Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves

by T. C. Rypel

  Slaves were expendable.

  Balaerik called Roman to him. The elongated white lynx strode toward him with regal bearing.

  “They do so love these displays of magic, don’t they?” Balaerik said to him.

  “Yes. They passionately follow leaders who can show them true cosmic power. All of them.”

  Balaerik rubbed his eyes, sighing. “Link with me now for the climatic exchange. I’ll show you what you and Blaise did wrong—or rather failed to do—last year. All you need do is allow the preeminent climate you import to dominate, as it invariably must. Let it touch down. It will fairly devour the milder region of the present sphere. Then let go and just allow the air-pressure cones to revert. That way you won’t create the domino effect on contiguous spheres you caused last year. Simple, eh?”

  “Yes, when you explain it,” Roman replied. “But not working with Blaise, it isn’t…”

  Moments later, there was a great upheaval in the sky, a cataclysmic, local atmospheric phenomenon like a vacuum that sucked the heavens through a funnel into an alien dimension.

  The firmament that was exchanged for the velvet night sky of Burgundy extruded itself overhead like an unwholesome thing spewed from an inhospitable world.

  “Just one more touch, I think,” Balaerik declared. “Bear with me.”

  * * * *

  Silver eyes reflected a lifetime’s loathing from a promontory high above the Farouche Clan’s stygian revelry.

  Simon Sardonis, now the night-shifted golden Beast that some in northern lands called the Grejkill, hunched inside the cleft of a rocky crag, watching the saturnalia as he kept a wary eye on the skies about him. Gargoyles sheared through the frigid night air, careening about in airborne celebration of the demonstration below.

  Simon was the first to see the apparition in the sky. It so shocked him that he thought his presence must have been discovered via Farouche sorcery.

  * * * *

  At the old ruined Frankish castle in the deep mountain gorge to the south, the Wunderknechten leaders who had reclaimed it for its hopeful strategic advantage gathered atop the bailey walls. The refugees below, who were streaming in from the province, stared and pointed from the castle wards and rock bridges leading to the fortress. Monetto, Nagy, Father Sebastio, and Capt. Salguero jostled for position atop the turret, gaping. The priest Gonji called Kuma-san had seen this apparition before.

  Anton Balaerik’s leering countenance filled the northern quadrant of the sky. He spoke with a reverberating voice that was magically apprehended by each listener in his native tongue:

  “…those who oppose us must die. Lay down your weapons and surrender. For soon our combined forces will scour the province, sweeping all resistance from their path. And that will only be the beginning…”

  * * * *

  In Lamorisse the entire populace turned out to hear the ominous message from the shimmering visage interposed between the northern horizon and the whirling black vortex that slowly spiraled to consume the starry night.

  The town leaders and the adventurers who’d come to their aid alike stared up from the streets surrounding the inns and market stalls, the town hall and guild headquarters.

  The Cochieus, the Aucoins, the Labossieres—the Lavelles, together bracing up the hate-filled, quaking and grieving Wyatt Ault—Henri Chabot, sharing the auberge steps with his daughter Gabrielle and Normand Gareau—Buey, yanking free a piece of dried beef with his teeth—Luigi Leone, casting up an obscene gesture—Brett Jarret, leaning with one foot on a hitching rail, sloshing ale about in his cup and nodding purposefully—and Wilfred Gundersen, belting and adjusting Spine-cleaver in a display of defiance he hoped the god-like taunter-in-the-sky could see.

  All listened to the pronouncement of their doom.

  * * * *

  Out on a plains road, Sgt. Carlos Orozco saw and heard in Castilian Spanish; and Le Corbeau and Jacques Moreau, in a dialect of the langue d’oc, as they escorted their ordnance to the castle, alerting towns and villages along the way.

  In Dijon, as in the other towns where dispirited, bewildered French regulars exercised martial law over the citizenry, the vision was not seen. For these places represented the core upon which Farouche power would be rebuilt in Burgundy, once the resistance was obliterated.

