Viperhand

feathered snake, Cordell seemed to hesitate. Finally he spoke. 'Will you join us in this fight?' he inquired. 'Of course, you're pardoned of all charges that might have been brought against you, and I can offer you captainship of the lancers.'

Halloran didn't even laugh, so surprised was he by the offer. But his response was quick and vehement. 'I have done nothing that requires a pardon. But I want no part of your 'grand mission' — and I regret the small part I once played. You have come here for nothing more than a massive theft!'

Bishou Domincus had been glowering darkly during the exchange, but now he snorted. 'Theft! To steal from barbarous savages who kill each other to feed their gods? Why, they don't even know the value of their gold!'

Hal turned to the cleric, with a meaningful gesture to the warriors in the plaza. 'It seems that you are the ones who have placed a mistaken value upon gold. Now you see what it has bought for you.

'And as for savagery, there are good people here as well as bad. When we arrived with the likes of Alvarro and Darien, I wonder who are the savages?'

'You are a traitor!' Domincus raged. He stepped closer to Hal and then suddenly recoiled as the sinuous form of Chitikas interposed himself between them. The snake's eyes never wavered from the cleric's, and the Bishou took several steps backward, frightened.

'Darien,' said Cordell quietly. 'Where do you think she has gone?'

'I don't know' Halloran admitted. 'This worries me. She is a great threat to Erixitl.'

Suddenly Shatil, who had been following Erix's translation, spoke. 'The Highcave,' Erix interpreted for the others. 'That is the lair of the Ancient Ones.'

'Where is that?' Cordell inquired.

'Up there, somewhere near the summit.' He pointed to the peak of Zatal, below its rising column of steam. The mountain belched and rumbled, looking every bit the suitable dwelling for a band of drow. 'I — we don't know where, exactly, but it is very high on the mountain.'

'She is the enemy of all of us now,' said the general.

Halloran thought for a moment. He understood the truth of Cordell's words, and he was surprised to learn that Shatil knew where Darien had gone — or at least, had strong suspicions. In another moment, he made his decision.

'I'll go after her, if my companions are willing.' Erix took his arm and Poshtli nodded. Hal may have imagined it, but Chitikas seemed to smile. Shatil stood back, looking at them in confusion, but then he, too, stepped forward.

'I wish you good luck,' offered Cordell. 'I suspect you'll need it.'

Halloran thought for a moment, casting another look around the war-scarred plaza. 'Good luck to you, as well,' he said.

Then Chitikas surrounded the four humans. Whirling colors formed a bright ring, and they were gone.

The attack began at midmorning, with no warning. Warriors bearing the brand of the Viperhand surged toward the stone-walled palace from all sides, in an explosion of whistling, howling spearmen, archers, slingers, and maca-wielding swordsmen.

The stones from the slingers and arrows from the archers drummed onto the palace roof, each volley pounding like a sudden downpour among the ranks of Daggrande's cross-bowmen gathered there. The dwarf's doughty company fired back, volley after volley. The steel darts were perhaps a hundred times more lethal than the stone-tipped arrows of the Nexalans, yet the Maztican archers were a thousand times more numerous.

The warriors hacked and bashed the gates of the palace to pieces, then threw themselves into hand-to- hand combat with the legionnaires. Cordell's men fought desperately in the constricted conditions, their discipline and courage enabling them to — just barely — hold each breach.

When the assault began, the legionnaires stood firm at the several wide doorways to the palace. They lined the rooftops, defending against the hordes of attackers who tried to scale the walls and attack from above.

Led by the cult, warriors hurled themselves at the structure throughout the day, their attacks growing in ferocity with each passing hour. Thousands of warriors surged at the ramparts. Crossbows, swords, and spears tore into them, but for each native that fell, two, four — a dozen more advanced to take his place. Urged on by Hoxitl and his fellow priests, the Mazticans attacked with brutal savagery, each man ignoring his own personal safety in the quest to destroy the hated foe.

