“We can intercept them.”
Tuolonatl shook her head. “Pursue them. Make those within the city come to their southern wall to protect the retreat. Let us keep as many eyes turned that way as we can.”
“While all the rest come through the shield of light from the west,” he said, catching on.
“We haven’t enough ladders yet,” she replied. “Every moment the mundunugu have in holding the western wall as the macana warriors climb those ladders will be critical.”
“Yes, my commander,” he said.
“Stay beyond their range,” she added. “Find me about the western wall when your task is completed.”
Ataquixt nodded and ran for his cuetzpali, then rode off to gather his brigade.
Tuolonatl signaled to her captains and had them setting the ranks, the marching squares, the mundunugu cavalry. Normally, she would have remained there to oversee the formations, but she mounted her own cuetzpali and rode to Pixquicauh instead.
“What augurs do you give me?”
“None,” he answered.
Tuolonatl looked back to the east, across the field to the imposing walls. “What do you know?”
“He comes. The city must fall quickly.”
“So you have said. We will need cover. Glorious light and magical fire.”
Pixquicauh nodded. “Many have died. The Glorious Gold shines brighter still, and the song of our god is in crescendo, approaching apogee.”
“The divine throwers?” she asked, and he nodded again.
“You wear iron bolts about your saddle,” the high priest warned. “You will wish to be far from this spot.”
Before Tuolonatl could begin to ask what Pixquicauh was talking about, there arose a huge cheer from the westernmost reaches of the xoconai forces. Both Tuolonatl and Pixquicauh turned quickly, and Tuolonatl gasped, even as Pixquicauh said yet again, “He comes.”
Indeed.
Tuolonatl saw him, the giant Glorious Gold, Scathmizzane in all his beauty and glory, riding fast on Kithkukulikhan. He swooped low over his gathered forces, who cheered wildly, and he held up a spear in a victorious salute.
A huge spear, Tuolonatl noted, thick and long and uniformly gray, as if it was made of a single piece of metal, or perhaps even stone, and quite unlike the slender spears of the mundunugu.
Scathmizzane rushed overhead, the cheers following him, and Tuolonatl turned back, hearing a rumbling behind.
The piled stones on the three platforms shifted and rumbled, as if the blown by the wind of Kithkukulikhan’s passing.
But there had been no noticeable wind.
“Be gone, quickly,” Pixquicauh warned, and he and all the priests began chanting in unison, each of the three semicircles holding hands and swaying in unison.
Tuolonatl rode back to her previous spot, noting that the back ranks of her forces were moving west, as if pulled by the wake of their Glorious Gold. She motioned to her many captains, mundunugu and macana, and lifted her own macana up high, a purple ribbon streaming from the base of its handle.
Scathmizzane was already over the city. To the south, the human cavalry was in sight, riding hard for the city’s southern gates, though still far to the south. She lowered her arm slowly, not signaling the charge just yet.
“Go find Ataquixt,” she told the rider beside her. “Quickly, to the south. Tell him to intercept the riders. Destroy them. Do not let them reach the city.”
The woman sent her cuetzpali rushing off, and Tuolonatl again lifted her macana high.
Scathmizzane circled high above the city. She could hear the communal screams coming from behind the walls and noted arrows flying up, though getting nowhere near Glorious Gold.
He circled again, as if studying the place, and lifted his spear, the air around it bending as if it had suddenly superheated. The dragon descended suddenly, diving toward one of the two largest structures visible above the wall.
A bell began to ring.
Scathmizzane threw the spear and Kithkukulikhan swooped around and climbed furiously, chased by a hundred small missiles.
The bell rang one last time, loudly and off key—struck by the spear, Tuolonatl realized—and then there came a loud crash from within the city.
Then came a whomping sound to the cochcal’s left, and she turned to see the divine throwers. Rocks rolled down the ramps, into the bases of the cylinders, and then were flung away with tremendous force, fired through the cylindrical tubes and flying high and fast for the city of humans.
