Ironhelm mt-1

by Douglas Niles

  Kardann started to sputter, but Cordell silenced him with a look. "By the time that happens, I intend to have the entire land under the banner of the Golden Legion!" He paused to make sure they understood the depth of his commitment.

  "Make the most of your day here," he suggested breezily. "We toil again very soon, this time upon the building of Helmsport!"

  Gultec's stomach growled again, and the lanky jaguar rose and stretched in feline bliss. He rested upon a massive bough, high above the jungle floor. Sitting up, he cleaned himself thoroughly. His hunger was present, but not yet urgent.

  Eventually the spotted cat sauntered down the branch, springing easily to a lower limb, and down again into the crotch of a neighboring tree. His nostrils twitched, alert for the spoor of game.

  Gultec made his way along the middle level of jungle branches, avoiding the tangle upon the ground but remaining well camouflaged among thick foliage. For perhaps an hour, he hunted, catching the scent of nothing edible.

  Lengthening shadows stretched through the small open patches in the deep jungles of Far Payit. The jaguar's spotted form moved among the shadows, his orange and black pelt blending perfectly with the gathering darkness. His stomach started to growl uncomfortably.

  By now the great cat skulked through forests far removed from Ulatos. He had worked his way southward, hunting and prowling and sleeping as occasion demanded. Now he was farther south than he had ever been before, in a region of Payit little known to the city dwellers of Ulatos.

  Gultec began to move with unaccustomed urgency, for the hunting had been lean for several days now. Hunger prodded him along, sometimes through the trees and occasionally along the twisting trails below. He pounced on a small rodent and devoured it in one gulp, but the tiny meal did little to sate his appetite.

  Perhaps it was the urgency of his hunger that made him careless. It had been many days since he had encountered any sign of humans, and thus his vigilance was relaxed. The great cat need worry about no other enemies, for even the powerful hakuna generally took no note of another feline predator.

  In any event, Gultec slipped silently along a trail as night fall settled around him. His padded paws fell silently on the soft grass of the ground. Every few steps, the great cat paused to sniff the air and look around.

  Impatient, he picked up his pace to a trot. Once an irritated growl even rumbled from his throat before he recalled the need for stealth. As he paced along the trail, he heard something rustling ahead. A current of breeze carried to him the delightful scent of a plump turkey — food enough to fill the great cat's belly.

  Gultec crouched and crept forward, slinking soundlessly on his belly. There! He saw the turkey, standing oddly still at the base of a great tree. The bird fluttered and twisted, but it did not move from its location. Even Gultec's keen eyes did not see the narrow tether holding the bird in place.

  With one lightning bound, Gultec sprang toward the bird. His attack was planned perfectly. He would land once, ten feet from the bird, and instantly spring again for the kill.

  His paws settled to earth, already preparing to push him forward, but the earth proved yielding, crashing away beneath his weight. With a screech of feline rage and panic, Gultec fell through the network of branches concealing the deep pit and plummeted to the bottom with a heavy thud.

  Instantly the jaguar sprang at the sides of the pit, his powerful muscles carrying him upward a prodigious distance before the steep, smooth walls sent him tumbling back down. Again and again the cat hurled himself toward the top of the pit, and again and again he fell back.

  Finally, exhausted and ravenous, he settled into a crouch. His unblinking eyes stared upward at the night sky, beginning to sprout stars above his pit. For all his rage and all his strength, Gultec could not deny that he was trapped.

  Several dozen men remained in Ulatos, while the rest of the legion moved to the sheltered anchorage barely three miles away. There construction of Fort Helmsport began as two hundred legionnaires, armed with pick and shovel, assaulted the rocky crest a short distance from the sandy shore. Darien used a powerful earth-moving spell to begin a jetty out into the lagoon, and now men labored with wheelbarrows and shovels, extending the pier into deeper water. The wizard and the captain-general, meanwhile, moved from the palace to their quarters aboard the Falcon.

  Late at night in this luxurious cabin, two figures lay in the great bed. Cordell snored deeply, while Darien lay wide awake, her pale eyes staring across the cabin, her elven senses seeing everything despite the pitch darkness.

