The Alpha Ch. 02

My second was to pick up a macahuitl and join the fray.

:..:

The starving, smallpox-infected and weary Aztec troops fought like men possessed. They threw themselves at men with more advanced arms and armor without a trace of fear or hesitation, knowing their very civilization was on the line. They knew that they were on the verge of losing not just their families and friends but even their gods. Blood, sparks and chips of obsidian flew through the air as the more skilled Aztec warriors struggled to bring down their armored opponents while avoiding their wicked steel weaponry. Slowly but surely the conquistadors that had managed to penetrate our lines were cut down or pushed back.

And not a moment too soon.

Cortes' flagship had managed to approach within one hundred meters before the pile of canoes brought it to a halt. The Spanish rodeleros, armed with side-swords and bucklers, disembarked from the large brigantine while the crossbowmen and arquebusiers began to fire their respective weapons from her deck. Cortes himself jumped over the ship's rail to land on a vacant canoe before nimbly leaping from boat to boat towards the causeway, leading the eighty-plus conquistadors under his personal command to follow him straight towards me.

I gathered the last reserve group, a unit of Eagle warriors that were more thoroughly educated on how to fight against the armor and weapons of the Spaniards, around me along with a small group of the best slingers and another of men armed with giant maces outfitted with star-shaped heads of heavy stone (the type used by the Incas far to the south). The star-shaped spear, as it was called, was really just a large stone star transfixed through it's center by a wooden spear-shaft at least as long as a man was tall. All of the weapon's weight and the user's power was concentrated into whichever point of the star struck the target first. It was even effective against steel plate; the armor didn't need to be penetrated as the force of the blow would pass through to inflict blunt-force trauma on the flesh and bone beneath.

We positioned ourselves about one hundred yards from the gate on the city's end of the causeway, facing outward from the walls of the city, instead of trying to hold them at the edge of the causeway. The men in the shield wall had orders to retreat in the opposite direction once the Spanish had broken through in order to trap them between my force and theirs. As I suspected, it didn't take long for the heavily armed and armored conquistadors to cut their way through the shield wall. Unlike the natives, the solid shield wall used with phalanx tactics was nothing new to them and they knew how to effectively counter it.

As soon as the invaders were in amongst my men they broke into a fighting retreat towards the land end of the causeway. Cortes professionally prevented his men from pursuing mine in order to prevent the small Spanish force from getting too spread out and becoming vulnerable. The forty or so remaining arquebusiers and crossbowmen disembarked from the brigantine and a few smaller craft to form up on the causeway with the eighty-plus rodeleros that faced us. These men formed up in a line back-to-back with the sword-and-buckler men, facing away from my group to the land side of the causeway where the other Aztec group of three hundred or so bedraggled men panted in thirst and exhaustion or shook with malnutrition. It appeared Cortes was going to try to keep the other group back with his ranged weapons while he concentrated all of his rodeleros on my group. It made sense. After all, it wouldn't be long until his cavalrymen finished their ride around the lake to the entrances of the causeways. When they did, they would be in perfect position to ride those isolated men down from behind.

"Melee!" I called out as the spsnisrds opened fire on the other group and the sword and buckler bearing rodeleros advanced on mine.

The Eagle Warriors behind me spread out in preparation of close combat while I fought the urge to shift and tried to channel the pull of the full moon into useful energy. No matter what I did, I would be forced to fight with a portion of my concentration diverted to keep me mostly in my human form. I knew that if I gave in and shifted I would run the risk of being exposed as something less than a god, as most of the people knew of and believed in Werebeasts while others might think me a demon come to deceive them. I was trained in fencing and kendo and trained all of my life in various disciplines useful to a fighter of any type-but I was not a veteran warrior of any stripe. Thus far I had been able to rely on my subconscious, instincts and martial arts training to control and utilize my Werewolf powers. I had never heard of a werewolf who had powers that connected them to animals, other than wolves, or who could turn werewolves into hellhounds with his bite- but since I had never heard of anything else that could do so either, I was forced to accept the conclusion that I was just werewolf with some extra power. I figured my divine parentage probably had something to do with it. Even if a demigod had to ascend in order to make use of their power, surely their could be tangible powers before that?

