by T. C. Rypel
“Silver, you see,” Gonji explained. “They can’t resist it. Whether that’s due to its glitter or its purity, no one can say. But it’s the purity that ends their foul enchantment.”
The monster vented its wrath in a last gurgling cry, putrefied matter spewing at once from a ghastly aperture in its domelike head, to steam in the snow. Some lancers covered their noses. Others crossed themselves as they slowly clumped away from the awful sight.
Gonji helped Orozco gather himself, then cleaned out the sergeant’s purse and dealt similarly with the other faery-ring dwellers. Sullen and fearful, speculating as to the unknown terrors that might lie ahead, the column thundered off without a look back.
Orozco joined them, lagging behind, in no hurry to resume his position at the point. He was caked with snow, one numb hand thrust into his un-clinking pocket. The narrow-eyed squint of the freshly victimized took a long time to thaw from the sergeant’s face as he rode, quietly cursing Gonji.
* * * *
They moved on in tense silence for a time, the mesas looming ever nearer, burgeoning eerily as though they were a painted landscape pushed toward the troop by an unseen hand. The lancers watched Gonji closely, still more impressed, after his facile handling of the faery-ring illusion and its dreadful secret.
Gonji saw the tightness in Salguero’s face, the creeping petulance in the captain’s slowly dawning realization of his command’s shifting allegiance. The samurai had no wish to erode the bond between him and his old friend, but when he shuffled near Salguero to have a word with him, the captain fended him off with curt responses and quickly broke contact.
Gonji dropped the matter, moving back to the point as his attention was drawn to the strange familiarity of the cliffs ahead. But then this, too, was abruptly forgotten when the first arbalest bolts arced down on them from the sky.
A lancer screamed and was bowled backward over his steed’s haunches. Salguero shouted orders. Bows were unlimbered and aimed at the flying death merchants—two wygylls, the strange birdmen, firing crossbows with deadly accuracy.
Another soldier fell, a quarrel ripping through his breastplate in a gout of dark blood.
Gonji reined in and raised a steadying hand to them. His thoughts raced. He stamped toward the column and called out over their shouts:
“Hold your fire! Dismount—use your horses for cover—”
Salguero’s teeth ground as he looked from the descending birdmen to Gonji and back again, his pistol flourished uncertainly.
“Are you mad? What are you going to do, samurai, bargain with them?”
“Just have your men dismount, senchoo—por favor—let me try something.”
The captain licked his dry lips. A bolt crashed into the snow before his horse’s hooves. The animal stutter-stepped backward. “I hope you know what you’re doing.” He swung down from his mount and aimed his wheel-lock over the saddle.
“Hai, so do I,” Gonji said, low enough so that only Orozco, dismounting at his side, heard him.
Gonji extracted the artifact the cliff-wygyll had given him and, propping it atop the spike-point of his halberd, lifted it high overhead. He swung it slowly from side to side as the flapping attackers swooped down at him.
A hissing bolt skimmed his thigh. He caught his breath and held it, steadying the halberd, his heart thudding in his breast. The creature’s companion hovered near, shrilling with bloodlust. Its beak was jammed against the arbalest’s stock as it drew a bead on the single boldly mounted human.
But then its fellow warbled a string of near human syllables, seized its attention, and pointed. The larger of the two lowered the weapon and peered with bright, intelligent eyes. It uttered a chattering disputation and raised the crossbow again as it hovered near the samurai. But its mate shrieked a single note, lofting down lower, to hover beside it. The angry creature clucked once at Gonji, then spiraled off into a surly holding pattern, squawking down at the men hunkered beneath their horses.
Gonji heard whispers behind him as the smaller wygyll descended with easy grace.
“Pollo—pecho—seno—”
A chicken with the breasts of a woman, the troopers had concluded in their befuddlement. And this one was indeed the female of the pair, her nearly human breasts jutting from the sparse down that tufted her body. It had a softness and sheen that differed from her mate’s; differed, in fact, from her own heavier wing feathers. And her breastbone was not in evidence, her contour much more human than the male’s, whose forefront was dominated by the great arch of his cantilevered breastbone. The reversion to avian life seemed less pronounced in the females.
She picked the wygyll artifact gently off the razor tip of the halberd as her mate keened his warning. Fingering it with taloned hands that seemed nonetheless deft, she lowered her head and closed her eyes as she touched it to her beak. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes, tiny rivulets coursing the slope of her beak. There was warmth in her eyes when she again looked at the samurai.
Gonji smiled thinly and bowed to her, feeling somehow honored, touched by an empathetic sharing. It was a sensation he had known vaguely before, on occasion, when moved by the earnest communication in a poem, in a passage of music.
She laid the wygyll’s mourning emblem on the halberd point again and, furling her twelve-foot wings with an undulating rhythm, rose to rejoin her mate. The sputtering male drew close to her. They grasped taloned feet, beating out an unsteady path in the frigid air as they seemed to hold counsel, the male nattering and clacking his beak all the while. But his mate slung her shouldered crossbow’s strap around her neck and lay the weapon atop the quiver on her back in a gesture of ceased hostility.
After demurring awhile, the male did likewise. He disengaged from her and strafed the dismounted column twice, swooping low and shrieking at them in a bravura display of frustrated fury and breathtaking speed.
The horses reacted with rearing terror and could not be calmed until the creatures had turned and flapped nearly out of sight to the north.
Only Tora held his position, to Gonji’s pride. The samurai sighed with relief that his instinct had been borne out again. Braced by the company’s increased confidence and deepening respect for him, he nonetheless found his spirits plummeting to see Salguero grow more sullen as they resumed their track.
* * * *
The deja vu Gonji had experienced earlier now turned to grim reflection: The mesas ahead were the same ones he had passed to the south of Barbaso.
He swore under his breath, uncertain whether to apprise the captain of his fears or leave the dispirited man to his somber introspections. For, as if by default, Gonji had indeed assumed command: Captain Salguero spoke nothing now and only led the troop where Gonji directed.
The samurai said nothing of the phenomenon as the low mesa sprouted unaccountably from the plain at their right. Were they now on an endless loop of land, doomed to pass over the same ground forever? Would nightfall find them riding back to Barbaso like a troop of misguided idiots? Or, perhaps, had the Archmage somehow cast the entire valley into some lost world of untold horrors? Did he sit now in his stronghold on the real world, laughing into his cups?
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.”