A Magic of Nightfall

Niente

The forces of Tecuhtli Zolin and the Tehuantin army were arrayed a careful bow’s shot away from the thick defensive walls of Munereo.

Three days of battle had sent the Garde Civile retreating inside the walls. Tecuhtli Zolin had been both aggressive and unmerciful in his attack. Commandant ca’Sibelli had sent a parley group to the Tehuantin encampment after the first day of battle, when Zolin had routed the Garde Civile from rich, high fields south of the city. Niente had been there when the parley group had arrived flying their white flag; he had watched Zolin order his personal guards to kill them and send their severed heads back to Commandant ca’Sibelli as answer.

They had attacked the main force of the Garde Civile at dawn the next morning; by that evening, they were within sight of the Munereo walls and the harbor, with the Holdings fleet at anchor there.

Now it was dawn again, and Tecuhtli Zolin had called Niente to him. Zolin reclined on a nest of colorful pillows; the High Warriors Citlali and Mazatl were with him also. Behind him, an artisan crouched over Zolin’s freshly-shaved head; next to the artisan was a small table crowded with dragon-claw needles and pots of dye. Zolin’s scalp had been painted with the spread-winged eagle that was the insignia of the Tecuhtli; now the artisan prepared to mark the skin permanently. He took a needle, dipped it into red dye, and pressed it into Zolin’s scalp: the warrior grimaced slightly. “The nahuallis’ preparations are finished?” Zolin asked Niente as the artisan quickly dipped the needle again and pressed it into Zolin’s head, over and over. Blood beaded and trickled down; the artisan wiped it away with a cloth.

“Yes, Tecuhtli,” Niente told him. “Our spell-staffs have been renewed-for those healthy enough to do so.” He lifted his own staff, displaying the carved eagles that circled below the polished, thick knob. “We lost two hands of nahualli in the battle; another hand and one are too wounded to be of use today. All the rest are ready.” Niente nodded to the two High Warriors. “I’ve placed them as Citlali and Mazatl have asked.”

“And the black sand?”

“It’s been prepared,” Niente told him. “I supervised that myself.”

“The scrying bowl? What did it say to you?”

Niente had spent much of the night peering into the waters, which had given him only murky and clouded visions, as well as exhaustion and a face and hands that seemed to have acquired a webbing of fine wrinkles overnight. Niente had found himself confused by the quick glimpses of possible futures. But he knew what Zolin wanted to hear, and he plucked one of those fleeting visions from his mind. “I saw you inside the city, Tecuhtli, and the Holdings Commander at your feet.”

Zolin grinned broadly. “Then it’s time,” Zolin said. He rose, nearly knocking over the artisan, who scurried backward as Zolin plucked up his sword. He patted his bleeding head, smiling. “This can be finished later. The battle can’t wait.”

They went outside the tent, guards straightening to attention as they emerged. From the small hill on which the Tecuhtli’s tent stood, they could see the army spread out below them, the haze of cook fires drifting in the still morning. The walls of Munereo rose high farther down the slope, and sun dazzled on the water of the bay beyond and to their right. Zolin gestured, and a trio of battle-horns sounded, the call taken up by other horns throughout the encampment, and Niente could see the entire encampment stir, like a mound of red ants stirred with a stick. The battle lines began to coalesce; the High Warriors on their horses exhorting the troops. On the walls of Munereo, the rising sun reflected from metal helms and the tips of arrows as the Holdings troops waited for the attack.

Their own horses were brought to them, and they mounted. Citlali and Mazatl saluted Zolin and kicked their stallions into a gallop as they rode away. “You’re with me, Nahual,” Zolin said. “Now!” He, too, kicked his steed, and Niente followed the Tecuhtli’s headlong gallop down the hill to where the troops waited on the slope, nearly level with the top of Munereo’s walls, the troops moving quickly aside to let them pass, their shouts of support and adoration following.

