by Rypel, T. C.
“This is Señor Sabatake, Esteban,” Navárez said. There was casual sarcasm in his voice, the kind a hard-nosed leader adopts when among his men. “He hauled my stern out of trouble back there. He has a good sword arm that he may wish to employ with us, is that so, bárbaro?”
Esteban chuckled in a way Gonji didn’t like. But he said nothing, made them wait.
Navárez’ eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward in the saddle. “This army of King Klann, it rides under the protection of a sorcerer—te entiendo? Understand? Can you pledge your faith in his power and your life to the king’s cause?”
Gonji cocked an eyebrow, momentarily speechless. His thoughts raced, a jumble of variables in an equation that made no sense.
“Black sorcery?”
“Who can say what color is sorcery, eh?” the pirate railed. “Sorcery is power, and power is all that matters in this world. Forget what you think you believe, and be prepared to believe in the impossible. If you can do that, then you can ride with us. Adios.”
With a final oppressive laugh from Esteban, the two pirates wheeled and clumped off into the forest.
Well, what now? Gonji wondered. It sounded like a deadly combination—bandits like that tapped into some lode of sorcerous power. There must be something to it. Men simply weren’t so unabashedly frank about the supernatural without good reason.
But a fat lot of good their sorcerer had done them: From where Gonji sat it appeared that Klann’s army had been raked over pretty well by the Austrian troops. Yet the city they attacked—the seat of the bishopric, a long ride behind—had impressed him as well fortified, the treasury impregnable to anything short of a fully appointed siege force. Klann had stormed it and apparently made off with a hefty plunder. Sorcery or not, the main body of this wandering army must be of respectable size. But what were they up to now, here in the mountains? Could the vampires that had attacked him be sinister agencies of this sorcerer? If so, one might certainly be better off with them than against them.
Sided with vampires—Yeeee gods, what madness!
What will be the next turn on your merry trail, Gonji-san? By all the spirits who ply men’s lives, I’d give an arm for the counsel of just one good friend!
But Gonji was far too intrigued now to obey the tugging of his instincts and leave this strange army to its devices. Pathetically low on money, human companionship, and raisons d’être, Gonji determined his course with a blithe peal of laughter and a hearty shout. He patted the Sagami in a gesture of trust to whatever kami guided its blade and spurred Tora after the Spaniards.
Even the most loathsome companions and deadliest of escapades would be welcome, it seemed, to a man slowly dying of emptiness.
CHAPTER THREE
Navárez rolled off his mount and limped stiffly toward a tight circle of men who sat or knelt under a towering fir. Their multi-tongued chatter and bawling mirth died when they took note of the captain’s set jaw.
Navárez quickened his step when he came up behind the man called Julio, who turned at the sound of his approach but not quickly enough to evade the sharp slap. He hit the ground heavily, crying out in anger more than pain, his tankard of mead sloshing over him and the nearest observers.
Tense silence gripped the camp.
“You stupid, scabby bastard! You left me to die back there, no?”
Julio rubbed his reddening face, glared back. All eyes turned to him. “I thought you were dead, Franco! How in hell could I know?”
“I called out to you, fool, raised my hand. You rode right by like the coward you are.”
“I never saw you!” Julio cried beseechingly, throwing up his hands. “I was clinging low to the saddle. There were musket shots all around.”
“Now you say you didn’t see me. If you didn’t see me, stupid ass, then how did you come to think I was already dead?” Navárez leveled a finger at him. “The next time you wet your breeches in battle, coward, I’ll put a pistol ball right between your eyes, ¿me entiendes?”
Julio nodded sullenly. He cracked a nervous smile and shrugged sheepishly as he rose, gesturing awkwardly as if to restore himself in Navárez’ good graces.
But the captain was already turning away to see why the other men’s gazes had lifted to peer behind him.
Gonji sat rigid in the saddle, looking over the rolling vista of hostile eyes. A cool wind whipped the tree-rimmed clearing, fluttering loose clothing and hair as it sighed over the drama of silent expectancy. Tora nickered and pawed the ground.