Once a company of Nexalan warriors burst through the front doorway, driving dozens of feet into the great hallway. Captain Garrant led a furious counterattack by the swordsmen of his company and barely succeeded in driving the attackers back so that the breach could be sealed. More than a hundred Maztican warriors perished in this assault, yet word spread through the native ranks that victory was possible against the foreign devils, they were not invincible!

With Alvarro dead, Cordell personally organized his horsemen for a charge. He appointed a burly sergeant-major, a veteran of many campaigns, to lead them. The riders thundered forth, only to be immediately surrounded by the press of thousands of warriors, packed so tightly together that even the powerful chargers couldn't force their way through the crowd.

Desperately the panic-stricken lancers slashed their way back to the security of the palace compound. Even so, the press of the attack tore three men from their saddles, and screaming warriors quickly spirited them away. Tightly bound and marched into the Temple of Zaltec, these riders despaired while maca-wielding warriors chopped their horses to pieces behind them.

Another sortie, attempted by armored troops protected by a bristling barrier of speartips and longswords, made little more progress. The tightly packed legionnaires advanced into the Maztican horde, chopping their way forward, slaying many native warriors for each step gained.

However, by the time the detachment had worked its way free from the palace wall, the precariousness of its position became clear as warriors swept around behind it. Pressed on all sides, it was only with an almost superhuman effort of discipline and courage that the men fought their way back to the palace gates. They left hundreds of Mazticans, and more than a dozen of their own number, dead on the stones of the plaza.

Many of the natives took up torches — dried branches of pine, or clusters of brittle reeds, soaked in pine tar — and then lit and hurled them on top of the palace. The brick and clay walls of the structure resisted the flame, but the roof of wood had spent long decades bleaching in the high Maztican sun.

Frantically the defenders threw these torches back, stomping out the fires that started to crackle among the ancient beams of the roof. Others worked bucket brigades from the palace's lone well, though the level of water in the well grew noticeably lower after less than an hour. Finally Bishou Domincus invoked the water to rise in the name of Helm and it quickly did so, flooding over the rim of its small enclosure and pouring through the palace's central courtyard — precious men, ill-spared from the battlements, wielded fresh buckets and large clay jars instead of weapons. The water proved just barely ample to keep the fires at bay. They soaked more and more of the roof, and eventually the torches lost their effect. Late in the day, the Mazticans abandoned the incendiary tactic.

The warriors of the Nexala filled the plaza surrounding the structure. They claimed the high positions, atop the Great Pyramid and lesser pyramids dedicated to the other gods. Even the Pyramid of Qotal, dedicated to the most gentle and unwarlike of the gods, fell to military usage. A hundred warriors armed with slings and stones climbed on top of it, hurling their missiles at the legionnaires on the roof of the palace.

Yet, though the soldiers of Cordell made no headway in their attacks against the Nexalans, neither could the natives advance in their ceaseless assault against the bastion of their enemies. More than a thousand of them paid for the effort with their lives, but the steel-armed, tightly disciplined foreigners held firm against every breach.

In the face of the cautious defense, the Nexalans captured few legionnaires alive. The frustration of the attacking warriors grew, whipped on by Hoxitl's shrill commands. In desperation, warriors hurled themselves in suicidal attacks at the doorways, trying to use long hooks to snatch a legionnaire from the ranks of his comrades. But always they fell dead before they caught a victim.

Suddenly, charging from concealment behind the Great Pyramid, a thousand Nexalans carrying dozens of ladders advanced in a furious assault. All of them warriors of the Viperhand, they had been churned to a frenzy by Hoxitl's exhortations about the hunger of Zaltec, his hunger for the hearts of the invaders. They blew their shrill whistles of wood and bone, racing madly toward the palace wall. Swarming against a lightly held stretch of the wall, they quickly raised their scaling ladders, placing them against the wall faster than the legionnaires could