“It only occurred to us that perhaps, just perhaps, some of the old legends were true, that they were jaguar warriors come to avenge themselves against those who do not revere their God.” He looked nervously at his lord. “We in Guayak persecute no one for their beliefs; we all share the displeasure of the Temple! But, though most here do not, some still revere the jaguar of the Old World we were cast from for our sins. Some feared . . .” He shook his head. “You are sure?”
Shinya suppressed a smile. “I suppose one can never be entirely sure about such things. Who am I to ponder the means or intent of any god? But I assure you, ferocious as our ’Cats can be in battle, they will harm no one based solely on their beliefs.” Suares looked relieved, as did the rest of the delegation when he translated Shinya’s words. “Now,” Shinya prodded, “how will the Doms push us out?”
“I suspect the army that marched from here will be sent back. Such a move might delay their offensive against you in Las Islas, but they can raise troops more quickly from around Manizales than from here.”
“Mr. Blair,” Shinya snapped. “Send this out immediately! All of it!”
“What about the troops at Quito?”
“Have them pull out, back here for now, and advise Admiral Lelaa to order that squadron of DDs back from its scout toward Costa Rica. I think it’s clear what the enemy has been hiding from us now!” He glanced at Suares. “If the enemy is gathering a great fleet there, I don’t want three DDs to run into it.”
“At once, General!”
“You . . . will stay here, will you not, General Shinya?” Suares suddenly pleaded.
“I don’t know if we can,” Shinya admitted.
“But if you abandon us, we are doomed!” Suares almost wailed. “Our women, our children—all will be slain simply because we saw you! It will not even matter what we might have said!”
“We’ll consider that; you have my word,” Shinya replied. “In the meantime, please talk with your people; assure them they have nothing to fear from us. Our only quarrel is with the Dominion that has made war on us, not the civilian population it oppresses. Return tomorrow, after we’ve had time to discuss what we’ve learned, and I promise we’ll keep you informed.” He stopped and looked at every member of the delegation, meeting each gaze. “And regardless of what we decide, we won’t abandon you.”
“What do you think?” Blair asked after the locals were gone. “Do you believe them?”
“Yes,” Shinya said simply, then gestured at the countless scrolls and pointed at the map still on the table. “They didn’t know we were coming, so I can’t believe they prepared that just to deceive us! And based on that map, everything else suddenly makes a great deal of sense. Does it not?”
Blair nodded, frowning. “And Suares was plainly terrified that we’d leave them. But what shall we do? What can we do? Even if we gather all our forces here, we’ll still be badly outnumbered unless we ask for more troops from High Admiral Jenks. I’ve no doubt we’ll drub them soundly, even with what we have, but do we want a major battle here?”
“Admiral Jenks will have to decide, and he’ll have to weigh it against the possibility that a very large force truly is preparing to attack the Enchanted Isles. That may limit the resources he can send to our aid, but I sense an opportunity. Based on what Mr. Suares said, it can’t be good for the enemy’s morale simply that we’re here. If we can defeat him on his ‘holy’ soil, regardless how remote from his capital, word will spread. It always does. How will he react to that? I, for one, would enjoy finding out.” His eyebrows furrowed. “One thing is certain: Whatever Admiral Jenks decides, we can’t leave these people undefended. I’m convinced Suares spoke the truth when he said they’d be slaughtered. Not only does it fit what we know of the character of our enemy, but it makes a twisted sense from his perspective—and we brought that fate to the people here. If we stay, we fight—and we shall enlist as many locals as we can to help. Word of rebellion will also spread, and can’t hurt our cause.” He shrugged. “If we leave, however, we must take as many of them with us as we can. I see no alternative if we’re not to be thought as wicked as the Doms ourselves.”
