Fortress of Lost Worlds

by T. C. Rypel

  “The river?” Gonji queried, perplexed.

  “Si. We take a barge down the Tajo to Aranjuez. Then we dash—as though all Satan’s devils pursued us, and so it will seem—making our way to the sea. We take ship near Valencia.”

  “Valencia?” Gonji cocked an eyebrow. “Nothing but rocky shoals.”

  “Then what do you suggest—Barcelona? We wouldn’t be exactly welcomed there,” Salguero said.

  “Mmm,” Gonji agreed pensively. “Then?”

  Salguero shrugged. “On to Genoa, then up to the empire. You have friends based in Austria, near Vienna. That will be sanctuary until we see what we’re about.”

  Gonji considered it as he finished dressing, clamping on a pikeman’s pot helmet. Something vaguely bothered him about this itinerary, but he dismissed it. “This is a crazy commitment for you, Hernando. What of your family? Those of the other married men in your rebel command?”

  “They join us in Valencia.”

  They locked eyes, and Gonji reached out in unaccustomed fashion and clasped his old friend’s hand.

  “Someone coming!” came a rasp from down the corridor.

  Weapons were brandished anxiously. The dead guards were dragged into Gonji’s prison chamber. Two loaded pistols were passed along to Gonji. Then Buey unstrapped the blanketed burden from his back.

  “Almost forgot.” He grinned broadly.

  “Yoi!” Gonji exclaimed to feel the comforting heft of his daisho again. He belted the swords and at once extracted his katana from its scabbard, eyes gleaming to see the heavenly wave pattern of the blade. It felt heavy in his battered hands. He’d lost strength despite his close-quarter training in the dungeons.

  Hisses urging silence—

  Gonji’s cell door was slammed in his face. Three troopers rushed up from below. They were not with Salguero. Approaching to speak with the captain, they were suddenly alarmed by something or someone out of place. They produced their weapons but were overcome in a brief, quiet scuffle.

  “No pistols unless absolutely necessary,” Salguero warned. “Let’s go, Gonji.”

  “Wait,” the samurai said, freezing them in place. “That woman down there at the stake. If she’s alive, I want her brought along.”

  “Que? That trollop?”

  “What for?” Orozco argued. “We have enough trouble—”

  “Just get her and bring her, por favor.”

  The pleading in the samurai’s voice won an exasperated nod from Salguero. He sent three men to comply.

  “And one more thing,” Gonji added. “I’ve got to go down into the dungeons after something.”

  “What?! God damn it! Are you crazy?” the captain railed. “What in hell for?”

  “There’s something I must retrieve, if it’s still down there.”

  “I’m not going down there,” Orozco grumbled. “Shit! The dungeons of the Inquisition—he wants to go back to them!”

  “No one’s asking you to go along, Carlos,” Gonji noted, checking the priming of his pistols.

  The final explosion rocked the Zocodover. A babble of frenzied voices rolled up the walls from the streets below.

  “Capitan—that’s it,” a lancer called from the hall.

  Salguero hawked and spat when he saw the familiar adamant set on Gonji’s face. “All right, we go, then.”

  “Not you, senchoo. They’ll need your leadership outside. Just give me someone you trust.”

  “I’ll go, I’ll go,” Orozco grumbled.

  “Forget it, Carlos.”

  “Why?” the sergeant contested. “Suddenly I’m not good enough to fight at your side?”

  “Gentlemen—por favor! More troopers coming!”

  “The fewer of my countrymen I have to kill, the better I’ll sleep,” Buey noted by way of grim reminder.

  “All right—Carlos and you two men,” Salguero ordered, “go with Gonji. Vaya con Dios, all of you. Gonji—”

  The captain moved close and licked dry lips as he spoke.

  “I’ve seen him, Gonji. He’s here.”

  Gonji peered into the man’s madly flicking eyes. “Simon,” he said flatly.

  Salguero nodded, a look of awe alighting his gaze. “He’s promised to be about when we—”

  The door at the end of the corridor blasted open, and pandemonium ensued. In the violent clash of weapons and the sharp report of pistols, Gonji felt a renewal of the old thrill of battle.

