It seemed to Erix fitting, as she collapsed on the paving stones and gasped for air, that the village should burn.
The terraced pyramid of Zaltec stood, perhaps fifty feet high, near the middle of Palul's plaza in the midst of the feast and, subsequently, the battle. A steep stairway ascended each of the four sides, leading to a square platform on top. In the center of this platform, a small stone building enclosed the sacrificial altar and a statue of the war god, Zaltec.
Brave warriors had gathered below the pyramid at the outbreak of battle, instinctively seeking to protect the sacred image of their god. Equally instinctively, the soldiers of the legion pressed from all sides, attempting to gain the top of the pyramid and shatter the barbarous idol.
The warriors conducted their defense with savage fanaticism, but the tightly packed legionnaires concentrated their attacks. Slowly the defenders fell back, giving up a step at a time, and each with a high price in blood. But the inexorable tide of attack grew ever closer to the bloodstained platform on top.
"Sorcery!" wailed Zilti from before the altar, looking at the massacre below. "How else could they have learned of the trap?"
Shatil, standing beside his high priest, looked around numbly. Accustomed to bloodshed and death – indeed, he had performed over a hundred sacrifices himself – the destruction below nonetheless horrified the young priest.
The legionnaires seemed invincible. The horsemen rode back and forth through the plaza, and only the thinning numbers of Mazticans prevented them from slaying hundreds with each charge. The deadly swords rose and fell, slicing heads from bodies or leaving deep, gashing cuts that sent the blood of the victim pouring in a fatal stream onto the stone pavement of the square.
First they had bottled up the north exit from the plaza, while the sudden horde of insects had closed egress to the west. The cloaked figure with the tiny stick had sealed the eastern side of the square, now marked by hundreds of stiff, frozen corpses. Only to the south could the villagers find escape, and it was from this side that the refugees poured out of the courtyard.
Finally the horses began to slip and stumble on the blood-slicked pavement, and the riders dismounted. There were no more living victims around them, in any event.
Shatil raised his eyes to the surrounding ridges, knowing that thousands of Nexalan warriors were concealed there. From the height of the pyramid, he could see over the houses and trees of the village, gaining a clear view of the surrounding heights. Surely those warriors had seen this treachery.
They had, but the priest saw that the Kultakan allies of the legionnaires had been just as prepared as the strangers themselves. Now the Kultakans fell on these hapless ambushers, and before Shatil's disbelieving eyes, the Nexalan companies were driven away from Palul. The feathered, warriors of both sides fought bravely, and showers of spears, arrows, and darts flew back and forth.
The Nexalans tried a desperate charge that was quickly broken and routed by the steady macas of the Kultakans. Inexorably, one after another, the attacks separated the thousandmen regiments of Nexal from each other. Each surrounded block of feathered warriors fought desperately as the battle on the ridges degenerated into numerous melees.
But each Nexalan thousandmen fought alone, in isolation and without coordination. The Kultakans, Shatil saw, concentrated their forces against first one, than another block of enemy troops. One by one, the Nexalan regiments broke, pressed from the battlefield by the overwhelming, savage force of the Kultakan ranks.
Around the square, the companies of legionnaire swordsmen attacked the buildings that sheltered the warriors who had been planning to perform their own ambush. Now, faced in small groups, the advantage of surprise taken from them, these warriors fought bravely. The valiant defenders stood firm and died quickly beneath the steel weapons of the legionnaires.
Bolts from legion crossbows raked the pyramid, and in a sudden rush, the attackers pressed upward, three quarters of the way to the top. On all four sides, Shatil observed numbly, the clamor of battle threatened to sweep upward, into the temple and its sacred statue. Grimly, clutching his sacrificial knife, he stood before the door, prepared to give his life in the desperate last stand before the bestial icon.
For now, there was little he could do. The warriors still fought on the narrow stairways, and their macas and spears, though outclassed by the invaders' steel, were still more formidable weapons than his obsidian dagger.
A house exploded into flame, and Shatil swore the fire was caused by the woman in the dark robe. She simply raised her hand and pointed. Immediately columns of flame had spurted from the building's doors and windows. Maztican warriors, their bodies blistered and flaming, dove through the windows and doors, only to collapse and die on the street.
Then the disbelieving priest saw the woman turn to another building. This one had started to disgorge warriors from several doors, angry spearmen who rushed forward to exact vengeance for the massacre.
But the woman raised both hands this time. A pale mist suddenly appeared before her and immediately fanned outward into a growing cloud. As the charging warriors met the cloud, they stumbled through it and collapsed, shrieking, gagging, and choking. They fell to the street, writhing in visible agony for several moments before stiffening and growing still. More and more of the warriors succumbed to the cloud as it gained substance and moved on. The victims, wracked by agony, finally dropped and lay still, cast in grotesque postures like so many mayz-husk dolls flung into the street.
The mist grew thicker, seeping through the doors and windows of all the buildings along the street. From some of these, bodies stumbled forth to collapse outside, gasping out their last, wretched breaths. In others, Shatil could see nothing, but he retained no illusions that any villagers remained alive within.
The deadly cloud drifted up the street, and in its wake, the village finally fell into stillness, except around the priests. The warriors fighting on the steps finally fell back to their last position, the top of the pyramid itself.
Companies of swordsmen still smashed into houses, killing whomever they found. More and more, the swordsmen discovered that these buildings had already been abandoned, their residents in flight or perhaps lying dead in the square.
"We are finished here," said Zilti, his voice an agonized grunt. "But one of us must carry word of this betrayal back to Nexal, to Hoxitl."
"We must defend the statue to the death!" objected Shatil. "The invaders must not reach the sacred image of Zaltec!"
"No" Zilti commanded firmly, his voice tempered with gentle compassion for Shatil's devotion. "I will stay here, but you must flee."
"How?" asked Shatii practically, as legionnaires burst onto the platform, gaining the top of the stairway on two sides. A shrinking ring of warriors, desperately striving to keep the attackers from the sacred altar, surrounded the two priests.
"This way!" Zilti led Shatil into the small temple building itself, past the gruesome statue of Zaltec and its blood-caked maw. Shatil hesitated, shuddering under the image of that statue falling, torn down by the blood-drenched savages from across the sea.
Zilti didn't delay, however. The priest pushed a stone on the back of the statue, and suddenly a hatch fell away in the floor, revealing a steep stairway that vanished into a terribly dark pit.
"This will take you to the bottom of the pyramid," said Zilti. "You will come out beside the temple, but wait until nightfall, until the strangers have gone."
The high priest now pressed a parchment, rolled into a tube, into Shatil's hands. "Take this to Nexal. Give it to Hoxitl, high priest of Zaltec there. It will tell the tale of the treachery here. Now go!"