And then the advance came to a sudden stop. They had reached the first of the two gaps in the causeway where the waters flowed back and forth between the lakes, beneath the heavy planks of a bridge.

Only now, the bridge had been removed. Rain continued to shower the city, and before the legion stood thirty feet of black, deep, silt-bottomed water.

Heavy clouds swirled around them, and chill winds drove stinging needles of rain into their faces. High on the slope of the mountain, in the dark of impenetrable night, Halloran fought despair, pressing on in the endless search for the Highcave.

He pulled himself up a steep slope, finding a narrow ledge. Reaching down, he helped Erixitl to climb up beside him. She gasped as the mountain rumbled beneath them, and they clung to each other for a panic-filled minute while it seemed that Zaltec tried to shake them loose from his towering volcano.

But then the tremors eased, and finally Shatil and Poshtli reached the ledge as well. Chitikas hovered in the air, swirling slowly while the exhausted humans rested.

"Zaltec's hunger grows," observed Shatil, touching the rock of the peak.

"Hunger!" Erix whirled on him, surprising the three men with her vehemence. "Must a god always feast? Must we always feed him?"

Shatil leaned back, chagrined. "I am sorry to upset you, my sister. But, yes, the gods I know require food. We can do little else but to feed them."

"What of Qotal?" she challenged. "A god who grants food, not demands it? And our ancestors drove him from Maztica for it!"

"Perhaps, if you speak the truth, he will indeed return," Shatil said quietly.

She looked at him, half angry that he wouldn't argue, but surprised at his willing aquiescence. She opened her mouth, but then decided not to speak.

"Here," whispered Chitikas Couatl, speaking from the darkness above. "Here I see the mouth of a cave."

Black water stretching before them, Cordell and Grimes turned desperately to the sides, their arms weary from the strain of constant battle. Cordell wielded his sword, Grimes his lance. Rain still drummed the city and the lakes, but they could dimly see the fleets of canoes swarming around the causeway. Behind them, the screams of their comrades told them the battle raged there as well.

The surviving legionnaires couldn't advance along the causeway, since the bridge before them had been removed and the lake to either side swarmed with Nexalan warriors in canoes. At the tail of the column, the press of warriors drove forward savagely, pinching Daggrande's rear guard into a steadily shrinking stretch of the road.

"Below – look out!" Grimes cried, stabbing downward with his blood – and rain – slicked lance.

A warrior fell back into his canoe, toppling the craft. At the same time, Cordell felt strong fingers grab his feet, and he sliced viciously downward with his sword. He was rewarded by the sharp chop of the blade through flesh and bone, though to his horror, the severed hands continued to clutch his ankles until he kicked them free.

The darkness seemed to move, so thick was the press of Nexalan attackers. Cordell stabbed and hacked, unseeing and uncaring of his victims, knowing that everyone in the canoes below them was an enemy.

More of his legionnaires pushed their way to the gaping end of the causeway, hurling themselves into the water in a desperate attempt to swim to safety. Many of these – those who had loaded themselves down with gold – sank beneath the water and disappeared. Others were hauled, screaming and struggling, into canoes, bound, and spirited back to the city, destined for the fate that had become far more fearsome to the legionnaires than death on the battlefield.

Overturned canoes and other craft wrecked during the combat clogged the water before them. Rain alternately pounded them or misted lightly. Many bodies bobbed in the lake now as both Nexalan and legionnaire fighters fell into the water, drowning in the press of chaos.

"We've got to do something!" cried Grimes as more and more of their men jumped or were dragged into the lake. Indeed, before them, the water had virtually disappeared among the mass of wreckage.

"Any ideas?" grunted the captain-general. He heard a cry of pain and a splash behind him, turning to see one of his men struggling with six Mazticans in canoes. The swordsman struggled in the water, slipping on the bodies below him, howling with terror as the natives pulled him into the canoe. With swift strokes of their paddles, three of them steered their craft away while the others turned to the causeway, after more victims.

Cordell heard more screams and the triumphant whistles of the Mazticans, and he knew that, somewhere, still another legionnaire had been dragged to a short, grim captivity.

"Murdering savages!" Bishou Domincus's bellow carried above the din, and Cordell saw the cleric struggling along the edge of the causeway, laying about with a heavy staff.

"Almighty Helm!" cried the Bishou. "Strike the heathens with your vengeance! Deliver your faithful from the jaws of death!"

But the heavens only delivered more rain, in the dull, pounding cadence that had marked the brutal tempo of the night and now, as gray dawn filtered into the valley of Nexat, counted time for the steadily growing illumination.

"Bishou!" The cleric looked up and saw Cordell standing at the lip of the causeway. With a sinking heart, he saw the dark water blocking their path.

"Helm has forsaken us!" groaned Domincus, reaching the commander. "I fear we have angered him, and he turns away from us in our hour of need!"

"Never mind!" snapped the black-bearded commander. "Do you have any magic, anything at all that can help us across this?" Cordell gestured to the strip of water, bristling with enemy canoes. Even the continuation of the causeway across the thirty-foot gap was packed with Maztican warriors who fired arrows or slung stones at the embattled legionnaires.

"No," the cleric said. "My power is exhausted now. It will take many hours of quiet meditation to restore my spells."

Cordell turned away in disgust. He didn't see a hook dart forward from one of the canoes, suddenly sweeping the Bishou from the causeway. Domincus cried out, plunging into the water, and Cordell whirled back to see many natives eagerly pulling the cleric into a canoe.

"No! Leave him, you devils!" cried Cordell, lashing toward them with his sword. The canoes paddled back, out of range, but the captain-general lunged dangerously far in his fury. Only Grimes, reaching out with a brawny hand and pulling him to safety, kept him from following the cleric into captivity.

"Praises to Zaltec!" crowed Hoxitl from his vantage atop the Great Pyramid. The high priest didn't try to suppress his burst of exultation. Though he could see nothing beyond the veil of darkness and rain that shrouded him, he knew of the great victory his warriors won on this black night. "Long live his almighty name!"

Scouts and priests brought him regular reports, and he heard of the many thousands of warriors who fearlessly hurled themselves at the strangers trapped on the causeway. He no longer feared that they would escape him. Already nearly half of the legionnaires had been delivered into his hands.

Still, he hoped to have them all by morning – to march the entire lot of them up the pyramid, offering their hearts to Zaltec in unworthy penance for the wrongs they had inflicted upon Maztica.

Though all Nexal had united and arisen to throw off the yoke of the invaders' presence, it was those men who wore the crimson brand upon their breasts who had ignited the fires of resistance. Warriors of the Viperhand, the most fanatical of attackers, displayed the greatest courage in the battle, and now led the way for their countrymen's greatest victory.