Ironhelm

FIRST BLOOD

Erix awoke suddenly. She sat up, her mind unusually clear, with none of the dullness that usually accompanied emergence from sleep. Her first thought was of Chitikas, and she saw that the serpent was gone.

It was still daylight, and very hot. Her position on the bluff offered some concealment, but she knew that the strangers would be exploring the area. Her clump of brush would not hide her from nearby eyes.

Seeking more secure shelter, she crawled through the strip of brush toward the concealment of the jungle. Quickly finding the trail she had followed earlier, she moved into the forest, glancing around frequently, alert for any sounds from behind her.

She came around a bend in the trail, and suddenly, with dismay, she knew that her attention should have been directed on the trail ahead of her. The high priest Mixtal appeared around another bend, marching toward her, his face twisted into a mask of religious fervor. He stared directly into her eyes as she lunged from the trail, tripping and falling among a tangle of branches.

Twisting behind the bole of a large tree, she listened for his cry of alarm. He could not have failed to see her, and yet now he marched right past her hiding place, his eyes still fixed in that fanatical forward glare!

Erix tried to still the pounding of her heart as she lay beneath a canopy of wet leaves. She saw the feet of Mixtal's apprentices, then the sandaled feet of a long column of warriors, march past. Slowly she realized that, somehow, she had escaped him. Mixtal had seen her and ignored her, and the others in the column, struggling to keep up with the patriarch, had not gotten a glimpse of her before she hid.

Still, the young woman remained under cover for several minutes after the column had passed. Slowly her heartbeat returned to normal, and she emerged from the foliage onto the narrow trail.

The priests and warriors were out of sight. She knew that the sensible thing would be to turn inland, opposite Mixtal's path, and strike out for freedom. The bizarre expression on the man's face remained vivid in her mind. Still, something about him had seemed so unnatural, so strange, that her curiosity was aroused.

Cursing herself for a fool, Erix silently took up the trail behind Mixtal and his column of spearmen.

Mixtal marched along doggedly, driven by a consuming sense of purpose. Everything had become very clear. The words whispered in his ear must have come from the Ancient Ones! Had not the warriors arrived just as he had been told? Now his vision, still somehow hazy and indistinct, remained fixed upon the edge of the forest before him. He stepped from the concealing cloak of the woods and stopped in astonishment.

Mixtal rubbed his still smoke-fogged eyes in disbelief, but there could be no mistaking the sight before him. There she was, the girl who had escaped his altar at the start of this day! She was walking through the brushy clearing at the edge of the bluff, accompanied by five of the strange warriors.

"That's her!" he hissed, backing into concealment as the knights and spearmen gathered around him.

The clerics and warriors remained in the jungle, peering from the thick growth at the strangers. The five men, one of whom was wrapped in silver, walked in a small protective circle around the woman. The party move slowly along the crest of the bluff, less than a javelin's toss away.

Atax, the apprentice, looked at Mixtal in surprise, then looked at the red-haired woman before them. To him, she bore no resemblance to the girl Erix.

"Most Holy Patriarch — " he began, but Mixtal wasn't listening. Instead, the high priest squinted at the girl again, nodding eagerly. Atax still saw the flaming-haired stranger, but obviously Mixtal saw someone else. The apprentice wondered if he himself was going mad, but he suspected the madness lay across the vision of his master.

"You see?" Mixtal earnestly explained to the Jaguar Knights. "These villains seized her from our altar!"

The cleric again studied the girl. The haze over his eyes maddened him, but it seemed like the one place he saw clearly through the mist was toward this young woman, Erixitl. She was not obscured in the slightest. He saw her black hair, her rich coppery skin, even the tattered rag of her captive's gown in crystalline detail.

"We have been ordered not to attack the strangers," demurred the knight.

For a moment, Mixtal blinked in confusion. He saw the warriors looking curiously toward the girl, and then back to him. He thought again of the prospects of defeat, of facing the Ancient Ones with the tale of his failure, of losing his own life in replacement for the girl who had escaped him.

He must not fail! Not when he was this close, when his quarry was once again in sight. "Let the fury of Zaltec fall upon your heads," he snarled at the warriors. "The girl will be mine!"

Mixtal shrieked a challenge and sprang from the concealing undergrowth. He raised his obsidian dagger above his head, still screaming. Then he charged.

Propelled by instincts running deeper than military discipline, the Jaguar Knights hesitated only a split second after the cleric began his attack. Then the knights rose, a hundred spearmen rose behind them, and the warriors of the Payit followed their priest into the assault.

"Send Alvarro after her!" demanded the Bishou, with an angry glance up the bluff. "Halloran has no business taking her into the wilds like this!"

"Daggrande is going," replied Cordell, as soothingly as possible. He knew Halloran. Also, the captain-general understood Martine's headstrong nature, a characteristic of which her father seemed unaware, and he suspected it had not been Hal's idea to move so quickly from the sight of the legion.

"Helm's curses on that scoundrel!" snarled the cleric, looking after Halloran. "Of all the impudent — "

"Now look, my friend." The captain-general silently cursed the Bishou, but his voice remained soothing. "They will be back soon. Alvarro is busy on the right flank, seeking grazing for the horses." Cordell gestured up the coast, to the north. He knew that the bad will between Alvarro and Halloran remained far from settled, and he could think of nothing more disastrous to Hal's confidence than to send his rival to look after him.

"In a few minutes, they'll be back, and I'll have a talk with the lad. He's a good soldier."

Martine, Cordell knew, was deeply cherished by the Bishou, as a father cherishes his daughter. But her importance to the cleric went even deeper, in some way that the commander couldn't entirely understand — perhaps because she was Domincus's one remaining link with younger, more peaceful times. He had not always been a martial cleric.

