“I’ve not eaten in a day,” she said, buying some time to consider her story, and also because she was indeed quite hungry. “Have you any food?”
“We do, but not much,” Bahdlahn said.
“I will go out this night and hunt,” she said.
Bahdlahn looked at her curiously.
“Trust me when I tell you that I’ll be more successful than you at it—more than you and Aghmor together if he was able.”
“For some reason, I do’no doubt you,” Bahdlahn admitted with a laugh. He found some food and gave it to Aoleyn, and while she cooked it and ate it, he told her his own tale, of how he and Aghmor had watched her be sacrificed, and of how Aghmor then had saved him, shuttling him away to this place.
“An owl has been bringing us food,” Bahdlahn explained. “Sometimes a fox, though we’ve not seen any offerings for a few days.”
Aoleyn, a bit of rabbit between her teeth, smiled at him.
“’Twas you,” Bahdlahn said, and she shrugged.
“The winter’s letting go now and food will be easier to find,” Aoleyn said.
“And we’ll be easier to find, by the Usgar,” Bahdlahn warned.
“What were you to do, then?”
Bahdlahn looked at Aghmor. “All on his leg,” he explained. “If he was able, we were to go down the mountain together.”
“To the lake tribes?” Aoleyn had to swallow hard to avoid choking on her latest bite.
“Tay Aillig meant to kill me. I wanted to go to my moth…” He had to pause and steady himself. “I would leave, down to the town in the shadow of the mountain. Aghmor meant to come if he could, but if not, then he meant to go back to the Usgar and tell them that it was Bahdlahn who had kept him alive.”
He shrugged again. “They thought me dead, or long gone.”
“You might have made it,” said Aoleyn.
“Now we will make it,” Bahdlahn insisted.
Aoleyn looked at him long and hard, but then shook her head. “No, we won’t have to,” she explained. “I’m not done here. Not with Tay Aillig and not with Mairen. I’m knowing so much more now. More about their god than they know!”
“They will kill you.”
“I won’t let them. And I will show them.”
“We can get away. With you…”
“We can still get away, but we’ll not until I’ve tried,” Aoleyn insisted. “It has to be more, don’t you see?” She leaned forward and put her hand on Bahdlahn’s forearm.
He shook his head at her question.
“We can change it. We can change it all.”
“Change what?”
“All of it. No more slaves, no more raids, no more warring. The Usgar have to learn—I will make them learn!—that the folk about the lake are not our enemies, and not our cattle, to be enslaved and tortured and raped. No, this will end. I will end it.”
“You’re one person,” Bahdlahn protested. “We’re two, or…” He motioned to Aghmor.
“I will take great care,” Aoleyn promised. “And if I see no way, then we will be gone from this place, off the mountain. I promise.” She leaned forward, locking Bahdlahn’s gaze with her black eyes.
“Will you trust me?”
18
PROCESSION OF GLORIOUS GOLD
“It is arrogance,” Pixquicauh’s fleshless face said to no one in particular. The other xoconai augurs marching alongside the High Priest knew better than to respond. Pixquicauh had often done this in the weeks since being openly challenged back at his temple, voicing his complaints against Tuolonatl in their presence, but not for their benefit, or even asking them for a response, confirming or not.
“She will not keep it up,” he said to himself. “She is showing off, currying favor. When the battles begin, she will not stay with the vanguard. This is a conquest led by the augurs, who hear the voice of Scathmizzane, not by the sovereigns, who cower beneath the protests of common xoconai. The mundunugu and the macana are our tools, our weapons, nothing more.”
The augurs marched through a valley. They were at the very center of the main xoconai column. Ahead, along the banks of a river swollen with meltwater, they could see a thousand macana marching; behind them, another thousand. A dozen other xoconai columns traversed this rough terrain, split among the many valleys as they climbed the foothills of the Tyuskixmal, to the peaks of the towering mountain range they called Teotl Tenamitl.
