Agon bowed again. “I fear you are correct. But I’ll stand by my officers as long as they stand by me when I remind Don Frutos the animals would never have scattered and the camp never would have been taken if he hadn’t ordered me forward, leaving so few troops behind.” There was a clear tone of warning in his voice for his fellows.
Lewis looked at Anson, then Varaa. She glanced at Father Orno, who also wisely hadn’t said a word, and then at Leonor. She alone looked angrier than surprised by all this. “We have to discuss it with the alcaldesa of Uxmal,” Lewis said at last. “She’s the only leader of our Allied cities present and will have to decide for them all.”
“She?” Agon asked.
Lewis’s face turned stormy. “Yes. Her husband was killed by treachery at our last meeting, so I’ve no idea whether she’ll ask me to let you go or kill you.”
Agon turned to look at the late-afternoon sun. “Very well,” he said, “but do press her to decide quickly. I quiver with the precariousness of entrusting such momentous decisions to mere passionate females. We must resume our battle if she delays too long. I don’t want to lose the light.”
* * *
—
“ ‘MERE PASSIONATE FEMALES,’ ” Leonor spat as they trotted back to where Sira Periz and Samantha Wilde waited with Major Reed and Captain Beck in front of the 1st Uxmal. “I’ll show him a ‘passionate female’ when I blow his damned head off!”
“Calm down,” hissed Varaa. “You’ll have the battle on again if you sway Sira, and I’m sure you will in your state.”
“You want to let ’em go?” Leonor demanded, incredulous.
“Of course!” Father Orno declared. “Don’t you see? We won! We were never going to destroy such a force entirely and were lucky to fight it to a standstill. As Major Cayce says, we won by not losing, and now we’ve won time!”
Lewis explained the situation to Sira Periz as plainly as he could while carefully withholding his own recommendations. That was largely because he was of two minds himself. On the one hand, all his arguments about winning by surviving were sound, particularly at this stage of what he feared would be a very long war. On the other hand, he’d brought his army here to fight, and a complete victory would earn them even more time. And if their losses had been worse than he’d hoped, his troops had stood strong, and morale was high. What’s more, General Agon bothered him. He was just as fanatical as Don Frutos in his own way, and he wasn’t a fool. Lewis doubted he’d had much control over the battle, but he’d clearly learned from it and would be harder to beat again. Lewis felt an almost overwhelming urge to destroy him while he could—but could he? That was the question—no doubt pondered by Agon as well—and he couldn’t answer it. He decided he had to let Sira Periz choose. She and all the people of the Yucatán had the most to lose, in a way. Not just their lives, but their homes and families, their very identity as a people. That identity would have to change to a degree for them to win the war, but it wouldn’t be exterminated by the Doms.
As it turned out, despite her personal feelings—almost exactly (and understandably) mirroring Leonor’s as Orno foresaw—Sira Periz reluctantly came to the same conclusion as her other advisors; they must let Agon go.
“Colonel, if you would?” Lewis asked De Russy.
“And our terms?”
Lewis glanced at Sira. “Essentially as Agon outlined himself,” Lewis replied, “with a few modifications. His men may keep the arms and flags they carry, but any that have fallen will remain where they lie. He has to pass back through the ruins of his camp, but he’ll make no attempt to recover any animals or supplies that might’ve survived the flames.” His voice turned harsh. “And he’ll keep going past Nautla, at least as far as Campeche.” They couldn’t realistically shadow him farther. “If he does that, he has my word we won’t harass his starving, weakening column on the march. If he doesn’t, we’ll know, and we’ll pick him apart.”
Captain Anson joined De Russy, calling on Teniente Lara and Lieutenant Joffrion to each pick a man and accompany them. He shrugged at Lewis. “The more fellas who know Agon by sight, the better.” Together they rumbled back down the gentle, corpse-choked slope and Lewis, Reed, Leonor, Sira, Samantha, Harkin, and Orno all stood together, dismounted at last, watching the exchange at a distance. Two of Agon’s officers broke away and galloped back to the regiments behind them, calling orders. Almost immediately, the Dom troops faced away from their enemy and began flowing from their battle lines back into a fat column, those first to do so already marching southwest toward the still-smoldering camp. Agon and three of his officers (including the tall aide named Arevalo) remained to converse with De Russy and Anson for a time, and though Lewis wondered what they were saying, he suddenly felt very tired.
