Gonji: Deathwind of Vedun: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Three

by T. C. Rypel

  “Garth—gen-kori, faithful friend—listen to me. Join with us. Come back to us, fight with us again, take up your former post as Field Commander—We’ve left the position open for you and you alone! There is none here I would trust more. We are begging you now—begging you, Iorgens, all the Brethren remaining within!—to take up your sword again. Think of it—you as Field Commander. Liaison between king and people. Loved and trusted by both alike. Only you, of all beings on the earth and under it, might accomplish what I ask. Might bring peace to this province through the evil winter that comes. It’s on your shoulders and your conscience, mighty man of valor—”

  Klann shook a finger at him, chuckling in a cracked voice, eyes glistening with emotion.

  Garth was aggrieved, tormented. He could barely think, drenched with sweat straight through his clothing, sipping from his cup in mad little tips that sloshed into his beard. Pain coursed through both his arms now.

  “Nein,” he gurgled. “It may not matter in a few moments anyway. Just...let the city—”

  “Iorgens! We implore you. By the European god you now espouse, and his son who hangs on your somber cruciforms, and all your legions of angels and saints—will you join us again?”

  A small sob bubbled up onto Garth’s lips. A tear coursed his cheek.

  There was, of course, the dreadful pain and the certainty of imminent death. But his head began to swim also with the lingering memories, the more recent convictions, the welter of confused voices screaming like hawkers at the market square. And the single, solid beam of revulsion, deadening the center of it all with the surety of choice it brought.

  Klann was asking him to side now with the Evil One. Garth tried to say as much.

  “I could never...join with...such a fool—”

  Nein! The blood-chilling alarm rang in his head, and as if in signal, the seizure seemed to abate by degrees.

  The atmosphere in the room fell lifeless, a vacuum. Emptied of feeling. Something had died within the king, and the mourning spell lasted but a few seconds.

  Garth experienced a curious mixture of cautious relief, guilt, and hopelessness. A moment’s reprieve. He felt his chest, where his jerkin was crumpled and warped by the action of his white clammy fist.

  King Klann stood with his back to him. A sealed vault.

  “Get out of here, Iorgens,” he said in a voice fired with threat. “Leave me now, before I—”

  “I-I have not been myself today, milord—”

  Klann seemed not to hear him. “Leave us! Begone from these walls—”

  “Nein—bitte, let us speak as—”

  “Go away!” Klann’s shout, as he whirled and fixed Garth with an icy glare, brought the sentries into the chamber. “Go back to your city, to your conspiring fellows!”

  Garth stood tall, squaring his massive shoulders. “Sire, I could never raise a sword against you. Surely you must—”

  “We shall see about that. The next time our paths cross, you had best be hefting cold steel.”

  The audience was ended. Garth turned slowly and clumped past the marble pillars of the narrow vestibule, the guards falling into step at both hands and slightly to his rear. He moved into the hall and through the corridors silently, his thoughts racing, unable to settle upon a single discrete impression. So relieved was he to still be alive; so crushed, to have earned the undeserved scorn of his former liege.

  And lacing it all was that vicious memory, with its certainty that it was he who should have been the scornful one.

  * * * *

  In his private chamber King Klann heard the screaming counsel of the remaining Brethren within, and in confusion and frustration he fell to venting the primal rage of the Tainted One. He lashed about the room, overturning furnishings, smashing the objects d’art that lined the walls, crying out in anguished spirit. He tore down the priceless arras, hurled cressets and fireplace implements at the bewildered personal guards and servants drawn by their king’s wrath.

  And at the last, when only his chair—the high-backed, ornate gilt-edged chair wrought for the late Baron Rorka—remained upright, Klann fell into it and began to sob in many voices, wracked by the cumulative despondency of the years that ordinary men would reckon by the score.

  * * * *

  The guard escort left Garth when he descended the short stairway to the ward, where his mare waited at the nearby livery. When he reached the bottom of the stair, he heard his name called in a familiar female voice.

