Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves

by T. C. Rypel

  Gonji frequently lamented that Paille, a rationalist, had omitted or glossed over many references to supernatural menaces that assailed Vedun; Gonji’s exploits had thus become a revolutionary treatise, laced with Paille’s own politics, rather than the stuff of great legends that it should have been.

  He asked the theologians how they interpreted it. They replied that they regarded it as a book of myths to portray the possibilities of a misguided, Utopian community that would regrettably becloud the truths of Divine revelation. With sagging heart, the samurai realized that even the events attending his life’s greatest adventure had been misinterpreted by all.

  Further, he inferred that the Wunderknechten communities were at best held in low esteem. They were thought to bring consternation to all church leaders, Catholic and Protestant alike, who saw the focus of their conflict blurred and compromised by this strange outgrowth.

  Vedun had become a feared symbol, a rallying cry to dangerous freedom-lovers. Gonji found this hauntingly quaint and deeply nostalgic. Now, for the first time, he began to feel an affinity for the Knights of Wonder movement.

  * * * *

  “Et in Arcadia Ego”…

  “And you say that you discovered and—what? were conducted into?—some sort of…physical world that exists inside the world we know?”

  “More than one world,” the samurai replied, his eyes narrowing warily. His contention, he knew, would have been considered heretical if uttered by an avowed Catholic. “A complex scheme of worlds, if our host and guide there could be trusted.”

  The priest cleared his throat, glanced down at the folded paper before him. “And is it not possible that you were under a spell at the time? That this host was not, in fact, an agent of the same evil powers you say trouble you?”

  “Or perhaps,” another scholar added, “it was an imbalance brought on by…eh…strong drink?”

  Things had begun to get ugly toward the end of the first week in Rome. Gonji took umbrage at their insinuations regarding his discovery of a doorway into lost Arcadia while he and his companions fled the Dark Company in the African desert. He replied by serving up a query about their embarrassing investigation of the previous pontiff, whose short-lived reign was said to be brought about by the powers of evil. He, it was, who had singled out Gonji for persecution.

  “If it please you, Signore Sabatake, you may now explain these accusations that you have held commerce with witches and werewolves…”

  And so it went…

  * * * *

  Indulgences…commercial trade in karma…

  Gonji and his party presently tired of the Vatican confines and the ever more cynical proceedings. They took a day to broaden their explorations of teeming Rome, Luigi Leone delighting in conducting them to his favorite sites. As they drifted farther from the Vatican complex, they saw fewer priests and nuns and more of the hostile contadini.

  They explored the ghetto, bartered with a band of zingari, the gypsy folk, for charms and trinkets and some words of sage advice from an old witch woman. Gonji was less interested in what the crone had to say than in discomfiting the sbirri, the constabulary agents who followed them everywhere. Finding an intriguing monte di pieta, a pawnshop that seemed to specialize in well-crafted edged weapons, they spent an hour admiring gaudy knives and sheaths and filigreed scimitars that resonated with the residual vibrations of battlefield legacy.

  The afternoon came to an abruptly hostile end when Gonji, inquiring after the price of a set of short swords finished in tarsia—inlaid work of bone, ivory, and mother-of-pearl—was told that his katana would be fair exchange.

  His companions quickly ushered him to a nearby osteria in an effort at restoring his harmony of spirit. They took a meal and swilled red wine into the early evening hours. Buey’s tongue soon became well oiled, and the big warrior waxed maudlin again about having killed the boy who had shot Gonji.

  “Gonji…Gonji,” he pleaded thickly, groping across the table to seize the samurai’s arm, “have you spoken to His Holiness about…you know…indulgences for our grave sins?”

  Gonji stared at the meal scraps a moment before dislodging his sword-brother’s hand and nodding somberly. “Courage, my friend. We need you in balance. It’s not good to allow setbacks to upset your wa.”

  “He said no?” Buey pressed, looking stung.

  “He…sloughed it off, I’m afraid. He says the Church has come under…heretical fire for selling indulgences. They’re trying to play down the practice awhile. Perhaps in the future…” Gonji saw Buey’s crushed look, tried to placate him. “Of course, I wasn’t offering to buy an indulgence for you. I offered some service in exchange. Barter. It was thought to be much the same, I guess. The subject was brushed aside. Gomen nasai. I’m sorry…”

  “Then,” Buey said disconsolately, “then I’ll have to suffer the consequences for what I’ve done.”

  Gonji sighed and turned his attention to Father Sebastio, whose clerical presence in the osteria seemed upsetting to the proprietor and clientele alike. “What are they saying about me these days?”

  Kuma-san shrugged. “I’m not privy to their private conferences anymore. Things have changed since His Holiness sent me after you. They meet in secret chambers each evening to sift through the day’s record.”

  “And what are they deciding—how best to roast me?”

  A pall descended over the band, signaling the end of the day’s good fellowship.

  That night Gonji, impelled by a combination of urges—suspicion, an itch for action, a sudden wild rebelliousness—cloaked himself in the fashion taught by the old ninja master whose association Gonji’s father had forbidden. He slipped from his quarters near the Vatican Palace and thrilled to the discovery that he was still able to confound even the vigilant Swiss Guards.

