"Lord! Is this... is this the legendary, wealthy eastern land? Is this the capital of the Kingdom of Cipangu, Japan?... This... this fucking place can't even count as a town. It's just a shabby native village, a crude and impoverished barbarian camp!... Ah! Damn Columbus, he lied to us! That shameless liar!!..."
"Antonio, this is definitely no ordinary native village! Look at all these armored native warriors, all these native militia with iron spears... and there's a stone native temple, too!... This has to be an important native stronghold! It can't be a capital—what capital would be this poor?... And it's not a village, either. How could a village have so many soldiers?... I know! This is... a fortress of the Kingdom of Cipangu!... Yes, that must be it! We've been taken to a port fortress domain near the Royal Capital of Japan!... Damn that Columbus!..."
The two captured Castilian sailing ships dropped anchor on the lake north of Iron Bay Town. This little town, built only three years ago, did not even have a dock deep enough to berth Caravels with a draft of nearly three meters. The Kingdom Warriors escorted the captives onto Oared Longships, then landed at the crude harbor of the small town. And then, beneath the reddish hills, the lakeside fields of natural scenery and the primitive, wild thatched huts and wooden sheds suddenly spread open before them.
The carpenter Antonio and the goldsmith Caro stared wide-eyed, standing blankly by the lake. They looked at Iron Bay Town before them, with its more than two thousand people, and thought back to the native villages they had seen earlier, trying hard to find the differences between them.
Iron Bay Town covered a fair area. With a broad temple square at its center, it was divided into