The augurs at all three held a singular note then, a droning command of power, and the three divine throwers shuddered with each exiting stone.
A score of stones shot out from each of the three batteries, more following, graceful lines of heavy shot arcing for the city, some high, some low. Some cracked against the wall, others clipped and bounced over, and others soared above. As they crossed the wall, those stones, like a flock of birds flying in formation, somehow swerved, moving closer together, arcing and bending in flight, heading generally for the spot where Scathmizzane had thrown his spear!
Tuolonatl didn’t understand.
She looked to the throwers. The augurs ended their long note, and the last of that barrage flew away.
She didn’t understand either end of this volley—the power throwing the stones or the one bending them to the target—but she collected herself to recognize that this was her moment.
Down came her macana, powerfully, and the xoconai ranks surged through the shield of light, riding and running across the long field for the human city.
Scathmizzane and his dragon came down before them, leading the charge.
Behind, the augurs again began their chant.
Before, the Glorious Gold lifted a second spear and hurled it for the city wall, then Kithkukulikhan broke upward and climbed fast. The great missile slammed into the stone and stuck there, about halfway up the wall.
The thumping sound resonated from behind and to the left, and Tuolonatl was not surprised to see three more lines of heavy stones streaming out above, some too low and close for comfort, but all speeding across the field, nearing each other more quickly this time in their swerving flight, speeding right for the area of that second huge spear.
* * *
“Sound the bells!” Abbot Ohwan instructed, calling the monks to gather in the nave of St. Honce. He rushed into the main room, most of the masters at his side, many others streaming in from the many side doors.
He began issuing orders as the bells began to sound. Some would go to the south wall to help the Allheart Knights get back into the city. Others would turn this very nave into a hospital for the expected wounded. He sent a group of monks to the secured storerooms for gemstones, mostly soul stones, and told the brothers to pray for strength.
“We will need it in these coming days,” the abbot told them. “A great trial is upon Ursal. Unknown enemies have come against us. But we will turn them aside, and with King Midalis leading us, we will drive them from Honce with such certainty that they will never come against us again!”
He was hoping for a great and momentous cheer with that proclamation, hoping to rouse his brethren to greater heights of power and determination, but instead, just as he finished, the pealing bell hit a strange and off-tune note, and the whole of the giant monastery shook.
At the back end of the nave, not far from where Abbot Ohwan was standing, the ceiling cracked and broke apart, sending monks scrambling every which way, and through that break tumbled a gigantic pole—no, a spear, Ohwan realized to his horror—that smashed upon and shattered the altar.
Then came St. Honce’s giant bell, tumbling and dropping to land with a dull, echoing clang.
A few brothers were hurt, but none too seriously.
“You see!” Abbot Ohwan cried, trying to save his message and their morale. “Let us go and defeat these profane monsters! To arms, my brothers!”
The cheer did begin this time, but only briefly, for then came the barrage
, three lines of heavy stones slamming St. Honce, crumbling her walls. The monks fled in terror when the main tower collapsed, stumbling through the nave and onto the street.
The building’s back wall buckled and crumbled into an avalanche of stone and dust, the entire structure groaning and cracking and tumbling down.
Abbot Ohwan barely escaped, and he would have been buried in the rubble had not two brothers grabbed him and dragged him across the nave and out the front doors. The trio scrambled down the stairs to the street, just ahead of the giant breath of rubble, a thick cloud of dust and small flying stones that gasped out of the destroyed building’s large front doors.
Filthy and bruised, Ohwan looked back at his beautiful monastery, then around at his battered brethren, at the Ursal folk screaming and running every which way. He followed many of their gawking expressions skyward and caught a glimpse of the gigantic, snakelike dragon swimming across the sky, carrying a huge, manlike creature, a golden-skinned giant with a face red and blue.
Cries went up from within and without Ursal. Soldiers ran all about, with shouts to “Save the Allhearts in the south!” and then louder shouts for help on the west wall.
