by T. C. Rypel
“It’s madness! All of it.”
“How would we even escape? Klann will stop any mass movement of—”
“That’s only part of it,” Gonji snapped. “This isn’t to be a stampede of rabbits. The non-militant will be moved swiftly through the catacombs under heavy armed escort of married militiamen and brought out into both the valley and the northern hills. Those tunnels are fortified but unblocked. Meanwhile, up above, the bulk of the fighting men will be locking horns with Klann’s occupation troops, securing the city, and then defending against the reinforcements from the castle garrison, along with...whatever Mord raises against us. Once they’re engaged and thus preoccupied, we rush every wagon in the city—fortified as best they can be—rush them out the west gate under the rest of the family men. They’ll pick up the evacuated innocents along the way, then load them into the wagons and fly for safety in Austria. A good day’s ride ought to bring you into Hapsburg territory, where Klann will be loath to follow. In any case,” he sighed resolutely, “his command should be...considerably diminished by then. There’ll be no one to follow. I’ll see to that. We’ll see to that.” Gonji locked narrow-eyed gazes with Wilf.
“Ridiculous—!” came the derisive cries, once the translators had finished. Some stood as if to leave but were urged back into their seats by faithful bushi.
“What about the conscripts at the castle?” asked a farmer whose daughter had been taken as a servant.
“I was coming to that,” Gonji responded, strolling again. “You see we’re going to...take it back again....”
The simple confidence in the bold statement tore gasps from the onlookers. Gonji smiled thinly as he went on.
“Wilfred and I will lead a raiding party that will wrest Castle Lenska from those thieving bastards who’ve soiled it by their presence. We’ll free the hostages and the castle servantry, so that they may join you until it’s fit to return and restore Vedun. To fortify it against future incursions.”
“You keep speaking as if Vedun were a fortress, a military stronghold—” Milorad began fretfully.
“And so it is,” Gonji shot back, eyes gleaming. “So it must be, my diplomatic friend. There is no way to think now—fight or die.”
“How will you mount enough men to attack Castle Lenska?” Roric Amsgard thought aloud, the former military man shaking his head.
“It’s not the manpower, Roric, it’s the method,” Gonji replied. “You know that. Maybe we’ll turn some of Mord’s deceptive tricks against him. You see, I say this all with utmost confidence, because I want our traitor to tell Mord I’m coming for him. I want him to know that.”
He smiled calmly, eyes half-lidded as if he envisioned an oracle of certain victory. Softly, he continued: “You see, I know Mord’s power wanes. He grows weaker with each passing hour. His monsters die by the hands of puny men. Has any among you seen the wyvern trail its filth across your skies today? I thought not. I myself participated in his demise....”
A tremor of excitement and jostling. Whispers of awe.
Gonji spoke with quiet arrogance, wishing Mord to know it all, if indeed the traitor would be able to get word to him. It would be necessary for Mord to be enraged, his thinking unhinged, his plans out of focus as he concentrated all his hatred on Gonji.
But was the traitor among them now? Among those he most trusted and most distrusted?
Hai. The traitor was there. Somewhere. Pulsing with fear and wrath....
Wilf had stood as Gonji had mentioned his name. The young smith also now leaned against his table with arms folded.
“Can any of you doubt that we’ll accomplish what Gonji says?” Wilf contributed with a forced pride that caused the samurai to stifle a smile. How well Gonji appreciated the company of the valiant and loyal bushi of Vedun!
His father cast his eyes groundward to hear Wilf’s swaggering, while both his brothers seemed embarrassed.
“Oh—Aldo,” Gonji said in sudden remembrance to the bearded biller, Monetto, “don’t forget to mount that party of worthies today to begin reopening the tunnel to the castle dungeons.”
Monetto nodded, as he had been instructed to do.
It was a ruse. On reflection, any person who had seen the effective blocking of the tunnel in question—the supporting timbers fired, tons of earth and rock jamming the collapsed tunnel for an unguessable depth—would have known the near impossibility of what Gonji asked. The samurai had taken Aldo into his confidence in this additional minor effort at keeping Mord off balance, should their plans be conveyed to him.
