Obey me! The captain-general focused his will and his command upon the cleric. We need you, Bishou. But we need Daggrande, too.

"Very well," Domincus grunted. "I want Halloran clapped in irons and locked below. I will say nothing to the men. I have no need to punish the dwarf."

"Good." Cordell nodded, still annoyed that his lieutenant's vengeance would cost him a good officer. "Now let us see to the landing."

The Bishou joined the captains, and Cordell summoned his cabin boy. The lad listened carefully while his commander outlined the preparations to be made in fashioning a cell belowdecks for Halloran.

The golden eagle banner fluttered proudly atop the Falcon's mainmast. Halloran felt a surge of emotion as he approached that flag and the ship below it. Tears clouded his eyes, and he saluted the pennant as the canoe drew alongside the Falcon. Shame, too, threatened to overwhelm him. The tragedy of Martine's loss weighed heavily on his mind. He did not know what to expect when he boarded the flagship.

The carrack rode quietly on the placid lagoon, and Daggrande and he had no difficulty ascending the rope ladders dropped to them from the deck above.

Halloran stopped in shock as he stepped aboard the Falcon's deck. Without a word, four brawny sergeants seized him and clapped metal cuffs about his wrists and ankles.

Hal bit his tongue. He saw the glowering figure of Bishou Domincus beyond his guards and suspected the explanation. Perhaps he deserved no better treatment, he told himself.

"Here, now!" growled Daggrande, turning to defend his friend. But captain-general Cordell stepped up to him and raised a placating hand. The dwarf glowered suspiciously at his commander. Cordell's words struck Halloran with greater force than any physical blow could possibly deliver.

"Captain Halloran, you are charged with desertion in the face of the enemy. You will have a chance to speak in your own defense after the matters of tomorrow are resolved. Until then you are confined to a brig belowdecks of the Falcon"

Cordell looked Halloran squarely in the eyes as he spoke. The young man sought some hidden message there, some gleam of communication that would tell him that Cordell knew he was not a coward, would not have fled a battle. This man's high regard meant more to Halloran than anything in the world.

But instead he saw inky-black depths that showed him only the strength of the commander's murky soul.

"Your sword, sir!" Cordell's voice strained as he barked at Halloran.

Numbly the young captain ungirded Helmstooth. Slowly, looking at the weapon in disbelief, he handed it to his commander. Cordell turned away from him, setting the weapon aside before turning back to the assembled legionnaires.

"Command of the Pennant Lancers is conferred to Captain Alvarro, effective immediately."

Halloran heard his unit transferred to the oily hands of the unscrupulous horseman, a final outrage as he stepped through the hatchway toward his dark and musty cell.

The desert stretched in all directions, bleak, dry, and hot. Where once Poshtli had seen a myriad of wondrous colors, hues of gold and red and brown in a million varieties of shadow and light, now he saw only emptiness, wasteland, and death.

His waterskin had been empty for days. No stranger to the desert, the Eagle Knight had survived by hacking the plump cactus known as the Sand Mother wherever he could find it. The sweet moisture within the plant had sustained him until the desert became so dry that even the Sand Mother could not live.

Poshtli's eagle-feather mantle spread around him as he slumped to the ground. He squeezed a handful of powdery rock, crushing it into sand as if he would force water from the stones. He began to wonder, for the first time, if the desert had defeated him.

The eagle feathers, black and white… now covered with dust, they could spread into wings and carry him from this place of death and despair. He shook his head weakly.

No! he thought determinedly. I have set out on foot, and on foot I will complete this journey. The god, the Plumed Father himself, had spoken to Poshtli in a dream, commending him to this quest. Somehow he would find the silver wheel, the artifact that might explain the meaning of the strangers' coming. If they did not herald the return of Qotal, their arrival still was a thing of great significance to the True World.

It was Poshtli's mission to find that truth, to learn the nature of that significance. How he would learn it, and if he would even survive his quest, were just now points of some doubt. Then the rocks began to talk.

The longboat slipped through the darkness to nestle against the seaward side of the Falcon. A dark figure grabbed a line and quickly pulled himself onto the deck. He nodded curtly at the legionnaires guarding the ship and went to the door of the forward cabin.

Bishou Domincus opened the door in a wash of candlelight. He admitted the visitor and then quickly closed the portal, darkening the deck.

"So good of you to come, Captain" greeted the Bishou, pouring two glasses of brandy.

"I got your message. What do you want?" grunted Alvarro.

The Bishou frowned, his long face creasing unpleasantly. He narrowed his eyes as he handed Alvarro a glass. "I fear that justice may not be served in a certain case of treason within the legion."

Alvarro's gapped teeth split into a sly grin of understanding. "Go on," he urged.

"You are in a position to benefit from swift justice in the case in question, and I desire such justice to be done. Believe me when I tell you that you owe command of the lancers to my intervention and strong recommendation."

Now Alvarro's red beard twisted into a frown. He did not like this turn in the conversation, and the Bishou immediately changed his tactics.

"If Halloran were to meet his end aboard ship, before his trial – while I am safely ashore, with Cordell – I can ensure that the investigation into the… execution would be minimal."

Alvarro turned and paced two steps in the small cabin, then turned back. "I want more than revenge. I want gold," he hissed.

"I'm certain that we can agree upon a price," replied the Bishou.

The featherbanners streamed in the air, lifted by pluma into a weightless colorful cloud over the army of Payit. The whole plain of Ulatos became a sea of shades and hues. Great fans swirled over the most important leaders, the chiefs of a thousand men. From all the lands of the Payit, from the depths of the jungles and the breadth of the wide coastal savannah, the warriors gathered on the field beside Ulatos Lagoon.

Gultec stood at the heart of the gathering with several other Jaguar Knights, on the flat roof of the large house they had claimed as their meeting place. The whistles and shell trumpets of different bands shrilled and honked in the growing twilight, and new arrivals often marched in under torchlight, advancing like slow, flaming serpents from the surrounding jungles.

It made the knight uneasy, this gathering of the entire army in the open, a mile from the camp of the strangers. Dense jungle and the mangaroo swamp of the delta surrounded them, and Gultec knew they could conceal ten thousand men or more close to the enemy route of advance. But Caxal, the Revered Counselor, flushed with his insulted pride, had ordered otherwise.

The enemy forces had quickly come ashore in their longboats, deploying into companies and advancing a hundred yards from shore. For some moments, it had seemed that they intended to attack at nightfall, a tactic unthinkable to Gultec and the other warriors of Maztica. But now it seemed as if the strangers, like normal men, would wait until sunrise to fight.