by Rypel, T. C.
At length Gonji trotted under the leaning crow. At its far side the road split, the left fork branching north. He held up. The view was breathtaking. An ocean of lush, misty verdure stretched below. The great Transylvanian territory that filled the curving ladle of the Carpathians. Magnificent. But it could not be crossed in the remaining daylight, that was sure.
He gazed at the sinuous road ahead, which snaked into the bowery overgrowth and was lost to sight. The thought of another night alone in this haunted territory was more than a little threatening. But then the warrior in him took charge, rankled at the vague fears and indecisiveness.
I am samurai....
With a bold hyah! Gonji cantered into the valley and was soon swallowed up as if by an emerald sea.
* * * *
Morning. The night had passed uneventfully, for which the samurai was only too grateful. As the haze lifted, he could make out the thin line of the walled city of Vedun, perched unmistakably on the brink of the plateau, backdropped by white-capped mountains. The jutting plateau looked like a steppingstone into the Carpathians for some forgotten race of giants.
Gonji felt invigorated. The valley held a life-affirming aura that one could draw on with every breath. It was a beautiful land where the night air smelled like something good to drink. Strange to think that evil could invade such a stronghold of unsullied goodness, Gonji found himself thinking. Yet it always found a way to hound the tracks of men. Perhaps in the good places most of all....
He traveled in the spoor of a thousand hoof- and footprints and deeply rutted wagon tracks that even the heavy rains had not been able to eradicate. Impossible to gauge the size of Klann’s force, which this spoor surely indicated.
He scratched pensively as he rode. Jocko had said the 3rd Free Company would be holed up in the village indefinitely. But would any of them have occasion to ride into Vedun? That could mean trouble. But that was karma. His course had been set long before he had the ill fortune to throw in with that bunch. He spurred Tora into a gallop for a time, anxious to reach the city.
The gradual upgrade soon became more difficult for Tora to negotiate, and he had decided to rest the horse when a faint cry reached him from somewhere to the west of the road. He tethered the stallion in good forage and investigated the sound on foot.
He had padded about two hundred yards from the road, looking about circumspectly, when the trees thinned at the eastern end of a small glade. At the opposite side four figures were huddled around a small, limp shape tied to a tree. The biggest of the four was dressed much like the Llorm rider of a few days ago, save for the loose sailor’s cap that flopped to the ground as he delivered a mammoth blow which snapped back his victim’s head.
Already Gonji didn’t like what he saw. Still smarting over his shameful flight from the winged monster, he tested the seating of his swords and repositioned the dirk strapped to his thigh under the kimono. Scratching his beard nervously, Gonji inched to the edge of the tree line.
The big man stooped and wrenched an object from around the neck of the slumped figure—now revealed to Gonji as a youth of twelve or thirteen. The others laughed at something the man said as he lithely bounded astride his horse and trotted off, angling toward the road ahead of where Gonji had stopped.
Gonji noted the burly soldier’s face as he rode off and then appraised the three cronies, who seated themselves under a tree, their horses grazing nearby. More mercenary dregs, there was no question. Their garb was motley, their weapons mismatched. A crude shelter erected between trees indicated that they were probably on outpost duty.
Gonji saw no pistols and feared only one thing: a bow and quiver which leaned against a tree. But his hatred of bullies and their brand of aggression made his course clear.
The toothless brigand who sat in the middle was first to notice the odd character who strutted toward them. He patted one of the others and gestured in Gonji’s direction. His rawboned partner on the right squinted at the oncoming apparition, then rolled over and grabbed the bow.
“Want me to drop him, Zito?”
“Nah,” Zito answered, “I want to see this up close.” He spat between rotten gums and wiped his mouth with a broad motion. Then all three rose and drew their swords.
Gonji looked them over carefully as the space between them narrowed. No bow, no pistols. Two rapiers and a broadsword....
“Need any help?” Gonji called in Spanish. “I can use some food.” He casually rested his left hand on the hilt of the killing sword as the three rogues stopped four paces in front of him.
