by Rypel, T. C.
“Good—good—excellent!” Gonji was able to shout at length. They dropped to their knees in the streaked sunlight and dried their faces. Satisfaction suffused the glade, the warm surety of men keenly apperceptive of the wholeness of their being.
But Wilf frowned. “It’s harder against men, though.”
“Eh? Hai, till you’ve first been blooded, I suppose. But you don’t flinch. I’d venture you’re a match for most ratty mercenaries. One day you’ll even handle the good ones.” He rose.
“What did you do last night?”
The question took Gonji by surprise. He scratched his head, undid his topknot and shook out his long hair, sighing. He told Wilf of his tilt with the wyvern.
“The flying monster....” Wilf breathed almost reverently. “But that’s—why?”
“I had my reasons, personal reasons.”
Wilf s brow creased. “Who are you that you can allow your personal feelings to put the whole city in danger? What about the captives at the castle? Maybe Klann will make it tougher on them now.”
Gonji remained silent as he redid the topknot, knowing the truth of what the smith accused.
“We’d all like to have that kind of freedom from responsibility,” Wilf continued. He grew wistful. “I know I would. I’d like to be the warrior who can lash out at things that make him mad. Ja...someday I will be. Someday I’ll—”
“Be as good a soldier as your father,” Gonji finished, eyeing him impishly. Wilf looked confused.
“I heard,” Gonji clarified, motioning that they should start back, “last night in the stable.”
Wilf moved into step with Gonji as they trudged over the spongy pine carpet. “He hates it when I bring up soldiering. Won’t even discuss it.”
“What kind of soldier was he? Where?”
“A good one, I guess. A cavalry captain somewhere up north. My mother died while the three of us were very young—I can’t remember her. It was while he was away on campaign. He blamed himself, I suppose, for not being with her, and he said he lost his taste for soldiering—”
“The will to fight.”
“Ja.”
“Mmmm,” Gonji said, nodding, his lips pursed.
“He gave me a sword on my twelfth birthday. We used to train together, like this.” Wilf smiled at the memory. “Then one day I made the mistake of telling him I’d be a soldier, not a smith....”
They paused on a squatty knoll overlooking the main road. Three wagons bearing boxed goods rumbled past below, making for Vedun.
“Will you be staying in Vedun awhile?”
“Hmm? Oh—awhile, hai, I have unfinished business here and there.” Gonji smiled away Wilf’s worried look. “Nothing that will increase your Genya’s burden! I still seek the Deathwind. I’ve a destiny to fulfill, you see, and I’ve been told it’s here. And I want to meet this Klann for myself—and his cowardly sorcerer who kills men from afar.”
“The Deathwind....”
“You’ve heard the legend—the man-beast who prowls the night wind?”
“Something. Strom could tell you better, probably more than you’d care to hear.”
The wagon clatter dwindled in the distance. Gonji slapped his thigh, and they started down the hill.
Wilf grabbed his arm, halted him. “Will you stay and help us if we need to fight Klann?”
The question struck Gonji hard, and it took him a long time to gather his feelings and answer. He was thinking how easily he might yet be on the side that held the reins; Vedun was the rich prize, the plump sheep, secured by Klann and ready for slaughter. And how nice to be on the winning side, if only for the rarity of the pleasure!
He gazed into the deep dark pools of Wilf’s pleading eyes and found himself playing the game of testing.
“No. It can’t be done. It’s all over.”
He turned to go, but Wilf’s grip tightened and Gonji’s eyes narrowed at the affront. “I thought you said last night that we should fight,” Wilf said, impassioned.
“I said I’d fight,” Gonji replied, easing out of the grasp. “These people couldn’t do it. They had their chance before Klann’s army entered the gates. Right now this city is the perfect plump hen, ready to be plucked and slaughtered. And Sabatake Gonji-no-Sadowara is not about to become chicken stuffing.”
Tears of anger and frustration welled in Wilf’s eyes, and he spun away from Gonji, choked back the lump in his throat. Gonji knew his pain, and his sense of bushi no nasake—the warrior’s tenderness—told him that his feelings were justified toward Wilf and that there was no shame or weakness attendant on them. He drew away a few paces for a time to allow Wilf space to vent his anguish.