But it was what they could not yet see that remained Pixquicauh’s focus. Far ahead, leading all the columns, were the cavalry vanguard, and at their head rode the mundunugu and the legendary Tuolonatl, who had become, in his mind, his greatest rival for Scathmizzane’s love.
Pixquicauh wanted no competition for the love of Glorious Gold. Scathmizzane had scarred him, had infused his face with the skull of his predecessor. To make him ugly, Pixquicauh had come to believe, so that no others would covet him, so that he would be Scathmizzane’s alone. What xoconai woman, or even man, would not wish to serve every need of Pixquicauh, the augur who had foreseen the rise of Kithkukulikahn to eat the sun, who had predicted the return of the God-King—the true God-King—at the risk of his own life? For had he been wrong, he would have surely been sacrificed.
“She is not as courageous as she wants us to believe,” he said with a sneer.
He turned around, continuing to walk backward, but fixing his gaze on the augurs behind him. The eight priests carried a litter, and on that platform had been set a small wooden chair, carved to look like a throne and painted golden. Atop the throne rested a mirror of shining, polished gold.
Pixquicauh saw his reflection in the mirror, and he spoke to it. “Tuolonatl wishes to outshine us,” he said, “but in doing so she separates herself from the Glorious Gold. She wishes to place herself above us, but instead she places herself more distant.”
He peered into the mirror, as if waiting for his reflection to answer. After a while, he grew satisfied, and turned back around.
The other priests said nothing.
He would hardly have heard them if they had.
* * *
Tuolonatl had seen war. War with other xoconai, war with the xelquiza, war with mict, war with the cillipontic, the short and rugged hairy humanoids who wore their bright berets (one of which Tuolonatl kept in her pouch to wear into battle), even, once, war with a band of brown-skinned humans who had come up from the far south. In the last two decades, whenever a xoconai sovereign decided to plunder another nearby city-state, he or she had called to Tuolonatl to lead the charge.
Her scars were many, but mostly old. She could still fight as well as any, but her true value lay in her understanding of the battlefield, of how to attack, where to attack, and when to attack.
Yes, Tuolonatl knew war.
Tuolonatl hated war.
She hated riding lizards, too, much preferring her horse, small and fast and incredibly powerful, a three-year-old she had carefully bred through specific bloodlines for decades. Up here, though, on the slopes of the Tyuskixmal, her green, golden-speckled and golden-headed cuetzpali was far more effective, and a far safer mount. But she hated the thing, hated all the dragons. They could be controlled, but they were stupid beasts, and cared not for their riders, other than the food those riders provided, and the punishments the riders would inflict when the lizard did wrong.
Tuolonatl smiled as she rolled with the long strides of the mount, thinking of her horse, Pocheoya. Such a smelly thing, he was, but such a friend, as well. In battle, Tuolonatl could count on Pocheoya to protect her, she knew, but this mount, this lizard? It would protect her incidentally, at best, eager to attack anything it could and hopefully aiming for her enemies.
The pleasant thoughts of Pocheoya, who was at the rear of the column, riderless and led at the back of a wagon, disappeared when another mundunugu loped his cuetzpali up beside her.
“It goes splendidly,” said Ataquixt, a fierce young warrior of great repute, whom Tuolonatl had named as the lead scout of her column.
“We will cross Teotl Tenamitl soon enough, and let the battles begin!”
Tuolonatl smiled and nodded, not wanting to dampen his enthusiasm. Inside, though, she knew that more than glorious battles would commence. So, too, would the garish wounds, the deaths of many far too young, the battlefield cries for mantli, as sons and daughters called out for the person who had given them the greatest comfort, as all sense of comfort flew away in the cold pain of death.
Tuolonatl liked Ataquixt. She thought him funny and clever, and very competent as both mundunugu and scout. They had fought together before, though that inter-city war had been more posturing than macana play, with few wounded and fewer dead. She thought him handsome, too, quite. His blue facial colors were narrower than most, but striking in color, just enough so to bring out the hint of golden flecks in his otherwise dark eyes. If she were twenty years younger, or even ten, she knew where she’d be spending her nights.
