They set off at a trot, twenty-two grim warriors in search of an unknown enemy. All of them were cautious, but none were afraid.
“Hsst!” Jhatli paused with a whispered warning, raising his hand and shrinking into the underbrush beside the trail. Instantly the desert dwarves followed suit. “Someone comes,” the young hunter told Daggrande.
They stared at the trail before them, and soon the sound of steady footfalls-many of them-reached their ears. They heard, too, the hum of animated conversation.
They’re not trying to sneak through the woods, whoever they are,” Daggrande hissed. He checked his weapon and Raised the heavy crossbow to draw a bead on the trail before them. A second later, he lowered it in surprise and relief. “Hal!” he shouted, springing to his feet. The desert Dwarves and Jhatli quickly followed suit. Halloran, accompanied by Erixitl, looked up in surprise. The pair had been walking easily down the jungle trail, in apparent unconcern of danger. The crossbowman saw movement behind his friend, but he couldn’t see who was there.
“Daggrande. you old griffon’s tail! What are you doing out here?” The man raced forward to embrace his companion.
“Looking for you!” sputtered the dwarf. “What do you think I’m doing! And who are they?”
He gestured toward the file of small warriors, still painted in black and red, who followed Halloran and Erixitl down the trail. The man turned with a flourish, indicating the leading warrior.
“Captain Daggrande. meet Chief Tabub of the Little People.”
Erixitl repeated the introduction in Payit, while Daggrande looked back at Halloran with raised eyebrows.
“They are my warriors,” said Hal, with just a him of a smile, “and our newest marching partners on the road to Twin Visages.”
From the chronicles of Coton:
As our numbers grow and our march proceeds towards its rendezvous with the god.
We make a colorful file now as we advance along dark forest trails. A thousand desert dwarves, new to the jungle and intrigued and mystified by its sights, smells, and sounds lead the file. With them, speaking with their chiefs and marveling at their ways, walks die legionnaire dwarf Daggrande.
In the center, we have five humans-six, to count the one carried by Erixitl. With us walks the great war-horse, Storm. The creature is a wonder to all of us Mazticans, far most of us have never seen an animal so large, and none of us have known one so useful.
And now our column is trailed by more warriors, hundreds of tiny bowmen who have sworn allegiance to Halloran because he answers the call of their prophecy. They
call it a miracle, and though I know it was his magic that “turned night into day” and caused him to be “a giant, even among the Big People,” 1 am not inclined to dispute the miraculous explanation.
Now we pass through the rolling country to the west of high, forested mountains. Though more adventures doubtless lay in our path, I cannot help but feel that our march to Payit gains unstoppable momentum.
15
The summit of the narrow pass loomed as a tight bottleneck in the rugged ridgeline known to the Itza as the Verdant Crest, the range that formed the border of the Far Payit country. Here Gullet: stood with the men of Tulom-Itzi, prepared to make a final stand against the army of ants that had ravaged their city and their lands. Those who could not fight had already proceeded down the western slopes of the range, there to await the resolution of their future.
Climbing the east side of the range, following the tracks of the Itza warriors toward the high pass on the crest, came the steadily advancing swarm of giant ants. Devouring, destroying, and always marching inexorably forward, the monstrous insects swept upward like some malevolent tide. In places, Gultec and his warriors had crossed slopes and valleys of dry brush. These they torched now, in the face of the ants. But the living wave simply swept to the sides of such obstacles, and the few ants who perished in the flames) were left unmourned in the wake of the steady advance.
Through the narrowest valleys they pressed, and up the steepest slopes. The humans outdistanced them, taking temporary refuge in the sheer heights of the range’s central divide. Yet the monsters below and their masters, the driders, had only to look up and they would see their ultimate objective looming before them.
Darien welcomed the chance to battle the humans who had fled before her horde for so long. The fact that the warriors had chosen good ground to defend meant little to her and to her army. What problem were vertical cliffs and sheer heights to creatures that could scale the smoothest shelves of overhanging granite?
The rocky crest stood barren of trees and bushes. Composed mostly of crumbling granite covered with mosses and lichens, the snakelike summit of the ridge towered above the rest of the range. All around, lower ridges, covered with lush foliage, dropped away to the distant, jungled flatlands. The trail from the lower reaches crossed back and forth across the sheer face of this highest ridge until it finally crested the long, rolling peak.
For the last thousand feet of this ascent, the trail broke free of its verdant surroundings, winding in the sunlight and open air through this region of broken, rocky ground. Gultec looked back across the trail below. The slopes to the east dropped steeply away into a flat, dishlike valley. Water and silt had collected in the bottom of this valley, forming a wide, tangled swamp. Hours before, the last of the Itza warriors had pressed through that swamp and made their way up the tortuous trail to this crest,
Gultec knew that the fetid waters of that dank marsh swarmed with snakes and crocodiles, yet he didn’t delude himself into thinking these would provide any obstacle to the ant army. If anything, the tangled vegetation and finger-length thorns sprouting from many a bush would delay the beasts only momentarily. The respite would delay the inevitable attack by a mere few minutes.
Beyond the muck and mire of the marsh, the jungle commenced again, cloaking the lower slopes of the range in green velvet as far as the eye could see. Somewhere within that carpet, Gultec knew, advanced the insect army of his unnatural and terrifying foe.
For a moment, he paused in reflection. He wondered what had corrupted these beasts into their monstrous forms, what had brought them under the command of these other creatures, the man-bugs with their sleek black skin? And what was the secret of that white one, with her bizarre appearance and her shocking powers? Why did all these foul presences work to destroy Tulom-Itzi?
But in the next moment, he shook his head with an angry, self-conscious growl. Why, indeed, did he worry about such things? He was a warrior, and now he had an enemy in war.
It was a cold and implacable enemy, to be sure, all the more! frightening for its complete lack of humanity But never the less it was a problem of war and demanded a warlike solution.
His mind resting once again on firm, familiar ground, Gultec looked around at his warriors. They stood ready all along the crest, though still no sign of their enemy appeared below. They will be here soon enough, Gultec thought grimly.
“Are the others, the women and children, safely away?” Gultec turned to an Itza warrior, a man who had supervised! the further retreat of those who would not be able to fight in this battle.
“They are nearly dead from fatigue, but they are safely off the heights. They have made camp at the western foot of the range.”
Now only the warriors stood along the crest. Proud and alert, the line of men provided the last barrier between the mandibles of the pursuing horde and the people of Tulom-Itzi. Brown bodies lean and muscular after weeks of war-fare and marching, the men of Tulom-Itzi didn’t show their weariness. Their bodies remained taut, their black eyes dark and intent, staring into the murky forest below.