Feathered Dragon

12

“Who was it?” Darien inquired, her voice icy cool yet taut with seething rage. Hittok had found her in a grassy clearing, and now they squatted among the tall blades, only their elven torsos showing above the vegetation.

“Dackto. The cat bit him right through the neck and broke his spine.” Hittok explained the death of the drider dispassionately, yet the news had struck them all a shocking blow. For the first time since Lolth had corrupted their drow forms, one of their number had perished.

“The cat was a human, no doubt-probably a Jaguar Knight,” guessed the albino. “No animal would be so brave or so foolish.”

“One of those we pursue, whose city we took?” Hittok ventured.

“Certainly. And when we catch these humans, they-all of them-shall pay for this affront. How fares the chase?”

“The humans flee quickly through the forest, remaining just ahead of the leaders,” Hittok explained. “Yet the ants are tireless, and the people will eventually begin to fatigue. Then we shall encircle them and take them all.”

“Very well. We must maintain the pace at all costs. Have you plotted their course?”

“Yes, mistress. It seems that they head for a pass through the mountains we have observed before us. Perhaps there they will be foolish enough to stand and fight so that we may overwhelm them.”

Hittok gestured to the purpled massif that lay to the northwest. For days, they had been approaching it, and now they could discern individual peaks and ridges, softly outlined by verdant, jungled slopes. In another day of pursuit, if the people of Tulom-Itzi held to their present course, they would enter the foothills of the range.

“Press forward with redoubled haste!” Darien barked The command, raising her own swollen abdomen from the ground to stand on her eight spidery legs. “Let us insure that the humans are fatigued when they reach the mountains.” She gestured to the others of her tribe, the nineteen remaining driders, who pressed forward in the wake of the marching column of ants.

“There we will finish the matter, for once and for all.”

“Don’t move. Don’t startle him,” Halloran said quietly. Slowly and carefully he stepped between Erixitl and the short man with the lethal-looking arrow.

“Look. There’s more of them,” Erix whispered.

He risked a glance around and saw that suddenly they were surrounded by the diminutive warriors. Each bore the shocking stripes of red and black war paint, and several wore feathers in their earlobes or tied to their elbows and knees.

Each native also carried a short bow and arrow, with a black daub at the head.

Desperately Halloran’s mind whirled through the few spells he knew: enlargement, light, magic missile… a few others. None offered any hope of extricating them from this crisis. Indeed, a sudden use of magic might be enough to provoke an attack. That was the last thing he wanted to do. The gummy substance tipping the arrows of the short warriors seemed a clear indication of fatal results.

Erixitl placed a hand, involuntarily he thought, to her throat. He knew she remembered the token she had given up to purchase their passage past the dead of Tewahca. He doubted that the thing would have helped them in this predicament, but the gesture made him feel their terrible vulnerability more acutely than before.

The first bowman gestured sharply with his weapon. Several others pressed forward, although they stayed out of

sword range-not that Halloran could have risked a fight here. A terrifying picture flashed in his mind. He saw his wife’s pregnant body, unprotected by armor, punctured by those obviously venomous darts.

The little man stepped up to him, demanding something in an imperious tone. He made a gesture toward the sword at Hal’s side. Slowly, grimly, Halloran ungirded the weapon and held out the blade and its belt and scabbard toward the warrior.

Jabbering something else in a rapid-fire, chattering tongue, the little man commanded one of his fellow warriors to step forward and carry the weapon. The bowman kept his weapon trained on Halloran. When the sword had been moved out of reach, he stepped forward, holding the bow and arrow in one hand. With the other, he reached up and tapped the steel breastplate. His dark eyes squinted at the hard metal-Then he spun on his feet and stalked away, turning to stare impatiently at his captives.

“I think he wants us to go that way,” Hal said in common.

“Then we’d better do it,” Erix replied in the same language.

The first of the small warriors, who seemed to be the leader, preceded them around the shore of the pool, white the others fell into file behind them. He pushed beneath some overhanging vines, forcing Hal and Erix to crouch low to follow.

