A Magic of Dawn

Niente

The desolation was nearly more than Niente could bear. The glare of his son sliced him open to his very bones.

He stood in the central square of Villembouchure, where he had stood once before in victory. The city walls were a tumbled ruin near the water, as were many of the buildings. On the hills outside those walls, the army of the Holdings was in retreat, though the farsighted among the Tehuantin claimed they could see lines of the Easterner warriors on the ridges overlooking the city. They might have retreated, but that retreat had been orderly and measured and they had not gone far.

If this was victory, it was a cold and bitter feast. That was what the Long Path demanded, but it didn’t make it any easier for Niente to stomach.

The Tehuantin warriors, their faces painted with the dark lines of battle and their bodies spattered with the blood of the Easterner defenders, trudged wearily through a gray landscape punctuated with fires and smoke. The city was theirs but it had cost them greatly; it had begun even as they approached. Nearby, Tecuhtli Citlali was huddled with the Tototl and the other High Warriors, his face grim and the glances he cast Niente were venomous.

There were too many bodies on the ground, and too many of them were Tehuantin. Their dead, gaping faces all seemed to accuse Niente. He remembered…

They could see the Easterners on either side of the A’Sele as they approached, just as the walls of Villembouchure tantalizingly appeared beyond the river’s bend. No one but Niente and perhaps Atl realized what the Easterners intended, nor the import of two crude stone buildings that had been erected on either side of the A’Sele.

Niente knew, and he braced himself. As the lead ships came abreast of the buildings, winches whined inside the structures and steel cables lifted menacingly from the brown waters of the river. The cables snagged the hulls of the lead ships. Great snarled hooks on the cable scraped and screeched, tearing gouges into their wooden hulls as the warriors and sailors shouted alarm, ripping planks and seams open so that the cold water rushed in. More cables lifted behind them, clawing at the ships behind.

Niente saw the first ships lift and cant over, stopped and snared to block the river. They took on water rapidly, the mast spars touching the water as men-warriors and sailors-spilled into the river, the lines and sails snarling and tangling in the mast of the nearest ship and bringing them down. The captains of the ships behind, tried to turn, tried to drops sails, tried to avoid colliding with the ships ahead of them in their way, but several could not-including the Yaoyotl, which crashed into the ship ahead of it, masts and spars snagging and breaking. Niente felt the impact, which knocked him from his feet despite his bracing. Through the screams and frantic shouting, through the smoke of fires started as lamps and cook fires were disturbed, he could see the A’Sele clogged with wreckage and disabled ships.

He could also hear the cheers of the Easterners on the shore…

“Taat!” Atl’s call brought him back to the present. His son’s tone was accusatory. He stirred, leaning heavily on his spell-staff, still warm from use. He felt older than the hills around them, older than the channel the river had carved in the land, as tired and ancient as the stones which were the bones of the place.

“Atl,” he answered. “Here I am.”

His son also showed the weariness of the battle, his face drawn and pale, smeared with soot. Atl thrust the end of his spell-staff hard into the ground before Niente. His glare was hard and accusing. “It did not have to be this way,” he said.

“We have won a victory, as I promised Tecuhtli Citlali,” Niente told him. “The path I was shown was true.”

“There was another path,” Atl insisted. “I saw our ships caught. Why didn’t you see that? I saw their troops waiting for us at the shore. Why didn’t you see that also, Taat? Why did you tell me that I’d seen wrong, and why did I believe you?”

“Why didn’t you see that?” Memory assaulted him again.

They lost too many warriors to the river, as the warriors were already dressed in their armor for the coming assault. The weight dragged down those who fell into the water even if they could swim. The ships that managed to drop sail and anchor in time sent out their small boats to rescue those they could. Everyone could see the Easterner warriors on the walls of the city, so tantalizingly close, and even Niente shuddered, waiting for the fire of their war-teni to come shrieking down on the disabled ships and the helpless warriors and sailors. They were a dead, unmoving target, and the teni-fire would be devastating. The river would become a conflagration, a death trap.

That was what Niente himself would have done, in their place: he would have rained death on the helpless enemy, ripe for the plucking. Impossibly-as Axat had shown him in the bowl’s water-only a very few spells were actually cast, and the nahualli easily turned them.

