“Just be nice to me,” she replied, sidling up to him.
Salguero felt the heat in his loins, but there was no true passion in it. Just melancholy surrender. The admission of weakness before a superior force.
He bent to kiss her, but she snatched his rapier from its scabbard and placed the needle point against his chest. She laughed, cold and derisive, to see his shock. Her voice was full of jeering accusation.
“Go out and catch me a warlock. I’ll keep the bed warm for you here.”
“Capitan!”
The cries sprang from several throats near the house. The beating on the portico door came simultaneously with the keening wind and the sudden darkening of day that they’d come to know so well.
The hideous harridan. The ghostly hag. The
banshee.
The door burst open and terrified faces confronted the captain. Among them was Orozco’s. Captain Salguero ran out onto the front steps to stare pop-eyed down the road to the west. The gray-green filmy apparition, her ethereal gowns flowing down over the housetops, swept toward them.
The harbinger of death, whose charnel stench sometimes brought violent illness, whose burning touch inflicted on her victims’ flesh gray-mottled patches of infection that produced pustules and trembling paralysis, followed by rigidity and death.
Salguero heard screams and the slamming of doors and shutters from all points in the town, though he could not tear his eyes from the strangely hypnotic death-shade who turned the west end of Barbaso sickly translucent.
“Get inside,
capitan—
now!”
Orozco and another lancer dragged Salguero into the house and bolted the door. They crouched with backs to the walls until the ghastly apparition passed, their eyes shut and lips trembling in silent prayer, as they had done many times before.
It was long after the wailing wind had ceased, and the gloom that penetrated even the very walls had passed from the sky, that they tentatively went out to the silent street.
In the wake of the banshee rode the corpse.
It wore the uniform of the
pistoleros,
and its decapitated head was fixed in the crook of one rigidly tied-down arm. Its sightless eyes stared in empty, eternal horror. The other death-stiffened arm was twined about a slashed regimental pennon, its shreds flapping listlessly in the breeze.
Salguero himself halted the lathered, wild-eyed steed. Steadying it, he gazed with lip-twitching disgust at the blood-drained, bearded head; the black, swollen lips and sickly-white boiled-egg eyes. A military pouch dangled from the corpse’s chest in grisly fashion, pinned there by the long thin blade of a misericord.
“Oh, Jesus—” The lancer behind Salguero began to vomit.
The captain tugged out the blade and gingerly grasped the pouch. Beneath it there was no heart, just a grisly hole in the corpse’s chest. His heart would turn up later, they knew, in some sick-joke revelation, after the fashion of their tormentor’s morbid sense of humor.
The pouch identified the knight as a Corporal Alcala. The message he bore from Madrid was simple. Alcala had been part of a detachment of handpicked
pistoleros
who were to aid Salguero in ending this tedious campaign against the warlock who called himself Domingo Negro. High Command, it seemed, had grown impatient. Salguero was ordered to press an all-out attack on Castle Malaguer. But that was not what concerned the captain and his aides. It was, rather, the fresh, chicken-scrawled postscript, appended in blood below the king’s own seal:
“You have your orders.”
CHAPTER FIVE
As soon as Gonji crossed the bridge over the Segre River, he experienced something of a second—if secondary—homecoming. The windswept snowy plains of Aragon were a sight that stirred familiar memories. He knew this place, knew its people, its lore and legendry, its monsters and magics.
He felt control and wariness in equal measure. Weakness here would surely usher one to madness or death or grim fates unsuitable to such rational description. But neither would it serve one to proceed with fatuous overconfidence.
Thus, when he happened upon the body of a slain Spanish lancer, the samurai bowed somberly in deference to whatever valor the man had expended in his duty, and then appropriated the lancer’s razor-edged halberd, to supplant the one he had lost in the harsh mountain passes.
Gonji left behind lands of Reformation strife, where it best availed him to remain neutral in his commitment, for a country ruled by the Roman Church. Here, faith in
Iasu
was sometimes strong, sometimes corrupted by fervent perversity of design, and always countered by faith in the formless Dark Power, here personified in Satan.
Christian symbology was employed with uncertain power in certain circumstances. Where its power did not obtain, the warrior was left to his own resources: the might of his sword arm, the strength of his courage, the depth of his experience.
Tora’s hooves thumped easily across the crusted, barren plain as they departed the river road for the less traveled southwest track Gonji sought. Gaining it at mid-morn, Gonji soon encountered a small caravan of traders bound for Barcelona. These hucksters took a dim view of this singular foreign warrior with his formidable array of weaponry. Gonji doffed his eye-slitted sallet and bowed, engaging them in curt conversation. They cast many an edgy glance at his pistols, wicked halberd, and matched set of swords before considering selling him the few provisions he requested.
The tinkle of his gold and the advantage of their numbers had just about won them over when a leathery-faced old duffer pointed out the wooden crucifix tied about Tora’s neck.
“Sacrilege,” the merchant declared.
“How do you know what my horse believes?” Gonji queried archly. The jest was lost on them. “In truth, I believe the power of Iasu this cross declares will ward off the evil ones. I can think of no simpler, more direct way of showing vampires and werewolves not to waste their time on me.”
They sold him the few meager goods he asked for, charging prices that reflected their low esteem and drawing the line at the black powder he needed for his pistols.
“Whatever your business,” one of them told him in parting, “mind that you steer well clear of the Valley of Barbaso.”
“Hai. Domo arigato,”
Gonji replied, to their befuddlement. He bowed and rode on, with their gun barrels quietly leveled at him until he was nearly out of sight.
Later that same morning, a band of mounted hunters sold him a sinew bowstring for a fee that caused him to wince—the only change of expression he’d shown them, though their bows had been aimed at his breast for an uneasy while.
