Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves

by T. C. Rypel

  Gonji decided his course. One room of the house had been burned pretty badly by an overturned lamp. The farmer possessed no useful weapons against such creatures, and Gonji doubted he’d be of much assistance in any case. He made it clear to the family that they must flee their home at once and seek sanctuary with friends or relatives.

  He finally saw them off in a wagon, sending them in the opposite direction from the one the winged monsters had taken. The first boom of thunder sounded in the hills as he began preparing for what must come.

  He familiarized himself thoroughly with his defensive ground, set things up in the house. Then he ruefully placed Nichi with the two frenzied draft horses in the corral, as decoys. This done, he turned his attention to his weapons.

  His motions were spare and efficient, his mien cold and grim as in days of old, when he’d first challenged this continent as a young ronin. He’d often allowed too much compromise, too many distractions, in the time since. The fine edge of combat readiness had been dulled, and many had died who had trusted him to see them through. There must be an accounting. And to assure that he would be around to enjoy the final tally, he must experience a renewal. He must do things correctly now. Purify himself. Reckon with his karma. He needed this time on the road of death…alone.

  Gonji gave his longbow and quiver of war arrows a thorough check for moisture, then tested his powder flask. Never caring for guns, he nonetheless acquiesced to their necessity in the days to come. His powder was a bit wet, so he extracted a sieve from a saddlebag and forced the powder through, salvaging a good quantity of hard-grain corned powder. He’d learned the technique from Le Corbeau and found that the extra time spent was well worth it. He tested a small amount, saw that it flared truly.

  Next he worked at camouflaging himself in the ninja manner, darkening his skin and wrapping his scabbards against chance reflection before harnessing his swords on his back.

  As the rain began to fall with steady, driving force, the samurai climbed to a loft in the barn and knocked out a board, affording him a good view of the darkening distant reaches toward which the bat-men had flown. It occurred to him that the rain might be his best ally—the creatures likely would have trouble keeping aloft in the gradually intensifying rain. He took up a sturdy piece of wood and passed the time whittling ninja darts with his tanto knife.

  When the armed band rumbled toward the farm from over the hill to the northwest, Gonji shook his head at the curious wonder of it. In the past it had always been men who set monsters after him; this time it had been reversed.

  He counted helmed heads. Fourteen. Heavily armed. He grunted as he decided on a quick alteration in planning. Bounding down from the loft, he set ajar the doors to both the barn and the outbuilding used for storage, placing his pistols inside the latter.

  Hunkering behind a trough with his bow, shielding its string from the rain, he glared at the splashing troop, watching them split into two columns as they bore down on the farmhouse.

  The mercenaries chattered brusquely amongst themselves as they pulled to a halt before the house. Muddy water sluiced up in all directions under stamping hooves. The heavy grain sacks Gonji had suspended inside the house twisted slowly from their hempen fastenings. Two pistols cracked wasted shots at the moving silhouettes in the windows. A third fizzled in the rain. Three guns that could not be reloaded to trouble him.

  He saw the outline of an arquebus, kept dry under a billowing cloak, as four men dismounted, pairing off to attack the front and rear doors at once. The two heading for the rear passed not ten paces from him without detecting his presence.

  Performing a quick, shallow draw, he launched a shaft high into the air. It dropped straight down into the corral near the three brigands who were eyeing the horses. The men shouted in surprise, wheeling about and searching the hills; it was impossible to determine the arrow’s point of origin.

  While the three were thus preoccupied, the samurai nocked and fired two rapid shots, felling both mercenaries who kicked and pounded at the rear door. He broke from cover and plunged across the ground, sprinting in a low crouch. He gained the corner of the farmhouse, stashed his bow and quiver in a dry niche behind a woodpile, and drew steel from his back harness an instant before two mounted men’s steeds skidded around the corner to the back of the house.

