by Rypel, T. C.
* * * *
Flavio and Tralayn turned with the rest of the supplicants in the chapel when the doors flew open and the Llorm squad marched in. There were a few strained screams. Some people sobbed openly in fear of death. Women pulled their crying children close. Several people rose and formed a determined knot around the Elder and the prophetess, but Tralayn ordered them away.
The two looked deeply into each other’s eyes and exchanged a nod of resolution and mutual commitment to go peacefully with the arresting party.
Tralayn took the Elder’s hand and squeezed it in a finality of warmth and affection.
* * * *
Julian’s lieutenant, Ivar, headed up a party of mercenaries searching for Tralayn. They tried her house first, bursting through the door with drawn swords, their fears of her witch’s notoriety making them not a little anxious. Some of them grumbled. Accosting a witch was extremely hazardous duty that ought to earn them a bonus.
Their fears were soon allayed: the house was empty.
But then they caught sight of the awesome weapons slung over the mantel. They looked from one to the other, speechless, the huge pieces arousing primal fears none of them would care to voice later. As their leader, Ivar knew it was his duty to quell such nonsense as he now saw in their eyes. He puffed up his chest and strode to the fireplace.
“Make a good set of weapons for Tumo, eh? Just about his size—”
The brackets gave way at just that instant, and the huge pieces fell to the floor with a thunderous echo. The stillness in the parlor was almost a palpable thing.
“I’ll...come back for ’em later, eh?” They were already backing out, even as the tremulous words quivered Ivar’s lips.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The sounds of the revolt poured into Vedun’s skies. The din of battle reached Michael’s house on the Via Fidei, the main avenue near the center of the city, which, though surrounded by frenzied activity on all sides, was as yet fairly quiet, the eye of calm at the center of the clash.
Inside the Benedettos’: terror and confusion among the gathered refugees; concern for what was happening both without and within. For Gonji and Paille were by now irretrievably drunk. Gonji had fallen to vulgar introspection, snarling at those who would try to disturb his maudlin self-pity. Paille crashed about the house, blaring heraldic outcries. Wilf slumped on a settee, one leg hanging over its back. He seemed ill, his face twisted; he alternated between short fitful naps and glassy-eyed staring matches with Spine-cleaver, which lay across him.
Lydia wrung her hands as she peered through an upstairs shutter, Michael at her side, his face a mask of fear and indecision. She whimpered softly, an angry tear rolling down her face as they watched the search party enter Flavio’s manse farther down the Via Fidei.
“This is what your military preparedness has brought upon us,” she accused, sniffing and brushing away the tear.
Michael made no answer, just kept staring as the searching mercenaries left Flavio’s and clattered off with a howl toward the sounds of fighting at the market area.
They hurried down the stairs at the sound of beating on the rear door behind the kitchen. Michael set his sword in a nearby pantry and inched open the door—
Several militiamen stood without. Michael yanked the door open, and Monetto led them in—Roric Amsgard, Jiri Szabo, and three others.
“Where’s Gonji?” Monetto cried in a rush. “The rebellion’s on. Who gave an order?”
“Not I,” Michael declared.
“Nor any of us,” Roric agreed. “This is Phlegor’s doing, I’ll wager. We’ve got to decide what to do now. Most of the militia await an order, and I doubt Rorka’s heard yet, unless someone who was in the chapel when—”
“Roric—look!” Galioto the dairy farmer cried, standing in the archway to the parlor, staring in disbelief. Galioto was an intense and serious Sicilian who constantly complained of tension headaches from the way the world had of confounding his idea of how it ought to work. He, it was, who was the first to see Gonji in his deplorable state. Galioto grabbed his head and began shaking it hopelessly. “Oh, no, Gonji....”
The others surged into the parlor.
“Found your leader, have you?” Lydia said sourly at their backs.
Aldo Monetto rushed up to the now seated samurai. “Gonji—it’s begun, Gonji. We need you at the square—everywhere. They’re fighting, Gonji, fighting and dying with no plan, no organization....” He pulled Gonji upright, grasping his sweat-soaked tunic.