Madness must be met with madness, their plans sown with red herrings and apparent illogic.
“Garth,” a man called out from behind the burly smith, “why does Klann refuse to see you now?”
“Da—were you not his trusted general once?”
Affirmations and questions echoed in reinforcement of the inquiry. Garth seemed stung by the implications, whose innuendo defamed both his present and his past.
“I tried,” he retorted sharply, “and that is that.” His ears reddened.
Lorenz rose at his side, the Executor of the Exchequer espying the accusers along his nose with courtly indignation.
“Who raises doubts regarding my father’s integrity?” Lorenz bridled. “He rode to the castle and was rebuffed at the drawbridge. Captain Kel’Tekeli refused to see him unless he wished to speak of Gonji’s whereabouts. Inasmuch as he possessed neither the knowledge nor the willingness the captain sought, he abandoned that tack. He next tried his old comrade Captain Sianno, who unfortunately hasn’t been seen in the city since that revolt of the idiots—”
Here there was grumbling at the aspersion cast on the late Phlegor, his fate still unknown to most of them. A few craftsmen leapt to their feet.
“Watch it, Gundersen. Phlegor’s a good man, and he has friends here.”
Lorenz ignored them. “Now what would you have my father do? You all know me. I’m a rational man—will you all grant me that?” He kept talking without pausing to assess the muttering. “But I’ve come to believe, reluctantly, that the militants are now right in saying that there’s no recourse but a violent one. So...we must fight.” With the single brandish of a fist, Lorenz relaxed, smoothed the creases from his well-cut doublet, and sat back down. There were shouts of assent among the groans.
Ignace Obradek, the blind wheelwright, cackled shrilly and slapped his thigh.
Gonji peered at Lorenz a moment, not liking the depersonalization in his phrase “the militants,” which in a single cleverly inflected swoop both ignored Gonji’s singular importance and voiced Lorenz’s undying contempt for the very fighting men he had spoken in support of. And the offhanded remark directed at Phlegor and the craftsmen reminded Gonji of his own guilt over having set Julian to watching them in order to deflect suspicions of the real militia’s effort.
“We’ll have no more in-fighting,” Gonji declared. “No more bickering among factions within the city. We are one, or we are nothing. As for what the craftsmen did.... They did what they felt they must at the time, believing Klann to be dead. It was a sound military principle, if ill-timed and undermanned. Now, I’m afraid, we must proceed in the belief that what Garth has told you is true—that Klann possesses more than one life.” His voice had dwindled to a near whisper, but now he raised it to a sonorous command tone. “But his troops are quite mortal! We’ve all seen that. And we are united against them. The craftsmen have laid their remaining weapons cache in the hills at the disposal of the militia, for which we thank them. And Phlegor—” Gonji’s gloom permeated the chamber, though none knew the man’s terrible fate, save Wilf. “—if we never see Phlegor again, he should be remembered as a heroic defender of his city. Along with Master Flavio, and Tralayn, and all those others who have fallen.”
A brief silence followed, punctuated by nervous coughing. Then Roric broke the spell.
“This business of the wagons, Gonji—” the provisioner advanced, “—are you sure there are enough o
f them to carry all the innocents away?”
Gonji turned his palms up. “They’ll have to do, Roric.”
Stefan Berenyi brightened suddenly. “Jacob Neriah’s back in town with his caravan! Just back from the east yesterday. He must have twenty sturdy wagons and a dozen drays.”
“That’s right,” Nick Nagy agreed.
“Are the draft horses kept nearby?” Gonji asked.
Both hostlers agreed readily that they were.
“Sure,” Berenyi said, “in the livery. Not all are at the Provender, though. Some few had to be sent over to the caravanserai at Wojcik’s Haven. But there are teams for every wagon.”
“Hmm.” Gonji grew pensive. “There’ll be tremendous pressure on you hostlers. You’ll have to hitch the teams with all good speed when the time has come. Can you do it quickly and quietly enough?”
