Fortress of Lost Worlds Read Online Free PDF Page A

and selected several of the ripest fruits, stuffing them inside his greatcoat. He sampled one. They overflowed with sweet pulp and cloying juice. Then he caught the scent—the unmistakable scent of searing human flesh. And he at once understood the meaning of the mounds of glowing stone.
    He dropped the fruit he’d been eating and rushed back to Tora. They hurried along the stream. Into an empty cave, and through another. The chanting increased in pitch, the reverberating echo turning Gonji to and fro in search of safe exit. His lips wove a tapestry of favorite imprecations.
    (something to kill and the power to kill it)
    Another blast of cold air from a passed cavern entrance. This one clean and sharp with the tang of ice. The nerve-racking languid glow filled the entrance at last. He recognized it, knew their location. Through this one into the next—
    Blinding silver sunlight—tongues of sifting snow—he’d found it!
    Dragging Tora inside, he halted and considered: the stones. Very useful when building a fire was impossible. Nodding curtly, he turned back.
    “Hai. Wait here, dumb beast.”
    In the adjacent cavern most of the rocks were too large. He selected a few small ones, looked them over as they began to glow, mind racing to fashion an efficient plan. Put them inside his wraps? In Tora’s saddle pouches? What?
    He dropped these inside the coat, where they gathered at his belt. He began to feel foolish. He moved into the main tunnel, heedless of the chanting now. With the Sagami in the crook of an arm, he picked up more glowstones of useful size. He was about to turn back when his eye caught the wash of yellow glare spilling from one— two— nearby caverns.
    The stones fell from his arms.
    The chanting was mixed with satisfied grunting now, and clearly the latter issued from the brightly glowing caverns ahead. More chants split from the main chorus, becoming localized, nearing his position.
    He watched the garish light with dawning fear. Remembered the soft magenta tones that had burned in response to his own body’s needs.
    Tora shrilled and bucked in the exit cavern, bellows of savage mirth mingling with the sound of animal panic.
    The samurai surged back toward his frenzied steed, skin prickling. Stumbling once and then again, he gained the entrance cave’s glaring white hole in time to forestall the monsters from destroying the wildly bucking horse. His roar of fury froze them an instant that would remain locked in his hall of nightmares.
    The hunters had returned. Ogros.
    Ogros—canibalis.
    Two of them. Huge and hairy, whether pelted or sporting their own fur, he could not be sure. They were humanoid, but Gonji’s blood froze to see the slightly elongated snouts that flourished canine fangs and long, red tongues.
    Cholera— they might be ten-, twelve-feet tall, judging by their stoop.
    The nearer one raised the cudgel with which it had been threatening Tora. With a blare of triumph, it stalked Gonji with the shouldered weapon. The samurai’s thews responded with a high-guard stance that might have been comical in other circumstances, so disparate were their sizes.
    He eyed the growling ogre steadily, his peripheral vision sketching out the hefted cudgel’s deadly head. One side featured a sort of razor-edged scoop, partially filled with snow. The other side—just razor edges.
    The monster heralded its strike with a bellow, and Gonji dove beneath its arc and tumbled into the cavern. The wall where he’d stood exploded in sparks of white-hot glowstones. Some of them landed in the creature’s fur, and it beat at the scorched spots in primitive fury.
    Gonji rolled to his feet with a grimace, burdened by his winter garb. These beasts were faster than they looked. He raised his katana overhead defensively and eyed the second beast, which came on with a vengeance, dropping its slack burden—an all too predictable, human shape.
    Tora reared and kicked madly at the second ogre. It hefted its cudgel too