Fortress of Lost Worlds (2 page)

PART ONE

Softly Rides the Reaper

CHAPTER ONE

Panic…

Panic is what tumbles under stress from the clutter of an undisciplined mind.

Iye—
no.
That’s not quite right. Work at it. Keep thinking. Keep staving off…panic.

The vicious wind lashed the northern slopes of the Pyrenees, implacably buffeting the white-bundled horse and rider as they pressed onward. Negotiating the precipitous switchbacks at night in a blinding snowstorm was sheer madness.

The madness of the hunted and the hungry.

Sabatake Gonji-no-Sadowara had long since become accustomed to such madness.

He let his philosophic musings drift off with the echoed howl of the wind. For a space, he thought of nothing. Then he considered the grim possibilities of frostbite, which produced a cheerless frame of mind that evoked bitter memory. He saw visions of Vedun, a place he had learned to love and had helped destroy; and of the bizarre Simon Sardonis, the lycanthrope, perverse answer to Gonji’s ten-year quest after half-understood prophecy; of unfinished business and compromised principles; self-imposed duty and failed charge; of wondrous knowledge that brought no gain; of his own changing priorities and eclectic beliefs. There came the fleeting warmth of familiar faces—good companions and staunch sword-brothers—abruptly twisted by lines of pain and set in the blankness of death.

Who are they?

His thoughts plunged and shifted with the broken rhythm of Tora’s plowing hooves. It had been hours, he fancied, since he’d last looked back over his shoulder, back down the mountainside to see what followed. When last he had looked he’d been plodding through the forested lower slopes, unable to do anything but press on. Upward, ever upward toward the peaks that would dominate the Spanish countryside, that would lift him out of the bitter winter of loathsome France. There was, in the present circumstance, nowhere else to go: The Pyrenees yawned forever to the west; to the east beckoned an icy Mediterranean grave. And behind, the pursuers relentlessly tracked him.

Who in hell
are
they?

They had come in the night, a long-ago night following the Moon of Consummate Horror—when a town had been systematically destroyed, purged of its unspeakable foulness. They had approached almost casually, dark and silent, as if conveyed by the enshrouding hell-mist that preceded them. Their number seemed small; perhaps no more than a dozen. Their armament was unknown but for the deadly bowshot—from arbalest and longbow alike—that struck down half of Gonji’s party in the first volley with the random callousness of the plague. Half the remainder fell in the next, and broken, weary, and wounded as they were, the unsavory prospect of flight seemed their only alternative.

Gnawed to the point of shame by the feckless trail they had left in their wake, they would now and again wheel and charge their distant pursuers. Another adventurer would fall screaming, and still another, torn from the saddle by the impact of a bolt. In impotent rage they would count their losses, come to terms with the inevitable, and grimly resume their flight.

By the time they were three, they discerned the pattern in the pursuit. The hunters made their best progress by night. Indeed, by day they were seldom seen, giving ground as dawn approached and ceasing the chase altogether under the sun’s wintry glare. On the fateful day when they lost Cartier, they drove their mounts to near-frothing over the frosted land, creating false spoor, doubling back, strewing misleading artifacts, setting animal traps that suggested their present return.

Sleeping with confidence that night, they were roused about the Hour of the Hare by the whickering fusillade of shafts and Cartier’s mortal shrieks. Gonji and Emeric had bolted the encampment under fire, the latter’s horse shot in full gallop, forcing Gonji to double-up aboard Tora with his dazed friend.

They sought sanctuary in a village. Two nights later they were turned out by the aroused villagers, who were being murdered in their own streets and stoops. Gonji and Emeric had become a pariah, accursed and shunned of men. They had further accepted the premise that their pursuers were supernaturally empowered, but in all Gonji’s encounters with sorcery and magic, he had learned nothing that could help him deal with these hellhounds.

Ever did the ghostly army follow: silent, evil cloud shadow, rolling with inhuman implacability over the ivory night horizon.

By this time they had adjusted their metabolisms to nocturnal habits, and the perspicacious Emeric, ever as optimistic as he was adroit with the saber, had begun to find reason for hope even in their present situation. He noted how the creeping rot of evil spreading through Europe in these days had been forestalled at several major engagements involving Gonji. Had not the Evil One himself become so vexed by his concern with this singular samurai warrior that he had set this Dark Company to confounding Gonji’s way? Either that or, according to Emeric’s meaningless but perversely pleasing cross-cultural concept, Gonji had become “karma’s whipping boy.”

