by T. C. Rypel
Gonji caught his meaning and nodded. “Ah, wakarimasu—I see—Michael, did the troops take a body count of the citizenry?”
“I don’t think so. They were preoccupied with their own slain.”
“Yoi—good. Then the wagons will be hitched for the purpose of moving coffins to the homes of the bereaved. If there is no interference with the movement of the first few actual bodies, then we begin moving the armament coffins to strategic locations. These will then be the first stop for militiamen when the fighting starts.” Gasps and whispers of shock.
Gonji went on, gleaming black eyes mirroring the images in his thoughts. “But that may not be enough...we’ll also have to have raiding parties to attack the garrison’s armory...and loot the dead soldiery...we should be grateful for this rain spell that—”
“It’s sacrilege!” Galioto the dairy stockman cried, his face a landscape of anguish. “Some of the bodies will already be corrupting. To deny them burial is—”
“That’s right,” Gonji said, picking up part of the man’s line of concern, “we’ll have to see what Dr. Verrico and the undertaker can do about retarding corruption. And keep the coffins sealed....”
A farmer jumped up, storming.
“Men of Vedun—come to your senses! Listen to what these madmen are ordering. The bodies of your loved ones corrupting in your homes—”
“Sit down, Yuschak,” Michael called over the din.
“—our children, our women, the old folk all led down here like cattle to the slaughter! Eaten by beasts from the underworld. Stung to death so that they bloat like fish—like—like—like Baron Rorka!”
Aldo Monetto bounded over the benches, past the bodies that parted before his charge, to stand in the middle of the fearful dissidents.
“Listen to me, all of you,” Monetto said, gesturing placatingly. “Now, you all know me. You know that I give my heart to the defense of the city. My loyalty to the leadership of the council, to Gonji’s devotion to our cause. You know that I tilted at the great worm from the tunnels. Karl and I—some of the others here—we fought with it, helped destroy it, and are here now to tell of it. It’s true that it was here, there’s no denying the awful reality of it. But it’s also true that its carcass now lies in ruin in that very cavern where we’ve trained so hard. It’s now a monument to our hard work. That’s so, no? Mord threw his best at us, and we destroyed it. At the last it went down like a hog in Roric’s slaughterhouse, like some quail you’ve seen Karl down with his bow.”
He paused briefly, glancing around at the anxious, encircling citizens. “Now you also know the size of my family, and my love for them. And I tell you that our homes are not safe. There’s no sanctuary in Vedun anymore. Some of you saw what that giant did, dragging people from their homes. I see by your faces that you’ll not forget, though you pray that the memory would lie still.” Monetto paused and licked his parched lips, seemingly out of words.
“My children will be evacuated from Vedun. And that’s...all I have to say,” he concluded.
Gonji caught Aldo’s eye and passed him a slight nod of gratitude.
“All this horror,” a craftsman whined in despair, unable to stave off the stomach-twisting fear and apprehension any longer. “Our families threatened. The holy chapel become an armory.” He sobbed. “Flavio would not want that—”
“No!” Gonji cried. “Flavio would not want that!”
He leaped down from the table and stalked into their numbers with a cold and deadly expression, as if his intent were to strike a man dead. The chatter abated, and all eyes were on the samurai.
Gonji recognized the subtle turning in the group’s spirit following Monetto’s heartfelt reproach of their timidity: Resignation to fate, perhaps. A nascent malleability of their collective will. Ignoring the cautions flung before his quick-stepping mind by the conscience of the Western child part of him, he moved in among them and began to shape their dawning resignation.
“Flavio would not want that,” he repeated in Spanish, in which language—one of the earliest he’d learned—he felt most comfortable at oratory.
“Flavio would not want to see his chapel filled with concealed weapons, his compatriots’ dead denied a quick consignment to their graves. His friends in armed revolt....
“By now you’ve all heard how I failed in my solemn duty to protect Flavio. What you may not know is that I would have ended my own life that very day for this grave dereliction of duty. This bitter dishonor. Had not my good friends reminded me that”—his voice shrank to a hoarse whisper—“that Flavio would not want that.” He paused, blinked, as if awaking from a dream.
