Feathered Dragon

17

Cordell scrutinized the banner fluttering from the pole above Helmsport before turning to Chical with a muttered curse. The two men lay in the low concealment of a patch of brush on a flat, low rise in the wide savannah. “That’s the symbol of Don Vaez,” the captain-general informed his Maztican ally.

“You know this captain, then?” inquired the Eagle Knight.

“An old rival,” Cordell explained. “We fought as allies in the Pirate Wars, but he was never one I would have turned my back on. He’s always been jealous of the successes of others. I’m sure he leaped at the opportunity to come after me, though how he won the appointment is beyond me. There are many other, far worthier, mercenary captains along the Sword Coast.”

“His presence here… does it aggravate our problems?”

“I’m certain he’s not here to help-not to help me, in any event. This will require some careful planning. On the other hand, he’s not the best-loved officer ever to lead his men to war, and this fact may work to our advantage.”

The fifteen riders and twenty eagles had completed the long journey from the desert site of Tukan to the Payit city of Ulatos after weeks of hard riding-or flying, in the case of the Maztican warriors. Now the rest of the band of travelers remained behind, hidden in the jungle some distance back from the savannah, while Cordell and Chical had wormed their way forward to study both the city and the earthen fortress on the coast.

The dark walls of the rampart enclosed a large courtyard, protecting it against approach from three sides, while the fourth, to the north, abutted against the shore. The walls

sloped steeply upward to a platform around the top, but not so steeply that they could not have been climbed.

Beyond Helmsport, Cordell saw the masts of the ships, twenty-five in number, that had carried the new expedition to the shores of Maztica. A sizable herd of horses grazed on the flat, grassy savannah between the fort and the city. Sunlight glinted from the steel armor of many sentries who walked the ramparts of the fortress.

“Carracks… a good fleet,” the captain-general muttered absently. “Mostly bigger ships than the carracks and smaller caravels that brought my legion over here.”

“Enough to bring your legionnaires and the Kultakans here?” Chical inquired. Those troops should have reached the coast by now and made semi-permanent camp there. The next step in their utilization could only occur after Cordell gained control of that fleet.

“I think so. The problem, of course, is getting them to sail down there and get them. I know Don Vaez will never do it simply because I ask him. We’re going to have to be very persuasive indeed.”

The Eagle Warrior smiled grimly. He suspected that his companion didn’t speak of the kind of persuasion performed with words.

“Still, we are too few to carry the fort by storm,” Chical pointed out.

Cordell turned away from the sight, his bearded face creased in a heavy scowl. In silence, he crawled back through the low brush, followed by Chical. They worked their way back into the jungle for some distance before standing. Then, certain they had remained unobserved, they hurried back to the rest of their companions. Quickly they briefed them on the situation at Helmsport as they had been able to observe it.

“There’s got to be someway! Who are his men? Where did Don Vaez get an army like that?” Cordell asked the questions aloud as his mind whirled.

“The Golden Legion?” guessed Grimes. “The fellows we couldn’t take along with us? There aren’t a lot of mercenaries to be raised in Amn, save the ones you left behind.”

“Good possibility” Cordell admitted. His legion had numbered more than a thousand men on several occasions. Many loyal soldiers had been left in Amn when the expedition departed, limited by the capacity of Cordell’s ships.

“The bulk of them have to be mercenaries-men hired for coin, loyal only to profit,” continued the horseman. “They’d probably be as willing to serve you to as to serve Don Vaez.”

Indeed, that captain’s reputation as a womanizer and dandy had earned him scorn from more than one honest fighting man, a fact known to any mercenary who had ever worked on the Sword Coast. Cordell, on the contrary, was widely known to be a fair-minded, well-paying officer. Too, there was the fact that his missions had been almost universally successful.

Until now, he reminded himself, disturbed by the sudden memory of the Night of Wailing.

“Still, he’ll have his loyal crew of officers,” Cordell said. “We’d have to work fast and take them all out of circulation. Then it would be up to the men.”

As he thought further, plans and possibilities began to form in Cordell’s mind. Grimes and Chical helped him to shape those opportunities into a course of action.

None of them took note of Kardann sitting nearby, his eyes narrowed to thin slits as if he dozed. But, in fact, the assessor of Amn was very much awake.

A mysterious compulsion drove the driders as they left the mountain valley where their army had perished. Darien, cursing and abusing the others, pushed the band forward. They scuttled northward, along the jungled mountains, pressing their bloated bodies through the tangles, using their black-bladed swords to chop the underbrush from their path. Their fur-covered spider legs propelled them swiftly, and only the terrain held them from a full gallop.

