A Magic of Nightfall

Niente

They used what little of the black sand they had left to hurl into the city again that night. Otherwise, Niente ordered the nahualli to rest and restore their spell-staffs for the next day’s battle. He had lost ten more of the nahualli during the battle, most of them late in the day as Zolin tried unsuccessfully to take the closest of the bridges over the river. The energy in their spell-staffs had been entirely gone, and there was no time to rest and replenish them. The nahualli-as Niente had ordered-tried to retreat behind the lines as soon as their power was exhausted, but some were cut down by Nessantican swords, unable to defend themselves. Niente didn’t know how many of the warriors had been lost. They’d been cast back by a desperate charge of the chevarittai, and Zolin-at Niente’s insistence, afraid that they would lose still more of the nahualli-had finally called a halt to their advance.

They were too few… both nahualli and warriors. But Zolin didn’t see that, or didn’t care, or was so caught up in his own vision that it overrode that of his own eyes. “Tomorrow,” he said to Niente, to Citlali and Mazatl. “Tomorrow all of the city will be ours. All of it.” Niente didn’t know if that was to be true or not, and he was too exhausted to care.

After the last of the fireballs had been catapulted into the city, Niente went to his own tent. There, alone, he held the scrying bowl in his hands: afraid to cast the spell, afraid that he would only see the same vision, afraid of the exhaustion and pain casting the spell would cost him. He tried to remember the faces of his wife, of his children: he could bring them up in his mind, but that only made the longing worse. He wondered how they were, how they’d changed, if they missed him as he missed them.

He wondered if he would ever know.

He put the bowl away.

Sleep that night was fitful and unrestful. Nightmares intruded; he saw his wife dead, saw his children hurt and injured, saw himself fighting, fighting, trying to run but unable to do more than walk while demons draped in blue and gold swarmed around him. He tried to imagine his wife’s face before him, her mouth half-open as he leaned in to kiss her… and her face was blank and featureless, a mask. Unable to escape the dreams, he eventually paced the encampment, listening to the sounds of the warriors resting, gazing at the strange shapes of the buildings around them. As he passed one building, he heard his name called out. “Niente.”

He recognized the voice. “Citlali.”

The High Warrior was leaning against the doorway of the building. Behind him, a candle gleamed in the darkness. “You can’t sleep?” Citlali asked.

Niente shook his head. “I don’t dare. Too many dreams,” he told the man. “You?”

Citlali’s black-swirled face creased into a smile. “Too few,” he said. “I would like to see our home and my family again, even if in my sleep.”

“That won’t happen if-” Niente bit off the comment, angry at himself. If he’d been less sleep-addled, he’d have said nothing at all.

“If Tecuhtli Zolin has his way?” Citlali ventured. “I’ve thought the same, Nahual. You needn’t look so distressed.” The smile widened to a grin, and he glanced from side to side, as if looking to see that no one was listening. “And let me answer the other question you won’t ask. No. I won’t challenge the Tecuhtli. Look at how far he’s taken us, Nahual-all the way across the sea to the great home of the Easterners. That is true greatness, Nahual. Greatness. I am proud to have been able to help him.”

“Even if it means you’ll never see home and family again?”

His shoulders lifted. “I am a warrior. If that’s Sakal’s will.. .” His shoulders fell again. “I don’t need a scrying bowl, Nahual. I have no interest in the future, only the now. It’s a beautiful evening, I am alive, and I am seeing a place that I never thought I would see and that few Tehuantin have ever glimpsed. How can one not take pleasure in that?”

Niente could only nod. He bid Citlali a good night and left the warrior to his reverie. For his own part, he returned to his own quarters and performed the rituals to place spells in his stave once more. Then, entirely drained from the effort, he took to his bed and let the nightmares wash over him again.

And the next day, the nightmares came true.

At dawn, Tecuhtli Zolin led them deeper into the city, and they fought street by street toward the wide main boulevard. The battle was a mirror of the one the day before: again, the initial push sent the weary Nessanticans retreating backward; by the time Sakat’s eye was well up in the sky, they had reached the boulevard, where Zolin quickly regrouped them and began marching them south.

