by T. C. Rypel
Nearing the rear of the mercenary pack, Gonji shouted: “Run, you men! I’ll handle these louts!” He removed his sallet as the hunters reined in and looked back. He cast them an obscene gesture.
Impelled by the dancing image of the reward on Gonji’s head, the surprised band of six mercenaries howled and wheeled back after him.
When the samurai turned and zigzagged back through the alley where he had left his men, he found to his dismay that only Wilf lay in wait in a crumbling niche, sword at the ready. The others—whether from fatigue, injury, or abject defeat—had ridden off.
Gonji nodded to Wilf in encouragement, saw the determined battle fervor in the young smith’s eyes. Spanked his borrowed horse away.
When the greedy adventurer band stormed past, vigilance clouded by their gold-lust, the flashing steel of the ambushing pair took their horses’ legs out from under the leaders. The mercenaries piled on top of one another, men and mounts entangled and heaping like freshly plowed earth. Seconds later, only warm, twitching corpses lay in the alley, a blockade of flesh.
Gonji had to pull his friend from the scene. Wilf’s eyes were glazed, as if he were experiencing a vision.
“Gonji,” he said, resisting, “we can go now, can’t we? To the castle, if it’s over here—”
“It’s not over here—not by a long shot.”
“Klann’s brought the whole damned castle garrison! Why can’t we—?”
“Wilfred!” Gonji shouted in his face. “Get hold of yourself. Come to your senses. We’ve got to remain clearheaded now.”
When Wilf had snapped free of his bedazzled, fearful frenzy, they scaled a wall and skulked over rooftops and arches toward the square again. They made their way to the roof of the millinery shop, peered over the ledge at the scene below.
An awful moment—
Gonji seized Wilf’s arm.
“Wilf,” the samurai said gravely, “make your decision. Do you want to go after him? If so, I’ll go with you. But it must be one thing at a time.”
Wilf stared down, horror-stricken, at the chapel grounds. His breath hitched as he spoke raspingly: “Nein...wouldn’t—wouldn’t do any good—the castle—that’s all that’s left.”
Gonji nodded deliberately, his jaw tight and his brow creased with intensity. “I’m not so sure.”
* * * *
Lydia’s heart skipped a beat when she saw King Klann march down the chapel’s center aisle. She knew what Michael would do.
Her hand clamped down hard on his arm that held the primed pistol under his cloak. They were in the third pew. She fervently prayed that her husband would not be recognized as one of the city leaders in the excitement of the moment.
Michael’s free hand grabbed her wrist and squeezed. She wouldn’t be able to stop him. When Klann mounted to the altar and tried to spring the secret panel—
Klann stopped and faced the weeping, shrinking congregation. Many beat their breasts, crossed themselves, or slumped in despair, holding their heads. Hands on hips, Klann leveled a stern gaze at them.
“How well you might pray for those foolish rebels among you, people of Vedun,” he said. His voice softened. “And for your honored dead.”
A woman wailed long and keeningly in the rear pews, rising and shaking her fists at Klann. He peered at her with an unreadable facial set, waving back the guards who moved toward her.
A dragoon along a side aisle toed open a casket, then called the king over to him. Klann looked inside at the armament, lifted his gaze to where the dead sentries were being cleared from the vestibule.
“Pray for all the valiant among you,” he whispered, such that only those nearest could hear.
Then he strode from the chapel.
Lydia sighed in profound relief. But a curious expression washed over Michael’s features.
“He didn’t know,” Flavio’s protege breathed in surprise. “He really didn’t know about the catacombs. Or at least the entrance tunnel here, behind the altar.”
“Or didn’t care,” Lydia was saying. “Michael, maybe he doesn’t wish to harm any—”
But Michael was moving away from her, speaking to the mournful refugees in the chapel.
* * * *
Klann watched his army sort out the remnants of the melee at the square. The weapons were seized and loaded onto the amazing wagons, which were drawn near the fountain and ringed with heavily armed troops, who looked worn by their ordeal with the surprisingly capable militia of Vedun. Tumo sat with them, growling as a soldier patched his wounds with strips of a blanket.
