Fortress of Lost Worlds (38 page)

Gonji began to lose confidence after several nights of pushing on into the trackless desert. He had frankly expected some magical apparition—perhaps the ghost of Domingo herself—to suddenly guide them, to alleviate his burden of direction. He began to feel like karma’s whipping boy again, bleakly recalling Emeric’s words. He rode with the wygyll emblem hanging at the tip of his bow, the only physical symbol of their mystery quest, half expecting it to inflame the night with sorcerous fire that would light their way.

But nothing happened. And in the night, only the Dark Company manifested supernatural power in the desert.

They rode for a many days and nights without even a token attack. Gonji fortified his band with the full revelation of all Domingo had told him, adding all his own speculations, his rationale for the journey, admiring them, appreciating them deeply for their near-irrational faith in the quest, in his leadership.

When the first assault of crossbow quarrels finally came, they found that they had indeed been lulled into complacency, taken the Dark Company for granted. The man whose spine was pierced by the shot had been riding along telling his partner a humorous tale of the road.

The rear third of the column ignored Gonji’s order and split from the main body to turn and give chase to the undead assassins, who languidly steered their mounts into retreat.

Gonji reassembled them, and there ensued a violent disagreement instigated by the furious, exasperated warriors who were bent on running down the Dark Company, whatever sorcery empowered them.

Gonji was forced to relate again the outcome of his earlier band’s similar effort. There was no hope of either escaping or catching the shadowy killers. No alternative at all but to find the legendary Fortress of the Dead and hope that there they might test the mad mufti’s lore about dealing with the evil hunters. For there, at least, they might make a stand, in that mysterious stronghold the witch Domingo had urgently steered him to.

“The evil dead follow us,” Sergeant Orozco mused aloud, “so we seek a
Fortress
of the Dead.”

“Makes a kind of crazy sense, no?” Buey observed, scratching an armpit, his wry expression almost pleading for it to be so.

They pushed on into the moonlit desert wilderness, and soon the Dark Company approached again in their wake, across the dunes. Unhurried. Taunting them with the promise of doom.

Sometime during the second week, they spotted Turkish scouts on a far-off dune, assessing them without drawing near. And two days later they found themselves in a pitched battle with a Turkish cavalry unit. The
Wunderknechten
’s
bows were easily a match for those of the Turks, who also possessed no firearms and could not attack at close quarters for fear of the party’s guns.

They exchanged bowshot for nearly an hour, Gonji finally ceasing his party’s fire to conserve their dwindling shafts. They were forced to move on in the blistering heat of the day, the Turks electing to trail them into the night.

“They got a big surprise coming soon, I’d wager,” Orozco said.

And sometime later, under the moon’s sickly glow, they watched the Turks swing wide to their left and gallop off toward the northeast. Taking up their place, far off in the churned-up sand, was the Dark Company.

“Well, they’re good for something,” Buey noted by way of half-hearted encouragement.

“The Turks will be back,” Ahmed declared sullenly, “and in swollen numbers.”

* * * *

The next day, a party of three—two Moriscos and Del Gaudio—convinced Gonji to allow them to ride back along the trail and see what they could discover. Their objective was to find some evidence of the Dark Company’s whereabouts during the day.

“Perhaps they’re like the vampire,” a Morisco posited. “They may sleep in the sand.”

“I’d like to catch that Abu-Nissar bastard and chop him into a few pieces we didn’t think of last time,” Del Gaudio put in.

“No,” Ahmed reminded, “he must be
strangled.
Remember.”

The company watched the three ride back along the trail amid the rising heat waves, to be lost in the glare, recovered ephemerally only in the personal mirages of a dozen people over the subsequent sweltering hours.

They were not seen again among the living.

That night, when the despondent survivors of Gonji’s dwindling band took to horse, they saw the Dark Company ride nearer than ever before. And before the snarling shadow-cats, driven to frothing, came the steeds of the three, whose mutilated bodies were lashed backwards in the saddles.

* * * *

“Jesus God Almighty,” Luigi Leone said tearfully, “I pray Del Gaudio doesn’t come back to life as one of
them
.”

“Get hold of yourself,” Gonji snapped. “Stay that kind of talk. I thought the mufti said the cats were harmless by day.”

“Evidently he was wrong,” Ahmed said with emotionless logic that evoked hostile looks among the Italians.

“Do you have any notion of what we’re heading toward?” Simon Sardonis asked Gonji quietly.

