Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves

by T. C. Rypel

  The gargoyles fell from the sky like scorched bugs, their short arbalests no match for the longbows in either range or firepower. They soon abandoned the fray and winged toward Dijon to report the incident.

  Buey led the bulk of the company down toward the well, closing fast with the disheartened mercenaries, who now cracked off pistol shot, their fear of the Wunderknechten’s vengeful fury daunting their aim, their frenzied reloading efforts costing them time and ground.

  The battle ended swiftly in a brutal clash of edged weapons as a handful of mercenaries took to scattered, ravaged, jangling flight. Buey himself engaged the leader, a massive Dutchman whose scarred armor evinced his experience in the field.

  Their brief, steel-sparking, hand-to-hand dirk fight climaxed in a thunderous exchange of fists and booted feet near the well, as both had lost their blades in the melee that had left them cut and bleeding from numerous wounds.

  Buey’s men shouted repeatedly for him to stop, for the mercenary commander might be useful alive. But the Ox was beyond rational counsel. In the end, he clutched his foe’s throat and tried to crush it in his iron grip as the brigand pounded him futilely, with weakening thews.

  “Steal—children—you—sonofabitch!”

  “Buey—no!”

  The Ox slammed his enemy against the side of the well. Grabbing him by one leg, he flipped him over the stone wall to plunge headfirst, screaming, into the watery depths.

  “Buey!”

  They gathered to peer down. An echoing, scream-filled splash…Then silence, and a soft lapping of water, was all they heard.

  “Jesus-God-A’mighty—look!”

  Gasps and shouts of horror. They ran as a body toward the band of six, led by Father Jan Sebastio and Luigi Leone, who had gone after the wolf-ringed children.

  Gonji’s old friend Kuma-san, the priest who had tutored him in Japan, was past hope—half the wolf pack had sprung on him en masse…

  * * * *

  As the battle raged about the well, Sebastio and Leone warily approached the snarling wolves who poised threateningly around the imprisoned children. The little ones were crying, certain something awful was about to happen. They huddled together inside the oxcarts as one wolf leaped atop each canopy, snarling toward the savage fighting at the well.

  “Christ, padre, what the hell can we do?” Leone said, grimacing, his blade and pistol brandished in either hand in useless display.

  Kuma-san swallowed, shuddering as he considered something, briefly shutting his eyes against the sight.

  “We can’t fire on ‘em,” another warrior declared needlessly. “Might hit those youngsters.”

  “If they charge, I’m shooting,” another man said in a strained voice.

  “No.”

  Father Jan put up his stout-bladed schiavona in its scabbard. Waving the others back, he gripped the crucifix that depended from a leather thong about his neck. He began to walk slowly toward the red-eyed beasts, whose jaws slavered in anticipation of tearing frenzy.

  “You’re crazy, padre!”

  Sebastio plodded on, holding the crucifix before him. He spoke softly as he walked, his voice murmuring words that could not be heard over the growling of the wolf pack, the menacing clack of bared and stained white fangs.

  “Yes,” Kuma-san was whispering, “you know not human speech, but you know this symbol. And you know your true Lord…” His breathing became choppy, but he forced a deep breath and steeled himself, closing his eyes an instant when terror threatened to engulf him. Sending up a prayer for strength and courage in his faith, Sebastio commended his spirit to his God.

  “You dare not harm these innocents, for they are God’s own children,” he said more clearly now, his voice rising in volume and pitch as his eyes began to shine with the flooding of faith, of conviction…of resolution, that drove his spirit and steadied his footsteps.

  “They’re going to spring—”

  “We’ve got to shoot!”

  “No—let him be,” Leone ordered, holding up a now weaponless hand. His face glowed with astonishment at the priest’s faith and valor as he swallowed back a ball of burning fear.

  “Leave these children,” Sebastio commanded the wolves. “By the power of God I demand that you spare these children. Avaunt, power of Satan! Avaunt, spirits of Evil!”

