Gonji: Fortress of Lost Worlds Part 8

Moon had set the windmill afire. The mill floor was already ablaze, the flames licking up the walls. Gonjis own trap had been set against him.

He cast about futilely for a second or two, then calmed himself. He ran to the opposite window, which overlooked the bonfire, the tilting ground of moments ago. Tora, lying on his side, kicked uselessly at the black coc.o.o.n.

More immediately below: the long hind body segment of the Moonspinner, clawing and pushing; and one of the windmill vanes.

Gonji exhaled a determined breath, feeling the rising heat waves at his heels. Throwing the halberd as far from the burning windmill as he could, he poised in the window, praying to the kami of good fortune that the monster wouldnt free itself. Better to die in the leap.

He launched himself from the sill, caught one edge of the vane, his breath jarred from his lungs. But the vane began to shred from his weight, and he slid down the framework. The shaft turned slowly, lowering him even more. Now he neared the struggling bulk of the monsters lower half. His flesh crawled at the antic.i.p.ation of its imminent touch.

When he brushed the shrieking monsters smooth back carapace, he could stand no more. He pushed off and landed in the snow, his back flaring with pain as he rolled hard over the harnessed daisho.

But he was on his feet now. Free. And alive.

He looked up at the blazing windmill. The flames had reached the cap now and engulfed it. Infernal tongues belched from the windows. The monsters frenzied efforts still had not freed it.

He found his halberd and took up a torch from the bonfire. He ran to Tora, finding his left ankle sore from the fall but paying it little heed.

"Tora-hold still!" he cried. "Easy, Im not going to hurt you." He burned the terrified animal out of its restraining coc.o.o.n, had some difficulty steadying him, and could not mount until Tora had become reoriented. Rearing, nostrils and eyes flaring against the patches of webbing that still clung, Tora at last allowed his master to take to the saddle.

They made slow progress at first as Gonji burned them a path through the magical webwork. But then the flames spread, preceding them, and all at once Gonji could see into the distance. Into the clear, cold night air. An invigorating chill swept through him as the wind poured through the widening hole.

He wheeled and looked back. The Moonspinner had been burned free of the windmill, losing its claw in the flames progress. It scrambled about the base of the fuming windmill in mindless insect terror on its surviving appendages. Then it made two unsuccessful leaps skyward before finally catching the underside of the web and laboriously working its way upward, dangling upside down.

Gonji remembered his bow and quiver and took the opportunity to ride back and collect them, though he had to dismount and pick them up on foot, for Tora would not approach the blazing windmill.

They rode off a hundred paces, and Gonji felt a lunatic thrill to see the awesome spectacle of the flames racing up the webbing with volcanic fury. It was a sight like none he had ever seen. The relentless fire raged through the network in beautiful patterns of heavenly tracery. An ephemeral work of art to please the sky kami. The searching flames at last caught up with the diminishing figure of the Moonspinner, flaring it incandescent. It fell to earth on an angular path, like a shooting star. Gonji gasped to see its supernatural effulgence as it grew in his vision with the amazing speed caused by the weird spatial distortion. For an instant he feared it would engulf him, then it crashed into the snow before the roiling windmill with a shower of sparks and steam.

With a bellow of triumph Gonji dismissed all thought of it to concentrate on the new problem: the mercenary troop on the hills, ma.s.sing at the east end of the road to meet him. Their distance, he knew, was an illusion; they could be upon him in seconds.

They would have to catch him. His way lay westward; he would not abandon his course over the temporary inconvenience of a monster insect and an army of cutthroats.

Gonji laughed aloud to hear his own thoughts. It was a display he would not have liked others to observe, least of all his father, Old Todo. But his Norwegian mother would have appreciated it. It was the sometimes uncontrollable Western child part of him. He permitted it a moment to breathe and stretch.

Tora kicked up snow as they pa.s.sed the shriveling carca.s.s of the Moonspinner. Gonji had time for a momentary glimpse of the orange dart of bright flame that pierced the heart of the moon-a sight to inspire waka poetry in some future time of serene reflection. Then he focused on the road ahead. The road to Barbaso. A ribbon in the hills miles away, in a normal spatial framework.

He gained the gentle slopes in a minutes ride. Several mercenaries angled down and closed in from both sides to snare him. The main force charged from behind.

At full gallop, he nocked an arrow and drew back on his longbow, the flames hed left behind now rekindled in the depths of his dark eyes.

