Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [125]
For long, bloody minutes, the battle stood in terrible balance. Humans, ores, dwarves, ogres, halflings, horses, and trolls, all bled into the dark earth, beneath the encloaking clouds that blacked out even the slightest glimpse of stars or moon.
Hundreds of lives expired. Companies of ores or humans, decimated by battle, turned to flee. Others on each side expanded their fronts to cover gaps thus exposed. An exhausting, costly equilibrium held along the front.
Then another horrifying sequence of whistles and bellows erupted from the forest. The din of the battle faded to insignificance against the cacophony of fresh strength symbolized by that throaty, hungry roar.
More hulking shapes emerged from the forest, their shadows spreading across the savannah. Another powerful wave of destruction, they pressed toward the cringing shore as Hoxitl throw another ten regiments into the fight.
* * * * *
Erixitl stumbled forward, helped by Colon and Halloran. They made their way slowly down the shore toward Twin Visages on foot, since the ground in places was too rough for safe travel by horseback. Jhatli led Lotil by the hand.
They followed the coast, since all the paths through the jungle from Ulatos to Twin Visages were obscure and difficult to follow. The shoreline route took longer but was far more certain.
“It’s not much farther,” Erix said finally, after hours of marching. The sun neared the western horizon, and now they strived to reach their goal by nightfall.
Halloran remembered the place called Twin Visages, the place where he and Erixitl had met. It had seemed even then to be a place of dire portent and deep, abiding power. Now it fell like the focus of his world, the place toward which all his roads had been leading.
“When we get there, do we climb the pyramid?” he asked. That structure, much smaller than the one in Tewahca seemed hardly large enough to support the massive dragon they had glimpsed, so briefly, in the City of the Gods.
“Yes.”
“And the god will arrive there?” Halloran asked.
“I think so,” Erix replied. She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know! I can only do what seems right’”
She gasped in sudden pain and bent double. “It’s… all right,” she said, pushing herself along.
The ground rose beneath them as they moved onto the bluff that formed the broad headland of the point. Silently they walked on, pushing along the fringe of brushy ground between the deep jungle and the sheer drop toward the wave-battered shore below.
Then Halloran stopped, raising a hand before him and soundlessly pointing. Erix looked and saw it, too, even though the moon had set an hour before. She would never forget that horrible place where she had come so close to death.
Before them stood the squared bulk of the pyramid and Twin Visages- Beyond, etched in streaks of sunset, stretched the lagoon and the endless ocean. They couldn’t see the top of the pyramid, but the last rays of the sun brightened the side facing them.
Erixitl groaned again in sudden pain. With a gasp, she grabbed her belly and sank slowly to the ground.
Flames exploded into the dark sky from one after another of the huts of Nayap. Metal-armored soldiers from Amn fought desperately for each square foot of ground, making the beasts pay for every forward step with one, two, a dozen lives. But the monstrous army could afford the price.
Finally the defenders gathered around the pyramid attacked on three sides by a howling, slavering mass. Fire and ash and smoke drifted around the squat structure, though the din of battle drowned any sound of the blaze.
A great ogre bulled his way onto the steps of the pyramid, crushing the skull of a metal-helmed soldier with a blow of his heavy club. Laying about him to the right and left, the beast lumbered up several steps. A swordsman leaped at it from the side, driving a steel blade deep into the beast’s thigh. With a howl, the ogre turned, seizing the courageous soldier