To Dolates’ right, four or five men suddenly tumbled out of line as two impatient crocodilians leapt over the shields. These two monsters were quickly surrounded and killed by the Greeks, but their sacrifice pulled the soldiers’ attention away from maintaining the blockade. To exploit this weak point, Set’s reptile-headed troops surged forward. Herikos quickly realized the effectiveness of their strategy with a curse. He’d lose too many of his men if all the enemy began leaping over the front shields. It was time to take this battle to the reinforcements hiding inside.
“Fall back!” he yelled, “To the pits, fast run!”
Herikos began a loud shout, and the retreating Greek joined their voices with his to alert their comrades inside that the fight was coming their way. Herikos found himself running neck and neck with Dolates near the very back of the pack, yelling at the top of his lungs and praying to Ares not to be seized from behind by a hungry Egyptian horror. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dolates duck to avoid a blade. Somehow Herikos found more speed than he thought his legs possessed. They both made it into the fort running like rabbits before hounds. There was no time to take stock of what surprises Ares had laying in wait, but in the dim interior of the fortress Herikos caught glimpses of heavily armored men, poised archers, and explosive fire traps. The Greeks, hurrying somewhat blindly as their eyes tried to adjust from bright daylight to dungeon night, lost a bit of speed as the corridor narrowed. Shields pushed against backs as the men continued their desperate flight. Behind them, the sound of arrows loosed from bows and the snarls from wounded crocodilians that followed eased some of their panic. They had done their job of leading the enemy into the trap and could now withdraw from the battle.
Herikos pushed ahead, threading his way through the moving line of men, slapping shoulders encouragingly and taking a quick head count. Those at the front of the line had reached the trapdoor to the pits. The opening led to a landing nearly a man’s height below their current level. The Greeks were moving slowly, taking care not to hurt themselves in the drop and passing shields and weapons down to one another. Herikos frowned, not liking the leisurely pace. He looked around, hoping to find a ladder, a ramp, or even a rope to speed things up, but there was nothing at hand. He’d just have to trust in the ability of the other units to keep the Egyptians busy. After watching a few more men make a slow descent, he couldn’t bear the wait. Stepping into line, he threw his weapons down ahead of him and jumped, rolling skillfully to a safe landing in a fraction of the time it was taking others to make the trip.
“That’s how it’s done,” he heard Dolates say encouragingly to those still above. Herikos grabbed his gear and moved on to where the first men to jump had fallen out of formation to rest in a group strung out along the tunnel. He rousted two of them from where they leaned against the wall. “Take those torches down. I know there’s a way to the armory. Find it.”
The soldiers wearily obeyed him and disappeared around a bend in the passage. Herikos made a quick check of the rest of his squad as Dolates and the last of the others dropped down to his level. Above them, they could hear the clash of the armies continuing. Splatters of blood rained down upon him as he returned to help Dolates haul on a chain connected to the underside of the trapdoor. The door fell shut.
“Lock it down,” Herikos said, spotting a padlock fixture on the floor. “We don’t want anything coming at our backs.” Dolates tugged the chain into place and clamped the hasp of the padlock shut. There was a collective sigh of relief now that there was a sturdy barrier between the Greeks and the enemy.
The sound of running footfalls came from the opposite end of the passage. “Sir, we’ve found the way,” reported one of the men he’d sent to scout.
“Good. Up everyone, up! There’s no glory in this rat hole, no wine and too much stink. Let’s be on our way,” Herikos encouraged. The weary soldiers pushed on, the promise of drink and cool, fresh air proving to be a great motivator.
“Did you see any monsters?” The scout looked back over his shoulder to answer Dolates behind him, who was curious about what lurked in the pits.