  Only at the wooden bridge crossed by Gonji and Armand Perigor—the same place that haunted Guy Moreau’s nightmares, where once Belial Farouche had plied his outrages—was the voice heard in Japanese.

  Gonji stayed Perigor’s anxious speech with the wave of a hand. He peered up into the sky with narrowed eyes, a cold smile creasing his lips to see the predatory mask. He was perversely glad to see that his hated enemy Balaerik was part of this fell business. It made sense to him now. There was a satisfying feeling of a circle being completed.

  Balaerik. His old nemesis from Spain, who’d set the Dark Company on his heels and heated the pyres of the Inquisition on Gonji’s behalf. The face in the fiacre that had tried to run him down in St. Pons.

  The mystical display, intended to strike terror in all their hearts, exercised quite the opposite effect on the samurai. He lifted a hand and cupped Balaerik’s translucent face in its ridge.

  “Shi-kaze,” Gonji said. “Deathwind.”

  * * * *

  Balaerik rose slowly from the pallet where he’d lain, light-headed now as the projection was drawn back into his being, melting from the angry skies.

  “Prepare them,” he said weakly to Roman Farouche. “When the siege force encounters first resistance, we’ll open the…spigot in the mountains.” He gurgled a low laugh. “Strange to think what gargantuan forces are sometimes held in check by the subtle magic of a single gateway…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The sky was a livid bruise, a patchwork discoloration of threatening clouds, as Simon Sardonis rode into Lamorisse. An icy wind whipped through town, and winter garb was already in evidence as the citizens readied at once for the dual strife of winter hardship and impending war.

  Despite their disillusionment over his having fled from the fight against Serge Farouche, the people received Simon’s return with good cheer and a new surge of hope.

  Simon, for his part, was happier to see Wilfred Gundersen than he had been to see anyone since his chance reunion with his tragic uncle, many months earlier.

  They embraced warmly and entered the town hall, where Wyatt Ault, Darcy Lavelle, and Brett Jarret eagerly awaited Simon’s news garnered in his reconnaissance. Wilf beamed with pride to hold the honored position of “old friend” to the great lycanthrope. It made him feel like a respected veteran of noble campaigns.

  “You have Claire safely hidden, I’m told,” Simon said with anxious uncertainty.

  Wilf nodded reassuringly. And to hear Simon’s sincere words of gratitude, the warrior-smith was flooded with a sense of vindicated conviction of his decision to become involved here.

  Simon ducked his towering head under the lintel and entered the conference chamber, flashing a hint of his old social unease to see all the other gathered rebel leaders.

  “Will you be rejoining Claire at the castle at the old ruined castle in the mountains?” Wilf asked.

  Simon pondered the matter. “I long to do so, but think I’d best be out in the countryside when the worst happens, as it’s sure to. I’m particularly interested in areas of…wolfish action, you understand.”

  They all conveyed their apprehension of his meaning. He had unfinished business with Serge Farouche and his private corps of animal terrorists.

  “But I may need your help,” the accursed warrior added. “I bear the mark of a sorcerous effect. Something they did to me when I was last at the fortress—you’re sure it’s been secured for our purposes now?”

  “We’ve had reliable intelligence from runners, t
o that effect,” Darcy Lavelle told him.

  “Aldo Monetto is in command there,” Wilf said, encouraged to be able to mention another of the old guard from Vedun.

  Simon half smiled. “Good old Monetto. Has anyone had contact with Gonji?”

  Brett Jarret cleared his throat and leaned forward. “I was with him a few days ago. He’s in the south, getting our comrades stoked for action…raising his usual chaos. Some of his other old allies are here—”

  “Buey and Leone,” Simon noted. “I saw them. Reliable men. As you yourself are, Monsieur Jarret.”

  Brett cocked his head sideways in casual response.

  Simon seemed subtly changed by the events he’d survived during the past year. Yet when he felt them all staring, uneasy in his lupine presence, he reverted to his former taciturn withdrawal from human contact. And his more recently acquired predilection…

  “Is there anything to drink around here?”

