CHAPTER 38
It took a while to ride all around the battlefield, stopping for a report at Olayne’s grand battery, before rejoining Major Reed. He was already mounted and waiting with Alcaldesa Sira Periz. She looked very small but fiercely determined in her own gold scale armor similar to (and just as useless as) her dead husband’s, sitting atop his horse. Lewis and his party had lost a lot of the ash that coated them, but the battle itself had left them quite bedraggled compared to her, and their lathered horses had had quite enough of all this running around. Father Orno and Reverend Harkin were mounted as well, looking adamant and resolute. Samantha Wilde, Barca, and Colonel De Russy were there as well, though Lewis noted with relief that none of them looked as if they expected to go. Lewis, Anson, and Beck bowed to Sira in their saddles, and Lewis spoke first. “Alcaldesa, please accept my most sincere condolences. Your husband was a good man, a brave man. I considered him a friend and hope he felt the same.”
“That’s neither here nor there at the moment,” Sira replied sharply, but then her voice softened. “You served him well, as you’ve served our people.” She looked at him intently. “Your people. He could be . . . confused at times, especially of late, and that was largely my fault,” she confessed bitterly. “But he wasn’t ‘confused’ at the end, nor am I now.” She waved out over the field, and Lewis followed the gesture with his eyes. About ten thousand Doms left, he confirmed, drawn up for battle—Though they look as hard used as we do. And some, probably survivors of their “execution,” don’t appear very firm. Of particular interest was the cluster of horses and riders about halfway between the respective forces, just sitting there, patiently waiting. “And look what you—we—have wrought together!” Sira continued. “The terrible Doms, humbled at last, and the remnant of their army at our mercy!”
Leonor coughed. “Not exactly at our mercy, Alcaldesa,” she said dryly.
Sira’s eyes flashed, but Lewis shook his head. “She’s right. They still outnumber us two to one, and even with the ammunition they carry—we’ve destroyed the rest—they could smash right through us with a determined, concentrated attack. We’re low on ammunition as well, and our artillery is nearly spent. They don’t know that, but they have to suspect. I’ll tell you what I told the Ocelomeh: the best way to win this battle and a breathing space to prepare for the next one is not to lose. We can still lose if we don’t handle this right.”
“Hear him,” said Colonel De Russy, voice subdued. He glanced repentantly at Lewis, and particularly Varaa. “I apologize for my earlier . . . indisposition. I fear I was trying to make up for something. I’m quite recovered now and fully reminded of my limitations.”
“No, I should apologize to you,” said Lewis with a sad smile. “We did have a deal, and I pushed you past your end of it. We’ll keep things more straightforward in the future.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Varaa stated, staring hard at Sira with her large, blue eyes. “Which is why De Russy should be on that horse at this moment and you should not, Alcaldesa. This is his ‘end’ of it, as it were.”
Sira bristled. “Are you saying I can’t conduct the affairs of my city?”
“Not at all. But this is a battle, not a city. And though De Russy may be more suited to a city than a battle as well, he’s been in both.”
“Uxmal can’t risk another leader today,” De Russy agreed firmly. “I’m far more expendable than you, my dear.” He looked down. “Proven conclusively once more.”
Barca, standing by him, frowned deeply, and Samantha spoke up, “Really, Rube, don’t be absurd.” She looked at Reed, arching a brow. “And you can’t go either.”
“Mistress . . .” Reed objected with surprise.
“She’s right,” Lewis said, growing impatient. This was taking too long, and the Doms might interpret the delay as shyness. “I’m going, so you stay.” He bowed as respectfully as he could in the saddle to Sira Periz. “For the same reason you must. If they’re planning treachery, we can’t make them a gift of us all.” He glanced down at the clot of waiting Doms. There were six of them, and even at a distance, Lewis thought he recognized the squat, powerful form of General Agon in his yellow-and-black coat, dripping lace. “I’ll take Colonel De Russy, Varaa, and Captain Anson.”
