Then it dove toward the sea, a long, swooping descent that quickly propelled the powerful animal at blinding speed. The massive wings beat again, a steady cadence of power. Now the eagle climbed slowly, never wavering from a straight course, gaining only the elevation needed to cross the mountains that lay invisible beyond the horizon ahead.
It flew northwest, toward distant, iridescent Nexal.
Erix scrambled through the brush, ignoring the sharp thorns tearing at her limbs, mindful only of the desperate need to flee the deadly altar of Zaltec. She used the sacrificial knife to hack some of the encroaching vegetation away, but the stone blade proved an inefficient means of clearing a path. Mostly she just pushed her way between branches, occasionally diving headfirst through a tangle of vines.
After two desperate minutes of flight, she paused, stifling her own gasps in an effort to listen for pursuit. A bird cackled somewhere nearby, hidden by foliage. Fat insects buzzed around her head.
But there was no sound of even vaguely human origin. For long moments, Erix stood still, listening to the sounds of the jungle. Vaguely, in the distance, she could hear the dull roar of the surf.
The sound of the ocean reminded her of the great, winged things she had seen. For some reason she had already begun to doubt that they were creatures. Whatever they were, she knew their appearance had saved her life.
For a full minute, Erix stood still, wondering at the lack of pursuit. Surely they had noticed her escape! The strange objects offshore, she finally concluded, must be holding the priests and the Jaguar Knight in some kind of thrall.
Again she wondered at the spectacle, her curiosity beginning to overcome her fear. She gained her bearings, remembering that the ocean lay generally behind her. Moving slower, with more stealth than during the initial rush of her flight, she turned to the left and began to move parallel to the shore.
The pyramid of Zaltec gradually fell away behind her, and she became immersed in the heavy, wet jungle. Soaked with her own sweat, ignoring the flies and mosquitoes that buzzed around her, she laboriously worked her way to the south. Finally she emerged upon a narrow trail, and here she turned again, striking eastward for the coast.
Erixitl's arms bled from dozens of scrapes, and the thorns had torn her cotton gown into a tattered rag. But now she pushed quickly forward, forgetting all of her present difficulties in her desire to look again upon the great wings over the ocean.
At last she pushed through the dripping fronds of a thick fern and found herself near the edge of the coastal bluff. A strip of brushy ground lined the edge of the precipice, but her curiosity overcame caution. Carefully she crawled through the brush to the edge of the cliff. Worming forward, secure in the shelter of a dense tangle, she looked out toward the ocean.
The white wings of the sea – things now hung limp, smaller than when she had first seen them. Though the objects were well to her left, a mile or more away, she could see more details.
Instantly she understood; These were great vessels, like unthinkably massive canoes, and they were filled with men. Even as she watched, she saw smaller craft – more like true canoes, though still larger than the slender boats plying the waters of Maztica – drift away from the great vessels. Like great whales giving birth, each of the large craft disgorged one of the smaller boats, and these began moving slowly toward the shore.
Erixitl's sense of wonder grew. Was this a miracle in progress before her? Where did these visitors come from? Certainly they did not originate in the True World. She could see tiny manlike figures among the strangers, but she could not believe that these were actually human beings like herself. Could they be the messengers of the gods? Or even the gods themselves?
"Pretty girl!"
A voice, speaking crude Payit, jerked her attention back to reality. Erix swung around and raised the knife, but she could see nothing. Her back to the steep bluff, she scrutinized the surrounding vegetation.
"Oh, she's got a knife, too! Look out, look out!" The voice sounded amused.
"Who's there?" she hissed, crouching.
"We're all here, eh, pretty one?" A sudden burst of color startled her. She gasped, almost dropping the knife, as a brightly feathered bird exploded from the bush before her, squawking upward to rest among the fronds of a palm. "She's scared now!" Her jaw dropped as she realized that the mysterious voice belonged to a macaw.
"I'm not scared! You startled me, featherbrain!" She tossed her head at the bird, feeling sheepish. She had heard of macaws and parrots that could mimic the sound of human voices. Then she realized with a chill that the bird had not mimicked any sound. It had remarked about things it had observed, such as her knife!
"Smart bird, that he is," lisped another voice, a low, sibilant sound emerging from a leafy bush.
Erix turned with a gasp as she saw a long, brightly colored head emerge from the greenery. It was followed by a snake's neck and a portion of a serpentine body coiling smoothly forward, slender but supple and wiry. Yet the snake eyes gleamed at her with intelligence, even perhaps a little amusement.
"A lucky girl you are today, Erixitl." The creature spoke again, its snake lips pursing softly as a black, forked tongue slipped in and out of its mouth. "Lucky girl because I am here.
"And I am Chitikas."
Tenth day following landfall, aboard the Falcon
Helm has granted us a splendid anchorage, a deep lagoon surrounded by encircling headlands. A rugged coast greets us, distinguished in particular by two monstrous images carved into the rocky bluff.
Each of these presents a human visage, apparently a male and female, many times the height of a man. At the top of the bluff stands a squat structure, pyramidal in shape.
We move quickly to put the legion ashore, leaving bare crews to tend the ships. The footmen claim the ground even now; in some hours, we will debark the horses.
"Who could have made them?" wondered Halloran, awestruck. The growing light of day revealed a pair of huge faces carved into the cliff before them.
"Look at them!" murmured an unusually subdued Martine, taking Hal's arm in unconscious excitement.
He thought uncomfortably how that touch would have thrilled him a few days before. Now Martine's hand felt like a cold iron shackle, closing around his flesh. Her attentions, which once had exhilarated him, now confined and enclosed him more securely with each bubbling phrase, each coy look.
She had stayed at his side constantly during the three days she had been aboard the Osprey – except, of course, when they slept. Hal had willingly offered his cabin, the only private lodging on the ship, and she had accepted it as her due. He had spent the last three nights with the horses and dogs under the crude deck shelter, and he had come to appreciate those hours as his only free time.
Daggrande had avoided them as much as possible – no mean trick on the ninety-foot carrack – and Martine's incessant talking had begun to ring in his ears even in his dreams. Perhaps this landing would give him an opportunity to be a soldier again, but he doubted it.
The fleet stood offshore, resting easily at anchor. Halloran and Martine stood at Ospreys rail as the longboat was lowered toward the crystalline azure waters. Bright flashes of color, schools of exotic fish, darted among the coral.
But their attention remained fixed upon the gargantuan faces. They showed a male and a female, each with a broad mouth and wide nose. The faces were flat and rounded, and even the male was unbearded. The eyes, though mere carvings in granite, seemed to stare at the ships with keen scrutiny.