Merlin's Godson by H. Warner Munn

Author:H. Warner Munn [Munn, H. Warner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780345304995
Amazon: 0345304993
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 1981-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

straight line from the north to the south walls is less than one mile.

There are five main gateways, and sixty-eight other gaps in this long wall, each opening being about ten feet wide, and each being protected by a blockhouse reaching out beyond the wall. From these bastions, defenders could enfilade the outside of the ramparts.

Along the top of the wall ran a sharpened palisade, also with openings for defense, supplied with small wickets, easily closed and easily defended.

At many spots where the declivity beyond was quite inaccessible, a little platform was either built out or cut into the wall itself. These were sentinel stands and were always occupied, except when under direct fire, thus rendering any surprise attack almost impossible.

In the North Fort was the military camp, which we must attack from the plain, for the Middle Fort and the South Fort were well protected by deep gullies whose walls were steep and composed of crumbling earth. Trapped in these, we must inevitably perish, even though above us lay only the families of the warriors.

In the military camp, our first interest, our spies estimated at least forty thousand men awaited us; fully armed, very active, was the report, and constantly drilling.

Possibly twenty thousand more occupied the other connected forts and manned the walls and blockhouses, while in the South Fort, well protected from us, their families dwelt.

Here then was the last stand of the Mias. Numbering, in all, possibly 150,000 people, they had gathered with all their household goods and implements of war in this, their citadel. They had built it for a home at their first coming into Tlapallan.

Laboriously, their ancestors and their slaves had borne on their backs the baskets of earth, containing from a peck to a half-bushel, that in the end had created these formidable ramparts. Here they had found a home and from behind those walls they had expanded and grown into a nation.

Now, back they had come, reaping the fruits of their cruelty, to find all their world in arms against them, and once again, so great were their losses, they found the sheltering walls of Miapan broad enough to enclose the entire Mian nation.

“Conquer Miapan,” said the spies, “and you have the whole of Tlapallan!”

So we lay hi Colhuacan three weeks and a little more, and every day brought recruits. By twos and threes and scores they came flocking in—savage moormen, wifeless, childless, ragged, fierce and destitute. They never smiled or laughed, and spent most of their time sitting alone, sharpening their knives or hatchets, or learning the trick of archery. Scarred and maimed Tlapallico slaves, slinking hi like cowed dogs. They cringed when spoken to sharply, but there was a fierce, furtive look hi then: eyes, like the yellow glare hi the orbs of a tree-cat.

They brought their own war-paint. It was always black.

“Have you no gayer colors in your medicine-bag?” I asked one group.

One oldster, savagely marked with running weals which* would never quite heal, looked up and said grimly:

“We

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