“Ah, Señor Sabatake,” Navárez said, grinning and walking toward him. “This is the man who saved me when that dog left me to die. So, bárbaro, you’ve decided to ride with us after all. Bueno. Make yourself comfortable in the camp, eh? Jocko!”
“I’m comin’, I’m comin’, dammit!”
A fat and grizzled old wretch lumbered over in response, scowling and muttering to himself. His hair was a matted gray scrub, and a fringe of tangled beard seemed to have erupted from his face rather than grown.
“Now who’s callin’ Jocko and what’s the trouble this time? Nobody gets along around here without Jocko. Jocko this and Jocko—!”
“Callarse! Be quiet, you old buzzard!” Navárez shot, not without a grudging affection. “Take our new man here and see that he gets what he wants.” To Gonji: “I’ll speak with you later.” With that he hobbled off to another part of camp.
“Sí, make him feel at home,” Esteban snarled needlessly, tracking after the captain.
Jocko growled at the departing tormentor. “Goddamn weasel.”
He looked up at Gonji, shielding his eyes with a hand although the sun had sunk deep into the trees. Beneath a curled upper lip overhung by a ragged mustache, Gonji could see a rancid display of brown-and-yellow stained teeth.
“Well, come on, then, pilgrim.” And with that Jocko half-shrugged and hopped off toward a cluster of wagons and pack animals near the company’s unsaddled horses. Gonji dismounted and led Tora slowly after, stroking the weary animal’s muzzle.
As he played at talking to Tora, Gonji glanced around the encampment, taking in everything. He had been in many such mercenary camps, and little was different here. Gruff, surly voices barked out in a half-dozen languages as men jostled and joked, told ribald tales and challenged each other to mock combat. Blankets and gear were bunched into mounds here and there where men reclined and pulled at wineskins, or sloshed ale and mead from battered goblets. Insects buzzed everywhere, drawn by sweet-sour odors that mingled now with the mouth-watering aroma of a popping and crackling deer carcass spitted over a roaring fire at the center of camp. A few night birds cried in the treetops in response to the lengthening shadows.
The men in camp numbered about thirty. Of these a handful nursed various wounds. One in particular seemed in a bad way. He lay on a makeshift bed of blankets and boughs, one hand resting over a poor patch job done on his ghastly belly wound. The bandage had gone freshly red. His glazed eyes were rolled heavenward as he breathed spasmodically, a wineskin in his limp grasp dripping pale golden liquid. Men passing him did so somberly, with the warrior’s grim awareness of mortality. Tomorrow this might be any one of them. And tomorrow this one would be dead.
As for the rest of the men in camp, most were typically arrogant mercenaries, clanging an assortment of preferred blades and stolen bits of armor, brandishing a few pistols, affecting their sullen masks and shouting prideful boasts like merchants hawking wares in the marketplace. Only here the object was to sell not goods but intimidation. Spheres of privacy were sacred: A misapprehended stare could lead to a fight; a fight could lead to death.
Caution. Caution and tact. But never timidity.
As Gonji’s gaze passed over the international assemblage of fighting men in their wild array of sabers and broadswords, helms and chapeaus, jerkins and cuirasses, leather and hide, he was acutely aware that he was the center of attention, as was to be expected.
The stranger in town. Now began the careful assimilation into th
e group. It was all right; he had played the game many times before. No Magyars about. No encircling by bullying cliques as yet. And just as the thought came that his exotic uniqueness had passed first inspection, he caught the hot glimmer of two pairs of obsidian eyes.
Two fur-trimmed Mongol renegades transfixed him with lances of pure hate. There was no love lost between their peoples.
Gonji walked Tora past an unhitched dray that must be the field mess wagon. Scattered around its bed were grimy pewter plates and cutlery and an assortment of barrels and kegs. Jocko busied himself at a small fire above which was suspended a bubbling kettle of some unsavory looking mold-colored mulch. Gonji supposed it was stew, though it reminded him of the belching cone of Mt. Fuji.
The old duffer turned at their passing. “Nice animal,” Jocko said, scuffing over a few paces to stroke Tora’s muzzle. The stallion nickered contentedly. “We gonna take good care o’ you, fellah. What’s his name?”