And every time Ataquixt flashed her his smile, or laughed at one of her jokes, she thought she might entice him to her bed anyway.
She didn’t want to imagine him lying broken on the ground, wailing out “Mantli, mantli,” to a mother who would never hear.
She had seen too much of that, which was why Tuolonatl was usually careful about not making friends with those who would fight beside her. Ataquixt had charmed her, though.
“To see the sun rise on Ayuskixmal,” he said wistfully. “To climb Tzatzini and look down upon…” He couldn’t even finish, caught halfway between a joyful laugh and his words.
Tuolonatl looked around at the many mundunugu, all pressing their cuetzpali along, all eager to bask in the blood they would spill for the Glorious Gold.
Tuolonatl didn’t hate humans. She would happily lead her forces against any xelquiza half-bloods that might revolt, however, and she took particular pleasure in killing mict goblins. Other than fellow xoconai, her least favorite enemy were the humans. No, she didn’t fear them—most were terrible fighters—and they were ugly, of course, and didn’t particularly smell any better than her Pocheoya. But they were not irredeemably vile, like the others. This she had learned in her one fierce encounter with them, for when the humans lay broken and dying, they called out their word “mother,” which Tuolonatl knew to mean mantli.
So, while she would not dissuade, and couldn’t even disagree with, her army, the augurs, all the xoconai, who viewed this eastward march to be the greatest glory of their God-King, and justified, of course, merely because of Scathmizzane’s word, her heart was not as light as those about her.
Any human she struck down throughout this campaign, she resolved to kill quickly, before it could call out to its mantli.
At her bidding, Ataquixt continued to ride beside her. The trail was fairly straightforward here and those leading the column would not likely go astray, and Tuolonatl enjoyed the company. There were other matters for the two to discuss, as well. Tuolonatl had assigned the sculpting of the battlefield model to a trio of older mundunugu who served Ataquixt directly, two women and a man from Ataquixt’s city-state. That small replica of the terrain they would first conquer could prove critical to her, not just from a tactical standpoint, but in giving her solid and tangible counterpoints when she ran into the inevitable interference by the fanatical High Priest and the other superior-minded augurs.
Still, the conversation between the two was more lighthearted and personal this day, swapping tales of home, and even stories from Ataquixt regarding his mischievous youth, which reminded Tuolonatl of their age disparity.
An interruption came later that afternoon, from a short and bright flash from somewhere far ahead, and much higher, near the peaks of Teotl Tenamitl.
“Code-talker!” Ataquixt yelled, correctly anticipating Tuolonatl’s command.
Another flash showed ahead, then a second, from another high peak in the mountains before them.
A few moments later, a mundunugu carrying a small sheet of polished gold rushed her mount up beside the pair, to the other side of Ataquixt, who pointed out the ridge where they had seen the initial flash.
The code-talker maneuvered her golden sheet carefully, catching the lowering sun’s rays and flicking the mirror in a series of bright flashes up toward the mountaintops.
Almost immediately came a responding series of flickers.
“What is it?” Tuolonatl asked.
The code-talker moved her mirror furiously, interspersing long and short flashes in a set pattern to spell out words to the distant code-talkers.
A string came back, then a second from the side peak.
“News from Tzatzini, my general,” said the code-talker. “Some of those who shadowed the xelquiza forces have returned to the Tyuskixmal.”
“Signal them down to us,” Tuolonatl instructed, and as the code-talker complied, she turned to Ataquixt. “We make camp here, in this area. Find an acceptable spot.”
Ataquixt nodded and tugged his bridle, dropping back between the general and the code-talker, and turning to ride off.
“Defend it well and send word to halt the line,” Tuolonatl told him. “Except for High Priest Pixquicauh and his entourage. Bid them to come forward to join us.” She looked ahead, back up the mountain. “It should be an interesting evening.”
