It didn’t seem to matter and they kept unerringly on, without hesitation, never even consulting a compass. Boogerbear knew their course remained steady because he did have a compass. Let it go, he told himself. They’re better at this than me. Me an’ Sal are only here in case o’ fightin’. His companions might be better at that as well, for all he knew, but he was pretty sure nobody was a lot better.
His mind wandered, even as his eyes swept the dim surroundings, missing nothing. He was surprised the Ocelomeh took to horses so well, considering they had so few and most seemed to walk everywhere. Prob’ly like Major Cayce, they want their fighters able to do most anything, he supposed. They got messenger horses in all their villages, I hear, so maybe they pass ’em around for ridin’ lessons for the kiddies? An’ what about that big duck-faced booger King Har-Kaaska rides? How come they don’t use more o’ them? The creature seemed to behave itself and didn’t slow their pace, though it did eat an awful lot. That’s probably why, he decided. An’ maybe breakin’ ’em is a particular chore for Injins that prefer goin’ on foot anyway. He figured the Ocelomeh were as good at being “woods Injins” as any he’d heard of. He doubted, even on horseback—especially on horseback—they’d match any “plains Injins” he knew. An’ Comanches’d rip ’em to shreds in the open, he suspected.
Then he reconsidered. King Har-Kaaska was the biggest “Cat” he’d seen (he thought of all Mi-Anakka as “cat-people,” even though he liked Varaa and she was obviously smarter than him), but even Har-Kaaska didn’t have the arms and shoulders of the Ocelomeh he led and couldn’t launch one of their massive arrows with anything like their power. Boogerbear had met five Cats now, counting the two with Har-Kaaska. All, like Varaa, carried one of those British-looking muskets. I bet even Comanches’d respect Ocelomeh bows. ’Specially for stickin’ buffalo.
It struck him as ironic that, even as he was contemplating those big, heavy arrows with long obsidian points and fletching as big as turkey feathers, one should whip by his face from the left, inches from his nose.
He jerked back on the reins, stopping and whipping his horse’s head to the side, just as another arrow hissed past where his chest would’ve been an instant later. Snatching the double-barrel shotgun from the saddle boot, he wrenched his horse around and charged directly where the arrows came from, noting that the big Ocelomeh to his left was already down, an arrow through his throat. Silly bastard, he reflected philosophically. Guess I should’a been lookin’ his way too.
A black-painted Holcano leaped up from where he’d been lying on his back by the base of a tree, bow across his body. Even as he reached for another arrow, Boogerbear pulled the front trigger of his shotgun. The right barrel fired almost two ounces of swan shot, blowing off the Holcano’s jaw and ripping out most of his throat in a geysering arc of blood and teeth. An arrow stung his horse’s flank, and Boogerbear forced the frightened animal in the direction that one came from. This Holcano was painted red, and Boogerbear shot him in the back of the head as he ran, exploding it like a ruptured gourd. Taking the empty shotgun by the muzzle with his left hand, ready to use it like a mace, he drew one of his revolvers.
Mingled with shouts and high-pitched yipping shrieks, muskets boomed in the forest behind, and he whirled and charged that way. “Goddamn trees,” he grumbled aloud. Even then his deep voice was deceptively mild.
The main party was engulfed in a melee, most everyone off their horses, the struggling forms making it hard to discern friend from foe in the gloom. Har-Kaaska’s strange mount was mooing piteously with a pair of heavy shafts in its side, even as it stomped a man to paste under the claws of its big, three-toed foot. But Har-Kaaska wasn’t on the rampaging animal, and Boogerbear saw that two Holcanos had him down, trying to stab him with spears used as knives. Boogerbear shot them both in the back, not much concerned the little .36 caliber bullets would punch through and harm the king. They didn’t, but the carefully placed bullets shattered the attackers’ spines, and Har-Kaaska flung the screeching, helpless men away with a grunt. Then his yellow eyes went wide and he leaped for his musket. Boogerbear spun and saw another pair of Holcanos drawing bows. He shot them both in their foreheads without aiming. One loosed his arrow high in the limbs, but the men dropped like sacks of beans. These little Colts ain’t much, Boogerbear thought with a certain fondness for his tools, not like them big new ones like Cap’n Anson’s, but they point pretty well. With one shot left in his first Paterson, he gently dropped the shotgun and drew his second.