“Just the beast. We have to pass it to get to the armory. Lucky for us it’s in Ares’ strongest cell.” Suddenly the entire passage shook. A rain of loose soil and rock fell upon the men, and a deafening high-pitched screech with an underlying low trumpeting echoed through the darkness. The infernal noise repeated, this time followed by an earthquake which sent the men tumbling. A wall went down and a fissure broke across the floor ahead of them. A fount of water burst up from that crack, extinguishing most of the wall torches. When the shaking stopped, Dolates scrambled to his knees to peer across the cleft. Down the passage, he could see the beast, still imprisoned, pacing back and forth angrily behind the bars of its cell.
“Can anyone see what’s happening?” Herikos roared over inexplicable howl and the splashing water. As the Greeks helped each other up the answer to his question was revealed. The cleft broke wider as a netherbeast of Lamasthu succeeded in breaking into the pits from an underground feeder of the nearby river.
The first the Greeks saw of it was the several pairs of shelled legs which gained purchase on the edge of the crevasse to lever the rest of it through. Those flexible, determined appendages glowed a deceptively gentle pink color. What they were attached to was anything but tame. The body of the netherbeast was armored with a thick red shell which protected something that was mostly mouth and gnashing teeth. An under shell sandwiched it together, a skirt of frilled swimming fins flapping between the top and bottom sections to aid its movement in the rising water. It lumbered down the corridor on angled, spiny legs toward the beast and threw itself at the bars of its cell, biting and pulling, testing whether it could break in. Even if the men could have crossed the churning chasm, the corridor was effectively blocked. There was nowhere they could go but back the way they came.
The Greeks jogged back down the corridor, feet splashing through almost a foot of rising water. Dolates suddenly grabbed Herikos’s shoulder. “The lock! How are we going to get the lock open so we can open the trap door?” Most of the color drained from Herikos’s face as he realized what he had thought would keep them safe was instead going to ensure that they drowned.
“We’ll have to break it!” he cried.
Herikos and Dolates shoved their way past the men in front of them. Dolates shouted for someone to bring a torch as they rushed to the chain and felt their way down it to the padlock. Herikos began to hammer it with the butt of his sword. The other men suddenly realized what had gone wrong. A hum of panicked words rose along with the river.
“Does anyone have a stronger weapon?” Dolates called out. “A hammer, a wedge?” Even as the words left his lips, he knew they were for naught. Those were not the weapons of fighting Greeks. Herikos continued to pound relentlessly on the padlock. He looked up toward the trap door. Perhaps they could strike through the wood with their swords once the water floated them upward, but it would be almost impossible to apply much force with nothing to brace against. After all he’d been through in his service to Ares, he couldn’t believe he was going to die like this, failing in his first command, rather than dying honorably in battle.
He pushed away from the padlock, exhausted from his efforts. The water was up to his chin where he knelt. “Take over, I can’t pound anymore,” he said. Dolates fell to his own knees, but being a bit shorter than his commander, he found his face half under water. He tipped his head back for a deep breath and crouched below the sturdy lock. He held his breath as he hammered with all his might, feeling pressure in his ears and lightness in his head from the effort. He shot up, grabbed a breath, and continued. When he had to go up for another he had to stand on the tips of his toes to reach the surface. He gulped, fearing the next time he swam up, there would be no surface at all.
Soon more hands began clawing at the lock and chain as the men desperately tried to aid him. It was useless. The Greeks, kicking and punching in close quarters, did more da
mage to each other than to the padlock. Dolates felt a sharp pain as a shoe slammed into his shin. Herikos’s face came near, shoving some of the other men away, and Dolates gasped out the last of his air, eyes fixed on his friend, who turned his face when they locked eyes.
When Herikos turned away from Dolates to hide his fear of death, he saw behind him a beautiful woman floating peacefully toward the padlock. She was smiling at him. Herikos thought he must have already drowned. There was no other explanation for her presence. She must be a shade come to escort him to the underworld. When she reached out and touched him, he knew he must be dead, for suddenly he could breathe as easily as if he were outside. The woman took him by the hand and pulled him up with her as she touched all the men thrashing in the water. At her touch, each Greek stopped his panicked movements. Herikos supposed they had all become dead like him. He floated up among his friends. All of them looked mystified. The top of Dolates’s head was butting up against the trap door, confirming that the room had completely filled with water. Herikos then realized the woman had let go of him and he looked around for her. He saw red robes trailing back down to the depths.