Before his deep enchantment of the Easterner, Niente could have ridden all day with anyone. Now, the pounding of the horse’s hooves on the ground struck Niente’s body like hammer blows. It was all he could do to cling to the back of the animal with trembling knees. Zolin rode to the center of the front-line Tehuantin forces, where the eagle flag had been planted in the middle of the winding road leading down to the western gate of Munereo. There, the hand of siege dragons waited. Zolin, from his horse, patted the massive carved and painted head of one of the dragons. “The gods have promised us victory today!” he called out to those around him. He pointed downhill to the waiting city. Their warrior-marked faces were turned up to him, and they cheered. Niente had to admit that Zolin had charisma that Tecuhtli Necalli had lacked: the eagerness on the face of the warriors said that they would follow him even into the depths of one of the smoking mountains. “Tonight, we will feast where the Easterners dined, and we will take their wealth and the survivors back to our own cities, and this land will be returned to our cousins who once held it!”

They cheered again, louder than before. Zolin roared with laughter and patted the siege dragon again. “It’s time!” he shouted. “This day, you will find victory or you will find peace with the gods!”

He gestured, and the battle-horns blared the call-to-advance. The lines shivered and began to surge forward, and Tecuhtli Zolin-unlike Necalli, Niente again had to admit-rode at the very front, his head bare so that anyone could see the eagle on his skull. The advance started slowly, the soldiers moving forward at a walking pace. As they continued down the slope, the walls of Munereo seemed to climb, growing ever taller as they approached until they were in their long shadow. The siege dragons, mounted on their carts, squeaked and groaned as they started down the roadway, protesting as the men pushed them down the slope toward the walls and the great, barred gates. Zolin paused, and Niente with him: there was movement on the walls, and suddenly a storm of arrows dimmed the sun, arcing high in the air followed momentarily by the thwack of a thousand bowstrings. “Shields!” Zolin yelled, and the warriors around them lifted their wooden shields, placing them together into a temporary roof, several of them lifting theirs high so as to shield both Zolin and Niente on their horses. The arrows rained furiously down, feathering the painted, leather-strapped planks, some of them slipping between to catch an unlucky warrior, but most thudding harmlessly into wood. “Down!” Zolin called, and the shield wall fell, the soldiers hacking at the shafts with their swords. Broken arrows littered the ground.

Now the advance quickened. Niente held his spell-staff high-he knew what must come next. “Nahualli!” he called. “Be ready!” He could already hear the distant chanting, and he felt the shifting energy of the X’in Ka as the Holdings war-teni released their own enchantments. Fireballs sputtered over the walls of Munereo, shrieking toward them in lines marked by smoke. Niente shook his spell-staff at the nearest fireball and spoke the release word: the fireball erupted while still above and before them, the fire hissing as it died with glowing sparks falling around them. Another fireball crashed untouched into the Tehuantin forces to Niente’s right, and even at a distance the heat and concussion of the explosion were frightening. Where the fireballs landed, hardened warriors screamed as they died. The fireballs cut gouges in the advancing line but they filled quickly with warriors from the rear ranks. Zolin urged the line forward at a trot, the siege dragons seeming to scream as their wooden wheels lurched and bounced over the broken ground.

“Push!” Niente roared at those around the siege dragons. “Move!” Now the battle fire had finally caught him up, and Niente no longer felt prematurely old. His blood boiled and the wind sang in his ears. The hand of siege dragons were picking up speed, starting to move downhill on their own. The warriors around them no longer needed to push them; they had their own energy now, already beyond the front lines of the army. Arrows fell again and again and the shield roof snapped up each time in response, but Niente barely noticed. He watched the siege dragons, flying across the packed ground of the road now, painted jaws wide as they rushed toward the gates. Fireballs arced out, and again Niente and the other nahualli sent their spells to counter them. He could hear Zolin shouting, screaming orders at the men.

The siege dragons flew, their handlers far behind them and shouting as the carts trundled forward on their own. Three struck the base of the city walls on either side of the gates, two the gates themselves.

The dragon heads had been packed with black sand-more of it than Niente and the other nahualli had ever prepared before. Spell-sticks had been placed on the snouted heads to respond with fire to the impact. Niente saw the burst of flame from the sticks, then…

There was a roar as if one of the mountains of fire of Niente’s home had erupted, deafening, and with it a flash of pure light that brought Niente’s hand up to his eyes belatedly. Stones the size of horses were flying through the air, some of them crushing the nearest Tehuantin, but there were louder screams from within Munereo. Smoke swirled around the scene, making it impossible to see, but as it slowly cleared, a wordless shout arose from the Tehuantin forces.

