Fortress of Lost Worlds (6 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

The buffeting night wind tamed to a whisper as a gray dawn broke over the town of Barbaso.

Capt. Hernando Salguero pushed open the portico door of the late magistrate’s house—
his
house now, for all intents and purposes—and welcomed the blast of cold air, though he wore no coat or wrap over his jerkin. It was exhilarating, cleansing. He took a sip of rum from the pewter mug he carried.

Down the snow-packed street, toward the square to the north, the smaller houses of rude stone and brick were mounded by drifts on one side. They seemed lifeless, uninhabited. Nothing stirred at the square; the stalls of the great bazaar, hidden by the rooftops, sounded still but for the barking of stray dogs. In the farther distance, Salguero fancied that he could hear herdsmen moving their animals to winter fodder.

No troopers in sight. The First Catalonian Lancers, flower of the territory’s defense, had gone to seed. No clopping of patrol hoofbeats; no morion-helmed sentry at the south guardpost; no morning assembly or drill.

Desolation. Dissipation. Lassitude.

He took another sip of rum, let its velvet warmth roll over his tongue and inner cheeks before swallowing.

Desolation.
What in hell are we doing here?

Dissipation.
What have we come to?

Lassitude.
I
must restore order and discipline. Must…must…

His eyes focused on the crumbling cross fixed to the roof of the empty chapel. He would go there today.
Si,
today would be the day—
Jesus-Maria,
let today be the day! He would go there and pray as he hadn’t since…when?

Anita’s voice called to him from inside.

Si,
later. Later he would go to church, and there he would seek answers from his angry God.

“Hernando,” she called again, “come inside.
Hace mucho frio.”
She shivered and drew her robe tightly about her.

The captain of lancers raked his fingers through his white-fringed beard and shuffled inside. But he remained in the foyer, gazing vapidly through the portico windows.

“What were you doing out there?” the magistrate’s daughter asked. “I reached over to you, but you were gone. Now why would a man with your needs flee the arms of a woman with my…fullness?” She moved up behind him and began massaging his neck.

Salguero’s shoulders stiffened and flexed to feel the cloying warmth of her touch. He drew away in vague annoyance.

“Iglesia—
the church,” he said, nodding. “I was thinking about going to church today.”

Anita laughed in the low, throaty manner he had always found so seductive before. She reclined on a parlor sofa, her twined legs bared to halfway up the thighs. Her dark, flowing hair spilled over the arm of the sofa with artless grace.

The captain tore his eyes from her languid command as an exercise in discipline but looked back again a moment later, not from lack of resistance to her charms but searchingly, trying earnestly to understand what she meant to him.

“The church is cold,” Anita said at last. “Ever since the warlock burst the windows. Colder than the mountain nights. It’s so much warmer in here, no?”

“Why hasn’t the town seen to its repair?”

“Why don’t
you?”
she parried. “You’re the military governor. Why doesn’t
God
, if He wants it used again?” She smiled placidly. “Why don’t you just forget the whole thing and come jump on my belly,
mi amore?”

“Silencio,
bitch!”

Salguero smashed his mug against the lintel of the archway, startling her so that she cried out.

“Are you
loco?”

“Si, loco,”
the captain snarled. “Why don’t you give me space for what’s left of my morality to breathe one guilty breath?”

She laughed and walked toward the center hall. “Ah—a poet, then. Morality’s last poet.
Morality,”
she repeated scornfully. “What do you suppose those friars who so fill you with fear are doing behind locked chamber doors?”

“Sacrilege!” Salguero roared. He stalked after her as if to strike her but was paralyzed by her calm withdrawal to the kitchen and larder area.

He pounded a fist into his palm as he bemoaned his fate. He was jaded and broken in spirit. The failed campaign against the warlock’s power had produced diabolic effects in his life that he would not have believed scant months before. His command decimated, degenerated into roistering rakehells; his days spent in debauchery; his sleep troubled by terrible nightmares of unimaginable death. The world was going to the Devil.

