At the end of the column, Hesparsyn reined in his horse and turned to Serjeant Tavis. “Very good, Serjeant,” he said. “I always knew that someday those lances would come in handy.”
“Sir!” the Serjeant said, sounding offended. The lances were an ancient tradition, used these days only for dress parade. Which, as far as Serjeant Tavis was concerned, was sufficient reason for anything.
“Ready the men to move out, Serjeant,” the coronel said. “Watch for my signal.”
“Yes, sir!” Tavis saluted, and his horse reared and pawed the air briefly.
I’d swear he was teaching that horse to salute, Coronel Hesparsyn thought as the Serjeant trotted off down the line, if that hadn’t been the animal’s left hoof.
The sun was bright but the air was chill. The Azteque party was moving out; their drummers beat out the rhythm of the march on puma skin drums. The platform carrying the Eternal Fire was flanked by the palanquins carrying the higher-ranking priests, the whole surrounded by lesser priests and then warriors. It was a fierce and splendid display.
Leftenant MacPhearling trotted up to the coronel. The mounted magician’s special wide saddlebags gave his horse the appearance of wearing stubby little wings. “I’m all ready, Coronel,” he said.
Coronel Hesparsyn nodded. “You want the middle of the line?” he asked.
“That would probably be best,” the leftenant agreed.
“Then let’s get to it.” Hesparsyn took his place at the front of the line, his thin face expressionless. He raised his right arm and moved his hand in a small circle, the signal to move out. The bugler sounded the brassy strains of “England and St. George,” and move out the company did. Lances up, the double column trotted forward toward the trees.
The double column of Legionnaires passed the Azteque marchers and trotted up to a position about fifty yards from the forest. There they swung around and spread out until they were stretched in a single line between the trees and the approaching Azteque columns. Coronel Hesparsyn positioned himself in the middle of the line, and Leftenant MacPhearling joined him there.
“It may be a little late to ask, MacPhearling, but, is this going to work?” The coronel was looking at the wide brass bowl affixed to the front of the leftenant’s saddle.
“I think so, Coronel,” MacPhearling said. “The magic part of it will.”
The coronel glanced over at the end of the line, where Captain Flagg and his five picked men were waiting. If nothing went wrong, the plan would work like a charm. But there were two groups of warriors out there determined to see that things did go wrong. And, Coronel Hesparsyn reflected wryly, there were all sorts of charms.
The Azteque party reached a point about fifty yards from where the Legion was spread out and, as predicted, began to arrange themselves in battle formation. The palanquins were grounded, and Lord Chiklquetl and the other senior priest-magicians took their places at the front of the line, Lord Chiklquetl in the center. The platform bearing the Eternal Flame was placed behind the line on the right-hand side, closest to the river. They seemed unconcerned that a thin line of mounted Legionnaires stood between them and their forest foe.
With their placement and preparations complete, the Azteques froze in place, waiting. Theirs was not a mere lack of motion, it seemed to Coronel Hesparsyn, but a positive acceptance of immobility. They seemed able to wait all day—all year if necessary.
There was a slight flicker of movement in the woods, and then a runner carrying a white flag appeared. He loped steadily to where Coronel Hesparsyn waited, looking neither left nor right, and handed the coronel a scroll, rolled into a tube and tied with a bit of thong. With hardly a perceptible break in his stride, he turned and raced back to the forest.
“Well, at least they didn’t try another message arrow,” Coronel Hesparsyn said wryly to Leftenant MacPhearling. “God knows where it would have hit!” He unrolled the scroll and read it.
“Terse,” he said, handing it to the leftenant.
Coronel,
You are in the way.
Not a good place to be.
Sincerely,
Laughs-Last
“How long before they attack, do you think?” Leftenant MacPhearling asked. “I’d like to wait until the last possible moment.”
“Any time now,” Hesparsyn told him. “There would be no reason to delay. They will be attacking the center of the line with foot troops, and then their cavalry will sweep around the left end.”
“Prophecy, Coronel?”
