Slowly and agonizingly they made their way up the steps of the pyramid, stopping each time Erixitl was seized by another pain. It took them countless minutes of ever-increasing daylight to reach the top, and by the time they did, the sky was light blue and the moments between Erix’s contractions had shortened dramatically.
Coton spread the cloak on the platform on top of the pyramid some distance away from the grim altar. Immediately Halloran lowered Erixitl, and once again she gasped.
Then she screamed and wept. She threw back her head and cried out loud. She hissed through her teeth and pushed with all of her strength. Again and again she strained.
Pain became her constant emotion, a way of life that seemed as if it could bring only death. But she fought against that pain with all of her strength, striving and pushing to overwhelm and defeat it. With a groaning curse, at last she felt herself collapse. The pain was still there, but now it was a fading sensation, unimportant any longer.
Halloran, in one stunning second, found himself looking
at, and then gathering up, his son. The baby squirmed; kicked on the blanket of pluma, wrinkling his face and then uttering a sharp, demanding cry.
“A boy,” he said reverently. He handed the child to his wife and she clutched it to herself.
Colon surprised them by tugging insistently at the blanket of pluma. He pulled it free and Erix gasped in surprise. “The Cloak-of-One-Plume!”
Indeed, the cloak woven from countless tiny feathers by her father Lotil now looked exactly like the one she had worn, the one that had marked her as the chosen daughter of Qotal.
Slowly, devoutly, Coton rose to his feet in the pale blue of the dawn. He carried the billowing cloak in his arms, and then he gently spread it across the altar.
At that moment, the sun crested the eastern horizon, and the first rays of the day fell upon the altar. The cloak fleeted these, sending up a dazzling rainbow of light.
The twisted violently, plummeting into a steep dive. For the first time, Poshtli felt the tug of gravity below him, and then he saw the ocean, pale blue in the dawn and spreading to the far limits of his vision to each side.
But not before him. There, a thin green line of land emerged from the distance, quickly growing into the bluff at Twin Visages. Now he saw the two faces he had seen before, still staring out to sea, waiting… waiting for him!
Or more precisely, for Qotal.
“She has given a life that I may return!” the exulted aloud.
“A sacrifice?” Poshtli demanded.
“No-not yet,” replied the god ominously. But now the Plumed Serpent had no time for mortals.
The great dragon soared toward the small pyramid, settling slowly to earth. He landed, bracing one massive foot on each of the four corners of the pyramid’s top.
Poshtli slid from the wide, plumed neck for the first time in countless weeks. His feet landed solidly on the top of the pyramid, and at the same time, he heard a great splintering of wood. He looked up to see a colossal stone figure, vaguely manlike but with grotesquely etched facial features and massive, clawlike fingers, lumber toward them from the forest. The monstrous thing crushed trees beneath each powerful footfall.
“Poshtli!” The warrior heard his name and turned, startled.
“Halloran!” he cried in delight and surprise.
Then the dragon once again took wing.
The surging horde of monsters crashed against the summit of the rampart again and again, to be met by arrows and swords and the explosions of the harquebuses. With increasing fury, Hoxitl commanded his beasts to attack, to press up and over the embankment.
Dawn grew to full daylight, and yet each attack fell back, repulsed with bloody losses. Many defenders paid with their lives, but the sloping outer wall of the fort was littered with hundreds upon hundreds of bodies, each marked with the serpents-head brand of the Viperhand. Finally, under the increasingly blue sky, the beasts (ell back to rest. For (he first time in many hours, silence blessed the field.
As the sun crested the horizon, it gleamed off the clear blue waters of the lagoon. The vast ocean stretched to the horizon, rich, blue, apparently endless. Pure light and pure clarity marked the view of the sweeping sea.
But not so the land. The slopes of the fortress and all the earth around it had been churned to a sticky brown mess by the passage of heavy feet. Smoke drifted across the savannah from the ashes of the two burned villages, and the volleys from the harquebusiers had sent a new cloud rolling down from the walls of the fort.
Now the Beasts of the Viperhand gathered in their great regiments, camping and resting across the savannah.
Though none of the formations had been obliterated, nine or ten had suffered catastrophic casualties and now numbered a mere fraction of their original thousand-orc complement.
Hoxitl knew, however, that the humans were trapped The long night of battle had taken its toll on attackers and defenders alike. Now it served his purposes to allow his beasts to recover their strength in anticipation of the next attack.
And the next, and perhaps the one after that. However long it took, Hoxitl knew that his force would prevail.
Darien had slowly carefully pulled herself up the last portion of the bluff. Now that the sun had risen, she had to take care not to be seen by the humans, yet instinctively she knew that they would not be looking for her.
She had seen the great dragon soar overhead, and she understood implicitly that it was her enemy-more to the point, the enemy, even the very antithesis, of her hishna. But now its passage gave her the chance she needed.
She saw the creature, its broad, brilliantly colored wings flapping gently, perch upon the top of the small pyramid. It faced away from her, toward the looming colossus in the jungle.
Darien scuttled across the field to the base of the pyramid, certain that she had not been observed from above. Slowly carefully she climbed the steep stairway She held her body low against the steps to avoid being spotted.
When she was partway up the stairs, the great dragon sprang into the air. The drider cowered against the pyramid as the serpent soared away. Awestruck, she watched it race toward the stony giant that was Zaltec.
The two deities collided, and the earth splintered around them. Great fissures opened in the ground, swallowing trees and earth, as the force of the onslaught caused the colossus to stagger backward. But then a massive, mountainous fist crashed into the neck of the Plumed One, and the
dragon tumbled back. For a moment, one wing folded back against its side.
Qotal fell to the earth, crushing dozens of trees and sending more fissures tearing through the soil of Payit. The pyramid rocked upon its base, and Darien clung with her hands as well as her legs to keep from being shaken off the stairs.
The dragon reared back, a hissing cloud of flame and smoke erupting from its widespread jaws. The sizzling inferno surrounded the god of war. but Zaltec ignored it. Again he lunged at Qotal, and this time the dragon pounced away.
The gods waged their war, uncaring for the living things around them, be they trees or animals or humans. The destruction of their combat crushed miles of forest and spread earthquakes and chasms that threatened to consume all of Payit.
Darien sensed her opportunity She crept up the last few steps of the pyramid and cautiously peered onto the crest. There, as she expected, all eyes were directed away from her, toward the battle between the gods.
Black hishna surged in Darien as the moment of her triumph lay before her. There was the wife, sitting up weakly staring in awe at the war god. She held a bundle to her breast, and Darien’s smile tightened savagely.
Very slowly the drider climbed onto the platform atop the pyramid. The talonmagic within her caused all of her energy to focus on the target of pluma before her.
Then she attacked.
“ How many did we lose?” Cordell spoke to Grimes atop the rampart, where he could keep a careful eye on