Kurk-bang! roared Har-Kaaska’s musket, dropping another shadowy figure, just as a thunder of hooves approached through the wet, drifting smoke. It was Sal and the rear guard, coming up. Boogerbear watched with admiration as something attracted Sal’s attention and he almost casually shot a Holcano with as little apparent effort as swatting a fly. Men were still grappling on the ground, and the giant duck thing curled a toe around a red-painted man, pulling him off a Cat before stomping him with a squealing crunch. Har-Kaaska battered another with his musket butt, bashing in his skull, before reaching down and hauling the Mi-Anakka to his feet. An arrow whickered in from nowhere—it was impossible to see through the standing smoke—and slammed into the chest of the grinning Cat Har-Kaaska just raised up.
“Non!” Har-Kaaska almost wailed as the grin turned to a grimace of agony.
“Stay here, Sal,” Boogerbear rumbled softly, dashing through the smoke in the direction the fletching pointed. There was something dark on the ground ahead, a stump maybe—that instantly transformed into a Holcano who jumped up and tried to stab Boogerbear’s horse in the chest with a long, wicked spear. The horse sidestepped the thrust without a touch from the big Ranger, and he shot the man in the top of the head, right alongside the stiffened, bristly crest of his hair. Boogerbear patted his huffing horse on its broad, striped neck. “You’re gettin’ good at this, girl. Hafta give you a name.” He’d been reluctant to do that. He’d had his pick of “local” horses and chosen a good one, he thought, but it seemed indecent to take a new one “for keeps” so soon after losing his old companion in the wreck. And naming a horse made it yours. “How ’bout ‘Dodger’? You dodged that spear well enough.”
It started raining hard again, washing the smoke from the air. Boogerbear put his poncho on and took Dodger on a circuit of the little battlefield but found no more lurking enemies. Returning to where Har-Kaaska and another bloody Mi-Anakka were kneeling on the ground by their friend, Boogerbear looked around. He figured they’d lost four, counting the dying Cat. There were eleven or twelve dead Holcanos. An Ocelomeh had drawn the heavy arrow shafts out of the duck thing and was soothing it as best he could. Its wounds were bleeding freely, but it didn’t seem much hurt. Sal and another pair of Ocelomeh had caught all the horses, but one was blowing blood with an arrow high in its chest behind the shoulder. Seeing Boogerbear’s sad gesture, Sal quickly stepped in to cut the suffering animal’s throat. A moment later, it was thrashing on the ground while Sal gently patted its head, saying, “Lo siento, mi amigo.”
Not long after, the Cat-man died.
“Twenty years,” Har-Kaaska whispered, then stood and roared, “Twenty years he’s been with me!” He glared at Boogerbear, frizzed-out tail whipping behind him. “You can’t go home, but we might’ve done. Instead, we stayed and toiled and suffered to lead the Ocelomeh and protect others of this land—and avenge ourselves upon the Doms! Now . . .” He waved helplessly at the dead Mi-Anakka. “There were almost thirty of us once. Now there are six. Six!”
Boogerbear cleared his throat. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but there won’t be but four if we don’t get a move on. I don’t reckon we killed every Injin that came at us, so they know where we are an’ll likely bring more. Might be a little mad at us too.”
Har-Kaaska took a long breath, blinking rapidly. “You’re right, of course. We must go.” He paused. “But how did they find us? We were on no road, no known trail. Even if someone betr
ayed us, they could never tell the enemy exactly where to wait!” He looked up searchingly. “Nor could they have been guided by eyes in the sky!”