“Tactics, Leftenant. That’s what I would do, to cut off the Azteque line of retreat.”
The leftenant stared musingly at the battle-assembly of Azteque troops. “I don’t think they have any intention of retreating,” he said.
“I agree,” Coronel Hesparsyn said. “If your scheme doesn’t work, we’re going to be very busy.”
“Well, sir, we’ll soon find out,” Leftenant MacPhearling told him. “I think it’s time to commence.”
“Good luck, Leftenant,” Hesparsyn said. “Although I am fully aware that luck has nothing to do with magic, still, it couldn’t hurt.” He nodded and rode off toward the front of the line.
MacPhearling opened the flaps on his overlarge, symbol-decorated saddlebags and removed a thin metal tripod with legs of different lengths. One leg of the tripod fit into a leather projection by his right stirrup, and the other two fastened to clamps at the front and rear of the saddle, forming a fairly stable projection canted off to the right of man and horse.
The leftenant slid the brass bowl into the gimbaled ring at the tip of the tripod and tightened three brass set screws to hold it securely in place. Now, as long as his horse didn’t decide to roll over, he could make magic.
Three small lumps of charcoal from his saddlebag went into the brazier, followed by an already-prepared packet of finely divided charcoal mixed with various pulverized metals and earths, plus a few carefully picked and powdered organic materials.
A bright blue light flashed from the brazier as MacPhearling fit a slotted lid into place over it. The light continued to shine brightly through the narrow openings for about a minute, before muting itself. A dull purplish glow now surrounded the brazier, seemingly independent of the fire inside, which still shone a quiet blue through the intricate pattern of slits in the lid.
The magician held his hands out over the glow and stared into it, reciting secret, unintelligible words in a low-pitched, firm voice. His eyes, and the eyes of his horse, seemed to glow green in the strange light.
The double drumbeat of the Azteque warriors sounded over the meadow, and the triple bugle-call of the natives responded. Both sides were ready to attack. And the thin line of troops of Company B of the Duke’s Own was all that stood between them.
Fine streams of blue smoke poured out of the slits in the brazier top and writhed about each other in a pattern no air current could have caused. And then, when they were about twelve feet off the ground, the streams separated and moved down the line of troopers. As the tip of each stream met with the rag-wrapped tip of a trooper’s lance, the rags burst into silent flame, and billows of yellow-tinged white smoke poured from each ignited lance.
A smell reminiscent of roasting turnips filled the air. The line between the opposing forces was filling with the dense yellow-white smoke, punctuated with mounted, lance-armed Legionnaires.
The triple ta-tra of the horn sounded again, and the native troops began moving forward all along their line. The Azteques, drums beating, also moved forward. The smoke thickened and spread.
Coronel Hesparsyn stared into the billowing smoke and tried to make out the movement of the native warriors in front of him. Not a rifle had been fired yet; not an arrow had cut through the air. Both sides were waiting until the last possible second to start hostilities. They wanted to be so close that the first volley would count. And the first volley would have to go through his men to reach the enemy. Not, Coronel Hesparsyn reflected wryly, a good place to be if his war
magician’s scheme failed to work.
And so far it had produced nothing but smoke.
Coronel Hesparsyn resisted the urge to ride over to the leftenant and peer over his shoulder. It was not wise to disturb a wizard at work, even if you were his superior officer.
The smoke had spread out now, until it formed a wall between the opposing forces, running the full length of the front; about three hundred yards. It was some twenty feet thick and twelve feet high. Inside the smoke, visibility was limited to your hand in front of your face.
But this in itself would not stop the battle; it would merely curtail the effectiveness of guns and bows. Hand-to-hand combat—when you had to be closer than three feet from your opponent to even see him—would be particularly deadly.
The first serjeant’s whistle sounded—two sharp blasts—and the mounted troops of Company B diverged by the numbers. Even-numbered men moved forward at a walk. Odd-numbered men swiveled their horses to face in the other direction—back toward the Azteque column—and headed out at a walk. The smoke screen widened.