Plucking at a butter-and-eggs blossom for a moment, admiring its fragile loveliness, Gonji asked, “Are you a Christian?”
“Ja,” Wilf answered.
“I’ve seen Christians refuse to kill under such circumstances,” Gonji observed gently.
Wilf held his gaze firmly. His eyes had dried. “Klann has attacked our faith. I’m willing to die for it.”
Gonji studied his face, nodded gravely. “That’s...all any way of life can ask of its adherents.” He sighed breathily. “Ah, Wilfred-san, you must learn to understand me. I’m a creature of duty. I need duty—crave it—like the ministrations of the bedchamber from time to time, you know? Well...perhaps you don’t. Forget it, bad joke. At any rate without duty a samurai is nothing, a fruitless tree. Yet for the past few years—I go out and commit myself wholeheartedly, then proceed to follow it up in my typical half-assed way, compromising one principle after another as I go. I don’t know. It’s my mother’s restless spirit within me, I suppose. Or maybe there’s nothing worth committing oneself to on this mad continent. Who knows, eh?”
Bereft of comforting words, Gonji loped down the hill and onto the road, heading for Vedun at a slow shuffle. Wilf shortly fell into place beside him. “We’ll do what we must,” he said matter-of-factly, and Gonji bobbed his head in agreement.
They jogged through the west gate under a noonday sun that baked the stones of Vedun into a shimmering curtain of rising heat waves.
Washed and dressed—Gonji in a borrowed tunic from Wilf and invigorated by the heft of his sashed swords—they took a ride through the city. Vedun’s teeming life was in midday bloom. Children tore through the lanes with yapping dogs leaping at their sides for a nip from a fresh roll. Market stalls sang with sales pitches and cries of dissatisfaction over bruised produce. The fishmonger’s stall was the favorite of Vedun’s population of stray cats, who brushed against the pavilion struts and patrons’ legs and gathered on the wall behind the open stall.
Merchants and craftsmen hawked their wares to clucking, head-shaking buyers. Fullers’ dry goods were stretched and caressed and fluttered over by whispering and tittering young women. Fosters held out their saddle traces to passing riders. Coopers sat behind tables stacked with casks.
Myriad scents stirring their digestive juices, Wilf and Gonji bounced along the broad avenue of central Vedun toward the prepared food stalls. These were crowded by citizens, wayfarers, and soldiers alike, the desires of the belly rendering men equal for the nonce. Hot meats and poultry beckoned from their skewered positions over belching flame pits and ovens: There were chicken and capon, mutton and pig, hare and goose. Cooks, bakers, and wine keepers danced to the tune of the clinking coin. Children in their elders’ employ sloshed water from leather budgets over the greasy hands of the full-bellied.
Wilf treated Gonji to broiled fish and steaming buns, washed down with flagons of ale. As they sat on a rail wolfing down their meal, the samurai watched the bright, cheerful faces, the merry unconcern of Vedun’s daily life. To see it one could scarcely guess at the perilous times that had befallen the city. The thought made him glance into the sun-bleached sky, but no monstrous batwings blackened the glaring azure.
They finished, washed, and rode past the noisy open-air market to find the tailor and cobbler shops. Gonji commissioned from the tail
or a sleeveless tunic, a pair of breeches, and a new pair of spun-wool tabi. From the cobbler he ordered a pair of soft leather riding boots. He found that he would have money left, but not enough to cover the balance of his next purchase when the goods were ready: The tanner shared his shop with a barker, and from these rather sullen souls, who fancied Gonji a Klann hireling, the samurai ordered a leather cuirass and backplate, plus a pair of pauldrons and vambraces. Gonji placed the balance of his money down on account and strode out of the tanner shop with a sigh of satisfaction, confident as always that when the order was ready he would somehow find the money to pay for it.
Karma.
