by Rypel, T. C.
Many of the foray party gave chase, most trying to run them down before they could take to horse, some hoping the others would get to them first.
Screams and curses sounded in the village, doors slamming.
The trooper named Riemann rolled off the cot in the hut he had taken for his own and fumbled on his trousers. The woman made small puling sounds, and her child began to cry fretfully.
“Shut that child up before I do it myself,” he grated. She couldn’t understand, only knew from his tone that her child was menaced and that if she couldn’t calm her, the monster would kill her just as he had killed the woman’s husband.
Muttering curses, leaving his jerkin behind, he loaded and spannered his wheel-lock pistol, then grabbed his sword belt and rapier and moved out into the night—adjusting his eyes to the darkness, trying to make sense of the carnage and hurtling shapes and pounding hooves—
“Care to try another shot, Riemann?” came a haunting voice in the shadows, and he spun down onto one knee and pointed the pistol at...what? Where had he heard that chilling voice before?
A dagger chunked into the earth several feet away to his right. He rose and leveled his pistol in that direction. Too late, he heard the soft padding behind him. Whirled—Saw the glint of moonlight flash his death sentence—
The Japanese...that terrible sword raised high over his head!—He never even had time to aim the pistol, the shot tolling his death knell squeezed off errantly, at the earth.
Gonji drew one quick breath and kept moving. He slammed the door shut on the screaming woman and child and launched off into the main lane.
People were running in all directions in bewilderment now; doors and window shutters burst open and were clamped shut. The sharp reports of pistols along a side lane—
The samurai saw some of his raiders dashing about in terrified confusion, projecting toughness by growling and waving their blades and pole-arms, but seeking no action. He called out a few brusque orders, sending them toward the activity at the stables.
Then he saw Esteban.
Navarez’s toothy sycophant rushed through the street at the head of three others, one bearing a flaming torch. Esteban’s good eye was cocked toward the far end of the main street. He held a pistol at the ready, another one angled up behind him in one of his followers’ fists. Gonji slipped into a doorway and waited until they had passed. He sprang after them.
“Komban wa—good evening—pox-ridden scum!” Gonji cried at their backs. The four spun and fixed their gazes on him, wide-eyed with dawning terror.
“You—bárbaro!” Esteban gasped. “Franco-o-ooo!”
And then Gonji hurtled into their midst, his katana singing, tearing through flesh and bone. One pistol-wielder shot his crony in the back in his frenzied effort to get at Gonji. Esteban himself never had the chance to recover from the shock of the apparition. He lay dead atop his still un-discharged wheel-lock piece.
Gonji saw the horsemen lurching out of the stables, some of the militia engaging them. He knew the danger, should any of them escape. But Gerhard and Roric and Anton were there, and he turned instead toward the magistrate’s dwelling, where he knew Navarez had taken up residence.
There, peering dimly out into the street, a pistol hammered and leveled at his waist, stood the hated captain who had brutalized Gonji’s duty.
* * * *
Anton surged into the stables after the fleeing bandits, who rolled and scrabbled aboard neighing, bolting mounts, some unsaddled. Two horsemen lurched past him, knocking him aside. He slipped and fell in the hay. But a third bandit had been thrown from his steed. Anton peered up, leveled his pistol, cocked it. Sighted his downed adversary in the shadows. Too late—he caught the glint of the other’s pistol barrel in a stray beam of moonlight.
Both guns cracked and belched smoke at once. Anton cried out with the searing pain that jolted his leg, spun down onto the damp, pungent stable floor. But he heard the other’s groan, looked up tentatively through the cloud of smoke. In his gasping agony he felt a flood of relief: his pistol ball had split the brigand’s skull.
He collapsed, succumbing to shock and pain.
Outside, a sword-swinging mercenary on horseback engaged the wily Roric, whose pike pointed steadily at the chest of the oncoming rider. The swordsman howled his berserker’s cry and lashed down and out. But Roric sidestepped the slash and lunged—
There was a horrendous scream and chunkering of honed steel against plate and bone that caused heads to turn nearby. The free companion’s momentum skewered him on the pike, tearing him out of the saddle. The horse galloped off, riderless, as Roric felt the great weight on the end of his pole-arm that wrenched his grasp downward. The weapon’s head had nearly gone completely through the rib cage.
