by T. C. Rypel
Orozco swiped a hand at him scornfully.
Two charges later, one of the breeches spluttered and misfired, the sergeant cursing and bounding after a water bucket, having taken powder burns about the face and hands.
Father Sebastio and another man at the northeastern tower tended the few rebels who took wounds. As they anxiously worked at a man who screamed and jerked in agony—a crossbow quarrel having split his clavicle—they were suddenly set upon by a spear-bearing bipedal ram.
Sebastio’s partner shrieked as the deadly barbed head ripped through his backplate. The creature jerked at his haft cruelly as it stuck in the wailing man’s spine.
Kuma-san sucked in a harsh breath to see the nature of his satanic adversary, the first such monster he’d seen close up. He drew his schiavona and raised it before him in both hands.
The ram hissed at the falling body it had kicked free with a cloven hoof. Seeing Sebastio’s crucifix, it leered at him and made a gesture that could only have been obscene.
Teeth gritting in defiance, Sebastio set himself for the charge, for the first time in his life wishing that he’d spent more than cursory effort at fencing practice.
The ram lunged forward tauntingly, feinting at Kuma-san’s face and then his bowels, uttering a mocking hooting sound. The priest reacted to the feints with jerking twists of the heavy blade, gasping with the exaggerated efforts, trying hard to maintain control of his quivering arms.
Sebastio heard the sickening slap of water-logged flesh behind him—a floating corpse had escaped the detection of the preoccupied sentries to pull itself over the ancient stonework. Spongy gray fingers groped at his feet.
The priest’s courage fled. He panicked and tried to run. But the ram was quicker, darting at an angle to cut off his retreat across the ward. With a taunting cackle, it steered him back toward the bloated fiend that peered up at the priest with eyes like jellied eggs.
Sebastio shouted in sudden rage, his hatred of evil inflaming his soul. He batted aside the spear, arcing his blade violently from side to side, the ram respecting the danger of a flailing attack. It fell back and allowed Sebastio to spend his fury, watching for an open line to a vital spot.
“Hey!”
The ram spun. Captain Hernando Salguero stood behind it, leveling a ranseur for imminent engagement. In that instant, Kuma-san slashed the distracted creature from shoulder to hip. It whirled about with an expression of shock and dismay.
The priest plunged his bladepoint through its thick-napped belly, withdrawing the bloody sword at once as if caught in some embarrassing indiscretion. Blood from the backlash splattered his face. He dropped the schiavona and clapped a red-stippled hand over his mouth, his stomach rolling over.
“Good work, padre—now look out—”
Salguero moved to the wetly slapping corpse on the tower’s ground floor. The ex-capitan of Spanish lancers swallowed his disgust and wondered how best to engage this ponderously crawling perversion of sacred life.
But it stopped moving forward now. Its pulpy fingers laboriously groped ahead, yet it gained no ground. And in seconds, even the slowly pumping arms stopped reaching. Presently, it ceased all motion.
Sebastio looked to it, then to Salguero, and finally back to the otherworldly ram-fiend he’d dispatched. “Thank God for you, Hernando. I shouldn’t have been able to do such a thing alone, I fear.”
“Ah, your faith would have seen you through,” the former captain replied distractedly. “I must get word of this outside.”
Quickly the word spread. Their enemies’ black sorcery was failing, its energy drained off at the unguessable source. On the distant plain, at that same moment, the last reanimated corpses of the throat-slitted mercenaries were jerking spasmodically, falling, their last moments of evil quasi-life spent in harmless thrashings.
Le Corbeau’s cannon thundered over the cheers of the Wunderknechten.
Soon there was no shot left for the great cannon to spew. Nor was there anything left to fire upon.
* * * *
Simon was the only man in the reunited forces who glared at the carnage with an anger that would not be defused. Heavily bandaged, clutching the hilt of a broadsword, he cursed the coming night that would soon see him undergo another transformation into the Beast.
