by Rypel, T. C.
* * * *
The chilling thunder of the muskets nearly cost Gonji his life.
His parry was slow and imprecise, and the harrowing pass at his ribs lost him positional advantage. But then urgency electrified practiced reflexes. A flick of his left wrist slapped the attacker full in the face with the seppuku blade, sending him spinning, whining in pain.
Gonji spun into a crouch against the hacking whiz above his head and caught the blow hilt-tight on the killing sword, enabling him to throw the second man backward on leg power alone. A low whirling parry-slash deep inside a third downward cut ripped open an attacker’s belly. The man lurched forward with a ghastly moan, clutching his abdomen, as the samurai’s licking swords hammered back two blades with an outward spread of his arms and crashed into the two men’s sides with the crossing return. One foe yanked sword and buckler into the sky in mortal agony, but the second’s hauberk had withstood the slash of the short sword. The Austrian stumbled back a pace, righted and charged, howling ferociously. Gonji’s leaping turn away from the plunging sword landed him a scant six inches from the spearing lunge of the leader, whose ugly red welt now ballooned the left side of his face.
For a frozen instant of time, the samurai was a dead man. Knifing steel poised to skewer back and belly. But such a slice of life would beckon only a fool to bet the odds.
Gonji never stopped moving, executing a quicksilver spinning pass. The first whistling slice of the Sagami sang cleanly through the welted man’s steel, casting the broken end skyward. The short sword’s backswing deflected the rear lunge, and like a fan blade Gonji continued around with the longer katana, slicing through mail and flesh. A blind stab delivered under his armpit—and the leader’s mouth gaped, behind him.
He still clutched the broken sword as he died in his tracks.
And Gonji was off at the run, a downed warrior’s moaning receding in his ears. He waved the scattered mercenaries up the hill with a broad gesture, calling for them to cling close to their saddles.
Another volley of musket shot. Gonji pulled the ground to him and hugged as musket balls pattered around him like hailstones. Feeling no searing wound, he scrabbled to his feet and drove himself toward the low line of tree cover above. Somewhere nearby, Tora must be waiting. He still carried his swords in grimy fists.
Out of the corner of his eye Gonji caught sight of a swash of filthy color groping over the treacherous shale. A mercenary. Hurt. With a quick backward glance he gauged his chances of aiding the man while yet escaping. Not good. Mounted knights with lances had begun their ponderous ascent, followed by footmen, pikes and swordpoints marking their long line. A field of bright escutcheons dotted the base of the hill.
Oh, what the hell....
Growling with every stride, Gonji loped across the hillside. Arrows sprouted suddenly from ground and trees like a magically sown crop. Two mercenaries yelped and dropped from their saddles. A horse tumbled past toward the ravine, kicking and shrieking. The oppressive heat began to take effect, Gonji feeling as if he were in the body of a heavier man.
He reached the crawling man, sheathed the seppuku sword, and clamped a hand on his shoulder. With a fierce outcry the mercenary lurched onto his back, and Gonji found himself triangulated by a pair of flinty-black eyes and the point of a dirk. He threw up a fending hand and cocked the katana in defiance.
“Hey—alto! Alto! I’m here to help!” Gonji gambled on Spanish. His guess was correct.
The Spaniard’s pearly teeth gritted against his pain, and rheumy eyes glowered at the samurai feverishly. The swarthy face was streaked with grime, a crimson trickle issuing from beneath a bandanna like tattered fabric. A thick red wetness drenched his upper leg from the furrow a musket ball had gouged through the thigh. He was trembling. His curled lips relaxed, and he drew a labored breath.
“So then help—idiot!” he roared under flaring nostrils.
Gonji put up his sword and stooped to raise Navárez. The muskets exploded again, a torrent of lead ripping into the hill as they hit the ground.
Gonji swore through pursed lips. “That’s three, amigo. Too much luck for me. Now we climb or the next round drops us both, neh?”
The Spaniard groaned with the effort to rise. Gonji grabbed his arm and yanked him up, shouldering him as best he could and churning uphill.
But they had lost far too much time. It was all over now but for the crash of a bullet or the arrival of the cavalry that could be heard chunkering to their rear, hurling challenges to halt.
