Conspiracy of Elders

Chapter 2: ...and Justice for all

CooOOoo-woo-woo-woooo! The mating call of the mourning dove rang out of the cloud forest canopy as the Pathfinder leader began his report to his superiors. With a series of bird calls, he transmitted the vital information of the Incas' rapid advance downriver.

As he finished his report, he motioned for his subordinates to retrieve the bloated cadaver as he studied the silhouettes of the eastern mountain peaks.

**

The fog renewed its assault on the soaring fortress in Kuelap as it clambered up the towering walls and flooded the ramparts with meandering ribbons of milky-coloured tentacles.

Sporadic wind gusts drove the amassed mist down the staircases and between the rows of barracks and storage huts that bordered the central parade ground.

Whish!

"Nooooo!"

"Ayhee!"

Whish!

Shrouded in the damp mist and drizzle, a solitary figure slithered into the shadows of a window's alcove and continued his reconnaissance of the assembly area below him. His dark-brown cloak blended with the window's drapes and camouflaged him from the soldiers assembling below his vantage point. Through sporadic gaps in the fog, he searched for the source of the slashing sounds and the tormented shrieks.

**

CooOOoo-woo-woo-woooo! The plaintive call of a mourning dove soared over the screams.

The interloper shifted on the narrow ledge as he wrenched his cloak's hood off his head. "Incas...thirty...thirty-five war canoes approaching rapidly." He squinted in the direction of the river as he deciphered the Pathfinders' message. "Two marks of the water clock...more than three hundred Jaguar warriors...who?" He stiffened as the cold point of a blade pressed against the side of his neck.

"You're too late, Merbal," his accoster growled. "Your famed survival skills have finally failed you. Turn around slowly."

**

Neither of the two adversaries observed the four canoes skimming upriver through the mist and drizzle. In each canoe, six men drove their slim craft forward towards the braziers at the end of the city's long stone docks.

"Arato!" The paddlers decreased the pace of their paddling at the whispered command.

"Jumpers, out!" Two paddlers jumped from either side of each craft into the churning water. Their helmsman steered away from the docks and toward a protective cordon of fifty silent, green-cloaked warriors standing behind the low boundary walls of the city's main market square.

In the glow cast by the soldiers' torches and the reflections from their burnished bronze helmets, the silhouettes of several market stalls emerged in the waning mist.

Feral cats snarled or wailed as they scampered from the butcher stalls and their nocturnal scavenging as the clank of a bronze edged shield against another shield or the shuffling of military sandals on the paving stones echoed across the plaza.

**

"The perimeter is secure, Rufo," a cadre leader, identifiable by the brass whistle handing from a red cord around his neck, reported to his commander. "The men have been fed and the other five cadres have sent word that our base camp is secure."