CITY OF THE GODS: FORGOTTEN (73 page)

She could tell without even looking at his aura that it was the most important thing she could do for him at this point. “If you think I should, then yes, of course.” Aavi looked down at the floor, and for a second D’Molay thought he saw her pouting. Then from afar, he heard commanders calling for all soldiers to report to their stations.

“Come on, we have to go.
 
Do you have everything you need?”

She looked around the room and picked up the small basket of fruits that they had been nibbling on. “I want these,” she decided, leaving behind their knapsack. As she walked to the door, Aavi looked at him. “Do you think there really is a place that’s always safe?”
 

“I hope so, Aavi.
 
I hope so.”

“It is of no consequence,” Quetzalcoatl said. “I knew Chaac would eventually be tricked one way or another.”

Yolotli stirred the flat stone basin into which Quetzalcoatl gazed, erasing the scene of Mazu escaping from the remote temple. The priest breathed a sigh of relief that his lord was not angered by the event. Perhaps Quetzalcoatl had planned to release her and her initiative had saved him the trouble. The magical vessel of blood boiled for a moment then stilled as it chose a new event to display.

Quetzalcoatl grunted with approval as the basin presented the conflict between his army and the Greeks. The Mayans, with their clubs, spears and nets, were at a great disadvantage. However, they were not attacking to gain the field. They were seeking captives. Like predators cutting prey from a herd, small decentralized groups of feathered warriors harried the edges of phalanxes to pick off men. One raft was already fully loaded with prisoners and the warriors needed to guard them on the journey back.

“Show me another,” Quetzalcoatl said. Yolotli disturbed the liquid with a reed and the scene shifted. Although the priest could make out nothing but rippling blood, Quetzalcoatl freely told him what he saw. This time however, Quetzalcoatl frowned. “Lamasthu’s beasts should mind their step,” he said. The twisted things were lumbering toward the fortress, causing his Mayans to scatter and break off from the Greeks. However, the approach of Lamasthu’s creatures did turn Ares’ attention from the raft that was attempting to lift off. The missiles stopped peppering it and turned toward the greater threat posed by Lamasthu. Quetzalcoatl smiled broadly as he saw another development. “The first raft is up, and the Egyptians are mounting a new assault.”

Yolotli watched his god stare into the basin as some of the blood dripped slowly from his reed. Word had come to them through Topiltzin that the Council seemed unaware of the carnage in Olympia. He should not have been surprised that Quetzalcoatl had chosen a perfect time to strike. The universe spoke to his god, told him all things.

It never occurred to Yolotli that some of those things might be lies.

*
       
*
       
*

Dawn brought relief to the Archers guarding the Greek ramparts, but the assault on other fronts was just beginning. Herikos and his men waited tensely as their batteries of catapults and ballistae gave a warm greeting to horrible creatures none of them had ever seen before. Whispers passed down the line named them as the children of a foreign goddess called Lamasthu. Herikos wondered what she could have mated with to spawn such things.

“It’s not stopping them,” Dolates muttered. He stood close to Herikos at the front of their column. The squad was in position to carry out their mission and had been commanded to do nothing until the enemy came to them. Herikos and Dolates watched as the monsters were struck by a rain of fireballs and flaming arrows, some the size of boulders and small tree trunks, flung from Ares’ war machines. The missiles either passed right through them or were extinguished with loud squelches in their innards, which seemed to have few critical organs or structures to harm.

 
        
“I can’t believe I’m disappointed we’re not facing the Egyptians,” Herikos said ruefully to Dolates. He’d give his left sandal to be fighting charioteers, even if they were mummies, instead of the swarm of monsters bearing down on them. The first of the creatures scrambled through the gap where a gate once stood, battering the edge of the wall to rubble. Herikos reminded his men one last time what they were to do. “Shields ready! Remember, just draw them inside!”

The Greeks packed their ranks tightly and braced themselves to be pushed backward. But the push did not come. After a few seconds, Herikos allowed his gaze to shift from directly ahead of him to get a wider view of the battle. The beasts had turned and were attacking forces that had swept in on them from behind.

“Those Egyptians you wanted are here,” Dolates said. Ten crocodilian units, some of them Set’s gold-headed elites, tore into the monsters with their enchanted axes. The carvings on the blades glowed redder with each successful strike, the weapons growing more powerful when wetted with an enemy’s blood. The monsters had no loyalty to one another, and most retreated to escape the fate of the others. The crocodilians were now free to advance toward the missing gate and into Ares’ trap.

“Again, ready yourselves!” Herikos ordered, and the squad hunkered down behind their shields. The crocodilians quickly reformed into a united front and charged toward them. The first of them hammered into the Greek’s shields. Herikos’ line flexed, but held.

Dolates wrenched his shield free from a crocodilian’s axe point, staggering back into the soldier behind him. He quickly moved back into position, even as Herikos was crying
Hold! Form up!
and making sure he and the others driven out of line did so. The assault of Set’s elite foot soldiers was brutal. The Greeks were driven steadily toward the opening that led into the fortress. It was fortunate that giving way was the plan, for they stood no chance of stopping the assault.

To Dolates’ right, four or five men suddenly tumbled out of line as two impatient crocodilians leapt over the shields. These two monsters were quickly surrounded and killed by the Greeks, but their sacrifice pulled the soldiers’ attention away from maintaining the blockade. To exploit this weak point, Set’s reptile-headed troops surged forward. Herikos quickly realized the effectiveness of their strategy with a curse. He’d lose too many of his men if all the enemy began leaping over the front shields. It was time to take this battle to the reinforcements hiding inside.

“Fall back!” he yelled, “To the pits, fast run!”