Gonji saw that Valentina was at the lycanthrope’s side. She was dividing her time these days between Orozco, Buey, Cardenas, and Simon, though the latter seemed uncomfortable in her presence. But the heat, the frustration, and the paranoia of his situation had caused Gonji to begin to think of them as having formed a conspiracy against him. And he could not blame them, for it seemed that the
kami
that augured death radiated her grim portent from their faces. From the faces of all in the band.
Valentina—
so chilly toward him now, yet so strong and uncomplaining, so supportive to the spirits of the others.

“We’re running terribly short of water,” Cardenas was saying, dispersing Gonji’s foolish reverie.

The samurai rubbed his face and tipped his head toward the south. “The Tibesti Mountains, Ahmed says. We’ll drift that way. There we should be able to find water.”

“So now we climb mountains,” Orozco complained, spitting dust from between cracked lips.

* * * *

The pounding of the sand was like a plague of blinding, devouring insects.

Four of the Dark Company assassins fanned out into the withering sandstorm to flank the refugees, two on either side. Bolts and shafts darted through the pelting sand, dropping two men and two mounts as Gonji shouted orders from behind his face-wrapping burnoose.

They could barely make out the forms of the reanimated assassins as they squinted through the swirling curtain of choking particles. They dismounted and sought cover behind the horses, having no choice but to sacrifice their mounts. Four more steeds fell in the next volley.

Gonji swore and unlimbered his bow, the others doing likewise. Shafts and pistol balls launched outward at the deathless intruders, their familiar cats hunkering behind their mounts or melting into the storm. Again and again the assassins and their mounts were struck, but to no avail. A woman screamed, fell, taken in the belly by arbalest bolt. The mercenary beside her leapt out of cover to curse and draw his blade, driven to madness by their ordeal. He surged blindly through the lashing sand toward the silent killers. Two bolts tore into him, spinning him off his feet, one leg kicking high as he fell like bow-shot game.

The fighting men were screaming in terror and anger now, curses and prayers mixing in profane litany.

Gonji concentrated on the single target he had selected and focused on through the eddying sand-spouts. He had yet to launch a shaft, all thought fleeing before Zen discipline. One shot, one unerring shot guided by the hand of the wind
kami
,
was his sole desire.

His horse fell before him, whinnying and kicking in its death-throes, but still he stood, arms tautened, sighting by instinct alone on the position of the hunkering creature with the red-devil eye-slits.

“The sirocco is their ally!” Ahmed was shouting despairingly as Gonji fired.

A keening cry—almost feminine in its shrill pitch—

The temple cat rolled and lashed in the sand. The rider above it and just to the right lurched in his saddle. His arms and legs snapped out as if on invisible tethers.

And he was torn asunder.

Gonji had seen this phenomenon while a prisoner of the Inquisition: This assassin had met his death by being been drawn and quartered.

His eerie companions hissed at the refugees and wheeled off, the cracked, triumphant cries of Gonji’s sand-choked band following them.

Eight left
, the survivors were quick to remind one another. But this one had been costly. They would have to double up on the remaining horses, or walk in turns. But for the moment, all that mattered was their victory.

They warily moved out to examine the sundered assassin. But both he and the familiar who had guarded his dying moment were gone, consigned to the Hell from which they’d been reprieved.

Simon came loping back out of the sandstorm, shaking his head in reply before the question could be put to him. His tattered shirt sleeve and bleeding arm testified to how close he’d come to one of the temple cats.

“Gonji,” Valentina said earnestly, catching him by the arm, “I think I’ve seen one of them before. The ones who attacked just now.”

“What?” the samurai probed eagerly.

She nodded her head repeatedly. Turned to glance at the other eyes fixed on her. “One of them was from Toledo—I
think.
I’m not
sure
.”

“The one with the pikeman’s cuirass,” a renegade lancer described.

“
Si-si
,”
she agreed.

“But how did he die?” Gonji pressed forcefully, almost shaking her until he regained his composure.

She swung her head dejectedly. “I—how would I…? I’m just not
sure
.”

“Damn,” Gonji growled, turning away. “These god-cursed walking corpses could have died in a
thousand
ways.”

“It certainly wasn’t by bow or pistol,” a lancer named Gonzaga said, reloading.

* * * *

“The end of a wonderful quest.”

“Shut up, Simon,” Gonji said between clenched teeth, scanning the massed party of Turkish cavalry on the northern horizon.

“I’m not going to die here,” Simon went on. “There are rather more important things to be done in Europe than pursuing some witch’s dying fantasy.”

“Fine. Leave, then. Join the dead killers. You’ll fit right in.”

“I’ve paid whatever debt I owe you,” Simon said in a curious tone, “don’t you think?”

“Go screw yourself into the sand.”

