Cordell shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. He had always been a hard campaigner, but never had he pushed himself as hard as in the last months, since the escape from Nexal. Now there was no part of his body that did not ache, throb, or cry out from fatigue, hunger, or thirst.
He looked across the vast encampment. His own legionnaires, the hundred and fifty that still survived, spread in a ring around him. working at polishing and sharpening weapons, oiling tattered boots, or sewing plates of armor together where the desert heat had rotted worn straps.
Six of the men, led by young Captain Grimes, rode patrol in the desert They needed more scouts, but only fifteen horses remained to the legion-fifteen horses in all the True World-and the unfortunate steeds all were near total exhaustion.
So were the men, for that matter, he realized. Now his legionnaires the remnants of his once valiant force, fled alongside their former enemies, the Nexala. The greater enemy of the monstrous horde menaced both groups equally He realized with bitter irony that the gold of Nexal had also been lost There was no longer any reason to make war with the Mazticans.
One bright spot in the months of flight and disaster had been the loyalty of the Maztican warriors from the nation of Kultaka. when he had first entered that nation on his march inland Kultaka had resisted his legion furiously Following Cordell’s victory, however, the young Kultakan chief, Tokol, had become his most staunch ally Now some six thousand Kultaka warriors marched alongside the Nexalans and the legionnaires. The ancient rivalry-hatred, in reality-between Kultaka and Nexal had been temporarily subordinated to the pressing need to escape the monstrous horde that threatened them all.
Nearby Cordell saw Captain Daggrande, the doughty dwarven captain of the crossbow, talking with a small cluster of Maztican archers. Daggrande was one of three dozen dwarves to live through the Night of Wailing. Unlike most of his comrades Daggrande had learned to speak the Nexalan tongue.
For a moment, the general’s mind drifted as he thought of other men-Captain Garrant, Bishou Domincus, many faithful soldiers-who had met their ends in the dying city. He
thought of the mountainous trove of gold there, now buried beneath tons of rubble and guarded by tusked and taloned beasts. Once the loss of that gold had seemed the end of the world to him. Now it seemed but one more thread in the doom that still threatened him and his men.
Still, there remained the gold buried within the walls of Helmsport. This, the trove he had claimed from the conquest of Ulatos, had been left behind when the legion marched to Nexal. All of the men who knew the exact location of the treasure had accompanied him to Nexal; among the small garrison left at the port were none who knew where the gold was buried.
The general dismounted and walked over to Daggrande as the dwarven veteran looked up from his discussion of weaponry. Cordell winced inwardly at the look of guarded suspicion in his old comrade’s eyes. Even Daggrande loses faith in me!
“How can you speak that Helm-cursed tongue?” the commander asked, joking.
Daggrande ignored the humorous intent. “It only makes sense, since it seems as though we might have to spend the rest of our lives here.”
“Nonsense! We’ve got good men left. As soon as we get out of this desert, I see no reason why we won’t be able to reach the coast and make ourselves some ships.”
Daggrande grunted, and Cordell sensed blame in the sound. His own conscience growled at him daily. If only I had been satisfied with the gold we had already gained! Why did I march on Nexal? Now an expedition that had, at one point, owned a tenfold profit was reduced to struggling for escape for the fortunate survivors.
“We’re leaving today,” Daggrande said. He gestured across the camp, and Cordell saw that many of the Mazticans had already begun to trudge wearily from the valley heading southward in search of more food and water.
“So I heard. I don’t know why though. There’s still enough provisions here for a few days.”
“We march to follow a bird. That’s what these warriors tell me, anyway” Daggrande added. “It seems some eagle came to camp, and Halloran’s woman decided we all should follow it south.” His tone as he spoke of “Halloran’s woman” remained carefully neutral.
Cordell turned away, suddenly irritated with the dwarf. Daggrande started to pack up his weapons, preparing to march.
Among the warriors, Cordell saw Chical, proud chief of the Eagle Knights. Chical wore his cloak of black and white feathers and his wooden helmet with its curved-beak visor extending over his rugged face. The man had been a stalwart enemy, leading the attacks against Cordell’s legion during the struggle to escape Nexal, but then quickly realizing the greater threat when the world had come to pieces around them all.
Now Chical had become the accepted war chief of all the Nexalans, though there had never been any formal acknowledgment of such status. Cordell had found him to be a proud, brave warrior who understood perhaps better than any of his people that his world was never again going to be the same.
He looked across the valley, spotting Erixitl easily by the brightness of her cloak. She stood beside the trail as a wide column of Mazticans marched past. Beside her, tiny in the distance, he recognized Halloran.
How had that man reached inside these people the way he had? How, indeed, had Daggrande been able to understand and converse with them? The general felt a sharp jolt of envy for these soldiers, both of his legion but now his no longer. They might even be able to make a home hereTo Cordell, Maztica remained a great, faceless void. But where once it had been a space beckoning to adventure, promising reward, now it was a nightmare, threatening extinction, promising only constant flight and terror.
His reverie of self-pity suddenly broke as he sensed someone approaching behind him and saw the pudgy figure of Kardann, the Assessor of Amn, hurrying toward him. Appointed by the council of the merchant princes, the accountant had been an annoyance and a bother throughout the expedition. Now the mere sight of him aroused Cordell’s
ire. Why did the useless assessor live when so many good men had perished?
“Hello, general,” gasped the red-faced accountant, mopping his brow.
“Yes?” inquired Cordell coldly.
“I’ve been thinking,” began Kardann, speaking carefully. He crossed his arms over his chest and met the commander’s gaze. “Perhaps we can go back to Nexal. That gold can’t be too hard to find. And with this group as an army, we could surely drive those monsters away from there!”
“We?” Cordell asked angrily. He well knew that Kardann’s taste for battle grew in direct proportion to the distance between the accountant and the prospective combat. “I’ve had enough of your mad schemes, Kardann!” he snapped. “Look around you. Do these people look like an army? Even the warriors can think of nothing more than protecting their families!”
Kardann’s eyes glowered, but finally he turned and stalked away from the Captain-General. Cordell watched him go, feeling his own frustration rise again. Pushed by the circumstances of their surroundings, he saw no prospect other than flight. Yet this fact burned painfully inside of him. He didn’t like to yield to destiny.
Instead, Cordell liked to sweep fate before him.
From the chronicles of Coton:
In flight before the ranks of chaos.
The horse carries me like the wind across the face of the True World, but always the places I pass are realms of darkness, destruction, and despair. We fly along the road to Cordotl and pass the smoking ruins of that town.
Here the monsters of the Viperhand have erected a great edifice atop the pyramid, like a great skull image of Zaltec. They seek to raise their bloodthirsty god to new heights, but they do not understand that it was he who cast them down among the beasts. The folk of Cordotl are gone, either fled or given to the fanged jaws of the war god in sacrifice.