Monetto bounded up, sword in hand, open-mouthed. “You—you—” He couldn’t catch his breath.
“Look out!” Roric yelled.
Two more horsemen were upon them, splitting up to skirt the carnage. One whirled a cutlass, but the other was aiming his pistol for a passing shot.
There was nowhere to hide.
* * * *
Wilf heard the cries behind him as he clashed with his opponent between the huts. Spine-cleaver flashed and whined, backing the Austrian highwayman, who waxed increasingly desperate, though he sneered and taunted Wilf. The young smith held his concentration.
Clang-clang-siizzzzz!—a rapid exchange of attacks and ripostes and Wilf s leap over a low slash designed to hamstring him—The karumi-jutsu training had made the timing feel natural and easy. His confidence grew.
He backed his man down the lane, steel, teeth, and eyes gleaming in the darkness. Wilf felt his stomach knotting. (have to finish it) They passed from murk through shards of yellow light from an unshuttered window that illuminated their sweating faces, then back into deep shadow again. (for the city, for Genya)
He missed a parry and the saber whanged off his sallet, knocking it awry. He flung the helm off as the brigand took a step back and, encouraged, lunged into a straight attack. Spine-cleaver deflected the blade, slid along, shot forward in a two-handed lunge—
A wet gurgle and a spout of dark blood—
Wilf withdrew his point from the man’s throat like a shot, as if having been caught doing something he shouldn’t. The soldier fell heavily in the lane.
“Get down, Wilf!”
The cry had come from behind; the pistolier stood in his path, not ten paces distant. Wilf dropped like a sodden sponge. Heard the report of the pistol and the sizzle of something overhead. A body fell—the bandit’s.
Wilf looked up, then behind him. Karl Gerhard stood there, nodding curtly, his now emptied bow lowered to his side. Wilf blew out a hot breath.
“You all-recht?”
“Ja, danke,” Wilf replied.
“Kommen Sie, then—the stables.”
Gerhard sprinted off, reaching back into his quiver for another clothyard shaft. Wilf rose, recovering his sallet, and stared at the grisly form of the bandit he had dispatched.... Walked around him twice in disbelief....
“Cholera.”
* * * *
Seeing Monetto and Roric’s peril, Nick Nagy charged the pistol-wielding horseman from the blind side, slashing his exposed ribs. The horse’s flank brushed him, and Nagy stumbled backward, cursing. The wounded bandit fell in a jangling heap at his side. Nick had lost his blade, reached for it as the groaning mercenary tried to rise, pressing in his rent side. But Paolo Sauvini rushed him and finished the job with a savage blow across his neck and shoulders.
Nick pulled away as the brigand crashed to earth almost on top of him. Roric and Monetto surged over to them, as Paolo leapt back, crouching, chest heaving, looking for more enemies to engage.
“Holy shit! Stop him, somebody!” a voice cried.
They all looked down the street: The other horseman had evaded Roric and Monetto as they dove for cover from the pistol. He was headed for the gate far down the main village road. If he were to
escape, get to Klann with word of this....
Roric seized the downed man’s pistol, took careful aim, and fired—missing. “Perimeter guards will have to stop him,” the butcher said, all of them looking after the fleeing bandit anxiously.
But then through the shrieking and pounding of feet there came a sizzling hiss. An arrow skewered the fleeing free companion full in the back. They looked across the street. There stood the saturnine Gerhard, his great longbow still vibrating from the magnificent shot that had spilled the man over his horse’s withers. The animal continued to gallop out the gate, but now it bore only a dangling corpse.
A dozen men cheered as Karl simply nodded with finality as he did on the archery field. Then Roric muted their celebration.
“All right, all right, calm down. We’ve yet to—”
A bellow from behind cut him short. And though the action seemed over, for the most part, two things beckoned their attention: the shouts for help from behind the stables; and the crowd that was gathering before the magistrate’s house.
They split up to check them out.
* * * *
Gonji charged Navarez, the Sagami trailing behind him, pointed rigidly upward in his right hand. He dared the captain’s cocked pistol, racing at him with flaring nostrils, zigzagging with the litheness of a leopard.
“Bárbaro?” Navarez whispered dimly, squinting against the harsh light that flared from wind-whipped torches. “Bárbaro!” he shouted at last, recognition gripping him with the certainty of oriental justice.
He waved the pistol and fired, missing badly.
“Bárbaro—Gon-shee—I—” he stammered, fending off the charge with raised hands.
Then Gonji was on top of him. The katana arced sleekly, struck the captain’s head from his shoulders—The tarantula-mustached head thudded on the steps, jaws still working mutely.
One of the militiamen ran up behind Gonji, saw the gushing neck, the rolling head. He fell on his knees and began to vomit. Others gathered. The emboldened villagers began to creep from their homes and congregate at the magistrate’s, their deliverance becoming understood.
Paolo came up beside Gonji, triumph in his bearing. Seeing the horror on some of the raiders’ faces, he intoned, “Well, that’s the way it looks, boys.” Then, turning to Gonji: “What’s our next move, Gonji? What’s the plan? Vedun next, eh?”
Gonji made no answer. Suddenly Paolo was Gonji’s equal, full of tactical questions, his sullen introversion gone. Proven yourself, have you?
“Let’s restore order,” Gonji called out over his head. “See to our men. I want a head count. Check the perimeter. Someone start a body count of the—”
The shouting from the stables cut him off.
“Kami!—I—”
Gonji bolted to the stables, the curious and concerned following him. He arrived there to find four of his men holding the crusty old cook and hostler Jocko at bay. In a manner of speaking....
“Pilgrim!” Jocko shouted to see Gonji. “Sonofabitch! Ya told me you’d be back like a conqueror, and goddamn if ya didn’t do it! Hee-heeeee!” He rushed forward, past the now relieved band at whom the apparent madman had been waving his rusty cutlass, “Kingslayer,” and embraced Gonji like a son.
“What a grand night it is! How ‘bout some wine fer you an’ yer pals? Say, y’know,” he said in a low voice, “I don’t like ta say nothin’, but ya better get yerself some good boys. Why, if an old codger like me can hold off four of ’em, well—”
They were speaking in Italian, some of the men at a total loss to know what was going on.
“I told them not to hurt you, you old relic. But go ahead, break open the wine casks. Later we’ll reminisce. My friends, this is Giacomo Battaglia—”
“Just Jocko,” the old man growled.
“—who saved my life from these brigands a while back.”
Angelo, Jocko’s mule, began braying and kicking in the smith shop.
“Awww, shut up, Ange! I’m comin’, I’m comin’, dammit!”
“All right, bushi,” Gonji said, “let’s see what we’ve done.”
They moved off to sort out the village, voices in translation relating tales of the fray. It had been a new experience for most of them.
Anton’s leg was patched. He wouldn’t be fighting on foot for quite a while. And Stefan Berenyi had come forward clutching a bloody rag, pale as the harvest moon. When the rag was unwrapped, it was found that he’d lost a finger. “Oh, is that all it is?” he joked to stave off his nausea and a fainting spell. They quickly got him drunk so that the old woman who served as village physician could cauterize the wound. All the while Berenyi sat in a cold sweat, shivering, telling jokes that Nagy for once suffered in silence.
But that was the extent of the militia’s casualties—not a single death, and most of them seemed encouraged, if a little unnerved, to have seen Gonji’s savagery in battle for the first time. And the samurai, for his part, understood that some of them failed altogether to take part in the exercise, these having at least gained something from the grim sight of it all, he thought.
“I didn’t do very well today,” Jiri said to him when no one else was around to hear.
“Forget it, Jiri, that’s the way it is sometimes.”
“Don’t give up on me, eh? I feel more comfortable about it now. All I need is some extra work in ken-jutsu—”
“Jiri, this isn’t a competition to please me. This is war. Do what you must to feel good about yourself.” And with that Gonji left him to ponder what he had said.
Later Gonji stood alongside Wilf, watching as the bodies of the last fifteen members of Klann’s 3rd Royalist Free Company were loaded onto wagons for burial. The samurai cleansed his katana blade with a silk bandanna taken from the dead Esteban. He saw Wilf staring at the man he had killed. “Are you all-recht, Wilf?” he asked gently.
“I think,” Wilf breathed.
The wrapped corpse of Navarez was the last to be brought, Paolo carrying his head, which no one else would touch. The manner of the captain’s death still evoked terror and revulsion among some of them, Gonji knew, and he decided to probe them about it.
“This man did me grave insult and offense. He tried to kill me—”
One of the grimacing militiamen spoke his mind in a way that brought the band to tense silence:
“Who are you? What are you? Are you a god or a spirit or a demon, that you can fight like that? So...coldly.... You—you—”
“I’m both very good, and very lucky,” Gonji replied evenly, “but still a man. When my time comes, I’ll fall like any other. Maybe I’ll fall a little more gracefully....”
His arch tone on the last word brought a few chuckles, but his detractor continued, impassioned now:
“You make light of it! I’m talking about the way you kill. You kill men like—like—like you’re gleaning in a field. Like they—”
“I’m sorry that you don’t approve, friend. Battle is like that. I didn’t make the rules. I just survive, that’s all. Just because men die when I strike them doesn’t mean I don’t believe in human dignity. I’m sorry that I’m so good. I’m what my father expected me to be. Can you say the same? What were you hoping—that I’d die back there? That one of those bandits would be better? Your hope was misplaced. Better to start hoping that none you meet on the field are better than you—”
“It isn’t going to matter, because I’m not going to be on any battlefield.” With that he turned and walked away, and another followed him. They left the village and returned to their horses.
“Shouldn’t we stop them?” Paolo asked.
“Iye—it’s their right. Maybe they’ll turn out to be smarter anyway.”
A new magistrate was appointed in Zarnesti. Gonji recognized him as a burly villager whose life the samurai had spared when he had helped the mercenaries take the village. The man thanked Gonji through an interpreter, relating that he had felt the samurai was a noble man when he had seen how the bunch had tried
to kill him on that miserable night. The militia left the village leader several edged weapons and half the bandit pistols, with which to help defend his village in the future.
Gonji went alone to the widow of the smith he had killed to try to convey his deep sorrow, but she would not receive him; nor would she even hear him out through an interceding villager, saying only that she wished he were as dead as her husband and would pray that he would soon end up that way.
Gonji was profoundly pained by this, his heart heavy with guilt. But there was nothing he could do. It was his karma.
When the militia mounted to leave Zarnesti, deep in the night, Gonji said his farewells to old Jocko, having tipped a few cups to their mutual good fortune. “And what will you do now, old sourface?” Gonji asked.
“Well...seein’s how ya made me unemployed....” He shook his head.
“You won’t go up and tell Klann what we’ve done?”
Jocko’s grating laughter blared forth. “That’d be pretty stupid—I saved yer cursed life fer ya! No, I think it’s kinda funny, one li’l bugger like you givin’ Klann’s whole army an’ monsters and God knows what-all else the fits! Only you be careful now. These’re small fry ya done-in here. As for me...I kinda think I’ll stay around here a bit. Ya killed their only hostler, ya dumb ass! But that’s work fer me. And then, I dunno...I got this notion I ain’t too long fer this world, and I got a grandson I ain’t never seen. Maybe I’ll spend some o’ that time with him. Who knows?”
“Take care, my friend, and may the spirits of your ancestors guide you to a place of gentle respite, when your time comes.”
“Well, now, I don’t know about that, sonny, but you just watch yer arse. Y’hear, pilgrim?”
“Sayonara, old man.”
They rode out of Zarnesti exhausted, wounded, but in high spirits. Anton clopped up beside Gonji when they slowed. He didn’t look well.
“My cousin, in the village, is well. Thought you might want to know.”
Gonji glanced at the balding knight. “I’m pleased for you.”
For a time they rode on in silence, something on Anton’s mind besides his pain. Finally he phrased it: “They lost something back there, your bushi, no?”