Wilf was glad to be done with the marketplace when they trotted off. Although Gonji paid it no heed, the young smith was discomfited by the succession of hateful stares he was drawing from people he had known all his life; annoyed and ashamed of all the multilingual people in town who suddenly knew only Slavic tongues when his new friend spoke to them.
“You know, Wilf,” Gonji said, “I’m becoming more intrigued by this place all the time.”
“Why is that?”
“I’ve inquired of everyone we’ve dealt with today about this Simon Sardonis I have a message for. He ought to be pretty important in Vedun, judging by what I know.... Where does this prophetess Tralayn live?”
“Not far from where I live—why?”
“Later.”
A vibrating rumble of rushing water told Gonji the sluice gates were being cranked open. As they watched the befouled torrent blast along a culvert, Gonji recalled with a shudder how narrowly he had missed being one with its filth the night before.
They rode toward the square. The chapel spire could be seen spindling up the backdropping slope of a snow-capped mountain. Wilf wished to pay his respects to the boy Mark and the others killed the previous day, whose bodies lay on view.
They passed the garrison that had housed Rorka’s city guards, now commandeered by the Llorm troop. Farther along, as they moved west, stood the imposing Chancellery of the Exchequer, abuzz with activity.
“My brother works there,” Wilf said. “The smart one.”
Gonji smiled at the sarcasm. Ah, sibling rivalry....
Three young women they passed at the Chancellery greeted Wilf enthusiastically, but he only nodded, looking uncomfortable.
“Popular fellow,” Gonji teased.
“Friends of Genya.” His face reddened.
“Mm-hmm,” Gonji agreed archly, needling him. But the pang he felt reminded him that it had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. And how long since he’d truly been in love? The girl last night—how like Reiko she’d looked in the darkness, with her flowing black hair, those large fathomless eyes. Reiko...(pledged to kill her husband’s slayer)
The chapel stood across the street from the bell tower and fountain at the square, a stone’s throw from the postern gate. A steady flow of mournful visitants coursed the chapel stairway. They dismounted and tethered their horses. Gonji stretched out his saddle kinks and adjusted his swords, tightening his sash. Wilf again complained of his chronic backache. Then Gonji saw them.
Swinging upside down from a gibbet erected next to the bell tower were the two bandits who had apparently taken the rap for Gonji the night before. Two free company guards stood watch over the tasteless symbolic display that greeted the mourners. Pushing aside Wilf’s warning hand, Gonji strode across the street, the guards wary of his square-shouldered, bold approach.
When he raised a hand in greeting, they tensed, but Gonji only smiled. They carried swords, but no pistols.
The gibbet creaked under the gently swaying burden of the two corpses, lashed by their feet, arms hanging limply as if in perverse joy. The whites of their eyes bulged like eggshells. The gunshot wounds had dried to maroon streaks. Flies buzzed around the dangling carcasses. The pair had been dressed for travel. Above them a sign had been nailed, indecipherable to Gonji.
“These the troublemakers from last night?” Gonji asked in German.
“Two of them,” the taller mercenary answered cautiously.
“Good work.”
Gonji rejoined the wide-eyed Wilf on the chapel steps. “Close your mouth, friend. You’re making a spectacle of us.”
Wilf relaxed.
“Are they locals?” Gonji asked.
“Strangers,” Wilf replied, shaking his head.
Gonji nodded, feeling somewhat safer and a trifle unburdened of his guilt. Could I really be so fortunate, he wondered, to have my impetuous screw-up covered by those highwaymen? Hell, not quite—“Two of them,” the guards had said....
Wilf started up the chapel steps, but Gonji hesitated.
“Come on,” Wilf urged. “It’ll do you good.”
Gonji looked sheepish. “Isn’t there a curse or something?” Rarely had he been invited inside a Christian church. But Wilf simply waved him up the steps and continued inside.
Gonji stood respectfully still in the vestibule as Wilf confronted the supine forms before the altar. He watched with his usual confusion the contradictory mourning with which Christians dispatched their loved ones to heaven. As Wilf returned he noticed an old couple seated in a rear pew and moved in to whisper to them. Gonji glanced around the nave, saw the lovely paintings of spiritual subjects—some unfinished—gracing its walls. He heard a clatter and a petulant outburst of tsking and whispering from the ceiling. There on a scaffold lay a smallish man, covered with paint splotches, his hair bound with a scarf. He had been painting a section of an angel’s wing but was now seemingly scolding the angel for declining to cooperate.
