Ironhelm - Douglas Niles [67]
"Hey, Captain, maybe this one can tell us something!" Gra-bert, the ranger, still leading, turned back to Daggrande with a struggling form clasped in his brawny arms.
The dwarf saw a young woman, a black-haired, copper-skinned beauty who kicked and scratched in a vain effort to escape the ranger's grasp. The man winced once as the girl landed a sharp kick, but he simply clasped her more tightly as one of the crossbowmen seized and held her feet.
Daggrande grunted, studying the girl, or woman… he was not sure which. Her smooth-skinned face and slender form bespoke late adolescence, but something in the girl's glaring eyes, in the firm set of her mouth, made the dwarf suspect her to be an adult.
In return, Erixitl studied these strange men who had taken her, new captors now after her one brief day of freedom. All of these strangers had hair growing out of their faces. Their skin was a sickly pale color. She especially recoiled from some of their unnatural eyes, watery blue orbs that seemed more properly the eyes of fish than men.
Some of the men were very short, she noticed, though this did not make them seem any less fearsome. If anything, the bushy facial fur and gnarled limbs of these smaller strangers made them even more ferocious-looking than their human-sized comrades. She remembered tales of the Hairy Men of the Desert, who supposedly dwelt in the arid reaches south of Kultaka and Nexal. Legends said those folk were short, broad of shoulder, and bowed of leg. Such a description matched the shorter warriors among the strangers as well.
"Well, I don't think she's the one who did the killing and capturing," speculated Daggrande. "But I don't think it would be smart to let her go until we find out a little more about what's going on."
The dwarf nodded to a couple of the crossbowmen… "Tie her up and bring her along. And be quick about it! We're moving on."
Erix couldn't understand the harsh, barking speech otthe strangers, but their intentions became clear enough as the hempen rope curled around her wrists. Her struggles in the arms of these burly humans were as a child wriggling in the grasp of its mother. Soon she was bound as tightly as before, though the strangers did not gag or blindfold her.
In the meantime, the swordsman at the point of the column had pushed forward several steps and now crept slowly backward.
"Captain, look at this!" he called, with a new sense of urgency.
Erix knew he had seen the pyramid and its scene of gory sacrifice.
From the chronicle of Colon:
Serving as always the resplendent glory in the memory of the Golden God.
Iwatch the young Lord Poshtli as he leaves thecitybythe south causeway. He departs Nexal alone, but this in no way diminishes the grandeur of his mission.
Poshtli carries a pair of spears, an obsidian-edged maca, his bow, a quiver of arrows, and a waterskin. He will shun the lands of Kultaka and Pezelac. Instead, he will strike out over the House of Tezca, the great desert that marks the True World's southern extent.
He still wears the mantle and helm of the Eagle Knight, but he will not make this quest by wing. Instead, he laces his high sandals tight and marches toward lands as barren as any nightmarish pestilence of the gods. His goal is the truth and nothing /ess-a quest that might keep a man searching for a very long time.
But Poshtli has dreamed of the Sunstone. Such a dream must provide a nicker of hope, for it shows the presence, however faint, and the will of the Plumed One. And, too, this vision was given to him by the couatl, the feathered snake who is the voice of Qptal himself.
So I wiU choose to believe that, perhaps, Poshtli may find his truth in the great silver wheel of the Sunstone.
RETRIBUTION
Halloran watched the spearmen descend from the pyramid, attracted by the chattering of the bird near the base of the structure. The creature suddenly flew off into the jungle, and the leading warrior, the one who wore the spotted hide, gestured toward his comrades above. Two of them roughly urged Halloran down the stairs. The legionnaire staggered