“But tell me—what would Flavio want? He is beyond asking—may all good kami convey him to his reward—so we are left with asking ourselves. Would he have wanted us to hate Klann or his captains for what they’ve brought to us? No, Flavio would not want that. Nor are the Llorm troops, or even those mercenaries who do what they do because they know no other way, nor are any of these to be hated. Flavio, again, would not want that—but...to hate the evil that they do, the evil perpetrated by Mord. This alone would Flavio want in this business—that we hate the evil and fight it to the death, if necessary.”
He clamped his hands behind him and strode with head down as he spoke now. “Flavio...was a great man. A man of shining idealism and firmness of belief that he adhered to all the days of his life. He should not have died in vain, if we fight now to save the seed of his ideals: the dream of peace and freedom of worship and the brotherhood of men of all nations—and you, Vedun, are that seed!
“You cannot live and grow in this place any longer. You would be trampled under the hooves of dragoons; your women savagely used; your children dragged to befouled dungeons and hideously sacrificed to the whims of the dark powers. And, I can assure you, Flavio would not want that. No...he would not. I think, if he were with us now, he would have to agree with the wisdom of our plan....
“That is all that I can think to tell you.”
He moved back to the table, where he leaned and crossed his arms, listening to the breathy silence as the translators finished, feeling the congealing atmosphere of bitter acceptance.
Paille shattered the sepulchral spell. “Why the long faces? Can’t you see the bright tomorrow to it all? When the town is cleansed, you can all return to your lives, to a new order, free of the yoke of—”
Ignace Obradek stood and cackled trenchantly, twisting and turning to crane his head toward the chamber’s dim ceiling, as if his dead eyes could see something denied the rest of them. By his side, the gloomy Paolo kept his place and let his boss rant.
“Bede gowno sie przed dam sie!” the blind wagoner squealed, barely able to squeeze the words out between gusts of mirth.
Several men brayed at the words.
“What’s that?” Gonji asked.
Most of the men near Gonji shrugged sheepishly. Stefan Berenyi seemed about to reply, but he was stopped short by a cultured crystal voice.
“It’s Polish,” Lydia Benedetto explained. “Sort of an...old man’s battle cry: ‘I’ll shit myself, but I won’t give up.’ He seems to have become the spokesman for the city’s solidarity.”
Gonji nodded and smiled at her. She returned it. As cool in defeat as she was in victory, she had serenely accepted Vedun’s future course. Some of the men had colored to hear her unaccustomed use of vulgarity. She, for her part, was unflinching. Gonji felt a pang of warmth over her graceful combination of beauty and self-assurance.
Deep inside, he found himself shaking off the effect of her charm.
“All right, then—gowno sie przed dam sie, old man,” Gonji said, haltingly. The crude battle cry, coupled with his peculiar accent, evoked additional laughter.
“Why must such things happen?” Milorad wondered aloud, grimacing behind his fleecy brows and beard like the wrathful spirit of the north wind. “What will posterity make of all this?”
“Why did we allow ourselves to be swept along into this ma
dness?” a man seated behind him asked similarly.
But Gonji could make no answer that would satisfy either the city or himself.
“God must have some purpose in it,” Michael ventured in reply.
“It is our destiny, good people,” Paille declared, moving nearer now.
Lydia rose with stately grace and addressed the leaders. “You’ve set our course, so I ask you men only one thing. Why can’t we appeal to Klann to allow the innocents to leave the city without harm to them? Surely the king is not so barbaric that he would wish to see children harmed.”
Gonji smiled sadly through the mixed murmurs of agreement and objection. “I’m afraid, dear lady, that you continue to miss the point. There are none who are exempted from danger now. Mord is the enemy, and he wishes for all to be destroyed, so it would seem, even as Tralayn has said again and again. If there is any hope of success, then some semblance of secrecy and surprise must be preserved.”