  Gonji’s whirling blow cut the forelegs out from under the first horse. It shrieked and spilled its rider over its plummeting head. The samurai never stopped moving, gaining the second steed before the warrior could fix on the skittering dark form. Gonji’s arcing slash tore through brigandines and rib cage, downing the second rider in a shower of dark redness.

  Gonji heard more hoofbeats coming round the house on both sides as he doubled back, a mighty sword cut half-beheading the first bewildered rider as he tried to stagger to his feet.

  Gonji grabbed a rock and pitched it through the open barn door to bash into the wall at the far side. Then he dropped flat in the mud, nothing more than a patch of shadow to the bellowing troopers who galloped past, four from one side of the house, two from the other.

  Gonji peered up, caked in mud, saw four men dismount and furtively creep toward the barn. As the two stragglers warily climbed off their horses, uncertain pistols angled into the weeping sky, Gonji crept backward with the silky litheness of a nocturnal hunting cat. He melded with the shadows under the eaves as the four entered the barn to engage the now threatening silence therein, where the rock had struck.

  The nearer pair glanced about them circumspectly. Gonji could see them swallow back their fear of the unknown enemy as they spotted the rain-spattered corpse of their former comrade, head hanging askew by strands of bloody sinew. When both looked away from the house at the same time, Gonji silently glided through the open door of the barn’s outbuilding.

  He enfolded and reshaped himself at the center of the outbuilding floor, by ninja artifice, now resembling the mounded bales and piled mantuas, the casks and covered farm implements. He clutched a pistol low at each side as he hugged himself motionlessly. His swords lay at his feet, unharnessed now.

  Gonji listened to the curses and challenges from the barn as the brigands demanded surrender. Then he heard the soft slap of soaking boots just outside his own door. He remained rigid, stayed his breathing. The door creaked on warped hinges, then swung wide and slammed open.

  A thunderous commotion inside the farmhouse—

  “It’s a goddamn trap!” someone was shouting in French from the house front.

  A footstep—scraping along the ground just behind him—

  Gonji’s pistols exploded in the staccato rain patter. He fired once from under each armpit, his back to his foes, a quick twist of his head to either side presaging leaden death. His guns spewed white smoke. Through it he could see one man clutching his belly; the other, blank-faced, his chin split wide open under a tossing morion helm.

  Then Gonji was flinging away his pistols, grabbing up his blades and sashing them. He rolled out the door in the muck, to the concealed side of the outbuilding. He heard a shout from the barn door—a name called—

  Then he nearly ran headfirst into a mercenary slinking along the back of the farmhouse, naked sword at the ready.

  The brigand barked out a throaty syllable and raised his saber for a strike. Gonji drew his katana and slashed in a quicksilver motion, the saber slicing by harmlessly as the mercenary’s head lolled forward onto his blood-sprayed chest.

  Before the dead enemy’s body splashed down into the mud, Gonji leapt to a ladder-work fixed to the rear of the house. He scrabbled up to the roof amidst more confused shouts, two more riders pounding around to the back of the house. A shot rang out in the barn—another pistol rendered useless as the men therein hysterically tilted with phantoms.

  Gonji gained the roof’s peak and swung over, scanning the environs. The rider with the ar
quebus under his cloak sat alone now at the front of the house, gaze flicking about him. Nichi hadn’t been bothered, though she ran about the corral with the work horses, eager to join in the fray.

  The samurai’s eyes flashed with battle-fury as he slid down the roof, the Sagami extended behind him. He hit the edge and pushed off, launching himself into the air. The mounted mercenary gasped to see the hurtling form descending on him like one of his own gargoyle allies.

  The arquebus came up under the cloak—a tremendous explosion blew tattered fabric into the rain—

  Gonji roared, un-hit, and landed on him with both feet, belting him off his mount. The horse whinnied and reared, clopping away from the tumbling men. Gonji rolled with the fall, came up onto his feet with blade held low. The big mercenary staggered up to face him, clawed for a weapon, blared one whining curse. Gonji slashed from ground to sky, keen-edged steel spinning the shrieking man into a half-turn. A second sword cut downed him in a semicircular fanning of blood.

