Fortress of Lost Worlds

by T. C. Rypel

  Loaded pistols came out in the hands of the charging defenders, trained on the musketeer position, their distance from the attackers down to a hundred yards. Still the musket company held its ground, their commander spreading their line to minimize the effect of the counter-fire.

  A blast of sizzling pellets whistled past. Gonji exhaled a sharp breath, standing firm and relaxing himself, as he arced through a powerful draw and sighted on the commander. His shot hissed away, the samurai following its sleek trajectory.

  Too high, he decided. Then—

  The commander’s head looked as though it was suddenly snapped off his shoulders, and he was knocked off his feet. Shouts of victory broke from the bowmen when they saw. The musketeers began to fall back now, and the refugee band descended on them with a vengeance, pistols igniting like fireflies over the plain.

  Gonji nodded with satisfaction. It had been his third try at the commander. The dungeon sojourn had cost him dearly. Raking out the Sagami, he tossed away the bow and hurtled forward with the others.

  There was another brief exchange of mostly erratic gunfire, then an engagement of clashing steel, some of the Spanish company fleeing in panic.

  “Buey,” Gonji shouted to the sword-wielding giant, “can’t let any of them escape.”

  The Ox nodded and took two men with him in pursuit of the retreating troopers, who tried to take to horse.

  And then Gonji was in the midst of the fray. Two swordsmen came at him as one. He sprinted into the pincering charge, then stamped to a halt, his feint drawing them off balance. His lightning, scythe-like strokes batted both blades aside, the return blows ripping through both men’s midsections before the singing parries had left their ears.

  He continued on at the run, coming to engagement with the lunging figure-eight whirl of a sizzling rapier point. The Spanish swordsman clenched his teeth, his face contorting with exertion as he strove to use his blade’s length advantage to hold the samurai at bay. They clashed twice, both feinting a disengagement to open a line of attack. Again—sparks showering the frigid darkness.

  The Spaniard lunged deep—

  Gonji dropped to one knee and released his left hand to rake overhead with his right. He unhinged the other’s sword arm at the wrist, the clenched rapier tossing through the air in the severed hand as the man howled. Blood spurted onto Gonji’s jerkin, across his cheek, as his passing two-handed plunge finished the opponent.

  Then someone in a Spanish jack was bounding up from the rear, hefting two pistols. Gonji’s breath hissed as he spun and came to middle guard.

  “God—damn it, don’t you swing that thing at me!”

  It was Sergeant Orozco, running with an ungainly limp, snarling at him. Gonji breathed a sigh of relief and waved him on.

  “You’re gonna kill me yet before you have to pay me back my silver, eh?” Orozco was bellowing. He fired at an onrushing trooper, downing him. Then he kept on hobbling after Buey’s band.

  A pikeman withdrew his gory spike point from a dead mercenary and brought it up at Gonji. The samurai stumbled back, raising his blade into engagement. He tripped over the body of a musketeer, seeing the deadly pike descend at his face as he fell.

  He heard shouts and a shot in the expanded moment as he tried to roll out of range of the razor-edged pike. The plunging blade tore through the top of his right shoulder, and he emitted a sharp outcry of pain, swinging his katana wildly behind him, clacking against the wooden haft.

  Then he was scrabbling on his knees, slapping at the blood seeping from his rent jerkin, pushing up onto his feet. Backing, swatting at the oncoming pike again, wiping a bloody hand on his breeches.

  The pikeman sensed a kill. Lunging—stabbing—weaving his angry weapon through space warmed by Gonji’s retreating form.

  The samurai recovered his senses, his ko-dachi—the short blade used in seppuku, the ritual suicide—snicking out of its sheath. Teeth gritted in defiance, he brought his twin blades into counterattack, knowing the ferocious potential of the well-trained pikeman.

  He caught a lunge in an X-block, driving the pike’s spear point into the ground. Slipped the next lunge, his shoulder wound burning painfully. Caught another thrust and drove the pike-point down harder, leaping back as the weapon tore up from the ground in a frenzied slice aimed at his groin. The pikeman lost his pot helmet in the hard, jerking motion.

