Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [132]
At the last moment, the dark powers within Darien held her back. She felt a compelling urge to leap; in fact, she stumbled forward and lost her footing at the lip of the precipice. But she slid a few feet and then grasped some curling roots of brush that grew along the face of the bluff.
Gasping for breath, she scrambled for footholds. She found purchase for enough of her legs to support her, then collapsed, suddenly exhausted. Shivering in a sudden chill she wondered at the nearness of her escape. The rest of the driders, together with the blind human, had perished on the rocks far below.
She clutched the cliffside, unseen by those above. For a time, she needed to rest. Her anger and hatred seethed
anew, directed at these humans who had so nearly defeated her. But she still lived, and her strength slowly returned. Soon she would return.
The final ten regiments of Hoxitl’s army doomed the defense of Actas, the second village on Cordell’s defensive line. The ores rushed forward in force with untamed fury, sweeping around both sides of the village.
Grimes led charge after charge of the slowly shrinking company of horsemen, but he may as well have tried to hold back the ocean tide. Finally the riders fell back to regroup, realizing the futility of further attacks.
Bather than expend his army in Actas in a hopeless holding action or allow it to be annihilated, as had happened to the defenders of Nayap, Cordell ordered his trumpeters to sound the withdrawal.
The defenders broke away from the savage onslaught, struggling to hold their formation as they fell back toward Helmsport. The cavalry operated as four small companies, driving back the foremost spearheads of the pursuit.
Sharp volleys of harquebus and deadly showers of arrows dissuaded the attackers from vigorous pursuit. Didn’t they have their foes in full withdrawal, in any event? Now that the battle was won, why press? No fighter, whether human, dwarf, or ore, wants to be the last to die in a victorious campaign.
The slow, pale light of dawn began to wash across the field, revealing that many a brave warrior lay behind on the once-grassy savannah that was now a sea of mud. Dwarves of the desert, the Little People of the jungle, warriors of Payit and Tulom-Itzi, mercenaries of the Sword Coast-all mingled their blood in the earth, no longer caring of the differences that had separated them or the alliance that had brought them together.
But many more of these fighters, the defenders of that alliance, remained alive. These were the ones who reached Helmsport’s high, earthen ramparts. They fell back in good
order, and were met at the walls by Cordell or Daggrande. These officers quickly directed the retreating companies into useful positions on the fortress ramparts.
As the last ranks of Hoxitl’s regiments reached the battle, there was no fight to be found, for all the defenders had gone. Thus they swept on in victorious glee, a surging wave of chaos roaring toward the breakwater of the solid fortress.
That rampart served its function as the ores and ogres and trolls roared up the steeply sloping outer wall. At the top, they met an array of defenders, tightly packed together and holding the high ground. The horde was too big to bring all of its strength to bear against this limited front, and Cordell took advantage of the fact. Now his men fought shoulder to shoulder, spurred on by the knowledge that there could be no further retreat.
In Helmsport, they would hold or they would die.
The massive monolith that was Zaltec had neared the clearing at Twin Visages early that terribly dark night. The god of war had sensed the powers there, powers of both pluma and hishna. Also, it had sensed that its moment of confrontation with Qotal had not yet arrived.
So the mountainous figure of the war god had waited standing impassively as Halloran fought for his life, as the driders threatened the woman, and as the pluma whirlwind carried