A narrow trail, surrounded by dense verdure, lay beyond the screening vines. To their left, the moss-covered rock wall of the grotto climbed away. The warrior broke into a trot, and the natives to the rear moved up, raising their bows menacingly.

They picked up the pace, Halloran keeping a protective hand on Erixitl’s elbow. In her condition she couldn’t run, and the warrior in front of them turned and gestured impatiently.

“Wait’” snapped Hal in Nexalan.

For a second, he regretted his harsh tone and thought he would pay for it with his life as the chieftain raised his bow.

“I… can’t go… any faster,” Erixitl told him breathlessly, speaking the Payit tongue. The warrior scowled as though he understood and disapproved. But when he turned to resume the march, he went a little more slowly. A short time later, he removed the arrow from his bow and slung the weapon across his back. The warriors behind them, Hal noticed with a quick look, still kept their weapons ready to shoot.

They followed a deep cut in the rock wall of the grotto, and soon granite cliffs towered on each side of them. In places, the rocks were wet and slippery, and it seemed to them that the sun must never reach to the bottom of this crack in the bedrock. The warrior never hesitated, leading them forward as the niche grew more and more narrow.

Finally they reached a steep progression of stairs- whether natural or hewn from the rock, Hal could not tell- and proceeded to climb. The cool, mossy rock pressed close to either side, and only a thin strip of blue sky, visible straight above them, gave proof they had not entered a cavern.

After a very long climb, at least two hundred steps, they emerged at the top of the cliff. Here the path led through a deep forest glen, winding along damp dirt. Halloran saw Erix begin to stagger, tired from the long climb.

“Stop!” he ordered in his firmest martial tone.

The chieftain whirled around in surprise. Hal blinked, stunned at the quickness with which he had snatched his bow from his shoulder and renocked an arrow. “Can’t you see she’s tired? She needs to rest!” The two stared at each other for long moments.

Erix leaned against a tree, breathing hard. Gently Halloran took her arm and lowered her to sit upon the mossy ground. The warrior jabbered something, raising his weapon, but Hal continued to meet his gaze.

He studied the little man, curiosity not banishing his fear but beginning to rival it. For the first time, he noticed the man’s feet. Like the rest of his body, they were barren of clothing. The tops were covered with tufts of coarse black hair.

In all other respects, proportionally and facially, he looked like a human. His features, behind the garish paint, bespoke a person of pride and confidence. The look in his face, even when confronting a man twice his size, displayed courage. He had a strong chin, a smooth, straight nose, and dark, intelligent eyes. Whether his skin color was the darkened copper of Maztican humans or simply bronzed by a lifetime in the sun, Halloran could not tell.

In any event, the man apparently decided to let Erixitl rest, for he lowered his weapon and squatted on the ground. For a few minutes, he and his fellow warriors waited, immobile.

“I’m all right now,” Erixitl said to her husband, awkwardly rising to her feet.

“Do you think they speak Payit?” Halloran asked her as they started to move again.

“Can you understand my words?” she asked in the tongue of the Payit. Halloran did not know that language, but he watched the little man with interest.

“Speak not with Big People,” the little warrior answered awkwardly. “They kill us, many always times.”

“Why have you taken us prisoner?” she inquired. “We offer you no harm.”

“All Big People bad,” he grunted, turning away to lead them along the trail.

“Where do you take us?” she prodded.

“To village-to feast,” he explained. With these ominous words, he ceased to answer her questions, and they could only follow his tense, naked form through the seemingly interminable forest.

“They press too closely,” gasped the Itza warrior. “The children, the old people can no longer keep ahead of them.” The man leaned weakly against a tree, bleeding from multiple wounds. His eyes focused only vaguely on Gultec, and the Jaguar Knight could see that they were dull with shock.

Gultec growled in frustration. Around him tumbled the

steep hills at the foot of the Verdant Mountains. The fleeing Itza formed a long file in the valley bottom, pressing forward toward a pass high up along the crest of the range But the ants had accelerated the pace of their pursuit, and the Jaguar Knight began to wonder if he had led these people into a colossal trap.