Nagy was scratching his tousled gray hair and frowning. They looked at each other across Nagy’s wife and shrugged.
“You boys can do whatever you have to do,” Magda said encouragingly, patting them both.
“Igen, sure,” Nick grumbled. “You don’t have to do any of the work!”
“She might as well, for all the work you do,” Berenyi sneered.
“Hey, watch it, you little shit!”
They began snapping at each other in Hungarian, chuckles erupting all about them. Some of the tension leaked from the chamber, and Gonji let it run its course for a few seconds before clapping his hands sharply.
“Gentils,” Michael Benedetto urged, “may we keep to the point? And do speak German, or Italian, if you will.”
“Hai, dozo—yes, please do,” Gonji agreed, smiling at the laughter evoked by his ironic use of Japanese.
Berenyi rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, there’s no quick and quiet way to hitch wagon teams, you know.” He shook his head. “No way to avoid attention.”
“Does it have to be this way?” a voice pleaded from the audience.
“Ja, that’s settled,” Wilf called out impatiently. His left hand worked at the hilt of Spine-cleaver. Strom snorted from where he sat, slumped between his knees, eyes scanning the cavern floor. Lorenz curled his lip in distaste at his younger brother’s posturing of leadership.
Gonji nodded gravely. “How’s the hand, Stefan?”
Berenyi held up the left hand, still partially wrapped around the missing little finger. He grinned. “Doesn’t seem to bother my work, but my ken-jutsu suffers a little. If I get behind, I’ll just have to make Nagy work harder.”
Some good-natured laughter, then, as Nagy reached across his wife with a gnarly hand as if to throttle his partner.
Gonji tugged at his chin thoughtfully. “We’re going to have to create a diversion for you...or perhaps use the wagons for some logical purpose, so that their appointment for travel won’t look suspicious....”
“I can’t believe you’re all really considering this,” Boris Kamarovsky suddenly declared. “Leave your homes to....”
Some heads turned toward the craft guild party, anxious faces betraying their agreement with the wood craftsman’s concern. Normally Boris would have sat with his best friend, Strom Gundersen. But Strom’s seating with his father and near the rest of the military council—particularly the indomitable oriental—had driven Boris to a rear bench with other alienated guildsmen. Boris’ speech failed him and his eyes grew large and sheepish, to see the adamant resolve of the council members.
“So how do we go about this?” the Gray knight Anton growled.
Gonji nodded curtly. “Ah—the rest of the plan. All right.... From this moment on, everyone in this room will proceed with the constant accompaniment of at least one other person now here. Every one among us will keep watch over his partners. So sorry,” he apologized to see the expressions his implication aroused, “but we have a traitor in our midst, and we must observe what security we can still muster. As moon-maddened as it may sound.”
William Eddings rose, jaw working as if he would blare an imprecation that wouldn’t come. He glared angrily at Gonji, tears brimming his eyes, but his family spoke to him softly and eased him back into his seat.
Gonji had gone on, paying it no heed: “There must be no fraternizing with Klann’s troops, either Llorm or mercenary, beyond what discourse you must have with them in the pursuit of commerce. Spread the word in that matter, as it will be strictly enforced and violations will be investigated by me personally. I do have my suspicions as to the means by which the coward snivels intelligence to Mord—”
As he spoke, Gonji’s thoughts coruscated with anger, frustration, and a sense of futility over efforts at security. In truth, he had no salient idea how the traitor plied the foul deed. It could have been accomplished in any one of a thousand ways: via notes, gestures, personal audiences with the sorcerer despite all attempts at vigilance, perhaps even by means of some mystical communication whose inscrutability might make Mord quiver with glee over the rebels’ ignorance and fumbling efforts at security.
He cursed to himself, his jaw tightening with the effort at self-control, and went on.
“Remember that I have my own operatives, and they’re aware of the signs I’m watching for.
