Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [106]
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-