Gonji: Fortress of Lost Worlds. T.C. Rypel
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I’ll bowl you and your stupid horse so flat your sky god will think you’re a new continent!”
“Ahh, so desu ka? Is that so? Take one more deep breath and I’ll plant so many shafts in your blobby hide that you will—”
“Mande usted? What did you say?”
“—that you will look like a burr.”
“I’ll swallow your horse’s head!”
“And the shaft of my halberd with it.”
“You puny little mortal—sniff—I’ll—sniff-sniff…” Bulba’s tiny nose kept wrinkling in Gonji’s direction. “Sweets,” he said, his yellow eyes widening. “You have sweets!”
From the tone in his voice, one might have guessed that he’d been betrayed by a friend. Gonji smiled coyly and nodded.
“Give them to me at once!”
The samurai shook his head slowly. “First remove your…considerable self from my path.”
“Bah!” Bulba bounded atop the boulder on Gonji’s right again—the maneuver astonishing, as though his blubber were composed of air pockets—and settled his corpulence on the crest, where it sagged again like melting tallow. He made a gesture with his useless arms that approximated crossing them over his chest. There he sat sulking while Gonji fished a packet from the bag of provisions he’d purchased from the traders.
“Eat hearty, buta kao—pig face.” The samurai tossed the demon the packet and rode past him, through the boulder gateway.
“Taffy!” Bulba cried at his departing back. “All I ever get is taffy. Next time you pass through here you best be carrying those French confections—with the soft cen—”
His words deteriorated into a gooey mumble, and Gonji trotted on into the hollow with the matter of the wind elemental receding from his concern.
The experienced warrior learned to deal variously with the challenges in his way. Sometimes the path of least resistance to one’s goal was through might of arm, sometimes through strength of spirit. Other times again…
Gonji could only stand in awe of the endless wonder of the world. And only one raised in Shinto and disciplined to Zen seemed properly suited in spirit to marvel at its profound mystery.
He traveled without encounter for a time, negotiating the rugged track of the hollow, which narrowed after a while into little more than a foreboding ravine. But this soon widened on the left hand again, the trees thinning, and the land once more assuming the forlorn face of the Spanish wilderness with which Gonji was familiar. On the right, for as far as the eye could see, a stretch of low mesa bordered the valley, curving sharply into gorges and canyons which the samurai studiously avoided. Approaching one, he was nevertheless attracted by the sound of running water, the splash of a cataract. A branching of the river must feed a minor falls, he thought, as he swung by warily for a look.
Even through cold air, he caught the harsh scent of the giant before he saw it.
Knowing that he must have been heard by now, and accepting that it had been a mistake to ride so boldly near the tableland, Gonji stoically turned into the grotto to confront the great brute.
A thrill of shock coursed Gonji’s spine, and his belly turned over, to see this creature. It was clearly the most awesome giant he’d ever encountered, albeit he’d seen few: They were a vanishing race.
The giant grunted at him from where it squatted near the icy pool formed by the cataract. It was ruddy, black-bearded, and burly. Even in its crouch its head would top three acrobats in shoulder-stand. It was clad in a patchwork of wildly mismatched hides and cloaks and plate armor—the latter, he knew only too well, torn from the crushed bodies of men who’d attacked it.
But they were generally a docile race, not given to attacking men without provocation. By the look of him, this giant either had met with his share of fools or was easily provoked.
“Good day to you, Sir Giant,” Gonji said, bowing elaborately from the saddle.
But the giant had noticed Gonji wincing from the stench of his enormous body. He curled his lip indignantly.
“Good day yourself, mite. Just keep your squirmy little body over there, and quit screwing up your face like that. It’s too damn cold for an Anakim to bathe.”
“Forgive me, por favor, but can you tell me whether I’m on a proper course for Barbaso?”
The giant rose to his full breathtaking height. “You’re no Spaniard,” he said in a menacing voice. “But I’d judge you know damn well there’s nothing else in this valley.”
The samurai did indeed, and he had asked only in an effort at small talk, to display his bravery in light of the rather uneven angle of eye contact between them.
“So what is your business here? Have you come to seek employment with the Master?”
“The Master?”
“Hah, but you’re a dumb one, eh?” the giant bellowed. “This valley belongs to the Archmage Domingo Malaga y Colicos, and those who journey here are either his servants or his enemies. There can be no other.”
Gonji scratched his stubbly beard pensively. “The one who calls himself Domingo Negro—Black Sunday?”
“Hah-hah—si! A name to strike terror in the hearts of all goodly church militants, eh?”
“Hai,” Gonji agreed, “but why would so powerful a giant as yourself be concerned with the strife of men?”
The giant sighed deeply, his rancid breath causing Gonji to hold his own until it had passed. “Self-preservation, little man. In this valley you choose sides or you perish.”
“I’m not interested in choosing allegiances right now,” Gonji said. “I have my personal duty to follow. This valley is the shortest route to—”
“Then you are The Enemy!” the giant roared, catching up a huge staff carved from oak. “Give me a reason I shouldn’t grind your crackly little body into the snow right now.”
“I’ll give you several,” Gonji responded defiantly, fighting Tora’s backstepping. “First, you’d not find me easy to catch, if I would run. But I wouldn’t. I don’t fear death like some dishonorable knight you’d find groveling under a bush. And man-stings are most unpleasant. They open wounds that attract demons which cause fester and swelling, sometimes fever and death. And I bear many stings. And besides, like you, I’m only an outcast, with no land to call my own anymore. I would say that binds us in a sort of brotherhood. Wouldn’t you agree?”
The giant grunted. “Loco, as well as squirmy and stupid. But I suppose that’s one shape valor comes in. It got you this far. Listen, you wouldn’t consider trading that horse for safe conduct as far as Barbaso, would you? Game grows scarce, and I haven’t eaten a good horse in—” He stopped when he saw Gonji’s negative tensing. “Begone with you, then.”
Gonji swung Tora about, but as he was about to exit the grotto, he half-turned again.
“Giant—have you seen many wonders hereabouts?”
The prodigious warrior’s expression segued from blankness to disbelief to uproarious mirth. He slapped his great thigh, and the echo caused snow to shower from the rock walls of the grotto.
His laughter rang to the skies as he spoke. “Any wonders! Haaaahhh! You’re the pick of the litter, tiny hombre! Just keep riding.” He shook his head from side to side, sat down with a great whump, and leaned back on his tree trunk arms. “Just keep on riding.”
Gonji sniffed, unsure whether he was being ridiculed. He shrugged and continued on his way, the giant’s booming voice pealing behind him until the mesa had shrunken to a crooked step that at last blended with the surrounding terrain.
“…he