the fight.
Erixitl stumbled forward, helped by Colon and Halloran. They made their way slowly down the shore toward Twin Visages on foot, since the ground in places was too rough for safe travel by horseback. Jhatli led Lotil by the hand.
They followed the coast, since all the paths through the jungle from Ulatos to Twin Visages were obscure and difficult to follow. The shoreline route took longer but was far more certain.
“It’s not much farther,” Erix said finally, after hours of marching. The sun neared the western horizon, and now they strived to reach their goal by nightfall.
Halloran remembered the place called Twin Visages, the place where he and Erixitl had met. It had seemed even then to be a place of dire portent and deep, abiding power. Now it fell like the focus of his world, the place toward which all his roads had been leading.
“When we get there, do we climb the pyramid?” he asked. That structure, much smaller than the one in Tewahca seemed hardly large enough to support the massive dragon they had glimpsed, so briefly, in the City of the Gods.
“Yes.”
“And the god will arrive there?” Halloran asked.
“I think so,” Erix replied. She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know! I can only do what seems right’”
She gasped in sudden pain and bent double. “It’s… all right,” she said, pushing herself along.
The ground rose beneath them as they moved onto the bluff that formed the broad headland of the point. Silently they walked on, pushing along the fringe of brushy ground between the deep jungle and the sheer drop toward the wave-battered shore below.
Then Halloran stopped, raising a hand before him and soundlessly pointing. Erix looked and saw it, too, even though the moon had set an hour before. She would never forget that horrible place where she had come so close to death.
Before them stood the squared bulk of the pyramid and Twin Visages- Beyond, etched in streaks of sunset, stretched the lagoon and the endless ocean. They couldn’t see the top of the pyramid, but the last rays of the sun brightened the side facing them.
Erixitl groaned again in sudden pain. With a gasp, she grabbed her belly and sank slowly to the ground.
Flames exploded into the dark sky from one after another of the huts of Nayap. Metal-armored soldiers from Amn fought desperately for each square foot of ground, making the beasts pay for every forward step with one, two, a dozen lives. But the monstrous army could afford the price.
Finally the defenders gathered around the pyramid attacked on three sides by a howling, slavering mass. Fire and ash and smoke drifted around the squat structure, though the din of battle drowned any sound of the blaze.
A great ogre bulled his way onto the steps of the pyramid, crushing the skull of a metal-helmed soldier with a blow of his heavy club. Laying about him to the right and left, the beast lumbered up several steps. A swordsman leaped at it from the side, driving a steel blade deep into the beast’s thigh. With a howl, the ogre turned, seizing the courageous soldier as the monster tumbled down the steps, crushing the life out of the man during the brutal fall.
In the meantime, a thousand ores-a full regiment of the beasts-pressed around behind the village. The insect plague cast by the cleric had dissipated by now, and the few warriors who stood in the regiment’s path had been brushed easily aside.
Even as the defenders fought courageously to hold their key outpost to the last, the monstrous advance slowly cut them off from all retreat. In the smoke and the chaos of the night battle, this maneuver went undetected until it was too late. Abruptly the men on the pyramid realized that the village had been taken around them and that all connection with the rest of their army had been severed.
And now the breach in the pyramid’s defense had been opened. More ogres, followed by ores, rushed onto the side of the structure. The archers atop the pyramid poured a deadly fire into the creatures’ faces, sending many of them tumbling back. But others-others without number, seemingly without fear-advanced from the darkness to take their places, and slowly the beasts pressed higher up the four sloping sides of the pyramid.
The arrows of the defenders couldn’t last forever, and when the last missile was exhausted, the archers drew their short swords and prepared to die fighting. Now, with the village in flames around them, the pyramid cut off by the ores behind it, they could think no longer of escape. They could only fight and die like the men they were. In another moment, the last of them fell, and a dozen ores howled their triumph from the top of the structure.
Back! Fall back!” Cordell shouted the command, and trumpets brayed in echo. Along his line, decimated by the first phase of the battle, the exhausted fighters pulled away
from the equally exhausted monsters. The second rank of Zaltec’s attack rushed across the muddied ground, still a mile from the withdrawing defenders.
Nayap, the foremost village in the defensive line, now spouted smoke and ash, a funeral pyre for the men who had died there. Indeed, the only men remaining in the village were those who were dead.
“Where to?” grunted Grimes, riding beside the cap general.
“Hold Actas” The captain-general pointed to the v that formed the inland end of his line. “Hold it at all but we’ve got to shorten the line! Keep your riders ready watch our flank!” Cordell gestured to Daggrande, who trotted over to him.
“Divide your men into two companies,” the commander ordered. “If all else fails, you’ll have to cover our withdrawal into the fort.”
“All right,” grunted the dwarf, grimacing at the thought of splitting his already depleted company. He saw the line shortening as the companies of Mazticans and foreigners drew closer together, filling in the gaps left by their fallen comrades.
The second wave of the monstrous attack now rumbled through the line of the first battle, knocking their own battered comrades aside. The beasts lumbered through the smoldering ruins of Nayap, paying no attention to the bodies around them, uncaring even whether the fallen had been human or their own bestial kin.
Some of the survivors of the first attack, the most aggressive among the monsters, joined in the second wave, and a powerful force of ores, ogres, and trolls rushed toward the narrowed band of defenders.
Once again the shower of arrows, the thunder of the harquebusiers, the speeding darts of crossbow and halfling, took their bloody toll of the attackers. But now there were fewer missiles and more monsters. The effect could only be lessened.
The first of the attacking regiments crashed into the thin rank of the desert dwarves under Luskag. But here the monsters, who towered over their diminutive opponents, as well as outnumbered them, met a rude surprise.
The dwarves ducked low at the first impact of the charge, darting beneath the shields and raised weapons of the attackers. Their keen weapons, with the razorlike edges of plumastone, struck upward, and hundreds of ores reeled backward, screaming and wailing in agony. The wounded monsters fell and writhed and died, and the desert dwarves attacked their ogre masters, slicing and slashing with their murderous blades of shiny black stone.
Even the ogres fell as the nimble dwarves twisted around them, evading the heavy but clumsy blows of the monsters. In moments, the entire regiment fell back, the beastly faces of its troops distorted by fear of these small, ferocious slayers. The shrewd Luskag, however, allowed only a moment’s pursuit before calling his warriors back into line.
Other regiments of Hoxitl’s horde turned from their advance to press the desert dwarf force with renewed vigor. This could have proven a critical weakening of the cleric-beast’s attack, except that nowhere else along the line were the defenders prepared to resist so sturdily as in that portion manned by the desert dwarves.
On this assault, two of Hoxitl’s great regiments swung wide of the line, passing around the far village of Actas. The rest of the force lumbered into the thin line, and once again the defenders struggled to hold.
Cordell looked to his left as a series of torches waved through the field. A small band of Payit warriors, concealed in the grass before Actas, held up the suddenly blazing brands. In the yellow light, the commander saw