The enemy was coming. The enemy was here.
Abbot Ohwan shook away his shock at the brutal and abrupt fall of St. Honce and reminded himself that he had to lead here, that the monks had to do their part, above and beyond, to serve the folk and the king.
But he looked back to St. Honce in horror.
Most of the gemstones were in vaults in the catacombs beneath the far end of the monastery. Now, along with the brothers Ohwan had sent to retrieve them, they were buried under tons and tons of rubble.
“By Saint Abelle,” he whispered under his breath.
A thumping sound, like someone beating a huge skin drum, sounded to the west. Then came the thunderous report of the second barrage, the whole of the city shaking under the pounding of the thrown stones.
“Gather where you can, in small groups,” he told the brothers around him. “Help where you may. For Ursal!”
He looked to the large building beside St. Honce, the castle of King Midalis, and tried to take some solace in the fact that this man was battle-proven—indeed, was the victor in the great civil war that had torn Honce-the-Bear asunder a decade before.
Abbot Ohwan had prayed for Midalis’s defeat on that dark day.
Abbot Ohwan now prayed for Midalis’s victory on this dark day.
* * *
Several more human riders had fallen, but the group had proven more resilient and capable than Ataquixt and the others had expected, and more than a few mundunugu lay about the ground near the dead enemies.
The pivot of the horsemen had been brilliant, never breaking formation and moving just far enough to the east to get around the intercepting force.
And it was all her doing, Ataquixt knew, riding his cuetzpali hard to get one last throw at the woman spearheading the human force. He was moving too near the city, he realized, inviting fire from those strange throwing sticks, like a small bow held horizontally, used by the soldiers on the high wall. Those crossbows shot small arrows but at a very high speed.
Still, Ataquixt, feeling very much a failure in his inability to intercept and destroy these riders, ignored the risks.
One throw.
He hoisted the atlatl into the air, turning his mount, angling carefully. A group of his fellow mundunugu had kept up the pursuit behind the riders, spears still flying regularly, although most fell short and the others found only blocking shields.
But Ataquixt’s angle was different, and he hadn’t been noticed.
A pang of regret stung him. This warrior had been brilliant and deserved a better death. But how many xoconai would be doomed if he did not defeat her here and now?
He urged his lizard more swiftly ahead and closed for just a moment, just long enough to let fly. The woman was looking back, turned the other way, her shield protecting the flank of her horse.
She never saw it coming.
The javelin hit her in the small of her back, just below the breastplate. It found a seam and punctured the leather padding enough to stick in place.
The woman jolted and started to turn but faltered halfway, falling forward onto the lowered neck of her running horse. There, she held on for several strides before slowly sliding off the right side, falling hard to the ground, tumbling and bouncing.
Before he could digest that, while he was only beginning to nod grimly at the hit, Ataquixt, too, was jolted, his cuetzpali suddenly lurching and stumbling, fighting his every tug on the reins.
He looked back and saw the small arrow buried into his mount’s hip, blood streaming from the wound.
A lesser rider would have been thrown in those perilous moments, as the cuetzpali thrashed wildly, but Ataquixt held his seat and finally brought the mount under control, moving it away from the wall.
He glanced back to the fallen human woman and saw another of the warriors on the ground beside her, but standing, sword and shield in hand.
The gallantry brought a grimace to Ataquixt’s face. These were the children of Cizinfozza, so claimed the augurs, so claimed Glorious Gold. Thus, these were the kin of goblins, sub-xoconai, monsters more than men.
But no goblin would have moved to stand beside a fallen companion.
Ataquixt wanted to deny the truth but found that he could not.
A barrage of four javelins flew in at the man as he straddled his fallen friend, but he worked his shield with amazing grace to pick them all from the air, two of them even sticking there in that upraised shield.
In went a pair of xoconai riders, macana swinging.
