by T. C. Rypel
He ducked into an ancient, scarred cul-de-sac and let them pass. Free companions, chattering gruffly. When their hoofbeats had diminished to a distant tattering, he moved on, wary of the Llorm sentries whose burgonets could be seen gliding along on the battlements.
Reaching Tralayn’s house, breath huffing with the anticipation of relief, he stopped short. An armed party under Julian’s lieutenant, Ivar, ascended the front steps. Cursing and pounding a fist against a granite wall, he doubled back toward—what? where to, now? The chapel tunnel was out of the question. He’d never make it. Not now. Not with the army probably alerted—
What in hell gave me away? I could have killed them all, if they hadn’t reacted—
More riders, shouts of command.
Gonji turned and ran, loping along the alleys, back eastward again. Hoofbeats lumbered and sloshed both before and behind him. He had to find sanctuary quickly. He bounded along a lane that backed two rows of houses, modest two-story stone houses, built ages ago, when the walls had gone up. He vaulted two low dividing walls, wound up in a small rear court that had been pointed out to him once as someone’s from the militia. But whose?
He paused in uncertainty for an instant, then took the three steps of the stoop in a short leap and beat on the door. A rustle inside, then silence. Rainwater sluiced down the wall from a broken shingle on the eave’s edge, fell in a silver sheet alongside the house for the rest of the eave’s course.
Gonji drew a nasally breath. The door burst open. He tensed, and his hands went for the Sagami.
He stared along the wicked forte of a two-handed broadsword.
CHAPTER SIX
“A thousand talers...,” Julian announced, strutting about the headquarters imperiously. He jangled the money bag as he strode.
“A thousand talers to the man or group of men who bring me the Japanese. That’s what the king has authorized me to offer. Have we no takers?”
The crossbowman who had just reported to the captain’s headquarters in the southeast quadrant stood nearby, head hung low. He still wheezed. The others murmured among themselves over the rich prize. Salavar the Slayer eyed them evenly under surly brows. The soldier-of-fortune Gonji called “the Armorer” propped one leg on a bench and leaned forward on his thick forearms. One hand twirled the handle of his leaning battle-axe. The tendrils of his drooping mustache danced as he worked his jaws, inviting a smirk from any onlooker. There were none forthcoming. Some of the adventurers in the room had been there when Salavar and Julian had dispatched a dozen rebels in an alley now stained like the sacrificial bowl of the god of war. They’d seen what that axe could do....
“You—idiot,” Julian said, pointing at the breathless messenger, “how can you be sure it was him you saw?”
The crossbowman trembled as he spoke. “I think it was him...ja, it had to be him,” he added more certainly. “The way he carried his swords. The way he...struck his blows.”
“Nobody’s seen him or that Spanish chestnut he rides for days,” another man observed. But Julian ignored him.
“And you couldn’t stop him,” the captain accused in a scornful voice. “Three of you.”
“I dropped his horse, I did,” the man replied fendingly. “But then he—he went for help. I could hear their horses coming, so I—I thought it best to report to you, sir.” He averted his eyes from Julian’s piercing gaze.
“How did you know he was an impostor? What tipped his hand?”
The Flemish brigand brightened, fancying that he was being praised for his keenness of observation. “We had this thing, Jof and I. Whenever we passed each other on horseback, he would stand in the stirrups and raise both fists—like this—” He demonstrated. Someone chortled. “When he didn’t do it this time, I....” He saw Julian’s look to Salavar and swallowed, reddening.
The captain’s eyebrows arched. “Children,” he said, smiling haughtily, “playing at being soldiers, you see. Isn’t that quaint?”
Salavar hawked and spat.
“Get him,” Julian said calmly, peering at the floorboards. “I want him alive. Spread the word. Shoot him, if it’s necessary, but bring him to me—alive. A thousand talers. Get out of here.” His voice lowered to a near whisper with this last, but the mercenaries scrambled to comply. The captain’s cruelty and intractability were widely known. The spell of his saber had become legend.
Salavar cleared his throat and took up his furred helm. The vicious throwing daggers that crested it spindled the air like the horns of a bull.