“And me,” Leonor said dangerously. “My revolvers are reloaded.”
Lewis sighed.
“Will you leave us as well?” Harkin demanded. “Shouldn’t have even waited for him,” he said aside to Father Orno.
“No. Come along if you like.”
“But keep your mouths shut,” Anson warned. “Battles are no place to argue scripture either.”
They had to tread carefully for the first part of the way out to meet the enemy, guiding their horses through the maze of bloody bodies still lying where they fell after the Allied stroke that finally broke the Doms’ furious but uncoordinated effort to smash through the 3rd Pennsylvania and 1st Uxmal. Even down here, Lewis saw the occasional American corpse. Their death was no more tragic than that of their indigenous allies, but Lewis felt especially responsible for them. They’d followed him into a war they had no stake in before he made it so and died in a land unimaginably distant from their homes. It made him very sad, but even more grimly angry as he approached the leaders of the invaders who killed them. The most extraordinary thing to him was that, absent the weird, surrealistic setting of the marquee full of gold and flags and Blood Priests—and then the debilitating smoke they’d conjured and sacrifices they’d prepared—the men before him were only men. All were soldiers, no Blood Priest was with them, and despite their grave, even hostile expressions, here beneath the late afternoon sun there was no palpable aura of menace about them.
Both groups spread out as they neared, and Lewis finally stopped Arete about five yards in front of General Agon. The others in his party did the same. Agon appeared somewhat surprised as his gaze took them in, lingering longest on Varaa and Leonor.
“It seems I met you all last night, in a manner of speaking—since we never actually spoke,” Agon said loudly, in excellent if accented English. He gestured aside at a companion. “And some of you already met my aide, Capitan Arevalo.” The officer he indicated, taller than the others, was staring intently, almost wonderingly, at Leonor, hand straying absently to his chest under his collarbone. Agon blinked and glanced around at the carnage, caused mostly by artillery down here. “Only last night,” he said lower, then cleared his throat and glared at Lewis. “But now I know you quite well, even without words.” He took a deep breath and let it out, glare shifting to a stiffly erect officer of lancers. “So. I believe we’re now fully acquainted with one another’s current dispositions. We can’t know what reinforcements might be rushing to join each other, but it’s clear what we have to fight with now.” A hint of a smile touched the sharp line of his lips. “Therefore, since Don Frutos embraced this stimulating tradition of meeting before battle . . .”
“Perverted it into a treacherous attack!” Father Orno seethed loudly. Harkin put a hand on his arm, and Agon glanced at him before continuing.
“. . . I found myself amazingly curious what you think we should do, Major Cayce.”
“Interesting,” Lewis ground out. “I was wondering the same about you since we know you have no other forces closer than Nautla, possibly even Campeche or farther. I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with what you have—only what your men have in their cartridge boxes and haversacks.”
“Which makes a strong argument for renewing the action at once and taking what I need,” Agon countered. “And you!” He stretched out his hands to encompass the long crescent of the Allied line. “Despite your laudable performance and impressive display, you’ve no intention of mounting a general assault. Why should you?” He waved at the grand battery, then out to sea, where HMS Tiger lay some distance out, hove to at the moment. She couldn’t linger like that off this lee shore for long, but Captain Holland had positioned her well for effect. “But if you mean to keep pounding me with your great guns, supposing I’ll just stand and take it, I must disappoint you. I will attack and destroy you if it costs every man in my army.”
“Well, considering the recent demonstration of your devotion to your men, it’s clear what you intend, and you’re only wasting our time,” Lewis snapped, starting to pull Arete around.
“Wait,” said De Russy, peering closely at Agon. “I can’t believe you invited this meeting for no more purpose than this. But what are we to think? You invaded this land to subjugate and murder its people in the name of an abominable faith that would continue the process until all submit or die. You tried to murder us in our first meeting like this”—his tone grew incredulous—“and did murder hundreds—perhaps thousands—of your own men when they honorably withdrew, in remarkably good order, from an assault they couldn’t complete. That, sir, is the most monstrous thing I’ve beheld in all the time I’ve been on this world full of monsters!”