“Would you look at this,” Zito said in High German, “a woodland elf dressed like a priest!” The others laughed coldly. “And he talks Spanish. That is, I think it’s a he. Look at them eyes! Where’d you get them, elfie? Sie sprechen Deutsch, Dummkopf?”
“I speak it,” Gonji said disdainfully, his smile twisting into a sardonic grin. “And you boys don’t seem very friendly.”
“Don’t we, really?” Zito minced. He leveled his rapier at Gonji’s chest and glanced at his partners, who slowly separated to circle the motionless samurai. The gaunt man now stood behind him, out of sight, and the third, a paunchy cur with a sarcastic sneer, edged to Gonji’s left.
“Well, now,” Zito continued patronizingly, “I think you’re wrong. I think we might be just friendly enough to share equally whatever bounty an elf might carry. C’mon now, what’ve you got?”
“Now wait,” Gonji said, his hand upraised, “I do have a gift for you, and a well-deserved one at that.”
“What’s that?” Zito asked suspiciously.
“Death.”
The gaunt man in the rear plunged forward. Gonji whirled, dropped to one knee, and took the man’s leg off at the calf. The fat man charged and sliced downward, and Gonji’s short sword whirred in a left-handed parry. A flashing arc of cold lightning from the killing sword spilled the man’s bowels to the earth. Zito’s face was a mask of terror as Gonji calmly replaced the seppuku sword. The toothless bandit took two steps backward and then turned to run. Gonji sprang, and his two-handed slash laid open the man’s spine. Zito half-turned, eyes bulging, then fell like a sack.
The samurai froze in position, surveyed his fatally wounded attackers, then relaxed. His movements had been minimal and efficient; that part of him that was his father’s son was satisfied. He inhaled deeply to normalize his breathing and walked away from the quivering carnage.
As he neared the fallen boy Gonji snapped his wrist earthward to shake the blood from the Sagami. He picked up a black silk scarf lying beside a wineskin and finished the job properly. His wounded shoulder began bleeding again. He dabbed at it, reset the bandage. Then, wiping his brow, he knelt down and examined the brigands’ victim.
Dead. How wasteful. A fine, strong youth, and they’d mangled him. Gonji had seen enough of this to hate such outrages. In youth was hope, if there was hope anywhere in this miserable land. Nothing left to do now but try to see that his family received the body.
But where was he from? Vedun? Another village? What the hell was he doing out here with an invading army ravaging the territory?
Gonji tied the boy’s body to a bandit’s horse and led the animal across the glade. On an impulse he trotted back after the bow and quiver and lashed them to Tora’s saddle. Feeling better for this additional armament, he continued his journey.
Without further encounter or incident, Gonji negotiated the road as it inclined up the west slope of the plateau. The world soon became level again, and the horses snorted their approval. Atop the plateau this road from the southern valley junctured with a broader way that coursed east-west, paved in stretches by ambitious ancients.
Gonji plodded east toward the city and passed a trail which meandered up into formidable foothills. Through breaks in the trees, great castle spires and battlements, dwarfed by the distance, shimmered in the heat on the summit of a hill to the north. Castle Lenska. Beyond this was the imposing Carpathian Mountain range immortalized in ballads
by the minstrels and spoken of in whispers by the peasantry. To the right lay the steepening precipice. As Gonji drew near the city a fleeting awareness dawned: This was no place to get oneself trapped.
Then the walls of Vedun came into view.
Massive. Magnificent. Every bit as impressive as he had anticipated. He felt a sudden thrill at their sheer antiquity, for this city was of no recent vintage. By all architectural style that Gonji understood, this fortified city would be more at home in—what? The homeland of the Turks?
The thick crenellated walls of white stone, mortar and timber rose twenty feet or more, buttressing the city from invaders. Arrow-looped battlements jutted skyward at strategic points, silent sentinels at the ready to rain death on the heads of besieging armies. Yet there was a frightfully fatalistic air about the place. Who had built this madman’s citadel, backed as it was against the two-hundred-foot dead drop of the plateau brink? He had heard tales. Campfire magick had been spun from legends of Vedun, the ancient race that had built it, and the awesome sieges it had withstood. Sieges by men and things that were not men. Some said that one such incredible siege had caused the shearing of the plateau as it now stood.