And worst of all, Salguero no longer cared.
His
world had ended when Port-Bou, his home garrison and his family’s adopted town, had been given over to the French. Bartered away over dinner, in the Lancers’ absence, by the fat architects of power. Even
he
had begun to believe that was true.

What was left?
Who
was left to believe in, save the God who had set him adrift?

The discordant ringing of the chapel bell snapped him out of his reverie. He moved out onto the icy portico again as a rider pounded past the manse and skidded his mount to a halt, turning at the sound of the bells.

Down the cobblestoned street, snow-packed and tracked by wagon rut and muddy hoof, a mixed band of soldiers and townsmen gathered across from the church. A woman emerged from the vestibule, wearing a shawl and a crookedly tipped morion. Hands on hips, she bent at the waist and brayed in Salguero’s direction.

“Ahhh!” the swerving rider growled in mock anger, kicking his steed to give chase. He seemed not to notice his commanding officer, who at once recognized him:

Montoya. Born-to-the-stockade Montoya.

The woman down the lane shrieked in feigned panic to see Montoya’s clattering approach. The band of observers howled at the spectacle.

“Corporal Montoya!”

The trooper reined in at the sound of the commanding tone. Grinning slyly, Montoya glanced at his
compadres,
then walked his mount toward the magistrate’s house. He affected a penitent air, rendered all the more ridiculous by his appearance: white flannel breeches tucked into his riding boots; a half-clasped cuirass flopping over a silk nightshirt; and, most absurdly, a long nightcap trailing down his back. This he removed as he cast Captain Salguero a ragged salute.

“
Si, mi capitan.
I was just—”

“Silencio,
idiot. Were you not posted for the night at the east end?”

“
Si,
mi capitan
, but there was—”

“Has an order been issued changing the uniform of the guard?”

“No,
mi capitan,
but I—”

“Shut up, soldier,” Salguero ground out coarsely. His voice lowered in an effort to control his seething temper. “You disgrace your king and your country by your very presence here. You will dress in a uniform befitting a king’s lancer and proceed to the headquarters compound, where you will present yourself for arrest to the Officer of the Day. Is that clear, corporal?”

“Si, mi capitan.
I go right away,
si,”
Montoya minced, apparently unconcerned with the grave matter.
“Saludos, mi capitan.”

Again that half-assed salute. Salguero didn’t return it. He would gladly have broken the man’s arm. But his sense of dignity prohibited any further quibble with so trifling a matter as a sloppy salute in view of what was happening in Barbaso. He was, he quickly noted, out of uniform himself.

Salguero watched Montoya casually trot toward his sniggering
amigos.
Before he reached them, another mounted lancer intercepted him, remonstrating with Montoya as the captain had, it was clear from their body language.

Sergeant Orozco.
Good old Carlos,
Salguero thought.
The sole answer to my prayers.

He moved through the house aimlessly for a time, encountering Anita again leaning in the doorway to the larder. She was eating one of the accursed golden fruits again. These strange, spherical winter-ripening fruits were highly prized in Barbaso. The townsfolk called them a species of granadilla, though they seemed nothing like it. No one would say where they grew but for the fact that it was in a secret grove in a wonderful valley that had been theirs until the warlock seized power in the territory. Eating one of them produced a glorious energizing effect. A warm and euphoric vigor and sharpness of the senses. But eating more than one brought on intoxication and languor by stages, the ultimate state sometimes lasting days. Salguero had at last been forced to proscribe their consumption among his troops. As with everything else these days, his order had gone the way of full-plate armor.

“Are you going to arrest me?” Anita asked coyly, her dark dewdrop eyes moist and teasing.

“What do you really know about that fruit?” Salguero asked. He eyed it with distaste.

She held it up to him tantalizingly. “I know that it prolongs the act of love.”

His eyes narrowed, and he slapped the half-eaten golden granadilla out of her hand. She cursed him and caught up the rolling fruit like a starved predator. Salguero strode from the room, but she followed close on his heels.

“Are we finished then, Hernando?” she asked breathlessly.

“Leave me alone.”

“Will you throw me out into the snow? Any of your subordinates would be happy to take me in.”

“This is your father’s house,” he replied in a flat tone. He began to dress and gather his belongings.