  Scaling a wall and taking to shadow, he nimbly crept inside the palace, finding its thousand rooms a raft of concealment to the skilled infiltrator. He gained a loft above the High Office conference chamber, pausing to snatch a leg of lamb from an amply appointed monsignore’s table, and hunkered into a dark recess to listen, his command of the language serving him well enough…

  “…a regrettable lack of respect for life and a frequent recourse to carnality that mark him for the unregenerate pagan…”

  “…I rather like him…trust him…there’s a headstrong sincerity about him.”

  “Everyone’s entirely too taken with this heathen’s quaintness, including His Holiness…”

  “Imagine the insolence—an infidel requesting indulgences for his cohorts—from His Holiness himself!”

  “I must agree…the only conclusion to be drawn thus far is that he is singularly dangerous…”

  * * * *

  Near midnight, as his reverie dissipated, Gonji finally halted the company. They erected crude shelters against the rain, which had gradually chilled with the tramontana wind whose Alpine breath presaged the changing seasons.

  Before sleep overcame him, he had time for final reflections on his last days in Rome.

  * * * *

  Simon Sardonis…werewolf apologist of Holy Mother Church…

  Pope Innocent was now the only man in Rome Gonji respected enough to try to reach, but it was becoming clear that distrustful aides had by now swathed the pontiff’s mind in exhortations to irrational caution against heathen persuasion.

  “This matter of the Frenchman you’ve traveled with,” His Holiness began haltingly. “The one said to be possessed by the spirit of a raging animal—”

  “So sorry, but he is not possessed,” Gonji replied. “He…struggles daily with an evil force that strives to overcome him. Yet he perseveres. I have been witness more than once to his triumphs over this evil thing…”

  And Gonji pressed on.

  “…the Church has used f
ire and sword to coerce ideas…”

  And tried humor.

  “…I have seen a painting, a splendid work. Veronese was the artist’s name. Christ in the House of Levi—I see you know it. I have memorized the Inquisition’s formal charge of condemnation of the work. It reads something like, ‘This work depicts Christ in the company of buffoons, drunkards, Germans, dwarfs and the like’! Think about it. What man among us doesn’t fit one of those categories?!”

  And he saw his humor submerged in a sea of somber faces.

  The end was not long in coming.

  “You argue the same nebulous adherence to Christianity,” the prelate admonished, “as Franck and Castellio, whose work has already been proscribed. This Transylvanian city of Vedun, whose cosmopolitan virtues and equivocal posture, a community of religious vaguery which you’ve called attention to more than once—it was destroyed, wasn’t it? I propose that it had caused its own vulnerability to evil by its ambiguous and heretical attitudes!”

  Gonji fought back the seething of his belly. He turned from the prelate and addressed the pope alone.

  “Cosmopolitanism is unavoidable in Europe. See the makeup of any of your cities. Certainly there are problems. That is why the insularity of Japan is an inherently better way, neh? Gomen nasai—so sorry—I must confess that my patience is at an end. I leave you with this thought: I saw more love in Vedun than in any…theocratic stronghold I’ve passed through on this continent. Many, many worthy lives there paid the ultimate sacrifice for their brotherhood. There is nothing more that need be said. Sayonara, Your Holiness.”

  With that, Gonji bowed deeply and strode off, his dark eyes fixed on some point not contained in the High Office arena.

  Kuma-san was flushed when they had left the blustering clergymen behind them, who were outraged at Gonji’s insult.

  “Gonji-san! You can’t simply end an audience with the Holy Father!”

  “So sorry, but I believe I just did.”

  * * * *

  Karma…

  “You’ve successfully ended any hope of your Wunderknechten’s patronage by the Holy See, you know,” Father Jan fretted.

  “Hai. Get me that chanfron, dozo.” Kuma-san handed him the armored headpiece. Gonji strapped it about Nichi’s snorting muzzle. “Ah! Don’t bite! There’ll be time for that…”

  The black mare nodded repeatedly, as if in agreement.

  Sebastio was running his fingers through his sparse hair as Sergeant Orozco ambled up to them, grinning again in his erstwhile fashion. “Do you know what those rooms they housed us in were once used for—the lazaretto? Quarantine. Suspected plague victims, for God’s sake!”

  “Maybe we are.”

  “I thought you all knew that,” Sebastio advanced, a bit discomfited.

  Gonji shrugged it off. “Don’t worry about it. Where will you be heading?”

  “That’s what I was about to ask you,” Kuma-san offered in reply.

  “A hand, dozo—please, gentils,” the samurai requested. Orozco helped him lift the heavy war saddle onto Nichi’s back. Its cantle and bow were faced with steel plates. The black mare lurched under the weight and took a swipe at Orozco with her armored head.

  Gonji assessed his intentions. Japan beckoned, in its haunting way. But it was somehow less compelling right now. There was duty here. And there were other reasons for demurring in his expected return to the land of his birth. He had exhumed his feelings for Reiko and found that it was no longer as easy to shuck the grave wrappings.

  “For now, Austria,” he said quietly.

