Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [69]
“They’re certainly good at it, for folks who are out of practice,” Halloran said. The memory, nearly two months old, of the desert dwarves’ timely arrival in the battle with the trolls lived fresh in his mind. They all knew that they had faced certain and imminent death.
Now they marched with the dwarves in friendship, enjoying the gruff curiosity and solid competence of the Hairy Men of the Desert. The friendship had grown quickly to respect as together they had borne the rigors of the desert trail. Days of blazing sun had followed one after the other,
broken only by short, clear nights of startling chill. Their only water had come from the plump, precious cactus that the desert dwarves seemed to be able to smell from miles’ away, or from the blessed magic of Coton’s clerical power. They had shared the food he created among all of them, and somehow they had stayed alive.
And when the pair of fire lizards had attacked the companions and the desert dwarves, their respect had become an unbreakable bond, for they proved in battle that each possessed courage and skill worthy of the other. Two dwarves had paid with their lives in the first brunt of the attack as the giant, dragonlike creatures had charged from their dry caves.
But the keen missiles from Daggrande and Jhatli had distracted one, while Luskag had led his dwarves in a circular attack against the second. Halloran, with Helmstooth carving a deadly swath through the desert air, had felled the first with a blow to its neck, while the plumastone weapon of the desert dwarves had disemboweled the second.
The fight had also provided the one night of epic feasting along the barren trail when they seared the tough meal on hot fires of brush and pretended they were devouring the tenderest of delicacies.
“And now the Hairy Men march with us to Twin Visages? Jhatli was still trying to get a picture of this vast land called Maztica. Though he had lived here all of his life, until four months earlier he had never been beyond the valley of Nexal.
“The story goes that they had some kind of collective vision-at a place they call the Sunstone,” Daggrande explained. “I’d like to see it sometime-a lake, high inside a mountain, that seems to be made of silver!” The dwarf shook his head in wonder. “There they saw an image of darkness, and a flower of light within it. As soon as they saw Erixitl, according to Luskag, they recognized her as that flower. So now they’ve pledged to help her drive back the darkness.”
They moved steadily northward, following the long file of the desert dwarves. Always the memory of Twin Visages lay
before them, with the hope that Erixitl’s guess was right. Qotal would await them there, they told themselves over and over again, and they would stand fast to open the god’s passage into the True World. What happened after that would be left in the hands of
the gods.
The verdant foliage surrounded Gultec, masking his position from the advancing enemy. The Jaguar Knight drew back his longbow, sighting on the first of the approaching ants, and then he let the arrow fly.
The missile struck true, in the left eye of the monstrous insect. The creature reared back, antennae flailing wildly. Other ants rushed forward, scrambling over their wounded cohort. The creature struck by Gultec’s arrow spun in confusion, finally rushing into the brush off to the side of the army’s path.
Six of the giant ants rushed straight toward Gultec, only to draw a flurry of arrows. A dozen bowmen of Tulom-Itzi stood behind their leader, and several of their missiles struck the insects’ vulnerable eyes. Three more of the ants, wounded and disoriented, began to circle in agitation.
Quickly the humans melted back into the woods, following the winding trail that allowed them to make rapid progress. Gultec, who went last, retreated away just ahead of the leading ant, before turning to launch