“How can there be any secrecy with a traitor among us?” The questioner was Vlad Dobroczy, his tone filled with scorn.
Gonji’s brows knit, a grim shadow darkening his features. He began strolling, speaking as the argument slowly crystallized.
“Point: if security is maintained,” he began, “the coward may yet be prevented from reaching Mord with the new intelligence. Or the traitor may take one too many chances and find my sword lying in wait. Point: if Mord does learn of our plans, he may delay telling Klann, since the sorcerer seems to wish for rebellious action. His arrogant complacence will provide us just the advantage we need, and then the stupid enchanter will wind up at the end of my blade....” He grinned mirthlessly, allowing time for the insults to penetrate the listeners, more certain than ever that the one they were intended for was among them. Taunt the enemy. Cause him to lose control of his center. “Point: if Klann does learn our plans, I believe his position is tenuous enough that he will be forced to try to stop our action bloodlessly, perhaps....”
“Perhaps,” Lydia repeated tellingly.
“Perhaps,” Gonji said firmly, “but we must assume that he wants no more trouble. That he can ill afford it.”
“Bravo,” Paille said, simple and quiet. He produced a wineskin and slugged at it. “The dream of liberty is well served by you, sir.”
Gonji eyed him sidelong, stroking his stubbled chin and exhaling through his nose. Ignace crowed and chattered to himself in Polish again. The samurai glanced at him warily, fearing the blind man’s senile outbursts. Security seemed only a fool’s hope.
“Or Klann may find out and decide to crush us,” Jiri Szabo muttered on a quaking breath, at the last appending a nervous laugh full of false bravado.
“Then, Jiri,” Gonji said gravely, “we’ll have to show them all what fools they’ve been to underestimate us, neh?”
Slumped over, face buried in his hands, Galioto the dairy stockman fretted, “It’s really happening, isn’t it? We can suffer through it. If we’re to die, we grit our teeth, shut our eyes, and bear up until it’s done. But the little ones—the children—how do we make them understand?”
Gonji’s stomach churned to hear the very real concern voiced. He thought of little Tiva, and of Eduardo and the rest of his band of urchins. Of Monetto’s children. Roric’s. Of the children of a hundred other fighting folk of Vedun whom he’d come to know and care for.
Karl Gerhard ambled up to him. “This is insane, of course,” he sighed. “But we’re with you, Gonji.”
He extended his hand to clasp Gonji’s, and then all the other training leaders began to shuffle forward to similarly pledge their lives, if only tentatively, some with pale faces.
“Domo arigato,” Gonji said gratefully when they had finished.
“Do itashimashite,” Wilf replied for all, grinning. “You’re welcome.”
Gonji was proud to have the determined young smith for a friend and sword-brother.
But then his entire demeanor altered. His eyes became hooded as if some private thunderhead crossed his brow. The crowd watched as he turned away from them and tied about his head once again the hachi-maki—the headband of resolution—he had frequently worn during training sessions.
Death before failure at his purpose.
He vaulted atop the table again, glowering like some hostile stranger. He rotated in a complete circle, saw the menacing shadow beyond the unhinged catacomb door, then the anxious faces arranged around him.
“Does none of you ask the nature of the assistance I’ve spoken of?” he inquired cryptically. The bewildered murmuring had barely begun when he smothered it—
“You—traitor!” He passed an arm over the audience. “Listen to me....” There followed an unendurable minute in which the samurai leveled a withering gaze at every man and woman in the cavern. Some could not meet his eyes, though a few held them with vapid innocence. Others quailed and shrank back, though their cheeks were reddened more by indignation and insult than a sense of guilt. Some angled defiant, scornful stares at his oriental insolence. At length—he spoke again.
“Do you believe I have no suspicion of your identity, you contemptible wretch! Or of your means of communication to Mord? Do you think I bluff when I speak of my operatives, who also know what I’m watching for? Then behold—!”
Screams and outcries of alarm. People jumped to their feet as the frigid blast of demon wind roared into the cavern, fluttering the torches, extinguishing some of them with its searching force.
