Ironhelm - Douglas Niles [81]
Halloran stood awkwardly off to the side, while Dag-grande looked fruitlessly for some indication of the dark attacker's nature or trail.
The shrine, Hal saw now, was a round, dome-shaped building in the rain forest. It was covered with vegetation and stood very near to the shore. He wondered how far they were from the fleet's anchorage. He did not allow himself to consider the possibility that the legion had moved on. Nothing Halloran could imagine seemed as frightening to him as the thought of being stranded here, never to see men of his own world again.
Erix moaned and leaned across Kachin's suddenly still body. Halloran looked away, realizing with surprise that this man's death saddened and angered him.
The attack had been cowardly, and the cleric had given his life to save a maiden, a clear statement of the relative merits of attacker and victim. But also this cleric had acted as a decent and reasonable man.
Indeed, Kachin had almost seemed civilized, Hal admitted. Too, he was discomfited by this unusual girl who had magi- cally learned his language and who regarded him with those luminous eyes.
"Well, there's no sign of that thing, or person, or whatever it was," reported Daggrande. "Now let's get going back to the fleet."
"Wait!" Halloran suddenly felt reluctant to leave. He turned to the girl. "I'm sorry about your friend."
Again she disturbed him, this time with the extent of the pain he could see in her face. She studied him with a wounded innocence that finally forced him to turn away. "Will you help me bury him, please?" she asked softly.
"We have to go!" Daggrande objected. "Cordell might already have decided to move on!"
Halloran sighed and looked at his old friend. "You go ahead. I'll help her and catch up as soon as I can."
The dwarf looked at him incredulously for a moment but made no move to leave. "I never did think you had much in the way of a brain. But I'd best stay here and help you get the job done. Then"-and his voice dropped to an ominous growl-"we're going!"
Erixitl selected a spot beside the shrine of Qotal, the god Kachin had served all his adult life. The fringe of forest along the coast was lined with many rocks, for the beach here was more gravelly than it had been below Twin Visages. All three of them helped carry rocks to the burial site, then slowly built a mound over Kachin's body.
Erix worked steadily, ignoring the questions that began to grow in her mind. Where should I go? What should I do? Fiercely she forced those questions aside until the grave was completed. Finally the work was done, and all her uncertainties settled to the fore of her mind.
A small part of her wanted to return home, to Palul, to finally see Nexal, the great city she had never seen. She knew no one in Ulatos-indeed, in all Payit-and she had come here as a purchased slave. Erix understood that, though Kachin had called her a priestess, she did not have the training or background for such an exalted calling.
But if she was not a priestess, neither was she any longer a slave. She feared the forces of Zaltec, for they had attacked her more than once, yet it seemed that greater things had been set in motion by the arrjval of these strangers. And those forces would threaten her everywhere in the True World, perhaps with even greater savagery near their highest temple in Nexal.
Too, there was the matter of Chitikas's gift to her. She was probably the only Maztican who could communicate with the strangers. They were indeed a frightening, even horrifying, lot. The prospects for peace between Halloran's people and her own looked very grim, especially after the melee at the pyramid. In her heart, she wondered whether war was inevitable.