The samurai glared at him with watery red eyes. “What are you doing here?” Gonji slurred, grabbing Aldo’s wrist. “Why aren’t you training?”
“To the caverns!” Paille yelled.
“Hush yourself in my house, you drunken fool,” Lydia ordered, surging forward and pointing. Paille glowered at her.
The wyvern shrilled in the city’s skies. Somewhere: the bawling idiot roar of the cretin giant.
“Listen, Gonji,” Roric urged. “Listen—the beasts are here! Mord’s familiars. They’re destroying people in the streets. We’ve got to do something.” Whispers, and the shuffling of the terrified, surged through the house.
“Calm yourselves,” Michael directed. “Nothing can be accomplished by panic.”
Wilf pulled himself up and listened, casting about for something that apparently wasn’t there. The katana fell off his lap. He looked as if he’d vomit.
“The foul dragon,” Gonji breathed reverentially. Then he growled and surged to his feet. “Come, bushi—the time to fight is now!” He staggered forward two paces and stumbled, falling heavily. They looked from one to the other in desperation as they picked him up from the floor.
“Oh, Gonji—” Galioto whined, clutching his hair in both hands.
Paille leaped atop the Benedettos’ dining table. “To horse! Assemble the Hussars! Let freedom win the day! Someone bring me quill and scroll!”
“Get off there, you idiot,” Lydia shouted.
“Gonji, come on, we’ve got to get you—”
The samurai pushed them away violently, swung a backfist at Jiri, who ducked and tripped backward over a stool.
“Get hold of yourself, for God’s sake!” Roric stormed at him. “Get me an emetic,” he shouted at Lydia’s trembling cook, who hurried off in response.
Roric grabbed Gonji from behind in a bear hug, calling out for help. The samurai growled and broke the hold with a snap of arms and hips that knocked Roric back, his wind whoofing out of him. Monetto seized Gonji’s arm and hung on for dear life as the samurai began to claw for the Sagami. Jiri latched onto his other arm. Gonji tried to kick, but his sense of balance had long since fled.
“What are we going to do now?” Galioto cried, sagging into a chair, where he hunched forward.
Three of them now had a grip on Gonji and began to half-walk, half-drag him around the shambles of Michael’s parlor. The wyvern skirred over the house with a sucking rush of wind. A woman’s voice puled in prayer in another room. Paille stomped atop the table, marching back and forth, singing a French battle hymn, a taper held before him in lieu of a sword.
The cook’s emetic concoction arrived from the kitchen.
“Paille, get down from there before I knock you down,” Michael shouted, advancing.
“Benedetto’s joined the enemy!” The artist leaped down from the table and staggered behind the sofa, extending the candle in defiance. “I shan’t be taken without a fight!”
Roric poured the emetic down Gonji’s throat while the others held him. Gonji choked on it, gasping. Wilf was standing behind them now, his face askew. He stared dimly, trying to make sense of his surroundings. “Genya,” he whispered thickly. “Got to save Genya....”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Monetto ordered. “Someone grab Wilfred.” Two men took him by the arms and spoke gently to him, and he sat back down without a fight.
Gonji gagged at last on the emetic, having drained it off. They started to walk him around the room ag
ain, his arms around Jiri’s and Monetto’s necks. Lydia stood in a doorway, gazing on the scene in disgust. Her house stank like the Provender on harvest home.
“Give me my sword, you cowards,” the samurai blustered, sagging between the two bushi. Monetto and Jiri strained under his weight, his feet dragging.
There came a pounding at the rear door again.
“Merciful heavens!” the cook cried.
Lydia’s face contorted. “This is madness. Michael—this is your house—do something!”
Michael turned around once, twice, tipped between helping them sober Gonji and responding to the knocking, which came again, this time more insistently. He moved to a wall cabinet, thrust it open and pushed aside a clutter of linens and tableware. Opening a secret panel in its rear, he withdrew a pistol. Lydia espied the weapon with shock, its presence unknown to her.
Michael cocked the pistol and strode through the kitchen, followed by Roric and Lydia. “Open that, please,” he said through tensed lips.
