Niente
THE FORCES OF TECUHTLI ZOLIN and the Tehuantin army
were arrayed a careful bow’s shot away from the thick defensive
walls of Munereo.
Three days of battle
had sent the Garde Civile retreating inside the walls. Tecuhtli
Zolin had been both aggressive and unmerciful in his attack.
Commandant ca’Sibelli had sent a parley group to the Tehuantin
encampment after the first day of battle, when Zolin had routed the
Garde Civile from rich, high fields south of the city. Niente had
been there when the parley group had arrived flying their white
flag; he had watched Zolin order his personal guards to kill them
and send their severed heads back to Commandant ca’Sibelli as
answer.
They had attacked the
main force of the Garde Civile at dawn the next morning; by that
evening, they were within sight of the Munereo walls and the
harbor, with the Holdings fleet at anchor there.
Now it was dawn
again, and Tecuhtli Zolin had called Niente to him. Zolin reclined
on a nest of colorful pillows; the High Warriors Citlali and Mazatl
were with him also. Behind him, an artisan crouched over Zolin’s
freshly-shaved head; next to the artisan was a small table crowded
with dragon-claw needles and pots of dye. Zolin’s scalp had been
painted with the spread-winged eagle that was the insignia of the
Tecuhtli; now the artisan prepared to mark the skin permanently. He
took a needle, dipped it into red dye, and pressed it into Zolin’s
scalp: the warrior grimaced slightly. “The nahuallis’ preparations
are finished?” Zolin asked Niente as the artisan quickly dipped the
needle again and pressed it into Zolin’s head, over and over. Blood
beaded and trickled down; the artisan wiped it away with a
cloth.
“Yes, Tecuhtli,”
Niente told him. “Our spell-staffs have been renewed—for those
healthy enough to do so.” He lifted his own staff, displaying the
carved eagles that circled below the polished, thick knob. “We lost
two hands of nahualli in the battle; another hand and one are too
wounded to be of use today. All the rest are ready.” Niente nodded
to the two High Warriors. “I’ve placed them as Citlali and Mazatl
have asked.”
“And the black
sand?”
“It’s been prepared,”
Niente told him. “I supervised that myself.”
“The scrying bowl?
What did it say to you?”
Niente had spent much
of the night peering into the waters, which had given him only
murky and clouded visions, as well as exhaustion and a face and
hands that seemed to have acquired a webbing of fine wrinkles
overnight. Niente had found himself confused by the quick glimpses
of possible futures. But he knew what Zolin wanted to hear, and he
plucked one of those fleeting visions from his mind. “I saw you
inside the city, Tecuhtli, and the Holdings Commander at your
feet.”
Zolin grinned
broadly. “Then it’s time,” Zolin said. He rose, nearly knocking
over the artisan, who scurried backward as Zolin plucked up his
sword. He patted his bleeding head, smiling. “This can be finished
later. The battle can’t wait.”
They went outside the
tent, guards straightening to attention as they emerged. From the
small hill on which the Tecuhtli’s tent stood, they could see the
army spread out below them, the haze of cook fires drifting in the
still morning. The walls of Munereo rose high farther down the
slope, and sun dazzled on the water of the bay beyond and to their
right. Zolin gestured, and a trio of battle-horns sounded, the call
taken up by other horns throughout the encampment, and Niente could
see the entire encampment stir, like a mound of red ants stirred
with a stick. The battle lines began to coalesce; the High Warriors
on their horses exhorting the troops. On the walls of Munereo, the
rising sun reflected from metal helms and the tips of arrows as the
Holdings troops waited for the attack.
Their own horses were
brought to them, and they mounted. Citlali and Mazatl saluted Zolin
and kicked their stallions into a gallop as they rode away. “You’re
with me, Nahual,” Zolin said. “Now!” He, too, kicked his steed, and
Niente followed the Tecuhtli’s headlong gallop down the hill to
where the troops waited on the slope, nearly level with the top of
Munereo’s walls, the troops moving quickly aside to let them pass,
their shouts of support and adoration following.
Before his deep
enchantment of the Easterner, Niente could have ridden all day with
anyone. Now, the pounding of the horse’s hooves on the ground
struck Niente’s body like hammer blows. It was all he could do to
cling to the back of the animal with trembling knees. Zolin rode to
the center of the front-line Tehuantin forces, where the eagle flag
had been planted in the middle of the winding road leading down to
the western gate of Munereo. There, the hand of siege dragons
waited. Zolin, from his horse, patted the massive carved and
painted head of one of the dragons. “The gods have promised us
victory today!” he called out to those around him. He pointed
downhill to the waiting city. Their warrior-marked faces were
turned up to him, and they cheered. Niente had to admit that Zolin
had charisma that Tecuhtli Necalli had lacked: the eagerness on the
face of the warriors said that they would follow him even into the
depths of one of the smoking mountains. “Tonight, we will feast
where the Easterners dined, and we will take their wealth and the
survivors back to our own cities, and this land will be returned to
our cousins who once held it!”