And then they saw the huge figure that appeared out of nothing behind Gonji...a limp body slung under one arm—
“It’s the—it’s the killer!”
“Ben-Draba’s killer!”
“Simon!” Michael called out, eyes shining with recognition. Beside him, Lydia stared in abject terror, all her fears of the rational world gone mad embodied in this charmed being whose presence had disturbed her sleep for the past year.
“Be seated, all of you,” Gonji said. “There is nothing to fear.”
Gradually they resumed their seats. The wind stilled, and the torches were re-lighted. The sentries gaped at the catacomb doorway, amazed that the eerie apparition had passed their posts unnoticed, though Gonji had challenged them that it would happen.
Behind the table, Simon slowly lowered the corpse of the mercenary he carried. The man’s neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. Eyes bulging, some of the nearer watchers clutched their throats in sympathetic horror; others averted their eyes. Simon’s own eyes of flint-sparked iron glanced about the room, darting feverishly like those of a cornered stray dog. Less threatening than warding, advising safe distance.
Gonji tilted his head in silent command, and the sentries removed the dead mercenary. He studied Simon a moment, then turned to the crowd.
“This is Simon Sardonis, a warrior whose...unusual abilities need no introduction in Vedun. Welcome him, as our ally. He has come to our aid at the behest of the good monks of Holy Word Monastery, who’ve suffered horrible death at the hands of Mord. Together we dispatched the wizard’s flying monster. And there will be still more squaring of accounts, before we are through. Oh, yes, that is very so....” He let the words hang in the air a moment, then nodded to Michael.
The young council leader addressed the gathering. “We must move quickly now. First, a benediction. We’ll pray for God’s blessing on our efforts.”
Most of the gathering dropped to their knees and bowed their heads as Michael led the prayer. Gonji joined in, assuming a Shinto prayer position. He caught a glimpse of Simon, whose lips moved silently, though his body trembled as if in pained concentration. When it was over Michael took charge again.
“First I’ll call forward the pairs assigned to the alert-plan lists. All militia leaders will stay behind for specific orders. I also need you hostlers—and the founders, and....”
* * * *
“Remember,” Gonji bellowed, when Michael had finished at last, “the night after the full moon—shi-kaze!”
He moved to the corner o
f the cavern where Simon stood alone.
“How do you do that?” Gonji asked.
“What?”
“That wind—the elemental display.”
“I don’t do that. It just...happens sometimes.”
Then Garth and Wilf came forward, a few of the other training leaders trailing close behind, and the smith offered Simon a goblet of wine, which he accepted with a somber nod. Nervous introductions were made, Simon clearly ill at ease with being out in the open among so many of the blatantly curious.
* * * *
Gonji moved off with his wine to observe in silence awhile. Study their interactions. Watch individuals for telltale signs. Listen to conversations, questions. Be vigilant for—what?
Cholera....
He scanned their faces, tried to stretch out with his will, read their minds. As the assignments were discussed, he began to fancy that certain of their faces, their eyes, effused a radiance, a nimbus effect.
The touch of the kami who augured death.
He shook himself and stopped looking. It must have been the wine.
* * * *
The traitor watched him, fought to stifle the roaring laughter within.
The barbarian idiot suspected nothing. He was merely a blundering, angry child who brayed and blustered about unspoken clues that were as insubstantial as moonbeams.
Soon. So soon at hand—the heritage that’s been denied me. The life I should have been born to. And the slant-eyed fool will lead the way to its achievement. When Mord has what he wants, then I shall have what is mine.
It’s all so amusing. How intriguing the game!
The traitor’s throat made a small hacking sound in shackling the tittering the others would find uncharacteristic. Rancor welled up at having to avoid even so small a manifestation of the gargantuan mirth within.
They might ask. And I don’t think I could resist telling them. No-no, that would be unwise, oh, yes indeed. The time for the celebration will come. Very very soon now.
Him.
I don’t like him, that—Simon. Who is he? What is he? The one Mord speaks of? Yes, that must be. But why does Mord fear him so?