Ironhelm - Douglas Niles [48]
Erixitl's sense of wonder grew. Was this a miracle in progress before her? Where did these visitors come from? Certainly they did not originate in the True World. She could see tiny manlike figures among the strangers, but she could not believe that these were actually human beings like herself. Could they be the messengers of the gods? Or even the gods themselves?
"Pretty girl!"
A voice, speaking crude Payit, jerked her attention back to reality. Erix swung around and raised the knife, but she could see nothing. Her back to the steep bluff, she scrutinized the surrounding vegetation.
"Oh, she's got a knife, too! Look out, look out!" The voice sounded amused.
"Who's there?" she hissed, crouching.
"We're all here, eh, pretty one?" A sudden burst of color startled her. She gasped, almost dropping the knife, as a brightly feathered bird exploded from the bush before her, squawking upward to rest among the fronds of a palm. "She's scared now!" Her jaw dropped as she realized that the mysterious voice belonged to a macaw.
"I'm not scared! You startled me, featherbrain!" She tossed her head at the bird, feeling sheepish. She had heard of macaws and parrots that could mimic the sound of human voices. Then she realized with a chill that the bird had not mimicked any sound. It had remarked about things it had observed, such as her knife!
"Smart bird, that he is," lisped another voice, a low, sibilant sound emerging from a leafy bush.
Erix turned with a gasp as she saw a long, brightly colored head emerge from the greenery. It was followed by a snake's neck and a portion of a serpentine body coiling smoothly forward, slender but supple and wiry. Yet the snake eyes gleamed at her with intelligence, even perhaps a little amusement.
"A lucky girl you are today, Erixitl." The creature spoke again, its snake lips pursing softly as a black, forked tongue slipped in and out of its mouth. "Lucky girl because / am here.
"And I am Chitikas."
Tenth day following landfall, aboard the Falcon
Helm has granted us a splendid anchorage, a deep lagoon surrounded by encircling headlands. A rugged coast greets us, distinguished in particular by two monstrous images carved into the rocky bluff.
Each of these presents a human visage, apparently a male and female, many times the height of a man. At the top of the bluff stands a squat structure, pyramidal in shape.
We move quickly to put the legion ashore, leaving bare crews to tend the ships. The footmen claim the ground even now; in some hours, we will debark the horses.
"Who could have made them?" wondered Halloran, awestruck. The growing light of day revealed a pair of huge faces carved into the cliff before them.
"Look at them!" murmured an unusually subdued Mar-tine, taking Hal's arm in unconscious excitement.
He thought uncomfortably how that touch would have thrilled him a few days before. Now Marline's hand felt like a cold iron shackle, closing around his flesh. Her attentions, which once had exhilarated him, now confined and enclosed him more securely with each bubbling phrase, each coy look.
She had stayed at his side constantly during the three days she had been aboard the Osprey-except, of course, when they slept. Hal had willingly offered his cabin, the only private lodging on the ship, and she had accepted it as her due. He had spent the last three nights with the horses and dogs under the crude deck shelter, and he had come to appreciate those hours as his only free time.
Daggrande had avoided them as much as possible-no mean trick on the ninety-foot carrack-and Marline's incessant talking had begun to ring in his ears even in his dreams. Perhaps this landing would give him an opportunity to be a soldier again, but he doubted it.
The fleet stood offshore, resting easily at anchor. Halloran and Marline stood at Ospreys rail as the longboat was lowered toward