  * * * *

  They moved surreptitiously through the halls of the High Office, seeking cover amidst the rushing bodies of clergymen and soldiers, as they moved toward the prison wing. Gonji’s three companions huddled about him to better conceal him from discovery, though he wore the same uniform.

  The samurai kept his face angled toward the floor, glancing up sporadically. He held a pistol low at his side, and he had removed the infamous Sagami from his belt and now carried it wrapped inside a soldier’s jack.

  They reached the dungeon wing without incident, most of the scurrying men they encountered heading out to the streets.

  Orozco engaged the pair of sentries at the first gate with a fabricated tale of urgent business for the warden on duty below. They opened the gate before thinking to ask for written orders, and the four pushed inside the gatehouse and overwhelmed them in seconds, though the din was heard below.

  Gonji hurtled down the familiar loathsome stairwell to the dungeons, taking the first inquisitive guard with a pistol shot before throwing the piece at the next man through the sub-level portal and unleashing the Sagami. The second guard ducked the wheel-lock and brought up his own pistol. Gonji’s slash relieved him of his arm before he could fire, then the samurai burst into the next guardhouse with Orozco on his heels.

  The katana’s heft felt strange, and Gonji found that he was unconsciously altering his favorite two-handed grip to slightly favor the hand on which the knuckle had been broken months earlier. He’d lost speed, and his control was imprecise, but he swept aside the first rapier that darted at his chest, the return slash ripping open the soldier’s belly.

  A sharp scream—the falling of the body that he leapt over—and he was between two more swordsmen.

  Orozco was shouting something he didn’t hear clearly. He dropped to a knee and high-blocked a skewering blade-point, his arcing return slicing through the attacker’s jack and ribs in a fanning spray of blood. The second man’s lunge whizzed past his ear as he spun and batted the blade aside with a tinny clang and slashed down and in, falling short of his mark.

  A pistol barked behind Gonji, smoke belching into his vision, another guard falling in the doorway. Then the two men with Orozco were running past Gonji’s scuffle and down to the second level, where the samurai had been imprisoned. A shot rang out below. A cry. A body tumbling down the stairwell amid the sound of heavy scraping and slapping footfalls.

  Now Gonji recognized the man he crossed blades with: a former tormentor from the evening shift who had been party to more than one beating the samurai had suffered.

  Gonji cocked the Sagami high overhead, but he had allowed his hostility too much time to frame itself. The soldier caught up a pistol from a weapon rack and aimed it at him.

  Orozco yelled at him as he passed, heading for the carven stretch of stairs. The sergeant drew a bead with his own pistol. Gonji’s opponent turned in reply. Both guns cracked, the reports echoing through the dungeons. The guard was knocked back into the wall, his face split open. Sergeant Orozco jerked downward and grabbed his thigh, grimacing in pain.

  Gonji ran to him, but Orozco grunted and pushed him toward the stair. The samurai started down, saw one of their men splayed on the floor of the sub-cellar. A pistol shot rang out—the second man fell heavily at the gatehouse.

  The samurai sprinted down,
heading for the gatehouse, though he could not tell how many guards yet remained. The complement had always seemed to vary. He hoped Morales would not be among them.

  He paused at the gatehouse, steeled himself, then darted in and out quickly, his ploy drawing a wasted lead ball and revealing that only two guards were left alive in the wing.

  But how many would soon descend on them from above?

  He rushed in, katana trailing behind him for a strike, roaring a mighty kiyai, his charge directed at the nearer man. Both frantically reloaded their pistols. The first guard, who had once treated Gonji to the lash, recognized him at once and flung away the half-loaded wheel-lock. Grasping the handle of an axe, he bellowed for Gonji to come on. The second man rapidly spannered his pistol, eyes bulging.

  Prisoners in the cells screamed and howled with delight to see their torturers embattled.

