by T. C. Rypel
Cresting the slope, he peered down into a moonlit delve, a gurgling brook meandering along its nadir. An open wound in the forest. For an instant as he sat aboard the steed, squaring his shoulders against an unbidden feeling of aloneness and vulnerability, he imagined that his faulty sense of direction had betrayed him: He could not recall having passed this way with Tralayn.
But it abated at once when he caught sight of the ominous rise of the foothills before him. The sleek-faced escarpment he sought was scarcely a kilometer distant.
And now—a new awareness: The forest whispers had receded; he had penetrated into a sphere of paralysis, for although he could sense the shapes of staring things all about him, not a living thing moved save for the trees, nor did any sound come to him but the murmur of the brook and the slow, heavy soughing of the wind at his face, ruffling his clothes and hair. A deep note of warning, as of a watchdog’s growl.
A misshapen frustration, topped by a many-headed anger, rose up in snarling defiance within him. He set his jaw against the press of the wind, his face an inscrutable Eastern mask; but the Western half—the tameless, emotional Western child part of him—jabbed the roncin’s flanks, harder than necessary, directing her down into the delve.
Gonji eased down off the shuddering horse, allowed her to drink from the brook as he paced the bank from side to side like a predator spoiling for a fight. Weary and eager to drink though it was, the animal repeatedly paused in its slaking to cast about with rolling eyes, nostrils quivering in the wind, ears flicking to snatch at sounds beyond Gonji’s range. The samurai watched her closely, keeping near lest she flee to leave him alone on foot.
Then the moon tore a hole in the scudding cloud sea and emerged in silvery glare. Gonji peered up to see the soft white ring that dimmed its edge. A portent of more rain. Leaden wisps skimmed over the moon’s surface, obscuring it again, making its shape indistinct. It was bloated, bulbous. Almost full....
Full?
A sudden screaming chill along the ramparts of sanity.
Iye. No. Not full. Not for two—three days yet. The last full moon had nearly seen him dead. This one must find him very much alive. Oh, very yes. There was much that must be done before he could pass with honor into the land of the dead.
The roncin nickered, trembling and stamping. Gonji spoke to her reassuringly and caught up the reins, calming her as she stamped back against his gentle pressure. He brought her under control and leapt astride, riding out a brief spate of anxious bucking.
The wind gusted through them again, swirling about, buffeting them as if shaking a fist against their continuing. Gonji experienced a momentary unbidden vision of the monstrous beasts of the nether world he had encountered in his time, few so terrifying as those he had seen in Transylvania; of the strangling white clutch of the Weeping Sisters, those foul blood-lusting things which had tried to feast on his unwilling person; and of their prophecy that he would die in this land. Hollow threat of the evil Deceiver, or oracle of certain doom?
But then came the fortifying thought of the fulfillment of his destiny, so close at hand, if deadly in promise; and of his hatred for the fulsome Enchanter, who had toyed with him, had so casually regarded his prowess and his courage. And lastly he thought of the lamented dead, and of the fighting hearts of the men and women of Vedun....
Karma....
With a grunt he kicked the steed across the brook and up the delve’s far side.
The trees soon parted. Before him lay the broad glade that fronted the concealed cave. The Cave of Chains. Frosted lances of moonlight slanted through the treetops to dance over the tall, still grass. Cool and quiet it was, the pines and larches that rimmed it as implacable as a court of inquisition. The forest at Gonji’s back seemed to his heightened sensibilities to recede of its own accord, abandoning him, having offered its fair warning.
The roncin’s snorting was the only sound, the wind having died away now. The animal’s pounding hooves clumped forward three strides into the glade and came to a confused halt. She tossed and whinnied fretfully, such that Gonji drew on the reins to steady her. But the more he tried, the more recalcitrant the horse became, tossing her head and curvetting, then clattering a full circle before he yanked her, shivering, to the fore once again.
(Deathwind) Stop it. That means nothing now.
(He is here) He’s a man, that’s all. And by all the spirits of my ancestors, I aim to learn what he’s about....
