Niente
THEY USED WHAT LITTLE of the black sand they had left
to hurl into the city again that night. Otherwise, Niente ordered
the nahualli to rest and restore their spell-staffs for the next
day’s battle. He had lost ten more of the nahualli during the
battle, most of them late in the day as Zolin tried unsuccessfully
to take the closest of the bridges over the river. The energy in
their spell-staffs had been entirely gone, and there was no time to
rest and replenish them. The nahualli—as Niente had ordered—tried
to retreat behind the lines as soon as their power was exhausted,
but some were cut down by Nessantican swords, unable to defend
themselves. Niente didn’t know how many of the warriors had been
lost. They’d been cast back by a desperate charge of the
chevarittai, and Zolin—at Niente’s insistence, afraid that they
would lose still more of the nahualli—had finally called a halt to
their advance.
They were too few . .
. both nahualli and warriors. But Zolin didn’t see that, or didn’t
care, or was so caught up in his own vision that it overrode that
of his own eyes. “Tomorrow,” he said to Niente, to Citlali and
Mazatl. “Tomorrow all of the city will be ours. All of it.” Niente
didn’t know if that was to be true or not, and he was too exhausted
to care.
After the last of the
fireballs had been catapulted into the city, Niente went to his own
tent. There, alone, he held the scrying bowl in his hands: afraid
to cast the spell, afraid that he would only see the same vision,
afraid of the exhaustion and pain casting the spell would cost him.
He tried to remember the faces of his wife, of his children: he
could bring them up in his mind, but that only made the longing
worse. He wondered how they were, how they’d changed, if they
missed him as he missed them.
He wondered if he
would ever know.
He put the bowl
away.
Sleep that night was
fitful and unrestful. Nightmares intruded; he saw his wife dead,
saw his children hurt and injured, saw himself fighting, fighting,
trying to run but unable to do more than walk while demons draped
in blue and gold swarmed around him. He tried to imagine his wife’s
face before him, her mouth half-open as he leaned in to kiss her .
. . and her face was blank and featureless, a mask. Unable to
escape the dreams, he eventually paced the encampment, listening to
the sounds of the warriors resting, gazing at the strange shapes of
the buildings around them. As he passed one building, he heard his
name called out. “Niente.”
He recognized the
voice. “Citlali.”
The High Warrior was
leaning against the doorway of the building. Behind him, a candle
gleamed in the darkness. “You can’t sleep?” Citlali
asked.
Niente shook his
head. “I don’t dare. Too many dreams,” he told the man.
“You?”
Citlali’s
black-swirled face creased into a smile. “Too few,” he said. “I
would like to see our home and my family again, even if in my
sleep.”
“That won’t happen
if—” Niente bit off the comment, angry at himself. If he’d been
less sleep-addled, he’d have said nothing at all.
“If Tecuhtli Zolin
has his way?” Citlali ventured. “I’ve thought the same, Nahual. You
needn’t look so distressed.” The smile widened to a grin, and he
glanced from side to side, as if looking to see that no one was
listening. “And let me answer the other question you won’t ask. No.
I won’t challenge the Tecuhtli. Look at how far he’s taken us,
Nahual—all the way across the sea to the great home of the
Easterners. That is true greatness, Nahual. Greatness. I am proud
to have been able to help him.”
“Even if it means
you’ll never see home and family again?”
His shoulders lifted.
“I am a warrior. If that’s Sakal’s will . . .” His shoulders fell
again. “I don’t need a scrying bowl, Nahual. I have no interest in
the future, only the now. It’s a beautiful evening, I am alive, and
I am seeing a place that I never thought I would see and that few
Tehuantin have ever glimpsed. How can one not take pleasure in
that?”
Niente could only
nod. He bid Citlali a good night and left the warrior to his
reverie. For his own part, he returned to his own quarters and
performed the rituals to place spells in his stave once more. Then,
entirely drained from the effort, he took to his bed and let the
nightmares wash over him again.
And the next day, the
nightmares came true.
At dawn, Tecuhtli
Zolin led them deeper into the city, and they fought street by
street toward the wide main boulevard. The battle was a mirror of
the one the day before: again, the initial push sent the weary
Nessanticans retreating backward; by the time Sakat’s eye was well
up in the sky, they had reached the boulevard, where Zolin quickly
regrouped them and began marching them south.