  The young hoyden Genya sidled around the gargoyle-inlaid pylon at his right. She looked pale and bedraggled in the wilting rain. And somehow—older, as if she’d experienced some ordeal. His dislike for the beloved of his son Wilfred was tempered now by a pang of sympathy.

  “Genya—?” he began, awaiting her feeble attempt at speech, reaching a hand toward her, concern softening his features.

  But then she was looking past him, her eyes grown wide with terror. He lurched about, cap in hand, brow furrowed.

  Mord stood leering down, three steps above. His carven mask of gold shone with a glee that churned Garth’s stomach. The sorcerer’s head tilted from side to side at grotesque angles, as if the head of a predatory bird resided under the mysterious mask.

  Suddenly Garth realized the truth of it all, and hatred erupted in his still-aching breast.

  “You,” the smith grated through his beard with uncommon spite, “you, foul enchanter. You did it.”

  “Did you enjoy your audience with the king?” Mord’s dirge-like voice intoned. “His Majesty does so appreciate lively conversation.”

  “You twisted my tongue—garbled my speech, so that I spoke evil words to the king.”

  “Your tongue seems well oiled now, simple smith.”

  Garth’s fingers curled at his sides, his cap crushed in the powerful clutch of his right hand. He took a step upward.

  Mord lifted a gloved finger. “Tut-tut-tut. The worshippers of failed gods would do well to observe their place in the universe.”

  A single spark of pain twitched in Garth’s chest. He drew a whistling breath in reaction. His eyes rotated irrationally, focused again when his mind had framed the suspicion in shimmering crimson coils.

  Had the sorcerer also caused the sudden seizure?

  There came a surge of fear. It passed when his mind resorted to the comfort of faith. He lipped a silent prayer. The pain seemed to subside, but certainty was lacking.

  Righteous wrath, however, was not.

  “Hear me well, servant of Satan,” Garth fumed in a simmering voice his former charges would have heeded, “though you think you’ve schemed cleverly, God Almighty knows your evil deeds, and you will pay for them.”

  “Threats?” Mord minced. “Threaten me and you threaten His Majesty as well.”

  “Klann knows I wish him no ill. As for you, by all that I deem holy—God forgive me—I’ve made no such promise.” His teeth ground audibly, and the smith’s mighty fists squeezed at his sides until his knuckles were pearl-hued. He blinked the rain from his eyes to keep them clear and hot.

  Mord might have hissed, but the sound became indistinct in the tattering of the rain. “I should do King Klann a large favor if I were to slay you where you stand.”

  “Try.”

  Mord stiffened imperceptibly. There was a long silence, punctuated by the slapping, streaming wetness and Genya’s panting breath farther below.

  “Soon enough,” Mord declared. “To an immortal, time means nothing.”

  “Then you’d better begin to learn to count the days again. The Lord God of heaven and earth diminishes yours even as you plot, you—” Garth’s jaw worked pointlessly, his words having run out.

  “There is only one god of this earth,” Mord replied. “And I, his privileged servant.”

  Garth wheeled and, Genya forgotten now, stalked off toward the sound of splashing hooves. Heading across the gloomy, near-deserted ward toward his waiting horse, he was grateful for the cleansing drench of the rain. Glad to be fre
e of the hateful presence of Mord; yet ashamed and furious, to have been so used in the malevolent sorcerer’s machinations.

  But then he wondered again: Had Mord, who had surely bound his tongue and made him prattle like an idiot, also been responsible for the seizure that had filled him with the dread of imminent death? That seemed reasonable. But how could he be sure? His father had indeed died of the heart ailment, and his father before him. Folklore whispered that Garth himself could expect a similar demise.

  And what of it? Should the Lord be beckoning him to eternity, how might he comport himself in his present circumstances?

  A tapestry of disjointed thoughts: The past. The present. His sons. Unfinished business. Vedun. His sons. His—

  A brooding resolve began to form in Garth’s heart as he swung aboard the mare and angled her toward the castle gatehouse.

  * * * *

  Genya watched him go from where she crouched, feeling abandoned to fate. She knew she dared not look up to see that hideous golden mask that loomed above her. Yet she felt compelled, and at the last she peered up with languid despair. She tipped her chin up pridefully and met those eyes of ophidian ebon.