A horse whinnied just behind them. Gonji hurled Navárez forward with all his strength, sending him sprawling in a cursing heap. He pulled his blade, ready for desperate engagement.
Gonji faced the vanguard of the cavalry advance. The knight at the point grimly bore down on him, leveling his lance at Gonji’s chest. The samurai pulled the dirk from his thigh strap, timed the awkward stride, hurled—
The blade struck chain mail at a bad angle, snapping in half. But the force of the missile and the horseman’s flinch caused him to lose his seating. He rolled off his mount, jangling to earth and tumbling back under the hooves of his comrades.
Then, a small burst of gunfire. Not the muskets; these shots had come from above. Navárez’ survivors were giving cover fire.
The knights pulled up and scanned the forest. Another volley. A knight wrenched in the saddle, fell heavily from his mount. Two or three nearby steeds lurched back, throwing their riders. Cries of caution and metallic clangor—
Gonji wasted no time. He scrambled up the hill to where Navárez had groped ahead and then half-pushed, half-pulled the man to where Tora snorted and pawed the mossy fieldstone at his hooves. He hoisted Navárez into the saddle and led Tora the rest of the way up the hill on foot, all the while scolding the animal for its having foolishly followed him down the hill.
“What’s the matter with you, eh, dummy?” he called over his shoulder in Japanese. “You’re in a big hurry to die, is that it? Stupid beast! You’d like to see me walk through this godforsaken country, wouldn’t you?”
Tora, for his part, was too accustomed to these outbursts to be concerned. He said nothing.
Cresting the hill, Gonji halted them and peered below. The shouts of the cavalry could still be heard, but he saw nothing. The chase had seemingly been abandoned.
Comforted, Gonji took several deep breaths to settle himself and clear his head. Then he wiped the grime from his face with a kimono sleeve, seated his swords very properly in his thick sash, stretched his frame to the six feet he could almost reach in well-soled sandals, and strode up to the Spaniard.
He looked just about as fit for inspection as any unshaven, tangle-maned samurai with a threadbare kimono could look.
Navárez didn’t look up from the task of wrapping his injured leg as Gonji stepped near and bowed formally.
“I’m Gonji Sabatake, and you—”
At that moment two riders galloped toward them out of the pine-shroud. Gonji seized the Sagami’s hilt but relaxed almost immediately. The lead rider yanked to a halt and grinned a toothy grin at Navárez, his large dark eyes flicking from the Spaniard to Gonji. He held a horse in tether.
Spanish pirates, Gonji thought.
A glance at these two plumbed up vivid memories of the seafaring rogues of the Spanish Main. Both Navárez and the first rider were bedecked in the florid tastelessness of their decadent profession, from their lurid bandannas and opulent gold earrings down to their magnificent leather riding boots—wrenched, no doubt, from the refined feet of murdered gentry.
But what in the name of the Seven Devils were they doing so far from home? so deeply landlocked? and pitted against Holy Mother Church, with whom, in these territories, they’d best be sided if they ran afoul of Magyars or Turks?
The second rider pulled even with the flashy Spaniard and introduced further confusion. For here was a tall gaunt Aryan bandit whose ragged-brimmed slouch hat could scarcely conceal his patently fair features; the classic portrait of
a northern backroad highwayman, his presence was as incongruous among these freebooters as a wolf would be among sharks.
Looking to Navárez, Gonji noted the dark shadow that etched the Spaniard’s features. Fine needles of tension prickled the air, and the second pirate’s grin faded. Without a greeting he wheeled abruptly and gestured to the north, and the two new arrivals galloped off the way they had come, leaving the spare horse behind.
“Julio-o-o-ooo!”
Navárez’ cry went unanswered, an ugly grimace settling over his battle-scarred face. His fist clawed at his wide leather belt, found empty air where once had hung his cutlass, lost in the valley conflict. He nodded gravely, a nod that marked some inner resolve.
Gonji cleared his throat, then spoke again.
“I say, amigo, I’m Gonji Sabatake, and I think we—”
“Agua,” the Spaniard grunted. “I see you have some.” He snatched the water skin from Gonji’s saddle and tipped his head back to slosh the liquid down his throat. Then he freely laved his face until his chin dripped like the jaws of a surfacing sea beast.
