Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [92]
“But you are still the same stubborn old man I first met,” the Jaguar Knight retorted. His deep affection for Zochimaloc would not allow him to speak more directly but he dearly wished that his teacher would depart from the mountaintop.
“If the ants press through,” Gultec continued, trying a different tack, “we will have to flee quickly Even young warriors, fleet of foot, may not survive. How do you expect to
outdistance such monstrous creatures?”
His teacher smiled a trifle sadly “I know enough of war in understand that this mountain is the only place you have. chance of stopping them. If they press through here, what will there be to flee to?
“Now, see,” added Zochimaloc, drawing Gultec’s attention with a pointing finger. “Here they come. Do not worry your self about me, but instead tend to your warriors and your battle. I shall take care of myself.”
The warrior turned to stare into the valley bottom a thousand feet below. He saw a red rank of crawling insects advance from the jungle fringe and press forward into the swamp. More of the segmented bodies surged behind, then still more, and soon it seemed that the earth itself was a crawling mass of festering destruction, creeping toward the base of the cliff.
The ants looked oddly proper from this height, like the tiny insects that they were supposed in he. The Jaguar Knight suppressed a shudder as he tried to imagine the dark and corrupt power that had perverted the creatures into the monstrous horde below him.
Gultec growled in frustration with Zochilmaloc’s stubbornness and in genuine shock at the extent of the insect army. Always before he had seen it as a long, snakelike column stretching into the distance, but to a distance that he could not see.
Now the creatures had massed into a broad front, and still they came forth from the forest. There were many thousands of them, and still they came! How could his line of mere humans hope to stand against such an assault?
At the same time, he knew that they had no choice He trotted back to the center of the line, pausing to pat a warrior on the shoulder here or to speak encouraging words to a young man there. The men of Tulom-Itzi stood ready to fight-and to die.
They watched, tense and fearful but still determined to hold their ground, as the huge creatures forced their way through the entangled brush of the swampy valley bottom* Caught in the tangles, some of the ants hesitated, and these
buried by the press of others behind them. Soon the bodies of the slowest sank into the mud, forming a ghastly bridge for the following ranks.
The ants pressed forward, faster and faster as their footing became more secure. Soon they reached the base of the
steep slope- They scrambled ahead and upward without pause, and finally the last of the creatures emerged from the forest. Gultec tried to spot the man-bugs among them, but among the sea of insects, he could see no sign of the larger black bodies-or the white one.
“Archers, stand ready!” he cried-
A thousand bows tensed, slim arrows tipped with sharks’ teeth, nocked, and pointed downward. The Itza warriors awaited Gultec’s command. Though the ants were still far away, a great portion of that distance dropped away from them, so the Jaguar Knight judged that they were within range.
Now! Shoot!” he called, and the missiles soared into the air. “Keep shooting! Aim for their eyes!”
The insects crept up the mountainside while the shower of arrows rained down. The ants took no note of the steepness of the terrain, clutching the clifflike shoulders of the rock as if they were low obstacles on level ground. Many of the arrows clattered harmlessly from the stony surface of the rock, while others bounced from the laugh, shell-like carapaces of the monsters.
But still others found the vulnerable eyes, or, aided by the momentum from their long descent, struck the upraised heads of the ants and punctured the hard shells. One ant, then another, then many of them altogether slipped