Feathered Dragon mt-3

by Douglas Niles

  Cordell crashed into the door with the full force of his charge and felt it spring inward. He bowled over the guard

  just beyond and trampled past another who tried to stand against him in the hallway.

  The stairway led upward before him, and Cordell charged up the steps. He crashed through the door to the sleeping chamber just in time to see a silken-gowned figure spring through the window.

  Cordell raced across the room, looking below in frustration as Don Vaez sprinted away from the house. By now the entire garrison was alarmed, and a hundred men gathered around their commander.

  Chical entered the room, where Cordell still stared out the window, bitter defeat burning in his gut.

  “We are all in the house,” reported the Eagle Knight, “but it would appear that they have us trapped.”

  “Surrender, Cordell!” cried Don Vaez. Triumph filled his voice. “Give yourself up and things may go easier with you!”

  “1 will not deliver my sword to a scoundrel!” Cordell shouted back, placing all the strength of his will into his voice. “A scoundrel and pirate! Why do you hold my men, the garrison of this fort, in chains? Surely they offered you no threat.”

  “ You are the renegade!” taunted Don Vaez. “You planned to keep the riches of Maztica for yourself!”

  “You’re mad!”

  “Give up. and you shall have ample opportunity to testify at your trial. Defy me, and you shall certainly die!”

  Cordell leaned backward with a groan. He looked at Chical, sensing rather than seeing the ranks of crossbows and harquebuses leveled at the house from the outside.

  “You’d better think about escape,” he said grimly. “No sense in your warriors getting caught in the snare that’s wrapping around me.”

  Chical looked at the encircling forces. He knew that he and his eagles could take wing and escape Don Vaez’s trap. Yet what would they do then? The Beasts of the Viperhand marched steadily closer, and their options for resistance steadily shrank.

  Abruptly they saw a form fly toward their window. A metal-helmed figure sat upon a small flying carpet, and as he approached, they saw that he wore the silver gauntlets that displayed the all-seeing eye of Helm. The cleric hovered on his carpet out of arrow range, yet able to see in the high window. He needed only the command of Don Vaez to soar inside and cast a spell against the intruders.

  “Cordell is in there!” Kardann shouted, his voice rising several tones in his excitement.

  Cordell heard Kardann’s unmistakable squeal. He saw the little man burst from the shelter of his hiding place, pointing wildly up toward the window. The assessor ran over to Don Vaez and, panting, blurted out his explanation.

  “I tried to stop them. I raised the alarm so that you’d see them! Now you have him, and he’s the one who knows where the gold of Ulatos is hidden!”

  The last phrase got Don Vaez’s attention. Meanwhile, the cleric hovered outside the window, speaking firmly. “You will surrender now or my captain will have the house torched. Surely you do not wish to perish thus, in the flames?”

  Cordell whirled to pace rapidly back and forth in the small room. Finally he cursed, then nodded. “I have no choice,” he said to Chical. “But please, get your warriors and prepare to fly.”

  He turned back to the window. “Very well,” the captain-general called down. “We’re coming out.”

  Leading his men down the stairs, he waited as Chical gathered his warriors at the house’s upper windows. When he judged that they must be ready, he opened the door and stepped outside.

  A smirking Don Vaez advanced to greet him. “Your sword, sir!” demanded the pompous adventurer, extending his hand expectantly.

  Barely suppressing his rage, Cordell ungirded his blade. He handed the weapon, hilt first, to his rival.

  “What’s that?” demanded one of the men-at-arms, pointing skyward.

  “Treachery!” snarled Don Vaez, cuffing the unarmed Cordell with the hilt of his own sword. “What is the meaning of ‘his?” He gestured at the sky.

  Great birds lunged from the windows of the house, winging upward and swiftly disappearing into the night sky. “Shoot them! Stop them!” cried the captain.

  Archers launched their missiles into the air. Several harquebusiers raised their weapons as the birds vanished into darkness. A sound like the explosion of thunder crashed through the fortress as the loud, smoky weapons hurled their iron balls after the fleeing eagles.

