Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves

by T. C. Rypel

  “I do owe him, Lydia,” Wilf replied in a determined voice. “Genya and I would never have known a life together—I would never have had this child—but for Gonji. That’s all I intend to say. Except this—once the company is chosen, no one, not even Michael, must know where we go. Agreed? I’ll have to explain the quest to the Neriahs. There’s no choice there. Gonji and Simon’s mystique, along with their father, Jacob’s, friendship for the pair of them, might help keep them off the community’s back till we return.”

  “If you return.”

  “Ja, perhaps. But we’re going to do this the way Gonji would do it. Secretly. No chance of compromise. He used to say that for the lips of every friend there are ears on a thousand enemies. No one will know what we’re about except those who absolutely must.”

  Lydia sighed resignedly.

  “Sonofabitch,” Monetto muttered, chunkering another keen axe-head into the wooden post. “I wish Karl were here to join us…”

  One by one, their heads lowered respectfully in memory of Aldo’s friend, Karl Gerhard, a magnificent archer who had fallen in Vedun.

  * * * *

  Beads of sweat laced the air, spattering the floor of the rearranged smithshop as Wilf pushed himself through the Katori ryu kata for the seventh time. Spine-cleaver began to exert its mystical influence over him as he became immersed in his practice. Deadly earnest informed every stroke.

  Wilf had hefted the katana—Gonji’s spare killing sword, bestowed on Wilf during the Vedun militia training—almost daily during the past few years. He would often reflect on the costly victory over Klann the Invincible and his evil sorcerer Mord. He had replayed his part in the six-man siege of Castle Lenska, and the reunion with Genya, with every practice maneuver.

  But there was a renewed intensity to his training now. Wilf worked assiduously at the patterned strokes Gonji had taught, conjuring speed and swiftness of foot in the cleared space. Precision. Strength. Concentration. Mushin no shin—the “mind of no mind” Zen quality of banishing all conscious thought, all technical planning, all external distraction.

  He did not notice that dawn had replaced the night; nor did he take note of Genya, who had sat watching him for nearly an hour, grimly aware of the meaning of the hachi-maki—the samurai’s “headband of resolution”—tied about his forehead.

  Exhausted, Wilf finally bowed his head to touch the forte of the glimmering blade and ceased his practice.

  “So you’re going, then,” Genya said matter-of-factly, surprising him.

  Wilf regulated his breathing before answering. “I have to, Genya. You know that.”

  “Not enough excitement around here these days, I suppose.” She looked deeply hurt.

  He sat beside her and explained the warriors’ intentions, the need for secrecy.

  “I see,” she said coldly, breathing deeply and forming her hands around the distended bulk of the child she bore. “So you’re going to be off for no one knows how long in some place you’re not even sure of. All alone with that French woman.” She said it as if pronouncing the name of something distasteful.

  “Genya—”

  “In her purity and innocence she fell in love with a werewolf. Can you truly believe such a thing, Wilfred?”

  “I do,” he said defiantly, “and for God’s sake, I’m not going to be alone with her. We’re going to escort her home and then see—”

  “Can you imagine any sane woman loving that thing we dragged out of the rubble of Castle Lenska?”

  “How can you say that? You’re talking about Simon Sardonis, milady. Without him and the samurai we’d both be food for the worms long since.”

  “She looked pretty desirable, though, didn’t she?” Genya pressed, hot tears welling in her dark eyes. “Enough to make men believe any story she concocted.”

  “This is a lot of horseshit, Genya. I can’t think of any woman more dangerous to cast an eye at than Simon Sardonis’.”

  “Then you did find her attractive?”

  “I didn’t notice. Can we drop this?”

  “She found you attractive,” Genya minced. “In fact, you were the only man she looked at the whole time—”

  “We’re going to see that she’s safely reunited with Simon,” Wilf said with rising anger. “Do you understand me? The way he helped me to get back to you.”

