Fortress of Lost Worlds by T. C. Rypel Page B

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 meets a son of Anak, and he asks…”
    Gonji was intrigued. The giants were a discerning and aloof race, not given to dabbling in the affairs of men without good reason. And this sorcerer who called himself Black Sunday—by all accounts his reputation had always had it that he plied wizardry and white magic. And for giants to ally themselves with any form of witchcraft was rare.
    He stopped and dismounted, relieved his bladder in the snow. Feeling hungry, he tarried awhile on the broad plain that must mark the center of the valley floor. Hills rose humpbacked with snow on either immediate horizon, but he could still easily make out the cloud-crowned Pyrenees to the north.
    As he munched a piece of dried beef and fed Tora a few handfuls of meal, the samurai pondered again the epoch-making mystical revival in Europe, trying to make sense of it, some discernible cosmic pattern. Something was happening on this continent. The world seemed burdened by a heavy karmic legacy from times past. Multifarious forces struggled for supremacy, and Gonji had run afoul of more than his share. They seemed to take a keen interest in him. And now, it seemed he would be facing them alone…again.
    And how fared Simon Sardonis these days? he wondered as he remounted.
    “ Cholera ,”he swore under his breath, implementing a favorite Polish expletive of an old comrade, descriptive of a disease that produced unsavory effects.
    His mood lightened as he patted his steed’s shoulder. “Do you know, Tora, what that giant had in mind for you?” Tora seemed unconcerned as they broke into a canter across the crisp plain.
    It could not be far to Barbaso, and there was no losing the way, even given Gonji’s sometimes poor sense of direction. Barbaso—and perhaps some answers to a few questions before he proceeded to Zaragoza.
    * * * *
    Twilight gloom descended with the fierce north wind, and still Gonji had not seen the rooftops of Barbaso. The trees began to gather into pairs, the pairs begetting copses, and soon Gonji pulled up before yet