The Beast within would not be needed now, and Simon’s old attitudes of shame and misanthropy returned. He moved apart from the company, inconsolable, taking to the forest after a brief, edgy exchange with Gonji.
Gonji bowed to him, seeing that Simon was in considerable pain.
“I trust it will not be long before you heal. So sorry that we took so long to assist you here.”
Simon shrugged it off, wincing. “You came at last, that’s all that matters.”
Gonji was a bit stung at the other’s rather casual gratitude but attributed it to his evident misery. “It’s finished, then?” he asked apprehensively, knowing a new crossroad had been reached in what Gonji believed must be their common journey.
“There is still Blaise to reckon with. Tell Claire I’ll see her in the morning. Then I must head for Dijon. One more…duty.”
“We had to evacuate the people, Simon. She’s not in the fortress. They’re up in the mountain passes somewhere with Moreau. Escorted—safe, I think,” he assured to see the ensorceled warrior’s look of concern.
“All right,” Simon replied wearily, “then I’ll tell her myself. Adieu, again. I owe you more than I can ever repay…”
Gonji blinked. There had been a finality in Simon’s tone. He watched him painfully mount a foraging horse, as did the others, all waiting in respectful silence amid the grisly environs of the late battleground.
“Sayonara,” Gonji said quietly at Simon’s departing back.
And then Wilfred Gundersen was standing beside him and embracing him in a grand display of fond fellowship. Some others began to follow suit, rejoicing to see treasured friends among the living.
“Well met, my friend,” Gonji said to Wilf warmly, smiling to see the proud fashion in which the smith wore Spine-cleaver, Gonji’s former spare katana.
“Well,” Wilf said with a broad gesture, after he had brushed the happy tears from his eyes, “what now? Do we make for home with the good news of this victory?”
“First…a bath, I hope,” Gonji replied, smiling thinly. All those who knew him well laughed heartily at the reminder of his oriental fastidiousness in such matters.
Wilf’s expression changed, his smile fleeing. “I’m afraid…Buey’s dead,” he apprised them somberly.
Brett Jarret and Wyatt Ault moved up to add their regretful assurances that it was so.
“We don’t know about Gareau…or Leone…those others who aren’t with us.”
Gonji sadly pointed out Perigor among the dead. Jarret knelt before the slain form of his comrade and leader.
Then Gonji spoke low to Wilf:
“And…Niko-san,” Gonji said, shaking his head morosely.
“Nick Nagy?” Wilf replied, eyes wide with shock. “Oh, no…”
They both bowed their heads, repairing to private thoughts of all those former fellow warriors who had fought so well in the Vedun campaign and were now lost to the galleries of the hallowed dead.
“The children are well?” Wyatt called over, dashing their private reveries.
“Hai,” Gonji replied with forced lightness, his gaze now fixed on the scene, the aftermath of the castle siege. The power of evil had been found wanting. Its shattered forces had paid the price.
The unearthly invaders that comprised the backbone of the shape-shifting Farouche Clan’s army, those that remained alive, now dealt with defeat, each in their accustomed way. The barbarian giants fell upon their short, thick swords. The ram-headed horrors paired off and ran each other through
with their barbed, razor-sharp spears, coupling eerily and howling together in their death-throes. The few boar-men who remained threw themselves over the brink of the gorge to drown in the swirling water, which continued to recede as it swarmed with lifeless forms, debris of armor and drifting logs.
Hell’s own chamber pot.
Gonji removed his hachi-maki, as did Wilfred. They tossed the tattered headbands on the field and slowly headed for the celebrants at the castle, whose facile engagement had spared them the emotional drain of those who’d tasted the bitter savagery on the plain.
* * * *
Grimmolech, the sorcerer from a mystical sphere concurrent with the present invaded world, stood on the serene field beneath a cloud-tufted sky. Gentle breezes ruffled the leaves in the arbor behind him. Birds twittered in the branches.
His comrade and co-conspirator from another world—Balaerik—stood nearby, posing in a justified attitude.
Grimmolech, high priest of cosmic arts stared at the riven form of his son Roman.
“I brought him,” Balaerik explained, “because I knew him to be your favorite…”
Grimmolech seemed benumbed. His lips parted twice before he could speak. “I swear now, before all the powers of the concurrent spheres, that I will tear my son from the breast of Simon Sardonis with these hands…” He reclaimed his rationality all at once, stilled his trembling hands and twitching face.
“I will find him wherever he chooses to hide, and I will make him pay. Roman—” His voice warbled with emotion as he knelt beside the corpse of his son. “—the only one who showed promise…as my successor. I hold you accountable for this, Balaerik. Don’t come before me again without Gonji—do you understand? Bring me his head in Akryllon!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The refugees from Lamorisse and the rest of the countryside, led by Jacques Moreau, returned to the gorge before morning. Scouts had observed the battle, and the people were eager to rejoin their triumphant fighting men.
Amidst the widespread good cheer, Simon Sardonis rode out of the forest, belying his plan to hunt down Blaise, and held his strange reunion with Claire Dejordy. Despite the wide berth the company afforded him, Simon was obviously unnerved by the public affection Claire lavished on him. She, it was, who initiated their first longing embrace, to which Simon submitted awkwardly.
As she made much of his myriad wounds and ill-fitting garb—plucked, in his need, from among the strewn dead bodies—only Gonji looked on unabashedly. Simon seemed quite uneasy, obviously aware that onlookers whispered about this strange relationship he and Claire had formed.
“So where to now for the both of you?” the samurai asked in a loud voice. Claire still projected mild hostility toward Gonji, and he was only too happy to match it. For now he perceived an end to the shared destiny of battling the evil conspiracy that bedeviled him and Simon.
To Gonji, it seemed that Simon was attempting to evade his own karma in the name of love.
“Somewhere far from violence and strife,” Claire replied flatly. “From the life-style he’s known for too long.”
“Ah, so desu ka? To an as-yet undiscovered world, then?”
Claire tipped her head back, irked by the samurai’s taunt.
“He needs tenderness,” she told Gonji. “And that is what he’ll receive. He is no longer bound to aiding others in their violent questing.”
“Ahh…my violent questing had him at its heart, milady,” said Gonji acidly.
Simon stirred as though he would step between them, but Claire moved off to lavish her thanks on Wilf and the others who had helped her.
“I am sorry, mon ami.” Simon spoke with unaccustomed warmth, causing Gonji to cock an eyebrow in surprise. “But I think she may be right. I feel…different in her presence.”
“Different…? Just beware the Night of Chains,” Gonji observed glumly. He brightened suddenly, remembering. “What about Blaise?”
“To the devil with Blaise,” Simon declared surprisingly. “His power is broken, thanks to you and the others.”
Gonji was baffled. There was indeed a change evident in Simon when he was in Claire Dejordy’s presence. But the samurai was reluctant to count it a positive force.
Finding no more words to speak to each other, they bowed and parted company. An hour later, Simon and Claire rode off toward the north, leaving no word as to their destination.
At the last, Gonji swallowed back his misgivings and convictions and sent up a prayer on their behalf to the kami of good fortune. But his melancholy held fast.
Later that day, representatives from Paris arrived. They were part of a delegation that included officers from Dijon, provincial magistrates, the captain from Normandy who had presided over the exhuming of Rene Farouche, and a column of knights from the Holy League, who regarded Gonji ominously.
The refugees and Wunderknechten alike listened in bewilderment to the judgments Paris had rendered in the matter of the Burgundian upheaval.
Funeral pyres were quickly set, and the people were commanded to assist the knights in burning the corpses that littered the field. No answer was given to their inquiry after the need for this hasty disposal of evidence of otherworldly incursion. But the answer was soon clear.
It seemed that Duke de Plancy had died in his sleep, and that there had ensued a family power struggle that had seen the young marchioness possibly murder her husband, Blaise Farouche—the matter was still under investigation.
“Isn’t that just like the noble-blooded?” the captain from Normandy observed archly. Several people restrained themselves from setting upon him, including Jacques Moreau, who still bore the captain a grudge.
Order was summarily restored. The order of a superstitious and ignorant world that steadfastly refused to entertain even the physical evidence of a larger cosmos outside its established dogmas.
“By virtue of the merciful decree of His Royal Highness Henry the Fourth, Sovereign King of France, the insurrectionists of Burgundy are hereby absolved in the matter of the rebellion against lawful authority—said authority seated in the palace of Dijon—”
The herald droned on with feigned disinterest as outraged cries welled up from the crowd.
“Insurrection?” Moreau shouted.
“This was a goddamn invasion. Can’t you see that?” Wyatt Ault added.
“Silence, there! You’ll have your chance to speak—”
Gonji sat atop the carcass of a mammoth barbarian steed, laughing aloud at the proceedings, shaking his head in amazement. He knew only too well what this boded: one more endeavor to sweep the shocking manifestations of other-worldly evil into a shadowy corner, beyond the pale of mundane life. To refuse to admit of corruption seeping into high places from anywhere but the realm of the accepted devils of holy writ.
And he also knew the personal danger to him that might ensue…
Two knights led a party of four common folk toward the place where Gonji sat.
“Get off there and help these people burn bodies,” the lead knight ordered.
“I don’t speak French,” Gonji replied.
The two knights looked at each other. The leader repeated his command in two other languages, each time appending an insult citing Gonji’s unusual eyes.
He glared at them. Looked to a downed giant they were indicating.
“I killed that,” he said gravely. “All by myself. Without your help. Now you can burn it.”
“Insolent swine!”
The knights drew their blades.
Gonji stood slowly and laid both hands on the hilt of his sashed katana. The entire Wunderknechten company rasped out weapons in a concert of whining metal, other French troops taking note and hurrying to the confrontation with a clatter of horses and armament.
Gonji smiled thinly. “So sor
ry, but I wouldn’t do that. If you force me to draw, you will all die where you sit.”
They backed off as the commander of the Holy League knights pounded over to them, assessed the situation with much fluttering and mopping of sweat, and restored order. The Wunderknechten put up their weapons but watched the soldiers warily.
Gonji’s mysterious infamy—and the wary uncertainty with which European powers had come to regard him—had preceded him.
“We know you,” the commander told Gonji, by way of saving face. “Infamous leader of the vigilante cult who call themselves the Knights of Wonder. You have questionably entered French territory bearing threatening arms, brought evil and death with you—”
“We didn’t bring them,” Gonji replied. “They were firmly entrenched when we arrived here to do your work. And we will leave peacefully when we are ready to do so. You can have the big cannon back there as a token of our esteem. And tell me, what do you make of these things here?” He pointed to the dead barbarian giant.
“Big warrior,” the commander said with the merest flick of a glance. “Very big warrior. Probably from some—”
“Ahh—and this? A man using a boar’s head for a pot helmet?”
The commander tensed, spoke in hushed tones. “Black magic has been done, and now it is over. Satanic power has wrought its evil and been turned away by the power of prayer. And now…the sooner you and your brigands leave France, the sooner things will return to normal.” He wheeled his mount and rode away.
Gonji hissed an exasperated breath and relaxed. He spent the next hour striding arrogantly about the battleground, in a mood of antic pique over their stubborn stupidity; their fatuous insistence on ignoring things they could not explain.
He paused before a group with covered faces who considered what to do about a tangle of bloated corpses—the reanimated dead who had quickly been overtaken by the corruption necromancy had briefly forestalled. Forcing himself to suffer the stench, Gonji clasped his hands behind his back.