They cheered again,
louder than before. Zolin roared with laughter and patted the siege
dragon again. “It’s time!” he shouted. “This day, you will find
victory or you will find peace with the gods!”
He gestured, and the
battle-horns blared the call-to-advance. The lines shivered and
began to surge forward, and Tecuhtli Zolin—unlike Necalli, Niente
again had to admit—rode at the very front, his head bare so that
anyone could see the eagle on his skull. The advance started
slowly, the soldiers moving forward at a walking pace. As they
continued down the slope, the walls of Munereo seemed to climb,
growing ever taller as they approached until they were in their
long shadow. The siege dragons, mounted on their carts, squeaked
and groaned as they started down the roadway, protesting as the men
pushed them down the slope toward the walls and the great, barred
gates. Zolin paused, and Niente with him: there was movement on the
walls, and suddenly a storm of arrows dimmed the sun, arcing high
in the air followed momentarily by the thwack of a thousand bowstrings. “Shields!” Zolin
yelled, and the warriors around them lifted their wooden shields,
placing them together into a temporary roof, several of them
lifting theirs high so as to shield both Zolin and Niente on their
horses. The arrows rained furiously down, feathering the painted,
leather-strapped planks, some of them slipping between to catch an
unlucky warrior, but most thudding harmlessly into wood. “Down!”
Zolin called, and the shield wall fell, the soldiers hacking at the
shafts with their swords. Broken arrows littered the
ground.
Now the advance
quickened. Niente held his spell-staff high—he knew what must come
next. “Nahualli!” he called. “Be ready!” He could already hear the
distant chanting, and he felt the shifting energy of the X’in Ka as
the Holdings war-téni released their own enchantments. Fireballs
sputtered over the walls of Munereo, shrieking toward them in lines
marked by smoke. Niente shook his spell-staff at the nearest
fireball and spoke the release word: the fireball erupted while
still above and before them, the fire hissing as it died with
glowing sparks falling around them. Another fireball crashed
untouched into the Tehuantin forces to Niente’s right, and even at
a distance the heat and concussion of the explosion were
frightening. Where the fireballs landed, hardened warriors screamed
as they died. The fireballs cut gouges in the advancing line but
they filled quickly with warriors from the rear ranks. Zolin urged
the line forward at a trot, the siege dragons seeming to scream as
their wooden wheels lurched and bounced over the broken
ground.
“Push!” Niente roared
at those around the siege dragons. “Move!” Now the battle fire had
finally caught him up, and Niente no longer felt prematurely old.
His blood boiled and the wind sang in his ears. The hand of siege
dragons were picking up speed, starting to move downhill on their
own. The warriors around them no longer needed to push them; they
had their own energy now, already beyond the front lines of the
army. Arrows fell again and again and the shield roof snapped up
each time in response, but Niente barely noticed. He watched the
siege dragons, flying across the packed ground of the road now,
painted jaws wide as they rushed toward the gates. Fireballs arced
out, and again Niente and the other nahualli sent their spells to
counter them. He could hear Zolin shouting, screaming orders at the
men.
The siege dragons
flew, their handlers far behind them and shouting as the carts
trundled forward on their own. Three struck the base of the city
walls on either side of the gates, two the gates
themselves.
The dragon heads had
been packed with black sand—more of it than Niente and the other
nahualli had ever prepared before. Spell-sticks had been placed on
the snouted heads to respond with fire to the impact. Niente saw
the burst of flame from the sticks, then . . .
There was a roar as
if one of the mountains of fire of Niente’s home had erupted,
deafening, and with it a flash of pure light that brought Niente’s
hand up to his eyes belatedly. Stones the size of horses were
flying through the air, some of them crushing the nearest
Tehuantin, but there were louder screams from within Munereo. Smoke
swirled around the scene, making it impossible to see, but as it
slowly cleared, a wordless shout arose from the Tehuantin
forces.
The gates had been
breached. Where they had been, there was only a gaping hole, and
the thick supporting walls around them had collapsed. Even as they
watched, a portion of the parapets collapsed on the right, spilling
defenders fifty feet to the ground. “Forward!” Zolin was shouting.