But there was no sign of a siege now. No marshaled forces at its walls, no engines of destruction breaching its sanctuary, no hail of shafts or stones, molten lead or Greek fire. All was still.
Had Klann taken Vedun so easily? Were its streets littered with dead? No, that was senseless, and in any case not to be accomplished easily, whatever Klann’s might. Perhaps he was still preparing for attack.
Klann.
Who—or what—was he? A madman? A wizard? An immortal, itinerant king? A bandit chieftain? Or only a legend, a specter that stirs men’s dreams of conquest?
“Soon, Tora. Soon we’ll have all the answers, neh?”
Gonji saw no one as he rode near the shadows of the mighty walls. No guards were posted at the battlements. The road passed through a gatehouse flanked by low, flat-topped towers. Empty. The gates were sprung wide.
All wrong.
He reined in and scratched speculatively, feeling very small and naked. Squinted into the afternoon sun. He worked the stiffness out of his injured shoulder. It pained him, but not enough to deflect his probing curiosity. A short bowshot to the right the walls disappeared along the cliff, girdling the city damnably close to the brink. To the north the walls lazily arced for what seemed a mile or so, lost in rolling hills and cultivated plains. A trench ran beneath the walls along their northern expanse, terminating near this western gate. Sewage. Waist-high timber sluice-gates, suspended like pendulums and operated from within by cranks, were cut into the walls at points. Gonji’s nose twisted at the memory of other cities’ open sewage systems like this one.
He thought he heard voices in the distance. Dismounting, he cursed his carelessness. He covered the boy’s body with a blanket, disguising it as best he could. Then he contrived a story concerning how he came to discover the body, carefully deleting the fight and rehearsing the silly lie twice with much attention to the proper facial expressions.
A tocsin clanged somewhere in the north quarter. An alarm or rallying signal.
Ah, he thought, they’re preparing my welcome. Even the gates are flung open to me. Such hospitality!
And with that he laughed uneasily and guided the horses into the city.
PART TWO
O TEMPORA, O MORES!
CHAPTER NINE
“I bring you greetings from King Klann the Invincible, Lord Protector of the province and master of its destiny,” the massive commander’s voice boomed. His war horse sagged under the well-proportioned bulk, and the crowd’s murmuring shrank to a whisper.
Quiet, expectant terror had clutched the city since the night of the full moon, two nights earlier. That night violence had erupted at the castle of Baron Rorka in the northern hills. Human screams and the clash of arms had carried on the night air, and as Vedun craned its collective neck in horror, an evil omen had appeared in the sky above the mountains.
Some said that Satan himself had glared down at them with hungry red eyes.
The prophetess Tralayn alone had defied the spectral figure, moving among Rorka’s city guards, relieving them one by one of their duties. None had been seen since. The following day had been spent in fearful speculation. No rider had come from the castle bearing word of the baron and his troops. And none from the city dared leave. Not the farmers, nor the shepherds, nor any merchant.
Then this morning some hardy souls had returned to their tasks. Farmers, venturing out with their tools and animals. The shepherd Strom, who cared little for anything but his work and his flock. Hunters and fishers and itinerant merchants who feared the specters of new taxes more than the shades of evil.
Then in the early afternoon the double column of troops had arrived at the postern gate, descending from the castle via the winding road which coursed past lush pastureland and the cultivated lowlands.
The troop, about sixty strong, heavily armed and composed mainly of mercenaries, escorted an ominous black carriage trimmed in ornate gilt. Their standard-bearers hoisted a vaguely unsettling coat-of-arms that was also emblazoned on the surcoats and armor of the regulars: a rampaging monster of some sort, peering over its shoulder at a device of seven locked circles. They halted at the closed main gate.
Old Gort the gatekeeper, bald as marble, his head cocked askew by the hideous tumor that bulged on his neck, appraised the troop from his post in the drum tower. At their command—lacking any orders to the contrary from the city council—he dropped the drawbridge over the moatlet trench and opened the portcullis and gate.
