by T. C. Rypel
“What?” Gonji froze.
“Just—just Phlegor, that’s all. I knew—” Boris whimpered, then began to laugh senselessly, though pain showed uppermost in his posturing. “I—I knew he was trouble to you—that’s what you’d want—to be rid of Phlegor. So I—I—”
“You betrayed him to the enemy....” Gonji’s own projected guilt over having directed suspicion on Phlegor now fueled his fervor anew. “Your friend, and your boss.” His words crackled with contempt.
He took two quick steps forward, and Boris fell back against a workbench. The wood craftsman’s voice wailed, high and keening:
“They sent me here for harnesses, I got afraid, so I did this—But I won’t do it again—I’ll—I’ll—please, just let me go back! I’ll take the traces, and and and—”
Gonji noticed the dark stains on Boris’ jerkin.
“Lower your voice. Where is Ignace?”
Boris’s eyes kept straying to the far wall. Tools on the walls. A shallow storage shed.
“He—he’s gone. He wasn’t here. I—I don’t know.”
The storage shed again. Gonji peered furtively behind him.
“Open that.”
“Nyet! Nyet! Let me go!”
Boris tried to run. Gonji caught his arm and twisted it hard behind him, walked the painfully struggling craftsman to the shed, flung it open—
The old blind wagoner fell out with a heavy clump. Lifeless. Spidery branchings of dark blood fled the wound on the back of his skull. Boris fell to his knees, staring straight ahead, the slack form crumpled before him.
“He—he’s all right. I just knocked him out...that’s all,” he babbled in Russian.
The smell of death was thick about the musty shed.
A gurgle in Gonji’s throat, as if he’d taken a sudden shot to the gut.
The whine and flash of the Sagami.
Boris’s head thudded dully on the floor beside his slamming body, followed by the soft lap of gouting blood from the stump of his neck.
Gonji emitted one hissing breath, and then he whirled to engage the figure that pushed through the blockaded door with a squeal of wood on wood.
It was Wilf. “Gonji—what the hell’s going on. Omigod....” The young smith gagged on the odor of fresh blood.
Gonji explained the shocking scene as he cleaned the Sagami.
“Come on,” he commanded when he had finished, “let’s get the bodies into a dray outside.”
“Then what do we do with them?”
“You’ll have to have your friends move them to the undertaker’s. Or into the sewage trenches, if they can’t make it safely.”
Wilf grimaced. “But that’s...barbaric.”
“Welcome to war.” Gonji’s tone at once became sympathetic. “Gomen nasai—I’m sorry, Wilf, but they’ll have to let their survival instinct guide their actions.”
Wilf shook his head gravely. They both paused, flexing their hands a moment before reaching down for the corpse of Ignace Obradek.
“Poor old guy,” Wilf said with a grunt as they lifted. He averted his eyes from his burden. “I used to—help him here when I was a kid—he told me—the wildest stories of soldiering—I ever heard—”
“You know the business here?” Gonji queried. “The traces and everything?”
“Sure—some.”
“You’ll have to try and straighten out the mess.”
They loaded Ignace into a dray, covered him, and went back for Boris.
“Posram sie...niedam sie, old man,” Gonji said over his shoulder, recalling, as best he could, Ignace’s fiery words.
Inside, Gonji wrapped Boris’ head in a sack and prodded Wilf into the moving of the grisly remains.
“So it was Boris,” Wilf declared hollowly, in disbelief.
“I’m not sure. I wish I could be. It seems Paolo’s shirked all his duties this day—if his duty still lies with Vedun.”
They loaded the body. A party of mercenaries rode past when they were done. Wilf wore Spine-cleaver, and the pair of bushi crouched in the shadows, sword hilts gripped in clammy fists, until the hoofbeats were far down the Street of Charity. In the distance, dogs were barking, and sporadic shouts came to their ears.
“Gonji, listen,” Wilf said, grabbing his arm. “When you go back, I wouldn’t say—I mean, I understand about this, but....”
“I know. The facts of war come hard to the delicate sensibilities of your compatriots. I’ll remember.”