CHAPTER
26
////// Near El Paso del Fuego
New Granada Province (Costa Rica)
Holy Dominion
C aptain Anson was still sitting on his horse, inserting paper-wrapped cartridges of powder and ball into the front of the cylinder of his big revolver. Each time he slid a cartridge in place, he rotated the cylinder to cram the whole thing into the chamber with a lever mounted beneath the barrel. Periodically, he glanced up and down the trail.
“Do hurry, if you please,” he grumbled, lightly pinching what Fred Reynolds recognized as small versions of Allied percussion caps before pushing them onto little cones at the rear of each chamber. Finished loading, he didn’t reholster the weapon, but continued to watch while Fred and Kari-Faask quickly pillaged two Dom cavalrymen. Their horses had bolted, and the riderless beasts would be just as damning as the shots if they were discovered, but Fred said nothing as he tugged the faded yellow coat off the dead man at his feet.
“Why are you stripping him?” Anson hissed. “Just take his weapons and let’s be off!”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m just about naked!” Fred countered. His robe had remained his only garment throughout their long ordeal and had deteriorated badly, leaving him covered with welts and sores. Kari wasn’t much better off, but at least she had protective fur. She’d shed a lot, though, and it wasn’t as thick as when they were flying. “Get that one’s clothes too,” Fred instructed her.
“Why?”
Fred blushed. ’Cats had no qualms about running around practically nude, but though Kari never did it just to aggravate him, like Tabby used to do to Spanky, her very feminine shape could be distracting at times. “They might come in handy,” he said at last. “If more Dom cav spots us, it could help at a glance, from a distance. Maybe they’ll think we’re Doms too.”
Kari considered. “Okay,” she said, and began stripping the other man.
Fred’s excuse seemed to mollify Anson as well because he quit prodding them, but he did warn that the uniforms were as likely to get them killed by the locals as the Doms.
They quickly finished and dragged the corpses into the brush bordering the track. Scavengers would eliminate any trace of them before long. Fred adjusted the cartridge box and sword belt around his waist and checked the short musket he’d retrieved to ensure it was undamaged, loaded, and the priming powder hadn’t spilled when it fell. Satisfied, he climbed back on his horse, as Kari did the same. Kari looked very odd in her blood-spattered Dom coat, but he reflected again that at a distance, they might pass for the enemy. Better than they would have before! “Okay,” he announced.
Anson snorted, but urged his horse back toward the narrow trail they’d emerged from just a short time before—right in the face of the enemy scouts. Anson had killed both men before they even had a chance to raise their weapons, and that had elevated Fred’s estimate of their guide’s usefulness even further, but he still harbored a deep suspicion of the enigmatic man. When they’d retreated a considerable distance back into the dense jungle, they paused for a while.
“This is no good,” Anson suddenly announced, frustrated. He looked at Fred. “I expected them to hunt you, but not like this! We’ve been dodging patrols incessantly, and the closer we get to our goal, the worse it gets. They’re quite clearly certain of our objective.” There was no doubt about that now, and worse, they’d passed a small river village that had been utterly exterminated, apparently for no other reason than it was suspected they may have stopped there. “They’re not giving up, and they’re obviously willing to kill anyone who might help us or even talk to us! It’s madness!” He looked hard at Fred. “Just what the devil did you learn about them that they’d go to such lengths?”
Fred shifted. “I guess I’m not really sure. I learned a lot, but I don’t k
now how much would be secret from their own people . . . except . . .”
“Except what?” Anson demanded. Fred just looked at him. “I’ll tell you every last thing I know if you promise to shoot straight with us for once! Tell me why those other guys wanted Kari so bad and why we need to make it to that particular little town you talked about. Finally, I want to know just who the hell you are, Captain Anson!”
Anson seemed to think long and hard, then finally nodded. “I’ll tell you what I may, but our destination has changed. It’s clearly impossible to take you where I wanted, so we must go somewhere they won’t expect. In fact, your new wardrobe has given me a rather bold thought.” He shrugged that away. “Deviating from my original plan also eliminates any possibility of reuniting young Kari-Faask with the people who wanted her, though, so their part in this is of no further consequence. I will tell you they very likely didn’t mean her any harm, though.”
