Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [28]
Dimly Hoxitl remembered the great sacrifices with which he had celebrated victories as a priest. What a waste, he realized now, to capture and hold captives for ritual execution when it was so much more gratifying and appropriate to slay them on the field.
The idea settled into the beastly, but still shrewd, mind of the monster. Hoxitl began to see some of the reasons that the armies of Maztica had suffered so horribly in combat with the foreign invaders. The strangers had no such compulsion to take their opponents alive.
“Feast, my children! Feast and exult!” he howled in the language that had become his own. The ores and ogres and trolls understood their master, for they, too, spoke in the bastardized tongue that had come to them during the Night of Wailing.
“Feast and give thanks to Zaltec for his mercy!” cried the priest-monster, startling the vast assemblage of gore-soaked humanoids.
“Yes, you hear me true-thanks to Zaltec!” Hoxitl’s voice rumbled through the shallow valley as he surprised even himself with the power he felt thrumming through him at the name of his god. He thought of the great stone monolith, the statue back in Nexal that had come to embody all the might and terror of this bloodthirsty god.
“We will wage war in your name across the width and breadth of the True World!” gloated the beast, tearing a heart from the cold corpse of an old man and holding it upward.
And Zaltec heard, and rumbled his pleasure.
From the chronicles of Coton:
7n the nearness of Qotal, now the True World knows its hope.
I sit with the blind featherworker, Lotil, and we hear the beasts snuffling outside the house. The horse of the legionnaire remains in the building with us, while the monsters of the Viperhand prowl without.
They plunder each home on the ridge above Palul, smashing and burning and looting. Great cries of glee explode from monstrous maws when a golden treasure or piece of salted meat is discovered.
I fear not so much for myself, but for the old man. The blessing of the Plumed One surrounds me, and if his pleasure brings me to my end amid this sea of chaos, so be it. The pluma worker, however, must be spared this fate. He is needed for something greater. What this is, I cannot know, hut I shall stay with him and try to help him fulfill his destiny.
For some reason, they pass the house of Lotil, these panting monsters, and do not enter. And so we wait out the scourge, alone and helpless, yet somehow alive.
Again I sense die imminence of the One Plumed God.
A GOD ALIVE
Sea-birds wheeled above the great white sails, cawing and diving at the foaming wake. Don Vaez left Murann at the head of a proud fleet of twenty-five heavy carracks and more than fifteen hundred armed men, all of them thirsting for gold.
The young captain, his silver-blond locks flowing freely in the wind, stood in the bow of the lead ship. Scribes, sorcerers, and clerics had briefed him well on Cordell’s voyage, and though he sailed toward a land of mystery, he at least knew that land lay before him.
“And by Helm, it will be mine!”
Like many men of action, Don Vaez had little use for gods, except as they could help him in his endeavors. As such, he had casually adopted Helm as his patron deity, for a god of eternal vigilance is of obvious worth to a soldier.
Don Vaez struck a determined pose, well aware that his men watched him. A great believer in leadership by appearance, he constantly took pains to see that his troops saw him in the best possible light. To this end, he had no less than four wardrobe trunks stored in his cabin, so that he could insure a fashionable and well-groomed presence at all times.
The captain allowed himself to reminisce as the sea wind tugged at his hair. He had followed a long and convoluted road to reach this point, but now every audacious step of that dangerous path would be made worthwhile.
The fleet progressed steadily, under the guidance of a veteran navigator named Rodolfo. Indeed, the man had been hailed as one of the most fearless sailors on the Trackless