  One of the creatures squawked loudly and suddenly came back into view. It fluttered desperately on one wing, but it couldn’t fly. In another moment, it crashed to the ground before Don Vaez.

  From the chronicles of Coton:

  Amid the suddenly darkened paths, we make our way toward a destiny that has grown terribly obscure.

  Erixitl’s affliction is no natural malady, of this I am certain. All of the blessings of pluma worked by her father and all of the clerical arts worked by me prove to be of no avail.

  The source of the darkness, I know, is hishna, though in a strange and unfamiliar form. I sense the power of talonmagic assailing her, yet it is a more potent attack than any I have previously encountered. A great and black power has seized her, and so she resists all of our attempts to draw her back to the world of the living.

  Instead, she slumbers as one who is dead, and if she dies, our hopes perish with her.

  18

  CAPTIVE ARMIES

  Gloom descended like a heavy cloud over the entire vast expedition of halflings, desert dwarves, and Itza as soon as word of Erixitl’s strange affliction spread through the ranks. It was as if the bright hope that had brought them together and led them so steadily toward Twin Visages had suddenly and universally been extinguished.

  Now the woman rode in a wide litter, lined with leaves and blossoms. The front of the framework swung from Storm’s saddle, and the rear dragged along the ground when the path was clear. All too often, however, the way was obstructed, and at these times Halloran lifted the rear of the litter, carrying it over every obstacle.

  Halloran would allow no one but himself to perform this task. Erixitl’s breathing remained steady, but she did not regain consciousness. Even the most potent of Coton’s priestly ministrations could do nothing to return her to awareness or even cause her to flicker her eyelids or make the faintest of sounds.

  For two days, they continued onward, pressing northward through the jungle. Luskag, Daggrande, Jhatli-even Lotil-all tried to aid Halloran as he strained over the rough ground. But he clenched his teeth and ignored them, even as salt sweat stung his eyes and the miles rolled endlessly on.

  They stopped only after it was fully dark, and at one of these camps, Halloran made some decisions.

  “I think we should take her to Ulatos instead of going directly to Twin Visages,” he announced as they finished a meal of venison and fruit around a low fire.

  “Why?” asked Luskag. The desert dwarf had become convinced of Erixitl’s vision and knew that she believed Qotal would return at the faces on the cliffside.

  “It seems more and more like some kind of spell that has her in its grasp. In the city, at least, we will find more clerics, perhaps an apothecary-a chance to help her.”

  Coton, the priest of Qotal, nodded silently. Lotil voiced his own opinion. “We can take my daughter to the temple of Qotal in the city. Perhaps there we can find aid for her. This is a good plan.”

  One by one the others agreed. They didn’t know how far ahead of them lay the coastline, and hence Ulatos and Twin Visages, though Gultec estimated that they were only a few days away. A native of Ulatos, he recognized that they had long since left the deep jungles of Far Payit behind.

  After they had reached a decision, Halloran rose from the fire and went to see Erixitl. She lay motionless on the soft mattress they had made for her. Her chest rose and fell with the rhythm of her breathing, and the roundness of her belly seemed so unmistakably alive that Hal almost convinced himself that she merely slept. He placed h
is hand upon her abdomen, where so often he had felt the kicking and squirming of their child. Now he felt no movement at all.

  “Summon your cleric, man! We need him now, or Katl will die!” Cordell stormed about the tiny makeshift cell, slamming his fist into the door repeatedly. Beside him, the Eagle Knight moaned in pain and delirium, his smashed right arm bound crudely by Cordell and Grimes.

  The wounded eagle, Katl, had been placed in the cell with Cordell and his legionnaires. Slowly, in his unconsciousness and delirium, his body had shifted back to its human form. As they ministered to him, they had seen that his arm bone had been crushed by the force of the ball. It seemed unlikely that he would ever use it for anything useful again.

  Outside the door, a trio of armed men stood, trying to ignore the prisoner’s outburst. They guarded the captain-general and the legionnaires who had accompanied him

  into the fort in a boarded-up stall within a small wooden barn. Hired by-and loyal to-Don Vaez, the men-at-arms were nonetheless nervous about imprisoning a personage of Cordell’s high reputation.