“Tora.”
“Tora—a good name. Real fine name.” Then, just as suddenly as he had come over, the grizzled old man had returned to his foul ichor.
Gonji smiled as he brought Tora to the knot of shuffling horses and unsaddled him. He was proud of the noble steed, a strong, fast, dependable stallion who had somehow managed to live through a bizarre tapestry of adventures.
He had been complimented on the horse’s name before. When he had bought him—after a mad adventure during which he’d found, and then lost, the wild stallion—the handlers had agreed that Tora was a fine name, though in Japan Gonji would no sooner have called his horse Tora than an Englishman would have dubbed his mount “Tiger.” But in Europe the name had a splendid ring.
Tora. An equine god of ferocity.
The tinkling siren-song of a shimmering crystal brook beckoned him. Beautiful, it was, in the orange drench of filtering sunset, now that the ominous storm clouds had blown far eastward. A few kegs chilled in its sparkling wash. Gonji stripped off his kimono and tunic. He undid his topknot and bathed his upper body in the refreshing briskness.
Feeling better for the effort at cleanliness, Gonji loped back to camp with a lighter step. He stopped at his saddle, relieved to find his mother’s ceremonial sword still jutting from its cinched position. Foolish thing to forget. He wrapped it and tied it down securely under a deep saddle pouch, from which he also produced a throwing knife to replace the dirk he had lost in the valley. Strapping this inside his kimono, he strode easily toward the mess wagon, hunger rumbling in the empty chamber of his belly.
“How’s that venison?”
“Ain’t got time now, pilgrim—outta my way!” Jocko had lifted the sizzling kettle and lurched around, almost knocking Gonji down as he waddled past like a herniated ape. He had spoken only Spanish before, the main language of the company. Now his urgency had welled forth in his native Italian.
Gonji chuckled. “Make it fast, I’m starving!” he yelled in serviceable Italian.
The graybeard stumbled around to face him. His arms trembled with the effort to keep the steaming cauldron off his ample belly, and his brow knit in disbelief.
“I’m Sicilian,” Gonji said with a straight face.
Jocko bellowed a gravelly laugh that rose in volume and mirth until the glade echoed and hushing yelps issued from several men. He lumbered over to the roasting deer on bowed legs and dropped the kettle with a dull thud and a hissing splush! Then with a long pitted carving knife Jocko set to breaking the deer, hacking off a slab of venison and plopping it onto a silver platter.
“All right, you saddle-sore vermin with blistered behinds!” he cried in Italian, still looking, still laughing toward Gonji. “Come on up here and cram yer pig snouts full, hee-heeeee!” He was obviously delighted to have an audience.
“Look at ’em come!”
Gonji grinned and scratched his stubbly jaw, stretched broadly, touched the ground with his palms. He sat on a cask and leaned on one thigh, the other hand resting casually on a sword hilt.
No hurry. It wouldn’t be proper to go rushing into the meal line, not for a newcomer. There’d be plenty.
The deer meat smelled maddeningly appetizing. Looking at it, Gonji felt like a winter-gaunt wolf before a snow-blind lamb. Funny. It had taken a long time to acquire a taste for animal flesh, but once seeded, the roots ran deep.
He felt rather good. Still an outsider, but on the threshold. A warm human aura permeated the gray twilight and evening chill, the first campside companionship he had known in—how long? Quite a while. Not a monster or sorcerer in sight, he chuckled to himself. And even better, he had shared a rare laugh with another human being. A sincere laugh of common understanding. That was good, hai, very good. Sometimes that could turn to genuine friendship. And with a bit of luck a friend might even live long enough to be remembered.
“Hey, bárbaro!”
Gonji rankled at the unpleasant shattering of his reverie. He looked up at the stocky Navárez, who stood grinning with thumbs hooked inside his broad belt, the ubiquitous Esteban’s jackass jaw suspended over his shoulder.
“You decided to stay,” the captain observed, “and we must discuss your...commitment, no?”