  The wolves at the fore spread out and encircled the priest, heads lowered as if to charge. The rest pawed about the oxcarts, spoiling for a fight. And the two on top of the carts snarled down at the puling children.

  Sebastio stopped, his conviction momentarily failing him to see the predators’ intent. He was unsure of how to proceed now that the wolves had held their ground.

  Eyeing the pathetic little ones, he took another step toward the carts, and then another—

  The wolves closed the circle.

  “If you must spill blood in your demon-lust, then let it be mine!”

  Sebastio spread his arms wide, glaring at the circle of eager carnivores. “Take me, and let these children live.”

  There was a breathless instant of stillness, as the drama at the well played out to its conclusion. A man beside Leone muttered an oath.

  And the wolves sprang at Father Sebastio.

  “Noooooo!”

  Luigi and his men opened fire on the wolves at the oxcarts, felling four or five with pistol shot. There was nothing they could do for Sebastio. Unleashing their bows, they took out three more of the beasts as they strove to rip the wooden carts to shreds and get at the children.

  Then something eerie occurred.

  All the wolves tearing at the oxcarts cringed as one, as if by some unheard directive of the nameless principle that compelled their actions. The six who had descended on Father Sebastio in primitive fury now backed away from his downed form.

  Leone stayed his men’s fire and stared in horror at the supine priest, whose hands—bloody now—covered his face. Like a phoenix, Kuma-san rose shakily from the position in which the others had conceded him to death. Marked by many fangs, his flesh punctured shallowly through his garb in scores of places along his upper body, hands and arms, he was nonetheless relatively unharmed.

  He stood with bowed head, as wolves and men alike focused on him in awe.

  The wolves slunk backward, turned quietly, and padded off along the slopes toward the forests below, those about the oxcart joining Sebastio’s attackers in an outre single line of orderly retreat.

  Convinced that they’d been privy to a manifestation of the power of faith, the company fell to quiet whispering and private introspections a moment, some of the men falling to their knees to give thanks for what must surely have been divine intervention.

  Leone circled Sebastio twice before speaking. “God, padre—I could never do that. I doubt that I’ll ever have such faith.”

  Sebastio hacked a breathy laugh, still running his fingers over his mild puncture wounds, incredulous to find his parts intact.

  “And I doubt that I could ever do such a thing again,” he replied, his voice trilling as if speech came with the greatest difficulty. “Gonji will be disappointed, no?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve still not used this to kill.” He touched the pommel of the belted schiavona, then rushed toward the oxcarts with the other men. “Oh, my God—the children…”

  The captive children of Lamorisse were now released and comforted. Like the wolves, they seemed to sense a special power about Father Sebastio. This, coupled with their understanding of his importance as a man of the cloth, caused them to gravitate toward him like trusting sheep, hugging him en masse.

  After speaking with the older children, the men agreed upon a course. Buey was determined to see the children safely home; so he and Leone led half the company and the oxcarts to Lamorisse in e
scort of the little ones, many of whom doubled up aboard mercenary mounts. Sebastio took the remainder of Gonji’s adventurer command southward, toward the abandoned castle, for they’d by now encountered several bands of refugees who’d heeded Wilfred Gundersen’s rapidly spreading tactical advice.

  * * * *

  Kuma-san swiftly headed the thundering band of sixteen fighters over the southeastern foothill trails, picking up knots of refugees and small detachments of rebels as they rode. Two days later they caught their first glimpse of the brooding fortress in a lower Alpine gorge.

  It was a vast and breathtaking spectacle. The castle turrets and tumbled-down outer curtain stood imposingly on a great ridge that jutted from the dim floor of the gorge. The centuries-old fortification was rather like the hub of the sprawling, elliptical natural cleft in the mountainside; the only approaches to the hub were afforded via the spokes—three sinuous rock bridges, terrifying in their illusion of fragility, as they stretched over the yawning chasm of the gorge’s dizzying bowl.