“The only one left… me. The others… all killed, burned’”

Gultec noticed as the man talked that the hair on one side of his head had been burned away. His arm on the same side had blackened, as if he had held the limb in the coals of a hot fire.

“My company… good men, all of them. Why me? Why?” The warrior looked at Gultec helplessly.

“Be calm,” ordered Gultec, and the man’s breathing! slowed. “Now. what happened?”

“They did not come after us as they used to,” he explained, breathing more easily “Instead, they continued past, ignoring our arrows. So we pressed closer, knowing the importance of our task.”

“Then did they turn?” asked Gultec.

“No. They continued on. We finally tried to advance, to get in front of the column again. Then we saw this thing-like those man-bugs, only this one was white all over, pale like a slug. It had the face of a woman.” The warrior’s voice! choked with horror as he remembered the scene.

“She raised her hand and called out a word. We saw a tiny bubble of flame, no bigger than a pebble, float toward from her finger. And then the world became hell, with fire exploding everywhere, scorching the trees, killing the men. By the grace of the gods, the fire only singed me, but I alone escaped. All of the others were consumed, left as blackened corpses when the flames receded.”

“The white one did this, you say’” Gultec had heard the tales of the pale bug-thing that lurked among the ants. He remembered another white creature, the albino wizard of the Golden Legion, who had incinerated a hundred brave Eagle Knights with similar magic. That attack, plus the sudden arrival of the horsemen, had doomed the defense of Ulatos and secured the legions conquest of the Payit.

Once again the Jaguar Knight growled. He looked at the column of Itza marching past, the old men and women helping the children, all of them casting anxious looks to the rear. It would be many hours before they could even reach the next valley in the range, and many more such valleys in their path before they reached the pass.

“We face the risk of disaster if we do nothing,” he finally concluded. “Gather all the warriors together. We will meet at the tail of the column.” His voice was a deep growl, grim with reluctance and foreboding. Gultec’s plan, born of desperation bordering on despair, seemed reckless and mad even as he prepared to enact it. He knew that the Itza had no training, no tradition of melee warfare.

Yet it filled him with pride, and guilt, to see how willingly they followed his command. But he could see no other alternative.

“Then, when the creatures move up, we shall attack.”

Poshtli sensed no hunger, no thirst. It never grew dark, nor did the gray mist show any signs of thinning or dissipating. Yet he knew that many days must have passed since he and Qotal had escaped from the Temple of Tewahca.

For all that time, he had ridden on the great dragon’s shoulders. Nestled among the bright, flowing plumage, he fell no danger, knew no desires. He had not spoken, nor had the Plumed Serpent made any communication with him. A sense of timeless peace possessed Poshtli, and it seemed to him that it didn’t matter where they were or where they went. His human body seemed like an old friend.

Finally, though, he knew that this sense of stasis must begin to fade. He felt something that was not boredom, but instead a slow, restless stirring that compelled him to speak or to act.

“Where are we?” he asked finally, his voice low but level.

We soar through the ether, away from the plane of men.

The answer came into his mind clearly, and he could almost imagine it spoken in low, articulate tones. Yet there had been no sound after his own question.

“Why am 1 here with you?” Poshtli inquired.

I admired your bravery. You were willing to die for me in the battle. We lost that fight, but there will be another.

“When? How?”

The woman, the Daughter of the Plume, is very wise. She will know where the battle must be fought, and she will go there. We wait for that moment, and then I shall challenge Zaltec again.

And I will triumph.

Poshtli wanted to ask more questions, to talk about the details of their entry into the world. He wondered briefly how long their wait might be, or how much time had passed since they had entered this stuff that Qotal called “ether*) But something in the dragon’s mental tone discouraged any further questions, so he settled back into the lush plumage.

There would be time enough, he suspected, for all these answers and more.

