by T. C. Rypel
Only hours earlier he had needed no clothing. He had prowled the plains in the form of the great golden werewolf. And soldiers had been unfortunate enough to cross his path. The people had been prepared for his eventual appearance among them; it had been much spoken of. Yet they still gaped, and crossed themselves, and anxiously fingered weapons as they herded their children behind them for protection.
Gonji watched it all in silence, knowing Simon’s discomfiture but admiring him greatly for the courage to appear among them. He had been shunned of men for so long, due to his ghastly curse, that he had understandably become deeply misanthropic. Gonji recalled at what traumatic cost Simon had joined with the defenders of tragic Vedun.
He thought to say something of it, discarding the notion when he realized that it might embarrass Simon and cause him to withdraw again. In the same instant, Captain Salguero was moving forward, and reaching up to grasp Simon’s shoulders, then shaking the man’s reluctant hand, and finally holding up that legendary lycanthrope’s hand to show the onlookers the white cross emblazoned in the palm.
“This man is the one you’ve heard so much of,” the captain was blaring momentously. “He is a follower of the Christ, but he embraces the universal tolerance of the Wunderknechten that we all hold dear. And he is the Wrath of God to all powers of evil—”
Gonji folded his arms and cocked an eyebrow as he listened, smiling inside. He could see Simon begin to sweat, those silver eyes flicking about for safe harbor though there was none to be found, the company of others being so discomfiting to him. Salguero had certainly overstated Simon’s tolerance of beliefs outside the dogma of Holy Mother Church, unless Simon had changed radically since Gonji had last ridden with him.
And what of this sudden camaraderie between Simon and the captain? Salguero had not mentioned that he and Simon were now fast friends. These Spaniards certainly had a way of developing bonds of affinity over every chance meeting. Gonji was not sure that he and Simon could call each other ‘friends,’ though it was the samurai who first had shamed the reclusive werewolf into helping other people, in the Vedun campaign.
He suddenly realized that he was being childishly jealous, chiding himself and dismissing the foolish feeling. Simon was now apprehensively relating their present situation—the messengers who had been dispatched to set blockades against them; how some had never made it to their destinations (gasps of horror, pilgrims crossing themselves—though his actions had been on their behalf!); that at least one patrol tracking them would not return.
And then the grim faces of some of the Spanish soldiers in the camp, whose mixed feelings about the news could not be disguised, caused Simon to seize up. He pulled away from Salguero, locking eyes with Gonji.
They moved toward each other, bowing. Gonji’s first words came in the form of a mildly sarcastic jest: “Have you forgotten what I taught you about the need for a horse? I see you’re walking again.”
Simon’s visage twisted scornfully. “You’re in typically caustic form. I left my mount on the plains. I could not persuade it to wait while I—” His tongue could not pronounce the words.
“So sorry. A bad joke,” Gonji admitted. “I am glad to see you.”
“You can save your humor and your gratitude for later,” Simon said in his low, rasping voice. “For now, you can find me an obscure wagon to lie in, and keep these people away from me. I need sleep badly. Ride hard today for the Jucar. Wake me just after noon. You’ll have to fight your way over the bridge across the river. We’ll talk before the sun sets. Is there a surgeon along?”
Gonji shook his head sadly as he gazed into the man’s pearly eyes. Fractured redness strained them. He looked dazed. And when Gonji looked down to where Simon withdrew a bloody hand from inside his shirt, he gritted his teeth.
Simon began to tremble from the effect of the pistol wound.
“Then…” the lycanthrope said haltingly, “then send me someone with a steady hand and a sharp knife.”
A steely-nerved trooper who had dug more than one pistol ball from a comrade’s hide attended to Simon that day. Visibly shaken by the experience, he could only repeat again and again how Simon had lain awake during the entire grisly procedure. And more disturbing, how the wound had shown signs of nascent healing only an hour after the ball had been removed.
* * * *
More refugees joined them on the road that day: Jews, closet Reformers, Moriscos. Jacob Neriah’s caravan was now mixed in with a mass lemming-like movement of escapees from the Inquisition’s clutches. Gonji fostered grave misgivings as to what it would all come to.
“How many ships?” he asked old Jacob as the sun ascended to its apex.
Neriah raised two fingers, casting him a sidelong glance.
They encountered their first serious resistance when they reached the bridge over the Jucar River. A patrol of five Spanish lancers halted the caravan and began suspiciously questioning Jacob, all the while eyeing the ominous Simon Sardonis, who rode at Jacob’s side, looking distressed by his wounds. Neriah produced legitimate papers of transit and had just about convinced the patrol to allow them through when one of the lancers began routinely checking the wagons.
When he reached the dray driven by the innocently cloaked and hooded Gonji, the vigilant trooper peered more closely and registered alarm at the Oriental’s presence. He kicked his steed up close to the smiling samurai, who greeted him calmly, while averting his face.
But Corsini, who had joined the band out of his debt to Gonji as well as an idealistic sense of Gonji’s divine mission, pulled his pistol and blasted a hole in the nearby patrol commander’s forehead. Horses screamed and reared, and a short, frantic engagement ensued. The three soldiers with the commander were felled in close-quarter combat, one taken down by a springing Simon and the other two overwhelmed by the mercenary escort.