The human drove his shield down across his body, angling it so that the encumbering spears had their butt ends on the ground in front of his right foot. Down and across came the sword, severing the spears up near the shield, removing the encumbrance, and up went the shield, just in time to deflect a macana swing. Out went the man’s sword the other way, hooking the macana of the other passing xoconai, then diving so perfectly that it scored a hit on the cuetzpali as well. The lizard reared and dove, the rider flying over its head, sliding facedown to the ground.
After a few more barely controlled strides, Ataquixt managed to pull up his mount. He turned back to watch the fight, to call out commands to his fellow mundunugu.
Another volley of javelins went out at the human, who again deflected them with his shield—all but one, which struck him in the leg, digging in.
From the side came the wounded cuetzpali, from behind came the other mundunugu and her mount, and so Ataquixt figured the man would fall quickly.
But no. He rushed out fearlessly to meet the charge of the riderless lizard, catching it with a heavy downstroke even as it started to rear for his throat. Down went the lizard, so suddenly and so finally, and the human spun back, then dove aside in a practiced roll as the other mundunugu came in at him.
Another javelin flew in at him as he rose, slipping past the shield and striking him squarely in the chest. His fine breastplate rejected it, though the weight of the blow staggered him backwards.
On came the mundunugu, standing in the saddle and chopping down at the apparently oblivious man.
But up came the shield and down went the armored man, crouching and stabbing hard—once, then again—then retracting and chopping the back of the cuetzpali’s neck.
Both lizard and rider tumbled down in the dirt.
Ataquixt vowed to never underestimate these human foes again. The beauty, precision, and strength of this one’s attacks could not be denied.
Nor should they be dishonored.
Ataquixt lifted his horn and blew three sharp notes, and the charging group of mundunugu pulled up as one, some turning disappointed glances the leader’s way but none disobeying.
Ataquixt signaled them to pass him, heading back to the west, to move around the corner of the city wall, out of range of the archers on the wall, and thus to join in the main
charge, which had only just begun.
As eager as he was to get back to Tuolonatl’s side, Ataquixt held there for a while, watching the human. He was wounded in his leg, of course, but now his shield arm, too, hung limp at his side. Even so, he retrieved his horse and walked it back to his fallen leader, and he somehow managed to hoist her up over the animal’s back.
He dropped his sword to the ground and tried to unfasten his shield, but it would not fall. He pulled off his helmet, his face a mask of anger, sorrow, and pain, and his eyes met those of Ataquixt.
The man’s clear hatred challenged the mundunugu to attack, but Ataquixt, his mount hobbled, his forces moving off behind him, would not. Instead, he saluted the man and turned his cuetzpali, riding to the west.
* * *
Tuolonatl led the first wave of mundunugu riders for the wall of Ursal. They took some volleys from the crossbowmen up above, but the shaking and crumbling wall rendered that defense fairly inconsequential. By comparison, as they neared, the mundunugu lifted their atlatls as one and let fly a sweeping volley of javelins, most skimming the top of the wall, forcing the defenders down, disrupting the rhythm of the archers.
Without slowing, Tuolonatl’s cavalry reached the wall and urged their cuetzpali into leaps, the riders leaning forward to keep their weight as close to the wall as possible while their sticky-fingered lizard mounts rushed upward.
Tuolonatl was among the first to reach the top, of course, and, as the cuetzpali came over the parapet, she was immediately set upon by a human soldier crashing in from the left. She drove her left leg hard into the side of her mount, urging that toothy maw around to snap and shorten the man’s swing. In that moment, Tuolonatl leaned away from the swing and leaped up from her saddle, crossing her legs to set her feet opposite, left foot back. From there, she suddenly spun halfway around, her turn moving her away from the man’s second feeble stab, her angle, as she circuited, allowing her to throw her full weight behind the backhand strike of her macana paddle. The man got his shield up to block, but it hardly mattered, for his feet were too close together as he tried to stay inside the angle of the cuetzpali’s bite, and the weight of Tuolonatl’s blow was simply too great for him to resist.
Song of the Risen God Page 24