A flight of two dozen eagles soared overhead, following the dusty spoor across the rolling desert terrain. On the ground, Cordell and fourteen other riders held their steeds] to a walk in order to conserve their strength- The journey to] Helmsport would be a long and tiring one, but no part, would be as difficult as this first leg, the crossing of the “ House of Tezca.

For the first week they had moved northward, retracing the route of their flight and following the path of the horde, which now apparently returned to Nexal. Water had been plentiful along this route, and they carried sufficient food for the passage, at least until they again entered settled lands.

But now they cut to the northeast, both to avoid the tail end of the monstrous army, which moved much more slowly than the riders, and to trace a more direct path toward the Payit lands. Chical and the other eagles soared

ahead and above, informing them that the fertile lands of Pezelac lay another week’s journey in this direction.

Loading the horses with as much water as they could carry, the men carefully rationed the precious liquid and embarked upon this scorching trek. Cordell, accompanied by Captain Grimes, the assessor Kardann, and twelve stalwart lancers, rode toward Helmsport. The rest of his legion and its Kultakan allies marched toward the sea.

Only the gods, or fate itself, would decide whether they would again be reunited.

“Gultec, I must speak with you now.” Zochimaloc said with uncharacteristic force. Despite the mounting pressures of the attack that he was about to launch, the Jaguar Knight turned to heed his teacher. Around him, the warriors of Tulom-Itzi crouched among the underbrush, awaiting his command.

“I understand the importance of this attack, and I know that Itza warriors, perhaps many of them, will die as they make it,” continued the old man.

Gultec nodded, uncomfortable under Zochilmaloc’s patient gaze.

“But take care of one thing, my student and my friend,” he said. Gultec flushed with pleasure. Never had his teacher called him “friend” before. “Take care that you survive the battle.”

“Why do you tell me this?” Gultec scowled. “I cannot lead the warriors into battle, all the while taking care to preserve my own life!”

“You are important to us, to all Maztica. Perhaps more important than you know. If you were to perish now, all that you have won for us would be lost. The future would become despair.”

“What have I won for you?” the Jaguar Knight challenged “Thus far, your city has been sacked, your people have fled into the jungle, and now they stand at the brink of disaster. You know that the ants must be diverted, or at least slowed

here. Otherwise we will never make it to the pass in the mountains. There will be no future for the Itza!”

“Please do not ask me to explain,” continued the teacher. “But promise me that you will take care. Keep my words in your mind.”

Once again Gultec felt very strongly his teacher’s deep and patient power. What this strength personified, other than intelligence and wisdom, the warrior did not know. But he sensed it as a majestic might that could only be obeyed.

“This I will do,” the warrior promised. “Now the attack must begin.”

“Fare well in the fight, my son.”

“I will do the best that I can, Grandfather,” Gultec said with a bow.

He turned back to the warriors. Already the hulking black forms of the ants were visible among the underbrush. With a heavy heart, his teacher’s words ringing through his mind, Gultec ordered his warriors forward.

The shrill howl of a thousand war cries split the jungle stillness, heralding the attack against the head of Darien’s inexorable column. The monstrous ants, marching eight or ten abreast, didn’t hesitate, nor indeed take any notice of the assault.

Instead, the first rank trekked forward into the chopping daggers and axes of the Itza. These ants fell, quickly overwhelmed by the onrushing warriors.

The next rank, too, advanced to its doom, and the third followed. Still the insect legs drove the segmented bodies forward, while cold eyes sought enemies for the killing. The humans, too, pressed forward, a savage wave spreading to both sides of the massive insects, disrupting the march and forcing the column to dissipate and turn to its flanks.

But soon the creatures began to exact the price of battle in human blood, which quickly soaked into the damp earth of the forest. The ants reacted with mechanical precision,

chopping and mangling targets as they presented themselves, marching forward as long as no obstacle stood before them. But as brave men fell to the rock-hard mandibles, others swept around them, still pressing the attack.