They bowed to each other and parted.
Back at Zarek’s, Gonji lingered outside under a parlor shutter in the whispering wind and rain, composing himself, straining to hear the tenor of the conversation within. Zarek was holding forth. The few Slovak words Gonji understood were not far removed from the thoughts in the samurai’s own mind:
“...of a fellow I knew a long time ago who made his living by spying. Only trouble was he was lousy at it. Every time I’d see him, his lack of skill had cost him something. First it was his left ear, then his right ear—”
“Sounds like Paille’s stories of his brothers,” someone cut in.
“—the last time I saw him, it was to identify which body went with his head after a mass execution he’d spied his way into.”
Gonji’s abrupt appearance from the rear of the house startled them. “I’d keep the shutters closed and my voice down, if I were you,” he said gravely.
Lydia gasped and stood up from the sofa. The outcries and expressions of the others gave him pause.
“Holy Jesu Christi,” Vlad breathed.
“Gonji—?” Garth muttered with darkening brow.
The samurai looked down at his tunic and breeches. They were stained with the fresh blood.
A bold pounding at the front door resounded through the house. All were on their feet now in breathless anticipation, expecting the reason for Gonji’s appearance to have brought the new caller.
“Open it,” Gonji ordered in a reserved tone.
Miklos Zarek went for the door, pale and dismayed, but the door burst open before he could reach it. It took a few seconds for everyone to recognize the visitor beneath the curious makeup and affectation of an eye patch; the huge hat and begrimed face. It was Paolo Sauvini, posturing like a triumphant thespian.
“Got them all fooled, haven’t we?” he said.
“Shut up, Sauvini, and close the door,” Michael said angrily in Italian, clumping forward two steps on his gimpy leg. “What in God’s name is wrong with you? Where have you been?”
“What is this all about, Paolo?” Milorad added.
Paolo slammed the door and leaned back against it, regarding the group’s anxiety with bleary amusement. “Well, hello to all of you, too. And where have I been—? Hee-hee-hee.” His curious titter was cut short when he pressed at the pain in his side. It was clear that not only was he injured, but he’d also been tipping a few.
Gonji turned away, a slow boil creeping into his carriage. His hands reached up to grip the mantel above the roaring hearth fire, his back to them.
“I’ve been to the Provender, you see. Done a little snooping. Gonji—sensei,” he slurred, appending a deep bow to the samurai’s back, “you’ll be relieved to hear that they’re searching high and low for you—but in the eastern outskirts. Tramping through the fields and orchards, overturning rocks by the river—hee-hee!” He hiccuped and excused himself to the ladies present. Then his callow tale of bravado rambled on. “I know their strength—maybe six hundred mercenaries in Klann’s humble command now, did you know that? And I know a lot of other things about them. I know even the price on the sensei’s head—oh, it’s a handsome one indeed, my sensei—”
“A thousand talers,” Gonji said.
“Eh?” Paolo mumbled, his brow knitting quizzically.
“A thousand talers—idiot!” Gonji jerked about like an awakened watchdog. “Don’t you think I know all that? Did you believe I was only bluffing when I spoke of my operatives? Why do you think Gutch, from the Provender, ne
ver attended militia training?”
“Too much of a fop,” Lorenz observed with casual levity.
“You should talk, Gundersen,” Gonji shot back.
“You asked,” Lorenz replied with a conciliatory gesture. “In any case, I did choose to train in the catacombs.”
Gonji turned back to Paolo. “Gutschmidt already told me of the bounty on my head, and of the troop strength, including the Llorm, and of their disposition and leadership. And who do you think set the occupation force on their futile hunt for me in the eastern end, fool?”
Paolo’s face colored. He rubbed it, smearing the grime, swallowing back his embarrassment, sobering rapidly.
“Gutch has been plying them for information right in their midst, doing what he’s been told,” Gonji continued. “But you—you can’t so much as obey a simple order. You were told what your job was, but you left Vlad to perform it for you, creating a serious breach of security. Putting on a drunk with the brigands to get your useless intelligence. And once you were in your cups, what were they able to drag from you?”
