Viperhand - Douglas Niles [68]
Shatil fell backward against the pyramid, wrenching his arm from the vicelike jaws. He gasped in pain, struggling to remain conscious as a red haze drifted across his vision. He felt blood flowing into his lap, but only slowly came to realize the danger of his wound.
Shaking his head to ward off the grogginess, Shatil climbed to his feet. Tearing a strip of cloth from his robe, he wrapped it around the bloody flesh of his wrist. Though the bandage quickly became sodden, he hoped it would stem the bleeding enough to allow him to move. He stumbled when he tried to walk, but slowly he managed to stagger out of the square.
He saw that perhaps half the buildings in town had burned. Around him, in the remaining houses, slept the victors of the day's battle.
If you could call it a battle, thought Shatil bitterly. His step grew stronger as he passed the last houses, striking out on the road to Nexal. Thousands of Mazticans had already fled this way, and doubtless Naltecona had been told of the battle. But Shatil had a mission of his own. He had the scroll that he needed to give to Hoxitl, patriarch of Zaltec in the city of Nexal.
His step quickened. As his wrist throbbed, he held it to his chest and fought back the bile of his pain. He began to trot, and somehow he held this pace through the rest of the night.
At dawn, he stopped to drink, but he felt no need for food. Acutely conscious of the parchment he had pledged to carry to Hoxitl, Shatil once again trotted down the road.
His god, he knew, would sustain him.
Poshtli slipped through the darkness, appalled at the extent of the disaster. His route took him past the ruined section of Palul, and he came upon many badly burned survivors. These groaned and pleaded for water; he helped as many as he could, until his own waterskin was empty.
He found no sign of Erixitl, and he began to wonder if he had embarked upon a fool's task. She could have lain, delirious, ten feet away from him and he might have missed her in the gathering darkness.
It was with little hope that Poshtli started toward the rendezvous with Halloran at the base of the ridge. He approached the meeting with a strange sense of revulsion for his friend, simply because Hal was of the people who had done this. Yet he also knew shame for the treacherous ambush, all the more pathetic now for its obvious lack of success.
He heard Storm whinny quietly up ahead, and Poshtli moved toward Hal. He kept his face carefully neutral, so as not to reveal any of his inner emotional torment.
But then he saw Erixitl, and he couldn't hold back the tears of joy. She leaped toward him, then held the warrior tightly as he looked over her shoulder at Halloran. The expression of relief and joy on Hal's face banished Poshtli's earlier pain.=*
"You are safe!" said Poshtli earnestly. "That is what I feared I would never see."
"Hal's hurt," Erix said, returning to the ex-legionnaire. She had removed his breastplate, revealing a narrow puncture below his left armpit.
"I'll be fine," he grunted, trying to ignore the pain. "It's not serious."
"So many are dead," Erix said quietly, turning back to Poshtli. The warrior could only nod numbly; he had seen the proof. "Such mad butchery!" she blurted, turning back to Hal. "Why? What makes these men go mad with killing?"
Hal lowered his eyes, unable to meet her pain-filled, accusing stare. "The one who seized you is a born killer. His soul is dark and mad. As to the rest…" His voice trailed off, shameful.
"The ambush" Poshtli said to Erix. "Who attacked first?"
"The strangers. We presented them with a feast, and the leader, Cordell, murdered Kalnak with one blow. He said things about treachery, and then he killed him."
"He learned about a planned attack, ordered by Naltecona. The feast was a charade," Poshtli said softly, "to lure the invaders into a trap. But the ruse ensnared the trappers, instead."
Erix looked at him in shock. She recalled the weapons, close at hand, used by the warriors in the plaza, and she slowly