Darien didn’t understand why she drove herself and the others so relentlessly. Her army gone, obliterated beneath

the collapsing tonnage of the mountains themselves, she, had nothing left but her hatred. Now she could at last revile her fiendish goddess Lolth and curse and-ultimately- ignore her. With the destruction of the ant army, she sensed that her old powers had deserted her. Now she had only instinct and rage to direct her on a course of vengeance. But that rage had focus, in the person of the woman of pluma, the wife of Halloran. Darien’s mind seethed with images of her earlier encounters with Erixitl-of the Maztican woman’s feathermagic protecting her from the elf’s sorcery during the massacre at Palul; of the encounter in Nexal, on the Night of Wailing, when the woman had pursued Darien and her drow allies throughout the palace complex, thwarting their every plan of attack.

This hatred drove her now even more relentlessly than before. The driders pushed through the jungle, slaying the few humans they met, killing and eating as they needed, sleeping for a few hours each day whenever exhaustion claimed them.

It was during a period of brief, fitful sleep that Darien’s hatred began to reform into vengeance.

She twisted and groaned, spitting and clawing reflexively, at a picture that formed in her mind. Dim memories awakened within her, memories from another life, another body. She recalled images of the Golden Legion, of its first landing on the shores of Maztica… of two great faces, carved in stone, which stared out to sea as if they awaited her arrival. She saw the image of a place by the coast where a great battle would rage, with hatred and killing aplenty.

She saw the image of Erixitl, her beauty a taunt, a spiteful affront to the bloated form of the drider. And as she thought, as her mind created vivid pictures, the black essence of foulness crept through her being. Power collected in her bloated abdomen, and the might of her malevolence began to take form in the world.

Around the vivid picture of the human woman, Darien saw a dancing, swaying framework of images that melted indistinctly together. Then slowly this framework took on a more solid definition.

Now she recognized the bobbing, swaying head of a snake, its mouth gaping slightly to reveal curved, venomous fangs. She saw the sinuous form of a crocodile twisting around the other images, and then she sensed long, hooked talons reaching toward the picture of the woman Erixitl.

Darien could not know it, but a new god was working his power within the female form of the drider. The power of that warlike deity rose and spread through the corrupted body. More and more images bombarded her, images of hishna, the magic of talon and fang and venom. Soon this power would explode. The precise time she could not know.

But of the place, she could be certain: the low pyramid, high on the coastal bluff; the great faces carved into the face of that bluff; even the sheltered lagoon within its encircling wreath of coral. She knew, and they would go there.

Darien would lead her driders to Twin Visages.

They pressed ahead with renewed determination and drive, pausing to rest even less than before. Darien thrilled to the quarry before her, often throwing back her head to laugh out loud, a shrill screech of horrible triumph that put the jungle birds to flight and sent monkeys whooping away through the trees.

She stopped occasionally, when the images assaulted her mind, and slowly the power of hishna grew within her. Then she would scramble through the brush, seeking, and after a few moments of search, she would emerge with a snake, or a lizard, or, once, even a jaguar cub. With relish, she put the creatures to death, and each of them nourished her growing power of talonmagic.

Ever northward they went, toward the headlands of the Payit country, east of the city of Ulatos, Darien moved straight toward the great sculpted cliff, not out of any sense of immortal destiny but simply because this was where her hunger directed her. And all the while, black and murky, the power of hishna swelled within her. Fertilized by the fuel of her hatred, the seed of talonmagic coalesced, gathered from the talismans she collected in the forest. Slowly, gradually, the power became a driving source of energy, a self sustaining explosion that could not be contained.

When the driders paused, near collapse from exhaustion Darien sat in a meditative trance. She took no sleep, instead picturing the fire of light before her. Her mind reeled with enchantments, fragments of forgotten spells, supplications to dark deities.

Sweat poured from her pale face, across her breasts and stomach to trickle onto the hard shell of her spider body. Her eyes tightly closed, she imagined the light she saw. Powers coalesced within her.

Finally the seed of hatred bore fruit. A black fog of festering evil gathered in Darien’s soul, clamoring for release. Hishna seethed upward and away, breaking free of the bonds of her body. Slowly, inexorably, the power grew within her and began to escape.

As she started to move again, the effluence of her might drifted ahead of her through the jungle, like an invisible toxin carried by the wind itself. Swirling about with the eddies of the breeze, it crept through the forest as if it were a living creature that sought a destination.