  The dagger under her skirts chilled her thigh.

  “So,” Mord opened archly, “you know this blundering smith, eh? And what was your hurry in engaging him?”

  She emitted a short puffing breath before answering, feeling compelled against her will. “He—his son—is my...my love. That’s all. I wished only—to convey my...affection.”

  Mord laughed boorishly. “I feel something about you, ripe wench. Yes...I fancy that he’s not been your only lover of late—is that so?”

  Genya felt sickened. Loathing turned her stomach, blackened her heart. She fought back the impulse to spit at him. The dagger—go for the dagger....

  He stepped down close to her. She stumbled backward, but Mord held up a hand and fixed her with a lancing gaze of almost palpable power. She felt her feet go leaden, tingling as though they had fallen asleep, then numb altogether. She swayed a bit, then steadied, but could not pull away from his slow approach. She fancied that he smiled, though nothing could be seen of his mouth through the breathing holes of the mask.

  Then he was an arm-length away, and he placed his foul gloved hand on her bosom. There was a revolting sensation of mingling flesh, and when Mord drew his arm back an inch, Genya’s body leaned with it as if they were one. She felt an indescribable horror of being forever part of the sorcerer in some unspeakable way.

  Lord God Almighty—the knife....

  Her arms seemed under her control, but she could not find the courage. And then he released her. The feeling gradually returned to her legs.

  Mord touched her brow with a thumb.

  “The scarlet chrism marks you as an instrument of the Dark Lord,” came the words that strobed dully through the hammering of her heart. “Rejoice! The time will soon be at hand. You shall help to prove that the life is in the flesh. The flesh and the blood—these alone, my pretty one. The spirit is nothing. You shall partake in the triumph of flesh over spirit. Be cheered. Virginal, you’d have been better, but my Master is not so biased as yours.”

  Genya gasped. She turned and ran madly into the ward, the sound of Mord’s fulsome laughter echoing in her ears. She ran in the rain and the twilight for an indeterminate time, those passing her—whether servant or soldier—drawing near as if to help but then strangely backing away, averting their eyes.

  She gained the central keep, her composure reestablished but her thinking chaotic. She wandered dully into the less traveled corridors, into an area of larders and antechambers, bewildered, uncertain.

  Then she saw the beast named Chooch. The filthy Steward of the Larders angled toward her, wearing his perverse mind on his face. He grinned dull-wittedly when he saw her raise her skirts but halted as surely as if he’d struck an invisible wall when he caught the gleam of the blade by torchlight. His mouth contorted cruelly, and he took a purposeful step as if to test her hand, then stopped again, staring. He blinked, eyed her up and down scornfully, and hulked off into the darkness.

  Genya ran a hand through her soaking hair. Throwing open a pantry door, she swept through piles of silver service pieces and cutlery with reckless clamor until she located a large shining platter. This she brought out under the light of a torch, where she beheld her reflection.

  An oily red mark glimmered on her forehead where the sorcerer had touched her.

  She dropped the platter with a piercing ka-dang! on the mildewed stone floor. Then she summoned the courage to touch her brow. It felt greasy on that spot, but nothing of the substance would come off, though she rubbed it and rubbed it, finally, with a most frantic, tearful energy—It was part of her flesh.

  Retrieving the dagger, Genya threw herself onto the floor of the pantry. She wept for a time, shaking and sobbing like a tortured child. Then control at last returned.

  Closing the pantry door, she rehearsed, again and again, the action of raising the blade to full arm’s length, the razor-sharp point angled at her breast in both hands, and plunging it slowly and methodically down to press through her bodice and against her flesh. All the while she recited an act of contrition that she prayed would suffice.

  She repeated the motions until she had drawn blood from the soft flesh of one breast, but in the end her fear of the sin and her passion for life won out. She flung the dagger away.

  Get hold of yourself, Genya dear, she thought. That’s not the way. No, not at all. If the end is to come, then by the good Lord’s mercy, there must be a better way. I must do...what I must. I’ll not go weeping and pleading. I’ll be no one’s easy victim. Never again....