  A sense of danger gripped the elf woman, and she sat up in the bed. Something unseen warned her of attack, and she placed her feet on the floor. Her robe, with its many packets of spell components, hung beside her.

  Suddenly a gust of wind rushed through the crack under the cabin door. Darien's keen vision, unnaturally sensitive to such conjured creatures as the invisible stalker, recognized the thing instantly. In the next moment, she perceived its intent.

  The stalker reached out for her, a sudden gust of wind whirling in the cabin, extending invisible but powerful tendrils of air toward Darien. She sensed immediately that it wanted to kill her.

  But Darien's spell was ready. She spat, her saliva flying toward the invisible attacker. " Dyss-ssymmi!" she cried, raising both hands before her face.

  With a horrible sucking sound, the wind twisted into a vortex and whirled in an ever smaller cyclone in the center of the room. It writhed as it shrank and then puffed into nothingness. Her spell of dismissal, she knew, had sent it back to the plane of air.

  Cordell had awakened at the sound of her spell, and now he stretched an arm around the elf woman, amazed and impressed by her calm demeanor.

  "What was that?" he asked. He sat up in the bed, blinking. He had seen nothing of the attacker, though he had heard the wind.

  "My stalker. It has failed to kill Halloran, thus it sought me out instead. It is a risk of the spell." Darien shrugged, the attack already forgotten except for its implications.

  "And this means Halloran still lives. If he had perished from the poison, the stalker would not have come after me. It would simply have gone away."

  Cordell flopped backward with a sigh. "Helm's damnation! That lad makes things very difficult."

  Darien squinted in anger, an expression Cordell could not see. "Difficult, perhaps. But he will not escape!"

  "What makes you so certain?"

  "Where can he go? We have control of Ulatos, and through the city, we can keep tabs on the entire nation. Sooner or later, someone is bound to report him. He'll probably leave a whole wealth of stories behind everywhere he goes." Darien leaned over Cordell, gently pressing him back on the bed.

  He grinned. "Come closer. I'd like to hear you scheme some more." And he pulled her down to him.

  "There is no way that I can repay the kindness you have shown me. It has meant my life, and much more, to me." Poshtli bowed deeply to Luskag, blinking and finally looking to the side. The golden dot still burned before his eyes.

  But the vision had been worth the price. If he could but complete the tasks before him, a city, a whole people, might be saved.

  "You have been a worthy companion, Poshtli of Nexal," said Luskag sincerely. The dwarf mopped the sweat from the top of his bald head, then reached into a quiver slung at his belt.

  "I would like you to take these on your journey," he said, offering Poshtli six slender arrows. The Eagle Knight took the gifts reverently, bowing deeply.

  The arrows bore no marks to distinguish them, but each was perfectly straight, made from an exceptional reed. The heads were of shiny obsidian, deftly chipped from flawless rock. Tiny fluffs of feather marked the tail of each arrow, and though the feathers were small, it was here that Poshtli sensed the true strength of the gift.

  The desert dwarf chieftain and a score of his dusty, suntanned warriors had gathered in the center of Sunhome to bid farewell to the stranger, one of only a handful of humans ever to have foun
d Sunhome, according the Luskag. Many of them had come seeking the Sunstone, but only a few had departed alive.

  The village itself was simply a circle of ground-level cave homes around the inside of a box canyon. A clearing in the center of the canyon floor had long ago been smoothed, and here Poshtli nodded to the others, then turned back to Luskag.

  The Eagle Knight wore his full regalia, black-and-white-feathered cape and beaked helmet, with his bow and arrows, his spear, and his maca all suspended from his belt or harness.

  Suddenly Poshtli whirled around in a circle. The desert dwarves scurried backward as he raised his arms, causing the feathered cape to swing in a wide circle. Then he squatted and beat his wings, falling several feet and then swooping above the ground.