“
Mon Dieu
,
what a hypocrite! I thought you valued a sense of humor.”

Gonji peered at him with mild curiosity. “This isn’t the time for it. And yours is worse than Orozco’s.”

“Well, then you can just keep staring at the Turks, and I won’t bother telling you.”

Gonji looked at him with narrowing eyes. “What? I’ve no time for riddles.”

Simon cocked a thumb over his shoulder without glancing back.

Gonji gaped and called the gloomy band’s attention to it: Two humanoid forms flapped toward them out of the blazing southeastern sky.
Wygylls
. A mated pair, they could see, as the flying creatures swooped near. The samurai held up the emblem, and it was duly recognized at once, the wygylls lowering their short bows and nattering at them in shrill command tones, indicating the direction from which they’d come.

Gonji called out words of encouragement and pushed the fatigued survivors onward after the slowly circling, guiding creatures. The Turks gave chase but pulled up in superstitious wonder to see the apparitions that careened down from the sky to strafe them with arrows. They continued following but kept their distance.

When night fell and the Dark Company took up pursuit again, the Turks abandoned the accursed business.

The wygylls either failed to understand or disregarded Gonji’s warning and arced back toward the undying butchers. When they reached arbalest range, they cracked off a volley.

As the wygylls strafed the Dark Company, Buey shouted and turned their attention to the mystical vision that loomed up out of the sand ahead.

There were gasps of shock, the troop hesitating though their murderers swept on behind them. Where had it come from? How could it have appeared so abruptly?

There in the sand, an indefinite distance ahead under a canopy of countless stars, stood the most enormous fortification any of them had ever seen. Its massive facade and seemingly endless sprawl were given perspective by the minuscule specks that must have been battlement sentries.

Gonji bellowed for them to mount up double, and they kicked the exhausted and laboring steeds onward. Before they had gained a score of yards, they heard the strident cry in the star-shot heavens—one of the wygylls had been struck by the Dark Company’s fire to spiral down into the dunes. Its mate had gone wild, lacing the sky with its furious, accelerated flight paths, firing down at the assassins as it shrilled in tortured despair over its loss. The undead killers, in turn, crossed the starlight with pinpoint bolts as the temple cats scrambled for cover beneath the horses in their murky ground mist.

“Good hunting, noble creature,” Gonji cried, lashing the horse he shared with Ahmed.

The fortress spread still larger in their view, as the band approached it, crying out for sanctuary and churning through the sands, and then—

As unexpectedly as it had appeared, it began to shrink, to grow slender at first, its turrets and walls lengthening and compressing at once, squeezing up toward the sky.

“What evil sorcery—?”

“What have you brought us to, Gonji?”

“Just keep riding,” the samurai bellowed. “Remember Castle Malaguer—”

“
What
?!”

For in truth, only Orozco and Buey remained among those who had experienced it with him.

They kicked on through the sifting sands, grunting out anguished prayers and oaths. The fortress spindled higher in the sky, then began to shorten, to shrink back toward its sand-sunk pilings, losing all its features, a dissolving column of granite, to their perspective.

And now, on either side of them, outcroppings of stone flicked into view, growing, broadening—a graveyard. Huge monuments and headstones flitted past too quickly to be read, though some of them strained to discern what creatures might rest here.

“This is an abomination—”

“Unhallowed ground—
I’ll not die here
!”

“Keep
riding
!”
Gonji fumed, drawing the Sagami in threat. “We’re fighting to
live
, not to die!”

The frantic refugees’ scalps bristled to see the headstones grow from needles to wedges to flat, two-dimensional tablets that reversed just as swiftly. It reminded Gonji of the foreshortened doorways in the magic corridor of Domingo’s castle. The sand turned gray, then black, then became too coarse for sand at all, crackling under their horses’ hooves.

The Moriscos took note first: They were no longer in the Sahara of the only world they all had known.

The fortress compressed, enfolded, shriveled
inside
itself, somehow, from without—that was the only way their tortured minds could process the visual phenomenon. The graveyard ended. The sky changed to a sharper, deeper black, the stars shifting their patterns, a cold wind arising out of nowhere to buffet them as they plunged into its seethe—

“No-no-no!”

They reined in. Their quest had ended. They dismounted before the solitary granite block that alone broke the surface of the ashen ground. It was perhaps twenty feet wide and three deep. The top of a gatehouse. At the front of its base could be seen the grating of a portcullis, whose greater portion lay buried in the ground. There was no sense to it, even were this the sand-blown ruin of an ancient fortification. For there was no housing into which the portcullis could be raised.