A Magic of Nightfall

The Battle Begun: Niente

The sky lightened in the east and the spell-fog vanished with the light, though the city was still wrapped in smoke. Niente stood with Tecuhtli Zolin, with Citlali and Mazatl. The warriors were arrayed in their armor, their tattooed faces painted now, so they looked like the fierce, terrible dream-creatures who raped Axat before Darkness placed her wounded body in the sky. They were near the river; the large island around which it flowed seemed to be afire, and smoke coiled up from several dozen places in the city.

“Well done, Nahual,” Zolin said. “They will be exhausted and frightened from the fires in the night. Are the nahualli rested? Are their spell-staffs full?”

“They’re as rested as they can be, Tecuhtli,” Niente told him. “We readied our staffs last night, after we sent the black sand.”

“Good,” Zolin boomed. “Then stop looking so mournful. This is a great day, Nahual Niente. Today we show these Easterners that they are not immune to the wrath of the Tehuantin.”

Citlali and Mazatl laughed with Zolin. Niente tried to smile but could not. He hefted his own spell-staff, and Zolin nodded. “Go to the nahualli,” he said to Niente. “Citlali, Mazatl-rouse your warriors. When we see Sakal’s eye open on the horizon, it is time.”

Niente bowed his head to the Techutli and left them. He moved north, into the trampled field where the bulk of the army was massed near the roadway. The nahualli were there, and he gave them his orders, spreading them behind the initial line of mounted warriors and the first wave of infantry. He took his own place behind Tecuhtli Zolin and his handpicked warriors. Across the field, he could see, blurred by the poor vision in his left eye, the banners and shields of the Nessanticans, waiting. There were so many of them; Niente looked at their own forces, significantly smaller now after all the battles.

He had no doubt that the Tehuantin warriors were braver, that the nahualli were more powerful than the war-teni of the Nessanticans. Yet…

There was a burning in the pit of his stomach that would not go away. He clutched his spell-staff tightly, feeling the energy of the X’in Ka bound within it, and the power he held gave him no comfort.

The eastern sky lightened further. The first rays of the morning sent long shadows racing over the land.

Zolin raised his sword, shouting. “Now! Now!” Horns sounded in response, and the Tehuantin warriors screamed their challenge. Niente raised his spell-staff, clapping it into his open hand. Fire sizzled and sparked, flying away from him toward the enemy’s ranks; a moment later, the staves of the other nahualli did the same all along the long line. The war-teni of the Nessanticans responded: some of the spells vanished as if swallowed by the air; other rebounded as if they’d hit a wall, arcing back into their own ranks. Where they fell, warriors fell with them, screaming as they were consumed in the sticky tongues of fire. Many of the spells, though, passed untouched, and they heard answering screams from the Nessanticans. The archers, their arrows tipped with the last of the black sand, sent a fiery rain streaking over the field, and it was answered by a hail of Nessantican arrows. Around Niente, warriors grunted as they were impaled, but their shields had snapped up to snare most of the arrows. Zolin gestured with his sword and the warriors began to move, slowly at first, then gathering speed to run over the field toward the waiting enemy and the city beyond them.

It was difficult not to be caught up in the rush of excitement. Niente surged forward behind Zolin and the wall of the infantry, and he heard his own voice screaming challenge with the others. Then, with an audible shudder, the Tehuantin line collided with the waiting Nessanticans. Niente could see blades flashing, could see the mounted warriors on the horses slashing down into the chaotic mass of soldiers, could hear the cries from the wounded or dying of both sides, could smell the blood and see spatters of it flying in the air, but there were too many warriors between. The warriors behind him pressed in at their backs, pushing them forward, and the front line gave way so abruptly that Niente nearly fell. He was suddenly in the midst of the battle, with individuals fighting all around him, and he saw a Nessantican in his chain mail swinging a great sword overhead as he came at Niente.

The scrying bowl… The dead nahualli…

Niente shouted and thrust his spell-staff at the man as if it were a rapier. When it touched the man’s abdomen, a spell released: a flash, an explosion of broken steel links, of brown cloth and pale flesh and crimson blood. The sword toppled from nerveless hands, the man’s mouth gaped though no sound emerged, and he fell.

But there was no time to rest. Another soldier came at him, and again the stave, packed with the spells Niente had prepared, took the man down. One of the mounted soldiers they called chevarittai charged toward him, and Niente flung himself to the side as the warhorse’s spiked and armored hooves tore the earth where he’d just been standing, plunging on past.

For Niente, this battle-like every battle-became a series of disconnected encounters, a maelstrom of confusion and mayhem, a disorganized landscape in which he continued to push forward. The noise was so tremendous that it became an unheard roar all around him. He sidestepped swords, thrust his stave at anything clad in the colors of blue and gold. A blade caught his arm, slicing open his forearm, another his calf. Niente shouted, his throat raw, the stave hot in his right hand, the energy blazing from it fast, almost gone now.

And…

He realized that he was standing not in a field, but amongst houses and other buildings, that the battle was now raging in the streets of the city, and the blue-and-gold-clad soldiers were turning now as horns blared, retreating deeper into the depths of the great city.

He was still alive, and so was Zolin.