There, the Nessanticans had gathered: around the market where they’d finally stopped the Tehuantin advance yesterday, and around the bridge leading to the island. Out in the A’Sele, Zolin had ordered the ships to advance toward the army; the ships of the Nessanticans had moved to stop them, and there was another battle taking place there, one whose outcome Niente could only guess at, though many of the warships of both sides were afire. There was no retreat possible there anymore-there were too few ships left for them all to return home.

“Nahual!” From his horse, Zolin jabbed a finger toward Niente. “You will take your nahualli with you and follow me. We have the main street, now we must have the bridge. Citlali! To me!”

Zolin quickly placed the warriors in position. Citlali and Zolin would attack the piers of the bridge from the boulevard, directly into the heart of the Nessantican forces; Mazatl would wait until the assault was underway, then strike from the west flank through the River Market. Several double-hands of warriors would also begin an attack to the north immediately, pushing the other way along the ring boulevard so that the Nessanticans could not concentrate their attention on the bridgehead-not without possibly losing the easternmost bridge to the great island. Zolin sent the diversionary warriors on, then waited for the sun’s shadow to move a finger’s length before waving his hand and leading them east and a little north to the boulevard, where he set them into position. They could see the Nessanticans: a wall of bristling shields across the boulevard, a scant few hundred strides from them.

There was no black sand and no time to make any more even if they had the raw materials. This time, the archers began the assault with a barrage that rained down on the shields of the Nessanticans without doing a great deal of damage. The war-teni sent their fireballs screaming toward them, and Niente-with the other nahualli-raised their spell-staffs quickly. The warding spells crackled outward, a nearly visible pulse in the air. Most of the fireballs were deflected; they fell into the buildings to either side, setting them afire. But there were too many of them, and not enough nahualli. The war-spells crashed down on the assembled warriors; where that happened, men screamed, their bodies twisted and charred. Those who could do so fled, terribly injured from the burns of the viscous fire. Those who could not, died. One fireball fell close enough to Niente that he could feel the heat of it, like a smithy’s furnace opening in front of him. The heat washed over his face, scouring and drying. Zolin felt it also; he glanced back at the scene as his horse reared up in fright. Zolin shouted: “Forward! Now!” He brought his mount under control and kicked him into a gallop. The High Warriors on their horses followed him and the infantry surged forward as well. Niente was pulled along in the wave.

The wave crashed against the shields painted blue and gold, and impaled itself on their spears. In the roaring chaos, Niente saw Zolin’s horse go down, a spear tearing deep into the creature’s chest, but Zolin himself was lost in the press of soldiers and Niente couldn’t see what happened to him.

There were swords and fighting all around him, and Niente could think only of himself, of taking out as many Nessanticans as he could. He pointed his spell-staff, speaking the release word over and over, and lightning crackled from the tip, hissing and bucking as it plunged into the ranks in front of Niente. A hole opened in the shield wall as Niente released another spell, and another-the flashes sending dozens of men to the ground. Warriors, shrieking and howling, plunged into the gap with swords waving. The wall began to give, then it collapsed entirely. Niente again was pushed along with the tide, and he saw close by the towers that marked the bridge entrance.

To his right, there was a cacophony of shouts: Mazatl’s warriors striking at the flank. Horns shrilled deep in the Nessantican ranks. Niente could see a banner waving there and a cluster of chevarittai on their horses. Suddenly, the banner was moving away to the south over the bridge, the chevarittai with it. He could see the realization on the faces of the enemy soldiers in front of him. He could see the way their swords dropped momentarily, the lines weakening visibly. Arrows no longer rained down, the war-teni no longer cast fireballs over Niente’s head to fall into the rear of their ranks. They were moving steadily forward: the warriors, the nahualli, and now Niente could see Zolin again, bloodied and injured but on his feet, his sword cleaving the soldiers who dared to stand before him. Citlali was alongside him, his face grim and eager.

They were on the bridge now. It was theirs. The river moved sluggishly below them, and bodies fell from the rails to splash into its waters.

The Tehuantin roared. They sang as they killed, and Niente sang with them.