  “I’ll tell the others,” Orozco said happily. He stopped and engaged Gonji again. “For more muscle, eh?”

  “How do you mean?” Gonji queried.

  “Before returning to France,” the ex-sergeant of lancers added matter-of-factly, as if it were unnecessary.

  Gonji grunted noncommittally.

  And when they rode away from the gates of the Vatican, there was quiet cheer throughout the company. Even Buey was pleased to be heading toward Austria. There was nowhere else for a renegade Spanish lancer to go, and he was muttering into the wind again about retiring to some civilized livelihood.

  Gonji masked his joy, hoarding it for himself, over the fact that Kuma-san had chosen to go along, the priest mumbling unconvincingly about being charged by the High Office to study the Wunderknechten phenomenon more closely.

  It was a sham: the Church hierarchy had long since decided that the movement was merely another heretical cult.

  And as they departed Italia, much good-natured fun was made of the ironic discovery that Gonji had indeed become a cult figure among the young. The exotic, eccentric stranger, hero of countless legendary adventures, had spawned a fad. Topknots sprouted among the young men; some women painted their eyes in bizarre imitation of geisha fashion they had heard of. Two-handed sword techniques came back into vogue.

  “Proof,” Gonji declared, “that the world isn’t ready for the wisdom of the East. Behold the superficial aspects of bushido, of my race and my culture, that they cling to. Soon they’ll tire of my novelty. I’ll cease to be an amusing diversion, an intellectual riddle. Just as Simon once said…”

  “Si, and then it’ll be my turn,” Luigi Leone called up from the column. “They’ll all start popping out one of their eyeballs.” The gregarious young adventurer patted his eye-patch, to the gruff laughter of his fellows.

  * * * *

  The former Austrian Landsknecht returned from his scouting of the armed party encamped ahead.

  “Old enemies of yours,” he told Gonji, confirming their suspicions. “Do you have any old friends? Anyway, they wanted me to join up. They were boasting about their toughness—”

  “Isn’t that just like mercenaries?” Orozco asked archly, honing his broadsword.

  “Interesting,” the Landsknecht went on with raised eyebrows. “It seems one of their points of pride is that some of them once rode with King Klann the Invincible.”

  His words hung in the still night air. Gonji’s smile spread slowly. He shifted his swords from his sash to his back harness.

  “You’ll be rejoining them soon,” he told the scout.

  “We take them?”

  “They hold the road to Noricum. They’re in our way.”

  An hour later, Buey and Kuma-san rode with the small squad set in rear guard as the main body of the company, thirty-three strong, descended on the bandit encampment in a long, howling skirmish line. The din of clashing steel and hurtling human-animal war machines exploded amidst sporadic gunshots.

  The engagement was short. Gonji’s party pounded over the grounds, pulses racing as they sought worthy steel to test. None remained. The crucibles of oppression and combat had melted the samurai’s company down to a lean, tough fighting unit.

  With a single nod of satisfaction and a last withering glance toward the Alps, Gonji wiped down his blade and led the thundering band eastward.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Three months before the resolution made by the Wunderknechten of Lamorisse at Henri Chabot’s inn, a party of strangers sought out the source of the militant bushi movement in its base in Austria. They were directed to the old Roman province of Noricum. There, in a placid country town virtually owned by the prosperous Neriah family of merchants, these pilgrims encountered the remnant of the population of Vedun, that storied and embattled ancient city in the Carpathians.

  They sought out the council Elder, Michael Benedetto. His wife, Lydia, received them into her home. Explaining that her husband was in ill health, Lydia warily inquired as to their business.

  Moments later, she was pulling on her capuchin, calling for the nursemaid who sometimes cared for her young daughter, and sending runners out to gather certain of the settlement’s leaders.

  Wit
h the visiting strangers in tow, Lydia Benedetto hurried to the blacksmith shop of Wilfred Gundersen.

  * * * *

  “You gentiles have been nothing but a bane to us since your arrival,” Isaac Neriah was saying. “I say that with no particular rancor. I merely state a fact. Remember, I am the one who rather enjoys your company. My brothers would throw you to the wolves, if not for my dear father’s wishes. But now that he’s gone, well…I just think it would be wise for you to…consider alternatives to remaining here.”

  “I expected this day would come,” Wilf replied, “long before your father’s death. The funny thing is, none of us likes staying here, living off your family’s hospitality and largesse. Squatters, that’s all we are, as far as you’re concerned. We know that. We just don’t know what to do as a community, for the moment.”

  Another axe-head crashed into the splintering rail near the forge. Aldo Monetto retrieved the two deadly throwing axes he’d been practicing with. Vedun’s former biller and a hero in the city’s evacuation action under Gonji, Monetto found little demand for his skills, so near the larger cities. More than any of the others, Aldo chafed for a fresh direction in which to steer his considerable energies, though his wife and children seemed content in Noricum.

  “Some of the others know what to do,” Aldo said. “They’re leaving for their homelands. The old cosmopolitan spirit is dwindling, Wilf. Since Gonji never rejoined us…” His voice trailed off in despair.

  “What about you, Aldo?” Genya asked. Wilfred’s wife leaned in the doorway uncomfortably, heavy with child as she was.