  A runner was sent for wine.

  “We killed another Farouche, we think,” Wilf announced when he remembered, imparting brief details. Simon took a special interest in this.

  “Must have been Belial,” he decided. “That’s good. Good work.”

  “So there are three left now, since we disposed of Rene,” Darcy said, nodding forcefully.

  “They’re gathering an army of demons. Demons from…other worlds,” Simon said without preamble. But then he elaborated, haltingly. “That is our…meager understanding of it. Apparently, somehow there are…worlds that co-exist with our own, beyond our ken. I don’t know…At any rate, these Farouche fiends mean to raze this territory and refashion it to suit their own designs. I have a personal reason to avenge myself on them—more than one. Can you all stand firm against them, at my side, and at Gonji’s, every warrior committed unto death, if necessary?”

  “I’ve nothing left to live for,” Wyatt Ault replied gravely. He pointed a finger at Simon emphatically. “And when you go out hunting…wolves, I want to be along with you.”

  Wilf saw the pain in Wyatt’s eyes, the mystical communion the man seemed to share with Simon. With the single sparking of emotion that for an instant inflamed Simon’s eyes, an unspoken bond had seemed to form between those two men.

  The wine arrived and was served. The messenger who’d brought it shook the first snowflakes from his hat brim. As they took note of the cascading whiteness that swirled beyond the windows, a pall descended over the group.

  “Well, that doesn’t help,” Brett Jarret said, his gaze fixated on a nightmarish memory of the previous winter’s lost battle in a lurid arena of bloody snow.

  But he snapped out of it and immediately tried to lighten their mood by extracting two silver ecu from a pocket and tossing them to the wide-eyed youth who poured the wine. “That may be the last tip like that you see for a while, sonny!” The laughter was perfunctory, strained.

  “No one else leaves town, Darcy,” Wilf ordered. “For their own good.”

  “Non. This morning the last band departed. Claude Aucoin and his daughter—with your children, eh, Wyatt?—the Richards—some rural folk who lost their taste for this place since…” His voice trailed off.

  Wyatt Ault withdrew a pistol from his belt and laid it on the table. “Gentils,” he said softly, “let us pray together. A Catholic prayer and a Protestant prayer. And then let’s get ready to fight…together.”

  Purple-black clouds pressed the earth outside. The wind lashed and whirled the snow that had come from another world, in a pelting assault that piled and drifted in the streets, climbed and smothered the walls of shops and dwellings unnaturally swiftly, almost whispering in low, murmuring threat. It snowed for two days and nights. And after a brief respite, the wind howled like tortured souls at the gate of Hell, reshaping the drifts again, into hulking mounds.

  The evil sky shed its underside with renewed vigor until, for as far as the eye could see, the world was caked in wretched white bleakness.

  * * * *

  “Hell, look at this—they’ll let just about anybody die for this province!”

  The voice was Aldo Monetto’s. Gonji and Perigor reined in and looked past the shattered redoubts, up to the crumbling turret above the barbican, to where the Italian biller crouched between the old Frankish castle’s merlons.

  “You obviously don’t need me around here, Monetto,” Gonji shouted, removing his sallet and waving in salute as Nichi stamped back from the sheer drop beyond the escarpment at the road’s edge. “What a splendid fortification!”

  “Hey! Watch it there. I’d hate to think what Paille would write if you met your death from a fall off a stupid land-bridge!”

  They met later in the outer ward, which was now strewn with wagons and supplies and dotted with enormous fallen stone blocks that told the tale of the last siege of the Frankish fortress.

  Gonji dismounted and received the bows of his friends, some of them unable to keep from displaying their fondness in the backslapping, hand-clasping European manners he still found rather distasteful. Yet he did nothing to belay them as he introduced them to Perigor.

  Monetto was his usual outgoing self, scampering down the wall and catching up the samurai in an affectionate hug. Even irascible old Nick Nagy extended a gnarly hand and a broken-toothed grin.

  “It’s about goddamn time, sensei,” the old ostler said.

