Read Online Fortress of Lost Worlds by T. C. Rypel - Free Book Online Page A

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.