  “Simon was in Africa, Hernando said. With Gonji. Who can say where they are now?”

  “Ja, well, others have heard that they made it back. Simon promised Claire that he’d return to help her people, and you know how he and Gonji are about duty. I intend to be there to help them.”

  “While I stay here alone and try to explain to our child why it has no father. What about your duty, Wilfred?”

  He sighed. “Genya…I’ll be back. I promise. You know I have to go.” He took her by the hands, drew her close, and gazed deeply into her moist, accusing eyes. “I’ve never felt as useful, as fulfilled, in my life as when we drove agents of evil before us in Vedun, when we could reach out and grab them by the throat, slash them to pieces. We were accomplishing something. How many men are ever privileged to know that they risk their lives for something? Something they can point to with pride. That won’t be forgotten? Living an unfulfilling life is a terrible thing. We’re biding our time here in Austria. Doing nothing. Not a damned thing. We’ve had only trouble since we settled. We can feel that we’re opposed by faceless enemies who’d like nothing better than to crush the survivors of the famous Vedun campaign. But we don’t know what to do about it.”

  “So you go off to fight in France?”

  “It’s a start.”

  Genya paused before speaking. “You’re not happy married to me, are you, Wilf?”

  “You’re not listening to me,” he replied with a frustrated head toss. “I don’t express myself well in these things, but you know what I mean, how I feel. I’m happy with you, but I’m not happy as a smith. I hate this place. We’re like ducks on a pond, ringed in by hunters. Maybe rejoining Gonji will start something. I’ve got to have meaningful duty, Genya. Just like him. I could have been very happy as a samurai. Or even a goddamn dragoon…”

  She made a throaty, scoffing sound. “You never used to think about these things when we were first married,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder.

  “Ever since Vedun I’ve thought about these things. Ever since my father died at—”

  “It’s because I’m so fat, isn’t it?”

  He held her at arm’s length. “If this were our wedding night, I’d probably still be leaving in the morning on this quest.”

  It had been the wrong thing to say. Genya’s jaw clenched tightly, and she stalked off to the living quarters at the rear of the shop.

  Wilf spent a few regretful moments gathering his thoughts and settling himself. Then he moved to the chest where he stored his weapons and armament. He sheathed Spine-cleaver, then laid it out along with his pistols, cuirass and buff-coat, pauldrons and vambraces, short sword, and Zischagge helmet.

  He slowly unfurled the banner he had kept since Vedun. It had been fashioned by the militia as a rallying ensign. White field; Rorka crest in sinister; a crude katana in dexter. The motto: a Latin translation of the inscription on Gonji’s Sagami—There is nothing that a man need fear / Who carries at his side this splendid blade.

  * * * *

  Two nights later the party of three French travelers—rumored, by way of secrecy, to be cousins of a minor official in Noricum—departed for home. Under cover of night, a company of eighteen adventurers, led by Wilfred Gundersen, left by twos and threes at staggered intervals to rendezvous with the French pilgrims at dawn near the western border of the province. They rode out with no fanfare, their armament under wraps until they were far from home. Even council leader Michael Benedetto was unawa
re of their destination, a festival in Vienna being the most common cover story.

  As Wilf said his good-byes to Genya, she presented him with a linen shirt to wear beneath his buff-coat. On it she had embroidered a saying in Hungarian: I survived Vedun. Wilf felt embarrassed, struck by a sense of silliness to it. But he donned it and thanked her warmly, remarking, “Maybe this will start a trend or something, ja?”

  “While I await the baby,” she said, “I’ll do another like it about France. And next time, Wilfred Gundersen, I go along. I can aim a pistol at least as well as you can.”

  Wilf embraced her, aware of an apprehension about what might lie ahead. He felt his first serious pang of doubt about the journey, and as he made his way westward toward the Alps, he was grateful for the feel of the shirt with the oddly naive message.