Agon actually looked away. “I didn’t do those things,” he said softly, then met De Russy’s gaze again. “No, I did. Some of them. But I wouldn’t have taken advantage at the meeting or slaughtered my own men without orders.” He gestured around him. “These officers and I have been soldiers all our lives, loyal to the Holy Dominion. The faith it requires is demanding,” he conceded, “but we firmly believe our faith is the only engine that can secure this land and continent in a ‘world full of monsters,’ as you say.” He frowned. “But the . . . leadership of our faith has changed in recent years, growing more adamant and strident, some might even say fanatical, than in the past. And the rise of the Blood Priests . . .” He shook his head. “You see none of them here, since all are dead or have followed Don Frutos in the retreat he wouldn’t allow the soldiers I was ordered to destroy.” He paused a long moment, regaining control of a flaring fury. “Our faith, our very souls require us to follow the orders of God, passed through the mouth of His Supreme Holiness and Blood Cardinals such as Don Frutos.” He gestured behind at the mound of dead Doms his own soldiers made. “But since Don Frutos—ordered to command this campaign—has withdrawn, I can only take that to mean his army may do so as well—if it can,” he qualified, then snorted. “You may note I extended that presumption to what remained of those others who retreated as soon as our commander did so.”
“Such rigidity!” De Russy exclaimed. “And such . . . imaginative maneuvering within it on your part.”
Agon bowed. “He is our ‘leader,’ after all. Are we not bound to follow him?”
Leonor started to say something, probably inflammatory, but Lewis beat her to it. “Am I to infer that you wish to be allowed to retreat, your army intact?” he asked doubtfully.
“It’s hardly ‘intact.’ Nor is yours, I daresay. And I expect mine will be even less so by the time it straggles back to Nautla without supplies,” Agon added bitterly. “But it can certainly fight now, if you want, and we can destroy each other entirely.”
“Then why not?” Lewis asked.
Agon held up a finger. “Neither of us gains. Mutual annihilation might end our war for months, even years, but then it will all start again at the beginning.” He gazed at the Home Guards, Pennsylvanians, 1st US and 1st Uxmal, the grand battery. . . . “You have made a good beginning, and even in my . . . withdrawal, I will have done so as well because I’ve faced you, met you, and know better how to fight you when we meet again. We’re destined to be enemies, you and I,” he told Lewis, suddenly enthusiastic, “destined to contend as proper soldiers should: as instruments of our countries and faiths for possession of this continent!” He looked at his officers. “Not all believe as we do, but our foundational faith, even now under assault by the Blood Priests and perhaps checked by those like Don Frutos on the surface, is still quite fervent and compels us—as soldiers—to fight and strive and suffer for God as soldiers. How can we do that without war? And such a war! A battle against respected peers, not filthy rebels in huts”—he glanced at Varaa—“aligned with demons, no less!” Varaa wisely kept her mouth shut. “But that makes it even better!” Agon proclaimed, warming to his argument. “The stakes couldn’t be higher! What could please God more?”
“Good heavens,” murmured Reverend Harkin. “My own argument thrown back at me.” He frowned. “Quite twisted, of course. My God would have us stop fighting and live together in peace.”
“The same God,” Agon countered harshly. “Only your weak worship of Him makes Him seem different, and you misunderstand His requirements.”
Harkin reddened, preparing a rebuttal, but Father Orno very earnestly shook his head at him.
Lewis cleared his throat. “Let me get this straight. You want to just stop fighting and leave.”
“With our arms and flags, of course. You may consider it a victory if you like, but I cannot withdraw in defeat. Even the perception of that would ensure my officers and I would be subject to the same example we were ordered to make of the men who retreated earlier.” He actually chuckled. “But since Don Frutos now leads us away, I’m duty-bound to follow him, am I not?”
“You can’t take your cannon with you, not with all your animals scattered,” Anson snapped.
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 out 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.”