  Gonji ran straight into the teeth of the axe’s tight, wrathful swing, jerking back just out of range at the last instant. The dim corridor wall exploded in a showering of stone and dust. Gonji’s vertical slash tore open the man’s face and severed his right wrist. The samurai plunged past him and straight at the last guard, who raised and hammered his pistol. The soldier emitted a short yelp that was drowned out by the pistol’s cracking, fuming shot. The ball whanged off the samurai’s pot helmet as he dropped low, stunned momentarily. The soldier dropped the piece and reached for his belted rapier. But before he could draw, Gonji surged at him, growling in fury, his katana cocked beside his ear in both hands, point angling for the kill.

  There was a long wailing peal of a scream, smothered by an eruption of blood in the man’s throat as Gonji withdrew his darkly gleaming sword-point from his opponent’s upper chest.

  He breathed a ragged sigh and snapped the blood droplets from his blade, bringing his shuddering thews under control. Blood thrummed in his ears, and adrenaline momentarily caused double-vision. He shook it off.

  The prisoners began to bellow that he should release them. Gonji moved down the corridor, took a brief nostalgic look at his old cell, the home of so many bitter memories. What he saw there shocked him with the realization that he would find Valentina’s cell in a similar state:

  Both had been purged by fire, a regular practice after occupation by suspected witches. He had forgotten. His heart sank. Valentina’s cell was scoured, the walls charred, the brimstone stench its only feature.

  The wygyll’s medallion was gone. Destroyed.

  “Cholera.”

  Gonji heard Orozco’s shout from above. He ran past the groping, pleading prisoners. There was nothing he could do for them, though he keenly empathized with them in their suffering. Some, he knew—murderers, thieves, and the like—were fittingly imprisoned. And the others?

  Karma.

  There was no time.

  He found Orozco binding his leg wound tightly, nodding toward the stairwell and the upper gatehouse.

  Voices and stamping feet all about the upper level—

  Gonji massaged his aching head a moment and urged the wounded sergeant into a painful hop up the stairs. Gonji was by now breathing heavily and soaked with sweat. He saw that his left hand was smeared with blood from a head wound he could not remember receiving. In his weakened state, dragging the laboring Orozco, he felt the dawning of despair. He had suffered so long in the dungeons, entertained such wild spates of occasional hope; he’d been granted this brief taste of freedom again. And now…

  Gonji put up his katana, unconcerned with concealing it. He began to concoct a halfhearted plan when he ran out of time. A party of troopers met them at the gatehouse, a clergyman at the center of them.

  The samurai gaped. It was Father Martin de la Cenza.

  “Hold, Gonji—amigos!”

  Sergeant Morales was with them. The others—four in all—were evidently Salguero’s men or new sympathizers. They took note of Orozco’s wound at once and bore him up.

  “Martin-san,” Gonji said breathlessly, “I won’t go back down there. You know that.”

  “Si, I know,” the prelate replied, waving his hands reassuringly. “We must hurry while everyone’s out in the square. Was there much killing?” The priest’s brow knit in anguish.

  Gonji swallowed. “Too much, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, my friend, but there seemed no other way.”

  Father Martin shook his head and directed them toward the north wall exits of the Alcazar. Gonji’s garb was changed on the run again; he now affected a monk’s habit and cowl—with swords. The priest led them through a guardhouse and into the ancient Moorish walled lanes of the north quarter. All attention seemed concentrated on the diversionary fires to the south. They could hear the thunder of horses and cattle stampeding through the great square, the shouts and screams rising above the city. Chaos reveled in Toledo.

  “I pray God Almighty that I’ve done the right thing,” Father Martin said with fretted brows. “Your Captain Salguero and his people have arranged their uprising well. Bedlam everywhere, though there seems to be little injury. It will cost a fortune in men and materials to repair the damage.”

  They could see the gorge of the Tajo River now, where they would have to descend.

