Viperhand

A FEAST FOR VULTURES

Halloran and Poshtli clung to the horse and gave the powerful mare her head. Rejoicing in the countryside after weeks in the city, Storm galloped with the exaltation of a wild beast escaping to freedom from a cage.

The two men bore their steel swords. Halloran wore his breastplate, Poshtli the padded cotton armor of the Maztican warrior. Hal's other possessions — the potions, the spellbook, the leather snakeskin bond — these he had buried in the garden of his house back in Nexal.

They rode in grim silence, out of the valley of Nexal, past Cordotl, and along the mountain road. Their faces — one pale and bearded, framed in brown hair; the other brown, smooth, noble-featured beneath hair of black — reflected their inner turmoil.

Both of them were sick with fear for Erixitl.

Palul lay a mere two days' march by foot from Nexal, so they knew that the warriors of Naftecona's ambush had already arrived at their destination. The question was whether or not the two of them could get there before Cordell.

Halloran spent every moment of silence cursing himself, an unrelenting stream of rebuke that slashed mercilessly from all sides. How could he have let her go? Wallowing in his self-pity, he had committed a criminal act of neglect against the woman he loved.

And by Helm, how he loved her! The feeling burned like never before, brought home by his acute fear.

"I asked her if she would become my wife," said Poshtli after Storm slowed to a brisk walk. Hal jerked upright. He felt suddenly embarrassed about his unnoticed presence at that meeting.

"You are a very lucky man."

"She refused me," the warrior said frankly. He chuckled, a forced good humor. "An honor any family in Nexal would hail, but she said no."

Stunned, Hal didn't dare speak. His embarrassment turned to shame over the blind assumption he had made. Slowly he realized that his stupidity had driven Erix from him in Nexal, sending her, all unwittingly, to the center of a vast and growing storm.

Angrily he kicked Storm's flanks, and the mare broke into a fast trot. Despite the load of two men, she held the pace for hour after hour.

"It will be evening before we reach the village," said Poshtli, observing their progress.

"We'll get there in time — before Cordell." Halloran spoke with a forced confidence he didn't feel. In truth, he did not know when the legion would arrive in Palul, or how much delay would follow before the ambush.

Neither of them wanted to think about the other possibility, the thought that battle could be raging in Palul even now. But they couldn't avoid thinking about it. The question kept coming back, rearing up and taunting them in their imaginations.

What if they were too late?

To Erixitl, the feast seemed a grand success. They ate melons and citrus and venison and mayz and beans and chocolate. The foreigners seemed to enjoy the food. They made a great deal of noise when they ate, talking and joking and laughing. She saw the square in its natural sunshine, without the ominous cloak of shadows that had been so often here before. Still, she found that she couldn't entirely forget the sense of dire portent that had come with that darkness.

Erix sat on a huge feathered blanket with Cordell and Bishou Domincus, and also the Jaguar Knight Kalnak and the Eagle Knight Chical. The dour cleric of Helm remained silent, but the three men of war seemed to greatly enjoy exchanging tales of battles through Erixitl's translation. The Mazticans expressed great interest in Cordell's equipment, and the general allowed them to examine the blade of his sword.

Some time shortly after the feast began, the robed elf-mage joined them. Looking at her slight figure — Darien was shorter than Erix, and far more petite than the human legionnaires — the Maztican woman found herself wondering what lay behind that deep, cowled hood. Erixitl easily understood why Halloran had always found the elven wizard's presence unsettling.

Darien sat beside Cordell. She leaned toward the captain-general and, though Erix could hear nothing, it seemed as though a silent message was passed from the wizard to the commander. Indeed, Cordell suddenly stiffened. His black eyes narrowed to dark spots, and below hooded lids, he shifted his gaze from Kalnak to Chical, and then to Erix. She squirmed under that penetrating stare, feeling an anger and menace there that had previously been absent.

But she had little time for musing or pondering. Kalnak and Chical had many words for the foreigners, and Erix was required to translate each statement.

"The Kultakans are old women," Kalnak was explaining. "It is no wonder you defeated them. Do they serve you well as slaves?"

"They are my allies, not my slaves," said Cordell pointedly. His voice had a new edge to it. "And in truth, they fought like men — on a battlefield, in a fight between armies."