“Forward!”—and the Tehuantin army surged forward as one toward the
city, heedless of the arrows or the fire of the war-téni. Niente
found himself charging with them, his own throat raw with screams
of exultation, his staff ready.
The Tehuantin poured
through the broken walls of Munereo.
In the streets of the
city, the battle had been pitched, vicious, and chaotic. As soon as
the Tehuantin army entered the city, the native population had
risen in concert, arming themselves with anything at hand to kill
and loot with glee the people who had forced them into servitude.
The Easterner defenders of Munereo found themselves assailed from
both the front and behind.
Realizing that the
day had been lost, the remnants of the Holdings force had tried to
retreat to their ships in the bay, but Zolin had brought Tehuantin
warships to the mouth of the bay, each with a nahualli aboard, and
they sent spell-fire to burn the sails and masts of the Holdings
ships; none escaped the inner harbor of Munereo Bay.
It was said afterward
that one could walk from the wrecks of the Holdings ships to the
shore on the bodies of the dead, and that the entire bay turned red
for a week afterward from the blood washed into it from the ruins
of Munereo.
The Tehuantin had
found Commandant ca’Sibelli cowering aboard the flagship of the
fleet and brought him back to the smoking ruins of the city.
Tecuhtli Zolin had the man dragged into the main temple of Munereo
and lashed to the altar there, and Niente himself prepared an eagle
claw for the man, filling the curved bone tube with black sand. He
spoke the enchantment as he worked: all it would need was a turn of
the ivory horn and a press of the trigger in the wooden handle to
strike the flint and set off the black powder. He took the eagle
claw with him when he accompanied Tecuhtli Zolin to the temple. The
temple was crowded with both High Warriors and nahualli; Niente saw
both Citlali and Mazatl there, seated at the front. All of them
were spattered with blood, most of which was not their own. Zolin
stood over ca’Sibelli, naked to the waist and strapped on the
altar. The gray-haired man looked terrified at the sight of the
Tecuhtli; he moaned. “I’ve surrendered the city to you,” the man
said in the Easterner language. “The Regent and the Council of Ca’
will pay my ransom, whatever you ask—”
“Be silent,” Niente
told him in the same language. “Now is the time to pray to your
god, if you must.”
“What does he say?”
Zolin asked Niente, and Niente told him. Zolin roared with
laughter. “Is this how the Easterners play at war?” he asked. “They
buy and sell their captives? Are their gods that weak? No wonder
they ran before us.” Zolin gestured at the man with contempt.
“They’re barely worth the sacrifice. Sakal and Axat must get little
nourishment from them.”
“What is he saying?”
ca’Sibelli said, lifting his head up and straining against the
ropes that held him. “Tell him I know where the treasury is.
There’s gold, lots of it.”
Niente took the eagle
claw from its pouch. Ca’Sibelli went silent, looking at it. He
licked cracked, bloodied lips. “What . . . what is
that?”
“It is your death,”
Niente told him. “Sakal and Axat demand your presence as the
leader.”
“No!” the man
shouted. Saliva frothed around his mouth. “You can’t do this. I’m
your prisoner, your hostage. Ask for ransom—”
Niente leaned close
to the writhing man. He could feel the man’s terror, and he made
his voice as gentle as he could. “This will end the killing here in
your city. Your death pays for the death of all your soldiers that
we have captured, and they will be spared. If you are brave,
Commandant, if you show Axat and Sakal that you’re worthy, they
will take you to Themselves and you will live forever in Them.
Forever. It is a gift we give you here. A gift.”
The man gaped,
disbelieving, but the chant of sacrifice had begun, low and
sonorous, echoing in the chamber. The warriors and nahualli swayed
with the prayer. Ca’Sibelli turned his head to stare frantically at
them. Tecuhtli Zolin nodded to Niente, and he pulled the eagle’s
claw from his belt. Ca’Sibelli’s eyes widened as Niente turned the
ivory horn until it clicked into place.
Niente stood
alongside the commandant. “You should be praying,” he told the man.
Ca’Sibelli’s head was shaking violently back and forth, as if he
could deny the moment. Niente pressed the end of the curved tube
against the man’s stomach as ca’Sibelli thrashed frantically in his
bonds. Niente sighed—this would not be a good death. “Axat, Sakal,
we give this enemy to you,” Niente said in his own language. “Take
this offering as a sign of your victory.”
He pressed the
trigger. There was a click, a spark, and then an explosion of flesh
and blood.