Boogerbear had no idea what Har-Kaaska meant by that, but knew where he was heading otherwise. “They didn’t know where we’d be, so they set theirselves up to bushwhack us all along a line. Must’a took every Holcano there is, maybe lizard-man too. An’ a fair number might’a heard our little fight.”
Har-Kaaska was nodding grimly.
“There’s little point going on, then, is there?” Sal asked angrily. “That many of the enemy between us and Puebla Arboras . . . How else could they stay here as long as this might take if they didn’t hold the city already?”
“Or are guests there,” growled the Mi-Anakka with the bloody fur beside Har-Kaaska.
Boogerbear couldn’t pronounce his name, so he never tried to remember it. He shrugged. “Go on or go back, but whichever it is, we better get at it.”
“We’ll return to Itzincab,” Har-Kaaska decided. “Alcalde Truro must know of this . . . and that his city is now on the frontier with the enemy!”
* * *
NORTH OF CAMPECHE
Unlike Boogerbear’s small joint scout with King Har-Kaaska, Lieutenant Coryon Burton’s probe down the coast, roughly following the rutted, overgrown coastal track toward Campeche, had started more like a reconnaissance in force. He had his own eighty-man J Company of the 3rd Dragoons (fleshed out by more than twenty Ocelomeh recruits), and the almost entirely Uxmalo fifty-man B Company of the 1st Yucatán Lancers under former sergeant, now Alferez, Espinoza. They were accompanied by another fifty Ocelomeh under Ixtla. None of the latter was mounted, but could run alongside a trotting horse longer than the horse could keep the pace. In any event, it was a respectable force that swept down through the coastal town of Nautla, long in the hands of the Holcanos, and liberated it without a fight. Not that there was anything to liberate. The only sign of previous inhabitants were long-abandoned cook-fire pits where they’d been eaten by their occupiers. Otherwise the place was a ghost town with nothing living there but garaaches—“wild” young Grik that had turned the once-cheerful little stone-and-adobe dwellings into warrens of filth.
They’d sent their report and pressed on into the disputed Tierra del Lagarto de Sangre, or “Blood Lizard,” as Coryon’s Sergeant Hayne called it, about the time the rains became constant and they’d slowed to a crawl, carefully plodding through its terrible forests and avoiding even more terrible monsters whenever the Ocelomeh gave enough warning. The monsters seemed to thrive in the endless rain and oppressive wet heat, but Coryon’s party, even the Ocelomeh hardened to it, grew increasingly miserable. Clothing and everything leather began to rot, and tents turned black with mildew and started to disintegrate. Weapons were impossible to keep dry, as big a problem for the Ocelomeh’s bows as the dragoons’ carbines. Even the men’s skin and the hooves of their horses started to deteriorate. There were only the great Cipactli and distant Usuma Rivers on the whole peninsula, as far as anyone knew, but swamps and marshes were resurrected everywhere. Long-dry gullies became roaring rivers in their own right, cutting directly across their path, and they had to be crossed.
All these things took a toll in sickness, injury, and death, but monsters of all shapes and sizes remained the most terrifying hazard. Ixtla said the weather emboldened them, since they could move with greater stealth. It also revived the more amphibious sorts dependent on this short time of year not only to mate, but to eat enough to sustain them in buried torpor through the drier months. These were the ones that cost them the most on the march, exploding from the swamps they attempted to skirt like long-legged, catfish-skinned crocodiles, snatching men and horses in apparent disdain to fusillades of bullets and arrows. Other men simply disappeared at night, sometimes without even a scream. Those on guard had it worst. Torn between terror and a reluctance to allow their imaginations to disturb exhausted comrades, at least one a week was snagged by savage teeth or claws and dragged shrieking into the wet darkness by things they never really saw. Searches never found the victims alive, and more men were occasionally lost.
Despite Coryon’s determination to press on and complete his first independent mission, he started to doubt they’d ever reach Campeche. “I thought a force as large as ours would intimidate the monsters more,” he’d confided to Ixtla one day, remembering the army’s relatively pleasant march from the beach to Uxmal.