Chical twisted uncomfortably beside Erix. She sensed that the Eagle Knight wished he were somewhere else. The Jaguar Knight Kalnak took no note, however.

"Perhaps the Kultakans fight well," Kalnak grudgingly admitted. His voice then became nearly a sneer. "But they are savages and barbarians when compared to the high culture of Nexal."

Erix translated loosely, trying to smooth the arrogance of the Jaguar Knight. It was a great breach of manners to talk so rudely to a guest, and she didn't understand why Kalnak was doing so. At least Cordell didnt seem to take particular offense. In fact, the bearded general seemed mildly distracted.

"If you'll excuse me, I have to tend to the comfort of my men. I'll be back presently. Bishou, Darien, come with me please." Cordell stood up and, with a deep bow, left them to move among his feasting troops.

The plaza of Palul was crowded with humanity. The five hundred men of the Golden Legion were gathered in several large groups, each surrounded by Mazticans who fed them and offered jugs of the mildy alcoholic octal. Thousands of natives feasted here, too, while children dashed about and mothers tried to keep track of their offspring.

The horses, in particular, proved magnetic to the little ones, who gathered around the steeds. With the permission of the riders, some of the bolder children stepped forward to offer carrots, ears of mayz, and other treats to the mounts. Erix saw one tall, gangly youth who wore a headband decorated with macaw feathers in imitation of a warrior. This one actually stroked the muzzle of one of the chargers.

Beside the mounts, great war hounds lolled on the stones. Their long tongues hung from their loose jaws, and they drooled, panting in the heat.

Erix saw Bishou Domincus go over to the horsemen and talk to them. Alvarro, staggering slightly and holding a jug of octal, heard the cleric speak and scowled in reply. Cordell circulated among his men, stopping at each group in the ptaza. Darien had disappeared again, and Erixitl found the mage's vanishing act as unsettling as her appearance. Meanwhile, Kalnak and Chical had huddled together in conversation behind her.

Then, as she looked around at the flowers and feathers, at the food and the gaiety, a black cloud seemed to descend across her eyes.

Once again the plaza lay concealed beneath a monstrous shadow.

"It is almost time," Zilti hissed, finding Shatil near the base of the pyramid. That structure, dominating the great square, was to be the focal point of the attack.

"All is ready," replied the younger priest. "What about the Kultakans?"

"There are ten thousand Nexalan warriors hidden on the slopes above them. As soon as the attack begins, they will fall on our ancient enemies and keep them busy. Then, when the battle in the town is won, our warriors will go into the field to complete the destruction of the Kultakans." Zilti turned around nervously, his fingers absently scraping at one of the many fresh scars on his forearm.

"Where did their leader go?" Shatil asked suddenly. He had looked over toward Erixitl and saw that his sister still sat on the feathered blanket with Kalnak and Chical. But Cordell and the other two strangers — the sorcerer and the priest — had disappeared.

"There he is." Zilti pointed, relieved.

Cordell had just spoken to a short, stocky man with a bristling beard. Erix had referred to these smaller strangers as "dwarves." Shatil's sister had explained that their small size in no way diminished their fighting prowess, but this was a fact of which they were frankly skeptical. Now this dwarf walked among his men, stopping after to nod and talk with them.

The captain-general finally returned to the blanket where he had been feasting. The knights and Erix stood up at his approach, and for a moment, they all stood there, as if reluctant to sit back down.

"Any moment now," said Zilti, barely able to contain his excitement, "Kalnak will give the signal. Then the battle will begin!"

"You referred to the Kultakans as old women," charged Cordell. This time his elven mage translated before Erix could begin to speak. Darien placed all the accusatory inflection that had been in the captain's voice in her own version of the words.

"They are our lifelong enemies!" insisted Kalnak, taken aback by the guest's sudden aggressiveness.

"I say that the old women are those who fight their battles disguised behind women and children, behind feasts and presents!"

As Kalnak stared in shock, Cordell whisked his sword from its scabbard and raised the blade high. "This is the reward for treachery!" he cried.