  The Eagle Knight enjoyed the stunned expressions on the faces of the dwarves. His wings beat steadily as his sleek form circled, climbing into the canyon above Sunhome. He cried a challenge and a farewell that echoed through the canyon long after he soared from sight. A cold mountain up-draft lifted him and carried him eastward.

  Poshtli flew steadily toward the sunrise, as his vision had shown him.

  Vast reaches of land passed below him, and desert slowly turned to savannah, then mountains, and finally jungle. The eagle subsisted upon the power of pluma, for Poshtli did not stop to eat nor to sleep, though the sun rose and set during his flight.

  He flew on through the damp, heavy air above the jungles of Payit, and now his muscles thrummed with renewed energy. He sensed the goal of his flight in the distance. Somewhere ahead he would find the green pyramid.

  Halloran and Erix pressed through the forest for a full day, gasping through hot, moist air and ignoring a surrounding swarm of biting insects. Occasionally they found a narrow trail and mounted Storm, while Corporal trotted ahead or behind. The dog panted constantly in the heat, and Hal began to wonder if the greyhound could keep up for long.

  They tried to work their way inland as much as possible, avoiding human settlements. Hal felt that any pursuit by the legion would come along the shore, the only terrain suitable for horsemen over any stretch of distance. Indeed, sometimes he considered abandoning the loyal mare, but he always discarded the idea, hacking extra-hard at the ubiquitous vines to open a passage large enough for Storm.

  Finally the long day came to an end, and they collapsed in exhaustion. They camped in a place indistinguishable from all the surrounding jungle, a space between two tree trunks, with the overhanging vines and drooping ferns hacked away. It was all Halloran could do to pull the saddle off Storm before collapsing on the ground. Corporal already snoozed, albeit with an occasional whimper or twitch.

  They had not found fresh water all day, but Erix found several thick-stemmed plants. When cut, these yielded a precious trickle of water. After a minimal meal of beans and mayzcakes, Erix fell asleep.

  Halloran once again pulled open Darien's spellbook and tried to force himself to concentrate on the pages. The words still seemed distant and indistinct. Though he had cast the magic missile spell against Alvarro, he found himself struggling and failing in his attempt to relearn it. The light spell was a little, but not much, more familiar. Finally he drifted off to sleep, with the spellbook resting across his body.

  Near midnight, Corporal's whine awakened them both. The source of the dog's agitation was quickly audible, a sharp, ululating howling rose into the night and resounded through the forest like the voice of doom.

  "It's closer," whispered Erix, awestruck.

  In the back of his mind, Halloran had sheltered the notion that perhaps this nocturnal pack was not connected to him. After all, he knew of no spells usable by the Bishou or Darien that could conjure up anything like this. But their appearance on this second night in a row confirmed his worst suspicions.

  "They're a lot closer," he said grimly, looking straight into Erix's eyes. He wanted to dive into the warm pool he saw there, seeking comfort and shelter. But he knew this was not to be.

  "What are they?" Erix questioned him earnestly.

  She tried to conceal her fright, but was not completely successful.

  "I'm not sure. Sorcerous, some kind of black magic things, I'm sure… very powerful, very deadly. They sound, in a way, like a pack of hounds on the hunt, but the noise is too unearthly for that." He took a deep breath and continued.

  "Remember when I told you that we'd have to split up if it ever got too dangerous? The time has come. You can't stick with me any longer. I can't outrun those creatures, and when they catch me, it won't be pleasant. I might be able to hold 'em off, but you'll be far safer elsewhere."

  She laughed at him then, and Halloran just stared back, not amused. "I mean it! We'll have to split up. It's the only chance you have!"

  "Did you ever stop to think that this pack might be chasing me?" she asked, standing up and then helping him to his feet. "Maybe we should just stick together and try to help each other out," Erix suggested.

  Halloran looked at her in surprise, ashamed that he had not considered that possibility. He had known since the death of Kachin that Erix had powerful and murderous enemies. Indeed, that attacker had broken off the fight at dawn, exactly when these hounds had ceased their howling the previous night.

  Wearily, aching in every joint, they prepared to move out once more. The howling was more distinct than the previous night, yet still somehow indefinably distant.