The samurai whispered in calming tones to the steed and dismounted, lashing her tightly to a stump at the eastern end of the glade. On an impulse, he removed the longbow and quiver of poisoned arrows, looking about him circumspectly all the while. These he brought with him as he strode lightly across the grassy clearing.
Halfway to the boulder-strewn base of the hill and the cave entrance covered by tangled overgrowth, Gonji was seized by a sudden conviction of the alienness of his presence in that place. The same skin-prickling sensation he had experienced on the day he and Tralayn had entered the secret cave. At the center of the glade he lay down the bow and quiver and began pacing laterally before the cave entrance, adjusting his swords and striving to control his breathing and pulse.
He would have called it caution and not fear, and he would have been at least partly justified. For the cave emanated so palpable an aura of menace that Gonji dared not enter. So he made his stand, came to terms with the longtime focus of his destiny, there in that dread moon-limned clearing. A low rumble of thunder in the mountains both preceded and emboldened his voice:
“Hail to you, storied cave-dweller! I am Sabatake Gonji-no-Sadowara, and I would have a word with you.”
The ringing mock greeting, spoken in Simon Sardonis’ native French, lingered in the chill air. Gonji stood motionless, facing the cave entrance, hand lightly fisting sword hilt. When his call was not answered, he released his captive breath and began to pace laterally again, more confidently now, the spell of the glade broken by the new assurance in his presence, the fresh reminder of his conviction of destiny in fulfillment. His face was the impassive mask of an aggrieved master awaiting the accountability of an underling. There was no sound but the thin wisp of the wind in the trees and the anxious snorting of the horse.
“The time has come for an accounting, monsieur. I think we both know whereof I speak.”
A light rippling chill teased at Gonji’s skin to hear the bold sound of his own words. He paused in his pacing and squinted at the play of moonbeams over the cave entrance.
He stiffened. There had been motion, but not from the cave. Something in the corner of his eye, something moving along the tree line at the western side of the glade. When he focused his eyes on that spot, it was gone.
He expelled his breath in a long choppy exhalation and began to rotate slowly clockwise, scanning the forest. When he caught a glimpse of the thing that caused the tethered steed to whinny and buck, he froze.
A gleam of eyes. Baleful, pale eye-slits that regarded him coldly a moment, then disappeared in the brush.
By the horse’s tossing, Gonji marked the presence’s continued clockwise movement for a long interval. Then the mare’s bulging eyes cast about her in all directions, confused and terrified. A cloud bank swallowed the moon.
I am samurai, and my swords are with me. He swallowed hard, affecting a battlefield scowl, and the burden of fear plummeted through him to vanish into the earth.
“I grow weary of this coy game,” he growled in High German, now facing the eastern end of the clearing. “Declare yourself, if you be a man, and let us speak of Vedun.”
The heraldic dash of wind at his back turned his blood to searing frost, matting his clothes to his sweating back, raking his hair and topknot. He shouldered about, grasping the belted katana’s hilt with both hands, to face the terrible sight of Simon Sardonis. The man of mystery. Cold-blooded killer of the giant commander Ben-Draba, and of untold others in Klann’s employ. He, of whom Tralayn had spoken her awful tale.
The te
thered steed whinnied and stamped as the tall figure began to circle languidly in her direction, scowling at her instinctive panic.
Approaching Gonji at a lazy pace, the man spoke.
“Calm yourself.” His voice came soft but commanding, the language a recognizable French dialect, a coarse rasp in its undertone. “What do you want here? Who told you of this place?”
Calm yourself. The cavalier accusation failed to penetrate at once, for Gonji’s mind had exploded in flaming pinwheels of disjointed thought. In his anxious state, no coherent words would come, so he merely kept his silence and permitted instinct to move him. The glade seemed transformed, timeless. Overlays of impression unfolded to the samurai’s wary consciousness. First, the soldier’s assessment: Sardonis wore a short sword thrust through his wide belt, much in the manner of Gonji’s own swords. No other armament was apparent. The man was alone. He strode with an air of confidence and command. His face, though, bore the occasional twitch of barely contained curiosity or unease. And when he began to move laterally again once he had approached to within about forty feet of Gonji, his movement betrayed a definite limp; he was favoring his right side. The bowshot he had taken in the buttock had left its agonizing reminder.