The Greeks floated about for a few seconds, feeling rather silly and wondering what they were supposed to do. Then a dull, cracking sound reached their ears as the chain was yanked from below and its mooring to the trapdoor came loose. The chain sunk as the soldiers gave an experimental shove on the door. It yielded. The men swam up through a few more feet of water and emerged into the compound. The battle they had fled had moved on, no doubt due to the flooding which was now threatening more than just the pits. Coughing and spitting out water, they marveled at their luck.
“We’re not dead?” Dolates looked to Herikos for an explanation.
“Not yet,” he replied. “But don’t ask me how.”
Below them in the flooded passages, Mazu moved on. Her salvation of those men had been a matter of mere chance. She had been following the waterways in pursuit of Quetzalcoatl’s army and arrived just in time to sense the desperate cries of the drowning Greeks. She hadn’t been in the rescue business for years, but now that she had exercised those dormant powers she felt rewarded with new strength. Breaking the chain had been easy. As she came upon two monsters, she wondered if her strength would stand their test.
She moved effortlessly toward them through the flooded chambers of the pits. The pink luminescence of one giant creature lit her way with its muted glow. She had never seen such a thing in all her travels along the waters. It was not natural. Mazu discerned immediately that its presence here was no accident. Nor was the diversion of the tributaries of the Styx River that she had fortunately followed here. She floated right up to the rear of the thing’s shelled body which was blocking a corridor and holding most of the intruding waters back. Unable to determine if there were innocents on the other side of the crab creatures that would be imperiled by the water, Mazu decided that trying to move the monster was too much of a risk. The safest way around was to again merge with the waters. Her beautiful robes disappeared as she liquefied and streamed between vibrating fins and spiny legs. She emerged safely on the opposite side in quickly rising floodwaters. Mazu reassembled and floated toward a great cell. To her surprise, she recognized its occupant from the drawing she had seen Topiltzin create. It was the beast.
The red and pink intruder was chewing on the bars of the cell with nasty, beakish teeth, while the beast paddled awkwardly to stay afloat in its flooded prison, howling in distress. Mazu wasn’t sure what to do. Perhaps it would be best to let the beast drown. That would certainly end the fighting over it. But she knew it had some connection to Aavi and to let it perish ignorantly could bring the sweet girl harm. Mazu heard a wrenching creak as the shelled monster managed to pry a section of bars from the stone wall. She needed to decide quickly what to do.
“I see no reason not to help you both,” she said. “It seems a balanced and reasonable path.”
Moving over to the part of the wall now missing its bars, Mazu began to strike it repeatedly with her staff. With each blow, a little more of the stone came free, falling at her feet and disappearing into the waters. The shelled creature continued its intent attack, pulling more of the bars out until their combined efforts broke open a gap large enough for the beast to swim through. As the beast lunged for freedom, the red monster tried to pursue, but Mazu turned on it, striking its underbelly hard with the butt of her staff before water-merging to avoid retaliatory strikes of its great claws. She transformed from solid to liquid several times to attack the thing, keeping it busy while Aavi’s beast escaped. The blows of her staff against the great shell sounded through the pits like the beat of a giant war drum.
Despite her earlier surge of renewed power, Mazu now felt herself weakening. She had given the beast as much of a head start as she could. Turning to water one last time, she flowed away from the giant clawed creature in the direction the beast had gone. She emerged in a large chamber above the pits. Pieces of battle machines were knocked over near a broken wall. Mazu noted the trail of giant wet footprints that led to the hole. The beast had found its way out of the fortress. Mazu was uncertain if she had just made things worse, rather than better.