“I’ll roust your Red Blade for you. You can add that money bag to my month’s wage. None of these sons of bitches can handle him. He’s clever. I’ve heard of his moves. It’ll take Salavar to—”
“And I’ve seen his moves,” Julian shot back. “Beaten them.... He’s not as clever as he thinks.”
The brutish Slayer grunted and moved for the door.
Julian halted him. “Salavar—I want him alive. Is that clear?”
The warrior turned slowly from the rain-stippled puddles in the courtyard. “I do what I must to deal with my enemies.”
“And I am in command here.”
Their eyes locked, unflinching.
Salavar brayed a gravelly laugh. “All right, Captain. You’ll have your demon-eyed Red Blade, maybe minus a hand or a foot.”
“That will do.”
Salavar departed, and moments later a visibly shaken Lieutenant Ivar clumped in, wringing wet but oddly oblivious to it.
“Now what’s your trouble?” Julian inquired. “Have you heard—they think they’ve seen the samurai still in the city.”
Ivar dismissed it with a wave and went straight to the captain’s well-appointed wine cabinet. He poured himself a goblet with unsteady hands.
Julian was about to reprove him for his effrontery when he was overcome with curiosity. He held his tongue momentarily and watched his longtime subordinate drain off the cup and pour another almost in a continuous motion. Battle-hardened and not easily unnerved, Ivar now seemed a different man.
As if to himself, the lieutenant spoke. “It’s no good, this place. No good for us. I knew that when I first set eyes on these mountains—” He regarded the walls as if the Carpathian peaks had shrunk to imprison him. “—first time I heard how the forests speak to one at night.”
“What happened to you, Ivar?”
A half-sob, half-laugh struggled out of Ivar’s throat. “You sent me to burn her house. The witch’s house. Like the sorcerer said. I went. We tried.” He looked at Julian with fever-gleam in his dark eyes. “Wouldn’t burn.” Turned his hand palm up as if what he related should have been expected.
“What do you mean, it wouldn’t burn?”
“It wouldn’t burn!” He trembled, but it subsided. His own shout steadied him. He squared his shoulders and controlled the pitch and volume of his voice once again. He flushed to have the captain see him so irrational.
“We tried everything,” he went on in a tone more befitting a report. “Oil, dry kindling, even gunpowder. The place simply wouldn’t catch.”
“All right,” Julian reasoned, “so it’s the weather. The dampness took hold. So what the hell are you so upset about?”
“It’s not that, Julian. Hell, it’s dry and dusty as a damned tomb in there. You remember what happened at her hearing?” A whispering intimacy in his tone now. “The explosion—that—that white flash? I think the Great Spirit—her God—is on the side of these people—”
“What the devil are you babbling about now?”
“I’m serious, damned serious.”
“What gods are you talking about?”
“The God. Her God. Theirs.” He bobbed his head in stuttering affirmation, pointed overhead, and then downed his cup, reaching for more.
“You’re growing old and senile on us, Ivar. Those who lose their nerve are replaced. You’re not above that, whatever you think the king owes you for long service—”
“That so?” Ivar challenged. “There’s som
ething else.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The big weapons.”
“What big weapons?”
“The ones we told you about,” Ivar clarified. “The ones that hang in her parlor—hung in her parlor—the ones nothing mothered by womankind could wield?
“They’re gone.”
* * * *
“Hey, bimbo, you wanna close that, schnell?” The booming voice of Gutschmidt, owner of the Provender and its chief innkeeper, dampened the inn’s conversation.
The burly brigand so addressed—in one of Gutschmidt’s countless pet insults—cast him an ugly frown that might have blighted a mulberry thicket, but the wiry innkeeper leaned forward over the bar and held his gaze, rock steady. The soldier looked back at the open door, where gusts of wind pelted the floor and the nearer tables with rain spray.
A few men and women at the tables called out in gentler support of “Gutch’s” remonstrance, and the angry soldier slouchingly complied. Gutch returned to his conversation with two Landsknecht renegades.