“Agua,” Gonji muttered low. “Help yourself.” He eased the water skin away from him and, before taking a pull, said, “You can thank me later.”
The Spaniard stared at him a moment and at last broke into a wide grin, chuckled softly, and then barked out a long throaty laugh that lasted until the burning pain of the leg wound again caught up with him. He massaged the area around the gunshot. Then he motioned to Gonji to board Tora and himself crawled onto the other horse, a groan accompanying the effort.
They looked back down the hill to where disembodied shouts and hoofbeats and sporadic gunfire could be heard in the distance.
“Vamos,” Navárez said. “Let’s go.”
They picked their way along the savage trail, which was little more than a rain-rutted footpath. The piquant scent of pine oozed in the late afternoon swelter. Stinging insects, maddened by the humidity, launched in droves after the great loping human-animal clumps that pounded through their sanctuary.
As they rode deeper into the wood, the trail took an upward drift. Watershed country. A merciful damp-cool breeze chilled them under sweat-drenched clothing. Here and there a renegade golden sunbeam broke through the entwining pine-shield above and strobed them with dull heat. Now and again they ambled uncertainly over lumpy root fingers and tangled scrub, or slipped on treacherous smooth-worn stone iced with gray-green furry moss.
They rode in silence for a long while. Then the Spaniard dropped his steed into step with Gonji’s.
“Francisco Navárez,” he growled, as if to say the name should have been obvious all along. “Where are you riding, bárbaro?”
Gonji rankled at the insult. Few things needled him as much as being called a barbarian on this foul continent. He considered a particularly choice Spanish barb.
“I’m told that—”
“I know, I know—you’re Gon-shee Sa-ba-ta-keee, corregir? Right?” Navárez cut in.
“That’s right, amigo, now tell me—what is so fine a buccaneer as yourself doing so far from the ripe shipping lanes? And what does one do around here to set a full papist army yapping at his behind? Especially so deep into territory that must be Magyar or Turk?”
“In this army,” the Spaniard bellowed, “one finds himself in many unusual circumstances. Most of which requiring a certain skill with the sword. You have such a skill perhaps?”
Gonji smiled slightly, his gaze fixed on the trail ahead. He said nothing.
“Ah, but of course you do, sí. I did not imagine, did I, all those bodies dropping on the hillside, like lightning striking, no? Snick-snick—” He made a few quick passes in the air with an imaginary sword. “Bravo, bárbaro, muy bueno! Very good! No pistols, no body armor, and yet you jump right into a fight. I like that.”
“I don’t like guns. Not a very honorable weapon, eh?” Gonji said with a shrug. “Armor? Sometimes. I just don’t happen to own any right now. Anyway, the trick is not to get hit, neh?”
Navárez laughed heartily. “You are, no doubt, seeking to employ your skill?”
“That depends.”
“Don’t let the lack of pretty uniforms mislead you, bárbaro. We’re a unified army, whatever we look like. His chest swelled with a breath befitting a heraldic pronouncement. “I am Captain of the 3rd Free Company, Royalist Force of the Isle of Akryllon.”
Gonji blinked.
Captain? he thought. Royalist Force? Now what the hell is this mangy dog trying to hand me? Great. Another lousy renegade bunch formed in uprising, with a title for every enlistee down to the third hind flea of the last straggling nag.
Gonji’s spirit sagged, and he sighed resignedly. “Who did you say your king was? Not a Magyar, was he?”
“Did I say? I think not.” A calculated pause. “We fight for King Klann the Invincible, son of the deposed king of Akryllon. We fight a wandering war, adding troops as we can, plundering for our survival. Sometimes at sea, sometimes on land. One day we’ll help him take back what is his, and we’ll all be richly rewarded. Until then, he takes good care of us.” He paused, and a distant, wistful look crossed his face. “He saved me from the belly of a shipful of condemned men. At sea I’m his third-in-command.”
Gonji strained to recall something. A legend, a fireside tale. Something.
“When we find Akryllon, we’ll tear it from the devils who hold it. Then—”
“When you find it?”
