Brasyl

“The men; mother of worlds, the men!” Waitacá cried. The capsized Guabirú tried to strike for the shore, for the upturned canoes, for the disintegrating dam itself, but the torrent was too strong. Their cries joined with the crash of rending timbers and the roar of water as they were swept under and sent spi

Qui

Canoes had been beached on this earthen ramp, run up above the floodline, light pirogues.

“Waitacá, would it be possible to make headway against the flood?”

Waitacá studied the river, the flow changing with every second as Father Gonçalves’s dam was scoured away.

“It could be done through the varzea, with caution.”

“I have need of speed.”

“It could be done with both of those.”

“Very good, then. Waitacá, I have need of your help at the paddle. I still have an admonishment to visit upon Father Diego Gonçalves.”

Soldiers’ boots, the bare feet of indios splashed into the water as the canoes ran through the flooded stake-lines onto the shore. Archers threw away their bows, took their knives in their hands to grapple hand to hand with the attackers. The hillside was a landslide of yelling, whooping indio bodies part ru

The two lines met with a shock that quailed Hope of the Saints Hill to its roots. Falcon found himself sword to bayonet with a charging Portuguese infantryman. He sidestepped and cut the man’s legs from under him. Caixa finished the work with her spear. Falcon threw her the bladed musket, took the man’s sword for himself. As he tested its weight and mettle, a Guabirú spearman lunged out of nowhere: Caixa caught him full on her bayonet, twisted the musket. The man gave a terrible wailing shriek and slid from her blade. She nodded in approval.

Two-bladed, Falcon did a demon’s work along the front line, cutting halfway to the enemy’s battle standard of a naked woman entwined in green, but for every man who fell three sprang up and more canoes packed in behind those run onto the shore, indio conscripts in half-uniform — a jacket, breeches, sometimes only a tricorn hat — ru

Zemba led the nation like some relentless forest legend; the cross of Our Lady of All Worlds surged across the battlefront, a daring drive here, a feint and full-blooded attack there. But Out Lady of the Flood Forest commanded the waters, and the attackers were a red tide. The City of God drove the City of Marvels back across the first and second trenches. Beyond all thought, all reason, all language, Dr. Robert Falcon worked wrath and slaughter with his twin blades, and it was good. It was very good. He knew Luis Qui

Feathers waving upon the bloody hillside. Blood and buff and a shining sword.

“Araujo!” Falcon called through the clatter of war. “Now you shall have your contest.”

The colonial officer ran to meet him as Falcon threw down his second, looted sword. Abruptly Araujo pulled up, whipped a pistol out of his sash of office. And Caixa was there between Falcon and the ball. A discharge, a gust of smoke, and Caixa went tumbling headlong. French, Portuguese, lingua geral, Iguapá — Falcon’s shouts were incoherent. Caixa rose unsteadily to her feet, then gri

“Kill him, husband!”

Araujo flung the useless pistol at Falcon, who deftly sidestepped. Falcon spread his hand in invitation, then dropped into the stance. Araujo saluted and returned the attitude. A new round of mortar fire howled down onto the hilltop, but nothing remained there but shattered flesh and wood. Falcon feinted, then attacked. Araujo, for all his European airs, was no practitioner of the Art of Defense. In five moves Falcon had sent his blade whirling away across the red earth and the Portuguese captain found a sword-point at his chest.

“Senhor, as a fidalgo to a fidalgo, I cast myself on your mercy.”

“Senhor, alas, I am no fidalgo,” Falcon said, and ran him cleanly through in one lunge.

A tumult from downslope; Falcon glanced up from cleaning his sword on Araujo’s coat to see the great cross of Nossa Senhora de Todos os Mundos teetering madly in the center of a ring of Portuguese indio-conscripts. Zemba leaped and whirled, his spear and hide shield dashing and darting. Men fell, men reeled away bloody and ripped, but every moment more piled in. Falcon ran, sword ready. He could feel Caixa at his back, her wounded hand bound in Araujo’s neckcloth, her spear held underhand to stab up into an enemy’s bowels. Terrible, wondrous woman. The cross wavered, the cross went down, then Zemba snatched it up again, clutched against the back of his tattered shield.

Falcon threw himself into the circle of soldiers, cut and cut again. Zemba gave a cry, arched backward, and went down on his knees in the water, blood gouting from his severed hamstrings. His face wore a look of immeasurable sadness and wonder.

“Get them out of here, lead them, we are done for here,” he gasped, and flung the cross on its pole like a javelin. Ribbon and streamers fluttered in the train of the Lady of All Worlds; then Caixa’s bloody hand reached up and caught it.

Zemba smiled, eyes wet with tears. An auxiliary in a tanga and infantryman’s jacket stabbed with his spear. The blade point burst from Zemba’s throat and he fell forward into the flood, still smiling.

A pillar of smoke and fire stood over Cidade Maravilhosa, a sign for leagues up and down the Rio do Ouro. Again the great guns of the Nossa Senhora da Varzea fired. Qui