They further offered to help him string the difficult three-man longbow for an additional charge. While Gonji had long since developed a bending method for stringing the great longbow unaided—though it was tricky—their mild jeering at his claim aroused his competitive instinct. So Gonji instead proposed a display of his skill in exchange for their free assistance.
As they scoffed and wagered among themselves the distance by which he’d miss the proposed target, the samurai nocked a thirteen-fist war arrow, rotated the bow over his head and through the half-arc of a
kyu-jutsu
draw, and skewered the trunk of a cork oak later estimated at two hundred and seventy-five yards away.
The impressed hunters threw in a scrap of advice along with the free stringing:
“Marksman or not, swing wide of the Valley of Barbaso,
amigo.
”
“Hai, arigato.”
* * * *
Gonji entered the valley that cradled the town of Barbaso a little after midday. Plenty of time, he assured himself, to reach the town before nightfall.
But as he made the gradual descent into the valley, he soon became aware of the subtle change in atmosphere, some mystical sense stirring within him, warning him to remain on his guard. The terrain became more rugged, the snow mat broken in many places by protruding roots and overgrown with brush. There were virtually no forests south of the mountains, yet the evergreen oaks grew thickly enough here to qualify as such. The lush bower blotted the sun’s weak rays and absorbed the wind. It was cold and still, save for the distant chirruping of an occasional bird. The snow piled higher as Gonji progressed, though the valley floor should have been spared to a greater degree. The air seemed unaccountably thick and hazy, the trail ahead obscured. Now and again the samurai sensed movement on the periphery of his vision, but when he looked nothing came into view.
Some things deceitfully operate on the edge of the senses, Gonji-san. That is the purpose of this phase of our training…
The inscrutable
ninja
master had been right as always: Gonji was instinctively aware of the insidious power that took predatory note of his presence.
The trail thinned, mounded up over a scrub-tangled knoll, then dropped steeply toward a gloomy hollow. Here the barren beech and poplar trees clustered densely under a dwarfing stand of ice-drooping green oaks. At the entrance of the hollow stood two enormous boulders, flanking the trail, looming before him like the lifeless eyes of some granite colossus. From what source they had tumbled, no man could say.
When sorcery opens the way, worlds may tip and spill, one into another…
Gonji halted a moment and scanned the trail ahead. Nodding and squaring himself in the saddle, he clucked Tora into an easy trot, wrestling with the reins against his steed’s skittishness. When they reached those massive guardian stones, Gonji yanked back on the reins and swept his halberd out of its moorings. Catching it up smartly under the crook of his right arm, he arced its deadly edge across the top of the stone where the evil eyes had peered at him hungrily seconds before.
Tora whinnied and stamped as sparks showered over the boulder, and the huge form launched over their heads with a fearsome bellow. An incredibly round and fat demon bounded down behind them on the trail, swelled rapidly to an even greater girth, and bounced straight up into the shuddering lower boughs of an evergreen before landing again between the boulders, with a tremendous
thud
!
Gonji fought to control his mount as he leveled the halberd threateningly and peered with narrow-eyed disbelief at the bizarre apparition. Settling Tora and stretching up boldly on his saddle, he studied the hissing creature, which sucked great howling breaths through a mouth that seemed capable of expanding without limit.
Stubby arms and legs jutted comically from a body the size of a coach. Its head was as round as its body, jammed atop plump shoulders with economy—no space wasted on a neck. The head was hairless; the ears, beet red and pointed like the leaves of a lilac; and the face was dominated by that elastic mouth, as supple as a snake. Its nose was a tiny scallop between two beady yellow eyes which Gonji could not help comparing to his own in their angularity. The creature, too, seemed to take note of the similarity when the samurai doffed his sallet and proffered a shallow bow.
“You remind me of me, funny man,” the demon said in a peculiar high voice. “What land spit you from its shores?”
Gonji rankled but remained expressionless. “I am Sabatake Gonji-no-Sadowara, son of the
daimyo
Sabatake Todohiro of
Dai Nihon,
the Land of the Gods.”
The creature laughed derisively. “The Land of the Gods!” it mimicked. “Well you’re in
my
land now. I’m Bulba, and these are my boulders. That’s my tree over there. And you’re riding on my trail.”
“I’m riding on the snow,” Gonji countered with mixed pique and amusement. The obese demon’s wheezing punctuated his words with keening whistles between the syllables.
“The snow’s mine, too!”
Gonji leaned forward over Tora’s withers. “The snow belongs to the
kami
of the sky. It’s his carpet for—”
“Bah!” Bulba scoffed, waving a flabby arm. “That’s empty theosophical piffle! Whatever falls out of
his
pockets—”
A loaf of finger jerked upward out of a porky fist.
“—and lands in
my
territory—”
And then downwards, though barely below the horizontal.
“—becomes
mine
!”
Gonji replaced the sallet on his head in martial threat. “Nevertheless, my path lies through your land. Now will you remove your great bulk, or will I have to prod you out of the way?”
Bulba’s ears deepened in their redness. He sucked in air until it seemed his eyes would pop and, swelling until he was nearly wedged between the great stones, he blew such a blast of wind down into the snow before him that Gonji and Tora were engulfed in a blinding squall that took a minute to settle back to earth.
Gonji brushed the snow from his beard and caked garb with firm, even strokes. Tora snorted and tossed his head, flicking his ears as he chomped at the bit. All the while the wheezing fat creature cackled in high mirth.
“Do that again, my fat landlocked flounder,” Gonji warned, “and I’ll burst you such that your entrails will festoon the woods for acres.”
“Oh—
Si?!
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?”