  Finally one of the guards left, but when he returned it was not with a man of healing. Instead, he came back with Don Vaez himself.

  “I understand you’re creating a disturbance,” chided the blond-haired captain.

  “I’ve tried to tell them this man needs a cleric. The fever has taken him, and without aid, he doesn’t stand a chance!”

  “Why should you care?” inquired Don Vaez with a disdainful look at the Maztican warrior. Katl lay on the floor in the cell, surrounded by the fifteen legionnaires who had been captured with Cordell.

  “He’s a good man and my friend,” replied Cordell, his voice cold steel. “Why should you want him dead?”

  “1 don’t really care one way or the other!’ chuckled Don Vaez. “Perhaps if you were to cooperate, you would find that I can be… accommodating.”

  “What do you mean?” The captain-general scowled, studying his rival.

  “We have learned that you claimed much gold from your conquest of Ulatos. Yet we have not been able to find it- your man, Tranph, has insisted he does not know, even after we applied some vigorously, ah, persuasive techniques.”

  You animal! thought Cordell, but he tried to keep his anger from his face. He took a deep breath.” He told the truth. Tranph didn’t know where the gold is buried. None of the men I left behind knew.”

  Don Vaez nodded; it was a precaution that he could understand. “Nevertheless, the good assessor has told us that it’s buried somewhere within the walls of this fort. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know exactly where.”

  “The little bastard!” Cordell blurted, though the tale merely confirmed his understanding of Kardann’s treachery.

  “You, however, do know,” observed Don Vaez. He cast another look at Katl and clucked his tongue in false sympathy.

  “Perhaps, before it is too late, you will decide to tell me.”

  With a sly smile and a twirl of silver-blond curls, the adventurer turned on his heel and stepped lightly from (he building.

  A massive block of stone fell among the trees, splintering the trunks and crushing the wood to pulp. Another, identical block fell beside it. Then the two massive bludgeons repeated the process.

  Thus Zaltec entered the forested lands of Payit. The jungle trails vanished beneath the verdant canopy of the tree-tops, but the huge form had no use for such amenities as paths in any event. Instead, the monolith of stone made its own path, clearing a wide swath at the head of its army simply by the force of its passage.

  Behind the huge, lumbering statue that was Zaltec trailed the beastlord Hoxitl, and then the teeming thousands of his army, the beasts of the Viperhand,

  During the long month of their march, they had become more than the ragged horde that had left Nexal in search of blood and treasure. Now they marched in ranks, the ogres controlling the ores, and the trolls maintaining their own tight, fast-moving companies.

  Hoxitl strutted at their head, full of devotion for his hungry god. He knew that soon they would meet an enemy. Which one, he did not know, caring only that it was composed of warm bodies, bodies with hearts that could given over to Zaltec’s greater glory.

  “I’ve got to tell him where the gold is,” Cordell admitted to Grimes shortly after Don Vaez had left the prisoners. Katl groaned and tossed, his fever seemingly intensifying every minute. It was obvious that the Eagle Knight was very neat to death.

  Beyond the cell, the trio of guards paid them no attention, instead focusing on some game of wagering that they played on the dirt floor of the barn. Cordell was about to tell the guards to summon their captain when the door to the barn opened and a man entered.

  The newcomer passed the guards, who looked up from their game and obviously recognized him, for they made no objection to his presence. The man approached the door of

  the cell.

  “Rodolfo?” asked Cordell in surprise. “Can that be you?”

  “It is, I’m ashamed to admit,” said the navigator, with a look to insure that the guards were out of earshot.

  “I thought you gave up the sea when you married,” said the captain-general quietly. “Otherwise I surely would have had you at the helm of my flagship a year ago!”

  The grizzled navigator shook his head sadly. “I was a landlubber for five years, but then the plague swept through my village. It claimed my wife and my two young sons.”