  “Kyooshi—teacher,” Hernando Salguero greeted him in Japanese, tears in his eyes. He’d last seen Gonji from a ship’s rail on the Mediterranean.

  “Senchoo—captain,” the samurai replied, bowing.

  “Hell, it’s back to learning Japanese again, I see,” Monetto called out as the warm glow of fellowship spread through the company.

  Gonji greeted his men from Italy, who had formed themselves into two ranks for an impromptu inspection, which the samurai walked through briskly, offering keen and amusing observations that briefly brightened their spirits. The spell was an ephemeral one: their attentions were continually drawn to the bizarre storm to the north, which seemed to sheer off sharply at a point about a mile from the gorge.

  “What do you make of that?” Salguero asked him.

  Gonji’s brow knit pensively. “I don’t know. That damned Balaerik’s sorcery, I fancy. Hai—the same evil sorcerer from Toledo. The storm just stops out there at the edge of the plain. Here…you wouldn’t know it was autumn, to feel the warmth, much less an early winter.”

  “That’s no winter storm like I’ve ever seen before. So…localized.”

  “I’ve seen the like,” Gonji replied somberly, eyeing Perigor’s corroborating nod. “A lot of these men did. Not far from here, last year. They may be isolating our forces. Where is Wilf?”

  “Somewhere out there,” Salguero answered gloomily, tipping his chin.

  Gonji exhaled in frustration and watched as more refugees arrived in a steady flow that increased in speed and frenzy as the storm raged. People crossed the granite bridges breathlessly, fearful to gaze into the depths of the gorge, then shucked their winter wraps in wonder at the abrupt climatic change.

  Father Jan Sebastio was the last of Gonji’s old friends to greet him, having been called from hearing confessions in the rooms of the central keep that he’d converted into a chapel. Beside him strode the slender, placid figure of Claire Dejordy.

  “Kuma-san,” Gonji breathed. “What a tale they’ve told me about your great power of faith.”

  They exchanged bows.

  “Still in one piece,” Sebastio marveled. “I think Old Todo would be pleased to know that his firstborn is yet among the quick—even in this barbarian land.”

  “Domo arigato.”

  Kuma-san pulled out his schiavona. “I keep carrying it, but as you can see it remains unmarked.”

  “That is perhaps the best thing a warr
ior could ever say, who has performed his duty without fail.”

  Sebastio introduced him to Claire. They studied each other with questing expressions, neither opening up. There seemed a curious distance, perhaps even hostility, in Claire’s attitude toward the samurai.

  “I hope for your sake,” Gonji said in a taut voice, “that the Great Kami has guided Simon’s steps.”

  She thanked him and then their attention was drawn to the new arrivals. The last party that had fled Lamorisse clattered over the forbidding north bridge, including the Cochieus and Claude and Francoise Aucoin, who had Guy Moreau and the two Ault children with her in the wagon.

  But the principal attraction now was the great rumbling approach of Le Corbeau’s ordnance wagons as they lumbered harrowingiy over the tortuous passage. They had scarcely arrived when Corbeau, casting Gonji and Perigor a toothy grin and a peremptory salute, set to placing the guns in positions that commanded a firing vantage over the north and west canyons. He moved about the grounds imperiously, shouting clipped orders to his band like a proud though tiny general.

  “Will these things work? Either of them?” Orozco was yelling to him. “Shit, we haven’t tried them out yet.”

  “All in good time,” The Crow cast back.

  And then Sgt. Orozco dismounted to greet Capt. Salguero, his commander of many years, the pair of them expressing concern for Buey, who hadn’t reported back, though some of the refugees thought he might be in Lamorisse.

  Le Corbeau sought out Father Sebastio as the latter spoke with Gonji again. The Crow had heard that Kuma-san had been responsible for saving the kidnapped children from Lamorisse.

  “I want to thank you, Father,” Le Corbeau said stiffly. “It is difficult for me to reconcile with this…road I’ve chosen, but children are…special to me. They have no place among such horrors. Do you not agree?”