“They got nothing from me,” Paolo roared.
“What happened to your side?”
Paolo blinked, felt the wound. “I—I got hurt, that’s all.”
“Taking part in that jackass rebellion?”
The wagoner’s sheepish twitch of guilt was as good as an admission.
Gonji stretched up tall. “Do you know that your boss had his skull split open tonight while you were off on your bold sortie?”
Mutters of shock and concern. Someone dropped a flagon.
“Oh, how awful,” Lydia intoned mournfully, hands cupping her cheeks.
“Who?—What happened?—How?” came the outcries.
“That jackal Boris Kamarovsky,” Gonji explained.
“Boris,” Garth echoed incredulously. “What did you—?”
Gonji paused reflectively before speaking. “He joined the others in the Dark Lands this night.” Seeing their horrified expressions, he bristled. “Ah, so now I have your attention again. You call yourselves educated people, and yet why is it that I can only gain your attention when I do violence?”
“But surely not Boris,” Milorad said skeptically.
“Nein, of course not,” Gonji minced. “Of course Strom Gundersen couldn’t be a traitor. Of course Lydia Benedetto couldn’t be a traitor—” A ball of warmth burst inside him as he spoke. He was as pleased to feel her name roll off his tongue as he was satisfied with the starkness of it as an example. “—of course Boris wasn’t a traitor. No one here is a traitor! Yet we have sabotage and treachery in our midst, and all our plans are known to Mord, neh?”
“Calm yourself, Gonji,” Michael enjoined.
“Hai,” Gonji said, inhaling deeply. And just as suddenly as it had begun, his outburst subsided. His face assumed its well-known inscrutable cast, and as usual he was aware that the placidity that followed his loss of temper was more unsettling to the others than the venting itself.
“So you have your traitor—Boris,” Roric Amsgard concluded.
“Perhaps,” Gonji replied, “but I’ll reserve my judgment on that. I still entertain...other possibilities. Finish here and disperse. Michael, you know where you can reach me, if you need me.”
With a bow to all of them and a last hard look at the brooding Paolo, Gonji took his leave through the rear of the house.
CHAPTER NINE
The rain showed no sign of abating.
Stillness descended on the curved bowl of the Transylvanian Alps. The sky pressed low and heavy, the clouds ceasing to move. Their gloomy roiling had engulfed the moon—it would bloom to ripe fullness on the morrow—and swallowed up the proudest peaks of the Carpathians.
Vedun seemed sealed from the blessed deliverance of both men and gods alike. Tension crept like a living thing from every shuttered dwelling, every seething shadow.
Gonji paused in a darkened lane to rub his burning eyes. He briefly considered all the tempting reasons why he should accept Hildegarde’s invitation to return to her home for the night. These he balanced against the reasons he should not; foremost among them was his desire to maintain an angry fighting edge, a focus and concentration of his energies.
Grumbling at the inner voice, he nonetheless embraced its counsel and passed her house, moving on into the dangerous southwest quadrant to enter the Tralayn’s vacant home.
The late prophetess’ weathered dwelling was no longer under guard. Gonji entered through the once-popular side window and breathed in the antique stuffiness of her parlor, mingled with heating oil. Almost at once he noticed the telling pale pattern above the mantel where the formidable broadsword and axe had hung. He approached it slowly, casting suspicious glances around the room. Now, as his eyes parted the dusty swarming shadows, he saw the evidence of Ivar’s abortive effort at setting the place ablaze: splashes of oil, charred logs scattered on the floor, shredded drapery fabric, soaked and blackened—
A strange chilling sensation, the feeling that he was being watched, caused him to clear his throat, to make a few comforting noises. Without pondering the state of the house any further, he passed through the fireplace.
Thoughts of Tralayn became more generalized, splintering into thoughts of the other women who had late aroused his interest. There was Hildegarde, who inspired admiration and lust in a heady concoction; and Helena, the gentle flower whom he had shamed, whose artless overtures of love so unsettled him, fired him with a guilt he should not feel; and Lydia, the one he dared not desire yet did, in futility, who made him almost glad for this insistent specter of imminent war, for its diversion.