Next Gonji took in the man’s overall appearance. Under the broad belt he wore a light-colored tunic, slashed and blood-stained on the left sleeve, a thick wrap bulging beneath the ragged tear. His narrow-cut breeches and well-worn walking boots were of so similar a dark hue in moon-bathed night as to look of a piece. He was hatless, his coarse golden hair lying back stiffly, darker now than Gonji remembered, its blackened ends stirring like the ruff on a dog’s back.
Finally came the insistent impression he had experienced upon entering the concealed cave with Tralayn: Gonji was an alien here, an intruder. Unwanted. Out of place. And his foreignness bore less of a cultural association than a metaphysical.
Gonji eased his hands off the Sagami’s hilt and stood regally straight, turning slowly to keep Sardonis in the center of his vision. The longbow and quiver of envenomed arrows lay a rod away. Small comfort against the chilling memory of the speed of this man of legend: Fleeting glimpses of the event at the city’s square returned to Gonji. The killing of Ben-Draba...the lightning escape on foot...the scramble up a sheer fifteen-foot wall...the Night of Chains...the full moon....
He is a man. Still a man. He—
“Well, monsieur?” came the grating voice again. “Has your bold blustering been so easily retired by—”
“Speak German,” Gonji shot, “or Spanish—anything but French. I care as little for your native language as I do for your hermit’s self-pity.” Gonji felt the momentary singe of the harsh words, and then it passed. He was beyond regret now. Beyond diplomacy. Beyond fear.
Sardonis’ hair began to bristle like a hedgehog’s. The strange man’s swept-back eyes became a gleaming silver line, curving angrily. To Gonji’s mind, so similar to his own. Yet different; the difference being less one of race than of...species.
“You’ve already crossed over a boundary from which few men have ever returned,” Simon asserted coldly. “Once again—who sent you here? And what were you told?”
Sardonis had spoken in German now, and Gonji would continue in kind.
“Tralayn,” he replied softly.
“So,” Simon said smugly, relaxing somewhat, “the holy woman betrays her oath. The sanctimonious—”
“She’s dead,” Gonji shouted, “or likely so by now. Dragged off in shackles to Castle Lenska. Or is this old news to you? Were you there watching from your godlike vantage, the way you’ve watched all our puny mortal struggling from the beginning?”
Simon grew rigid again, a slight coloration creeping into the paleness of his cheeks. Caution, Gonji-san....
But when Simon spoke in reply, it was in a tentative voice, his eyes for the first time falling from the samurai. “No, I—I didn’t know,” he acknowledged, his voice dwindling to a verbal introspection. “So that’s why it wouldn’t let me....”
Gonji was emboldened by the turn, the icy barrier of apprehension melting, his anger and frustration and sense of futility surfacing: “Hai, Tralayn—dead, Mark Benedetto—dead, Flavio—dead—” At this disclosure Simon’s angular, predatory eyes became a silver line of menace, snapping up to lock onto Gonji’s own again. “Dead,” Gonji repeated. “Swinging in the square from his beloved cross, that holy symbol under which you’d call yourself his brother. And it needn’t have happened,” he accused, pointing a finger at Simon for a second but almost at once lowering both his hand and his voice, for with the words had come a fresh flooding of guilt-ridden recrimination. And he continued in a near whisper:
“The priest, Father Dobret...dead.... But I suppose you already know that.”
Simon quaked with an inner fury at the words. “Ja,” he replied with a tremulous breath, “I’ve been there.”
Gonji experienced a rash of gooseflesh. Could the strange man have learned of Gonji’s own participation in the outrage at Holy Word Monastery?
Simon’s trembling subsided, and he glared at Gonji.
“What did Tralayn tell you...of me?”
“Enough,” Gonji replied evenly, gauging the reaction. Then: “Everything. Enough to know that you shirk your responsibility, your duty. You resist your destiny, Monsieur Thing-of-Legend—Herr Grejkill—shi-kaze...Deathwind!”
Gonji’s pulse raced, and he began to pace as he spoke, circling about Simon imperiously, their roles subtly reversed now, as the man of folklore and legend cast his eyes groundward again and flushed with a look that resembled shame. Or guilt. Or self-loathing.