  Looking down over the brink, experiencing a sense of vertigo, Kuma-san conceived an equally terrifying thought: It was clear that someone had once successfully besieged this apparently impregnable place.

  Refugees streamed across the disconcerting rock bridges. The adventurer band joined them, halted by local Wunderknechten sentries, who questioned them. Kuma-san answered their inquiries truly, and runners were sent to the castle on the double.

  Captain Salguero came out to greet his old comrades personally, along with Aldo Monetto and Nick Nagy. The arriving band was led through the crumbling outer barbican and shown the in-progress effort at refitting the Frankish stronghold as a modern defensive bulwark and a base from which to strike out against the evil Farouche.

  Kuma-san took grim note of the moldering corpses that had been gathered for burial in a common grave—down in the depths of the gorge itself—and learned that the castle had late been wrested from a small company of mercenaries working for the otherworldly invaders, their Farouche Clan masters.

  The priest’s first act was thus to perform a ritual ablution, a benediction presumed to purify the castle of any residual evil power. The bodies were then consigned to the fathomless depths.

  Sharing a meal presided over by Claire Dejordy, the new comrades exchanged tales of their dealings with Gonji, the singular samurai warrior who had so amazingly affected all their lives; who had unearthed the sublime knowledge of a cosmic scheme beyond any previous comprehension.

  As well as mad lore concerning the ghastly plotting of off-world sorcerers, who were said to have enslaved numerous worlds mystically touching upon the present earth—the only one they all knew.

  The meal and its converse ended first in awed silence…and then with a solemn prayer that this present campaign with Gonji would save many souls from the dreaded minions of the Evil One, whatever his true shape and wherever lay his spatial core, the center of his corrupted realm.

  And with bowed heads, each rebel prayed further that this action would not be their last.

  * * * *

  Wilfred Gundersen sat in a back room at Chabot’s Inn, pondering his next move in light of the outrage committed against Lamorisse, the unthinkable stealing away of the children, for what vile purpose, no one cared to speculate.

  Henri Chabot filled him in concerning the grisly events, the divided thinking of the populace. Lamorisse looked like a ghost town, the streets beset by a morbid calm like the hush before a violent storm. Many had fled. Those who remained were digging in for a siege. All hope of unified effort seemed lost.

  Gabrielle perched on a stool beside them, alternately embellishing her father’s tale of woe and making Wilf uncomfortable with her searching eyes. The needless lurid details she eagerly imparted seemed calculated to prove her toughness to Wilf, who received them with feigned interest and sheepish smiles.

  “Will you be staying here or going straightaway to the castle?” she asked, twining a lock of her hair around a finger.

  Wilf grunted. “I don’t know. The castle seems best. My friends are there. We may need to plan further before taking any action. It’s damned frustrating that Simon’s run off. I could wish he were along with me.”

  “We’ll be going to the castle, non, Henri?” she asked her father. “Perhaps we could ride along with Wilf and his men.”

  She bobbed a bared, crossed leg up and down as she spoke, catching Wilf’s eye in spite of their circumstances. He tried gamely to avert his gaze whenever it fell on that fetching limb.

  Henri shrugged and shook his head in response to her question.

  Wilf chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Might not be such a good idea,” he said lamely, mopping his brow and adding: “It’s warm in here, eh?”

  “It won’t be for long,” Gaby said airily.

  Wilf eyed her quizzically.

  “What—another of your visions?” Henri asked, chortling. “She dreamed the castle, you know. About everyone running there. She has visions.”

  “Ah—that’s all blather, really,” she explained. “I just imagine things, or dream them, or even luckily guess them, and they all think I’ve got some power of foresight.”

  “What else have you dreamed?” Wilf asked.