Wilf rejoined him. “Genya’s parents,” he said when they had remounted, nodding to the chapel. His gloom could have sent a wedding party scurrying for cover.
Gonji plucked an apple from a saddlebag, took a bite. “Worried about your girlfriend, eh?”
“Do you think they’ll...hurt her?”
“I have no doubt of it.” Then, seeing Wilf’s pained expression, he quickly regretted the coldly smug sound of the reply. “I mean...some girls are strong in these matters—she’s a strong girl, neh?”
“She...has some experience,” Wilf advanced tentatively, then added in a rush, “but she’s not the harlot my father would have you believe. I mean that—I know that. You know, the way only a man who would know...would know.”
Gonji chortled. “So papa smith disapproves because his son isn’t catching his worth in feminine virtue!”
“He and some of the prigs around town. They don’t forget little incidents. Then in their minds they make up bigger things—Genya was an early bloomer, you see. She had her pursuers. Then lately it was this pinhead farmer named Dobroczy who was my rival for her favor.” He shrugged. “She likes playing the game, and I suppose she’s got enough going for her that she deserves it. But she’s not the runaround Papa thinks. She’s a hard worker, level-headed....” His voice trailed off as he looked dreamily toward the castle.
“What would you do? I mean, if Genya were yours?”
Gonji chewed thoughtfully on the apple, eyes becoming chips of flint-sparked steel. “I’d go there,” he said simply, “and get her back—or die trying, if that was my karma.”
Wilfred’s jaw dropped. He stared at him, tipped between incredulity and wonder.
“You’d go there—”
“That’s right.”
“—all by yourself—”
“Hai, if need be.”
“—and attack a whole army?”
“Sure, there are ways,” Gonji said haughtily, shifting in the saddle. A speculative look dawned as he considered his bravado. Could he do such a thing? Of course! He shrugged and dismissed the matter.
“Of course,” he added, “the girl would have to be pretty special, and I’ve met only one like that.” His gaze wandered skyward.
“Tell me about yours,” Wilf said.
“Eh?”
“Your...‘special’ girl.”
“Some other time, neh?”
Gonji was distracted by a disturbance at the postern gate: An assistant driver on a grain wagon flew through the air and sprawled on the ground. A leather-jerkined mercenary leaped atop him and threatened to crush his skull. Others gathered around expectantly. From the center of it all emerged Captain Julian Kel’Tekeli, the mercenary leader, bedecked in full military regalia. The captain stepped to his splendid black charger, spoke to it, and then mounted with the stylishness of a soldier on review.
Gonji snorted. Hope you slip your stirrup, fall off, and break your ass. Gonji punctuated the thought by breaking wind. Actually, Gonji himself lived by precision movement, took pride in it, enjoyed showing it off in its place. But Julian’s oh-so-proper gallantry was insufferable. The art was in the disguise—making it all look simple.
He saw Wilf’s telltale look of unease as he watched the mercenaries and decided it was time for a lesson.
* * * *
Wilfred felt the cold sweat rise in beads on his forehead, the clamminess of his hands that accompanied the claustrophobic fear that he’d never felt in his city before. The mercenaries were everywhere, constantly threatening by their looks and actions. He strove to remember the lessons in strategy Gonji had been teaching him: how Klann’s army seemed undermanned, judging by the troop disposition; how they pushed their weight around just enough to keep the city intimidated; how a quick revolutionary strike might paralyze them, as they well knew, if they didn’t maintain this aura of fear. He wiped his hands on his breeches.
“Here,” Gonji said, handing him the spare sword slung in his saddle.
“Huh?” Wilf accepted the blade uncertainly.
“Mount it in your belt. Time for more training—no-no, not like that, with the cutting edge upward. That’s a katana, meant to be drawn from sky to ground.”
Wilf’s heart began to pound. “What now?”