Once again his men raised a cheer, and this lime the Mazticans joined in.
“I don’t even care that it’s salty,” Halloran admitted, with*in expansive gesture across the rich blue Sea of Azul. “It’s wet, and a lot cooler than the air.”
“It’s better than that accursed desert, I’ll grant you that,” Daggrande agreed. He gestured toward the long file of desert dwarves marching before them. “How they can live that hellhole is beyond me.”
“How did they come to be there?” Jhatli asked. “Often I have heard of the Hairy Men of the Desert, but no human had ever seen them before, or so it is said”
The trio brought up the rear of their group as they marched along the sandy shore. A short distance ahead Erixitl rode Storm, while Coton and Lotil followed behind the horse.
The barren terrain of the desert stretched to the limits of the horizon to the left, yet the companions were considerably refreshed during this portion of their march. The blue waters of the Sea of Azul, to their right, provided an often used cooling agent. In addition, the smooth, sandy beach made for much easier traveling than had the rough ground of the desert.
The latter fact was of particular importance to Halloran, who had grown increasingly worried about Erixitl and the child who now rounded her belly to a rich fullness. Across the desert, during the many weeks of the trek to the sea, she had walked steadily. But the rugged journey had taken its toll, and though she tried to conceal her moments of weakness, the caring eyes of her husband were not deceived.
She had protested only feebly when he insisted that she ride the horse, and now she spent most of each day in the saddle. Lotil had ridden through the roughest of the desert, but now, on the smooth sand of the beach, the blind man found the walking easier. He proved apparently tireless over the long days of march, as long as he had a hand on a horse or companion to show him the way.
Halloran knew that the long trek had been very hard on Erixitl, though she bore the strain with little complaining. She had never spoken of the terrible loss she must have felt after giving up her feathered token, though Hal knew she had carried the object since girlhood. Not only was it a cherished memento of her father, but it was also a token with magical powers that had saved their lives more than once.
He knew, in fact, that it had saved their lives one last time when she used it to secure passage through the Halls of the Dead.
Lotil still carried the pluma bundle with him, and when they stopped each evening, he carefully worked a few more feathers into the cotton mesh. The design there had not yet begun to take shape, yet Halloran saw bright colors and a magical sense of beauty in the small portion of the pluma fabric already completed.
Hal turned back to his companions, realizing that Daggrande was answering Jhatli’s question about the desert dwarves.
Luskag told me the story, at least as much as they know of it.” The grizzled legionnaire had found that, despite the vast differences in their backgrounds, the desert dwarves and he basically spoke the same dwarven tongue, with minor variations. He spent much time talking with the chieftains, exchanging stories and experiences with his unusual cousins.
“It happened after a war with the drow-one of the wars that dwarves have always fought with the drow. Something they call the Rockfire destroyed the caverns and tunnels that connected them to the rest of dwarvenhood. It must have been some underground volcano, or an earthquake, maybe.
“Anyhow, they thought that all (he drow had been killed, and they thought that being cut off from their kin was a small price to pay to get rid of their worst enemies. It seems that this is the first warfare they’ve known since that time.”
“They’re certainly good at it, for folks who are out of practice,” Halloran said. The memory, nearly two months old, of the desert dwarves’ timely arrival in the battle with the trolls lived fresh in his mind. They all knew that they had faced certain and imminent death.
Now they marched with the dwarves in friendship, enjoying the gruff curiosity and solid competence of the Hairy Men of the Desert. The friendship had grown quickly to respect as together they had borne the rigors of the desert trail. Days of blazing sun had followed one after the other,
broken only by short, clear nights of startling chill. Their only water had come from the plump, precious cactus that the desert dwarves seemed to be able to smell from miles’ away, or from the blessed magic of Coton’s clerical power. They had shared the food he created among all of them, and somehow they had stayed alive.
And when the pair of fire lizards had attacked the companions and the desert dwarves, their respect had become an unbreakable bond, for they proved in battle that each possessed courage and skill worthy of the other. Two dwarves had paid with their lives in the first brunt of the attack as the giant, dragonlike creatures had charged from their dry caves.
But the keen missiles from Daggrande and Jhatli had distracted one, while Luskag had led his dwarves in a circular attack against the second. Halloran, with Helmstooth carving a deadly swath through the desert air, had felled the first with a blow to its neck, while the plumastone weapon of the desert dwarves had disemboweled the second.
The fight had also provided the one night of epic feasting along the barren trail when they seared the tough meal on hot fires of brush and pretended they were devouring the tenderest of delicacies.
“And now the Hairy Men march with us to Twin Visages? Jhatli was still trying to get a picture of this vast land called Maztica. Though he had lived here all of his life, until four months earlier he had never been beyond the valley of Nexal.
“The story goes that they had some kind of collective vision-at a place they call the Sunstone,” Daggrande explained. “I’d like to see it sometime-a lake, high inside a mountain, that seems to be made of silver!” The dwarf shook his head in wonder. “There they saw an image of darkness, and a flower of light within it. As soon as they saw Erixitl, according to Luskag, they recognized her as that flower. So now they’ve pledged to help her drive back the darkness.”
They moved steadily northward, following the long file of the desert dwarves. Always the memory of Twin Visages lay
before them, with the hope that Erixitl’s guess was right. Qotal would await them there, they told themselves over and over again, and they would stand fast to open the god’s passage into the True World. What happened after that would be left in the hands of the gods.
The verdant foliage surrounded Gultec, masking his position from the advancing enemy. The Jaguar Knight drew back his longbow, sighting on the first of the approaching ants, and then he let the arrow fly.
The missile struck true, in the left eye of the monstrous insect. The creature reared back, antennae flailing wildly. Other ants rushed forward, scrambling over their wounded cohort. The creature struck by Gultec’s arrow spun in confusion, finally rushing into the brush off to the side of the army’s path.
Six of the giant ants rushed straight toward Gultec, only to draw a flurry of arrows. A dozen bowmen of Tulom-Itzi stood behind their leader, and several of their missiles struck the insects’ vulnerable eyes. Three more of the ants, wounded and disoriented, began to circle in agitation.
Quickly the humans melted back into the woods, following the winding trail that allowed them to make rapid progress. Gultec, who went last, retreated away just ahead of the leading ant, before turning to launch another missile. This arrow caromed off the creature’s tough-skinned head, however, and the Jaguar Knight sprinted for his life.
Ten minutes later, the men paused in a grassy glade to catch their breath. The ants would reach them soon, but experience had taught them that they had a few minutes to regroup. When vines and underbrush restricted the path, an ant could press forward as fast as a man or even faster, but with a trail to follow, a running man could swiftly outdistance one of the giant insects.