  They plodded along through the rest of the night, and gradually the sound drifted away behind them. But humans and animals both were near the point of total exhaustion when sunrise finally ended the cries of the beastly pursuers.

  Finally, just as dawn turned to daylight, the jungle opened slightly into a flat savannah of grass, reeds, and, wondrous miracle, a clear pond! They both splashed into the water as the sun came up, drinking and washing and cooling off.

  Only as the first rays lit the ground around them did Halloran look up to see three buzzards wheeling through a lazy circle above them.

  "Higher! It needs five more feet!" Daggrande barked at a group of legionnaires who leaned on their spades in exhaustion. With dark looks at the dwarf, they chopped into the earth and shoveled more dirt onto the rampart that now ringed three quarters of Fort Helmsport.

  Despite his shouts and curses, the dwarf could not restrain his pride in the work of the legionnaires. In a few short days, they had moved a prodigious amount of earth. Soon they would have a commanding and easily defensible base overlooking a fine natural harbor and a long stretch of the coast of this nation called Payit.

  Below them, the little fishing village would never be the same. The wide, once-grassy field surrounding it had been churned to mud. A small smithy had been established near the stream, which now flowed brown and silt-laden into the bay, while black smoke from the forge filtered across the plain. A road, already reduced to a strip of mud, led from the fort to Ulatos. Steady supplies of food — cocoa, mayz, turkeys, venison, all the choicest delicacies of the Payit — arrived daily, and the legion ate well.

  As the fort's construction progressed, rocks and earth had also been dumped into the bay, and now a solid jetty extended perhaps a hundred feet from shore. An additional pier, crossing the T of the jetty, took form, and carracks and caravels pulled up to the solid barrier. No longer did all loading and unloading depend upon the ships' small boats.

  Daggrande continued his inspection of the rampart. The hilltop would soon be circled by a ten-foot-high dirt wall, with a five-foot deep ditch on the outside. A small opening had been left, free of ditch and wall, but Darien claimed to know a spell that would fill this gap in a moment. Daggrande did not doubt her.

  The dwarf moved around to the far side of the redoubt, facing inland. This entire length had been the first completed, and no one was working here now. Daggrande climbed to the top of the wall and looked south. The belt of coastal plain surrounding Ulatos quickly met a deep jungle. The legionnaires had heard tales of a land called Far Payit, in the distant reaches to the south, but lit
tle was known of that heavily forested reach.

  The natives of Ulatos had proven most cooperative, arriving at Helmsport laden with food, octal, and featherwork, but no more gold. These days Cordell studied his map, consulting again and again with the men who had seen Nexal. Images of that city — gold-lined images, Daggrande felt certain — had begun to dominate the commander's thoughts.

  The dwarf himself didn't like the prospect of a long campaign on this foreign shore, so far from a supply and reinforcement base. At least here, beside Ulatos, they were close to their ships. The fleet represented ultimate safety against a people whose largest craft was the canoe.

  Nexal was an inland city, many days' march from the sea. Surely even Cordell would not be so rash as to lead his small group, a bare five hundred men, into the heart of a nation whose army must number many tens of thousands! But beneath all his reflections, Daggrande was a legionnaire, sworn to obey his captain-general. And such he would always do, or die.

  Daggrande's musings were interrupted by the sound of hushed voices. Scowling, he looked along the length of the wall, then into the redoubt behind him, but he saw nobody near him. Leaning slightly forward, he looked down the outer slope of the wall and saw several captains, including the usually dependable Garrant. Leaning farther, but crouching so as to remain hidden, the dwarf recognized the hat of the Assessor of Amn, Kardann.

  It was the latter who spoke.

  "He means to see us die here for his own aggrandizement!" Kardann's urgency carried even through the whisper of his voice. "Any sensible man would send for reinforcements and build up an army here before marching inland to seize more land!"

  "Aye," grunted Captain Leone, a brave but unimaginative captain of longbowmen. "I've heard the army we fought here is nothin' next to the men they can muster inland."