Gonji: Fortress of Lost Worlds. T.C. Rypel
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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