The Ocelomeh had only shrugged. “Large, noisy groups do scare some of the monsters,” Ixtla had replied. “Even ours would normally do so, less large and noisy by design. But during the rains, along this low path?” He’d shaken his head. “A thousand men would lose just as many, probably more—though they wouldn’t be as sorely missed.”
“I’d thought the Doms would wait for the rains to end because it’ll be easier to move their men, guns, and supplies. Now I know different!”
“Do you?” Ixtla had asked harshly. “I think not. The Doms care nothing for the lives of their men. They’d still come through this if they could, and the suffering of the men they lost to sickness or monsters would be celebrated.” He’d paused then, considering. “No, if they were ready and could move their guns and supplies, we would’ve already met the scouts ahead of their vanguard.” He’d looked at Coryon, rain dripping from the wide-brimmed Uxmalo hat he wore. “It speaks well for you that you think of your people first, but pray your Major Cayce never forgets the Doms do not. He can’t expect them to act as he might under any circumstances in which the welfare of his troops is foremost in his mind.”
They finally reached the vicinity of Campeche with less than three-quarters of the men they started with, never once meeting enemy scouts, not even Holcanos. Coryon couldn’t help but hope that might mean the Holcanos and their Grik allies were still reeling from their defeat on the beach, and maybe, just maybe, the Doms weren’t really mustering a huge army to come for them after all. The next day they’d view the city itself and know for sure. In the drizzly, predawn darkness, Coryon, Ixtla, and Alferez Espinoza took a small mixed company to some low-lying wooded hills east of the city that a grizzled old Ocelomeh crept ahead to find. There they waited for the dawn of another dreary, sopping day. When it came, it brought a surprise: for the first time in weeks, rain wasn’t pouring from leaden clouds. It also brought disappointment, to Coryon Burton at least. The Doms were in Campeche, and they were there in force.
Various legends had described Campeche as a bustling coastal city carved from the dense woodland, much like Uxmal. It was obviously older, larger, and—once—significantly more populous; its stone buildings even more refined and ambitious in size and complex architecture. As the light gathered, Coryon saw the great central pyramidal temple was taller and more impressive than the one at Uxmal too, with entryways to unknown interiors on each stepped level, but it—like the rest of the once-thriving city—was a dead ruin. Much had been shattered into rubble in the distant past, though it was impossible to tell if age or artillery had done the work. And there were no homes, unless one counted the seemingly endless expanse of tents and canvas shelters radiating outward from numerous large marquees erected under the sodden red flags of the Holy Dominion.
A haze of wood smoke lay low on the encampment, and few men were about as yet. Most were either fetching wood or tending vast herds of horses and armabueys on the desolate, briar-choked plain, but every person they saw wore the bright yellow coats and breeches with black facings, cuffs, boots, and tricorn hats of Dominion soldiers.
“Yellows,” Burton hissed. It was the first time he’d seen them, but the name had stuck in his mind. He took a small telescope from a leather pouch and extended it. “Damn,” he muttered, wiping the foggy lens with his fingers. It didn’t help. Finally, he sighed and returned the instrument to its pouch. “Not another single soul,” he told his companions. “No civilians, no Holcanos or Grik. Just Doms.”
“How
many?” asked Alferez Espinoza. Like Teniente Lara, his English was nearly perfect after four months of constant practice.
“How should I know?” Coryon snapped bitterly. “A lot.” He looked at Ixtla. “How many troops to one of those tents? Maybe we can figure out that way.”
Ixtla gaped, then closely echoed him. “How should I know that? I’ve only ever seen a handful of Doms. I don’t know anyone, besides King Har-Kaaska, Varaa-Choon, and Koaar-Taak, who’ve seen an army of them and lived!” He looked at the camp. “We’ll just have to count them,” he added simply. “There may have been no residents here for years, and now we know why we met no Holcano scouts.” He frowned. “The Doms use them but won’t stay with them. Won’t allow them to linger near. Even as vile as Holcanos are, and as close to the Doms as they hope to be, they’re still heretics.”
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