Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two

by Rypel, T. C.

  Then the huge man, Chooch, stalked her slowly, grinning. And whether by the thickness of the walls or the familiarity of the sound, Genya’s screams aroused no interest outside the gatehouse.

  Later—a timeless, woeful outrage later—she lay on the powdered floor, her face streaked by tears which would no longer flow. The vile gatekeeper stood over her, his beastly companion having drawn away from her, exhausted, surfeited, slumped on a bench along the soiled granite wall.

  “Well done,” Tomas said archly, clapping. “Was it truly so bad?”

  She curled like an animal at bay against the lash’s feathering course along her nakedness.

  “Like everything else,” he taunted, “freedom has its price. But wouldn’t Wilbert be pleased to know how badly you wish to see him?”

  “Bastards,” she whispered with undisguised revulsion, her tears flowing briefly again. But now they were tears of rage, and for the first time in her life she knew what hatred felt like.

  Tomas kicked over to her the discarded man’s clothes she’d worn. “Get those on and go. You begin to bore us.”

  She rose at once and dressed, averting her eyes from them. A cold, ugly feeling radiating a dead emotionlessness inside that vaguely bothered her. Just get out of here and be done with it—that was all she could think now.

  “Which one of you...sees me through the free companions?” she asked in a cracked voice, replacing the slouch hat. The dead cold feeling had reached her glazed stare.

  Tomas feigned surprise. “Oh—whatever is wrong with me, Chooch? I forgot to tell the lady. You see, the demand for freedom is so high that our risk has increased lately. We’ve had to raise our price. Three nights now...you see.” He flicked his lash at the flies that clustered on the walls. “The door is unlocked. Good morrow.”

  She gulped back the sickening taste of bile in her throat and shuffled back through the grating iron portal, numbly drifting along the tunnel and turning into the corridor where she had left her own clothes. When she had slumped to the floor next to the bin, her tears came again in the cheerless shadows, this time accompanied by wracking sobs.

  Once two Llorm sentries were attracted by her weeping, but she sent them off, bewildered at her insensate harangue. But it had seemed to do her good. No longer did she think only hateful, vengeful thoughts; the futility of killing the perverted swine, and then herself, came to her with dismal clarity. What was done was done. And her thoughts of murdering King Klann and/or Mord melted under the white heat of returning reason: Klann would only rise from the dead again, and the evil magician might divine her purpose before she could see it through. No, however dreadful the plight of the city, she doubted whether she could be of help now.

  But no man would ever do such an awful thing to her again. Of that she was starkly sure. She would get a dagger. And she would use it....

  O Madonna, I’ve been an awful woman, just awful, she prayed. So sure of myself. So quick to use my charms. My charms.... And then she prayed for Wilf, prayed in intercession, that he might be spared the horrors that were surely in the offing for Vedun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It was well past a hazy gray dawn when Wilf and Gonji’s furtive efforts at last brought them to Tralayn’s house. Their proximity to the mercenary garrison had kept their progress slow, but they gained the slain woman’s dwelling without incident and entered via the window by which they had last left it.

  Passing through the fireplace, they made the descent into the catacombs hastily, Wilf having fallen silent, brooding over Gonji’s refusal to honor his promise. Soon they caught sight of the glowing torches in the nexus cavern between the tunnels and the training ground. Many anxious voices could be heard as they approached, and when Gonji appeared at the tunnel adit, several of them greeted him excitedly.

  The samurai experienced a mixed warmth and guilt to see how many of the bushi had faithfully crammed into the small cavern to await him. Something over fifty men pressed forward amid the babble of voices.

  Most of the Zarnesti foray party were there: Karl Gerhard, Aldo Monetto, Nick Nagy, Peter Foristek, Jiri Szabo, others—all looking confused, breathless and apprehensive; Alain Paille had also come, sober now and full of nervous energy. By the sheepish looks of some, Gonji deduced that the story of his shameful breach of duty had already been spread, and in his introspective search for the right words to convey his apologies to the faithful militiamen, he failed to notice what was different about the vestibule chamber, the source of their disquiet.

