The little man stepped up to him, demanding something in an imperious tone. He made a gesture toward the sword at Hal’s side. Slowly, grimly, Halloran ungirded the weapon and held out the blade and its belt and scabbard toward the warrior.
Jabbering something else in a rapid-fire, chattering tongue, the little man commanded one of his fellow warriors to step forward and carry the weapon. The bowman kept his weapon trained on Halloran. When the sword had been moved out of reach, he stepped forward, holding the bow and arrow in one hand. With the other, he reached up and tapped the steel breastplate. His dark eyes squinted at the hard metal-Then he spun on his feet and stalked away, turning to stare impatiently at his captives.
“I think he wants us to go that way,” Hal said in common.
“Then we’d better do it,” Erix replied in the same language.
The first of the small warriors, who seemed to be the leader, preceded them around the shore of the pool, white the others fell into file behind them. He pushed beneath some overhanging vines, forcing Hal and Erix to crouch low to follow.
A narrow trail, surrounded by dense verdure, lay beyond the screening vines. To their left, the moss-covered rock wall of the grotto climbed away. The warrior broke into a trot, and the natives to the rear moved up, raising their bows menacingly.
They picked up the pace, Halloran keeping a protective hand on Erixitl’s elbow. In her condition she couldn’t run, and the warrior in front of them turned and gestured impatiently.
“Wait’” snapped Hal in Nexalan.
For a second, he regretted his harsh tone and thought he would pay for it with his life as the chieftain raised his bow.
“I… can’t go… any faster,” Erixitl told him breathlessly, speaking the Payit tongue. The warrior scowled as though he understood and disapproved. But when he turned to resume the march, he went a little more slowly. A short time later, he removed the arrow from his bow and slung the weapon across his back. The warriors behind them, Hal noticed with a quick look, still kept their weapons ready to shoot.
They followed a deep cut in the rock wall of the grotto, and soon granite cliffs towered on each side of them. In places, the rocks were wet and slippery, and it seemed to them that the sun must never reach to the bottom of this crack in the bedrock. The warrior never hesitated, leading them forward as the niche grew more and more narrow.
Finally they reached a steep progression of stairs- whether natural or hewn from the rock, Hal could not tell- and proceeded to climb. The cool, mossy rock pressed close to either side, and only a thin strip of blue sky, visible straight above them, gave proof they had not entered a cavern.
After a very long climb, at least two hundred steps, they emerged at the top of the cliff. Here the path led through a deep forest glen, winding along damp dirt. Halloran saw Erix begin to stagger, tired from the long climb.
“Stop!” he ordered in his firmest martial tone.
The chieftain whirled around in surprise. Hal blinked, stunned at the quickness with which he had snatched his bow from his shoulder and renocked an arrow. “Can’t you see she’s tired? She needs to rest!” The two stared at each other for long moments.
Erix leaned against a tree, breathing hard. Gently Halloran took her arm and lowered her to sit upon the mossy ground. The warrior jabbered something, raising his weapon, but Hal continued to meet his gaze.
He studied the little man, curiosity not banishing his fear but beginning to rival it. For the first time, he noticed the man’s feet. Like the rest of his body, they were barren of clothing. The tops were covered with tufts of coarse black hair.
In all other respects, proportionally and facially, he looked like a human. His features, behind the garish paint, bespoke a person of pride and confidence. The look in his face, even when confronting a man twice his size, displayed courage. He had a strong chin, a smooth, straight nose, and dark, intelligent eyes. Whether his skin color was the darkened copper of Maztican humans or simply bronzed by a lifetime in the sun, Halloran could not tell.
In any event, the man apparently decided to let Erixitl rest, for he lowered his weapon and squatted on the ground. For a few minutes, he and his fellow warriors waited, immobile.
“I’m all right now,” Erixitl said to her husband, awkwardly rising to her feet.
“Do you think they speak Payit?” Halloran asked her as they started to move again.
“Can you understand my words?” she asked in the tongue of the Payit. Halloran did not know that language, but he watched the little man with interest.
“Speak not with Big People,” the little warrior answered awkwardly. “They kill us, many always times.”
“Why have you taken us prisoner?” she inquired. “We offer you no harm.”
“All Big People bad,” he grunted, turning away to lead them along the trail.
“Where do you take us?” she prodded.
“To village-to feast,” he explained. With these ominous words, he ceased to answer her questions, and they could only follow his tense, naked form through the seemingly interminable forest.
“They press too closely,” gasped the Itza warrior. “The children, the old people can no longer keep ahead of them.” The man leaned weakly against a tree, bleeding from multiple wounds. His eyes focused only vaguely on Gultec, and the Jaguar Knight could see that they were dull with shock.
Gultec growled in frustration. Around him tumbled the
steep hills at the foot of the Verdant Mountains. The fleeing Itza formed a long file in the valley bottom, pressing forward toward a pass high up along the crest of the range But the ants had accelerated the pace of their pursuit, and the Jaguar Knight began to wonder if he had led these people into a colossal trap.
“The only one left… me. The others… all killed, burned’”
Gultec noticed as the man talked that the hair on one side of his head had been burned away. His arm on the same side had blackened, as if he had held the limb in the coals of a hot fire.
“My company… good men, all of them. Why me? Why?” The warrior looked at Gultec helplessly.
“Be calm,” ordered Gultec, and the man’s breathing! slowed. “Now. what happened?”
“They did not come after us as they used to,” he explained, breathing more easily “Instead, they continued past, ignoring our arrows. So we pressed closer, knowing the importance of our task.”
“Then did they turn?” asked Gultec.
“No. They continued on. We finally tried to advance, to get in front of the column again. Then we saw this thing-like those man-bugs, only this one was white all over, pale like a slug. It had the face of a woman.” The warrior’s voice! choked with horror as he remembered the scene.
“She raised her hand and called out a word. We saw a tiny bubble of flame, no bigger than a pebble, float toward from her finger. And then the world became hell, with fire exploding everywhere, scorching the trees, killing the men. By the grace of the gods, the fire only singed me, but I alone escaped. All of the others were consumed, left as blackened corpses when the flames receded.”
“The white one did this, you say’” Gultec had heard the tales of the pale bug-thing that lurked among the ants. He remembered another white creature, the albino wizard of the Golden Legion, who had incinerated a hundred brave Eagle Knights with similar magic. That attack, plus the sudden arrival of the horsemen, had doomed the defense of Ulatos and secured the legions conquest of the Payit.
Once again the Jaguar Knight growled. He looked at the column of Itza marching past, the old men and women helping the children, all of them casting anxious looks to the rear. It would be many hours before they could even reach the next valley in the range, and many more such valleys in their path before they reached the pass.
“We face the risk of disaster if we do nothing,” he finally concluded. “Gather all the warriors together. We will meet at the tail of the column.” His voice was a deep growl, grim with reluctance and foreboding. Gultec’s plan, born of desperation bordering on despair, seemed reckless and mad even as he prepared to enact it. He knew that the Itza had no training, no tradition of melee warfare.