“I still say we should hurry the devils along with artillery,” Reed said darkly.
“No,” Lewis said. “I should’ve seen it before. Crisp as they seem, the fight’s blown out of them.” He looked at the Uxmalo troops nearby, shifting his gaze to the battered Pennsylvanians and 1st US Infantry, seeing the exhausted relief on their blood- and sweat-streaked faces as they slowly began to relax. “Blown out of us too.” He smiled sadly at Sira. “We were lucky, and you made a wise choice.”
“So she did,” Varaa said with more energy than Lewis, voice suddenly animated with as much disbelief as pleasure. “But you beat them! By the heavens, you beat the Doms! King Har-Kaaska will be so amazed!”
“He didn’t think we would?”
“Of course not!” Varaa gushed, then collected herself. “He hoped, of course, but really, what were the chances?” She blinked benevolently at Sira. “I think you’ll find, with King Har-Kaaska more vigorously advancing the cause among the other alcaldes as well”—she blinked apologetically at Lewis—“and with the other cities now more secure, enthusiasm for this great Union that Major Cayce, and indeed your late husband, proposed will grow.” She clapped her hands with glee and thumped Lewis on the shoulder. “You beat them!” she repeated once more.
“Damn right,” Leonor affirmed, stepping closer to Lewis, even giving him a strange look he didn’t recognize as proud affection. “I was for killin’ ’em all—but that’s just my way, an’ Sira chose right.” She turned to look where the little gathering was breaking up at last, De Russy, her father, and the others galloping back, and Agon and his followers going to join their troops. “They ain’t runnin’,” she said almost gently to Sira, whose strong, pretty face was suddenly streaked with tears, “but they are leavin’. An’ even that fluffed-up General Agon knows Major Cayce made ’em.”
Lewis shook his head and waved up and down the line at the still tired but far more animated Americans, Uxmalos, and Ocelomeh. “We did. Together. And we have to get ready to do it again.”
Anson and De Russy slid down from their horses as their escorts returned to their places, and as if they’d discussed it beforehand, both men solemnly stood at attention and saluted Lewis. The men behind them exploded in a spontaneous cheer. Drums thundered, and fifes in the 3rd Pennsylvania joined in, exuberantly playing the “Old 1812.” Soon, the Uxmalos and 1st US were doing it as well.
“It seems we have a victory tune,” Sira Periz said loudly, more cheerfully over the racket.
“So we have,” agreed Samantha somewhat ironically.
“What did you and Agon go on about so long?” Leonor asked her father.
Anson frowned, then shrugged. “Oh, the usual, I guess. Mutual expressions of esteem an’ regretful descriptions of what we’ll do to each other when we meet again. Pretty graphic on their part.” He looked aside at Lewis. “Agon’s mighty anxious to meet you again, he says. Was disappointed you didn’t say goodbye yourself.”
Lewis took a long breath, gazing at the carnage on the field, the battered enemy host now starting to enter the distant trees, the red sun dipping down toward the forest. Tiger was under way again, beating o
ut to sea, sails a golden red as well. Turning to face his army, his cause, he raised his voice over the tumult. “The enemy general says he’s anxious to meet us again!” He raised his hands to silence the hoots of derision, then bowed quite deeply to Sira Periz. Cheers exploded once more, even louder, the local troops ecstatic to see their beautiful, tragic alcaldesa so honored. She raised her hands in turn and, looking back at Lewis, cried, “The Doms will see us soon enough. And when we’ve built our Union of all the cities in the Yucatán and Major Cayce builds an army even greater than this—greater than anything ever seen—they won’t have to come here to do it!”
Reverend Harkin, Father Orno, and many others nearby went down on their knees and clasped their hands before them.
“Praise the Lord for this, His victory, and the firm foothold He has granted us on purgatory’s very shore!” Harkin cried out. “Let us now gird ourselves to press beyond it, confronting the demons and evil men of this whole land with His works and word!”
Father Orno intoned a prayer full of similar sentiments, met by more roaring approval, and Leonor leaned over and shouted in Lewis’s ear, “Words an’ works won’t be enough. It’ll be our blood an’ bodies.”
