Tototl’s painted visage remained impassive. “I remember you saying that,” he said. “And I remember that I told you that I believed you saw more in the bowl than you were telling Tecuhtli Citlali. So tell me now, Uchben Nahual, what did you see? Tell me the truth.”
Niente placed the scrying bowl back in its pouch, feeling the texture of the incised patterns along its rims. He took up his spell-staff; he could feel the energy of the X’in Ka throbbing within the wood, captured and ready to be loosed. The smells filled his nostrils: burning wood, the scent of water, the odor of clothing worn too long. He swallowed, and he tasted the lingering tang of the green mist he had inhaled. His senses seemed too full and too sharp. He glanced up at the leering skull on the wall above him, and he could imagine the thing alive once more-teeth like ivory knives slicing open a victim caught in its powerful jaws.
“Listen to me, Tototl,” he said. “I said nothing to Tecuhtli Citlali because he couldn’t see beyond now and beyond his own ambitions. You have the imagination to do that. You could become a great Tecuhtli. One whose name would ring for generations.”
Tototl couldn’t entirely conceal the eagerness those words brought to him: Niente saw it in the the faint movement of the warrior’s mouth, in the slight widening of his eyes in their pools of red paint. There was ambition in the warrior. “You saw that?” he asked.
A nod. “It’s one of the futures. A possibility.” Niente paused. He looked at the catapult, nearly finished now. He looked at the bridge arching near them at the end of the boulevard, at the great building that loomed just beyond it, at the golden dome rising above the other rooftops in the middle of the island. “Tototl, victory right now hinges on a thread. You are that thread, Tototl. Without you, there is no victory at all. I’ve seen that.”
“What must I do?”
“You must win through to the island and to the other side, as you said earlier. You must bring your warriors to attack the Easterners from their rear. If you want victory, that’s what you have to accomplish.”
“Why would I not? That’s why we came here: to take the city, to avenge our loss with Tecuhtli Zolin, to rule this land.”
Niente wondered if he should tell him. Certainly Citlali would have heard none of it; he would have stopped Niente already, and Niente-he had to admit-would have bowed to the Tecuhtli. I will have victory here… That was all Citlali wanted to hear. He would scoff at the Long Path; he wouldn’t care what happened years afterward. But then, Tototl might feel the same. Niente took a breath. He watched the nahualli place the first of the black sand charges in the carrier of the catapult as the warriors winched down the arm.
“Citlali’s victory here will be too costly for us in the end,” Niente said. “He might yet take the city, but he won’t be able to hold it for long. Other Easterner armies will come from the far corners of their empire. This land is huge, and we have too few warriors here and not enough time to send for more from across the sea. And when the Easterners have killed all of us who are left, they will look toward our homeland and they will return there with an even greater army than the one they brought before. They will hunt us down until they’re certain we can never trouble them again.”
“You know this?”
Niente shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “But it’s a future I see; the likely one.”
“Has the new Nahual seen this also?”
Niente shook his head. “No. But Atl’s still learning. He sees only the near future, not the Long Path.”
“Before, you saw an easy victory. You said that before we ever left our own land.”
“I did,” Niente admitted. “At the time, that was the truth. But that has changed. There are forces here that were hidden from me, situations that have changed from what they were when I first consulted Axat. Nothing in the future is ever solid and fixed.”
“Then this future you see might also change. Will also change.”
“It might. Still… Tototl, I would tell you to take the warriors here and leave. Find our ships-by now, they should be nearly to the city. Take them and return home. I would tell you to become the Tecuhtli so that when the Easterners come back to our land-and they will come back-we will still be strong enough to resist them. They’ll understand that as we couldn’t conquer them, also they can’t conquer us, and our empires will have to deal with each other as equals.”
Tototl was already shaking his head. “I won’t run,” he said. “I won’t abandon Citlali. Not without knowing that I have no other choice.”
“Then here are the signs, Tototl. When the magic is snatched away from all the nahualli, when you see me fall to a weapon that shouldn’t kill-those are the signs that what I tell you is true. Will you retreat then, Tototl? Will you listen to my advice, as Tecuhtli Citlali would not.”
Tototl seemed to laugh. “You’re like a length of smoked beef, Uchben Nahual,” he said, “too old and tough to die. And who could snatch away the power of the nahualli?”
“If it happens,” Niente pleaded, “if you see those signs, will you go?”
“If it happens,” Tototl told him, “I will remember what you said, and I’ll do what I think I must.”
As he said the words, the catapult sang its deadly song, and a fireball went hissing across the river toward the island. They both watched it fall and explode in a roar of orange flame.
Jan wondered if this would be his final day.
Smoke smudged the southeastern sky from fires burning unchecked on the South Bank of the city. Runners had come from his matarh during the night with a message-the Tehuantin were on the South Bank; they would try to push them back in the morning; send a company of your gardai if you can spare them.
But he couldn’t spare them. They were already too few for the task before them. The night before had been hideous, with the ground shaking as both sides pounded at each other with black sand. Now the eastern sky was pink and orange, and the Tehuantin would be renewing the ground attack. He was certain of that; it was what he would have done himself.
One of the pages was assisting him with his armor, and Jan winced as the boy tightened the lacings of his cuirass-an armorer having pounded out the indentation from the brick the night before. “Go on,” he told the page. “Make them tight. Can’t have it falling off in the middle of battle.”
Any movement hurt. It hurt to breathe. He’d coughed up blood last night after he’d recovered consciousness, though that, thankfully, had stopped. Binding his chest in the armor actually felt good, but he wondered if he could take a sword blow to the ribs without collapsing. He wondered if he could lead his men the way a Hirzg should: at the head of the charge into the enemy. “Bring my horse to me,” Jan said, and the page saluted and scurried away.
He had spent the night in a tent beyond the second wall of earthworks. Most of the black sand had fallen well short of that encampment, but there were still craters of dark earth here and there, and smoke from grass fires that had to be extinguished. The offiziers had reported the losses to him a half-turn earlier after calling the rolls. Jan had been appalled. He had brought over 4,000 gardai and some 300 chevarittai to Nessantico. He and Starkkapitan ca’Damont had split them nearly equally. Jan now had less than 1,000 gardai and five double hands of chevarittai; ca’Damont had less.
No, he could not send a company to the Kraljica. He would be lucky to return to Nessantico with a full company himself. He’d read the message from ca’Talin: Outlook grim. Recommend holding as long as possible, then falling back to the city itself. Under it, in his spidery handwriting, ca’Damont had added a brief I concur. Jan had sent his own message in return to the two:
Agreed. Make them pay for crossing the river, then fall back to the River Market. We’ll regroup there and consult with the Kraljica.
The page came back leading a warhorse that had once borne one of the dead chevarittai. The boy placed a step next to the horse, then helped hoist Jan into the saddle. He managed to get himself seated without groaning aloud. “Thank you,” he told the boy, saluting. He cantered away, wincing as every step jarred his body. He rode up the short slope to the top of the second embankment. He waited there for several breaths, looking out over the landscape.