The gates had been breached. Where they had been, there was only a gaping hole, and the thick supporting walls around them had collapsed. Even as they watched, a portion of the parapets collapsed on the right, spilling defenders fifty feet to the ground. “Forward!” Zolin was shouting. “Forward!”-and the Tehuantin army surged forward as one toward the city, heedless of the arrows or the fire of the war-teni. Niente found himself charging with them, his own throat raw with screams of exultation, his staff ready.

The Tehuantin poured through the broken walls of Munereo.

In the streets of the city, the battle had been pitched, vicious, and chaotic. As soon as the Tehuantin army entered the city, the native population had risen in concert, arming themselves with anything at hand to kill and loot with glee the people who had forced them into servitude. The Easterner defenders of Munereo found themselves assailed from both the front and behind.

Realizing that the day had been lost, the remnants of the Holdings force had tried to retreat to their ships in the bay, but Zolin had brought Tehuantin warships to the mouth of the bay, each with a nahualli aboard, and they sent spell-fire to burn the sails and masts of the Holdings ships; none escaped the inner harbor of Munereo Bay.

It was said afterward that one could walk from the wrecks of the Holdings ships to the shore on the bodies of the dead, and that the entire bay turned red for a week afterward from the blood washed into it from the ruins of Munereo.

The Tehuantin had found Commandant ca’Sibelli cowering aboard the flagship of the fleet and brought him back to the smoking ruins of the city. Tecuhtli Zolin had the man dragged into the main temple of Munereo and lashed to the altar there, and Niente himself prepared an eagle claw for the man, filling the curved bone tube with black sand. He spoke the enchantment as he worked: all it would need was a turn of the ivory horn and a press of the trigger in the wooden handle to strike the flint and set off the black powder. He took the eagle claw with him when he accompanied Tecuhtli Zolin to the temple. The temple was crowded with both High Warriors and nahualli; Niente saw both Citlali and Mazatl there, seated at the front. All of them were spattered with blood, most of which was not their own. Zolin stood over ca’Sibelli, naked to the waist and strapped on the altar. The gray-haired man looked terrified at the sight of the Tecuhtli; he moaned. “I’ve surrendered the city to you,” the man said in the Easterner language. “The Regent and the Council of Ca’ will pay my ransom, whatever you ask-”

“Be silent,” Niente told him in the same language. “Now is the time to pray to your god, if you must.”

“What does he say?” Zolin asked Niente, and Niente told him. Zolin roared with laughter. “Is this how the Easterners play at war?” he asked. “They buy and sell their captives? Are their gods that weak? No wonder they ran before us.” Zolin gestured at the man with contempt. “They’re barely worth the sacrifice. Sakal and Axat must get little nourishment from them.”

“What is he saying?” ca’Sibelli said, lifting his head up and straining against the ropes that held him. “Tell him I know where the treasury is. There’s gold, lots of it.”

Niente took the eagle claw from its pouch. Ca’Sibelli went silent, looking at it. He licked cracked, bloodied lips. “What… what is that?”

“It is your death,” Niente told him. “Sakal and Axat demand your presence as the leader.”

“No!” the man shouted. Saliva frothed around his mouth. “You can’t do this. I’m your prisoner, your hostage. Ask for ransom-”

Niente leaned close to the writhing man. He could feel the man’s terror, and he made his voice as gentle as he could. “This will end the killing here in your city. Your death pays for the death of all your soldiers that we have captured, and they will be spared. If you are brave, Commandant, if you show Axat and Sakal that you’re worthy, they will take you to Themselves and you will live forever in Them. Forever. It is a gift we give you here. A gift.”

The man gaped, disbelieving, but the chant of sacrifice had begun, low and sonorous, echoing in the chamber. The warriors and nahualli swayed with the prayer. Ca’Sibelli turned his head to stare frantically at them. Tecuhtli Zolin nodded to Niente, and he pulled the eagle’s claw from his belt. Ca’Sibelli’s eyes widened as Niente turned the ivory horn until it clicked into place.

Niente stood alongside the commandant. “You should be praying,” he told the man. Ca’Sibelli’s head was shaking violently back and forth, as if he could deny the moment. Niente pressed the end of the curved tube against the man’s stomach as ca’Sibelli thrashed frantically in his bonds. Niente sighed-this would not be a good death. “Axat, Sakal, we give this enemy to you,” Niente said in his own language. “Take this offering as a sign of your victory.”

He pressed the trigger. There was a click, a spark, and then an explosion of flesh and blood.