“First we meet the desert dwarves and the Little People. Now Gultec rejoins us with a force of warriors. It has to be a plan, part of some great design!” Halloran felt a tingling anticipation of success as they moved steadily northward. They neared their goal, finally, after a transcontinental march of some five months’ duration.

Erixitl rode beside him as he walked. Her time of child- birth loomed near, and the last weeks-now perhaps the interval could be measured in days-of the journey to Payit wore heavily upon her.

“A thing concerns me, though,” she admitted. “If this is destiny, why are we provided with an army? Does this mean we’ll have to fight when we reach Twin Visages?”

“We’re ready if we have to,” declared Jhatli, brandishing his bow and arrows, “I will be a great warrior when I have the chancel”

Halloran chuckled, feeling like an older brother listening to the enthusiastic ravings of his younger sibling. “Jhatli, you are already a warrior of such stature as to make your people proud. I don’t think you have to worry about that anymore.”

The young man looked at him, pleased with the compliment and somewhat smug in his acceptance of it. “And you told me I would grow tired of battles and war! Little did you know-each fight is grander than the last!”

“That’s because we’ve won them, for one thing,” the former legionnaire said wryly.

Jhatli grinned at his companion. “And we will win the next fight as well.” he boasted.

Erixitl sighed, and Jhatli looked at the woman with a trace of guilt on his dark brown features. “I’m sorry, sister. 1 know how you feel about such talk of war. It is a topic best left to men!”

The youth looked toward the dwarves, up at the front of the column. Daggrande and Luskag engaged in earnest discussion of tactics and weaponry, as they had done for the past months of the journey. “Like the dwarves, I shall be a fighter of legend, a crusader against the evils that threaten our land!”

“Do not be too hasty to wish for that chance,” said Lotil quietly. The plumaworker followed beside Storm, his hand on the horse’s flank, his feet plodding steadily beside the trail. The blanket of pluma, more than half done, was wrapped in a bundle tied to his back.

“Aye,” agreed Gultec, coming up to join them. “1 have spent my life preparing for war, and yet 1 would be happy never to have to see it again.” “How much farther is it to Ulatos?” the youth asked. “Word from the last village is that we might get there in three days,” replied Halloran. And beyond the city, a short distance along the coast, lay their true destination of Twin Visages.

Coton followed them all, and Halloran turned to look at the priest as they walked. As always, restricted by his vow, the cleric said nothing. Yet his face bore a dreamy expression, as if his thoughts were very far away.

Erixitl swayed in the saddle suddenly and Halloran looked at her in sudden alarm. Her face twitched, as if from the memory of a horrifying dream.

“What is it? Are you all right?” Hal reached up to take her hand.

In the next instant, her eyelids dropped shut. Suddenly limp, she collapsed from the saddle as if the life had been drained from her body

Heavy clouds swept in from the great Eastern Ocean, soon blocking out even the faint rays from the crescent of moon that rose over the Payit jungles. A night of inky darkness fell across the city of Ulatos and the earthen bulk of Helmsport.

Within the city, torches blossomed here and there, and hearthfires burned in the homes. The compound of the fort stood outlined in the white light of lanterns as the soldiers of Don Vaez went about their routine duties of maintenance, shoeing horses, cleaning and sharpening weapons, oiling leather boots and saddles.

Then gradually the lanterns winked out. One by one the torches and fires faded into coals, and then even the coals settled into gray ash. The city and the fort fell into the silent slumber of a long, dark jungle night.

A score of lonely sentries stood duty from midnight to dawn, marching listlessly around the top of the earthen ramparts. Each carried a crossbow and a short sword, but their attention to duty was not so rigorous as it had been. weeks earlier, when they had first landed in Maztica.

At that time, this had been a land of mystery filled with unknown dangers and rumors of great treasure. The unexplained disappearance of Cordell’s expedition was a fact known to all of them, adding to the potential terrors of the strange new continent.

Now they looked over a placid and unthreatening land, a place that had become the site of another boring campaign,

Don Veaz showed no inclination to move from this base of operations, and no threat to the force had materialized, or even been rumored, anywhere across this foreign world.

Those sentries who attended to their duties more diligently looked outward, down the sloping walls of the fort. Within the enclosure itself slept more than a thousand men-all of them Don Vaez’s troops, except for the few of Cordell’s original garrison who now languished in prison. Clearly there was no threat there.

It is doubtful that any of the guards even thought to look skyward.

Yet from the clouds came the attackers, two dozen in number, settling silently to the rampart on the wings of eagles. Chical led the way, his keen vision penetrating the night enough to locate the metal-shirted figures, dully pacing the walls.