Lydia crossed herself as the butcher complied. The door swung open, and there stood Karl Gerhard, his English longbow at his side.
Michael breathed a sigh and lowered the gun.
“Michael—Roric—!” the dour archer uttered in surprise. “The people are in revolt—there’s no one to lead them—”
“Has the militia turned out?” Michael said.
“Most of them are waiting for official word, I think. The craftsmen started it and...and now it seems there’s no turning back.” Gerhard moved into their midst, someone closing the door behind them. He continued in a grim whisper. “The beasts are here, gentlefolk. They’re killing people at the square. We’ve got to do something.”
Cries came from the parlor. “A chamber pot—quickly!”
The cook came charging through, retrieving the pot from the garderobe and rushing back with it—too late. The sounds of Gonji’s heaving came to them. Lydia walked back into the kitchen slowly, eyes closed, jaw trembling.
“Gonji’s in there,” Michael said.
“What?”
“Indisposed, I’m afraid.”
Gerhard grabbed Michael’s arm. “He’s to be arrested. Soldiers are searching for him, on Captain Kel’Tekeli’s order. They’ll kill you if he’s found hiding here!”
“Mother of God,” Galioto prayed, listening from the doorway.
“We’ve got to get him out of here,” Gerhard said. “Michael, you and Roric must get to the market stalls and give them some kind of leadership. They’re dying out there like—like animals.” Karl pushed through to the parlor, saw the grotesque spectacle there. “Himmel,” he muttered.
Michael and Roric looked at each other, and the protege slowly stuffed the pistol into his belt. They nodded their resolve and lashed on sword belts and baldrics.
“Michael!” Lydia shouted, horrified. “Michael, don’t go—please!”
“It’s our duty,” he replied. “We must. I’ll...I’ll try to put an end to it.” Lydia stared through the space he vacated as Michael and Roric went to the cellar and returned with helms and half-armors, buckling them on. A moment later they were gone into the night aboard two steeds from the courtyard.
Gerhard and Monetto gazed in mutual astonishment at the vulgar spectacle the amazing oriental warrior had made of himself. He lay face down, snoring sonorously, the smeared effects of his retching all around him. Both knew, even from what little they had absorbed of the tenets of bushido, that there would be a terrible price to pay for his loss of self-control this night. If he survived....
“We’ve got to clean him up, Aldo, get him away from this. He’s—”
“Soldiers are coming!” a man cried from a window. “They’re searching house to house.”
Gerhard stiffened. “I saw them earlier—didn’t think they’d reach this street so fast.”
“What’ll we do?” Monetto asked, panting in his fear. “We can’t let them take him like this.”
“I know—I know—Lydia, is there any place we can hide him?”
“Nowhere,” she replied. “You’ve got to get him out of here. And then all of you—go out and help Michael.”
Monetto looked around: the rest here would be of no help. Paille had slumped against the wall behind the sofa, his head lolling on his chest. Wilf was deeply asleep. A few others cowered behind wild, bulging eyes.
“The cellar,” the biller said in sudden inspiration. “Let’s see what they’ve got in the cellar.”
They raced down the stairs and rooted about.
“There’s nowhere to hide him down here,” Gerhard complained.
“I’m not looking to hide him, idiot. We need something to carry him off in.” He ran his hand over the top of a bulky old armoire.
Gerhard shook his head. “That’s too damn heavy. We couldn’t even carry that thing through the streets empty.”
“How about this?” Monetto fished up a pile of Lydia’s old clothes from a wooden crate. “We could dress him up in—” He saw Karl’s look of ridicule and dropped the garments.
Then they spotted the brine barrel. It had been used for pickling, and its stench, when the lid was removed, welled up at them, overpowering.
“Whoo!” Gerhard breathed. “Forget it.”
“No-no, this is just what we need. Help me get it up the stairs.”
With a skeptical frown the hunter complied. They poured the reeking liquid out onto the cellar floor and carried the barrel up without much trouble. Under Lydia’s perplexed stare they dragged Gonji into the kitchen, washed him off, and wrestled him into the barrel, folded into a fetal position. His swords were dropped in with him.
