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.Clearly he didn’t like the interference of another in what he considered to be his own prerogatives of command.Then he looked back at Halloran.“I shall send them immediately—as I was about to do.My ploy was just that, an attempt to get you back.I meant what I said, Hal—you were the best.”Halloran studied Cordell, trying to figure out if he wastelling the truth or merely attempting to save face.Finally Hal held his hands up.“I’ll take the help you send, and grate.fully.”thought of getting as far as possible from the madman who now commanded Helmsport.Kardann groped his way through the tangled forest, propelled only by fear—fear of what lay behind him.AH of his nightmares, all the terrors that Maztica had aroused in him in the past, seemingly endless months were as nothing compared to the dread in which he now held Cordell.Didn’t he see? Couldn’t the captain-general understand? Kardann was loyal to the merchant princes of Amn.They had hired him, he had responsibilities’.Now, Don Vaez was clearly the duly appointed representative of those worthy nobles.Kardann’s loyalty belonged to him, not Cordell!Yet truly Kardann realized that Cordell would never understand.Just when it had seemed his nightmare was about to end, when the actual prospect of sailing home again loomed before him, catastrophe had to strike.Indeed, Don Vaez had promised to send the assessor home on the first ship, with the shipment of gold they had been about to unearth.Then somehow the treacherous Cordell had escaped, and Kardann’s future became a ruined shambles.Don Vaez’s men had turned to the new commander with no thought toward legalities or even common decency!What was the matter with those men, anyway? How could they renounce an oath of loyalty and accept a new commander in the middle of a campaign? But such they had done.Immediately Kardann had understood that the new organization would have no place for him, or if it did, that place might well be found at the end of a rope.Without thinking, he had fled from the fortress, from the eager hands of fickle soldiery suddenly so anxious to do Cordell’s bidding.So now he found himself in this infernal, eternal jungle.He pressed forward, cursing as thorns pricked his hands but not slowing his pace as his robes were slowly torn away.All he could think of, all that drove him now, was theEther had assumed the dimensions of infinity to Poshtli.For a timeless era—an entire lifetime of a man, for all he knew—he had ridden the shoulders of the god Qotal.Bright plumage surrounded him, softly cushioning and comfortably warm.His body craved neither food nor drink.Yet still the god remained little more to him than a great transport, carrying him across the worlds, yet conveying little of his mission or his might.Indeed, Poshtli had begun to sense that the god needed little from humans, save that they open the passage for him again to return to the world.Once he reached Maztica, however, Qotal would feel no compulsion to heed the pleas of his worshipers.They were puny mortals to him, and as such, beneath his cosmic concerns.But now Poshtli sensed a nearness again, a form of substance somewhere, not too distant, but still invisible within the ethereal fog.For just once, briefly, that mist parted.He saw revealed before him a shore of verdant green surrounding a small, lichen-encrusted pyramid.Below the pyramid, on a high, seaward bluff, two faces gazed impassively outward.And then Poshtli understood.They looked seaward, and they searched for the return of the god.The week following Cordell’s usurpation of command passed quickly.Erixitl remained comatose, and nothing that anyone among the Mazticans or the foreigners could do seemed capable of provoking any kind of response.Chical and the eagles maintained a steady vigil over the approaching monsters and the huge stone god that led them.The miles passed quickly beneath their footsteps, and all in Helmsport and Ulatos felt growing fear as word of theinevitably approaching mass reached the city.It was early in the morning, seven days after Cordell’s victory, that Chical once again glided to the earth within Helm-sport and quickly shifted back to his human form The captain-general already stood before him, summoned by guards who had seen Chical approaching and who knew how eagerly Cordell awaited this important report.“They are very close now,” Chical reported.“They no longer march as an untamed horde.They have been trained into an army.”“When will they get here?” Cordell asked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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