Colonel Patrey watched the general ride away and then quickly issued orders for the boats in the harbor to be disabled. He sought out another colonel of the 15th Corps and assigned him to direct the army northward. When that was done, Colonel Patrey selected a company from his own regiment to raze the fishing village. At the head of one-hundred riders, Colonel Patrey raced out of the city and north along the coast to reach the village before the fishermen put out to sea.
The sun was just breaking the horizon when Colonel Patrey and his company reached the village. He frowned when he saw that another company of Federation soldiers was already there, but he was not surprised. Colonel Wuler of the 6th Corps had been with Patrey in the fall, and they had both spoken of destroying the village. It irked Patrey to have been beaten to the prize by his rival.
“You’re a tad late,” grinned Colonel Wuler. “Did you think I would forget?”
Colonel Patrey glanced around the small village and frowned. All of the boats were gone, and there was not a person in sight other than Federation soldiers. He dismounted and stormed into the closest hut. No one was inside. He turned and ran outside and into another hut. With a sigh of frustration he exited the hut and stared at Colonel Wuler.
“Where are the people?”
Wuler pointed out at the sea. Patrey gazed out at the small boats bobbing on the waves, but he was staring directly into the sun. He could see the boats far off the coast, and he could make out the shapes of fishermen in the boats, but he could not see things clearly.
“The women and children, too?” he asked Colonel Wuler.
“I cannot tell, but it hardly matters now, does it? We aren’t going to wait for them to come ashore and surrender.”
“General Montero will be livid,” replied Colonel Patrey. “He fears that the fishermen will carry word of our arrival north to Trekum.”
“In those boats?” laughed Colonel Wuler. “I don’t think so. It’s over forty leagues to Trekum, and I remember what those boats looked like last fall. I would not take any one of them out of sight of land, and I mean that with only one person in it. If they do indeed have their families onboard, they will all die before this day is over.”
Colonel Patrey looked at the distant boats bobbing on the huge angry swells and nodded in agreement. Most of the boats were single-man boats and they would be sorely overloaded with entire families stuffed into them. Still, he did not wish to report a failure to General Montero. Such was not the way to move up in the ranks of the 15th Corps.
“Burn the buildings,” Colonel Patrey shouted to his men. “Leave no wall standing.”
Colonel Wuler smirked. “And you will hope that General Montero does not ask any questions as he passes?”
“You obviously had the same orders as me, Wuler,” retorted Colonel Patrey. “Are you so anxious to report your failure to arrive in time to kill everyone here?”
Colonel Wuler laughed. “I will only report the truth, Patrey. I will say that the village was entirely destroyed and that we did not leave a single person alive in the village.”
Colonel Patrey grinned. “I could get to like you, Wuler. You are devious.”
“I have had a great deal of practice, Patrey.”
Far off the coast, the fishermen shouted and pointed towards the burning village. Women cried and the children started asking questions that no one wanted to answer. One ancient man looked at the old woman beside him on the floor of the small boat.
“It is as the fairy predicted,” the ancient man said softly. “She saved our lives.”
“Our lives are not yet saved,” frowned the old woman. “We have no homes to return to now, and these seas still seek to claim us.”
The fisherman manning the sails looked down at the old woman with a warm smile. “Homes can be rebuilt,” he said confidently, “and the sea will claim nothing from our village. Have faith in your fellow villagers. We will return to shore after the armies have passed by.”
* * * *
Team Darcia was no longer an army on the move. Although the sun was well into the sky, General Ross and General Haggerty sat inside the large command tent sipping tea and gazing at a map of Cordonia. The tent flap opened and a black-cloak entered. General Ross immediately felt a shiver of fear, but he ignored it. He had long grown accustomed to the feeling whenever black-cloaks were around. He realized some time ago that it was a magical defense created by the mages. He waved the black-cloak forward.
“What have you discovered?” asked the leader of Force Cordonia.
“Paso and Carid are also false cities,” the black-cloak reported. “They are even less elaborate than Darcia. I believe the Alceans took extra care of Darcia because our portals were located too close not to make it believable.”
“And Kantor?” asked General Ross.
“It does not exist,” answered the mage. “I flew high over the land, and I did not see any signs of human life at all. Other than the locations of the three fake cities, there is nothing to indicate that man has ever walked these lands.”
“Yet you agree that we are in Cordonia?”
The black-cloak sighed. “The skies tell me that we are in Cordonia, but that is not possible. The terrain is the same as Cordonia, but no one can make everything just disappear. It makes no sense.”
“You haven’t really answered the question,” frowned General Haggerty. “Are we in Cordonia or not?”
“We are not in the Cordonia that we expected to be in,” answered the black-cloak. “We are in a false Cordonia.”
General Ross raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Is this all an illusion of some kind? Are the Alcean mages talented enough to accomplish something like that?”
“It is not an illusion,” answered the mage. “What you see and feel around you is real. It just is not the Cordonia that we expected. It is something that I cannot explain.”
General Ross did not like the answer, but he accepted it. “What about the portals in Paso and Carid?”
“All four of them are just like the ones in Darcia,” answered the black-cloak. “The portals have been physically removed and taken away.”
“So there is some kind of life in this Cordonia,” stated General Haggerty. “Someone took those portals and hid them.”
The black-cloak merely nodded.
General Ross started writing messages, and the black-cloak stood patiently waiting. When General Ross was done, he slid two papers across the table to the mage.
“These are orders for Team Paso and Team Carid,” explained General Ross. “I want you to understand them before you take them so that you can tell General Testa and General Nunes that they mean exactly what they say.”
The black-cloak nodded in understanding.
“Both teams are to cease their march on Kantor and set up permanent camps where they are,” declared General Ross. “While our armies can survive by foraging, it makes no sense to gather sixty-thousand men in one place. The forest would not support such a large gathering. I want you to explain to the generals what we have discussed here. I want them to be fully informed of our situation. I also want the black-cloaks assigned to those armies to start surveying the land around them in ever widening circles. I want to be informed immediately of any sighting of people or structures, anything that would indicate life in this Cordonia.”
“I will arrange for daily reports from my people,” promised the black-cloak.
General Ross nodded and waved the mage away. The black-cloak turned and left the tent.
“I do not like to be around them,” General Haggerty said softly after the mage was gone.