  Her indulgent smile faded. “Things…I hope I am not so lucky about.” Her expression brightened again almost at once. “You know, I did dream some other things. Nicer things that I wouldn’t wish away. Like about the valiant young swain who carries me off from this place on his sturdy charger—”

  Wilf felt his face flushing.

  There came a pounding on the door. Henri admitted a blanching messenger, who whispered briefly to the concierge before departing.

  “What is it?” Wilf asked.

  “Two tough-looking brigands at the town hall, asking for the magistrate or…”

  “Oui?”

  “…or the Wunderknechten leaders of this town. He says they’ll speak to no one else.”

  “Who is the magistrate right now?”

  Henri spread his hands uncertainly. “Darcy Lavelle, I suppose. Lamont went looking for him.”

  “Send the mercenaries here,” Wilf said sternly.

  “What? Why?”

  “Out in the hall. I want to see them. Can you do that for me?”

  Gabrielle rose and moved between them, stepping into her sabots. “I’d be delighted to…my fine young swain.”

  Henri shook his head to see Wilf’s look of discomfiture over the sexual tension that had formed between them and said, “Be quick about it, then, little minx. And be wary of them.”

  Gaby made a face at her father and dashed out the door.

  “I best charge up my pistols,” Henri said glumly.

  * * * *

  Wilf coldly regarded the well-armed pair of obvious highwaymen who accompanied Gaby back to the inn.

  “Here is one of our leaders,” she told the burly spokesman, who looked as though he’d seen his share of close combat. Gaby then sidled behind the bar, breathing shallowly, tensely, and casting glances back and forth from Wilf to the strangers.

  “I am the Wunderknechten…liaison here,” Wilf said, carefully altering what Gaby had implied. “Name your business.”

  The two armed men exchanged a suspicious look and separated as they slowly approached Wilf.

  The big man stuck his thumbs into his broad belt. A short, angry, double-bladed axe protruded from its front.

  “That so? You speak lousy French for a Burgundian.”

  The brute’s partner, a younger, slimmer man in a feathered slouch hat, suddenly drew a pistol and leveled it at Wilf.

  The big brigand pulled out his axe. “In fact, an accent like that marks you for an outlander.”

  Wilf still sat, unflinching, though a vein throbbe
d at his temple as he glanced from one to the other. “Nonetheless, I am the one you seek. And if it’s a fight you’re looking for, you’ve probably come to the right town.”

  The leader looked to his partner again, grunting boorishly. The gun-wielding brigand cocked an eyebrow to hear Wilf’s bold words, his hand flexing the pistol into a fresh grip.

  The big man snorted and then suddenly cocked the axe and flung it. Its gleaming head flashed past Wilf’s own to thunk surely into a vertical beam just behind him.

  “I didn’t have to miss,” the axe-man declared.

  “Touche!” Gaby cried out from behind the bar. She was holding a gun on them, her eyes shining as she held the pistol-wielding stranger’s gaze in check. The piece looked huge in her small hands. But her two-handed grasp of it seemed sure.

  “Touche, yourself!” the pistolier replied. “Don’t shoot that thing, little lady! We’re here to help!”

  “Horseshit!” Gabrielle spat back. “Find out what they want, Wilf.”

  Wilf smiled thinly, for the first time taking comfort in the girl’s flamboyant presence. “Not bad,” he said to the axe-thrower. “But I have a friend who might show you a thing or two about throwing an axe. For now, though, just tell me who you are and what you want. Have you truly come to help, or are you Farouche hirelings?”

  The big warrior reddened. He stalked toward Wilf, who stood from his table and drew his own pistol from behind him now, edging back to where Spine-cleaver leaned against the bar behind a chair. He kicked the chair out of the way and watched as the man moved past, ignoring his pistol, to yank the embedded axe free with a single tug of a corded arm.

  “You’re a feisty Teuton—that’s what you are, isn’t it? Oui, we’re here to help. But you show me the guts to fight first, and then I’ll tell you what plans others are making for your deliverance.”