drums so large it took six slaves to carry each. The drums were positioned every two hundred feet in the rear of his troops. On his signal, they beat as one, a terrible rolling sound, like thunder in the valley.
The sound of distant thunder reaching the defenders in the city confused them. The skies were clear. Was this an ill omen?
Casca looked to the sound, the sun sparkling off his brilliant feathered robe, the same robe he had worn on the day of his sacrifice. Shading his eyes with his right hand he watched the soldiers of the Olmecs spread out and begin to move in toward the city. From this distance the invading army looked like the horns of one of the African bulls he had seen in the arena at Rome. To the rear of the soldiers he could just make out the huge drums and their attendants. So that's what's going on. Relaying to his men below that the thunder was only caused by giant drums, he ran down to the square. Taking a thousand warriors with him, he raced to the city's edge where the broad avenue stopped and the lesser trails began.
The enemy was approaching through the tall fields and the rows of cultivated, spiked maguey plants. Lining his warriors in three ranks, Casca waited. The drumming sound was almost overpowering. Steadily the Olmec approached. One hundred of the thousand warriors Casca had taken were archers. By his standards they were nothing to compare with the archers of the Scythians and Parthians. They lacked the laminated bows of those famous fighters. The Teotec bows were lighter, and they were shooting arrows of cane from the marshes, tipped with sharpened bits of stone. But they were what he had, and he planned to use them. He had the archers stationed behind the rearmost rank of warriors.
Carefully, Casca watched his men for any sign of panic. They were standing fast, the ruddy, square faces composed and placid. Never had a Roman commanded an army of such brilliance. With their feathered headdresses and plumed wicker shields, the warriors seemed more like terrible beasts or birds than mere men. They carried deadly weapons. Their lances were tipped with flint and obsidian. Their clubs were edged with the same razor- sharp stones. The nobles among them each vyed with the others in their elaborate war suits. Many wore enough gold and precious stones to set even an avaricious Caesar's mouth watering with envy. They waited, confident. After all, they had a god with them.
The Olmec stopped their approach one hundred yards from the soldiers of the Teotec. Their drums were silent. The sudden stillness had a strange, eerie quality.
Casca advanced out from his line of warriors to where he was clearly visible, escorted by only one Serpent soldier, the escort carrying one of the spears he had been given by Vlad the Dark when Vlad learned he was to be one of Casca's bodyguards. Vlad had insisted on the man taking the Viking spear.
Casca walked slowly. The Roman cuirass seemed to be a second skin, except there was still one place over the ribs on his left side where a knot of thread holding the metal discs affixed cut into his skin, slowly wearing a sore spot. Shit, he thought, I meant to have that fixed. The damn thing's going to hurt all day.
Filling his lungs with air and raising his right arm in salute, Casca bellowed out:
'Teypetel! Dog king of the Olmec! Come forth!'
Casca's voice clearly reached Teypetel.
Stunned, with surprising agility Teypetel leaped from his litter. Dog! He dares call me a dog! Never in all his life had anyone dared to insult Teypetel. Not even his mother. For she knew full well that he would have cut her heart out and eaten it as he had done to his own brothers when they contested his right to the throne.
Pushing his way through to the front ranks, Teypetel stood there, gross, huge, his breasts like those of a fat woman. He towered over every one of his warriors by at least a head. His arms were larger than the thighs of his biggest and strongest warrior. His skin was oiled. In his right hand he carried a battleaxe of native copper, hand- beaten, and as large as the skull of a deer. Using the instrument to bash the brains out of a soldier who was too slow in moving out of his way, he reached the foremost rank and stepped out.
Casca took a look at his opponent. Shit, he thought, that is one large hunk of suet.
A distance of two hundred feet separated them.
Teypetel, too, sized up the man confronting him. From this distance Casca did not seem so godlike… even if he did wear strange armor…
Teypetel's white pointed teeth sparkled. 'Are you the one called the Quetza?' His speech had a slight sibilance to it caused by the sharpened teeth.
Casca stepped out a few more steps.
'Yes, molester of small boys and dogs, I am the Quetza.'
Taken aback by the repeated offense and wondering, How did he know about the dogs? Teypetel paused. But quick anger rose to his face, making his head feel as though he had drunk too much pulque, and in that anger he caved in the skull of his own nearest guard. The brains splattered on his feet. He roared: 'Come forth and fight! Let us do battle here.' Even in his rage he was rational enough to note that in the open his troops could easily butcher the few warriors with the one called Quetza.
Casca laughed, his voice sneering as he replied:
'No such deal, lard ass. You come to us. If you have the guts. And from here I can see that you have enough for at least six fat women.'
Enraged, Teypetel broke the neck of a novice priest who had come too close to his massive right hand. Summoning his captains to him, Teypetel began to give them explicit orders that the foreigner was to be taken alive.
While this was going on, Casca took the spear from his aide. It was a good weapon, iron-tipped, stout ash stock. Expelling a deep breath in a long controlled burst as the shaft left his hand, Casca hurled the spear. It arced across the distance between him and the Olmec king.
Teypetel looked up in time to see the shaft arcing toward him, giving him a hell of a fright. He threw the leader of his center forces in front of him. The iron blade went into the warrior's back and protruded a full arm's length from his chest, the point of the spear stopping just short of the Olmec king who quickly scuttled back to the rear ranks. No one could throw a spear that far. Not one that heavy…
Aw, crap. Missed him, Casca thought.
As Teypetel retreated, Casca's jeering voice followed; taunting: 'What's the matter, lard ass? Afraid?'
Reaching the safety of his rear ranks, Teypetel screamed in blind fury: 'Kill them! Attack!'
The legions of the Olmec obeyed. They raced to overrun the few pitiful soldiers who confronted them, their voices rising in animal cries. Predominant was the call of the hunting jaguar. The drums urged them on.
The center of the Olmecs moved in to crush Casca's force, and the horns began their pincer movement. But Teypetel had miscalculated. The wings were in confusion. They could move but to where? They could not surround the whole city. The buildings would break up their formation. So they waited.
The center closed to one hundred feet, and when they did. Casca gave the order for his men to fall flat on their faces while the archers behind loosed waves of arrows over them straight into the faces and bodies of the overconfident Olmecs. The thin reed arrows found their way into the eyes and open mouths of many screaming warriors. The Olmecs paused. Casca leaped to his feet and ordered his men to conduct a fighting withdrawal. They led the Olmecs deeper and deeper into the confines of the city along the broad, building-banked thoroughfare. Casca and his men would run back to get ahead of the Olmecs for a space, then fall to the prone position as the archers let fly another wave of arrows. Leapfrogging in this manner they hurt the Olmecs, not enough to stop them, but enough to drive them wild with frustration.
Gradually Casca led back to where the main body of his army waited. The Olmecs would have run two or more miles, while his own troops would be fresh for the fight. It could make a difference, equalizing Casca's disadvantage of smaller numbers.
An arrow bounced off the back of Casca's armor. Several of his men had fallen. As the Olmecs reached Casca's casualties, those seriously wounded were speared to death; those who would live were held for the coming sacrifices.
As the Olmecs poured into the city their ranks were ever more congested by the width of the streets, forcing them to crowd in on one another in a great, uncontrollable mass.
The Olmec officers screamed in frustration, trying to get control of their men, but it was too late. The units were mixed. They were following only those directly in front of them. Behind the melee, riding his enormous litter, Teypetel entered the city bellowing for his men to kill, kill. In his excitement he took the whip from one of his slavemasters and lashed the backs of the litter slaves into bloody ribbons as they struggled and gasped through open mouths, laboring to carry the tremendous load of the litter with its obese passenger.