The blade dropped, arcing through a silvery circle in the sun. Its passage caused a whistle of air, so quickly did the captain-general strike. The keen edge met Kalnak's neck as the Jaguar Knight still stared, and the steel didn't lose momentum. Instead, it passed cleanly through the neck and emerged in a shower of blood from the other side of his body.

The head of Kalnak, still wearing its jaguar-skull helmet, toppled to the side. Red blood spurted from the stump of his neck, and the headless body staggered forward for a step or two, almost as if it would mindlessly attack its killer. But then the corpse sprawled forward and pumped the rest of its life onto the paving stones of the plaza.

Erix saw the blade as a streak of thick blackness through the gray shadows that masked her eyes. She stood frozen in shock, stunned by the monstrous evil of their guest. The entire square fell silent for a moment.

Suddenly a flash of blue-white light cut through the air, penetrating even the heavy shadows across Erix's vision. She saw the wizard Darien standing off to the side. In her hand was a small stick, and it seemed that the stick was the source of the flash. Erix remembered Hal telling her of something like this — what had he called it?

Screams of pain and shock erupted from the plaza. Erix saw that, where the pale light had flashed, all those who had been feasting and talking and laughing were suddenly still. Some of them had toppled over, while others remained frozen in the positions of sitting, eating, even standing.

Frozen in position? Icetongue. She remembered the tale of that stick now. Hal had called it a wand of frost and explained that it slayed quickly and magically, killing many at a time.

There was no doubt in Erixitl's mind that most of these victims had perished — a hundred or more Mazticans, slain in one silent attack! Only around the edges of the afflicted area did she see the wriggling, crawling figures of wounded. These miserable souls desperately crawled away from the stiff corpses behind them, and Erix saw that many

of them dragged useless legs or showed ugly patches of scarred, frostbitten flesh.

Later Erix would realize that the pause had only lasted seconds, but at the time, it seemed as though many minutes ticked by while they all stood motionless in the plaza. The attack of Icetongue finally broke the paralysis. Again the wand flashed its chilling blast, and the pale white light illuminated, and killed, another group of villagers.

Chical howled in rage, raising his maca to leap at Cordell. The captain-general slashed at the Eagle Knight. Chical ducked the stroke of Cordell's sword, but the commander reversed his attack quickly and brought the hilt crashing down on the Eagle Knight's skull. Chical collapsed like a stone statue, kicking once and then lying still on the feathered blanket.

Panic compelled Erixitl's reaction, and she darted away from the man, disappearing into the throngs of weeping, screaming Mazticans. Even as she disappeared, Cordell had turned away, stabbing a charging Jaguar Knight through the heart.

The pale flash of light washed the plaza once more, this time flooding around Erix herself. She stared, stunned, as villagers died on all sides of her. Only after the effect had passed did she realize that she herself and several youngsters who had been right beside her had been unaffected by the blast. She sensed her pluma token puffing lightly out from her dress, and she realized that somehow her father's magic had saved her from the wizard's spell.

Darien regarded her coldly from the impenetrable depths of that cowled hood. Erix's eyes couldn't penetrate the shadows there, but she saw the elfwoman's eyes, glittering like hard diamonds.

Breaking from her thrall and spinning in panic, Erixitl ran from the wizard. Nearby she heard the stomping and snorting of horses and saw legionnaires swinging into their saddles. The youth with the feathered headband looked up in astonishment as the red-bearded captain of the riders loomed above him. With a cruel sneer, the man slashed savagely with his sword, splitting the youth's body from his forehead to his belly.

A woman carrying a baby screamed in front of Erix, falling to the ground, writhing and spitting blood. Erixitl saw one of the deadly steel darts fired by the legionnaires' crossbows. This one had pinned the woman's baby to her own body, and Erix turned away, horrified, as the mother and child perished before her.

More and more of the lethal, steel-tipped arrows flashed past, slaying indiscriminately. The dull chunk of the weapons' triggers created a grim cadence of death. The cross-bowmen stood in a circle, loading and reloading their weapons, driving their missiles at point-blank range into a solid mass of targets, puncturing bodies of male and female, old and young, with constant, gory slaughter.

Erixitl slipped on blood that washed across the paving stones. Like most of the other Mazticans in the plaza, she thought only of escape. The warriors among them seized their weapons and sprang to battle, desperate to give the women and children time to flee. At the time, it didn't seem odd to Erix that so many spears and macas should be available to warriors who had entered the plaza unarmed.