  Another darting lunge. Gonji caught it and turned it aside this time, a quick, circular lick of his short sword notching the haft of the pike. A swift horizontal slash across eye level caused the pikeman to jerk backward. Gonji slid the katana along the pike and plunged it into the warrior’s belly. His following slash of the ko-dachi ripped through the man’s throat.

  The katana had penetrated so deeply that Gonji was pulled along as the Spaniard fell onto his back. A hard tug freed the gleaming blade. Gonji glanced around him.

  It was over, for the most part. His comrades stood about, catching their breaths, nodding to Gonji as they leaned on bows and dropped to their knees.

  Shots split the darkness, tiny firelicks spitting in the northern distance. Gonji waved for them to follow.

  When they had gone about fifty yards, they encountered Buey’s pursuing party—all intact, including the grimacing Sergeant Orozco, who clearly had returned to combat too soon on his wounded leg.

  A rumbling of approaching horses—

  Salguero shouted for them to assemble, but Buey motioned that the threat was over, pointing: It was the musket company’s scattered horses. Two mounted figures were herding them toward the encampment. Strangers, clutching still smoking pistols.

  “Who—?” Salguero was asking, but Buey shrugged him off.

  “They helped us. Dropped the last two as they rode away. Corsini—” Buey was moving toward the Italian brigand, extending a hand, offering a bandanna to stanch the flow of blood from a rapier cut on Corsini’s face. He’d sport a new scar across his old one, Buey observed. Then the two of them were clearing the air between them, patching their differences.

  But everyone else watched the closing strangers. The riderless mounts streamed past, and then the two Frenchmen clopped up and saluted Gonji’s party.

  The taller man scanned them with penetrating blue eyes. He was fair of hair and skin, and a glimmer of a smile perked his lips when his gaze fell on Gonji.

  “Gracias, hombres,” Salguero was saying. “Habla usted espanol?”

  “Castellano,” the Frenchman answered. “Castilian Spanish.”

  “Ah, fine,” the captain said. “May we ask who you are and what interest you have in aiding us?”

  “I am Brian de Chancy,” the tall blond man replied. “My companion is Armand Le Clerc. Let me say that we have a common interest with—” He turned from Salguero to Gonji.

  The samurai stiffened, ignoring the pain in his bleeding shoulder now, wary, as he was these days, of Frenchmen seeking him out.

  “You are, are you not,” the shorter, darker Le Clerc was asking in a youthful voice, “the celebrated warrior Gonji Sabatake?”

  Gonji nodded slightly, still cautious. The pair looked to each other, and de Chancy dismounted and strode up to Gonji. He reached into a pocket and withdrew a shriveled white rose. This he held up before Gonji’s eyes.

  Buey rubbed his nose and sniffed. “I think you’re being courted,” he said in Portuguese, some of the men snickering.

  De Chancy chortled. “I’ll dispense with chivalry, my loutish friend,” he told Buey, “since our mission is urgent.”

  Buey affected a wryly brutish expression as his yokefellows brayed at the implied threat. De Chancy turned back to Gonji.

  “Do you recognize this symbol of secrecy?”

  Gonji shook his head. “So sorry, I cannot say that I do.” But he was thinking of the Knights of Wonder.

>   “Well, how is your knowledge of heraldry?” de Chancy asked, shrugging off his greatcoat and turning slowly before their curious gazes.

  He wore a white mantle emblazoned at the back with a red Latin cross, and Gonji wondered at the gasps and exclamations this evoked from some of the others.

  “Jesus-Maria,” Salguero was breathing. “The Order of Knights Templars? But—”

  “Yes, I know,” de Chancy said with an indulgent smile, “suppressed—disbanded, so they would have you believe—for nearly three hundred years. Not so. I am the present Grand Master of the Templars, and monsieur le samurai’s work has been brought to our attention. You’ll forgive me if I speak briefly and to the point.” He addressed Gonji now, who could only stare in narrow-eyed bewilderment as to the portent of all this.