  The samurai extended his blade behind him like the single poised fang of an adder as he raced around to the rear of the farmhouse again. He reached the woodpile and caught up his longbow as all six remaining brigands bore down on him from the barn, howling maniacally.

  A pistol shot splintered wood behind him. He saw steel glisten in the rain as they came on, two steed-borne, four on pounding feet. They bellowed curses and death-promises.

  He gritted his teeth and fired. A clothyard shaft ripped a man backward over the saddle, and down into the mire. Gonji nocked and aimed. The second mounted warrior lurched his steed sideways to evade the shot. The animal bucked, and the war arrow caught the horse full in the neck. Horse and rider slammed into a rain pool, water cascading about them as the wounded horse kicked and thrashed.

  Gonji flung away his bow and raised the Sagami in high guard, hurling himself into their midst, roaring his clan’s ancient war cry. Gonji’s fearless death-defiance, his strange appearance—perhaps their recognition of who he must be—something gave them pause. They slowed their charge, skidding in the mud, and in that instant advantage shifted to the oriental fencer.

  A scything slash spilled one man’s hot, steaming innards before he could bring his sword into engagement. The second foe’s broadsword raked downward to clang against Gonji’s stiff overhead block, and the samurai released to a one-hand grip that cut deeply into his thigh. His scream had hardly pierced the rustling rain when the third brigand, sensing an opening, lunged at the samurai’s side only to have his blade bound and twisted down into the mud. A two-handed spearing stroke of the katana skewered his belly.

  The fourth man grimaced and came to en garde, his rapier quivering. Gonji eased forward, blade cocked arrogantly into the air like a scorpion’s sting. The bandit tried two lines of attack in rapid succession, grunting with exertion and the passion to have done with this eerie assassin. Their blades clashed twice, spanking off each other. The brigand threw all his strength into a furious lunge. Gonji’s circular parry sent his rapier rasping off into the darkness. A sizzling stroke dropped him, and two rapid downward cuts ended his life. Crimson rivulets streamed away from the twitching body.

  Gonji peered up quickly, saw the mercenary aim a pistol over the carcass of his neck-shot horse. He sucked in breath and plunged forward into the darkness, teeth gritted, feinting and weaving as he ran.

  “Bloody bastard!”

  The pistol cracked off a shot that whistled past ineffectually. The brigand brought out his sword, flourished it from a kneeling position. Two blades sang in the night. The mercenary’s sword arm swung wide, opening him for the death stroke. The Sagami snaked out in a two-handed lick that began over Gonji’s shoulder and ended deep in the foe’s upper chest.

  He yanked his blade free, exhaled sharply. Seeing no enemy standing, Gonji cleaned his blade and strode up to the mercenary who lay in a dark, swirling pool, stanching the blood flow from his deep leg wound.

  “You…” the samurai said menacingly, “you will tell me now truthfully—what have they done with the man called Simon Sardonis?”

  The Farouche hireling gazed up at him. His eyes watered, gleaming with irrational luminescence. He laughed harshly in his pain. “Your friend le loup garou? He is one of them now. Back with his brothers. And you will see them soon enough, slant-eyed bastard! God…” He winced in agony, eyes searching out the downed forms of his companions. “…it wasn’t supposed to be like this. They promised us immortality. I won’t die. None of us will die.”

  “Immortality is, so sorry, not the same as invincibility,” Gonji said, pronouncing each word slowly, the dialect difficult. “That is correct?”

  “Go screw yourself, samurai—infidel—monkey-warrior! They’re going to cut your guts out!”

  A moment later, only the soft patter of the dwindling rain sounded on the grounds of the late battlefield.

  * * * *

  The two gargoyles returned shortly after the rain ceased. They were eager to see what their human allies had done to the assailants who had caused one of their kind a painful injury with their outrageous attack. Seeing the carnage, they cautiously flapped over the killing ground, nostrils perking at the scent of fresh blood. But unable to tell humans apart, they assumed the snipers lay among the dead, and sensed no danger.