Thunder boomed in the Carpathians, and the rain slanted in the buffet of fresh gusts of wind.
Klann examined one of the wagons, shaking his head in disbelief at the cleverness of the design.
“No one saw them build these?”
His officers lowered their eyes in embarrassment. The king next picked up a sword of recent forging. A schiavona. He executed a few passes with it, then with a powerful downward arc, he slashed nearly through a hitching rail.
“Superior to those they made for us?” he asked on a huffing breath.
“Doubtless, sire,” Captain Sianno agreed glumly.
Klann shook his head again, removed the winged helm and rubbed his face.
“What happened to Mord’s overrated intelligence?” Klann grumbled in Kunan to his officers. “He said nothing of this. And the revolt was supposedly scheduled for tomorrow. We arrived not a moment too soon—damn him to the flaming Pit! All this could have been avoided.” He eyed the city garrison leaders. “That was good work, Sianno. And Julian—well done.”
“What about these rebels, Your Highness?” Julian queried, waving a hand over the heads of the captives.
Klann thought a moment. “Detain them for now, I suppose,” he said, expelling a weary breath. He spotted the huddled party of captive rebels on the Ministry’s steps, Lorenz among them. Some were badly wounded. “Use their Ministry building for a detention center—”
“And these, sire?” a dragoon asked. He headed a party who pulled injured rebels from the carnage. Among the litter-borne was Roric, barely conscious, in great pain, both his legs shattered, as well as one arm.
“Seek out their surgeon,” Klann ordered. “Have him attend on them. For our wounded, have our own surgeons—”
“Sire, with all due respect,” Julian disagreed, “this one is one of their leaders. It is our opinion that an example is needed here.” He indicated Roric.
The king was annoyed by Captain Kel’Tekeli’s insinuation of timidity, clear from his tone. “All right, Julian—then crucify him.”
Julian saluted, his jaw grinding with satisfaction. “And that one, milord?” He jerked a thumb back down the street.
Klann stiffened, knowing the person he meant. “Come with me.” The king mounted and clopped through the ghastly square, through blood-swirled pools, picking his way over bodies and debris. Julian and Sianno followed.
“Tell me, Captain,” the king said without turning, “where is the oriental, and that lithe murderer—the one with the strange eyes?”
Julian forced down the lump in his throat. “They’re either gone, or....”
“Or?”
“Or they’ll be dead by morning, sire.”
Klann grunted. “Morning, then. Because they’re not gone. I can feel their presence. Even now....”
And then they reached the chapel grounds, and the duty Klann dreaded. From deep within, the Brethren tendered their angry counsel. But he shook them off, unheeding.
Garth Iorgens still knelt, prayerfully, eyes closed, where he had for the past half hour. Splattered by mud and the blood of some he might formerly have called sword-brother, the smith had been forced to surrender along with his remaining few sturdy bushi. They had been hemmed into their redoubt by the reinforcement troops, the dragoons hesitating to fire upon them, knowing Garth’s former status with Klann. But there had been no way out. No other way to save the survivors but to surrender. And so he ha
d thrown down his stained axe and sword and instructed his charges to do likewise, and then he had fallen to his knees in the redoubt amid the lifeless forms of those fellow citizens who had died under his command.
Garth opened his dark eyes, rosy-hued now, and stood unsteadily. He locked eyes with Klann, their new-found mutual resentment almost a palpable thing. Some of the Llorm, the older men, turned their glances away.
“You...,” the king began, quaking with emotion. “Whom I called gen-kori...so you could never raise a sword against me? This is how much your word can be trusted?” He swept his hand over the carnage.
Garth’s jaw worked, but he said nothing. Head hanging, shuddering, he was led with the others toward the Ministry building.
“Let it be known,” Klann declared loudly when they had reached it, “that Captain Julian Kel’Tekeli is hereby promoted to Field Commander of the Royalist Force of Akryllon, for distinguished service in having suppressed the Vedunian rebellion.”