  He bowed to all of them. “Listen to me, all of you—I apologize for—”

  “Never mind that now,” Paille rasped harshly from across the vaulted chamber, “there’s something dreadfully wrong here—look.” He indicated the iron-bound door, all the others clamming up. The portal was closed. It never had been before.

  “Locked,” the artist whispered loudly. “Barred from within.”

  Gonji rushed up to the door as the others crowded in. The small storage and receiving chamber was jammed now, more men straggling in. A baking swelter of massed body heat. Gonji hushed them and strained to listen at the cracks, twisting his nose at the foul stench that seeped in.

  “Q’est-ce que c’est? What is it?” Paille wondered.

  “Shhh!” Gonji commanded, listening. The sounds of whinnying and clumping—the horses were loose from the corral. But no human sounds emanated from the cavern. Gonji tried the door, one hand on the Sagami, but it wouldn’t budge. A sensation of primitive fear coursed through them all.

  The samurai cast about, his mind a-whirl. “What weapons have we?”

  “Few,” Monetto replied.

  “There are tools here,” Peter Foristek called out.

  Gonji considered it a moment, then nodded. “All-recht,” he spoke in German, “let’s open it...and see....”

  Foristek led a small band with pry-bars in working free the embedded hinges on their side, then gouging the stone door jamb so that they could get a bite on the door. As Monetto had said, there were few weapons; most were in the grotto used as an armory. Some had their swords, and a few staffs were in evidence in glistening fists, but there were only three pistols, and only Gerhard had dared smuggle down a longbow.

  As the work progressed, their tension spread contagiously, men crumbling into fearful hitched sobbing or gasps that they would try to smother by beating tools or swords against the rock walls.

  “Courage,” Gonji urged in a firm, gentle voice as he walked slowly around the cavern, hand on the Sagami’s hilt. “Time for prayer now, or meditation....” He palmed aside the sweat beading his brow, soaking his light beard. Water skins were passed around by those who had brought them. The few containing wine were drained off the quickest.

  “There might be...just about anything on the other side of that,” a man observed in a tremulous voice.

  “We’re sure not going to surprise anybody,” Szabo said in a weak effort at humor.

  “Might be...a whole army waiting for us,” another man continued in a quaking voice.

  “And if there is,” Gonji said, “then you can be sure there’ll be one at the ends of the other tunnels as well. So there’s no point in fretting. Karma.”

  A few men, some of the married ones in particular, began to worry about the safety of their families, in view of what Gonji was suggesting. If the catacombs’ secret had been compromised—Some of them broke under the stress, bolting back into the tunnels to ascend to the city. Wilf and a few companions moved to stop them.

  “Nein,” Gonji called, holding up a hand. “Let them go—”

  A bolt shrieked free of a timber on the other side of the door—only one coupling left that fixed the door to the bar. The work party eyed Gonji.

  “Get ready,” he ordered quietly. He and Wilf drew their katanas and raised them in a striking stance, other men moving behind them on either side of the door, swords at the ready. Gerhard and the pistoliers stood facing the arch, longbow and guns loaded for a volley at whatever
came through. A table was turned on its side and set before them as a crude shield.

  Gonji bobbed his head. “Finish it,” he whispered.

  Pete and the others gave their pry-bars a mighty wrench on the side with the remaining coupling. The iron door wavered and fell inward.

  There were sharp cries of horror when they saw the thing on the other side, and one pistol-wielder fired into it in panic. It jolted with the impact of the loud blast but still fell inward toward them, draping over the horizontal door bar that remained anchored in solid rock on the cavern side.

  “Oh, Jesu!—Holy Mother of God!—Damn you, Sklarz!—”

  “It’s the baron!”

  It had taken seconds to identify Baron Rorka, in the state he was in. Sklarz, the man who had fired the shot, clamped his hand over his mouth and dropped the weapon.

  “You stupid bastard!”

  “Shut up, all of you,” Gonji growled. “The shot didn’t kill him. Look at him.”

  They eased the baron’s body gingerly from the bar and onto the floor.

  “Look at his back....”