Gonji pursed his lips, stared blankly a moment. His eyes flitted to Navárez: fresh blouse, new gabardine pantaloons—puffed a bit at the right thigh, where a heavy wrapping must bind the musket wound. He took in the cutlass in its ornate gold-filigree scabbard; the sleek pistol with the argent fleur-de-lis handle. Decadent elegance under a cocked hat.
“There was a matter of payment,” Gonji said. “A small advance would suffice, I think.”
Navárez smiled crookedly. “The Señor did save my life. I think we can trust him for a month’s advance.” He fluttered his fingers in a gesture of request, and Esteban grudgingly produced a hide pouch. The captain counted out ten golden coins, chinked them into the pouch, pulled the drawstring, and tossed it to Gonji.
The samurai hefted it, nodded, and set the pouch on the cask next to him.
“All right—now,” Gonji said, rising and stepping onto the cask with one foot, “about this commitment you speak of.”
“It is a simple matter, really,” Navárez said. “Or maybe, not so simple. It depends on each man. We have a ritual we do each month at the darkest hour of the full moon. As a group we chant an invocation, a kind of prayer of faith in the sorcerer Mord. It is he who protects us, brings his great magick against our enemies.”
“His protection didn’t seem to help back there,” Gonji said as innocuously as he could, nodding toward the west.
“They were fools, bárbaro,” Esteban said hotly, tilting his head so that the heavy-lidded eye centered on Gonji. “Their faith was weak. Don’t speak before you understand.”
Gonji’s eyes narrowed.
“Don’t make light of the sorcerer’s powers,” Navárez warned. “Those whose faith was strong are here to tell of it.”
“Don’t be a fool like those others,” the toady Esteban parroted.
Gonji’s nerve ends flared with his annoyance, but he spoke calmly. “What does this ritual involve?”
From a vest pocket Esteban produced a folded piece of parchment which he opened and held out. On it were three lines of characters in a spidery script.
“Would you like me to read it for you?”
“I can read it,” Gonji spat, snatching the parchment from Esteban’s hand. He peered at the script, which read:
Hemeska shob daktra sessem ib Mord
Akt’nessai im Mord, vookt-mirh, yod-mirh
Sha’nai, Sha’nai
Now what the hell to do?
A chill shivered along Gonji’s spine as he scanned the words a second time. He had never seen the invocation before, he was sure; yet he knew enough of such things to avoid even forming the words on his lips as he read. Were they required to barter their souls in this army, or what?
“And what happens when the chant is sounded?” he asked.
“It is as I said,” the captain r
eplied. “Soldiers receive the protective power of Mord in exchange for faith in the power itself. From this faith the sorcerer himself draws power. Is it not so with all religions, eh? The one thing important above all is that you have absolute belief in the sorcerer. Do as you would with any of the heathen gods you might worship, only...expect results.”
Navárez pointed at the chant, eyebrows raised for emphasis. “This is true power on earth.” His voice had shrunk to an awed whisper.
Gonji was troubled, unsure of what to say. His uppermost fear was realized in Esteban’s next offering:
“Why don’t you try to say the words now?”
“When the time comes I’ll know them,” Gonji shot back.
“See that you learn them well,” Navárez said, turning and walking off.
Gonji refolded the parchment and placed it in a sewn-in kimono pocket along with the gold as he made for the feed line, his mind in turmoil. He walked two steps, and Esteban halted him.
“I need some information—your name?” the Spaniard queried officiously.
Gonji glowered as Esteban cocked the scarred eye his way and casually swabbed his face with a bandanna.
“Gon-ji Sa-ba-ta-ke,” he pronounced with deliberate condescension. “Now look, I’m hungry—”
“Spell it.”
Unbelievable. He complied.
“Special qualifications?”
Gonji was aware of the eyes on him without having to look toward the clusters of mercenaries enjoying the show with their meal. Nearby sat the Mongols. With them, Julio and a couple of his cronies, all snickering.
Gonji stretched tall and square and strode arrogantly, hand on hilt, toward Esteban, whose eyes now mirrored a creeping apprehension. The samurai brought his face a hand’s width from the Spaniard’s temptingly outthrust jaw, swelled his chest, and said in a voice loud and swaggering enough to be heard by all: