Fortress of Lost Worlds (14 page)

But no—on the hills that topped the horizon, an unguessable distance off in the present spatial circumstance, loomed the dark turrets of Castle Malaguer.

Gonji had time for one brief speculative thought. Then he heard the rushing sound of water from the cataract around the next bend in the cliff wall.

When they neared the grotto the samurai quickly remembered, he swung the troop wide around it—which was fortunate for them. For an enormous boulder arced over the shallow ledges and crashed in their former path with an earth-shaking impact.

The column was thrown into chaos, troopers breaking for short distances in all directions, fighting their panicked steeds, as the
giant
emerged from the grotto to lean casually against the cliff face. He raised his oaken staff, which might have been a beam liberated from a mangonel, and used it to scratch behind his ear.

“
Buenos dias
,”
the giant bellowed archly. “On a quest, are we,
conquistadores
?
Did your quest allow for the possibility of failure due to crushed bones and little bodies beaten into the snow?”

Salguero gestured, and the column fanned out and loaded their bows. Gonji cut across the broad stretch between the men and the giant, shouting that they should hold their fire. But two overzealous troopers launched their shafts, anticipating the order. One glanced harmlessly off the giant’s patchwork armor, but the second found a chink and embedded in his upper arm.

Bedlam.

The giant howled and tore the arrow free, which pained him still more. He caught up another huge rock and, fixing on the pair who had injured him, bowled the rock over the snow with tremendous force.

“
Cuidado
!
Look out!”

One horseman evaded the bounding juggernaut, but the other’s mount stumbled. Both horse and rider were crushed by the enormous weight. The lancer was killed instantly, his back and neck broken, and the animal lay on its side, kicking and screaming.

Salguero roared, and the company fired a fusillade of whickering shafts. The giant turned away and covered his head. Most of the volley deflected off, or stuck in, the behemoth’s plate-and-hide armor; some shafts, however, found a home in his flesh.

Gonji pounded to and fro between the combatants, shouting hoarsely and waving with his bow.

“
Alto
!
Alto
!
Halt! It’s all a mistake—
alto
!”

The captain held the next volley in check, though the giant advanced on Gonji, swinging his mighty oaken staff round and round his head for a strike.

“Stay your hand, there, Sir Giant. At least let me have a word with you.”

The giant stopped and peered down closely at him. Yanking another arrow from his hide, he arched his head back in recognition. “I know you. You’re the little scuttler who seeks wonders but only finds giants, eh?” He began to laugh, a growling deep in his throat at first, then a blaring full-bodied mirth as he tipped his face toward the sky. “Have I seen any wonders, indeed! I have a sense of humor, you know, and I like a little wriggler who’d rather make talk than hurt me with stings.”

He scowled at the troopers, who looked about uneasily at one another but held steady.

Gonji fought the reins to move Tora closer. “
Si
,
I
would
make talk, if you would allow me. Just spare them—they were frightened of your imposing appearance—and I’ll stay their fire. Before you could kill them all, they might cost you an eye, or an ear, and I’d hate to see so mighty a warrior as you walking around a mere fragment because of man-stings.”

Having thus played on the giant race’s celebrated fear of human toxicity, Gonji succeeded in arranging a dinner encounter that none of the lancers would ever forget.

Most of them sat near the entrance to the grotto, eating from their cold provisions and muttering in wonder at the colossal form of the giant, but always staying close to their horses in case he should become suddenly hostile or perhaps suffer from indigestion.

Buey, accompanied by two of his sycophants, sat facing the giant on the far side of his cooking blaze—on which was spitted the carcass of the bowled-over horse. The Ox seemed eager to display his boldness around Gonji since his defeat in their fight. And as a giant among men, he had long since been fascinated by things huge and mighty. To sit down to sup within a pole-arm’s length of a giant’s crushing power was the stuff of tales and ballads.

Gonji, Captain Salguero, and Sergeant Orozco all sat to the giant’s left, the Spaniards occasionally wincing to see the giant’s rolling red sack of a tongue licking his wet lips in anticipation of the crackling, spitted horsemeat. The samurai tried to show no reaction to the giant’s various inevitable vulgarities, since the titan seemed touchy about them, his acrid breath by far being the worst.

“Call me…Urso,” the giant said when they were settled, drinks in hand. “That’s not my real name, of course. Oh no. I’m not that naive. I didn’t give it to the warlock, and neither do you get it.”

“Isn’t that the word the Portuguese use for
bear
?”
Orozco asked tentatively.

Urso laughed so hard the ground shook. “So it is! So it is!”

“Well you get no argument from me,” Orozco replied, gulping from his wineskin.

“Hah-hah! I like you, little man!” He drummed his fingers on his knees, rendering an approximation of the sound of approaching dray-horses. “This is…rather nice, isn’t it? I mean, I rather like the rare company of
intelligent
humanfolk. Even with your little conceits and your pompously tinkling armaments—only don’t get too close. I don’t want to feel you skittering all over me with your tiny hands and feet. That’s one of my worst nightmares, you know.”

Gonji sat with arms folded, a look of amusement crossing his face. The others began to relax as well, even in their astonishment at the event.

“So you work for the warlock, then?” Gonji asked.

“
Si
,
we have an agreement,” Urso allowed. “But it’s not what you likely think. I take it you haven’t found him yet, eh, wonder-seeker?” He chuckled thickly and scooped a barrel full of water from the pool.

Gonji shook his head, and the giant rambled on.

“
Si
,
I promised I’d do my best to scare off soldiers, you see. Not so many of them anymore, but those that come are a helluva lot bolder, I’ll say that.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Orozco piped in.

Urso smiled crookedly, then waxed morose. “I didn’t promise to kill any. I’m sorry about the man who rode this horse. I just lost my head when he shot me. I’m tired of being shot. You’re not using poisoned arrows, are you?” He examined his wounds again.

Salguero assured him that they were not. “You’re a giant with a sense of morality, then?”

“Of course,” Urso said gruffly. “You little men think you occupy a place of—of singular dignity. And yet look at the wretched things you do! But still, you’re sentient beings. And there are gods to appease for randomly killing you. What I did was in self-defense, so I don’t think they’ll mind if I eat this horse.”

There were a few shudders as Urso went on.

“I don’t like this killing business, that’s why I didn’t agree to any. I think the worst thing about killing little humans—apart from the sickly squashing sounds they make—the worst thing is that they’re fully formed, just like Anakim. They’re completely articulated. Arms, legs—there’s something terrible about crushing the life from something that’s a tiny version of yourself.”

“You’re a philosopher,” Gonji observed.

“Among other things,” Urso replied. “I’m an explorer, you know. I’m an observer and recorder of strange new worlds, everything on them—rocks, plants, animal life. I have quite a collection from this one in the cave behind the waterfall. Oh, don’t look so surprised. Is it so hard to believe that there are worlds both within and without this one, given even the little that
you’ve
seen? They say that at one time all these worlds were connected, accessible to all. Then something happened. It all came apart. Now only the privileged few are guided between the worlds, exploring and mapping as they go. That’s me. Urso, the Explorer. Only I lost my way—or something prevented me from returning to my world. Seems like a long time ago. My world’s quite a bit larger than this one. What do you call this, a cliff?” He slammed a massive fist against the mesa wall. “I don’t know what
we’d
call it. A step, maybe. Aside from exploring, I like eating—” Here he made an eager slurping sound as he licked his lips again. “—and, of course, rapturing.”

The company glanced about quizzically, uncertain of his meaning.

“You know,” Urso clarified, “moving the earth with a lover—copulating.”

More at ease in his presence now, the lancers began to howl with laughter at the thought of two rutting behemoths.

“What’s so funny,
hombres pequenos
?
I’ve seen the jerky little thrashings you call lovemaking. To see Anakim in the throes of passion is an awesome sight. It’s said that the ecstasies of giants once caused earthquakes. That’s why we were removed to a larger world.”

When their mirth had been brought under control by Salguero’s look urging caution, Gonji addressed Urso again.

“Then I take it this
is
still Spain, despite the odd changes we’ve seen in the land?”

“Parts of the Spain you know, parts of another, from what I can gather,” the son of Anak responded. “It’s Domingo’s doing. His attempts to find the doorway back to my world for me. That was his part of our agreement. Why do you want to attack him?”

“He’s evil,” Salguero said. “He’s slowly destroying Barbaso. He
kills—
something you say troubles you. So I wonder how you can feel comfortable in his employ.”

“What you do to one another is no concern of mine. You all look alike to me anyway. With exceptions—the wonder-seeker here—he’s different somehow, in addition to being more valiant than any Spaniard I’ve encountered. And as for evil—I don’t understand your definitions of evil. I won’t even guess at what’s going on between the powers that vie here. Won’t even attempt a judgment. All I can say is that there are more powers operating in these environs than you think. I’ve seen things pass in the night that even make
me
shudder.”

“We don’t threaten the warlock,” Gonji said. “We seek only to take counsel with him.”

“Is that so?” the giant replied. “Well, good luck to you, then. He’s rather insular, it seems.”

“Don’t you have contact with him?”

Urso shook his huge bearded head sadly, poked at the spluttering horse carcass. “No, I don’t think so. He contacts me when he wishes, and that’s not often. I don’t think I’ve actually seen him, to be truthful. Not the real him. But, then, I said you all looked very much alike.”

Gonji pondered this while they exchanged banter a while, trying to guess at what might lie ahead, filling in his mental portrait of the enigmatic sorcerer. The roasting horse was done, and Urso tore into it with a zest that had the soldiers gaping and elbowing one another. Orozco and the giant seemed to strike up a curious rapport, and the sergeant fell into his cups, despite Salguero’s piercing glances. It would become a private joke between them in the future: If Salguero pushed him too hard, Orozco would tell his friend the giant to reduce him to meal.

But now Salguero had moved apart from them, slumping against the cliff base, withdrawn and introspective. Gonji came close and knelt in the snow, tipping a waterskin to his old comrade.

“We’ve had no chance to speak,” the samurai began. “It seems—does it bother you,
senchoo
, that the men are looking to me for leadership? So sorry to be so frank—”

Salguero’s eyes widened, and he smiled. “Ahh, don’t be ridiculous. We need you right now.
They
need you, just as you are. There are other things troubling me these days. I’m tired of leading men into battles I don’t believe in. Paying lip service to allegiances I don’t feel. I know that stings you,
amigo
,
with your exalted sense of duty. I just don’t know what to do about it. I think much of my wife, my children. Of what might be happening to them in Port-Bou.

“If we live through this madness—I just don’t know…” His voice drifted off, drowned by the bizarre human-giant revelry. Gonji felt his pain and was moved by compassion. But he knew not what to say that might comfort his old friend.

They deemed it wise to allow the troopers to vent their tensions. More wineskins appeared—though they had been prohibited, at first—and the relaxation seemed to do the lancers some good. They stayed the night in the grotto, keeping minimal watch while in the comfort of the giant’s presence, though Gonji himself eschewed any strong drink and slept only in short snatches, ever vigilant and suspicious, keeping his swords always at hand.

The morning dawned, gray and bleak, and as they mounted to leave, Urso pointed the way ahead.

“I see you’re within sight of your destination,” he said. Castle Malaguer shifted ominously in and out of the shroud of mist on the horizon. “This is as close as I’ve come to it. I hope the wizard knows what he’s doing.”

“Why don’t you accompany us?” Gonji inquired. “Your presence in our midst might spare more bloodshed. We might gain a peaceful audience with Domingo Negro.”

“No. I’ve had my fill of involvement with tiny folk for a while. In any event, I can’t leave this area. Perhaps he’ll open the doorway for me into my own world before you…destroy him, or whatever you’re about.”

Gonji nodded and wheeled off to rejoin the column.

“If you find any other little men seeking wonders,” Urso called after him in his booming voice, “do me a favor and don’t send them in this direction, eh?”

His bellowing laughter followed them for a long time. When it had dwindled to an echoed memory, anxiety again crept over them. Nervous eyes flickered on somber faces, scanning the unknown trail that twisted off before them.