Hercules was far stronger than any mortal long before he ever ascended to Olympus. From birth, in fact.

'Your timing sucks," I said mentally to my inner beast.

At my signal the Eagle Warriors kneeled, as did I, so that the slingers in the rear could unleash a hellishly concentrated storm of slingstones into the charging conquistadors. I decided to let the spaniards run the hundred-plus meters separating us in full armor in order to wind them before the first blow is swung. In order to prevent them from gaining an advantage in momentum and smashing into my lightly armored men, I initiated the last trick I had in place on the causeway. Six vats of slick oil were brought forward by men who quickly used wooden poles to dump them twenty yards forward of our front line.

Most of the spaniards had their faces covered by their small shields and those who didn't were much more preoccupied with noticing the ravens circling above in dense masses, whose onyx bodies would invisible in the dark if not for the silvery light of full moon. It's beautiful glow was finally beginning to break through as Luna emerged from behind the broken clouds that had thus far concealed most of her beauty. When the invaders hit the oil slicked stone all dozen of the men in the first row went down along with half of the second, landing in a loud clatter of steel and tripping up others that followed. The slingers opened up again as we ducked to a knee and tossed out several torches, stones and hollow clay shot filled with scalding hot sand whizzed over the flickering flames that engulfed twenty men who had fallen. The fire also formed a barrier to prevent them from progressing any further without risk of burns, though their armor would protect parts of their body as long as the oil didn't get in between the plates or on the clothes.

A few more men fell to the slingers before Cortes growled angrily at his men to advance through the dying flames. As soon as half of his men had crossed and many were still in the process of doing so, I charged. I had to give it to Cortes, he was no coward. He was also a veteran soldier with fencing skills that were probably superior to my own. That didn't intimidate me though.

After all, I had no intention of fencing with him.

I took a tepoztopilli spear in my hand and steeled myself to end more human lives. Even if they deserved it in my eyes, I had never killed anything more human than a grizzly bear before tonight and I knew I was crossing a boundary that there was no return from.

War is the failure of peace. And it was not you who failed. Do not shed tears for those about to fall to your swift hand. If you do not, they will kill your men and do unspeakable things to Jennifer, Will, Courtney and Dante if they manage to capture them.

'That's not going to happen!' I thought in response.

When the front of the Spanish group was 10 yards away, I hurled my spear straight at Cortes himself and then charged, my Aztecs close behind. The tepoztopilli blurred across the short distance to strike my target's breastplate over the sternum. The spear struck with such speed and force that it punched right through Cortes' armored torso and jerked him back into the men behind him, knocking over three charging conquistadors and entangling four more. The others around them stop to gape at the impossible throw, fouling the charge down the relatively narrow causeway.

'Now'

Immediately upon my mental order, the water to either side of the causeway bubbled for rely for a split second before a huge flaming wolf burst through the surface. The conquistadors cried out in alarm and the few enemy Mexica who directly witnessed Jen and Courtney's appearance in the chaos of battle simply froze-as if doing so would somehow allow them to go unnoticed. Both of my girls came down amidst the invaders, crushing several under the landing of their lupine deer before turning and tearing into those nearby with claw and fang. Like mine, their wolf forms had the agility, balance and flexibility of lions or tigers despite possessing the body much like a Dire Wolf with longer legs. This meant that they were not restricted to the typical attacking methods employed by grey wolves or other canids.

As they slashed with claw and eviscerated with fang, my Aztec troops met the staggered conquistadors at the front with the ferocity of the Furies themselves. It was then that I again felt my consciousness move beyond the confines of my own mind seemingly of it's own will. Again I became aware of all the animal life in the vicinity, which seemed to have increased significantly. I finally decided to confirm my theory about my own connection with animals, or at least certain species. If it didn't work out how I anticipated, I knew I was going to probably be boned since I had accounted for it in my hasty battle plans.