“So we work in pairs or groups of three. Teams will be given lists of citizens they will approach with our alert plan. Each team will cover one small sector of the city and report back to the council when their sector has been completed. You will tell them to prepare at once for the evacuation of Vedun. They may take only what they can carry; space will be at a premium on the wagons and on horseback. The riding steeds go to the militiamen, whose needs are first priority. Tell them all to be ready to evacuate on the night following the full moon.”
He paused dramatically to allow the timing to sink in.
“But,” he continued, “they must prepare immediately. There will be no time for delays when the signal is given.”
“What is the signal?” Jiri Szabo asked.
“Shi-kaze—deathwind!”
The entire gathering seemed to suck in a breath.
“When messengers come bearing the word ‘shi-kaze,’ they must move the innocents at once through the chapel and down here, where they will be escorted out to await the wagons near the exit tunnels.”
“Such a clatter, they’ll make!”
“Ja, how will we disguise our purpose?”
Michael held up a restraining hand and shuffled into their midst on his crutch. “Si, we’ve thought about that. As of tonight there will be a new service at the chapel, at ten bells of evening each night. A sort of...lamentation for the newly dead.”
“Soldiers haven’t been near the chapel in the past two days,” Wilf piped up.
“Hai,” Gonji added, “mercenaries are not fond of the reminders of suffering and death.”
There was a building storm of protest and grumbling, the complexity of the task ahead becoming clear.
“Michael, do you truly agree to all this?”
“Ja—da—si!”
“Fight or die,” Gonji pressed, “by the hand of Mord. Remember that he is our chief enemy, even as Tralayn so often told us. Even Klann may not know what he’s about. Enough dispute now. There isn’t time for it. The duty lists will be prepared today. The raiding, escort, and harassment parties will be selected, and their leaders appointed—”
“What about the weapons?” Dobroczy queried. “How will we retrieve those that are at the chapel? Most of the best long-range armament sits there—”
“Si, Gonji,” Monetto agreed, “it wouldn’t do to be going in after the weapons while women and children are there.”
Cries of abrupt realization.
Gonji blew out a breath and scratched his head. “Many of you still have your edged weapons, and there’s a lot of light armor in the city, I know that. The firearms are easy enough to smuggle. You’ll have to risk that, I’m afraid. And somehow—I’m not sure how—we’ll have to use the soldiers’ aversion to the many coffins in the chapel to get the
armament. By the by—that was a fine idea, Paille, moving the weapons and armor up and placing them in coffins.”
Paille petulantly waved off the compliment from where he stood with one leg on a bench near the wall. With one thumb he made small circles on the bridge of his nose, apparently lost in thought.
“How many coffins are still in the chapel?” Gonji asked of no one in particular.
“Too many,” Milorad Vargo muttered through his snowy beard. It seemed to have grown whiter these past dreadful weeks. “It’s a scandal. You can’t even pass along the aisles.” Anna patted his arm sympathetically and purred in his ear.
“There must be close to fifty,” Michael answered. “There’s been a steady flow of obsequies, though. Probably fewer than half still contain actual bodies.”
“Hmm.” Gonji sagged under the onus of unfinished planning, the chaotic nature of their operation. Yet one channel of his mind wondered at Michael’s recent reversal of attitude, his sudden spirit of cooperation. For the first time his eyes now met Lydia’s. She seemed reserved, calm, her eyes heavy-lidded with fatigue and resignation.
Ah, he thought, she’s with child. That must have some bearing on their desire to escape this madness.
She looked lovely and fragile, a delicate blossom on a battlefield. Deep inside, a brittle laugh spiraled up to mock the samurai. Gonji cleared his throat.
“All-recht...,” Gonji began, unsure of the words even as he uttered them.
But then Paille snapped his fingers and blared a gravelly laugh.
“Of course!” the mad artist cried. “We solve both problems at once—the wagon movement and the armament caskets.” Anxious heads turned in reply. Given Paille’s crazy turns of mind, he might propose almost any outrageous—“Not all the coffins have been kept at the chapel before interment. Some chose to take their dead to their homes, so that they might lie in state before burial. Well now, all the other bereaved will choose to follow suit....”
He cast Gonji a cunning look.