There, the
Nessanticans had gathered: around the market where they’d finally
stopped the Tehuantin advance yesterday, and around the bridge
leading to the island. Out in the A’Sele, Zolin had ordered the
ships to advance toward the army; the ships of the Nessanticans had
moved to stop them, and there was another battle taking place
there, one whose outcome Niente could only guess at, though many of
the warships of both sides were afire. There was no retreat
possible there anymore—there were too few ships left for them all
to return home.
“Nahual!” From his
horse, Zolin jabbed a finger toward Niente. “You will take your
nahualli with you and follow me. We have the main street, now we
must have the bridge. Citlali! To me!”
Zolin quickly placed
the warriors in position. Citlali and Zolin would attack the piers
of the bridge from the boulevard, directly into the heart of the
Nessantican forces; Mazatl would wait until the assault was
underway, then strike from the west flank through the River Market.
Several double-hands of warriors would also begin an attack to the
north immediately, pushing the other way along the ring boulevard
so that the Nessanticans could not concentrate their attention on
the bridgehead—not without possibly losing the easternmost bridge
to the great island. Zolin sent the diversionary warriors on, then
waited for the sun’s shadow to move a finger’s length before waving
his hand and leading them east and a little north to the boulevard,
where he set them into position. They could see the Nessanticans: a
wall of bristling shields across the boulevard, a scant few hundred
strides from them.
There was no black
sand and no time to make any more even if they had the raw
materials. This time, the archers began the assault with a barrage
that rained down on the shields of the Nessanticans without doing a
great deal of damage. The war-téni sent their fireballs screaming
toward them, and Niente—with the other nahualli—raised their
spell-staffs quickly. The warding spells crackled outward, a nearly
visible pulse in the air. Most of the fireballs were deflected;
they fell into the buildings to either side, setting them afire.
But there were too many of them, and not enough nahualli. The
war-spells crashed down on the assembled warriors; where that
happened, men screamed, their bodies twisted and charred. Those who
could do so fled, terribly injured from the burns of the viscous
fire. Those who could not, died. One fireball fell close enough to
Niente that he could feel the heat of it, like a smithy’s furnace
opening in front of him. The heat washed over his face, scouring
and drying. Zolin felt it also; he glanced back at the scene as his
horse reared up in fright. Zolin shouted: “Forward! Now!” He
brought his mount under control and kicked him into a gallop. The
High Warriors on their horses followed him and the infantry surged
forward as well. Niente was pulled along in the wave.
The wave crashed
against the shields painted blue and gold, and impaled itself on
their spears. In the roaring chaos, Niente saw Zolin’s horse go
down, a spear tearing deep into the creature’s chest, but Zolin
himself was lost in the press of soldiers and Niente couldn’t see
what happened to him.
There were swords and
fighting all around him, and Niente could think only of himself, of
taking out as many Nessanticans as he could. He pointed his
spell-staff, speaking the release word over and over, and lightning
crackled from the tip, hissing and bucking as it plunged into the
ranks in front of Niente. A hole opened in the shield wall as
Niente released another spell, and another—the flashes sending
dozens of men to the ground. Warriors, shrieking and howling,
plunged into the gap with swords waving. The wall began to give,
then it collapsed entirely. Niente again was pushed along with the
tide, and he saw close by the towers that marked the bridge
entrance.
To his right, there
was a cacophony of shouts: Mazatl’s warriors striking at the flank.
Horns shrilled deep in the Nessantican ranks. Niente could see a
banner waving there and a cluster of chevarittai on their horses.
Suddenly, the banner was moving away to the south over the bridge,
the chevarittai with it. He could see the realization on the faces
of the enemy soldiers in front of him. He could see the way their
swords dropped momentarily, the lines weakening visibly. Arrows no
longer rained down, the war-téni no longer cast fireballs over
Niente’s head to fall into the rear of their ranks. They were
moving steadily forward: the warriors, the nahualli, and now Niente
could see Zolin again, bloodied and injured but on his feet, his
sword cleaving the soldiers who dared to stand before him. Citlali
was alongside him, his face grim and eager.
They were on the
bridge now. It was theirs. The river moved sluggishly below them,
and bodies fell from the rails to splash into its
waters.
The Tehuantin roared.
They sang as they killed, and Niente sang with them.