The leader of the black knights gestured for his two comrades to remain at his side. His hand went thoughtfully to the shallow wound at his shoulder as he watched, with amazement, the whirlwind engagement on the hillock three hundred yards to the west.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Although it was only midday in Barbaso, already the streets were alive with the sounds of revelry. Drunken roisterers, from the soldiery and townsfolk alike, sang and danced at the square, in the inns, on the rooftops. Lancers who had abandoned all reason and hope fatalistically carried out their sentry and patrol duties. Festooned with weapons slung wildly from belts and harnesses, bedecked with religious artifacts, ropes of garlic, and pockets full of local charms and potions, they prayed hollowly that their armament would be sufficient to guard them against the warlocks powers. But all the while they alternated the grasp of weapons with the sotted clutch of tankards full of spirits.

Their hope of victory had been traded for the despairing desire of painless death.

Captain Salguero listened despondently to the sounds of civilization unraveling, only now and then hearing the droning voice of the accusing young official.

"So you wont make an effort, then, to obey your orders?" Pablo Cardenas was saying. "Despite their coming from your own High Command?"

Salguero was weary of arguing the point, tired of defending an indefensible position, sick of their accusations. The town itself was as much responsible as he. Or so his pride insisted.

He looked at Cardenas. The well-dressed, close-shaven Pablo Cardenas, the towns solicitor, was one of the few educated men in Barbaso. Yet he was one of the handful the captain least enjoyed discourse with. His insistence on maintaining appearances and order in the present circ.u.mstances was vexing.

Guilt.

"Well, captain?"

"Well, captain?" Salguero barked back, startling him. "Well, well, well, Senor Cardenas? Where would you have me start? Ill tell you where Ill start. Ill begin by ordering you to sequester your people in their homes and keep them away from my men. Then Ill-"

Shouts and broken screams from the street halted his tirade. Salguero drew his pistol and ran out onto the steps of the town hall, Cardenas at his heels.

A horse galloped by, a dead rider slung over its neck. It was not a lancer, and Salguero suspected that once again they were under attack. He craned his neck down the main street, where two more steeds, these riderless, parted the gathering gawkers.

Another horse-this one with a corpse bent backward over the saddle, feet locked into the stirrups.

Two more-one frothing from fatigue and injury; one dragging a sword-slashed body by a single entangled boot.

Mercenaries, they might have been. Or bandits.

Another horse, dropping from a canter into a walk. This rider was conspicuously alive.

Salgueros eyes bulged. His cheeks began to twitch.

"Kyooshi?" he whispered, smiling at the memory of the word.

"They must be the warlocks men," Cardenas said, but Salguero had already broken into a trot, then a full run, toward the expressionless rider.

"Kyooshi!"

Gonji reacted in spite of himself to hear the long unheard word in the heartwarmingly familiar voice. Teacher, the voice had called him, and he responded with the j.a.panese word for captain: "Senchoo."

A pistol report split the air. Gonji heard the familiar siiizzz of the heavy ball that tore past his face and impacted on the cobbled way, kicking up snow. It seemed like a long time later that his mind processed the screams that followed, and he found himself steadying Tora. He heard Salguero shouting orders, saw men scrambling to comply. He hadnt slept in a day and a half, and his fatigue suddenly overwhelmed him. His only reaction to the fact that hed just been shot at was to realize dimly that hed been fighting all night without his sallet. He unfastened the helmet from where it hung and slowly strapped it on as he gazed up at the window from which the shot had issued. All the while his expression remained unchanged, less from discipline than from numbness. He still felt nothing but the vague happiness to see Salguero, when the struggling townsman was dragged before the captain by two lancers.

The man was held with his hands behind his back. A pistol was turned over to the captain. Gonji heard something about "monsters" and the "G.o.d-cursed warlocks devils." He had evidently been mistaken for someone else. The would-be a.s.sa.s.sin was shortly ushered away after severe remonstrance from Salguero. The matter was abruptly over.

Salguero stood beside him, holding out a hand, asking whether he was injured, registering concern as he pointed at Gonjis kimono. There was redness there. A stain of some kind. Ah, he was thinking: the red pulp from the fruit in the ogros canibalis caverns. But he only shook his head in answer to Salgueros anxiety. He watched another riderless horse tramp by, blood splattering the saddle and haunches, vaguely cognizant that hed had something to do with its state.