“Sí,” Navárez replied, “this isle is never in the same place twice—it’s enchanted. Lorded over by sorcerers.”
Gonji waxed grim as the trail took a gently up-winding eastern hitch and a capricious breeze began to buffet them. Evening was drawing near. Gone was his earlier mirth as the samurai tried in vain to remember where he had heard such a story before. A wandering king, a sorcerous island....
Of course, Gonji wasn’t fool enough to embrace any such romantic tale without proof. Of sorceries, those which could be proven, there were few. Horrors, yes. Things that assailed the unsuspecting, shapes that haunted sleep—these existed aplenty. Experience attested to that. But magick was dying. As people clustered together in ever larger cities, more of that which was native to the spirit was lost, spurned, despised. And magick had become a lost art, something whispered about, disbelieved.
And for that reason, all the more deadly where it was to be found. And something about this....
“What did your king do to upset the Austrian priests enough to declare war on you?”
“We...sacked their treasury. In Bratislava.”
Gonji whistled thinly. “That would make them mad enough,” he said archly. “So what’s King Klann’s next move?”
Gonji saw Navárez’ neck muscles tighten, as if he were struggling with something.
“We’re going up there,” he said at length, gesturing to the jagged, snow-capped mountains to the east. “The Transylvanian Alps. To winter in, build our numbers. Prepare for a return to the sea.”
Gonji pondered this. It was late summer. Absurd to think of wintering in at such an early date. And in those mountains? Lunacy. He must be lying. Unless, that is, there was something Klann wanted up there.
Vedun?
“By all accounts,” Gonji said, reasoning out loud, “those mountains mark the pivotal point of territory contested by three great powers. Now why would a foreign king with a small army want to place himself right in the middle of—”
“Hey, bárbaro,” Navárez knifed in with a tone suggesting caution in such idle speculations, “if the King says we go up there to die, then that’s what we do.”
Most unusual, Gonji thought. A sense of duty, commitment, to something other than gold alone?
Gonji was intrigued. Moreover, he was probing a raw nerve—a favorite sport. He needled it anew.
“No amount of gold will send mercenaries happily to their deaths. How does Klann keep these free companions faithful? What power does he use?”
“T
here are powers beyond simple wealth, bárbaro, that men can draw strength from,” he answered cryptically.
Gonji turned this over briefly, filed it away.
They rode on without speaking for a time. Birds flitted among the towering pine peaks, and an occasional hare or deer would bound off, alarmed at their passing. And once, beneath a single morose willow that seemed to be on trial before an implacable pine jury, Gonji saw something black and serpentine slither by in the thatched weeds.
Navárez pointed at the several swords Gonji carried.
“What are you, a blade merchant?”
“Blade merchant,” Gonji echoed. “Has a nice ring to it. No, I just favor the style blade I grew up with, so I keep a spare. The ornamental sword was a present from my mother, and I suppose I’d best hide it away before it gets...lost, neh?”
Navárez sneered. Gonji couldn’t help staring. When the Spaniard sneered, his drooping mustache, with the frazzled black tuft under his nose, looked like a tarantula in relief.
Just then a peal of thunder boomed over the mountains, heralding a spidery branching of heat lightning that fractured the sky overhead and blazed for an oddly long time. It seemed as if the purpling sky might crack and fall in shards, and the jagged outline, to Gonji’s imagination, described an evil, hungry shape. An ominous thunderhead had mounted the northern peaks.
A rider pounded toward them on a midnight mare with white markings. As he pulled up and greeted Navárez with a harsh laugh, Gonji noted that the mare looked no more like a horse than did her master.
Still another luridly appointed Spaniard—and by now Tora must be feeling quite at home, for Gonji had acquired the steed in Spain—whose salient feature was the most obtrusive set of splay teeth the samurai had ever seen. The result was a perpetual grin, counterpointed by the gaping hole left by a missing bicuspid, that set one’s tongue running over his own teeth in comparison. The rest of the features on the long, shovel-jawed face seemed present as only a weak excuse to call it a face at all. One eye stayed permanently half closed and unblinking, the result of an angry scar, and the man rode with a spotted bandanna clenched in one hand with which he repeatedly mopped his sweating brow.