  For he did devoutly pray for a safe return to his wife and unborn child.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Simon caught scent of the cloying tang of blood long before he sighted the Cave of Chains.

  Breath came hard to him as he leapt off his steed and raced for the cave, axe and broadsword held high, the terror of the full moon’s imminent rising seeping into every crevice of his consciousness.

  He gained the concealed entrance, by now aware that only the dead awaited him within. A lamp had been lit for him. Surrounding its lambent glow, as if radiating from the magenta flame, was a ghastly bloodbath.

  Mountain men. Torn to shreds. Old Pierre. And Hugh. And Jean Godel. Others—an uncertain number to Simon’s feverish gaze, so mutilated were the corpses. His chains, the chains that had afforded him sanctuary from the Beast’s ferocity in the full of the moon, were sundered from their moorings. A body had been laid out amidst them on the ground in mock shackling, its head twisted about on a broken neck such that it faced the rear.

  Horrified, expecting the victim to be his Uncle Andre, Simon turned it around with the axe-head. There was little left of the face, but it was not Andre. Yet there was no relief in the discovery, for his uncle had been with this party only yesterday.

  Simon emitted a long, forlorn bellow of fury and anguish. Then he stumbled out of the cave to face the waning light of day. Shadows of mountain peaks crept over the valley. Panic-stricken, he knew not what to do as he watched his restive horse back away from him, turn, and bolt from his increasingly menacing scent, his belongings torn from their saddle cinchings as the animal sped through the brush.

  Jesus God Almighty, help me…

  They know.

  He dropped his weapons and clenched his hands in quaking prayer a moment. Then he began to think, with difficulty. There must be something he could do. Something to quarantine the monster for the night, lest it seek out its foul kin while Simon was helpless to control it. God alone knew whom it might kill this night. Already he could hear its yearnings for anticipated freedom.

  Control…

  Gonji had often spoken of his controlling it. Hadn’t Simon in fact done so in Vedun? Oui, but only after unbearable struggle. Many kills. Kills—he could suffer the transformation after first bringing it near some enemy. No-no. Madness. There was no guarantee of that. Not at all. Non, it would still seek out its evil kin. Run—he must run as far and fast as he could manage into the mountains…

  Crazy. It would mock his effort all the while and then retrace his steps at several times his speed and still have plenty of time to vent its bloodlust.

  What to do—God—what to do…

  Gonji said to control it.

  Or, perhaps, subdue it. He saw the downed pack a hundred yards down the trail. His wineskin. Oui…

  The demon began to rage within him, knowing his thinking, spewing its vileness at him for daring to consider denying it its fullness of life for a night.

  Simon sneered and retrieved the worn leather pack. He uncorked the wineskin and, there on the trail, seated on a rock, he began to guzzle the potent beverage. Before long he lay atop the boulder like a broken-backed doll, singing a French cavalry ditty. Laughing. He was dimly aware that he had never laughed before on the Night of Chains.

  The energumen spent its rage and was presently sedated, despairingly receding into its sleeping cell deep within their arena of cohabitation. And when the dreadful hour-long wrenching of his mortal form seized him, Simon discovered that the wine exercised an anesthetic effect. He had never before maintained such semi-consciousness through the agony of the Beast’s lunar birthing.

  The seven-and-a-half-foot golden-furred Beast rolled to its feet during the hour before midnight. Simon found himself in command of its imposing bipedal wolf form but hardly in control. He began to wonder what to do with it as it teetered about strangely on the trail. There was a curious drunken exhilaration to the whole experience, as forest wildlife fled in every direction from his noisy approach. He growled through his slavering jaws and hacked out a series of barking laughs as he formed a bleary resolve.

  Sober and in control, he would have sought sanctuary from the urge to kill. In his present state, with the grim memory of the cave carnage woven into the surface of what little rational thought he could conjure, Simon wanted nothing more than to kill. This, despite his dim awareness that he would thereby be forced to suffer the transformations nightly until the next moon.