Emeric further noted how the Dark Company closed faster when the pair despaired most. The notion was sobering: Gonji had long ago noted the strength inherent in faith and conviction; the power of righteousness itself when arrayed against supernatural evil. But how long could one nurture a withering faith in goodness when nothing was gained save stasis itself?

The revelation was noble Emeric’s own death knell.

Not long after, the blizzard had descended. Pressed by the eerie hunters into the corner formed by the barren Mediterranean shore and the oppressive mountain range, they knew their alternatives were two: ascend the torturous snowbound passes or turn and face certain doom.

Part of Gonji yearned for a savage end to his wanderings, but a nameless instinct told him to move on. There was more to know. There were matters to settle. He was yet needed in Europe.

But Emeric could go no farther. Weakened by fever, starved by many days without food, Emeric had surrendered his spirit. Gonji could still feel Emeric’s dying clutch about his ankle after that impossible bowshot—intended, he knew, for himself. He’d had to pry the man’s fingers from his boot, and in his enraged flight up the storm-battered mountainside, he’d prayed until voiceless that the
kami
of war would send him something to kill and the power to kill it.

And what of Simon Sardonis? Many times during the chase Gonji had imagined hearing the cry of the werewolf in the night wind, barely restraining a triumphant roar of vindicated hope.

But no. The Grejkill—the Beast with the Soul of a Man—had long departed him, painstakingly avoided his efforts at renewed partnership and examination of the prophecies that linked them. And Gonji had tired of the pointless game of rejection.

* * * *

Tora stumbled and nearly pitched him headlong into the snow. Gonji had no idea what kept the steed climbing anymore, how it picked its way. Reference points were obscured. Gonji could not tell how close to the brink of the trail they staggered; the fear of a fatal plunge had diminished with the numbness and waves of hunger pain. He fancied that he was beginning to see spirits. Twice he reached for the Sagami with useless fingers when the taunting wind whipped cascading snow into almost palpable airy sculptures. Creatures out of white nightmare danced at his side, and he realized he’d best do something to forestall the demons that stole one’s sanity.

He took stock of his weapons.

His swords were frozen to his sash. His halberd was mounted imposingly from lance-cup through saddle-cinch, though he couldn’t feel its shaft. The splendid longbow bestowed on him by the militia of Vedun loomed over his shoulder—unstrung and useless, the rolled string probably ruined by the moisture that had by now penetrated through layer upon layer of winter-wrap. The pistols he had come to appreciate after years of resistance to the dishonorable nature of such a weapon still bulged from a sturdy, well-oiled pouch, but his powder had likely gone the way of the bowstring.

Hai, Gonji-san, you’re in fine condition for a—

Suddenly it consumed the narrow mountain trail before them—an outcropping brow of granite, encrusted with snow and ice, blockading their way as surely as any double rank of Austrian Landsknecht Lancers.

“Tora! There before you!” he roared in a cracked voice, unsure whether the reins were conveying the message. “Halt, stupid beast!”

Tora snorted and whinnied, momentarily disoriented. The horse swerved to the right, and Gonji gaped to see the brink of the escarpment over the animal’s armored crest. His withered stomach lurched once. Then they were facing the way they had come. It was as surely dammed by the banked and drifting snow as the way ahead.
How had they gotten this far?

Gonji waved at the obscuring white curtain, clinging to Tora with his knees against the wind’s buffet. He saw breathtaking whiteness, extending in mounds that stretched forever. Craggy mountain peaks—invisible only hours earlier—that speared the roiling night sky. A gleaming slickness in the eastern distance that might have been the sea.

And below—an unguessable measure below on an adjacent slope—

The Dark Company.

Gonji could not draw the Sagami. Stretching himself tall in the saddle and resting his left hand on the pommel of the storied
katana,
he bellowed his clan’s war cry into the uncaring storm:

“Sado-wa-raaaaaa!”