He looked up at the window again before he spoke.

"Unfriendly town you have here, senchoo," Gonji was saying.

And Salguero could not disguise his amazement. Same old Gonji. A wry sense of humor in the direst of circ.u.mstances.

"What happened?" the captain asked. "All these dead men-Jesus-Maria, Gon-shee, I cant believe youre still alive after-" He couldnt even finish, could only shake his head in disbelief as the samurai dismounted creakily.

They bowed to each other amid the murmurs of the onlookers. Salguero scanned the samurai closely. He hadnt seen him bearded before, that he could recall. But other than the road stubble and some new pieces of equipment, he looked much the same as he had-when? Perhaps three years ago now.

But they went back much farther than that together. Ten years ago the strange young j.a.panese wayfarer had been honored with the post of swordmaster to King Philip II himself. He had ensconced himself in a position of unprecedented power for a foreigner of so unusual a background. His revolutionary mounted cavalry techniques had convinced the king that gunpowder was not yet the supreme force on the battlefield, and had helped mollify King Philip after the crushing defeat of the Armada. The land, Gonji had taught, was the province of the fighting man. The sea was her own mistress. And with Spain in his kimono pocket, the young samurai had one day ridden off in quest of his own strange destiny, in defiance of the kings command.

Years pa.s.sed, but Salguero never forgot the lessons of war he had gleaned from the much younger warrior, whom his men had come to call kyooshi. s.n.a.t.c.hes of j.a.panese phraseology had come into vogue for a time, despite the censure of factions within the Church.

But things had changed. Gonjis reputation had grown in such a way that it gravitated against him. The Inquisition had taken grim note of him by the time he and Salguero had next encountered each other.

Aragon. Count Cervera of Zaragoza-now a duke. The Contessa Theresa, his daughter. The incredible events surrounding the pursuit of Gonji from Aragon, across Europe, and into the marches of Hungary.

That had been a bad time. A very bad time. But-?

But now Gonji was speaking again.

"It seems," he began in a quiet, groggy voice, "that Barbaso is harder to get to than the map shows."

Salguero laughed heartily. "You-I cant believe its you." He lowered his voice. "Listen, amigo, I wont disgrace your bushido ethics with an embrace in front of all these slack-jawed scoundrels. But, Dios, its good to see you."

"I need sleep, Hernando," Gonji said, nodding absently. "Sleep and-"

But Salguero antic.i.p.ated him, remembering well his quaint Oriental habits. "I know-and a good bath, eh? We have a steam bath. And my quarters are yours. Come, lets get in out of the cold. These streets are even more dangerous than they seem. But then I suppose you know that, since youve made it this far. Theres much to talk about when youve had rest-Tora, eh?"

The captain cast a thumb in the horses direction, grinning. He had helped Gonji name the fine chestnut stallion, after the strange adventure in which Gonji had captured it, near Madrid. "You look like a man who could use nourishment, my friend."

"Hai, arigato."

"Do itashimas.h.i.te-youre welcome," Salguero replied.

They shared a warm laugh. Sergeant Orozco came up and exchanged greetings with the samurai. He cast Salguero a telling look. He, too, remembered Gonji well.

"You men-back to your duties," Salguero told a loitering band of lancers. And when they were slow to comply, he locked eyes with them and added sternly: "Now-p.r.o.nto. I want this town secured. Tend to those bodies and gather the horses. Clear the citizens from this street until further notice."

Salguero saw his men respond to the rejuvenated note of command in his tone. He felt an inward glow of satisfaction hed not experienced in a long time.

Evening shadows leaned and twisted over the streets of Barbaso. From the window where Gonji sat, the squatty shops and gabled houses of the open avenue seemed overlaid by dark, entrapping bars. Like the web of the Moonspinner.

Gonji rubbed his freshly shaven face. He had slept soundly in the late magistrates manse, then had gone in late afternoon to cleanse himself in the therapeutic steam baths, all the while aware of the hostility of the townsfolk, wondering what notoriety had preceded him, what fanciful tales had attached themselves to him.

Possibly, he decided, "fanciful tales" would cast him in a better light than the truth, if it be known.