The soldier at Gonji’s dray drew his rapier. Gonji pulled the Sagami from its concealment beside him and beat the slim blade aside. Just as the samurai engaged his opponent, another pistol shot dropped the lancer from the saddle.
Before the excitement died down, Buey pounded up to Corsini and leaped to belt him off his mount with a savage backhand blow.
“Neapolitan bastard!” the Ox growled. “We could have gone by without bloodshed.”
Some of Corsini’s companions began to move to his aid, and a violent argument broke out, finally mediated by Gonji.
“No more pistols,” the samurai warned, “and no more fighting unless I give the order or initiate it myself. I, or Captain Salguero. Children are with us, and those shots were probably heard for miles.”
“Are we or are we not on a holy mission?” Corsini grumbled as he wiped the blood from his mouth. His friends grunted supportively.
“What kind of crusade are you on, Napoli?” another renegade under Salguero challenged.
“We kill no more soldiers unless it is absolutely necessary,” Captain Salguero ordered. “It is my responsibility to decide when any of my former compadres must die. Simon has said that no messengers made it this far to the east.”
“And what did he do in order to prevent them?” Corsini accused, pointing at the lycanthrope. But when he saw the look in Simon’s eye, Corsini swallowed and dropped the matter, remounting and swinging off with his band of free companions to cross the bridge.
The Spaniards watched them, still muttering with hostility. It would remain a sore point between the Spanish and Italian contingents, and in the subsequent days, refugees began to segregate themselves into hostile factions, along ethnic lines.
Gonji took note of this divisiveness with a sense of ill omen.
* * * *
Simon took a meal with Gonji early that evening, watching the sun press near the horizon, his mood plummeting with it.
“What would you have done with that patrol?” Si
mon asked him, out of earshot of the others. “Sooner or later the tension will get to someone again. Too many families in danger here. Cardenas over there—” Simon pointed at the solicitor from Barbaso, seated against a wagon wheel fifty feet away, reading from a small tattered book.
Gonji inhaled sonorously. “I don’t think Cardenas would start trouble. He’s an intelligent man. He wants to return to his family. I’ve promised to let him go when we reach the sea, and that seems satisfactory to him. I don’t know what to do about trouble. We must fight, I suppose. We can’t haul prisoners with us. By the way,” he continued, smiling, “nice of you to drop by for my execution. I was afraid you’d miss it.”
Simon dismissed the droll remark with a curled lip.
“It seems we’re linked again,” Gonji said, “by a third party.”
“How so?”
“This Balaerik, this…manipulative priest, or sorcerer, who used the Inquisition’s mad fanaticism to try to trap you—I was the bait, you see. He’s taken a special interest in destroying both of us. Or me, anyway. I don’t know why. Your devotion to the Church may be compromised a bit when I tell you this: Are you aware that whatever secret faction is conspiring to kill us, for whatever reason, actually went so far as to place an evil Pope in Roma for a short time?”
Simon’s reply surprised Gonji. “I suppose it can happen. Evil is powerful. But now they’ll be on their guard against such blasphemy ever occurring again. Don’t look so pleased with yourself. The Church is still the guardian of the Word of God.”
Gonji shrugged in half-agreement. “Do you know, Balaerik said he bore you a message from your father.”
“He is not my father.”
Simon’s outburst caused heads to turn in their direction. He reddened and lowered his voice at once. “Don’t ever call that monster my father.”
“So sorry, mon ami, the possessing spirit’s father, then.”
“The possessed spirit’s father. I am not an energumen. I host one.”
Gonji’s brow knit in confusion. “Wait—there is a third spirit within you? Wakarimasen—I don’t understand. Sprechen Sie Deutsch, bitte.”
They changed from French to High German, a language with which Gonji was far more conversant.
“It’s something like that,” Simon explained. “The shape-shifting sorcerer Grimmolech used his foul sorcery to somehow place his son’s possessed spirit into the body of the Killing Beast. It’s possessed by something evil, to be sure, as is its father. Perhaps their entire family line…”
“But Grimmolech is essentially human? Not a demon, as you’ve claimed before?”
“One and the same nonetheless,” Simon responded, brimming with hatred. “Some sort of…high priest of evil power. Magic. Sorcery.”
“It’s getting bad, Simon,” Gonji said gravely. “Something must be done. And you’ve got to stop avoiding me. Somehow we are linked in this. Spiritually, cosmically. Too many wise men claim so. We must form an alliance against this…conspiracy that gives us no peace. Learn its intentions. Destroy it. I saw things in your native France since we last met. Whole towns are being swayed to supernatural evil. A visionary woman I met—she reminded me a bit of Tralayn—she told me of a…conjoining of evil forces that seek to control our world by using strange gateways into others. Other worlds…concurrent with our own. I’ve seen examples of the truth of her words.”
Simon was shaking his head. “It would be a mistake for us to be trapped together.”
“Stop playing the tortured loner! I want to know what’s behind all this,” Gonji argued. “What threat we pose to them. Do you know that a dead man returned from the Dark Lands to testify against me in Toledo? He spewed foul lies that connected me with a horrid cult I battled against—vampires who preyed on children, in Pont-Rouge.”
