"Come, Erix" urged Kachin, in Payit. "Let us hasten to Ulatos. We should leave the presence of these strangers."
"But what about the danger in Ulatos?" Erix vividly remembered her abduction from the temple.
"I will see to your safety personally. The sanctity of the Silent Counselor's grounds shall not again be violated."
Erix turned back to the two legionnaires. "You will find yourself on the shore as we emerge from this shrine. Your friends lie to the east. Kachin and I return to our city, to the west." She started toward the door, then stopped and looked back at Halloran.
"May your journey pass in peace."
Halloran looked at the woman again. She seemed so much older than Martine, or himself, for that mailer. He suspected that she had not yet seen twenty years, yet she carried herself with a maturily and grace that fascinated him almost to the point of awe.
Yet Martine's terror-stricken face appeared in his memory again. He had failed his responsibility to her! She had been killed because a mad priest took her to be this woman in front of him. Perhaps that should make him angry at Erix, but instead it only made him more curious.
"I hope that we meet again," he said, bowing.
Halloran preceded the others up the stairway leading out of the shrine. The twilight of approaching dawn filtered dim light through the foliage around them, and he saw a wide beach through the trees.
Erix followed him out of the shrine, then paused to look at him one last time. Kachin followed her, stopping in the doorway.
Suddenly the cleric's eyes widened. He sprang forward, pushing Erix roughly to the side. The black arrow intended for her heart lodged instead in the cleric's rib cage. Kachin gasped in deep pain and dropped to the ground.
Daggrande raised his crossbow, quickly sighting on the dark blur he thought he saw among the foliage. The black shape rolled to the side, evading his missile but revealing its presence by the movement.
Halloran charged the manlike figure, his silver longsword seeking flesh before him. Even though dawn's light had come as a rosy hue in the east, he could see nothing of his opponent but whirling shadow. Then he caught the dull glint of cold sleel.
Helmstooth clashed against another metal sword. The enemy's blade was black, but rang like true steel. Again and again the weapons met, silver and black. Sometimes sparks flared from the violence of the contact. The fighters dodged and ducked among the trees, hacking into trunks and through branches in their desperate attacks and parries.
Hal guessed his opponent to be of human size, perhaps a little smaller but possessed of a supple, wiry strength. He noticed that the swordsman was cloaked entirely in black, including his gloves, boots, and a silken mask. More importantly, the dark one's skill with the blade matched the best swordsmen he had ever seen.
With savage, silent violence, the dark figure rushed Hal, slicing his face and narrowly missing his bowels. Then the legionnaire kicked the wiry form away and stabbed once, twice, again, each time missing by a mere inch.
Halloran attacked and parried with all the skill in his arm and his brain. The dark figure seemed to flow away from his shining blade, deftly swirling beyond the point, and then the razor-edged return thrust whistled past Halloran as he used all of his speed to avoid sudden death.
Daggrande cocked his crossbow and aimed, but he could not get a clear shot into the melee. Even as red dawn blossomed to pink, as flowers and insects became visible among the fronds, the mysterious attacker remained shrouded in shadowy darkness. His garments, if such they were, seemed to float around him like a cloud of smoke, obscuring his limbs but in no way impairing his movement.
The fighter pressed Halloran back again, the blows coming more swiftly than ever. The legionnaire parried and retreated. Slowly he felt himself losing the fight. His arm felt like a leaden weight, and his brain began to struggle against fatigue. Still the dark stranger attacked, with no sign of strain or exhaustion. Dawn's pale illumination began to brighten the clearing around them, and Halloran fought for his life.
Then suddenly the black form darted away from him, rolling into the foliage. Like smoke, his shape seemed to dissipate. Hal lunged forward recklessly, his longsword lancing out toward his opponent's suspected location.
But his strike met only succulent greenery. He hacked at the fronds, but there was nothing there. As the first rays of the sun flickered across the treetops above them, Halloran and his companions realized that the attacker was gone.
On the ground, Kachin coughed, the pink froth of his life-blood trickling through his lips.
Dawn showed the great wings spreading across the water. Gultec, atop the pyramid with Caxal, the Revered Counselor of Ulatos, and Lok, chief of the Eagle Warriors, watched the white shapes unfold like the blossoms of a day-flower opening to the sun.
The Jaguar Knight felt a terrible unease as he watched. Oddly, he missed the presence of Kachin. That cleric, among all the men he knew, seemed capable of offering wisdom and sound guidance in this hour of dire danger.
And Gultec did not underestimate the danger posed by these strangers. Nearly two hundred of his warriors had been slain in short minutes of combat, a horrifying death toll even to the veteran campaigner. At the same time, only ten of the strangers had been killed.
Gultec felt certain that the other strangers at the pyramid would have perished, except for the appearance of the couatl. But at what cost to his own troops?
A sense of menace grew in his mind, and suddenly he spoke to Caxal and Lok. "We must send the warriors back to the city… quickly!"
"The city?" Caxal looked at him suspiciously. "But the strangers are here now!"
"I think they will fly soon. See how they spread their wings? The army of Ulatos is here, and the city lies undefended."
"No!" Caxal barked. Lok, the Eagle chief, started to speak but closed his mouth in the face of the counselor's glare. Caxal squinted, studying the great water creatures – he could not think of them as boats – and trying to control the fear raging in his breast.
Gultec turned away from the counselor, his temper flaring. Normally, in such a state, he would have stalked away. But this day, these occurrences, seemed so momentous to the Jaguar Knight that such ordinary concerns of pride faded to insignificance.
The white wings did indeed fly. "See how their beats stir the wave tops," Lok said, pointing. They all watched the white wakes foaming behind each hull as the strangers rode their water creatures around the reef. They followed the coast toward the west, in the direction of Ulatos.
Caxal watched the flight of the strangers in a stupor. This was the first he had seen of their might, and awe filled his body with numbness. Suddenly he shook his head.
"We must race to Ulatos," he declared, oblivious of his two war chieftains, who looked at him in scorn, "to defend the city against the invaders!"
From the chronicle of Colon:
Now our destiny has only to be born.
The Eagles continue to report to Naltecona. He hears the news of their departure with joy. He smiles and relaxes and beckons to his priests and nobles.
"See? The strangers leave us. They are no threat, surely not the cause of ten years of portents." He cheers himself, but no one else, with the heartiness of his words.
Then more Eagles fly to the palace of Nexal, and the Revered Counselor hears of the strangers' approach to Ulatos. For a time, Naltecona is despondent, and then again the smile of understanding crosses his features.
But now he understands things that no one else can see. "It is their folly to go to Ulatos, for that is the heart of the Payit lands," he assures his attendants. "Surely the Jaguars and Eagles of the Payit will rally to destroy them," he explains to the nobles.