Erix tried to run north, toward her father's house, but the surging crowd carried her west in the stampede to escape the massacre.

She saw the riders charge into the mob. The horse that, moments before, had been contentedly eating and resting, the picture of animal contentment, now became the snorting, stamping creatures of war that had so terrorized the Payit at Ulatos. They had the same effect on the Mazticans at Palul.

The huge war hounds that had once flopped peacefully on the ground now snarled and slavered. They savagely attacked the villagers unfortunate enough to fall before them, tearing with their great fangs and, with their growls, adding to the nightmarish din.

The cavalrymen used their swords to chop about, apparently since the quarters were too confined for their lances. They thundered through a line of warriors that tried to stand before them, breaking the bodies of many brave men. Bodies fell by the dozen, writhing, bleeding, dying.

In moments, the horsemen plowed into the mass of women and children beyond the warriors. These victims scattered in every direction, but not before the cruel blades and stamping hooves had slain dozens of them.

Above the whirling mass of chaos, Erix saw the black helm, with its trailing streamers, of the captain of the horsemen. He guided his charger with cruel abandon, his face split into a gap-toothed grin. For a moment, once again, his eyes met Erixitl's. She was surprised at the lack of life there — he looked to her every bit as dead as the corpses sprawled around him. She felt certain this time that he recognized her. Then the crowd closed around Erix, sweeping her along with its tidelike rush.

"By the power of almighty Helm, a plague beset you!"

The booming voice of the Bishou thundered over the volume of shrieks and cries, sending powerful tendrils of panic into Erix's heart. She knew, from Hal's descriptions, that the cleric wielded supernatural powers in much the same way as the wizard.

The fleeing mob came to an abrupt halt, and Erix saw people before her suddenly begin to thrash wildly, twisting and crying out in pain. Young children dropped to the ground, wailing, and then, moments later, fell still. At first she could see nothing through the shadows, though she could hear a deep humming sound that filled the air with heavy vibration.

Then Erix saw heavier darkness among her own shadows. At the same time, she felt a burning flash of pain on her wrist. Slapping involuntarily, she saw a huge wasp fall dead, its stinger embedded in her inflamed flesh.

Now the source of the droning became apparent, as more wasps swarmed around the panicked villagers. Before her, all fell into blackness as the savage insects swarmed thickly around every living thing. She saw pathetically twitching bodies, covered all over with stinging, biting bugs. Another jolt of pain, and another, shot through her as stingers plunged into her shoulder and then her neck.

What kind of power was wielded by these men? She realized, with a sense of hopeless awe, that the Bishou had summoned these insects, and the creatures had arrived to do his bidding! How could the True World hope to stand against might such as this?

Screaming and crying now, driven by panic and pain, Erix turned with the crowd toward the south. Her own voice melted into the cacophony as, mindless with terror, she sought any path of escape from this hellish place. The mob surged forward in blind terror, trampling those who were too slow or too frail to keep up.

They reached the tree-lined fringe of the square, and here many of the weaker villagers collapsed from exhaustion. Erix saw, with numb surprise, that fights raged among the nearby houses as well. Legionnaire swordsman rushed from building to building, slaying any Matzicans they found. The warriors made valiant attempts at resistance, but divided as they were into small bands, they quickly fell to the savage, sudden onslaught of the steel-toothed strangers.

Across the lane, tongues of fire licked upward from one of the houses. Something seemed to explode there, silently, but with a great eruption of heat and flame. The inferno leaped to the thatched roof of a neighboring dwelling, and quickly the entire block crackled into a tinderbox of fire.

Shadows mixed with smoke everywhere Erix looked, but the combined darkness couldn't block out the sight of blood and death. Her nightmare seemed forgotten, a pale image of true horror.

It seemed to Erix fitting, as she collapsed on the paving stones and gasped for air, that the village should burn.

The terraced pyramid of Zaltec stood, perhaps fifty feet high, near the middle of Palul's plaza in the midst of the feast and, subsequently, the battle. A steep stairway ascended each of the four sides, leading to a square platform on top. In the center of this platform, a small stone building enclosed the sacrificial altar and a statue of the war god, Zaltec.