  “For centuries we’ve been the guardians of knowledge the world is ill prepared to receive. Some knowledge, you see, leads to madness. You, it seems, are on the brink of discovering certain important facets of that knowledge. Your long struggle against the tyranny of evil powers has brought you to the doorway of Arcadia—”

  “Arcadia?” Gonji repeated, dumbfounded.

  “Yes, monsieur le samurai—Paradise. The Garden of Eden. Lost innocence—what is left of it after eons of pride and greed. The transcendent knowledge of reclaiming the simultaneously physical and spiritual realm the Creator made for humankind. A world of endless possibilities, of which this earth we walk is but the tiniest fragment. Grasping, ravening powers have sought for millennia to aggrandize themselves of all Arcadia, to enslave all the sentient races who aren’t already enslaved.”

  Gonji was shaking his head, staying the knight’s torrent of impassioned words. “I’m afraid, Sir Knight, that you’ve lost me. What exactly am I supposed to do about this—‘battle of worlds’ when I can’t even be sure I’ll get out of Spain alive?”

  “You must,” the young knight Le Clerc said simply.

  “Take this,” de Chancy said, pushing a pouch toward Gonji. “Within you’ll find a cheque for a…substantial amount, which the Hapsburg chancellery will honor when you’ve reached Vienna. They will exchange this note for silver or gold. Take no great heed of the name on the authorization, and do not connect it in any way with the order. The money is to be used toward the promulgation of the Wunderknechten movement. When you’ve done that, you must continue your quest after a doorway into Arcadia. You will know it by the words Et in Arcadia Ego.”

  “‘And in Arcadia I—’” Gonji tilted his head, prompting the man, as he translated. “I—what? No verb?”

  De Chancy looked to Le Clerc and smiled. “That is the secret of Arcadia. You must help us to learn it, so that we may win the battle to reclaim the fullness of the worlds that were created for all sentient beings. Where have they gone? How may common men pass into them?”

  “And exactly how shall I attain this wondrous knowledge?” Gonji asked peevishly.

  “By asking—whomever guards the… doorways,” Le Clerc answered.

  “Some call them jetties,” de Chancy added.

  “The gatekeeper?” Gonji said, recalling Domingo’s similar charge.

  “Oui,” de Chancy breathed reverently. “But have a care, sir—they might be angels.”

  The refugees within earshot whispered and jostled as Gonji fell silent, mulling over the new questions that joined the queue behind the others that already vied for solution.

  * * * *

  “Africa!”

  “Africa?”

  “He did say Africa?”

  Few in the camp could sleep following the musket company attack. So as the sentries were doubled and a new band of pilgrims pounded into the area from the south, to be settled in with the main body, Gonji laid out his plans. He could no longer keep them in the dark.

  “No, he said Austria—”

  “Africa,” Gonji repeated. “The Barbary States. That is my destination, and that of whatever fighting men are free to sail with me.”

  “But why?” Captain Salguero asked, fretting.

  “Because I have a duty, senchoo. I made a promise to Domingo Negro before she died. And,” he went on pensively, “I have a consuming curiosity to know what this business of Arcadia means to me personally. Evil abounds and takes a special interest in my demise. Influential allies appear whom I’ve never even heard of.”

  Jacob Neriah was muttering to himself. He peered still closer at the draft the knights had given Gonji, which the samurai had now presented to him. The merchant beat his breast and rolled his eyes skyward to again regard the sum that had been authorized.

  “What about all these people?” Sergeant Orozco asked.

  “They take the larger ship to Genoa, as planned.”

  “There will never be enough room.”

  Gonji’s face took on a stern set. “Then they take both ships, and we find passage on another. You cannot dissuade me, senchoo. I’ll go alone, if necessary.”

  “I’ll go,” Valentina whispered behind him, as she tended the shoulder wound that made him wince repeatedly.