In moments, the column of ants disrupted into complete confusion. The creatures turned upon themselves, seizing the torn bodies of their fellow insects and instinctively carrying the corpses to the rear. Others turned to the sides, striking and advancing to the right or the left, and the impact of the narrow column diffused into the tangled forest. The file spread, and the insectoid advance lost all sense of direction.

Warriors threw themselves at the monstrous foes, striking for eyes, trying to hack the glistening black bodies apart where the bulbous segments joined. A wild melee spread beneath the jungle canopy as men and insects both perished in mortal clash.

“What is the humans’ intent?” Darien demanded from her position with the other driders near the center rear of the column. The attack had caught her by surprise, but she felt curiosity, not dismay. She believed implicitly that human warriors could not hope to stand in battle against her mighty, unfeeling host.

The drider’s intuitive command, sensing the opportunity in the clash, reached her mindless creatures.

Kill, my soldiers! Kill!

The ant army surged forward, spreading into a broad front, facing the attacking warriors who now spread to the right and left of the column as well as to its front. Insects crawled over the bodies of their fallen kin, seeking human flesh.

“Hittok! Go now! Strike them with missile fire! Take the archers-now!” She barked the command at her drider lieutenant, and the grotesque creature sprang through the tangled column, his eight legs propelling him quickly past the steadily marching ants. The other driders followed, launching their black shafts into the faces of the attacking warriors.

Darien herself muttered a quiet command, instantly disappearing from view with the casting of an invisibility spell. She followed this with another chant, a teleportation spell that carried her to the flank of the human advance.

Here she crouched, unseen, among the underbrush. She saw ant and human alike fall to the assaults of the foe. Raising her invisible hand, she sighted an imaginary line along the Itza attack.

“ Kreendiash!” she snapped, unleashing the power of her magic as explosive energy.

A yellow bolt of lightning crackled from her hand, searing through the fleshen ranks of the humans. Men screamed in shock and pain, horribly wounded, while others fell dead, instantly slain by the hot magic. The bolt seared a black swath through the forest, killing vegetation, ant, and human alike.

Again she shouted, and another bolt blazed its path of blood and pain. Now the arrows of the driders began to take their toll, piercing human skin and muscle with driving power. A flush of ecstasy thrilled Darien. She saw horrible devastation wrought among the humans and knew a joy she had not known since her days as a drow.

Advance! Slay them all!

The ants surged forward now, a wave of inevitable death, tearing into the suddenly faltering Itza attack. Men cried out in pain as they fell to horrible maiming and death beneath the tearing jowls of the inhuman foe.

She saw a warrior, clad in the skin of a jaguar, and sensed instinctively that this was the one who had slain Dackto. She raised her hand, and a bolt of magical energy, like a sizzling arrow of light, hissed forward. It struck the warrior in his left shoulder, spinning him around and dropping him to the ground.

She pointed once more. There was a crackling hiss, and another magic missile exploded from her fingertip. Before the second bolt struck, however, a surge of warriors swirled around the fallen knight. The blast seared the back of one of the warriors, slaying him instantly, but she shrieked her hatred and frustration as her original target vanished behind the protective shield of his fellows.

Again and again her magic crackled through the air, but now the humans fell back toward the sheltering jungle. The cohesion of her insectoid column broken, the creatures scattered after individual targets, often dragging a fleeing man to earth, where others of the ant army set upon him and tore him to pieces.

Many of the warriors escaped, but many did not. Darien counted, with grim satisfaction, the remains of several hundred among the bodies of her own slain ants. Now the insects swarmed about the gory corpses, spreading into a vast feeding horde as the remaining warriors vanished into the forest.

Hittok and the other driders came toward her, with the scuttling, crablike gait of her kind that she still found so revolting. Counting quickly, she saw that none of the driders had been slain.

“They escape!” cried Hittok, with a gesture toward the now motionless forest fringe. “We must pursue!”

Darien raised a restraining hand, her face creased with an ice-cold smile. “Let them go,” she countered. “There will be time for more killing tomorrow.”