“I said it would be a mistake,” Simon repeated, “but it may be necessary to do as you say. For a time, perhaps. I, too, have seen evidence of what you say. And I came looking for you—to solicit your help.”
Gonji thought he detected a surprising note of fear in the man’s pearl-lustered eyes, for the first time ever in their association. But then he decided it must be the sun, now resting on the western horizon, which inspired it.
“I’ll explain when there’s time,” Simon added. “I’ll help you get these people to the ships, then I’ll explain. Don’t speak more of me, if they ask.” He rose to leave, compelled by the first stirrings of painful transformation. For because he had killed on the night of the full moon, he was doomed to the painful nightly reversions into the werewolf, until that moon had been supplanted by the next. Yet he still pathetically insisted that no companions take undue note of his tragic life, as if none of it were real.
“There’s one other thing about this,” Simon noted, watching the murky red orb of the sun sag lower. “I’ve learned that knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece have been set after you. It’s an order of impeccable honor and spiritual devotion. I’ll not harm any of them. They actually remind me of you, in their exalted sense of duty.” He cast the samurai a nervous, feral grin, as close to a gesture of humor as Simon could ever muster.
Gonji cocked an eyebrow. “Wait—the sea—what about when we reach the sea? How will we—”
Simon shook it off, backing away into the gathering twilight. “You’ll take to ship; I’ll go overland. What else can we do?”
“Iye—that won’t do. You see… I’m not going to Austria. I must sail to the Barbary States.”
“To Africa? What in God’s name for?”
“Later. I’ll explain later.”
Simon was trembling now. “I’ll never board a ship. You know it’s madness to expect—adieu!”
“Simon,” Gonji rasped after him in a whisper, “what will you be about this night?”
“I’ll prowl.”
Then he was bounding astride a skittish horse and kicking it hard across the savannahs, dwindling into the distance. The horse, Gonji knew, would soon abandon him in terror.
The samurai morosely ambled over to Cardenas, who had been watching the two of them.
“What are you reading?” Gonji inquired, not sure why, since he cared little.
“Bacon… Francis Bacon,” Cardenas replied airily, and thumbing to a particular page, he quoted without looking: “‘I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.’”
Gonji stiffened, chilled by the sudden quiet touch at his elbow. It was Valentina, proffering him a cup of rum. He accepted it with thanks and tipped it at Cardenas, who tentatively held up his own goblet in reply.
“To the stroke of death,” Gonji toasted.
The three of them exchanged small talk awhile, Gonji wary of the brightness of the starry autumn night. Cognizant of the brooding posture of the former Spanish troopers, who drank in lament of the countrymen they’d been forced to fight.
To Gonji, it seemed they could not depart Spain soon enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
So stealthy was the night attack on the dozing sentries outposted to the north of the camp that only one of them was able to squeeze off a warning shot before they were overcome.
The shot galvanized the camp. Strangled cries were hushed, and women and children were herded into and under wagons for safety as the first musket enfilade raked their left flank. One man was hit, and before the dazed fighting men could assemble, another volley spattered the encampment, felling another mercenary and a dray horse.
Gonji belted his swords and leapt astride the black mare, encountering Salguero as he clung low and checked the priming pan of a pistol.
“Patrol?” Gonji advanced.
“Musket company,” the captain corrected. “Probably down from Cuenca.”
“We’ve got to hit them, Hernando,” the samurai said. “Too many innocent p
eople in danger.”
Salguero moistened his lips and nodded resignedly in agreement. “They can outrange our pistols.”
“Not our bows,” the samurai reminded, leaping down off the horse again and calling the fighting men to assemble on foot. He caught up a longbow and quiver of shafts as another volley ripped into the camp. Someone shrieked inside a wagon, struck by the fire.
“See the flashes?” Salguero called out. “Two hundred yards.”
“I make it a hundred seventy-five,” Gonji judged.
They split the archers and crossbowmen into three squads and set out, firing in rotating volleys, each squad scrambling ahead after their fusillade, running low in the darkness as they reloaded. The arbalesters trailed the archers because of the longer reloading time. Arrows and bolts whickering across the starlit sky, they advanced like the beak and wings of a swooping hawk.
Now the musketeers, seeing their tactic, stood to fire in concentration on one wing at a time. The left flank of bowmen took note too late, firing simultaneously with the Spanish troopers. Two men of the six renegades dropped, one of them crying out repeatedly in anguish, his screams terrible to hear in the darkness.
But Gonji’s squad at the center of the counterattack leapt up as if to fire, dropped to the ground when they saw the muskets come to bead, and scrabbled back up after the discharge to fire at will, as they dispersed to form two smaller wings. The outcries of the skewered musketeers testified to their success.
Now the freedom fighters came on at the dead run, sweat glistening on anxious visages, as they dared the deadly gunfire. They were near enough to see the frantic reloading of the muskets by moonlight. The next gun volley felled two more free companions and one of Salguero’s rebel lancers, but a like number of musketeers spun down from the impact of quarrels and war arrows.