Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [75]
“I’m all right now,” Erixitl said to her husband, awkwardly rising to her feet.
“Do you think they speak Payit?” Halloran asked her as they started to move again.
“Can you understand my words?” she asked in the tongue of the Payit. Halloran did not know that language, but he watched the little man with interest.
“Speak not with Big People,” the little warrior answered awkwardly. “They kill us, many always times.”
“Why have you taken us prisoner?” she inquired. “We offer you no harm.”
“All Big People bad,” he grunted, turning away to lead them along the trail.
“Where do you take us?” she prodded.
“To village-to feast,” he explained. With these ominous words, he ceased to answer her questions, and they could only follow his tense, naked form through the seemingly interminable forest.
* * * * *
“They press too closely,” gasped the Itza warrior. “The children, the old people can no longer keep ahead of them.” The man leaned weakly against a tree, bleeding from multiple wounds. His eyes focused only vaguely on Gultec, and the Jaguar Knight could see that they were dull with shock.
Gultec growled in frustration. Around him tumbled the
steep hills at the foot of the Verdant Mountains. The fleeing Itza formed a long file in the valley bottom, pressing forward toward a pass high up along the crest of the range But the ants had accelerated the pace of their pursuit, and the Jaguar Knight began to wonder if he had led these people into a colossal trap.
“The only one left… me. The others… all killed, burned’”
Gultec noticed as the man talked that the hair on one side of his head had been burned away. His arm on the same side had blackened, as if he had held the limb in the coals of a hot fire.
“My company… good men, all of them. Why me? Why?” The warrior looked at Gultec helplessly.
“Be calm,” ordered Gultec, and the man’s breathing! slowed. “Now. what happened?”
“They did not come after us as they used to,” he explained, breathing more easily “Instead, they continued past, ignoring our arrows. So we pressed closer, knowing the importance of our task.”
“Then did they turn?” asked Gultec.
“No. They continued on. We finally tried to advance, to get in front of the column again. Then we saw this thing-like those man-bugs, only this one was white all over, pale like a slug. It had the face of a woman.” The warrior’s voice! choked with horror as he remembered the scene.
“She raised her hand and called out a word. We saw a tiny bubble of flame, no bigger than a pebble, float toward from her finger. And then the world became hell, with fire exploding everywhere, scorching the trees, killing the men. By the grace of the gods, the fire only singed me, but I alone escaped. All of the others were consumed, left as blackened corpses when the flames receded.”
“The white one did this, you say’” Gultec had heard the tales of the pale bug-thing that lurked among the ants. He remembered another white creature, the albino wizard of the Golden Legion, who had incinerated a hundred brave Eagle Knights with similar magic. That attack, plus the sudden arrival of the horsemen, had doomed the defense of Ulatos and secured the legions conquest of the Payit.
Once again the Jaguar Knight growled. He looked at the column of Itza marching past, the old men and women helping the children, all of them casting anxious looks to the rear. It would be many hours before they could even reach the next valley in the range, and many more such valleys in their path before they reached the pass.
“We face the risk of disaster if we do nothing,” he finally concluded. “Gather all the warriors together. We will meet at the tail of the column.” His voice was a deep growl, grim with reluctance and foreboding. Gultec’s plan, born of desperation bordering on despair, seemed reckless and mad even as he prepared to enact it. He knew that the Itza had no training, no tradition of melee warfare.
Yet it filled him with pride, and guilt, to see how willingly