The Bishou glared up the bluff. "If he allows any harm to befall her…" He did not finish the thought, nor did he have to.

The maniacal battle cry jerked Halloran's attention to the wall of jungle. He sensed the import of the sound even before he saw the knife-waving native burst into sight, followed a second later by the rank of warriors. Their orange headdresses waved in synchronization as the line paused, and the legionnaire saw them placing javelins into the notches of hand-held spear casters.

Halloran leaped in front of Martine as he saw the javelins soar into the air, raising his shield to protect her head and torso. He grunted in pain as one of the missiles grazed the fleshy part of his thigh. Another cracked against his steel breastplate, while a third stuck in his shield.

One of the swordsmen was slow to react, and a stone-tipped javelin knifed through his throat. The others raised their shields, deflecting most of the missiles, though one man took a wound in his forearm. The banded leather armor of the footmen, Hal knew, would not be as effective against these weapons as his own breastplate.

"Shields out!" he called, and the three joined him in an arc facing the native warriors, sheltering Martine behind them, their swords arrayed outward. They watched helplessly as the fourth swordsman, mortally wounded, gasped out his life from the gaping neck wound.

"Go back… quickly!" Hal commanded Martine, not turning to look at her. "Down the stairs! Get Daggrande!"

He glanced over his shoulder and saw the woman staring in shock at the whooping, rushing band of spear-wielding natives. Their plumed heads bobbed and their bronzed faces grimaced, twisting the sticks they wore through their noses. They whistled and shrieked, and the din they raised seemed enough to blast the leaves from the trees.

The warriors charged through the brushy clearing, stopping suddenly about halfway to their quarry. They cast back their arms to hurl another volley.

"Go, by Helm!" He turned to face Martine, grabbing her shoulder with his shield hand. She finally turned and started to run, but immediately her foot caught among the tangled brush. She sprawled headlong as Hal's heart pounded in fear. He must get her to safety! Nothing else mattered.

"Captain!" shouted one of the swordsmen.

Halloran instantly raised his shield and crouched over Martine, huddling with the other three men. The second volley of javelins, though delivered from a shorter range, found no targets among the well-shielded fighters of the Golden Legion.

The attackers renewed their rush, following the fanatical leader. Shocked by the man's blood-caked, filthy visage, Halloran stared as his attackers closed. He saw the dagger of dark obsidian, the black emblem on its hilt.

The man tried to dart around Hal, and the captain slammed his shield into the fellow's face. Immediately the black-clad figure dropped to the ground, but the mass of native warriors streamed forward in undimmed frenzy.

"Strike to kill!" he ordered, doubting their chances of survival. He cast one last look behind him and saw Martine scrambling to her feet, staring in mute shock at the swarm of shrieking, howling attackers. Desperately Halloran pulled her back into the small circle of legionnaires.

His shield crushed a stone spear tip, and his sword cut cleanly through a native's quilted armor. Another man thrust, and Halloran hacked off his wooden sword, bashing the face of yet another attacker with his shield.

He saw the flashing steel of the other swordsmen at each side. The four of them sheltered Martine in the middle, defending frantically against a whirlwind of thrusting spear tips. Halloran twisted, dodged, and stabbed repeatedly. He felt as if his life had become a focus of brown faces, waving feathered headgear, and blood.

He heard a grunt of pain as a swordsman fell, his leg slashed deeply. The three remaining men instinctively closed the circle, but then another man tumbled, claimed by a spear thrust through the bands of his armor.

Twoscore or more bleeding bodies covered the ground around them, but the numbers of the enemy were too great. Hal's arm grew leaden from the weight of his sword as he stood back to back with the remaining trooper. He did not see the priests crawling forward between them, seizing Martine, and tugging her away from the melee.

Halloran did see the first priest, the one whose fanatical charge had precipitated the battle, climb slowly to his feet, just out of sword range. For a split second, the spearmen fell back, leaving the two swordsmen to gasp for breath amid the slain forms of the attackers. Hal heard his companion cry out suddenly. The man slumped against him as a keen spear tip slipped over his belt to penetrate his vitals.

Then the priest removed a stretch of cord from his waist and held it in the air before him. It twisted, snakelike, in the man's hand. Indeed, Halloran at first thought that the object was a snake. He finally saw that it was merely the skin of a snake, though it still seemed to move as if it were alive.

The blood-caked priest barked some kind of command, and Halloran could not react before the cord darted toward him, growing and twisting into a weblike net that wrapped his arms tightly to his sides and then carried him heavily to the ground.

In another second, dozens of warriors leaped on him, completing the binding as they stripped away his sword.

From the chronicle of Colon:

In beseechment of the truth in the heart of the Feathered One.

The harbingers of the Waning have landed upon the shores of Maztica. Poshtli, in lofty form, observed their coming. He reports their numbers to be small, but their vessels massive.

Now is Naltecona thrown into a fit of oppression and brooding. He sees no one, speaks not at all of his anxieties. Instead, he sends more eagles to watch the newcomers, while he waits in agony for words that can offer no comfort.

The Revered Counselor now feels certain of the meaning of these many years of signs. He fears their import, but no longer doubts their meaning. Only I could dissuade him, for I know the truth. But the bonds of my vow of silence restrain me.

Meanwhile, Naltecona's army commanders, Eagles and Jaguars alike, demand to gather troops, to prepare a force to drive the strangers back to the sea. Naltecona's young nephew, the honored Lord Poshtli, is the most ardent advocate of this view. But Naltecona takes no counsel of their words.

For he is certain that these visitors are none other than the Silent Counselor and his minions, at last returned to his kingdom in the True World.