The rumbling began near the permanent snow line, somewhat beneath them now. It was echoed and repeated from all directions, it seemed to Gonji’s ringing ears. It was, he told himself, a majestic, glorious sight, worthy of the attention of any such as he who craved experience of the endless wonders of existence.

It was a fitting way to die.

Even had he been able, Gonji doubted that he’d have used his
seppuku
sword first, in ritual suicide. He would ride the avalanche to oblivion and rebirth. He had found the only way possible of ending the Dark Company’s ineluctable pursuit of his soul.

With glazed eyes he witnessed the magnificently orchestrated collapse of the lower slopes, reveled in the rolling vibration. When the first rush of snow pelted him from above, he steeled himself for the great plummet. Then, abruptly—as he’d heard told by mountain folk—the awesome event was over. All movement ceased below but for surface sifting on the reshaped landscape. Only the echo remained, and this, too, presently died.

I remain unchanged.

The world has turned to heaven a new face.

Mountains tell the tale.

Gonji mused over his feelings a long moment, resolving to turn the event into a proper
waka
poem one day. He scanned the slopes beneath the mountain trail, his senses quickening now, his manner more cautious. He could see no sign of the demonic hunters. Could nature have been so kind? Had Emeric missed witnessing the answer by a few scant nights?

Tora nickered and edged left, up the trail again, pawing at the fresh drifts in their way. Something drew the horse toward the granite shelf that had barricaded their path. The vibration had shaken free the snow cover: It was a hollow in the cliff face. A concavity.

Gonji’s breath hissed expectantly. He urged Tora forward, but the steed would not challenge the mounded snow before him. The samurai rolled down from the saddle with an ache-bidden groan. Once he had found balance, he began burrowing through the snow with almost childlike glee, dragging the reins behind him. When he reached the outcrop, he emitted an audible sound of relief.

It was shaped like a great eye socket in the mountainside. And it was more than a cavity. It was a cave. Tall enough to easily admit the pair even if Gonji were sitting the horse.

The samurai led his steed into the darkness, unconcerned with it, caring not at all how he might light a fire or feed them, savoring instead the respite from the storm, the solid feeling under his returning foot circulation. He stamped his wrapped boots, both to enhance sensation and to test the solidity of the new environment. The ground sloped downward into the cave, the drifted snow giving way to smooth stone a short distance inside. Judging by the echo, the cave must be of appreciable size. Soft and indefinable sounds welled up from deep inside the mountain, placing him on the alert, but Tora’s impatient nudges at his shoulder kept him moving.

He was about to halt then, to capitulate to weariness and drop to the ground to take careful stock of his parts, when he noticed the soft, enchanting glow in the indeterminate distance of the cave’s rear quarter.

An almost misty sunset evanescence played over the stones at ground level. Tora snorted wetly behind him. He drew on the reins again and, encountering no resistance, led the horse toward the eerie display. Almost at once Gonji felt the lap of welcome warmth at his face. His soul flooding with relief—though his cold-fettered left hand instinctively pressed at the Sagami’s hilt—he quickened his stumblings toward the phenomenon.

A shadow slithered before him where the darkness parted. Gonji’s breath hissed, and he nearly tumbled headlong in his tensed surprise.

But the shadow was his. The waxing light, emanating from the rocks themselves, now seeped from cracks and fissures in the walls and floor of the cave, serving up his own wavering shadow. He began to fear that he had fallen too easily into some terrible trap when he noticed the behavior of the rock glow: When he moved his hand toward certain of the glowing rocks—for not all the cave’s substance acted this way—their buried light intensified, irradiated from a dull red to hot ruby to autumn flame, lending warmth and light in corresponding measure.

Sorcerous fire—lava light—the foyer of Hell?

It was invigorating, of that he was sure; and for that he cared only, in his present state. Gonji’s hands and feet tingled with life-affirming needles of pain. And Tora proffered no animal-caution against proceeding.

They reached another doorway, the magical light suddenly flaring the way to a large antechamber that was the nexus of a series of tunnels and chambers that quite possibly honeycombed the mountain, judging by their size at the adits. Crossing through, Gonji again found cold stone responding to human need. Strange—the rocks behind him had ceased their glow—he could barely perceive the wind-lashed cave entrance; but the stones around him effulged their welcome as if stoked by an unseen frost giant’s forge and bellows.