  Hungry, they butchered a stray mercenary horse near the corral and slaked their fiendish thirst on its blood before indulging in the warm flesh. Too late, one of them cried out to see the form that rose from among the scattered human bodies.

  Two swift, accurate shots from Gonji’s longbow left both gargoyles squirming and fluttering helplessly in the mud, leaking thick, dark life-blood. Gonji watched them for a few seconds, lips formed in a grimace of loathing for these creatures out of nightmare.

  He stalked them icily, his grip sure and steady as he hacked them to pieces, consigning them to whatever foul reach of the Dark Lands such monsters occupied in death. He was revolted to see their hideous visages, their vermin-furred bodies, engorged with the horse blood that coagulated in their fanged mouths.

  He had seen their kind before, in that shameful, hellish winter campaign.

  No quarter. No mistakes this time.

  Cleansing the Sagami again, and then laving himself, he removed and washed his hachi-maki. He reverently touched the “headband of resolution” to his brow before folding it away.

  Then he retrieved Nichiyoobi from the barn and set out for the forest, wondering what the Farouche Clan had done with Simon. Knowing that tonight would bring the full of the moon.

  The Satyr’s Moon.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I daresay you recall,” Grimmolech said, strolling with his hands behind his back, “the time I came to you as a young woman.”

  Simon’s eyelids fluttered ever so slightly at the recollection, but he made no reply, as he crouched, shackled in the foul-smelling oubliette.

  “There are times I’ve regretted that incident,” the wizard from another world went on. “I did it, you see, to humble you. To make you see how altogether helpless you were against me. I had no idea it would engender such hatred in you. As nearly as I’m capable, I suppose I could say that I’m sorry for doing that to you, Simon, I truly wish that you would stop hating me so. It’s beneath you—you, so noble a creature! So elevated above these striving little men, with their ignorance, their strictured notions of morality. I want you to join me, Simon. I know that it’s difficult for you to comprehend, even as the ways of this world are sometimes beyond my grasp. But I’m asking you again to surrender to the inevitable. Join with me in a larger world. A more enlightened world. To know it is to be contemptuous of this ignorant sphere. They’ve twisted your mind with their pious beliefs! If you can believe me, I assure you that I can grant you the love—a father’s love—that you’ve always so desperately wanted.” He gazed deeply into Simo
n’s eyes. “Yes, you, whom I love as surely as the spirit of my other son, who cohabits these conflicting physical forms, along with you.”

  Simon glared back. “Hell’s own love,” he replied spitefully.

  “Hell, hell, hell! And what is that, really? Have they been able to show it to you? Your stubbornness is vexing!” Grimmolech shouted. He balled his fist as if to strike Simon, then seized the fist with his free hand and brought it down to his waist, kneading his knuckles in frustration. “You leave me no choice. I must depart for a time. I’m required elsewhere. Now your…conditioning must be left to others. Blaise will attend upon you.”

  Simon’s chin lifted haughtily, as if he were unconcerned. But his teeth ground in his cheek at the thought of torture by this most despicable of the Farouche.

  “I can’t say that I approve wholeheartedly of Blaise’s methods. And his constant recourse to carnal pleasure and hedonism is a testimony to his lack of discipline. I despise lack of discipline, as you do. You possess all my strengths, it seems…” He had momentarily waxed almost sentimental. The abrupt realization of it caused him to assume a stern facade again. “But Blaise achieves results. He is learning how to exercise control through terrorism. And now I must submit to his constant cajoling to place you in his hands. You’ve brought this upon yourself.” He pointed an angry finger at the ensorceled warrior, Simon. Looking up the ladder to the hatchway out of the dark rankness of the oubliette, Grimmolech shut his eyes and drew power from local energies, absorbing the faith and fear of the soldiers who watched in awe from above. Some would have called it a spell of levitation.