There was applause, saluting and handshakes. A brief, not altogether sincere cheer spread through the mercenaries within earshot. Julian seemed both relieved and surprised by the battlefield commission. His chest swelled with pride as he accepted the honor he had so long coveted.
“And this rebel leader, sire?” Julian asked when the brief ceremony had ended. He angled his head toward Garth.
Klann’s affected smile melted. He had hoped Julian’s pride in the appointment would channel his thinking away from Garth. But the soldier’s arrogance, a family trait, would permit no compassion to either enemy or rival. And Garth was both.
At length Klann was forced to answer, his subjects’ eyes on him. He gazed up into the rain, the impenetrable darkness. Night had fallen, and the clouds grew thick, devouring the mountain peaks.
“You’re Field Commander now,” Klann said. “You deal with him.”
Garth’s eyes clamped shut a moment as he accepted the finality of his fate. Then his round, bearded face reddened, his ears bright with anger.
The king had swerved his mount and begun riding off toward the main gate, his shield-bearing escort again forming about him. Garth’s bellow of rage halted him.
“Klann—where is my son?”
King Klann wheeled toward him with a perplexed expression. Julian had drawn his saber and ridden toward the smith as if to strike him dead, but Klann stopped him and stared blankly for a long moment. Then he made the connection. A look that might have been grief or pain pinched his face.
“If the fates smile upon you,” Klann said to him in Kunan, “then he’s dead.” With that he yanked his steed around and trotted off ahead of his escort.
Garth moaned, tears streaming down his face, as two mercenaries dismounted and bound him, on Julian’s order. They helped him onto a horse.
“Captain Sianno,” Julian said, his gleaming teeth in smug display, “you may have the honor of dealing with this turncoat. Hang him in some...shameful place. From a sewage culvert, perhaps. Some place where the king need not be troubled by his sight. It seems our liege lord finds his presence disturbing. And that will never do.”
Sianno cast him a disapproving scowl, but saluted stiffly. Another mercenary joined the first two, and they began the slow, dismal ride westward along the Street of Hope, toward the sluice gates.
When he passed Lorenz on the Ministry steps, Garth lipped him silent words of comfort. Lorenz seemed beside himself.
When the hanging party was half a block away, Lorenz suddenly pushed past a guard, shouting after his father. He sprinted straight for a mounted mercenary, taking him by surprise, dragging him off his horse. But the soldier clung to his leg, and two more arrived quickly to wrestle him to the ground. One of them placed a rapier point at the soft flesh of his throat.
“Nein, Lorenz!” Garth shouted, anguished. “Bitte, no more.”
“You don’t have to worry, papa!” a brigand mocked. “We’ll take real good care of him.” Others laughed and chimed in:
“Ja, Mord’s always in need of men who can’t hold their tongues!”
“Like that craft guildsman—”
“Big man with a big mouth—”
“Mord knew how to cut him down to size, though, eh?”
They all roared at the jest as they bound Lorenz, hand and foot. Garth, his mount dragged away by the reins, could only crane his neck in horror until he was guided left, into a crossing street, and the scene was lost to view.
* * * *
Roric Amsgard sagged from wooden beams leaned against the postern gatehouse. In great pain, he complained little.
Late in the Hour of the Dog, a whistling hiss parted the rain, and the sleek arc of a clothyard shaft ended in Roric’s breast.
Whether the mercy stroke was launched by friend or foe, whether in sport or out of compassion, no one was able to discover.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“The moon should be full tonight—but where is it?”
“It’s waiting,” another bushi answered his partner at the window, as he sat binding his leg wound, puffing, “waiting behind the rain clouds for...something.”
“Gonji,” someone called from a corner of the darkened parlor, “didn’t you say the sorcerer would have new power at the full of the moon?”
The samurai peered cautiously from another window, an angry scowl on his face. “I heard a lot of things about the full of the moon. None of them seem to matter anymore,” he appended bitterly.