  “I’m sorry, old friend,” Cordell reached out a hand to clap Rodolfo on the shoulder. He waited quietly, sensing this was not the reason Don Vaez’s navigator had come to see him.

  “We’ve heard what you said about the army on its way here… led by a giant made of stone! A lot of the men, I don’t mind telling you, aren’t at all certain how Don Vaez will fare against such a threat.”

  “He doesn’t even believe it exists,” said Cordell in disgust. “He assumes the tale is some sort of ruse I’m using to gain my freedom.”

  “Your freedom…” Rodolfo cast another look at the three guards, who were still engaged in their vigorous game of knucklebones. None of the trio looked up from the scattered coins and bones on the ground. “There are those besides me who would like to see you gain that freedom. Don Vaez is feared, but not greatly admired, by these men.”

  Cordell smiled grimly. “Your words give me great hope and encouragement. Now we need a plan.”

  Katl groaned behind him, and the captain-general turned toward the wounded man. Then he looked back to Rodolfo. “I’ll still have to tell Don Vaez where the gold is hidden. That’s the only way he’ll send the cleric to help Katl. But perhaps, with your help, we’ll find a way to keep it out of his hands in the end.”

  Tabub came rushing back to Halloran, gesturing wildly at the sky and the jungle before them.

  “Eagle!” panted the chief of the Little People. “Him and Now he Big Person! Come quick!”

  Hal’s first thought was Poshtli, but by the time he had laid Erix’s litter down and followed the halfling warrior forward, he had dismissed the idea of seeing his old friend here as wishful thinking.

  But the sight of Chical, standing beside Daggrande and Co-ton, was nevertheless a welcome one. As far as Hal had known, the warrior was somewhere deep in the House of Tezca helping his people erect the city of Tukan.

  The Eagle Warrior dispensed with the greetings quickly and told them of the mission that had brought the eagles and the horsemen to Helmsport and the fate that had befallen Cordell there. “He has been taken prisoner by this one he calls ‘Don Vaez,’” continued Chical. “They have kept him inside one of the buildings, so I’m not even certain that he lives.

  “This morning, one of my eagles flew a short way south ward over the Payit forests and discovered you. He did not know who you were, so I flew here to investigate.” Chicallooked around at the odd mixture of dwarves, halflings, and human warriors.

  “A short way?” Hal repeated. “How close to Ulatos are we now?”

  “No more than
two days’ walk. You could make it in a single long march.”

  “Don Vaez.” Daggrande spoke the name, accompanying it with a curse. He spat in disgust. “That little weasel doesn’t have the guts to do anything on his own, but he’s always chased after the Golden Legion’s glory. I’m not a bit surprised that he tossed Cordell in irons.”

  “We must free him if we can,” said Chical quietly. Halloran looked at the warrior in surprise, sensing that a bond had formed between the Eagle Knight and the foreign soldier-a bond that was all the more surprising in light of the opposing roles the two men had played in the battle for Nexal. Chical had commanded the Maztican warriors surrounding the Golden Legion, while Cordell had desperately strived to gain escape for himself and his men.

  “Why?” asked Gultec directly. “Why should it matter to us which of the bearded men commands their troops?”

  Chical nodded, understanding the Jaguar Knight’s question. He told them of Zaltec and the monstrous army marching on Helmsport and Ulatos, and of Cordell’s orders to his own legionnaires and the Kultakans he had left in the desert. “He planned to send those ships for them on the shore of the Sea of Azul. If they had returned in time, they would have greatly increased our numbers!”

  “Do we still have time?” asked Daggrande. “Those men must be hundreds of miles south of here.”

  “I don’t know,” Chical admitted. “The beasts will be here within a week, a ten-day at the most. It depends on how fast the ships could sail-but they will only sail if Cordell gives the order.”

  “Twin Visages!” said Halloran, suddenly understanding. “Zaltec doesn’t march against Ulatos. He goes to Twin Visages!”

  The giant god would have to march past the Payit city, of course, but Hal suspected that his eventual goal would be the scene of his brother’s attempted return. Suddenly the workings of fate, in providing them with the army that now marched with him, began to make sense.