* * *
As the fighting dragged on, the soldiers of Olympia discovered that their defensive advantage might ultimately be no match for the number of enemies arrayed against them. Even with the help of their gods, the Greeks were steadily beaten back and isolated from other units to prevent regrouping. Zephyrus had done his best to help the soldiers beset by the Egyptians, but once the enemy reached the fortress walls his assistance was limited. Any use of his tempestuous powers would only blow the Greek defenders away from or over their ramparts. So during the night, he had turned away from the fortress and spent the dark hours damaging what still stood more distant from the fort. He had stormed rows of chariots, blowing the shoddier ones to bits. The resurrected mummies in charge of them could not be killed, but they could be broken. Those who remained intact enough set about righting their chariots, while those whose limbs had been ripped off by the wind wriggled about uselessly on the ground.
When dawn began to light the sky, Zephyrus spotted other targets. The Egyptian’s supply caravan was ripe for disruption. He clenched his fists, rubbing his rings together to prepare lightning charges. He swept in, dodging among the carts to tag Set’s undead servants, attacking them with disrupting shocks. He let the living men who ran get away. Zephyrus didn’t really like killing humans, and this seemed a fair compromise.
With the supply caravan in chaos, he considered whom to bother next. Spotting movement on the fringes of the woods, he moved in that direction. Out of the trees came jackals. Zephyrus was puzzled at first. They looked like normal jackals traveling in packs. Then his eyes picked out the armored Egyptians holding the ends of mighty leashes, one man to a group of twenty jackals. Zeph laughed aloud. The Egyptians looked like they were out walking their dogs. He wished Eros was here to see the strange sight and flew in for a closer look.
The jackal handlers arranged themselves in a wide line which faced the opposite end of the plain where half the remaining Greek infantry were gaining ground against the Mayans. Steadily they advanced toward that engagement as Zephyrus followed them overhead. The jackals were guided in an arc which put them at the rear of the Greeks. Zephyrus cursed, realizing that his people were now encircled and that he may have waited too long to attack. A blustery assault now would just make things harder for the Greeks. As he wondered what to do he heard a jackal handler cry out a command. All the leash-holders struck flints against the chains restraining their jackals. Sparks crackled along the links and down each lead, sizzling into the jackals’ fur and setting them ablaze.
The handlers dropped their leashes and retreated, while their animals took their true forms. These were deadly fire jackals, beasts whose bodies turned to living flame. The dusty grass began to burn under the press of their paws and a dense wall of smoke rose in their wake
as they charged toward the Greeks.
Zephyrus grinned. He had been wrong. This job was made for him. It was time for a downpour.
* * *
Eros was exhausted. The barrage of battlefield passions fell as thickly upon him as arrows from the fortress rained upon Set’s army. The emotions struck him in great waves. Triumph, bloodlust, fear, and hatred waged their own war for supremacy in his senses. To avoid being swept up in any one tide, Eros had retreated to a far exterior wall of the fortress where only corpses from an earlier skirmish lay.
He walked among the quiet dead, an equal scattering of Greeks and Mayans. Some of them lay in positions of perverse embrace. A Mayan’s arms still clutched a Greek’s shoulders, the Greek’s blade buried to its hilt in the feathered warrior’s gut. The fingers of a Mayan felled by arrows gripped the ankle of a Greek whose skull had been bashed by a club. Around them all, the flies were already arriving. Eros watched the insects flit toward the most promising gore, landing upon contorted faces like brief, soft kisses.
He lifted his gaze from the bodies and turned it to the sky. Eros watched Zephyrus dive toward a portion of the Egyptian army on the plain where fires were raging. Soon all was smoke and vapor as Zephyrus stirred a rainstorm and Eros could no longer see him. He looked forward to a time when he could hear Zeph tell his battle stories over never-emptying cups of wine in the Seven Hills. He supposed that was something worth fighting for.
The voices of priests on the wall above him drifted to his ears. Eros was reminded of the conversation he had overheard on the City balcony, but these carried far more dire news.
“It matters not who freed it,” Panos snarled, cutting off discussion among his group of warrior priests. “No one is going to sneak off to look for that traitor. The beast has to be recaptured! Do any of you dare shirk this duty at the cost of failing Ares?”
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