Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [24]
and a hundred others marched steadily southward, along the trail of the Nexala. Weary, but determined not to let his exhaustion show, Jhatli strutted toward the distant group.
Then he froze, suddenly alarmed. He hadn’t noticed the clouds of dust roiling along the opposite side of the vale. Now, however, he saw creatures-huge creatures!– trundling from the rocks. Vaguely manlike in shape, they loomed over the humans before them. Hundreds of others followed these monstrous forms, merely human-sized but just as beastlike of aspect.
Even at this distance, he could tell that they were armed and that they were attacking! Wave by wave, the creatures burst from concealment. Jhatli heard snarls and howls, mingled with the terrified screams of women and children.
“No!” Jhatli howled his anger and sprinted forward, watching the people reel backward from the surprise attack.
The initial slaughter quickly gave way to full massacre as the mostly defenseless Mazticans tried to flee, but quickly fell to the talons of the attackers. The few warriors and armed youths leaped bravely to the defense, but the superior numbers of the foe and crushing strength of the attack soon doomed them to a man.
Gasping and sobbing, Jhatli slowed his pace. He realized that he was too late to fight, for already the killing was complete.
“Monsters!” he cried, shaking a fist. Several of the beasts, a few hundred paces away, looked up and growled.
“I will avenge my people! You will all be slain!” Furiously he nocked an arrow to his bow and let fly, though the missile carried barely half the distance. Now, he saw with grim satisfaction, several of the smaller man-beasts started toward him. The creatures’ pig eyes were narrow in their bestial faces, above beastlike muzzles that gaped to display long, curved teeth. Yet their hands and arms were manlike and clutched the macas and shields of Maztican warriors.
Jhatli nocked another arrow, drew back his bow, and waited, using the first shot as his range mark. Squinting, he released the missile and watched it soar true toward its tar-
get. It struck the beast in the chest with a solid thunk, and the creature cried out as the force of the shot knocked it to
the earth.
But the thing snarled and climbed back to its feet while its companions broke into a trot. More of the beasts looked up from the gory trophies around them.
Jhatli sensed the futility of further combat and quickly turned away. He paced himself slightly faster than the lumbering beasts pursuing him, and as he had expected, they soon broke off the chase.
The young man jogged southward as night fell across the House of Tezca. He felt a dull pain for the deaths he had witnessed this day. But too much of his recent life had been spent in sorrow and mourning. Now, Jhatli decided, it was time to think of revenge.
* * * * *
A dense thicket of jungle growth masked the mouth of the cave, indistinguishable on the outside from the rest of the bramble-covered slope. From within, however, the verdancy merely proved that the surface world lay beyond.
Darien, leading the column, paused and listened. The white drider sensed the sunlight before her, and her old sense of revulsion returned. But she was a dark elf no longer, and the light of day was not a thing that could master her.
“Incendrius!” she cried, pointing a pale finger at the obstructing foliage. The power of fiery magic blasted the lush barrier, and the leaves and branches crackled into smoke. Without a pause, she pressed forward, creeping for the first time in months into the surface world.
Behind her followed the rest of the driders, their black longbows held ready. The spider-beasts walked with mechanical, insectlike motions of their eight legs. Their weapons, however, they wielded with the familiar fluid movements of drow veterans.
Following the driders came the army of giant ants. The red insects lurched awkwardly but quickly from the cavern. Antennae