“Even the warlock—even Domingo Negro himself—would be glad to have me, I think.”

He trained on her a look so full of smoldering contempt that she faltered in her tack. She eased back against the doorpost of their bedchamber, looking over the golden granadilla thoughtfully. When she spoke again, there was softness in her voice.

“You’ve been dreaming of your wife again.”

Salguero stiffened. “Eat your…magic apple before you say something we’ll both regret. I will, anyway.” He donned his half-armor and strapped on his rapier. Then he began working on a black wheel-lock’s priming pan.

“Your former life is gone, Hernando,” she whispered. “I thought a soldier accepted the fortunes of war.”

“We’re not at war with France.”

Anita drew a deep breath. “I’ll tell you something. And you must swear to tell no one where you heard it.”

He looked up from the pistol and eyed her curiously.

“This fruit,” she went on, “it comes from Domingo Negro’s own magic grove. There are many more wonderful things there, in the valley near Castle Malaguer. Things that could be ours, if only you’d finish your campaign and kill the warlock. Hasn’t the king commissioned you to rid us of this unholy sorcerer? Haven’t the holy men sanctioned it? The Inquisition heats its irons in wait of the Archmage’s evil flesh.” Her eyes shone, huge and gleaming like a doe’s. She moved near and laid her hands on his chest.

“Do this thing,” she breathed, “and untold wonders will be ours.”

Salguero knew not what to say, but her words evoked a primal terror and dread he’d not felt since last he tilted with the warlock’s forces.

There was a knock at the front door. The captain opened it to admit a somber Sgt. Carlos Orozco. Salguero’s friend since childhood entered with a terse greeting. He declined Anita’s offer of refreshment, nor would he lock eyes with the woman, for whom his disdain was well known. Only when she had left the two men alone would the sergeant speak his business. His voice was thick with irony and resignation. The way a man speaks when he no longer believes in what he does but can do nothing about it.

“I’ve made the rounds, checked the outposts, for what it’s worth.” Orozco extracted a bandanna from a pocket of his cloak. He dabbed at the frost-melt in his drooping mustache as he spoke. “No blood in the streets. No night fiends about, so far as I can tell. Maybe we were lucky, eh? Of course, only half the posts were attended. Maybe the others are dead, or dragged off to be eaten by—but the only way I can tell is with a roll call. Do you want me to have them fall out from the inns and their adopted beds or whatever—?”

Salguero shook his head morosely. The sergeant turned away, directing his voice at the wall as he went on.

“This business with Montoya—the slovenly bastard. He’s a troublemaker, Hernando. You know what I’d do with him, if I were in command.”

“No. Place him under guard. Suspend all pay and privileges.”

Orozco grunted. “A leave of absence for him, then.”

A tense silence passed between them. The sergeant selected two pistols from Salguero’s small arsenal and began loading them.

“Time to mount another patrol, I think,” Orozco said airily.

“Don’t do it, Carlos. Don’t bother.”

“Someone must.”

“I need you here. You’re my only…link to sanity.” There was faint pleading in the captain’s tone.

“Don’t come apart on us. You’re too good a soldier, too fine an officer, to succumb to this place. What you need right now is what I need—a good fight.” Orozco triggered the wheel of a pistol, sparking the empty priming pan. “I can’t stand it here any longer, Hernando. I won’t waste another day in this living hell. I take the last few good lancers and mount a party. We fill the column at gunpoint, if need be. I load one pistol for the first pig who runs with loaded breeches. One for the enemy—whatever shape it takes this time. And a third…a third for myself. In case I need it.”

They eyed each other tellingly.

Salguero’s lips parted twice before he found words.

“I can order you to stay.”

“You can,” Orozco allowed hollowly.

Anita hovered at the doorway. Without another word, Sergeant Orozco gathered up the pistols and strode from the chamber to depart into the snow. The captain listened to the receding drum of his hoofbeats.

“Brave
hombre,”
Anita sneered.

“What is it that you want of me?” Salguero demanded, turning on her sharply. “This town has destroyed my company as surely as any of the warlock’s foul magic.”