  His corpse was luridly swollen, his skin a mottled blue-black, as if his whole body were one huge bruise. They laid him face down and examined the deep gashes on his back, the rent flesh around them.

  “Don’t touch that,” Paille warned. Something bluish seeped from the wounds along with the now dried gouts of blood, and around them the swelling was most pronounced. His back had the contour of an anthill.

  “Gott in Himmel—what is it?”

  “Some kind of...venom, I should think,” the artist mused.

  Several more men now lost courage, abandoning the terrifying scene to take their chances in the tunnels.

  “All-recht,” Gonji said, standing. “Pull him inside, and don’t touch the wound. Anyone else who can’t summon the guts to enter with me, leave now.”

  “We’re going in?” Vlad Dobroczy asked, moving up close behind the samurai, swallowing hard. “But that could be suicide. Who knows what’s—”

  “Everything we’ve trained for is in there,” Gonji said. “Our main armament cache. There may even be survivors who need help. All the finest horses—If no one else goes, I want to know what’s happened here.”

  “Well...,” Karl Gerhard said, moving up to the arch. He kissed his longbow and seated his quiver of arrows comfortably on his back, blinking back sweat. “We’re wasting time, nicht wahr?”

  “Just let me get to a halberd,” Foristek ground out through clenched teeth, staring at the baron’s corpse.

  Something came to their ears, echoing dimly in the cavern: a hissing, and then a grinding of rock. Then it was consumed by the tight, rough breathing of the bushi.

  Gonji slid the bar out of their way and stepped into the cavern.

  As they moved in, the horror was compounded in their unblinking eyes. More dead men, similarly bloated and discolored. Three knights—two militiamen—weapons scattered about their bodies: they had covered the baron’s flight. Or had it even been flight that had motivated him?

  “Why didn’t the baron get away, having made it this far?” Wilf whispered behind Gonji. “Why did he—?”

  “I...don’t think he was able, Wilf. I think your baron died a hero. With his last effort he tried to protect us from...whatever it was that did this. By locking us out, to warn us....”

  They moved into the main cavern, where the unsaddled steeds raced about in a frenzy. A wild herd. Gonji glanced about for Tora, but the stallion was nowhere in sight. The training ground was a shambles in spots, the corral having been caved in on two sides. Two dead horses lay atop the wreckage.

  “Get to the weapons,” Gonji called low, and a large party broke off and scrambled for the armament grotto.

  “Gonji—look,” Monetto said in anguish. He was pointing at the area of shelters used for sleeping and privacy by Rorka’s Grays. They were smashed to bits, bodies strewn amidst the debris, bloated and gouged like the others, many of them naked, having been overtaken in sleep.

  Gonji rubbed the back of his neck in wonder at the portent of the carnage. What could have done such a—? Then he descried the drag marks in the dust, the long trails that all led to...the shallow flat outgrowth of rock on which many training lectures had been held, near the center of the cavern. And about the same time, as the others took note, rasping in breath sharply, they heard the slithering sounds in the ground beneath their feet.

  “Stay clear of the rocks and tunnels,” Gonji commanded. They all froze, looking about cautiously, wide-eyed. The men who had gone after weapons slowed, listening, hushing one another as the sound moved toward the pounding of their massed feet—

  A resounding cracking of earth and stone—

  And the horror erupted in their midst, spewing rocks and shale and screaming men in every direction as it burst up from the bowels of the earth, mewling with a shrill echo like a thousand cats in a cathedral. Beyond its sound, it bore no resemblance to anything natural.

  In seconds the monstrous creature had snared a shrieking man and dragged him under the earth, slithering backward, down into the depths through the new hole in the cavern floor. The stunned survivors of the eruption crawled away, some moaning in pain with injuries sustained in their fall.

  “Cholera—what in all the hells is that?” Gonji breathed. Then, shouting: “Get to the damned weapons! Fan out. Head for the sides of the cavern. Hurry—we need bows and guns—”

  “It’s a serpent,” someone behind said in awe.

  “Nyet, it had claws.”

  “We’ve got to get to the tunnels, Gonji,” Wilf cried. “We can’t fight that thing!”