The Azteque column moved forward at a trot, determined to get into the protective shielding of the smoke before the natives raced through it from the other side and attacked.
On the other side, the main body of the natives marched out of the wood and double-timed in to the ever-expanding wall of smoke.
Now the smoke covered all, and everything smelled of roast turnips.
Now the first shots were heard, but who fired them and at whom they were aimed, was impossible to tell. An arrow whizzed by Coronel Hesparsyn’s ear with a high-pitched droning sound.
The coronel slowly rode over to where he had left Leftenant MacPhearling, and found him in the process of adding to his brazier a small bundle of dried twigs from some black, oily plant. “Nothing’s happening,” the coronel told the magician, “beyond the smoke screen itself.”
“You will continue to think so,” the leftenant told him without looking up, “for a while after the spell has commenced work on the opposing forces. It is designed to affect most strongly those in a fighting frenzy and those with hate in their hearts. If we were involved in the battle, we couldn’t use this spell. Even so, there will be some effect on our troops. But at least they have been warned, and know what to expect.”
Somewhere off to the coronel’s right someone screamed; a high, unexpectedly shrill scream. It was not the scream of combat, but the scream of fear.
“I think it’s starting to work,” said the leftenant, nodding in satisfaction. “If it were not that these two groups hate each other, a journeyman, such as I, couldn’t have made the spell work. If we were involved on either side, the greatest master sorcerer in the Empire couldn’t have done it.”
Guns were being discharged freely now. Amid strange, unwarlike screams and cries of terror, the firing came rapidly and from all directions. Sound like Dumberly-FitzHughs to me, the coronel thought. His Grace of Arc is not going to be pleased. Something appeared in the corner of his vision, but darted away as he turned to look at it. Although he hadn’t clearly seen it, he knew it had been something horrible. It’s begun, he thought.
* * * *
Copliquetle the Invincible, Warrior Chief of the Puma Sept of the Azteque Horde, crouched on the ground, his feet buckled under him, his shield raised protectively over his head. With his right hand he stabbed his spear repeatedly at the mist above him, muttering the words of the charm his mother had taught him to ward off evil. All around him, grinning and chattering, and weaving from side to side in the dense fog, he saw the skulls of dead warriors. They stared at him, they laughed at him, they whispered to him; they challenged him to play tlachtli. They told him they would make him the ball.
“I am not afraid!” he yelled at them. “A Puma warrior knows no fear! Come, put your bodies on and fight me! I can’t fight naked skulls.”
One of the skulls weaved in toward him until it was facing him, eye-socket to eye. “Life is fear,” it whispered. “When you are dead, you will not say you are not afraid. It will be evident. Hit me with that spear, oh warrior, thrust it in this empty eye-socket, for I am you. Am you. Am you....”
Copliquetle screamed.
Something moved in the white fog. Wise Fox, War Chief of the Catahaw Tribe, caught the motion out of the corner of his eye. He lowered his bow, useless anyway in the fog, and unslung his battle-ax. There it was again. He turned to meet the threat.
At first he saw nothing, although he could sense that it was there. And then—
It was tall—taller than a tree. A formless mass of black that blotted out the mist. No, not merely black; it was empty. A large, grotesque writhing mass of something that wasn’t there.
Wise Fox, his battle-ax raised to forehead level, tried to yell the Catahaw battle cry, but the inside of his mouth was dry as dust, and the words stuck in his throat. The formless black thing approached. Inside it he could now see various lights, colors, shapes, beings—that flitted back and forth restlessly and glared at him as they passed.
The blackness enveloped him, and he found himself standing on a featureless plain that receded at unnatural and ever-changing angles, in all directions. A naked woman with large breasts and the head of a snake hissed at him, and then fell away; falling to the right as though that direction had become down. A large elk bounded at him, and then another, and a third, kicking down at him with their hind feet as they passed over his head. They were slit open, breast to belly, and their intestines were trailing on the ground, and still they leaped.
The ground opened beneath him, and a hand reached out and groped about, feeling for his feet. With a scream of terror, he jumped aside.