Brave warriors had gathered below the pyramid at the outbreak of battle, instinctively seeking to protect the sacred image of their god. Equally instinctively, the soldiers of the legion pressed from all sides, attempting to gain the top of the pyramid and shatter the barbarous idol.

The warriors conducted their defense with savage fanaticism, but the tightly packed legionnaires concentrated their attacks. Slowly the defenders fell back, giving up a step at a time, and each with a high price in blood. But the inexorable tide of attack grew ever closer to the bloodstained platform on top.

"Sorcery!" wailed Zilti from before the altar, looking at the massacre below. "How else could they have learned of the trap?"

Shatil, standing beside his high priest, looked around numbly. Accustomed to bloodshed and death — indeed, he had performed over a hundred sacrifices himself — the destruction below nonetheless horrified the young priest.

The legionnaires seemed invincible. The horsemen rode back and forth through the plaza, and only the thinning numbers of Mazticans prevented them from slaying hundreds with each charge. The deadly swords rose and fell, slicing heads from bodies or leaving deep, gashing cuts that sent the blood of the victim pouring in a fatal stream onto the stone pavement of the square.

First they had bottled up the north exit from the plaza, while the sudden horde of insects had closed egress to the west. The cloaked figure with the tiny stick had sealed the eastern side of the square, now marked by hundreds of stiff, frozen corpses. Only to the south could the villagers find escape, and it was from this side that the refugees poured out of the courtyard.

Finally the horses began to slip and stumble on the blood-slicked pavement, and the riders dismounted. There were no more living victims around them, in any event.

Shatil raised his eyes to the surrounding ridges, knowing that thousands of Nexalan warriors were concealed there. From the height of the pyramid, he could see over the houses and trees of the village, gaining a clear view of the surrounding heights. Surely those warriors had seen this treachery.

They had, but the priest saw that the Kultakan allies of the legionnaires had been just as prepared as the strangers themselves. Now the Kultakans fell on these hapless ambushers, and before Shatil's disbelieving eyes, the Nexalan companies were driven away from Palul. The feathered, warriors of both sides fought bravely, and showers of spears, arrows, and darts flew back and forth.

The Nexalans tried a desperate charge that was quickly broken and routed by the steady macas of the Kultakans. Inexorably, one after another, the attacks separated the thousandmen regiments of Nexal from each other. Each surrounded block of feathered warriors fought desperately as the battle on the ridges degenerated into numerous melees.

But each Nexalan thousandmen fought alone, in isolation and without coordination. The Kultakans, Shatil saw, concentrated their forces against first one, than another block of enemy troops. One by one, the Nexalan regiments broke, pressed from the battlefield by the overwhelming, savage force of the Kultakan ranks.

Around the square, the companies of legionnaire swordsmen attacked the buildings that sheltered the warriors who had been planning to perform their own ambush. Now, faced in small groups, the advantage of surprise taken from them, these warriors fought bravely. The valiant defenders stood firm and died quickly beneath the steel weapons of the legionnaires.

Bolts from legion crossbows raked the pyramid, and in a sudden rush, the attackers pressed upward, three quarters of the way to the top. On all four sides, Shatil observed numbly, the clamor of battle threatened to sweep upward, into the temple and its sacred statue. Grimly, clutching his sacrificial knife, he stood before the door, prepared to give his life in the desperate last stand before the bestial icon.

For now, there was little he could do. The warriors still fought on the narrow stairways, and their macas and spears, though outclassed by the invaders' steel, were still more formidable weapons than his obsidian dagger.

A house exploded into flame, and Shatil swore the fire was caused by the woman in the dark robe. She simply raised her hand and pointed. Immediately columns of flame had spurted from the building's doors and windows. Maztican warriors, their bodies blistered and flaming, dove through the windows and doors, only to collapse and die on the street.

Then the disbelieving priest saw the woman turn to another building. This one had started to disgorge warriors from several doors, angry spearmen who rushed forward to exact vengeance for the massacre.