  And when, at length, her rage had spent itself, she was overcome by exhaustion. But before sleep overtook her, she replaced the dagger in the sheath under her skirt, pressing her hand against its firm, cold trust as she curled up in a corner. Feeling, if not precisely confident, then vixenishly deadly; promising measure for measure to any who dared threaten her solitude.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  By darkfall, word had spread throughout the occupying army that the oriental barbarian with the high price on his head had variously been seen both in the eastern portion of the city and beyond its walls, in the fields and orchards bordering the river.

  Some said he was mounted; others, on foot. Depending on the purveyor of the news, he was either alone or accompanied by his marauding band.

  Emboldened by their numbers and their lust for gold, roving packs of mercenaries combed the eastern half of the city and its outer environs. Citizens were rousted from their dwellings as the brigands searched high and low.

  Gonji knew well the direction their treasure hunt had taken, for it was his own operative who had planted the seed of misdirection that steered them both from him and from the evacuation and battle planning.

  He stood peering through a shutter out into the bleak and rain-misted Street of Charity. It was nearly deserted. He was in the house of a fisherman named Miklos Zarek, a stone’s throw from Garth’s smithshop and stables, within view of the wagonage across the way from the Gundersens’. Most of the wagons were gone on their clandestine business, only a few scattered drays huddled about the place to avert suspicions.

  Gonji leaned forward on one knee, leg braced on a chair. With his tanto knife he whittled from a sturdy chunk of red maple kindling. He and Zarek were alone for the nonce, a single taper casting drab light in a far corner of the dwelling’s front room.

  “That—what?” Zarek asked in Hungarian, pointing at the object Gonji shaped with the tanto.

  “Ninja darts,” the samurai explained in German. “Darts,” he added emphatically, appending a throwing motion. “If I can obtain some poison from the doctor, or the carcass of the great worm....”

  He let it drop, as Zarek shrugged and moved to the smoky cooking fire in the hearth. The flue had become stopped up, and Zarek cleared it, wiping the grime from his face as he did so.

 
“Want...fish?” Zarek asked, in halting German now.

  Gonji readily assented, though the meal he had shared not long ago with Hildegarde would probably have held him through the night. Zarek’s trout quickened his taste buds with its aroma.

  Gonji and the fisherman could share only the most broken of conversations in German—the only language Zarek knew a smattering of which Gonji could understand. Their speech was limited to monosyllabic grunts, for the most part.

  The samurai enjoyed the quiet while it lasted. Soon there’d be plenty of discussion; he’d left word with the Benedettos as to where he could be located during the Hour of the Boar.

  As he ate, Gonji passed a wine jug back and forth with Zarek graciously, though he mainly drank water now, with possible action impending at any time. Miklos was a dour, middle-aged man with thick lips and the doleful eyes of a bloodhound. He had a habit of laughing to himself from time to time for no apparent reason. A growling sound that rumbled from his throat, though his lips never smiled. His wife and children had fled the city weeks ago to seek refuge with her relatives in the Ukraine.

  There was a knock at the door, and Zarek admitted Wilf Gundersen and two men who had been assisting at the stables, of late.

  “Komban wa, Gonji-san,” Wilf greeted, bowing, the others following suit.

  “Good evening. What news of your father? Has he come back yet?”

  “Nein. I’m getting worried.”

  Gonji nodded and returned to his dart-carving. Wilf and his friends partook of the remains of the fish, though Gonji cautioned them against more than a sip of the wine.

  Almost at once, the alert plan delegates began to report back. Milorad Vargo and Vlad Dobroczy arrived together.

  “Not such a good idea,” Milorad cautioned. “To stay here, so close to their garrison.”

  “Never mind that—are you finished with your sectors?” Gonji asked.

  Both men agreed that they were.

  “Nobody can believe it,” Dobroczy advised, shaking his head.

  “Where’s Paolo? And you, Milorad—what happened to Ignace?” Gonji’s forehead creased.