* * * *
The white smoke was rapidly clearing away. Coronel Hesparsyn signaled to Captain Flagg, who wheeled his small body of hand-picked men around, and raced back through the lines to the Azteque encampment.
The Azteque warriors were still in place, but they were unaware of the approaching Angevin detachment. They were, each of them, fighting a private battle. Some stood firm, mouthing inarticulate war cries, and thrusting at invisible opponents with their spears. Others were writhing on the ground, in the grip of some private hell. The priest-magicians seemed to have the worst of it: Some of them were frozen in place, staring at an unimaginable horror; some, pursued by invisible demons, ran unceasingly in small circles, screaming simple words, until they dropped from exhaustion.
Captain Flagg’s men reached the back of the Azteque line, where the platform holding the Eternal Flame was grounded. The twelve slaves of the flame were sitting on the ground by the edge of the platform, looking bewildered, as their Azteque masters fought unseen enemies.
The Legionnaires prodded the slaves to their feet and indicated that they were to hoist the platform. Captain Flagg contributed his few words of pidgin Nahuatl to the prodding process. “Come, we move,” he said. “Quick—quick!”
Stolidly the slaves picked up the platform and trotted through the chaotic battleground, oblivious to the strange and frightening scene surrounding them. Theirs was not to remark or wonder or consider the world around them. Theirs was but to lift and carry and eat gruel and sleep when they could. And thank whatever god it was that watched over slaves—if there were such—that their masters practiced almost no human sacrifice anymore.
Coronel Hesparsyn signaled for his company to form up while Leftenant MacPhearling put away his magical apparatus. Around him was surely the strangest battlefield scene he had ever seen in twenty-seven years with the Legion. Hundreds of men, scattered about a narrow plain, fighting furiously or collapsed from exhaustion—or crouched in pitiable postures of defeat; and nowhere any enemy to be seen. Each of the men locked in his own private hell, fighting his own private fears, unaware of ally or foe.
“You’ve done well,” the coronel told his magic officer. “At the very least, you have saved many lives. How long will the effects of this spell last?”
Leftenant MacPhearling closed and secured
his saddlebag. “Hard to say, sir,” he said. “The spell interacts with the—let’s call it the psyche—of the individual experiencing it. Most of our men, because they were not involved, got but a small taste of it, and that has washed out by now. For these others—” he indicated with a wave of his hand the battlefield scene before him “—several hours, or possibly longer.”
“Then Lord Chiklquetl should be caught up to us, and his precious Eternal Flame, by the end of the day,” the coronel said. “With his flame platform up here with us, he won’t stand around to fight the locals.”
“If he figures out what happened, which he will,” Leftenant MacPhearling said, “he just may decide to fight us instead.”
“Now wouldn’t that be a pretty mess of beans,” Coronel Hesparsyn said, waving his arm for Company B to move out. “But he won’t, Leftenant. Not after that display of magic you’ve just shown him.”
“But we can’t use it against him if he attacks us,” Leftenant MacPhearling protested. “It won’t work if we’re involved in the battle.”
“That may be so, Leftenant,” the coronel said, “but he doesn’t know that.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
A row of green-coated guardsmen stood at attention as the cutter came alongside the pier. One of them grabbed the line tossed out to him and tied the boat off. The Chief Master-at-Arms in charge of the guard unit came out onto the dock. A man with a craggy, good-humored face bearing a carefully trimmed beard, he stepped alongside the craft to get a good look at its occupants. “Is one of you gentlemen Lord Darcy?” he called.
“I am.” Lord Darcy jumped nimbly from the bobbing cutter to the pier and paused to look up at the giant pyramid that dominated the island. Then he turned back to the guardsman. “What can I do for you, Chief?”
“Not a thing, Your Lordship,” the guardsman said, touching his hand to the rim of his uniform cap. “Chief Master at Arms Karlus of the Duke’s Guard at your service. We were told to expect you, and not to allow anybody except Your Lordship’s self and companions on the island.”
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