the beasts arrayed around the fort.
“Thirty horses-only twenty riders, though” The cavalry captain sighed in weariness and despair.
“You saved a hundred times that many” the captain-general told him. “Without you to screen us, we never would have made it back to the fort.”
Grimes smiled faintly. “Still, don’t know what good that does us,” he said, with a gesture to the horde gathered beyond.
“ More than you might guess. It buys us time. Time to rest Time for Rodolfo to get here with the ships. Time for Erixitl to work a miracle. Time, and whatever that time can do for us.” Cordell clapped the horseman on the shoulder. “Now, you get some rest. There’ll be plenty of work later on I’m sure.”
The captain of horse nodded gratefully and turned to leave the rampart. As he did so, his eyes swept across the la-goon and the ocean to the north and east. Immediately he stiffened.
“What?” Cordell, seeing his reaction, spun to look out to sea.
The white sails were barely visible on the horizon but coming swiftly. At first indistinct, they quickly became identifiable-the fleet! The carracks he had sent to the Sea of Azul were returning! In a few moments, they could count them-all twenty-five vessels.
“Rodolfo!” Cordell shouted, and the cry resounded and echoed through the fort. The carracks swiftly pulled closer and all of Helmsport shouted.
As the ships drew near, they could see their Kultakan allies lining the decks, as well as a few of the legionnaires who had remained behind in the desert-in all, more than five” thousand fresh troops, eager to throw their strength into the battle.
“There you are. What happened? The baby!” The voce pulled Hal’s attention away from Poshtli in surprise. He looked into the equally surprised face of Jhatli as the youth ascended the last steps to the top of the pyramid. For a moment, the epic struggle between the gods was forgotten at his joy in seeing his companion.
“You’re alive!” cried the swordsman. He seized his young companion and looked into his face. Jhatli’s eyes were bright and curious. Hal saw, with a cautious look at his chest, that no wound showed there, even as a scar.
“The magic of pluma,” said Erix, softly so as not to disturb her child. The baby suckled noisily, content with his world now that he was being held by his mother and fed.
Halloran turned back to Poshtli, clapping his companion on both shoulders. “And to see you again, my friend, is a wish I would not have dared make.”
“1 have been… fortunate,” Poshtli said dryly.
“But what- Look out!” Jhatli’s eyes widened as he looked past Halloran.
Colon turned with sudden quickness, surprising Halloran into looking away from the spectacle before him. And in that instant, he saw Darien, hissing and spitting and racing toward his wife and child.
But even before the swordsman could react, the priest of Qotal seized the cloak-the brilliant plumage that lay over the altar, that had, after its miraculous transformation during Erix’s childbirth, opened passage for Qotal into the world. The cleric whirled it at the drider.
Darien shrieked in hatred and revulsion. At the same moment, the cleric threw himself upon her. Coton moved with surprising quickness, and by the time Halloran had drawn his sword, the cleric and the drider were clasped together like a pair of grim lovers, the cloak of plumage bright between them.
Again the gods clashed, and the world shook. The dragon breathed another spout of fire, and whole sections of forest burned away to ashes. Zaltec pummeled the dragon with his great stone fists, and where the blows fell, great barren craters opened in the ground. The chasms in the earth widened, and it seemed as if the loser must take Maztica with him when he perished. Earthquakes wracked the point, and parts of the bluff fell away, crashing into the ocean below. The world seemed ready to fall apart around them.
Coton, too, sensed this imminent peril. A lifetime of service to his god had led him to this, to the end of all life. Once again the land rumbled, and the pyramid settled lower on its foundation. The drider and the cleric lashed around atop the pyramid, a mingling of hishna and pluma, of the respective magics of Zaltec and Qotal.
The battle continued to rage, and then the cleric of Qotal did a thing that surprised even his god. For more than two decades, he had remained silent, bound by a vow to this god who now threatened imminent destruction.
Coton threw back his head, and he cursed out loud.
“Damn your pretensions!” he shouted, and the gods paused in their strife. “Damn your greed and your cruelty- yes, both of you!”
For a moment, the gods held their blows, turning their great heads to this impudent mortal. Then Qotal bellowed in rage, lunging toward the cleric who had betrayed his vow and now cursed his god. Zaltec, too, lumbered toward him, ready to slay the one who dared interrupt the immortal tasks of the gods.
Coton twisted to look at Halloran. The cleric’s face tightened with the agony of his struggle as he clasped Darien, still holding the blanket of pluma around her, enclosing her own power of hishna.
Then the priest spoke to Halloran. “They will destroy us! We must send them back-remove them from this world. They do not belong here!”
“But-but how?” demanded Halloran, his blood chilling as the monstrous figures loomed closer.
“You dare curse my name?” Qotal’s voice was a rumbling bellow, nearly shattering their ears. “You, who have prayed for my return, pleaded for my presence?”
The two gods loomed overhead, one the source of pluma, the coalescence of all its power; the other, the dark font of hishna and the root of its dark might. They looked with cold detachment at the mortals. They saw a man of pluma, bearing a cloak of high feathermagic, wrapped about a foul creature of hishna. The essence of the two powers flowed through the blood of these tiny creatures and gave them the vitality to carry their fight across the world.
The priest whirled back to Halloran. “Kill me!” he hissed, his voice taut. “Kill us both-now! It’s our only chance!”
The gods loomed closer, rearing above the pyramid, ready to squash them all into nothingness. But Halloran couldn’t force his hand.
“Now! There is no time!” Coton’s voice was a desperate plea.
Halloran stood mute and helpless. He couldn’t bring himself to strike this old companion who had silently and patiently accompanied them across the True World. He tried to force his hand to his blade, but it wouldn’t move. Erixitl looked at him in terror, clutching the baby in her encircling arms.
But one man was free of those restraints. Poshtli suddenly grasped the sword from Halloran’s hand. Whirling toward the combatants as the spread his jaws, ready to immolate them all, the warrior sprang.
And he thrust the keen blade home.
The bloodstained tip of Helmstooth cut easily through the cleric’s body, tearing the cloak of pluma and driving into the drider’s bowels. Darien shrieked in pain, staggering backward with a force that pulled the blade from Poshtli’s hand.
But the cleric clung to her even as he died, and as the blood of pluma and hishna mingled and flowed onto the top of the pyramid, the power of the gods waned.
Qotal’s jaws emitted a short gasp of smoke, but already the dragon had begun to fade from sight. The stone behemoth of Zaltec, meanwhile, staggered weakly backward. Then it teetered once and crashed to the ground with thunderous force, shattering into so many lifeless boulders.
By the time the dust had settled, Qotal could no longer be seen.
Tokol joined Cordell and the defenders of Helmsport on the field before the fort. Together they watched the beasts of the Viperhand withdraw from the field, disappearing into the jungle.
“Did our arrival scare them away?” the Kultakan war chief wondered.
“Perhaps,” replied the captain-general. “Or perhaps it was
something else. All of the urge to fight seemed to leave! them.”
“Let’s hope the urge is gone for good,” growled Daggrande, with a scowl at the retreating foe.
“Chical tells me there’s no sign of the colossus, either;’ added Cordell.