Her tent was set up in the middle of the area chosen for the forward camp long before the High Priest and his accompanying augurs had arrived. Even better, the first of the scouts came into the camp as the last spike on that tent was being hammered, giving Tuolonatl some time alone with the messenger before having to share the information with her rival. She summoned Ataquixt to her war table, and there met the scout.
“You have glimpsed it?” Ataquixt asked as soon as the formal introductions were over. “You have seen Tzatzini? You have seen the beauty of Otontotomi?”
“I have walked the trails of the Herald, yes,” the young xoconai named U’at replied. “But no, there was no city below, no temple, just a…”
“… great lake, running long to the north and west,” Tuolonatl finished for him, and when both men looked at her, she added, “You should study more carefully the prophecies of the Last Augur of Darkness of the line of Bayan, who is now Pixquicauh, High Priest of Scathmizzane. Otontotomi is no more seen.”
“As you will,” U’at said, bowing.
“I will do better, my general,” Ataquixt promised.
“I have been to the peaks of Tzatzini,” U’at explained. “At the bidding of Halfizzen, who served the Last Augur of Darkness, did there I journey, and did there I fight with a human.”
“There are not many xoconai alive who can make such a claim,” said Tuolonatl.
“Where is your trophy?” asked Ataquixt. “His head? His ear? His hair? Have you nothing?”
U’at lowered his gaze. “He fought well and knew the land. I did not. I thought it better to flee and so return.”
Ataquixt started to say something snide, but Tuolonatl interceded. “To know the land is a great advantage,” she said. “That is why you are here.”
The tent flap opened and three others entered, one an augur, the other two mundunugu.
“Halfizzen,” U’at greeted, bringing his palm up over his face briefly.
“My general, great Tuolonatl,” Halfizzen said, using that same hand greeting with the general, but then bowing low before her in deference. “These scouts are returned from the battles. The xelquiza did engage the humans on the banks of the lake in the shadow of Tzatzini, and upon the highest reaches of the great shining mountain.”
“All of the humans?”
Halfizzen shook his head and looked to the scout at his left.
“Several villages of humans are scattered about the southern reaches of the great lake,” that female mundunugu explained. “The humans were too many. We sent the half-bloods to attack two, the two nearest the shadow of Tzatzini, and drove the humans from one.”
“Just one?”
“The humans fought well, better than the half-bloods,�
�� the scout explained.
“But we have one village taken?” Ataquixt said.
She shrugged. “Perhaps. Or perhaps the humans will take it back.”
“They will,” said the scout on Halfizzen’s right.
“If the xelquiza we sent forth can overtake one, we can destroy a hundred,” Tuolonatl said. “What of the mountain? Human scouts or hunters? Were they driven from the slopes of Tzatzini?”
“A village,” Halfizzen answered.
“You said the highest reaches.”
“Near the very top.” He looked to U’at.
Tuolonatl and Ataquixt exchanged curious glances. Tzatzini was, by all accounts, the tallest mountain of the region, and the peaks of the towering Teotl Tenamitl range were not hospitable in the least.
“The greatest village, perhaps,” U’at offered. “It is the one I first spied.”
“More than half of the xelquiza force attacked that village,” Halfizzen added.
“And they failed?”
“They were obliterated, General,” U’at explained. “The humans struck them with lightning and great exploding blasts of fire.”
“Lightning?” Tuolonatl asked incredulously.
“What nonsense…?” Ataquixt started to add.
“Obliterated,” Halfizzen agreed. “Killed, every one of the half-bloods.” Again, he motioned for U’at to explain.
“Perhaps some of the humans were killed,” U’at offered. “I could not get close enough to learn the extent. But not many fell, if any, I am sure. Never have I seen such power unleashed. If a thousand atlatls were all thrown at once…”
“Enough,” said Tuolonatl. “And be wise in how you speak of this, all of you.” She looked mostly at Halfizzen as she gave that command, knowing that the augurs, above all others, seemed to understand the concept of morale the least.
Reckoning of Fallen Gods Page 31