The eagle floated to earth behind one of these men, shifting to his human body a moment before landing. The guard turned with a start, sensing the presence behind him, but Chical’s heavy club fell once, sharply across the man’s temple. In another second, the guard dropped, still without making a sound, to the hard surface of the rampart.

All around the circumference of the rampart, the eagles descended, attacking simultaneously in silent, sudden precision. Within moments, the entire sentry patrol had been immobilized without alerting the rest of the garrison.

Chical slipped to the edge of the earthwork, out of sight of the interior of the fort but exposed to the south, across the savannah. He touched a flint to the steel dagger Cordell had given him, quickly igniting a small straw torch. He fanned the glowing object before him three times before snuffing it beneath his heel. Then he turned back to the courtyard, peering from the wall top into the crowded space below.

A half-mile away, Cordell, Grimes, Kardann, and the other legionnaires saw the Eagle Knight’s signal. They trotted forward on foot, having tethered the horses within the shelter of the nearby forest. As soundlessly as possible, they approached Helmsport, scrambling up the sloping wall of the earthwork to join Chical.

“There,” the warrior said, pointing to the large wooden building in the center of the compound. “That is where this Don Vaez makes his headquarters.” “Let’s hope be sleeps there, too,” grunted Grimes softly “He will.” whispered Cordell confidently. “It’s the biggest and most comfortable place in there. The rest are storage sheds, armories, and barns.”

Momentary bitterness gripped him as he looked at the familiar surroundings. He had ordered this fortress built as his own base! Daggrande had supervised the actual construction and excavation, but the site and the layout had been Cordell’s. Even the spot in the walls where the gold of Ulatos was buried, he remembered. Now to have this interloping pretender claim it.

One by one the other eagles joined them. When the entire group had assembled, Cordell and Chical led them down the inner slope of the breastwork. Somewhere within the compound a dog, one of the shaggy warhounds of the legion, barked, but a gruff curse followed and the animal fell silent. The rest of the soldiers slumbered around them in tents or in the buildings Cordell had indicated earlier. Creeping carefully through the shadows, the intruders moved past a large’ frame building that smelled like a horse barn. Next they passed a long rack of weapons-spears and arrows- beneath an open-sided shed.

Finally they approached the large headquarters building, a wooden frame house with oilskin windows, where several candles glowed in still-lighted rooms. Before the front door stood a pair of spearmen, weapons upraised and backs placed squarely to the wall.

“I’d bet all the gold in Nexal that Don Vaez is in the bedroom upstairs,” whispered Cordell. Indeed, as they watched, a shadow passed before the oilskin, a profile wherein the long, curling locks of hair were plainly visible. Cordell turned to Chical, and the Eagle Knight nodded. Melting into the shadows with three of his men, he suddenly shifted and dropped. In another moment, his powerful wings carried him upward, followed by his comrades. The four eagles soared swiftly and silently to the peak of

the roof over Don Vaez’s building. The men on the ground saw them as alternating shades of black and pale gray as they shifted back to human form.

Creeping to the edge of the roof, they sprang suddenly to the earth. With swift, silent blows, they immobilized the two startled sentries.

“Let’s go!” whispered Cordell, starting toward the door.

A harsh clatter, like someone spilling a cartload of firewood, suddenly crashed through the compound. Cries of alarm arose from many of the tents, as sleepy men-at-arms struggled free of their bedrolls.

Furiously Cordell whirled to see Kardann, standing beside the heap of weapons that had moments earlier rested neatly in their racks. The assessor looked at the captain-general, a terrified expression upon his pudgy face. With a muffled curse, Cordell started toward him, but he instantly realized that recriminations would have to wait.

“Hurry!” he commanded, sprinting through the darkness toward the house. A dozen legionnaires and an equal number of Eagle Knights, led by Grimes, raced after him, weapons drawn and ready Kardann remained behind, shrinking into the darkest shadows, unnoticed by the charging band.

The front door of the building swung open as Cordell approached, revealing several men in breastplates carrying drawn swords. Chical and the other warriors pressed back in the shadows to either side of the door.

“Who’s there?” one of the men demanded.

Dogs barked throughout the fortress as more and more men stumbled from tents or barns.

“You there! What’s happening?” The man at the door barked the question at Cordell, then gaped in astonishment as the captain-general dove toward the door.

“Sound the alarm!” cried the guard, trying to slam the portal shut. Shouts and challenges echoed throughout the fortress as rudely awakened men suspiciously accosted their neighbors. In several places, the clash of steel rang out briefly.

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.