Closing my eyes, I concentrated on enveloping the smallest of those electrical impulses in the darkness. I soon felt comfortable but instead of pushing my envelop many out further, I decided to do a test. I imagined all of those tiny sparks compressing together and when they immediately responded, I tried other manipulations which they also responded to. When I opened my eyes the electric signatures didn't go away but simply became overlaid with my standard vision. When I allowed my eyes to shift into the thermal spectrum, I saw that each electrical signature was overlaid by a heat signature. That meant that I could somehow visually perceive electricity in addition to my abilities as an Alpha that allowed me to see in multiple spectrums, principally infrared.

It seemed I was starting to acquire numerous new abilities in an unknown manner. Unable to investigate further, I again set to enveloping the tiny electrical signatures of what turned out to be mosquitos. This time it was even easier to manipulate them and I watched as they all compressed into a highly dense swarm. I pushed my right hand towards the Spaniards who were firing crossbows and arquebuses at the other group of Aztecs on the other end of the causeway, preventing the warriors from coming to our aid while inflicting steady casualties on them. The thick, hardened cotton armor provided decent protection to those who were hit due to the distance being more than one hundred meters.

As the Spanish ranged troops discharged their weapons at mine, a dark ball that appeared nearly solid and was composed entirely of loudly buzzing mosquitos slammed into the right flank of the firing line. Drops of blood splattered the ground as countless little bloodsuckers rapidly engorged themselves before purging the contents of their stomachs and repeating the process over and over. Anyone who was enveloped by the dark ball was left pale and completely exsanguinated in just a manner of seconds. With my test proving a rousing success, I initiated the plan that I had come up with in the palace zoo.

Within a minute, huge American Crocodiles and Black Caiman that I had released from captivity burst up out of the water to pull my enemies beneath in their crushing jaws. The Spanish were reduced to pure panic, madly seeking escape only to be cut down by my warriors, crushed between the jaws of a giant saurian or drained of their blood by thousands of mosquitos covering every inch of available flesh. Many of the Texcoco warriors, those who were close enough to see what was happening in the midst of the chaotic night battle, attempted to flee back over the swaying canoes only to be carried forward by the momentum of the men behind them who, oblivious to the inevitable death ahead, continued pushing forward towards the causeway. There were still at least three thousand of Texcoco's warriors loaded into the hundreds of canoes still waiting to unleash their passengers and crews onto my weary fighters. These men had not been infected by the fear of witnessing a Hellhound tear a comrade in half or nature itself seemingly turn against them. The conquistadors and their allied Mexica on the causeway were dead or captured with the exception of a few small pockets that were currently being overcome by my Aztecs, however I did not have the manpower remaining to overcome that many fresh enemies and I had used up all my tricks.

Then I realized that the night sky was full of large ravens.

Remembering a scene from a Dracula movie that I had seen, I reached out with my mind to embrace the thousands of corvids that filled the skies over our heads. It is impossible to explain the sensation of being connected to that many beings but the closest I could come would be to say that it felt like my brain had grown connections to thousands of additional little fingers. I could feel hundreds of thousands of human eyes on me from the city while Jennifer and Courtney trotted over to me and shifted back to their human forms while my warriors began binding captured warriors to long poles with lengths of agave rope. I closed my eyes and raised my spread arms as I pictured the birds funneling themselves into an immense swirling spiral that reached higher and higher up into the night sky. Once it reached a few thousand feet above ground level, I abruptly brought my hands together and down, clenching my fingers into fists.

The response was immediate.

"Oh my god..." Courtney gasped in awe.

Thousands of ravens dove downwards towards the lake below, gaining as much speed as possible as the enormous body of large black birds compressed together into a single, giant cylinder that had to be more than a hundred meters across. They pressed together so tightly that the mass became nearly solid, several tons of bird flesh packed together into an enormous pIllar that fell towards the lake at top speed. The sound on impact could only be described as a deafening thunderclap as feathers and gore exploded out from the impact sight and the smell of blood instantly filled the entire area. A huge wave radiated outwards over the surface of the lake in an expanding ring that capsized dozens of canoes and washed many overboard. The manned crafts that had occupied the impact sight just an instant before were now floating splinters and human jelly.

