Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [80]
Slowly, by ones and twos, then by dozens and scores and hundreds, the beasts of the Viperhand moved to their master’s call. They gathered across the sprawling chaos of the great plaza, perching on ruined temples, clustering in the few flat expanses of the stonework, all of them turning their beastly faces toward the great stone monolith that was their power and their glory.
“Creatures! My children!” Hoxitl bellowed in his grotesque language, and the creatures listened attentively.
“Zaltec calls us, and we must obey! Again we shall march so that all Maztica will know the terror of our presence!”
His creatures responded with dull roars of anticipation. The long days of inactivity weighed heavily upon them, and now they stood, once again ready for war.
* * * * *
“Chief Tabub, we bring two of the Big People as prisoners,” explained the little man, who was called Kashta, after placing his bow and arrows-the tips of the deadly missiles wiped clean of their kurari poison-beside the door to the chief’s low hut. Kashta carried Halloran’s sword with him into the hut. The weapon was as long as the warrior himself.
“It is as I dreamed, as the Lord of the Jaguars told me in my sleep,” said Tabub in a low monotone. The chief sat cross-legged, flanked by two of his wives. “A man and a woman… she carries a child?”
“Indeed,” whispered Kashta, awed.
“They must go to the pit tonight,” pronounced the potbellied chief. Like Kashta, his face was painted red and black, though in vertical stripes while all the other warriors bore their marks in horizontal lines.
“But this man, he is like no other 1 have seen, no other man in the world,” the warrior objected tentatively. “His face is covered with hair, like a bearded monkeys, and he wears a shirt of hard silver. He bore this great knife, also of silver.”
“Let me see,” said Tabub. He drew the weapon from its scabbard, and his wives shrank back as the glow from the enchanted blade filled the tiny hut. Tabub reached out with one short finger and traced it along the keen edge. “Ah,” he grunted, without any display of pain, as blood ran from a gash in his skin. “This is a potent weapon indeed.”
“The stranger speaks gibberish, also like a monkey, but the woman understands him. She can talk, too, in the normal language of the Big People.”
Tabub’s visage grew stern. “You know the commands! You may not speak with the Big People! They must be placed in the pit, and there they die!”
“But always we kill the Big People! We place them in the pit, and the Cat-God devours them! For how many years must it go on this way?”
The chief’s scowl didn’t waver. “You know of the words of the god, as told me by my father, and his father before him, and on through the history of our people!”
Tabub’s eyes closed, and his words came forth rhythmically, reciting the prophecy that had long been lain on his folk.
“The Big People are our enemies, and they will kill us unless we kill them first. They go to their deaths to appease the gods, and the gods are pleased, and the Little People will live on.”
“But the killing must end sometime, to that same tale,” argued Kashta. He, too, spoke the rote of long-taught prophecy: “ ‘There will come a man, a giant even among the Big
People, who will turn night into day and lead us into the peace of a new age.’”
“Is this man a giant?” demanded Tabub.
“He is tall, even for a Big Person. Yet truly I could not call him a giant,” Kashta admitted.
“Then he will be fed to the Cat-God.” Tabub, his pronouncement final, turned with studied arrogance to inspect his newest wife. Kashta knew that the interview was over.
* * * * *
The small garrison of Helmsport, some thirty men, rushed to the shore, shouting hurrahs, at the appearance of Don Vaez’s fleet of carracks. Their delight swiftly turned to chagrin