They had gathered boldly in Flavio’s splendid but now battered manse, which lay near the marketplace. Parts of the chapel, the bell tower, and the rostrum at the square were just within view. Several of Flavio’s magnificent leaded glass windows had already been wantonly smashed in the fighting.
Outside, the rain continued, and a stiff wind drove debris before it in the streets, whipped the draperies through the broken windows. Within the house were Gonji, Wilf, and several fatigued fighting men, as well as three women and five children from a scattered sector movement.
Refugees were reportedly in hiding everywhere: homes and shops, meeting halls, even the bath house. The city ran foul with soldiers seeking out pockets of rebels, less earnest about their duty and more besotted as time crawled on, for the militia had gone to ground, Gonji’s order having spread swiftly to ears only too willing to hear it.
But soon the search parties would be organized into house-to-house, building-by-building investigations.
Animals roamed the streets, barking and bleating forlornly in their confusion and fear. Dogs bayed in the distance for dead masters. At the square: the occasional bellow of the cretin giant.
From an extreme angle at one second-story window, Gonji had made out one pork-barrel knee of the beast where it sat among the captured wagons.
“Does warfare ever change?” Wilf asked of the unresponsive darkness, slumping forward on a high-backed chair behind the samurai. The young smith seemed alternately anxious and calm, crumbling and defiant. “Those endless moments before engagement...then the—the way time gets squeezed, flying past when the fighting begins...the parched mouth...sweating hands...that panic you feel when you know death is suddenly this close....”
Gonji stared impassively from the edge of the window.
The rear door from the servants’ quarters opened and shut, causing weapons to be hefted in readiness. Aldo Monetto burst into the room.
“They told me I’d find you here,” he said to Gonji. “How goes it?” Curt greetings were exchanged, and Monetto was offered a cup of wine and some of the same stale bread and dried meat the others ate. He accepted them gratefully.
“Listen,” the bearded biller said between gulps, “Klann’s gone back to Castle Lenska, and taken half the dragoons with him. Maybe more. But hear this: They’re going to conscript every able-bodied man in the city into Klann’s army when this is all sorted out.”
One of the bushi laughed harshly, a little madly. “That’s why they didn’t just kill everyone they captured, eh?”
Mone
tto nodded somberly. “Oh...Wilfred—I...I just heard. Steel yourself—I’m afraid they—” He licked his dry lips. “—they took your brave father and—and hanged him. So said the guildsmen at the square. God rest his blessed soul.” Aldo turned away, unable to take the look that had dawned on Wilf’s face.
The smith hung his head. “I suppose I knew. Expected it when we saw him....” His voice cracked, and he angrily brushed aside a tear. “Why hang him? The bastards. A lot Klann cared about his past service.”
No one spoke for a space, then Monetto came up to Gonji at the window. “Look, Gonji, I—well, I have a feeling we’ll not be seeing each other alive again and I—I just want to say it’s been...great to work with you, to train under you.”
Monetto’s eyes flicked about apprehensively, and he extended his hand. Gonji took it slowly, bowing to the faithful militia leader.
“Domo arigato,” he replied. “But let’s say little of dying, for the present. There is still much to be done.”
Monetto shrugged. Someone snorted and grumbled, whiningly, about the futility of it all, tiresomely recapping their grievous circumstances. Gonji allowed the man to prattle, knowing the need for the venting of their terrible frustration. At length, though, he commanded the frightened man to cease.
The wind began to lash the city with increased power.
A troop of ten Llorm dragoons splashed past the manse. When they were as far as Milorad’s house, a short distance along the Via Fidei, a hard rapping sounded on the portico door—
“It’s Gerhard,” someone shouted, and another voice hushed him to silence. The dour archer was admitted at once, the ornate front door quickly shut and barred.
Gerhard shuffled into the parlor, soaking and haggard. He dropped his helm, gazing around the room at the tense, huddled refugees as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Ignoring their expectant greetings, he flung his beloved longbow against the wall, following its flight as if it were some despicable thing.