The troop clattered along the cobblestones, swords and lances glinting in the sunflare, and halted at the square. Workmen passed by glumly, few daring to look up, but one of their number was singled out to assemble the citizens via the great alarm bell in its tower at the square.
The populace had gathered slowly, a pall hanging over their heads. Mourners at their own funeral. Horses’ hooves pawed at the baking stones, and the animals snorted peevishly. A thousand heads bobbed and muttered in low tones as the people jockeyed for the rearmost positions to evade the intimidating stares of the horsemen. It was withering hot. Animal smells settled like a pungent fog.
“And now,” the commander said, “may I commend you on the bravery with which you’ve defended your city.”
A resounding chorus of laughter broke from the troop. He motioned them to stifle it, grinning broadly.
Three figures emerged to the forefront: Flavio, the balding, bearded council Elder; Michael Benedetto, a handsome young Neapolitan being groomed as his successor; and Milorad, the paunchy master of protocol, hair and beard of flowing hoarfrost, former adviser to a once mighty king. A fourth man, the black-bearded and burly smith Garth Gundersen, stood a few paces behind them, peering up from under a lowered brow.
Flavio spoke in a pleasant, cultured voice. “The city of Vedun bids you welcome, but I must admit that we are somewhat confused. You are—?” Flavio smiled and gestured to the giant warrior.
“Ben-Draba, Field Commander of the Royalist Forces of Lord Klann. And your name, old man?”
“I am Flavio, Elder of Vedun’s city council. This is Michael, my protege, and Milorad, our resident diplomat. But again, I must confess to confusion. What has become of Baron Rorka?”
They had been speaking in Rumanian, which all the assembled leaders spoke. Many in the crowd had been translating in hushed whispers for those who didn’t. They were all struck dumb by the deep resonant voice that boomed from behind the thick curtains of the coach.
“Ernst Christophe Rorka,” the unseen speaker bellowed, “is hereby declared a criminal, wanted dead or alive by King Klann.”
The carriage door suddenly swung open, and the crowd gasped. A tall figure emerged, clad in a hooded black cloak. His arms were withdrawn into the ample sleeves of the cloak and crossed over his chest as he strode toward Flavio. His face was concealed
behind a carven and filigreed mask of gold.
Silence smothered Vedun.
“I am Mord, High Magician and Counselor to His Majesty Klann the Invincible. I stand here in his stead.” Mord gravely scanned the shocked expressions etched into the faces of the onlookers. “And do you not offer me obeisance?” he asked tauntingly.
Flavio looked cautiously to his two companions. The three bowed forward slightly, Milorad holding the bow longest as he said, “We do so for all, honored counselor.”
“And do you not also kneel before the High Magician of a king?” Mord demanded, his voice rising in pitch.
“No authority has ever commanded—” Michael’s words tumbled out hotly, but he was cut short by Flavio’s gesture.
“We are largely a Christian community, and in our beliefs and customs—” Flavio began, but Mord took a threatening step forward.
“I know about your beliefs and customs,” the wizard spat, “and I know the meaning of this city doubtless better than you.”
“You have been here before?” Flavio asked.
“I have, and it has changed little. But it shall change—and swiftly.” Mord looked about him and barked a command into the tense air. “Remove that meaningless image. It offends me!”
Ben-Draba called out the names of two soldiers, who trotted over to the large crucifix raised behind the rostrum and the coolly spewing fountain with its carvings of cherubim. Over a spate of shouted protests, they pulled down the cross with ropes. A sea of indignant faces swelled forward as Flavio turned and waved the people back. At Ben-Draba’s order a squad of horsemen broke from their rank and pushed back the crowd, swords held high.
Ben-Draba cursed to himself as he removed his helm. Stupid bastard of a magician! Why the hell fool with these superstitious people like that? Mess with their religion and you’re asking for trouble. I know. Wasn’t it oh-so-helpless townies just like these who murdered my brother in Italy? Christians, eh? Even sheep have teeth. Just turn your back and they’ll bare ’em. There are other ways to keep them in check, treat them the way they deserve. I’ve found a few. And I’m not done yet, Melah. A lot more puny little bastards are going to pay before I’ve settled the score for you.