“Hurry—they’re coming here next!”
Gerhard pounded the lid into place after splintering three hasty breathing holes. They could hear Gonji groaning within. Then there was a banging at the rear door again. Karl swiftly nocked an arrow and pulled back on the bow. The first man through was marked for death. But when Monetto flung open the oaken door and raised his axe, its lethal edge was angled at a flinching citizen.
“Are you crazy, Monetto? Signora Benedetto—Michael’s been hurt!”
“Wha-a-a-t?” Lydia cried, rushing up to them. “Oh, dear God—where? How?”
“An arrow, I think—he’s at Signore Vargo’s.”
“Go, Lydia,” Monetto urged, pushing her to the door. “That’s where we’ll meet you—at Milorad’s.”
Michael’s wife rushed out with the messengers, but they all jostled to a sudden halt: two mercenaries rode through the opened gate and into the courtyard, blades drawn.
“Where you people going?” a gruff voice called out.
“My husband—!” Lydia shrieked at him. “He’s been hurt.”
But before the words were finished, the first shaft sizzled through the air from the cracked-open shutters and a mercenary was torn backward off his saddle. The second soldier lurched his whinnying steed and swung toward the gate. Gerhard leapt out onto the portico, nocking and launching in one motion—the second man spilled over onto the horse’s neck as it bolted out into the street.
“Drag that body into the lane, far from the house,” Karl whispered harshly. Two men complied, another catching Lydia in her swoon, hurrying her toward the gate.
“Go on, get moving!” Galioto ordered from the parlor arch. “I’ll try to put them off when they come.” He shook his aching head, wincing.
Gerhard and Monetto hefted their burden, grunting. They lugged the barrel to the gate. The others had already run halfway up the street, past the advance of the search parties, which could be heard shouting on the Via Fidei. Twice they had to set Gonji down and duck into cover; once for a clattering Llorm troop, a second time for a band of galloping rebels, with a mercenary squad in hot pursuit. Both times the barrel came perilously close to being a surprise stumbling block.
At last they reached the rear yard of the house across from Milorad’s. But they still had to cross over the now deadly Street of Faith. A short sprint—w
ithout the barrel and its precious cargo.
They knelt in the shadows between the houses, panting for breath.
“We may have to just...just leave him here somewhere,” Gerhard observed despairingly, “come back for him later.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Monetto countered. “What if he comes to and climbs out at the wrong time?”
“He has the Sagami, dummkopf!”
“Against all these soldiers? Come on, Karl, we’re not that tired.”
“We still can’t run across, and we’ll have to run. Besides, what about my bow? They’re sure to spot that.”
A Llorm party pounded past, crossbows clacking at distant rebels.
“Hope they made it all-recht,” Karl breathed, thinking of Lydia’s bunch. A sudden notion: “I know what let’s do—let’s roll him across.”
Monetto’s face contorted and his stomach churned just to think of Gonji’s situation. “You’re crazy.”
“Nein, it’s the only way. A good push—a really good push. It wouldn’t do to have him stop in the street. And then we follow fast. How about it?”
“Stupid,” Monetto assessed the idea. But in the end he had to agree it was the only way.
Gonji moaned pathetically inside the barrel. “Sleep, sensei. It’ll be all right,” Monetto said, slapping the lid.
They waited until the most propitious moment. Then, running behind the rolling barrel and injecting all their remaining energy into the push, they sent Gonji bouncing and scraping across the tumult on the Via Fidei. Holding their breaths and grimacing with every bounce, they watched it rumble over the cobblestones, hit the sewage gutter at the center of the street and lurch over with increased momentum, then begin the roll up the slight grade to the far side of the street. With failing speed it struck the tiny curb and jumped up onto the fieldstone walk, where it settled. More soldiers thundered past. They waited anxiously a long time, or so it seemed. But at last they were able to sprint across the avenue safely.
Picking up the barrel once more, they struggled to the rear courtyard, where they were met by a grim party of citizens, who lent them assistance.
* * * *
Phlegor was dragged to the square, bound and bleeding.