  “Gonji-san,” Martin said at last, halting them near granite buildings housing forges of the great swordsmiths of Toledo, now cold and still for the night, “I have no time to discuss with you the scruples of conscience that have caused me to defy my own superiors—and perhaps my God—in aiding you. My only comfort is that I’m not alone. These doughty troopers here seem to be but the leading edge of an underground that opposes the Inquisition’s might from within the Church itself. If wagering were not a sin—and I had anything to wager—” He smiled gently. “I’d bet there were more than a few scholars from the university and the Office of Faith who are running the blockades being set up all around Toledo right now.”

  “‘Running’… from what?” Gonji asked absently, seating his weapons comfortably beneath his habit.

  “From the Inquisition and to whatever it is you’re leading them to,” Father Martin replied cryptically.

  Gonji met his gaze, puzzled as to his meaning. “I’m not leading anyone anywhere. Right now I’m just running. As fast and as far as I can from this place.”

  “Mmmm. But they are following you, you know. Impelled by a sense of import to all this. I think that if you make it to Austria you’ll find you’re even more notorious—and yet more respected—than you think. Many lives are risked—many lost—to save you. My only prayer is that you make good your restored life. If you possess secret knowledge of the workings of Evil, then use that knowledge to combat it. And por favor, kill no man randomly, lest you make me your accomplice before God.”

  Gonji pondered the priest’s words, their heady intimations setting his mind to reeling. Cascading notions, assumptions, memories, and experiences finally were laid to rest pending such time as he might sift through them rationally. Flight was all that mattered now.

  A massive explosion rocked the city—powder magazines igniting. De la Cenza and some of the soldiers crossed themselves.

  “So unnecessary now,” the priest fretted. “Go. Before I recover my senses and perform my sworn duty.”

  Gonji bowed to him, the priest replying in kind, and when they did so, there came to their ears shrieks of horror. And a savage roaring above the square.

  They looked back toward the cathedral that dominated the sky at the center of Toledo: Musket shot and arrows laced the smoke-filled night air. In the center of it all, bellowing down at the defenders from atop the cathedral’s very spires, was the snarling form of the great golden werewolf, Simon Sardonis.

  “Si,” de la Cenza said on a quavering breath, “si, he has also come, even as you said he would—go! Go now, swiftly, lest he harm anyone—Dios mio!”

  For a moment Gonji could not
tear his eyes from the sight of the creature’s primitive fury. The memories of the campaign in Vedun which haunted his sleep welled up again.

  And then his companions were urging him on, and soon they were descending the river gorge that protected three sides of Toledo. Barges and rowboats waited in the darkness, moored tenuously in the surging river. Civilians and soldiers alike gathered on the banks, flushed with terror and exertion, beacon-eyed with expectation. Gonji impatiently abided a welter of introductions as the craft were loaded.

  He was bewildered by it all as he took his place aboard a barge. He would have preferred a more clandestine escape. This was sheer madness. A disorganized mob. Women and children were endangered by the fire from the small skirmishes that now broke out with lancer patrols.

  They at last broke their moorings and swept down the river toward the east, Gonji imagining that he could still hear the cries of that monstrous beast, the golden-hued werewolf, whose destiny was somehow amazingly linked with his own in prophetic accounts. Then he thought again of the voice he’d heard briefly, earlier in the night, a voice full of vibrant memories without names or faces.

  The polemen ran them aground on the bank at the predetermined spot, screaming passengers being jolted and dumped into the water with the impact. Gonji’s mind itched in reaction to this chaotic plan as those who had fallen overboard were pulled up and other craft drifted by, some people calling out well wishes.

  Another band of escapees approached on foot and horseback. Soldiers, for the most part.

  Where in hell are they all running? Gonji found himself wondering. By the Great Kami, they can’t all be in trouble with the Inquisition.

  He was thinking again of Father Martin’s karma-laden words, and of Jacob Neriah’s rumblings about Moses and the Knights of Wonder and his daisho—and where was the old Jew? He must have something to do with this lunacy, since he had seen that Gonji was sent his swords. And then he remembered the heavy burden of responsibility Domingo Negro had tried to make him accept that night she had appeared to him. And the similar challenges of adventurers in days gone by. Emeric. Joost van de Berg. Rima. Mabenga. Clement the Virgin. Brother Friedrich. And even—