Gutschmidt’s characteristic audacity raised a few eyebrows, guffaws, and elbow jabs but little surprise among the Provender’s regular customers. On a first-name basis with many of the occupying troops, Gutch was held in a position of respect by most soldiers and one of awe by many citizens. A slender man of thinly muscular frame, if average height, Gutch was dwarfed by many of the brigands he served; yet he could hold his own in surliness and was adept at handling obnoxious revelers. He was in his mid-30s, with a broad angular face, well-cut brown hair, and deep, large soulful eyes that at a moment’s turning could range from fiery topaz to sensitive hazel. A dandy with the ladies, he was, and an impeccable dresser. He possessed a voice of such commanding resonance as to do any herald proud. And one other personal accouterment did nothing to detract from Gutch’s overbearing mien: He was the only citizen of Vedun authorized to bear firearms. Gutch was the owner of a pair of legendary matched wheel-lock pistols of burnished steel with ivory handles into which were inlaid tiny gemstones of great value. These, few people had ever seen, and no one knew where he kept them.
Mercenaries on occupation duty came to revere and confide in their innkeepers more than they did most commanders. And Gutschmidt of the Provender was tendered his share of respect by the troops in Vedun, who had claimed him for their own, their personal surly alehouse-keeper.
The door swung open again, and rain licked at the floor. Two soldiers piled into the Provender with slapping footfalls, calling out greetings to their fellows and sniffing the inviting food and drink aromas. A third man followed them, quietly closing the door and scanning the inn’s interior.
Gutch discreetly surveyed the new arrivals, as he always did, and the third man caught his attention. He continued feigning listening to the Landsknecht’s slurred mutterings as he watched the newcomer move to the bar and order an ale from the help. It took him two or three guarded glances and a little careful memory searching to realize who it was that had gone to such great pains to affect an incognito posture in the dangerous company at the Provender. The man wore a black wool traveling cloak with upturned collar and a heavy tri-corner hat. Three days’ growth of beard and an eye patch completed the disguise.
First amusement, then alarm came to Gutch in alternating sensations. Slowly, with practiced skill, he extricated himself from the conversation with the Landsknechts. He poured a kvas for the burly lout whom he’d bellowed at moments earlier, then began to perform small cleaning tasks behind the bar with detached nonchalance.
He kept one eye on the newcomer, who now sidled to the end of the bar, scanned the inn as if looking for someone, and eased into a chair at a table where two free companions argued a point of bleary honor.
Someone was in for big trouble.
* * * *
“Well, Gonji-Gunnar, you going to stand there bleeding all over yourself and dripping water on Hildy’s floor?”
Gonji laughed in spite of himself and closed the door, delighted to have trusted to his poor karma and have it for once turn up a sight as welcome as Hildegarde.
“Get those things off, you sorry looking Viking,” she told him in her pleasantly cadenced accent, lowering her deadly broadsword. “How many chase you?” she asked, peering out through the cracked shutter.
“I don’t know,” he replied, peeling off the capote, “a lot maybe. They may not know it’s me they’re chasing.”
“Well, they come through Hildy’s door today, it be the last door for them. Next time open the pig snout on that silly helmet. I nearly run you through.”
There were few people in the city Gonji admired enough to allow such a crack to pass unchallenged. He tossed away the Flemish burgonet with a noisy clatter and obtained from her a cleaning rag with which he began to wipe the blood from the Sagami.
“Anyone coming?” he asked, as she peered through the shutters into the outer gloom.
“I see a few horsemen...no...no one coming into my yard. What’s wrong with you, Gonji-Gunnar? Your crazy plan not crazy enough, so you decide to get yourself killed some other way, ja?”
“You’ve heard about the evacuation, neh?”
“Ja, I hear—how come you not can speak Norwegian dialect your Mutter teach, eh? Save Hildy lots of trouble.”
“Gomen nasai. So sorry.” He shook his head wanly. “I lost touch with it early, I’m afraid. There’s little I can recall.”
She nodded understandingly and continued in German, “I watch here. You check street.”
He moved through the small rooms toward the front of her dwelling, carefully skirting the coffin that took up much of the parlor floor. Gaining the front door, he reconnoitered the streaming lane. Drenched and gloomy, the street seemed quiet but for a few hurrying citizens and an occasional splashing of paired mercenaries shouting for clearance of the road ahead of them. Clearly, the thrill of a pursuit in this miserable weather had palled for them.