The ships at the end of the fleet’s long line turned away from the wreckage, sliding toward the shore well below Villembouchure’s walls, and the small boats poured out from the rest of the fleet, the warriors shrieking and pounding their shields as they landed, a furious Tecuhtli Citlali leading the charge. Niente was with him, as was his place, and his spell-staff cast fire toward the walls that shattered them and sent men screaming to their death. The catapults from the closest stable ships tossed their black sand, though much of it fell short.

The gates of the city opened, and the army of the Easterners poured out, then Niente’s world was enmeshed in the chaos of battle, all the plans the Tecuhtli and the High Warriors had devised gone to ash. The fight was brutal and bloody, but they had the advantage of numbers, of magic, and of the black sand.

In the end, they prevailed at great cost, as Niente had known they would.

“Axat showed me that if we had landed the fleet a day’s march from Villembouchure, we could have marched in on them intact-without having our fleet fouled and blocking the A’Sele, without the great losses we sustained there and in the initial attack,” Atl insisted. “Why didn’t you see that in the scrying bowl, Taat?”

“I’m sorry, but you saw wrongly, Atl,” Niente insisted again, hating the lie. But he had no other choice.

Atl was already shaking his head, glancing over toward Tecuhtli Citlali, who was staring in their direction. Atl’s voice was raised and heated, and his gestures were as sharp as a dagger’s edge. “I had one of the metalsmiths make me my own bowl, Taat, since you’re so reluctant to let me borrow yours. In that bowl and in yours also, I saw the same events, and they were clear. Had we landed the fleet earlier, this would have been a far easier victory, and the A’Sele would still be open to us. Your path was the wrong one, and it cost the lives of too many good warriors and sailors and has taken away our water path to the great city. Taat, I’m concerned. I look at you and I see how Axat has crippled your body; I see how weak you’ve become. I wonder…” He gave a huff of exasperation, or perhaps it was only concern. “I wonder if your far-sight has become as poor as your true sight.”

No, Niente wanted to tell him. My future sight has become sharper than ever before, and I can see further down the possibilities that Axat reveals than you can. And that is the problem… But he could say nothing of that to Atl. He wouldn’t understand and he wouldn’t believe. Niente wasn’t entirely certain that he understood it himself.

“What is this?” a gruff voice interrupted: Tecuhtli Citlali. He had come over to them; behind him, Tototl and two others of the High Warriors stared at Niente and Atl impassively. Citlali’s broad head, the red eagle bright against his flesh, turned from one of them to the other. The bamboo ridges of his armor were scratched and scarred from the battle, many of the steel rings set in it missing. “What are you saying to the Nahual, Atl?”

“I was asking Taat if perhaps there hadn’t been a better path for us to take, Tecuhtli,” Atl answered.

“He promised us victory,” Citlali said. “We have that.” He glanced around, his nose wrinkling at the odor of death and smoke. “Though not a pleasant one.”

“Yes, we do,” Atl answered. “But sometimes there is more than one road that can be traveled to the same place, and one might be easier than the other.”

The Tecuhtli’s regard turned back to Niente. “Nahual? What is the young man saying?”

Niente looked more at Atl than at Citlali. “I gave the Tecuhtli advice that led to our victory. If he wishes to follow another path next time, that is his choice. I am the Nahual, and I speak with Axat’s voice, as I always have. I know that Axat has given me true far-sight. I have proved that too many times already, at great cost to myself.” His voice was quavering at the end: an old man’s tired voice. His emptied spell-staff trembled in his hand. Niente stared at his son, and finally the young man’s gaze lowered.

“The Nahual found victory for us,” Atl said. “What else can be said?”

Citlali stared, but Atl kept his own gaze to the ground. Finally, the Tecuhtli coughed up phlegm, spitting on the ground and using his booted heel to grind it in. “Good,” he said. “Then there is no more discussion.” He gestured with his head to the High Warriors and they moved off. Tototl stared for a moment longer, then moved away to join Citlali. Atl lifted his head again, but there was no remorse and no apology in his eyes.

“I hope your victory pleased you, Taat,” he said. The words were thick with sarcasm, and they clung to him as if Atl had spat upon him. He turned and left, stalking away through the blue-gray smoke and the stones and bricks strewn over the square.

Niente sat on the ground, abruptly. The exhaustion rolled over him and he felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He huddled with his spell-staff clutched in his hands, and when one of the nahualli came to see if he could help, he simply grunted and sent the man away.

He stared at his wrinkled, ancient hands, and he tried to think of nothing at all.