He had laved his wounds and found them of minor consequence. Now, his topknot tied just so and his garb laundered so as not to shame him, he suffered through the protocol of Salgueros dinner table, shared with a few minor town officials; most notably, the keen-minded solicitor Pablo Cardenas; most antagonistically, the towns pastor, Father Robles. Captain Salguero seemingly delighted in the table he had set. For while goose was rered and hot bread broken, ale sloshed and steamy pudding savored, a far more piquant chemistry was at work in the dining salle: Suspicion was the main course; hostility, the dessert. And Salguero eyed it all with expectancy and a barely disguised mirth.

"Ah, Gonji," he was saying now, casting furtive glances at the others, "youve changed little since the old days, eh? Just as dignified and proper, but maybe a bit more somber, calmer."

"Ive been deeply affected by certain things Ive seen and done." The samurais words came slow and measured. His brow knit imperceptibly as he regarded his cup. "Vedun. Vedun left a few scars that wont heal, it seems."

"As well it might, from what Ive heard," Father Robles interjected without looking at Gonji.

Salguero steered Gonjis piercing gaze back to his own. "You still proceed with that same fearlessness I know well. That samurai fatalism in the face of death, eh?"

"Death-is as light as a feather, senchoo. Ive seen amazing things-"

The captain laughed heartily. "None more amazing than yourself, Id wager. Ill never forget the first time I saw you, twirling that blinding sword atop the carca.s.s of your own dead horse, corpses of bandits strewn about you..." He let his words trail off as he swiftly gauged the others reactions. Robles face was grimly set. Orozco belched and his chest rumbled with a private chuckle.

Cardenas cleared his throat. "Your appearance here, senor, substantiates your honorifics. Do you know the things they call you?"

Anita hurried around the table to refill Gonjis ale. He evaded her questing glances that seemed to admit of possibilities between them. Her forced allure was an insult to his friend Salgueros honor.

"Deathwind of Vedun," Cardenas continued, "and Red Blade from the East. Even while I studied in Italy I heard legends of a Far Eastern warrior who traveled in quest of some secret beast who roamed the western empire-"

Gonji waxed melancholy as he sipped. He was moved by the irony of it all. Once he had sought to spread his reputation in Europe, felt disappointment whenever it had failed to precede him. Now he understood what sages had tried to impart to him in times past-the wisdom of preserving ones anonymity in troubled times.

But then Father Robles was speaking harshly, and his reverie was swept aside.

"-and Scourge of Pont-Rouge, senor samurai. Do you give answer for that attributive?"

Gonjis mood altered darkly. "Dont speak to me of Pont-Rouge in that tone, and dont attach my name to it thusly. What youve heard is a confusion of the wretched truth. You have no idea of the horrors that fastened themselves to that place. Never call me the Scourge of that evil town. I purged it."

The others were intimidated by the samurais cold expression, but Father Robles persisted, fervor seeping into his voice.

"They say you have a compact with demons, you know. Some say you are one yourself. That you can transform yourself into animals by night." The priest was tugging at the crucifix which hung from the sash about his waist.

Salguero stiffened and gripped the table edges and seemed about to remonstrate with Father Robles. But Gonji sighed and slumped in his high-backed chair. Inevitably, but nonetheless incredible for it, his reputation had commingled with that of Simon Sardonis. He wanted to laugh and cry out in anguish at the same time.

"Zoanthropy," Cardenas said to no one in particular. "You know, I was a student of the higher sciences in Florence. I was to be a mathematician, a professor of the university, I thought. I studied the principles of the great da Vinci himself. Do you know, Padre, that science scoffs these days at the very mention of such a thing as you propose? Of course, were very far from Florence here, arent we?"

"Your science can explain nothing of Satans workings," Father Robles countered.

Cardenas went on as if he hadnt heard him. "Take giants, for example. Do you know that a giant cannot exist? That his own weight would bring him down as surely as a cannonball? Yet our lancers here insist that theyve seen one in these very environs."

"Evil abounds," Robles a.s.serted, "and its shapes know no limitations."

"Indeed it does," Gonji said, leaning forward, "and while the followers of Iasu-Jesus-ma.s.sacre one another over forms of worship, it snakes about you, feeding on your own petty hatreds. And its much more subtle than you dare think. Always it hides its true purpose behind illusion, deception-"

"It-it-it!" the priest railed. "Call it by its name-Satan."

Gonji blinked but remained calm. Nodding to the priest, he went on: "Satan, then, though Ive heard him called by many names. Illusion and deception. Misunderstanding, greed, intolerance-these are his tools. Not everything you would call monstrous is of the Evil One."