Simon swallowed with noticeable difficulty. “She broke her vow.”
“What is a vow,” Gonji proposed, ambling with hands behind his back, “when measured against the lives of men?” A poignant stab: You speak in tarnished, hypocritical assertions, Gonji-san. Does not bushido itself demand—Iye, I must maintain the upper hand. He must be made to see. These people—they matter. “She broke a vow for the higher value of saving the city and the people she loved. She knew that your great power might be—”
Simon hissed him to silence with a flash of gleaming white teeth, abruptly hostile once again. “Leave this place,” he shouted. “Go away from here. All I ever asked of men was that they leave me alone. Alone with this accursed burden I bear like some scourge out of Hell. My every crossing with men has brought death and destruction. Now you come to me, an infidel, blaring like a herald of Death that all those I could call friend are dead. Leave me now!”
Simon turned his back to him, shoulders bunching with tension. But Gonji continued pacing around him, sweating palms rubbing over the fabric of his half-kimono as he picked over his words, like a man traversing a thicket of deadly thorns.
“Ah, so desu ka? Is that the truth?” Gonji probed. “You care for people only after they’re dead, so that you can play godling with your aroused sense of vengeance? Why don’t you try doing something for the living now and again?”
Simon whirled and transfixed him with the silver darts of his eyes as the pale moon burst through the cloud cover. A searching wind whirled into the glade.
“Infidel,” Simon intoned venomously, “you have no idea what you’re saying. If you’ve been told what you claim, then you must know what you ask is impossible. You could never understand my lot. And I don’t like you. You...or your idiotic methods—what in God’s name was your plan the other night? What kind of rebellious action was that? Yet you attack my sense of responsibility?”
His words stung Gonji deeply. Rampant visions swelled: The vulgar drunken spectacle he’d made of himself; his failed duty; his shame and embarrassment at being forbidden even the saving stroke of seppuku.
He strove to lay at rest the mocking voices, to come to terms with painful honesty.
“Hai...you’re quite right,” Gonji replied with a thin, tight smile. “At least half-right. The action was not of my order. But I, too, have failed in my du
ty toward these people. Yet if I can I’m going to salvage what’s left of their way of life. When I came into their service it was unbidden, owing them nothing, at least at first. But you—you—they’ve been protecting your secret, harboring you, sheltering you, some of them, for a year now. Abiding all the while your anti-social contempt. Now they’re dying in the streets by sword and pistol and sorcery, crying out for assistance, and what do you do? Nothing but lash out on your own, strike down Klann’s troops as it pleases you by cover of night, only to have citizens beaten and shot for your crimes—ja, crimes—”
Simon’s scalding eyes followed him. “Mind your tongue, barbarian—” The ensorceled hermit began to circle warily again, such that they now described orbits around each other. The roncin mare shrilled and bucked as Simon neared her tether.
Gonji’s own anger rose again. “An old Polish farmer once told me of a proverb spoken in these territories. Something about the filthiest bird being the one who befouls his own nest. From my vantage you’re a pretty filthy bird these days—”
“Have a care, heathen swine.”
“Hai, call me ‘heathen’ as well you might. But if it’s insults you crave, then call me fool for having sought you out these many long years. Ten—miserable—karma-laden years as a worthless ronin, wandering this backward continent in search of the legendary Deathwind—him who would guide me to my destiny!” Gonji snorted and spat noisily behind him. “That’s for the trail I’ve ridden. If your wish is to insult me, then laugh at the way the gods mock my every effort.”
“That’s your problem.”
“Ha! Mine and that of the people of Vedun, now that their lives have become entwined with mine,” Gonji sneered. “How easy for you to cast aside the troubles of the world you move in, with a simple swipe of your legendary aloofness. And you’re wrong, Sir Hermit—there are those who still care about you. Tralayn saw to that with her constant insistence to them that a powerful Deliverer would be coming to their aid. Despite all my efforts on their behalf, with all the scratching and clawing and dishonorable compromise of principle I’ve had to bear just to win some measure of respect, they still wait for you.”