As a thick mist of blood hung over the water and clouds of black plumage slowly floated down to the surface, an eerie silence fell over the formerly chaotic lake. A moment later the quiet was shattered by cheers and yells from inside the city as news of the broken enemy spread from those citizens who had been watching from the rooftops of Tenochtitlan. Jen and Courtney trotted up to me, flames no longer being produced by their bodies, and shifted back into their human forms.

"Cool..." Courtney mused in awe as she looked at her now human body.

"What was that?" Jen asked.

"My bite changed all of you in to Hellhounds..." I gasped, trying to recover from the massive exertion of controlling so many primitively animal minds. "Don't know how..."

"How did you do that, with the birds?" Courtney asked, though Jen too looked eager for an answer.

"I don't know. I just felt like I could. When I was in the palace zoo releasing the crocs and caiman, I felt a weird connection to some of the animals... I just followed my instinct."

"You should do that more often," Courtney quipped.

"If you didn't know you could control them, how did you know they would attack when you decided to release them?" Jen asked.

"I just expected them to be drawn to the blood and commotion... I thought our men would be mostly safe on the causeway but the warriors from Texcoco and many of the Spanish were packed tightly into canoes and the spaniards' heavy armor would've pulled them under if they were knocked into the water," I explained. "I also thought it might hurt their morale to see huge man-eating crocodiles swimming around them and tearing into their comrades."

"It worked," Courtney smirked.

I had opened a link to the minds of Will and Dante so they could be privy to the conversation as they made their way over from their respective causeways, having met with success against the smaller forces sent against them. They whooped and hollered as the ran up to us and embraced. Will wrapped his arms around me in a gruff bear hug and called out, "we actually did it! We really beat the fuckers!"

"It was beautiful, worked out just how you said it would." Dante added.

"Almost," I said in a sobering voice. "Cortes' cavalry never showed up. It doesn't make sense. They could've turned the tide against us."

"Maybe the ran away when they saw what was happening?" Courtney ventured.

"They wouldn't have been able to tell what was going on in the dark without getting close enough for our pickets to see them. It's a full moon so the sentries would have detected them long before then. We need to find out where they are and deal with them. This victory has to be absolute."

"What do you mean?" Dante asked.

"It was only the total desperation of these people that allowed me to take command of the Aztecs so easily. Under normal circumstances, the word of two High Priestesses alone wouldn't be enough to enthrone a stranger. Even two like Xochitl and Izel, who were selected by the gods themselves." I explained. "The Aztecs cannot doubt for a minute that I'm the true born son of this Quetzalcoatl guy and that I can defeat the Spanish."

"Are you?" Will asked.

"What?"

"The son of this winged serpent god?"

"I... I don't know, to be honest. I know very little about my father..." I replied, emotionally conflicted.

"I'm sorry. I ju..."

"It's fine, Will." I reassured him.

Just then, an Aztec captain came running up to me. The man kneeled and then gasped, "there is something you must see, my lord. It is about a mile down the main road..."

"What is it?"

"We found the Spanish men who ride beasts into battle."

:..:

We came upon the Spanish cavalry less than a mile down the main road. Every man and horse was dead. More than that, they were literally torn apart.

The first thing I noticed was the scent: Lycan, human and something else that I couldn't quite identify. I mentally ordered Will and Dante to secure the immediate area, though my multi spectral eyesight didn't pick up anything in the woods nearby. As they shifted and took off, I approached to inspect the bodies. The group of warriors accompanying me spread out to form a cordon.

I quickly realized that many of the bodies weren't Spanish, or even human at all. The naked bodies of Lycan, reverted to human form in death, were piled over the corpses of the armored cavalrymen along with several pale men in dark European style clothing. It was these black clad individuals who gave off the scent I hadn't been able to initially identify. I kneeled down to have a closer look.