  But he cared not. He took up the weapons awkwardly, the promise of mayhem charging his bestial rumblings.

  * * * *

  The mercenary band, ten strong, had late come from northern German lands, where their reputation had been built on the plunder of defenseless villages. The increased pressure of pursuit by knights of the Empire had driven them over the Alps to France, where their love of power and brutality had ushered them into the employ of the controlling Farouche.

  The company relaxed near their campfire. In the still of the night, confident in their duty, their raised pennons bearing the fearsome wolf crest of the Farouche family. Mystical power supposedly surrounded them this night, which was theirs due to the barter of souls they scarcely believed in. Their flesh, they were told, now carried a charm of sorcerous power. “High survival probability,” Roman Farouche had explained in terms they didn’t understand. They’d seen it in action, though they were still content to call it luck.

  The young woman, the sacrificial victim, whimpered from the post where she’d been lashed. She was to be the flesh offering to the mighty being whose appearance they presently expected. He would hunger to spill blood this night.

  “The Lords say tonight’s the night,” one of them said in a voice full of nervous expectation. “They expect to win back the allegiance of some…lost Farouche brother.”

  “They’re sure he’ll stop at her?” another fretted.

  “You question the Lords, after what we’ve seen?” his companion blared.

  “He’ll know us by their crest, the family crest,” their leader assured. “Stop your stupid grumbling. Remember who our patrons are. Walk proudly under this standard.”

  “Shut up, there, bitch,” the first brigand called out to the woman, evoking harsh laughter from a few lounging men. “You want to hear your lover’s soft footsteps tonight, don’t you?” More laughter.

  “I’ve heard there’s a marauding bunch from Austria about—”

  “Listen!”

  They did so, with breaths held in check.

  “Kneel to him when he comes—”

  The leader and his second-in-command were the first two to move forward and drop to one knee respectfully at the edge of the firelight. The woman’s eyes went wide. She moaned pathetically, all she could summon from a throat raw from pleading. She turned her head, slumping into a near swoon.

  That movement spared her a grisly sight as the two kneeling men’s heads leapt off their shoulders under the first savage stroke of Simon’s broadsword.

  The rest of the band bellowed
in fear and alarm and scrabbled for their weapons, some trying to take to horse. Simon roared his volcanic wrath and tore into their number with flailing axe and sword, hacking men and mounts into bloody ruin. He lurched about unsteadily, his powerful wolfish frame still wambly from the spell of the wine. His strokes were wild and poorly directed, but in the close quarters of the encampment, most of them struck truly.

  Two men who reached their shrilling horses wheeled them around for the safety of the trees. Simon plunged after them, shattering one steed’s hindquarters, spilling it to earth. He tore the screaming rider’s throat out with a single snap and wrench of his jaws. Then he bounded off after the warrior’s companion, tripping twice over roots and bouncing off a tree trunk before angling in on the bolting horse from the right flank.

  The werewolf’s axe tore open the steed’s belly as it reared and threw its rider, who was knocked unconscious in the fall. Knowing this man to be the last living minion of the hated Farouche still in his grasp, Simon allowed his raging spirit to fully vent itself in a raking, tearing frenzy. Clawing at himself and spitting out blood and rent flesh violently to try to chase the taste and scent of the carnage, he stumbled about blearily a moment. Then he retrieved his weapons and returned to the campsite, alive with the last twitchings of involuntary muscular response.

  The probability of survival had not been so high for these men as the Farouche had promised.

  The sacrificial victim stared up at him, eyes glazed, her head lowered to her chest in surrender. She was beyond terror now, in shock.

  Simon tried to speak, but only guttural growling emanated from his throat. He spat again and made a gesture he hoped would appeal to her sensibilities. Tearing a wild-eyed mount from its tether, he dragged the kicking animal to the post. Raking talons sheared through the hempen bonds that held the woman and she fell to the ground.