  “So sorry, Tina-chan, but we don’t know what we’ll find, what danger lies ahead. Nor even where we’re headed. The desert, that’s all I know.”

  “We’ll see,” she said stubbornly.

  A renegade lancer approached Salguero at a trot, bearing important news. Some of the recent arrivals had heard that Madrid had unleashed the flower of the cavalry to pursue them.

  “The Order of the Golden Fleece?” Captain Salguero repeated in disbelief.

  “Hai,” Gonji confirmed. “Simon has also told me they’ve been set on our heels.”

  Corsini called over from where he sat before a blazing fire: “Are they good?”

  “Huh,” Salguero grunted in reply. “Ask any lancer. There’s none better.”

  A grim silence descended over the gathering, broken at last by Gonji. “They won’t follow to the Barbary Coast.”

  “They’ll follow to Genoa,” Salguero spat. “What will we do about all these innocent people?”

  “Nothing but trouble ahead, eh?” Cardenas said smugly, shackled to a wagon yoke.

  Gonji sighed. “I’ll just—somehow—have to get them to follow me.” He looked them over, gauging their reactions. It seemed clear they had accepted that he would be parting company with them. “Anyway, how quickly can they take to ship? Neriah-san says the only ships waiting at those shoals should be ours.”

  Deep in thought and heavy-hearted, the others began to drift away. They would need a snatch of sleep before the sun presently rose.

  Gonji sat near the fire, scribbling absently on a ragged scrap of paper. Valentina changed Orozco’s leg bandage and shared a cup of wine with the droll renegade before sidling up behind Gonji.

  “What does that say?” she inquired, looking over his shoulder. He read it to her aloud twice, helping her with the pronunciation. They exchanged weary pleasantries, and the samurai moved off to try to steal an hour’s rest from his unrelenting concerns.

  “Et in Arcadia Ego,” she repeated again to herself before sleep overcame her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  They split the caravan into three parties to help confound pursuit as they neared the craggy seaport city of Valencia. Neriah’s ships were to be nestled in a treacherous inlet, anchored off a small fishing village, ostensibly to maintain cheap harbor while the crews set to needless repairs and re-caulking.

  Captain Salguero and his men left their camp and, dressing as inland hunters, entered Valencia to regather their families with the caravan. After an anxious two days, they returned intact, having encountered no difficulty and bringing the encouraging news that there seemed to be no general alert concerning the refugees in Valencia.

  “I told you no messengers made it through,” Simon reminded them wit
h annoyance.

  “They may think we’ve gone west to Estremadura,” a lancer said.

  “Or south toward Granada,” Salguero added. “There was some rumor of trouble among the Moriscos.”

  “We should be grateful for any circumstantial misdirection,” Gonji said thoughtfully.

  When the blue-gray haze of the Mediterranean spread over the eastern horizon, the samurai took a scouting party to the brink of the crags overlooking the inlet. Simon and Jacob Neriah went along, plus a handful of the men under Salguero.

  What they saw in the waters off the village coast drowned their hopes in a maelstrom of despair. Neriah’s Portuguese carac and Venetian galley were anchored next to the hulking form of a Spanish ship of war.

  “Mierda—shit,” Buey swore, grimacing and slamming a big fist onto the rocks.

  “Well, that settles it, then—we must wait until the warship departs.” Jacob nodded repeatedly as if to convince himself.

  “Impossible,” Gonji disagreed softly.

  “I tell you, you must move,” Simon intoned in a low growl. “The Knights of the Golden Fleece are not far behind now. You cannot count on them to be misled.”

  “Well…” Salguero began, his breath huffing anxiously. “Any suggestions?”

  “We take the land route,” Simon said forcefully. “Just as I’ve said from the beginning.”

  “Through France?” a lancer grumbled.

  “I will see you safely through France,” the lycanthrope assured.

  “We take them,” Gonji said at last, all heads turning.

  “You’re loco,” Buey said, voicing their thoughts. “Take on a ship of the line? A seasoned crew? Twenty-four guns?”