Lewis was already nodding back. “But spiritually inspired or contrived or not, we do have a ‘cause,’ Lieutenant.” He paused, looking at her. “ ‘Leonor’ for the moment, if I may.” She flushed and nodded and Lewis went on, “With no choice now at all, it’s become our cause to make ourselves as ‘good’ as we can be”—he glanced at Barca—“in all ways, simply to survive the very real evil we’ve found. And I must agree with Sira Periz; the best way to do that is to go after it.”
“On purgatory’s shore” would remain a common description of their circumstances among the rank and file for quite some time. It was even somewhat appropriate as far as they could know since their earlier, by a century, perceptions of “this world” were even less informed than our own woefully inadequate understanding. We gradually accepted that not only have various prehistoric creatures been preserved largely unchanged in their adapted niches for millions of years; some of their descendants have advanced in unexpected, often shocking ways. Grik-like beings must be distant offspring of Dromaeosaurids, for example, and Mi-Anakka—whose small but important ongoing part in this tale (primarily revealed in surviving personal journals) has been otherwise largely forgotten, alas—might’ve originally been obscurely related to the giant lemurs of Madagascar.
But the “1847 Americans” couldn’t know any of this, though it appears Reverend Harkin—of all people—had an inkling, stirred by wonder and the controversy surrounding the fossil remains of Iguanodon and others, his own intellect, and a few “evolutionists” of various sorts already lurking in the shadows. But Darwin wouldn’t publish his famous work for another decade, and Owen only coined the term “dinosaur” less than a decade before. That word was by no means universally accepted or even known, virtually nothing was understood about the creatures Grant named, and there remained strong sentiment against the very notion of evolution and extinction, largely stoked by contention among some of the “lurkers” themselves! But the “1847 Americans” and their friends would learn much more, as we did, as they proceeded (allegorically) onward from purgatory, through ever deeper and darker levels of hell. . . .
Excerpt from Courtney Bradford’s
Lands and Peoples—Destiny of the Damned, Vol. I,
Library of Alex-aandra Press, 1959
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The years 2020 and 2021 have been tough for everyone and I’m mostly thankful to my sweet wife, Silva, for not tearing my throat out during the extended time in which we were inseparably cooped up together and I had to write—and she couldn’t escape. I escaped to the woods from time to time, and that’s probably why I’m still living. I can only imagine how hard it’s been for all my friends “up” in New York. Particularly strong in my thoughts are my wonderful editor, Anne Sowards, and great agent, Russell Galen. After writing the Destroyermen series for so long and starting “fresh” (sorta) with this, I’m especially indebted to Anne for helping me “get back to basics” here and there.
Otherwise, though I sometimes have a lot of people to thank for their direct technical assistance, that’s not really the case this time, and there’s nobody to take the blame for goofs but me . . . well, and Jim, as always. Jim’s really the one to blame. I had a lot of indirect assistance from many sources, though, sometimes over many years. This might’ve been in the form of kicking ideas around for this very book or just things I picked up from them, or even came up with myself in their company. In many cases, their chief contributions to this book—and my life—have been their friendship and inspiration. If any of you see your name here and say to yourself, “What? I didn’t do anything!” Yeah, you did. In no particular order I must include here: Jim Goodrich, Dennis Petty, Eric Holland, Ron Harris, Dennis Hudgens, Mark Beck, Chris Fisher, Mark Wheeler, Dave Leedom, Robin and Linda Clay, Dusty “Crickett” Springfield, Don Herlitz, “The Ghast Boys,” Dan Lawrence, Jim McNabb, Charlie Lara, Alan Hutton, Leo Bush, Dex Fairbanks, Michael Dunegan, Fred Fiedler, Gordon Frye, Kieran McMullin, Robert Norment, Gene Robinson, Steve Von Rader, Tony Hale, and last but not least (though I know I’ve forgotten so many), Bruce Frazier.
Thanks for the memories.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Taylor Anderson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Destroyermen novels. A gunmaker and forensic ballistic archaeologist, Taylor has been a technical and dialogue consultant for movies and documentaries and is an award-winning member of the National Historical Honor Society and of the United States Field Artillery Association.
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