Gonji exhaled with relief and examined the coffin grimly.
“Your...husband?” he probed when she came into the parlor.
Hildegarde emitted a strained laugh and toed the lid with one foot, kicking it up and off—it was filled with half-armors and helms, unstrung longbows and clothyard war arrows.
She smiled coyly. “Not my husband. He been dead a long time. But he be pleased to see this.”
Gonji studied her closely, seeing her now for the first time sans armor or training garb. She was a fine figure of a woman, tall and strong, proud and erect in carriage like a prize-winning Arabian mare. She wore a short, roomy gray tunic. Beneath it her breasts bobbed freely but artlessly as she tied back her auburn hair with a hachi-maki, the headband of resolution that Gonji had introduced. Her muscular hips and long thighs were garbed in tight breeches. Between the breeches and her high-topped leather riding boots, the proper women of Vedun might have been properly scandalized. Hildegarde’s eyes were of a pale blue, bright and transparent in the way Gonji had known the sky above the Mediterranean to be, of mornings in early spring. Yet they somehow reminded him of the eyes of a hunting hawk, clear and implacable.
Those eyes locked with his now as she finished tying off the headband.
“They come, we be ready, eh?” she announced firmly.
“Hai, we’ll be ready.” There was no hint of patronization in his tone. Her fighting prowess was a byword in the militia. Strong of arm and sure of foot, the figure she cut with the naginata—the Japanese halberd—was a striking apparition in the training cavern. Nearly as adroit with the broadsword and capable with the bow, she augmented her considerable abilities with absolute fearlessness and predatory cunning and ferocity.
But as Gonji watched her stride back into her kitchen, sword in hand, he felt an abrupt attraction to her sultry mystique. She exuded a magnetic primal charm that he had rarely experienced, and he was hard put to keep in focus the fact that, unleashed on the field and ordered to fight, she was about as feminine as a battering ram.
May the gods send their hosts to piece together the woeful warrior who mistook her for a spoil of battle....
“You smell terrible, Gonji-Gunnar,” she told him when he reentered the kitchen, “and you look like hell. Go wash in that basin there—and get that stinking coat away from Hildy’s larder.”
The samurai scowled and looked at his arms, sniffed his sticky tunic. He held up Milorad’s capote in two fingers.
“Mud and blood and shit,” he grumbled. “That’s been my karma ever since I arrived here.”
Hildegarde snatched the capote from him, scrubbed it in a wash basin, and hung it to dry near the hot stones around the cooking fire in her kitchen hearth, where fish were broiling with a merry crackle.
Gonji laved himself with the ewer and basin, untied his topknot and washed his hair, retying it properly when it was dried. The Scandinavian warrior-woman treated his cuts and abrasions with a mushy poultice that burned like saltwater, then instructed him to rinse his mouth with a diluted cup of the same evil concoction.
Doing so, he fancied that his face had melted from the mouth outward to leave nothing but his grinning skull, but he showed nothing of the shock in his expression. Hildegarde tossed her head, eyes glistening with lunatic approval, as though he had passed some arcane test.
Then, when she saw how he limped on the bruised knee, she had him remove his breeches so that she could wrap the discovered gash with linen and more of the foul poultice.
“Drink,” she commanded, slamming a goblet of dark, potent ale on the table before him.
When his unsubtle sniffing overtures elicited no invitation to sup, Gonji asked, “Were you just starting or finishing your supper when I intruded?”
“Now,” she replied without looking at him, “you see the trout sizzling over there.... And here, Gonji-Gunnar, you see Hildy culponing more. So what do you think?”
They ate until belching full, washing down their trout and rye bread with some of the ale, but Gonji quickly switched to water.
“Wilfred been down the lane looking for you earlier,” she told him while they ate. She had no idea what his comrade had wanted but began plying Gonji with questions regarding the evacuation and battle to come. Most of these were of a tactical nature, and he replied honestly, seeing no reason to suspect her motives. His answers seemed satisfactory to her—which made one of them confidently satisfied—and she soon lost interest in conversation.