Herikos began a loud shout, and the retreating Greek joined their voices with his to alert their comrades inside that the fight was coming their way. Herikos found himself running neck and neck with Dolates near the very back of the pack, yelling at the top of his lungs and praying to Ares not to be seized from behind by a hungry Egyptian horror. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dolates duck to avoid a blade. Somehow Herikos found more speed than he thought his legs possessed. They both made it into the fort running like rabbits before hounds. There was no time to take stock of what surprises Ares had laying in wait, but in the dim interior of the fortress Herikos caught glimpses of heavily armored men, poised archers, and explosive fire traps. The Greeks, hurrying somewhat blindly as their eyes tried to adjust from bright daylight to dungeon night, lost a bit of speed as the corridor narrowed. Shields pushed against backs as the men continued their desperate flight. Behind them, the sound of arrows loosed from bows and the snarls from wounded crocodilians that followed eased some of their panic. They had done their job of leading the enemy into the trap and could now withdraw from the battle.

Herikos pushed ahead, threading his way through the moving line of men, slapping shoulders encouragingly and taking a quick head count. Those at the front of the line had reached the trapdoor to the pits. The opening led to a landing nearly a man’s height below their current level. The Greeks were moving slowly, taking care not to hurt themselves in the drop and passing shields and weapons down to one another. Herikos frowned, not liking the leisurely pace. He looked around, hoping to find a ladder, a ramp, or even a rope to speed things up, but there was nothing at hand. He’d just have to trust in the ability of the other units to keep the Egyptians busy. After watching a few more men make a slow descent, he couldn’t bear the wait. Stepping into line, he threw his weapons down ahead of him and jumped, rolling skillfully to a safe landing in a fraction of the time it was taking others to make the trip.

“That’s how it’s done,” he heard Dolates say encouragingly to those still above. Herikos grabbed his gear and moved on to where the first men to jump had fallen out of formation to rest in a group strung out along the tunnel. He rousted two of them from where they leaned against the wall. “Take those torches down. I know there’s a way to the armory. Find it.”

The soldiers wearily obeyed him and disappeared around a bend in the passage. Herikos made a quick check of the rest of his squad as Dolates and the last of the others dropped down to his level. Above them, they could hear the clash of the armies continuing. Splatters of blood rained down upon him as he returned to help Dolates haul on a chain connected to the underside of the trapdoor. The door fell shut.

“Lock it down,” Herikos said, spotting a padlock fixture on the floor. “We don’t want anything coming at our backs.” Dolates tugged the chain into place and clamped the hasp of the padlock shut. There was a collective sigh of relief now that there was a sturdy barrier between the Greeks and the enemy.

The sound of running footfalls came from the opposite end of the passage. “Sir, we’ve found the way,” reported one of the men he’d sent to scout.

“Good. Up everyone, up! There’s no glory in this rat hole, no wine and too much stink. Let’s be on our way,” Herikos encouraged. The weary soldiers pushed on, the promise of drink and cool, fresh air proving to be a great motivator.

“Did you see any monsters?” The scout looked back over his shoulder to answer Dolates behind him, who was curious about what lurked in the pits.

“Just the beast. We have to pass it to get to the armory. Lucky for us it’s in Ares’ strongest cell.” Suddenly the entire passage shook. A rain of loose soil and rock fell upon the men, and a deafening high-pitched screech with an underlying low trumpeting echoed through the darkness. The infernal noise repeated, this time followed by an earthquake which sent the men tumbling. A wall went down and a fissure broke across the floor ahead of them. A fount of water burst up from that crack, extinguishing most of the wall torches. When the shaking stopped, Dolates scrambled to his knees to peer across the cleft. Down the passage, he could see the beast, still imprisoned, pacing back and forth angrily behind the bars of its cell.

“Can anyone see what’s happening?” Herikos roared over inexplicable howl and the splashing water. As the Greeks helped each other up the answer to his question was revealed. The cleft broke wider as a netherbeast of Lamasthu succeeded in breaking into the pits from an underground feeder of the nearby river.

The first the Greeks saw of it was the several pairs of shelled legs which gained purchase on the edge of the crevasse to lever the rest of it through. Those flexible, determined appendages glowed a deceptively gentle pink color. What they were attached to was anything but tame. The body of the netherbeast was armored with a thick red shell which protected something that was mostly mouth and gnashing teeth. An under shell sandwiched it together, a skirt of frilled swimming fins flapping between the top and bottom sections to aid its movement in the rising water. It lumbered down the corridor on angled, spiny legs toward the beast and threw itself at the bars of its cell, biting and pulling, testing whether it could break in. Even if the men could have crossed the churning chasm, the corridor was effectively blocked. There was nowhere they could go but back the way they came.

The Greeks jogged back down the corridor, feet splashing through almost a foot of rising water. Dolates suddenly grabbed Herikos’s shoulder. “The lock! How are we going to get the lock open so we can open the trap door?” Most of the color drained from Herikos’s face as he realized what he had thought would keep them safe was instead going to ensure that they drowned.

“We’ll have to break it!” he cried.

Herikos and Dolates shoved their way past the men in front of them. Dolates shouted for someone to bring a torch as they rushed to the chain and felt their way down it to the padlock. Herikos began to hammer it with the butt of his sword. The other men suddenly realized what had gone wrong. A hum of panicked words rose along with the river.

“Does anyone have a stronger weapon?” Dolates called out. “A hammer, a wedge?” Even as the words left his lips, he knew they were for naught. Those were not the weapons of fighting Greeks. Herikos continued to pound relentlessly on the padlock. He looked up toward the trap door. Perhaps they could strike through the wood with their swords once the water floated them upward, but it would be almost impossible to apply much force with nothing to brace against. After all he’d been through in his service to Ares, he couldn’t believe he was going to die like this, failing in his first command, rather than dying honorably in battle.