  “Get hold of yourself,” the samurai shouted.

  “There’s no one left alive here to rescue!” a man screamed. “Let’s get out before we’re next!”

  A rumbling eruption came again from the direction of the tunnel that exited into the hills. Then the subterranean scraping came again under the cavern floor. Swift and ominous. The creature slithered under their feet impossibly fast, imparting a primal fear that one could not count on the solidity of the very earth beneath his feet.

  “Then let’s get out of here now,” Gonji agreed, swallowing back the lump in his throat. “You men with the armament—grab what you can and get back to—”

  “Gonji!” Paille was yelling, sprinting out of the southern valley tunnel, three men trailing behind him. “Gonji, that thing’s burrowed up into the tunnels, blocked them off with tons of earth! We can’t get out this way!”

  “Back to the city tunnels,” Gerhard yelled, waving them all toward the way they had come. But a fresh explosion of rock before the door through which they’d pried their way in stopped them in their tracks, some men pummeled by the hurtling stones. The beast emerged, triumphantly clacking its clawed tentacles, and its segmented, wormlike body—forty or fifty feet of flexing and extending rings—bowed and stretched eerily in place, churning up rocks behind it with its tail, such that the portal to the city tunnels was effectively blocked in seconds.

  It reared up on its tail and wove its beaked, eyeless head, birdlike, as if listening. The men in the cavern all stood and stared in abject terror, their claustrophobic shock paralyzing them. Every man now understood what was happening. The training cavern had become a larder, a livestock pantry for the worm-thing’s casual feeding.

  Its pair of grasping appendages sprouted from its body for nearly a third of its length. These were similarly segmented and ended in the vicious talons that now rubbed its beak, as if cleansing lazily while it sat, coiled with detached unconcern.

  “Stand still, everyone,” Gonji shouted. His voice echoed, and the monster’s head twisted again. It tensed and extended the awful tentacles, sliding forward slightly. “Move only on my commands.” It slid forward half a length, its motion, when above ground, like that of an inchworm.

  “Karl,” Gonji whispered. “Try one.”

  Gerhard drew back on his mighty bow, launched—the shaft em
bedded in its soft gray underside with an almost pulpy sound. The beast emitted a high-pitched whine like a startled cat and raked the air before gliding forward. A knot of men panicked and bolted at the center of the training ground, and the monster immediately undulated after them.

  “Stop, you fools—it can’t see you,” Gonji cried. “It has to feel your footfalls!”

  The worm was terrifyingly fast for its size. One man stumbled, and the creature was led unerringly to the sound of his falling body. It descended on him as he screamed insanely, seizing him with the talons, immobilizing him with the venom from the spurs that projected from the base of those chitinous talons, like extruded stings. Then it gouged his belly open with its hooked beak, and the ghastly sucking sounds began.

  Suddenly the cavern was alive with panic-stricken militiamen, who scrambled for cover anywhere it might be found. The worm fed casually on the freshly killed prey.

  “Come on, you men,” Gonji yelled to the staring bowmen and pistoliers, and they rushed forward. “Follow me,” he said to the bunch within earshot.

  “Where?”

  “To get more weapons and mounts.” He began to run.

  “But that thing will follow our footsteps!” Wilf shouted after, trotting hesitantly, with eyes fixed on the worm.

  “Just follow me!”

  Several men ran with him in answer, Gerhard launching a parting shot that pierced its hide, disturbing its feeding. It lashed about blindly a second, then followed after the running footfalls, even as Wilf had feared.

  “Fire!” Gonji ordered over his shoulder, to the gawking militiamen, who seemed reluctant to use their weapons for fear of drawing the monster’s notice. That snapped them from their collective trance.

  A fusillade of gunfire and bowshot exploded and whistled into the monster’s soft flesh. It rocked with the impact, a banshee wail spewing from its maw. There were shouts of released tension when its mesmerizing hold was broken, but now the pistol-men had to retreat to reload, and the beast bore down on the shouting band of archers, who fell into disarray and broke into flight rather than resuming their attack.