Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [110]
“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