On the ground, Kachin coughed, the pink froth of his life-blood trickling through his lips.
Dawn showed the great wings spreading across the water. Gultec, atop the pyramid with Caxal, the Revered Counselor of Ulatos, and Lok, chief of the Eagle Warriors, watched the white shapes unfold like the blossoms of a day-flower opening to the sun.
The Jaguar Knight felt a terrible unease as he watched. Oddly, he missed the presence of Kachin. That cleric, among all the men he knew, seemed capable of offering wisdom and sound guidance in this hour of dire danger.
And Gultec did not underestimate the danger posed by these strangers. Nearly two hundred of his warriors had been slain in short minutes of combat, a horrifying death toll even to the veteran campaigner. At the same time, only ten of the strangers had been killed.
Gultec felt certain that the other strangers at the pyramid would have perished, except for the appearance of the couatl. But at what cost to his own troops?
A sense of menace grew in his mind, and suddenly he spoke to Caxal and Lok. 'We must send the warriors back to the city… quickly!'
'The city?' Caxal looked at him suspiciously. 'But the strangers are here now!'
'I think they will fly soon. See how they spread their wings? The army of Ulatos is here, and the city lies undefended.'
'No!' Caxal barked. Lok, the Eagle chief, started to speak but closed his mouth in the face of the counselor's glare. Caxal squinted, studying the great water creatures — he could not think of them as boats — and trying to control the fear raging in his breast.
Gultec turned away from the counselor, his temper flaring. Normally, in such a state, he would have stalked away. But this day, these occurrences, seemed so momentous to the Jaguar Knight that such ordinary concerns of pride faded to insignificance.
The white wings did indeed fly. 'See how their beats stir the wave tops,' Lok said, pointing. They all watched the white wakes foaming behind each hull as the strangers rode their water creatures around the reef. They followed the coast toward the west, in the direction of Ulatos.
Caxal watched the flight of the strangers in a stupor. This was the first he had seen of their might, and awe filled his body with numbness. Suddenly he shook his head.
'We must race to Ulatos,' he declared, oblivious of his two war chieftains, who looked at him in scorn, 'to defend the city against the invaders!'
From the chronicle of Colon:
Now our destiny has only to be born.
The Eagles continue to report to Naltecona. He hears the news of their departure with joy. He smiles and relaxes and beckons to his priests and nobles.
'See? The strangers leave us. They are no threat, surely not the cause of ten years of portents.' He cheers himself, but no one else, with the heartiness of his words.
Then more Eagles fly to the palace of Nexal, and the Revered Counselor hears of the strangers' approach to Ulatos. For a time, Naltecona is despondent, and then again the smile of understanding crosses his features.
But now he understands things that no one else can see. 'It is their folly to go to Ulatos, for that is the heart of the Payit lands,' he assures his attendants. 'Surely the Jaguars and Eagles of the Payit will rally to destroy them,' he explains to the nobles.
And indeed the warriors of the Payit gather, many thousandmen of the city and the surrounding towns. More warriors arrive daily from Payit lands deeper in the jungle, mysterious regions unknown even to Nexal.
But only Naltecona believes they may solve his dilemma.
ULATOS LAGOON
The cleric of Qotal gasped and wheezed, each breath coming shorter than the last as his lungs slowly filled with blood. Erixitl wept softly beside him, holding Kachin's hand in hers. The cleric forcefully stopped her when she tried to tend his wounds, shaking his head to indicate certain knowledge of his fate. This man suddenly meant a great deal to Erix, and the thought of his loss left her frightened and lonely.
Halloran stood awkwardly off to the side, while Daggrande looked fruitlessly for some indication of the dark attacker's nature or trail.
The shrine, Hal saw now, was a round, dome-shaped building in the rain forest. It was covered with vegetation and stood very near to the shore. He wondered how far they were from the fleet's anchorage. He did not allow himself to consider the possibility that the legion had moved on. Nothing Halloran could imagine seemed as frightening to him as the thought of being stranded here, never to see men of his own world again.
Erix moaned and leaned across Kachin's suddenly still body. Halloran looked away, realizing with surprise that this man's death saddened and angered him.
The attack had been cowardly, and the cleric had given his life to save a maiden, a clear statement of the relative merits of attacker and victim. But also this cleric had acted as a decent and reasonable man.
Indeed, Kachin had almost seemed civilized, Hal admitted. Too, he was discomfited by this unusual girl who had magically learned his language and who regarded him with those luminous eyes.
'Well, there's no sign of that thing, or person, or whatever it was,' reported Daggrande. 'Now let's get going back to the fleet.'
'Wait!' Halloran suddenly felt reluctant to leave. He turned to the girl. 'I'm sorry about your friend.'
Again she disturbed him, this time with the extent of the pain he could see in her face. She studied him with a wounded innocence that finally forced him to turn away. 'Will you help me bury him, please?' she asked softly.
'We have to go!' Daggrande objected. 'Cordell might already have decided to move on!'
Halloran sighed and looked at his old friend. 'You go ahead. I'll help her and catch up as soon as I can.'
The dwarf looked at him incredulously for a moment but made no move to leave. 'I never did think you had much in the way of a brain. But I'd best stay here and help you get the job done. Then' — and his voice dropped to an ominous growl — 'we're going!'
Erixitl selected a spot beside the shrine of Qotal, the god Kachin had served all his adult life. The fringe of forest along the coast was lined with many rocks, for the beach here was more gravelly than it had been below Twin Visages. All three of them helped carry rocks to the burial site, then slowly built a mound over Kachin's body.
Erix worked steadily, ignoring the questions that began to grow in her mind. Where should I go? What should I do? Fiercely she forced those questions aside until the grave was completed. Finally the work was done, and all her uncertainties settled to the fore of her mind.
A small part of her wanted to return home, to Palul, to finally see Nexal, the great city she had never seen. She knew no one in Ulatos — indeed, in all Payit — and she had come here as a purchased slave. Erix understood that, though Kachin had called her a priestess, she did not have the training or background for such an exalted calling.
But if she was not a priestess, neither was she any longer a slave. She feared the forces of Zaltec, for they had attacked her more than once, yet it seemed that greater things had been set in motion by the arrival of these strangers. And those forces would threaten her everywhere in the True World, perhaps with even greater savagery near their highest temple in Nexal.
Too, there was the matter of Chitikas's gift to her. She was probably the only Maztican who could communicate with the strangers. They were indeed a frightening, even horrifying, lot. The prospects for peace between Halloran's people and her own looked very grim, especially after the melee at the pyramid. In her heart, she wondered whether war was inevitable.
Could her destiny, the destiny Chitikas had spoken of, involve the prevention of this conflict? She doubted whether this was possible, but at the same time she felt compelled to try to do something.