But the woman raised both hands this time. A pale mist suddenly appeared before her and immediately fanned outward into a growing cloud. As the charging warriors met the cloud, they stumbled through it and collapsed, shrieking, gagging, and choking. They fell to the street, writhing in visible agony for several moments before stiffening and growing still. More and more of the warriors succumbed to the cloud as it gained substance and moved on. The victims, wracked by agony, finally dropped and lay still, cast in grotesque postures like so many mayz-husk dolls flung into the street.

The mist grew thicker, seeping through the doors and windows of all the buildings along the street. From some of these, bodies stumbled forth to collapse outside, gasping out their last, wretched breaths. In others, Shatil could see nothing, but he retained no illusions that any villagers remained alive within.

The deadly cloud drifted up the street, and in its wake, the village finally fell into stillness, except around the priests. The warriors fighting on the steps finally fell back to their last position, the top of the pyramid itself.

Companies of swordsmen still smashed into houses, killing whomever they found. More and more, the swordsmen discovered that these buildings had already been abandoned, their residents in flight or perhaps lying dead in the square.

"We are finished here," said Zilti, his voice an agonized grunt. "But one of us must carry word of this betrayal back to Nexal, to Hoxitl."

"We must defend the statue to the death!" objected Shatil. "The invaders must not reach the sacred image of Zaltec!"

"No" Zilti commanded firmly, his voice tempered with gentle compassion for Shatil's devotion. "I will stay here, but you must flee."

"How?" asked Shatii practically, as legionnaires burst onto the platform, gaining the top of the stairway on two sides. A shrinking ring of warriors, desperately striving to keep the attackers from the sacred altar, surrounded the two priests.

"This way!" Zilti led Shatil into the small temple building itself, past the gruesome statue of Zaltec and its blood-caked maw. Shatil hesitated, shuddering under the image of that statue falling, torn down by the blood-drenched savages from across the sea.

Zilti didn't delay, however. The priest pushed a stone on the back of the statue, and suddenly a hatch fell away in the floor, revealing a steep stairway that vanished into a terribly dark pit.

"This will take you to the bottom of the pyramid," said Zilti. "You will come out beside the temple, but wait until nightfall, until the strangers have gone."

The high priest now pressed a parchment, rolled into a tube, into Shatil's hands. "Take this to Nexal. Give it to Hoxitl, high priest of Zaltec there. It will tell the tale of the treachery here. Now go!"

Shatil took the parchment, knowing that there had been no time for Zilti to compose a message but not questioning the older priest's command. But again he hesitated, not from fear of the dark path but out of loyalty to his teacher. "Come with me," he urged. "We can both get away!"

Zilti looked outside the temple. Already several legionnaires had reached the altar, hacking about themselves with their invincible swords. "No. I have to close the hatch. Begone, and avenge!"

Without another word, Shatil dropped into the hole. He carefully felt his way past the first step. Before he touched the second, Zilti had closed the secret door above him.

The sweet scent of blood tickled Alvarro's nostrils, driving away the fatigue and exhaustion of the long combat. His sword, dripping with gore, remained in his hand, but he saw no victims for its deadly blade. Beside him, his top sergeant, Vane, galloped smoothly. The two horsemen rode far beyond the confines of the small village.

And still they did not rein in their chargers. The horsemen had ridden through the fields, chasing down fleeing natives, but the rest of the cavalry unit scattered in the process. Now the fleeing Mazticans dispersed into the brushy country outside their town. Bands of legionnaire footmen drove through the thickets, often flushing out additional victims.

Alvarro saw a group of swordsmen pull a young woman from a hiding place. With whoops of glee, they dragged her to a grassy clearing. For a moment, the red-beareded captain stared, thinking this might have been the woman who had caught his eye in town. As the footmen threw her to the ground, her panic-stricken face turned toward him, and he saw that he was mistaken.

Why had that woman, the translator, seemed so familiar? A memory tugged at Alvarro's brain, driving him forward even after the other riders turned back. Certainly her beauty was captivating, and the unique feathered cloak she wore had glowed with almost magical color, but his fascination went beyond that. He knew that he had seen her before.

Halloran! Suddenly it came back to him. His old enemy had struck him from his horse at the battle in Payit to save that same woman from Alvarro's lance! The captain's eyes narrowed. The pieces began to fit together. How had she learned the tongue of Faerun, if not from Hal? Shrewdly he wondered if she might know something of the fugitive's present whereabouts.

