Viperhand - Douglas Niles [59]
Frozen in position? Icetongue. She remembered the tale of that stick now. Hal had called it a wand of froSt and explained that it slayed quickly and magically, killing many at a time.
There was no doubt in Erixitl's mind that most of these victims had perished-a hundred or more Mazticans, slain in one silent attack! Only around the edges of the afflicted area did she see the wriggling, crawling figures of wounded. These miserable souls desperately crawled away from the stiff corpses behind them, and Erix saw that many of them dragged useless legs or showed ugly patches of scarred, frostbitten flesh.
Later Erix would realize that the pause had only lasted seconds, but at the time, it seemed as though many minutes ticked by while they all stood motionless in the plaza. The attack of Icetongue finally broke the paralysis. Again the wand flashed its chilling blast, and the pale white light illuminated, and killed, another group of villagers.
Chical howled in rage, raising his maca to leap at Cordell. The captain-general slashed at the Eagle Knight. Chical ducked the stroke of Cordell's sword, but the commander reversed his attack quickly and brought the hilt crashing down on the Eagle Knight's skull. Chical collapsed like a stone statue, kicking once and then lying still on the feathered blanket.
Panic compelled Erixitl's reaction, and she darted away from the man, disappearing into the throngs of weeping, screaming Mazticans. Even as she disappeared, Cordell had turned away, stabbing a charging Jaguar Knight through the heart.
The pale flash of light washed the plaza once more, this time flooding around Erix herself. She stared, stunned, as villagers died on all sides of her. Only after the effect had passed did she realize that she herself and several youngsters who had been right beside her had been unaffected by the blast. She sensed her pluma token puffing lightly out from her dress, and she realized that somehow her father's magic had saved her from the wizard's spell.
Darien regarded her coldly from the impenetrable depths of that cowled hood. Erix's eyes couldn't penetrate the shadows there, but she saw the elfwoman's eyes, glittering like hard diamonds.
Breaking from her thrall and spinning in panic, Erixitl ran from the wizard. Nearby she heard the stomping and snorting of horses and saw legionnaires swinging into their saddles. The youth with the feathered headband looked up in astonishment as the red-bearded captain of the riders loomed above him. With a cruel sneer, the man slashed savagely with his sword, splitting the youth's body from his forehead to his belly.
A woman carrying a baby screamed in front of Erix, fa!!1 ing to the ground, writhing and spitting blood. Erixitl saw one of the deadly steel darts fired by the legionnaires' crossbows. This one had pinned the woman's baby to her own body, and Erix turned away, horrified, as the mother and child perished before her.
More and more of the lethal, steel-tipped arrows flashed past, slaying indiscriminately. The dull chunk of the weapons' triggers created a grim cadence of death. The cross-bowmen stood in a circle, loading and reloading their weapons, driving their missiles at point-blank range into a solid mass of targets, puncturing bodies of male and female, old and young, with constant, gory slaughter.
Erixitl slipped on blood that washed across the paving stones. Like most of the other Mazticans in the plaza, she thought only of escape. The warriors among them seized their weapons and sprang to battle, desperate to give the women and children time to flee. At the time, it didn't s.eem odd to Erix that so many spears and macas should be available to warriors who had entered the plaza unarmed.
Erix tried to run north, toward her father's house, but the surging crowd carried