“Very likely?” Fred demanded. “That was good enough for you?”
“Yes! Good enough for my mission to gain their trust!” Anson took a breath. “I suppose I succeeded in that, for what good it will do. Perhaps some of our party survived and word will spread that they have friends. The Christians in our party already knew that, but they put me in contact with the others. It was, in fact, the Christians who fought to allow the Jaguaristas to escape.”
“Jaguaristas?”
“A cult of the old gods, opposed to the Doms. They’re somewhat radical fellows, but brave enough—and pervasive enough to be of use.”
“For what?”
“Why, to annoy the Doms, of course.” Anson urged his horse forward.
“Where we going?” Kari asked.
“A city. A Dom city, where I hope you can steal a boat and take your news to your Second Fleet. There’s no alternative now. At this point, I’d say it’s just as important for your people as it is for mine to learn what intelligence you have.”
“So you’re not an Imperial!” Fred declared, almost triumphantly, and Anson smiled.
“No.”
“Then who the hell are you?”
“Language, Lieutenant Reynolds! You’re, what, seventeen years old?”
Fred colored. “I’m nineteen, for what difference it makes. Who are you?”
“I’ll reveal that after you tell me everything you know.”
* * *
“There, at last, is El Paso del Fuego,” Captain Anson exclaimed, as they eased out of the jungle into the edge of a sloping meadow overlooking the sea. The sun was plunging down amid golden, vaporous clouds, but great billows of cloud streamed high in the sky above them, reflecting another, redder sun that seemed to have fallen to earth across the water to the north. It rested there, pulsing fitfully, atop the highest mountain Fred had ever seen.
“A volcano!” Fred gasped, looking up. And up. The thing was so tall, there was snow two-thirds of the way up its flanks. “And it’s spectacular!”
“It is,” Anson agreed, “but it has already diverted your attention from the greater marvel, which is the most important intelligence you can possibly relay to your people. Look at the sea.”
Fred and Kari did. There was a city below them, large and sprawling, with many, many ships anchored near. Even as they watched, more ships swept quickly toward them from the east, beyond their view. Some were steamers, towing bare-poled juggernauts of a hundred guns or more, but they moved amazingly fast, perhaps ten knots. Fred was confused.
“The steamers are essentially tugs,” Anson explained grimly, “that keep the ships of the line in the channel. They add little to the speed of their passage. Particularly against a contrary wind.”
“What channel?” Fred asked quietly. He still couldn’t grasp it.
“This whole area is amazingly volcanic. You’ve remarked on the tremors before. What you see is the result of that—or perhaps something else. Our scientific fellows can’t agree. Some say it was caused by a momentous eruption some thousands, perhaps millions, of years ago. Others propose a celestial body, a great meteor perhaps, once struck here.” He grimaced. “I’m skeptical of that, but it doesn’t really matter. The point is, this feature did not appear on any of the maps we brought to this world, nor, I daresay, did you expect to see it.”
“What feature?” Fred demanded, but things were beginning to knit.
“An equatorial passage,” Anson stated simply. “A canal. A strait, if you will, between the continents. A navigable strait, at the proper times of day or month. The tidal surge is most impressive, as you can see. No steamer I know can move against its flood, much less a sailing ship.”
“But ships . . .” Fred paused in horror. “My God! The Doms have their own damn Panama Canal—in Costa Rica! An entire fleet can make transit with the tide from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.”
“Or back the other way,” Anson agreed, wondering what Fred meant about Panama. “They can’t move many through at once, of course. If the tide should turn on a ship within the pass, it would almost certainly be wrecked. I’ve seen that.” He shrugged. “There is a bay of sorts about halfway through the passage where ships may pause at need, but even there the currents are amazingly treacherous.” He looked at Fred and Kari. “This is the gift I give you and your Alliance: the knowledge of this place. As you can see, whatever damage you’ve inflicted on the Dominion fleet is quickly dwindling to nothing.”