Alvarro knew of the hatred both Bishou Domincus and Darien harbored for Halloran. If he could apprehend the traitor, he would win the gratitude of these influential leaders of the legion — Cordell's two top lieutenants.

Squinting again, he tried to think. She had fled with the crowd going west, he knew. With a brutal kick at his charger's flanks, Alvarro turned down the road leading west, Vane following closely. The trail lay empty before him, though he saw natives scrambling away to either side. He kept his eyes narrowed, searching the mayzfields along the road, looking for this woman.

They rode at an easy canter. Alvarro laughed every time he flushed panicked villagers from the brush before him, but he no longer cared to ride them down. Now he had specific game in mind.

He saw a flash of movement across a field, a wave of long dark hair above the mayz, and something compelled him to stop. A woman fled the battle, but oddly, unlike the rest of her folk, she seemed to be circling back toward the village. Then he saw the flash of color — that cloak! Still staring, Alvarro saw the girl turn to look at him before she dropped out of sight.

And he recognized his quarry.

Bands of Kultakan warriors roamed the countryside, seizing stragglers as captives. Still, Erixitl knew she couldn't flee with the rest of the villagers, most of whom seemed intent on racing all the way to Nexal. She had to go back and find her father. Surely the invaders would discover his home atop the ridge on the opposite side of the village. She, assumed that her brother, trapped atop the pyramid, had fallen during the massacre. Still numb with shock, she began to ache with a foretaste of her pain, for she hadn't yet grasped the full extent of the disaster. Her village had died today.

Erix left the road that ran through the mayzfields lining the valley bottom. She circled to the north of Palul, finally reaching the stream that ran past the town. Here she stopped for a quick look around.

She spotted two silver-plated riders on the road, about a mile away. From the black atop the helm of one of the riders, she recognized him as the captain of the savage horsemen. For a long, hateful moment, she wished she was a warrior, with a powerful bow, so intensely did she want to strike him from his saddle. Then she saw his face turn toward her, and she dropped into the shallow streambed, knowing such a thought for the utterly futile desire that it was.

She splashed through the shallow water, staying low, and started to move along the stream bank on the opposite side. For half a mile, she worked her way back toward the town.

Finally Erix reached a bend in the stream, near the base of the ridge below her father's house. Here she broke from cover, darting up the bank and through another field of mayz toward the security of the brushy slope before her.

Sudden hoofbeats pounded behind her, and she knew she had been spotted. Without looking back, she guessed the identity of her pursuers, and that knowledge spurred her to deerlike swiftness.

But the horses were swift, too. Before she reached the undergrowth, Erix felt a charger thunder close, and suddenly a brutal weight smashed into her body, sending her crashing to the ground.

With a savage scream, she sprang to her feet and whirled, only to see the red-bearded legionnaire leap from his saddle and crash into her with the full force of his metal-armored frame. Again she smashed into the ground, this time driving the air from her lungs.

The legionnaire's companion pulled up beside him, casting a hungry glance at her. He dismounted, then stood to the side, looking around them.

Erix scratched blindly, hatred driving her fingers, but the horseman only laughed. With one brawny hand, he pinned both of her arms to the ground. She smelled the octal on his breath, saw the mad flush in his eyes. His laughter dropped to a menacing chortle.

"You're a pretty one, aren't you!"

She spat at his face, and he sneered.

"Spirited, too! I can see what Halloran liked about you."

At the name, she stiffened reflexively, then cursed to herself as she saw the pleased smile crease his gap-toothed mouth.

"Now," he said, reaching a bloody paw to the bodice of her dress. "Let's have a look at you!"

Lolth tasted the blood, felt the heat of the battle, and began to take a great interest in the faraway realm of Maztica. Her attentions, originally fixed upon the rebellious drow who dared worship another god, began to grow.

Perhaps her vengeance should not be hasty. Measuring in the time scale of godhood, she felt no hurry to punish her wayward children. They would feel the lash of her anger soon enough.

But perhaps, before then, she could enjoy the show of slaughter and butchery presented by the humans.

And in the near future, this land called the True World seemed likely to yield a plentiful harvest of blood.