He hardened his heart with the thought that he should allow none among them to clog his vigilance with their cloying allure. Furthermore, he should trust none of these people implicitly. They had disappointed him so many times.
And, his sense of duty and veracity reminded him cruelly, he had also failed them....
Reaching the nexus cavern’s receiving chamber, Gonji exchanged terse words with the sentries and walked to the shriveling carcass of the monster worm. He circled it, loathing curling his lips. Nodded with forlorn and senseless satisfaction at the many shafts and pole-arms still abandoned in the pulpy flesh of its many segments. He swallowed back the taste of bile when the phosphorescent glow of mineral-veined rock fell on the blood stains of its victims, those valorous bushi who had grimly helped dispatch this creature of the nether world.
Gonji tested the ninja darts he had fashioned, throwing them for short distances at quintains that remained upright on the training ground. Fair. Their weighting passable.
Tora nickered to him from among the horses bunched into a hastily repaired corral near the southern valley tunnel.
Gonji dipped the three darts point first into the dark, thick pool of congealing worm venom and strode across, smiling, to speak gently to his horse. Tora nuzzled him as he stroked the doughty steed, wishing earnestly to be mounted again, in full stride, his blade bared. He could fairly feel the wind in his face and hair.
A pang of grief tugged at his heart. He might never again know the sensation....
Calling over the tunnel sentry, Gonji instructed him to arrange for Tora to be smuggled back into the city the next day and left at the Gundersens’ stables, apprising the man of the considerable risk. The bushi seemed apprehensive, but willing.
Retrieving the darts, Gonji wrapped their discolored points carefully such that he would not accidentally jab himself. Then he placed them into an inner kimono pocket at his breast.
Before he reached the receiving chamber, Aldo Monetto and Alain Paille came surging out, brightening visibly to have located him, but noticeably troubled.
“Gonji, we’ve got trouble,” the biller announced.
“The guildsmen just killed three brigands snooping around the woodcraft shop,” Paille explained.
Gonji tried to slow them down. “Ah, so desu? One at a time now—what happened?”
“The armored wagons�
��” Monetto began.
The boorish artist silenced him in mid-statement. “My gun cupolas! They discovered them working on my design for the gun cupolas on the escort wagons. Now those didn’t mean anything to them. They just look like paneled coffins—which is all they are, in truth—”
“Get to the point,” the samurai said.
“Well, it was the calthrops and spiked bulwarks that were loaded on the wagon that tipped them, of course. Ready to be driven to the lanes and alleys you designated as killing grounds and fortifications on the map.”
“Cholera,” Gonji breathed. “Has there been an alarm?”
“Non, monsieur—fortunately.”
“We saw to that,” Monetto agreed. “We took them quietly—”
“But there’s sure to be an investigation when the three are not seen by morning, no?”
“Hai, perhaps....” Gonji stroked the back of his head thoughtfully. “Nothing for it now but to see what the morrow brings.”
“The damned wagon was supposed to be moved,” Monetto grumbled. “We sent Boris Kamarovsky after a team and harness hours ago. He never returned.”
Gonji sighed but resisted telling them of the fate of Boris. “Send someone else. You’ll find Wilf at the wagonage. He’ll tell you what happened there.”
They updated Gonji on the clandestine work by the militia, and soon they ascended to the chapel, where the late-night memorial service was nearly at its end. The final strains of a dirge-like hymn swelled through the wall behind the altar where the three slumped against damp rock, held back by the sentry who acted as both doorman and first line of catacomb defense should Mord suddenly decide to tell Klann all he knew of their military disposition.
Gonji exchanged words with the guard, a miller from the bushi who wore his straight sword proudly, in the manner a katana was worn. The samurai absently asked of comings and goings to and from the chapel and down into the catacombs, but all the while his thinking kept turning to the sweet sound of children’s voices calling out in innocent song for the mercy of their God.
At length the service ended, and the shuffling of the exiting crowd could be heard.