Fred gulped.
Anson smiled. “It’s not all bad. Every ship that comes through here is one less that my people must face in the East, and our Navy will take advantage of that.”
“Your Navy?” Kari managed. She wasn’t quite as stunned as Fred, but, then, she knew nothing of the way the world should be. She learned it only as it was.
Anson ignored the question, but pointed down at the sprawling city. Lights were beginning to gleam in the gathering darkness. “That,” he said, “is El Corazon del Fuego. There you must steal a boat. Perhaps, in the darkness, your borrowed uniforms will help.”
“What about you?” Fred asked, but Anson shook his head.
“I must make another way, to report what you told me to my own people. You’re on your own from here. All I can advise is that you not be caught. Your knowledge of the true nature of the Dom faith and their ambition to eradicate all others—even among their own—certainly explains why they’ve spared nothing to capture you, but it gives us little military advantage other than propaganda. What is useful is that they know about the Grik.”
Fred flushed.
“It’s not your fault! No one resists the Cleansing. No one. It’s a miracle you’re sane. But knowing that they know is utterly critical information, for your people and mine, if the Grik are as terrible an enemy as you say.”
“They are.”
“Then there’s that. There’s also the fact that not only have you met the ‘Emperor of the World,’ but you told me exactly where he is. We suspected, of course, but couldn’t know.” He grimaced. “It’s almost too obvious, but the Doms are nothing if not arrogant.”
“Who’s we?” Fred finally demanded, and Anson sighed and looked at him, frowning. “I did promise, didn’t I? Well, your people will likely discover it soon enough if they have any success against the Doms—which I pray they do—so it seems only sensible that the news should not come as a complete surprise to either side. Surprises can be such awkward things.” He glanced at the setting sun. “I must be brief, and there’s no time to describe the adventure of my people to this point, but . . .” He looked at Fred, and a crooked smile creased his weathered face. “You and I are . . . cousins, in a sense.” He turned to Kari. “And after coming to know you and learning your tale, as well as the circumstances of your Alliance, I’m personally pleased to call you cousin as well, though some of my people may hesitate at that.” He stared back at Fred. “You see, you’re not the only Americans to find themselves in this world.”
“I knew it!” Fred exclaimed, then his eyes narrowed. “But you talk so weird!”
Fred nodded.
“Whereas my people,” Anson continued, “found ourselves in this world in the year—as I assume we both reckon such things—1847.”
“But where . . . how?” Fred stammered.
“I assume the how of it was much the same as for you,” Anson replied. “‘Where’ was during a dreadful storm off the east coast of Mexico. The United States, you may or may not recall”—he looked strangely at Fred—“was at war with Mexico at the time, and our grandfathers were preparing an invasion at Vera Cruz. Three of our ships, much like your Imperial friends’, I understand, suddenly found themselves, well, somewhere else.” He grimaced. “Quite traumatically ‘somewhere else,’ in our case, since the Yucatán Peninsula is considerably larger on this world than our old charts showed. One of our three ships found itself suddenly hard aground in the surf! I take it you know nothing of the Atlantic, or the peoples and creatures on the far side of the world from you?”
Fred shook his head, wide-eyed.
“That makes us even, since we know nothing of your side of the world! Perhaps if our people can be friends, we may learn much from one another.”
“But . . . where are your . . . other Americans?” Fred demanded. “Obviously you’re not in Yucatán. I didn’t really know about this strait”—he gestured northward—“but I did get a pretty good idea what the Dominion claims and about where their frontiers are.”
“I notice you understand the difference between the two.” Anson grinned.
“Yeah. They claim everything they know about!”
“Then for now, consider us north of their frontier. I do have reason to be somewhat vague.”
“Los Diablos del Norte,” Fred whispered.
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