by T. C. Rypel
“What news, Karl?” Monetto asked his friend. “Take refreshment.”
Gerhard frowned in Aldo’s direction. He strode to a sofa, flopping down heavily, sullen and withdrawn. He unbelted the sword and empty quiver from his back. Monetto repeated his query, more urgently.
“Michael and Milorad were called into conference with them. You all heard that?” he asked.
They assured him that they had.
“I don’t know what else, then. Oh—Michael says you were right. Mord must not be telling everything he knows. Klann didn’t seem to know of the catacombs.”
Karl blankly eyed the parquet floor as he spoke, and it took Gonji a few seconds to realize the archer was addressing him.
“He came to the chapel,” Gerhard continued, “but he gave no sign of knowing about the tunnel.”
“Or maybe he didn’t want to,” someone reasoned.
Gonji’s eyes widened. “Cholera. Then one way or the other, the innocents in the catacombs may be in grave danger....”
Monetto belted his axe and sword. “I’ve got to get home. Check on my family. Just get word to me there when you need me. Karl—maybe we’ll see you later, nicht wahr?”
Gerhard sighed and nodded weakly. Eight bells sounded at the square, and the archer pulled himself erect in his seat.
“Oh, yes,” he breathed, “and they’re going to kill one hostage each hour until Gonji and Simon surrender themselves.”
There were gasps of horror in the manse, and even Gonji betrayed his emotion. He strode forward, fists clenched at his sides.
“Simon,” he hissed through his teeth.
“What will you do?” a cringing woman asked in Italian. “The hostages will die, and perhaps the women and children in the caverns—”
“Hush, Lucia—”
Gonji’s eyes blazed as he considered a course.
“There’s only one thing that can be done,” came the eerie voice from the shadows beyond the parlor arch.
Pistols and steel sprang into itching palms. A woman screamed, and the sobbing of children followed as they clung to their mothers for security.
“Simon!” The name sprang from several throats.
A rampant wind fluttered the drapes at the opened window of the dining room, where he had silently entered. Seeing the fear of the refugees, he remained in the cloaking shadow.
“You,” Gonji growled, slipping the Sagami half out of the scabbard, but returning it almost immediately.
“Save that,” Simon advised. “You’ll need it. Come with me.”
Gonji moved to the dining room, a few of the bushi following, including Wilf Gundersen. They were struck by the strange shifting, rearranging that had already begun to transform Simon’s features. Only Gonji appeared rather disappointed, expecting something...different.
“That’s...all there is to it?” the samurai inquired.
“Never mind that,” the other responded, his tone more gravelly than usual. His manner was fraught with urgency. “Never mind, for now. Just come with me....”
Gonji locked his thumbs into his obi. “Why should I go anywhere with you?”
“For the sake of these people, that’s why. Don’t play coy with me. You have no idea what we’re risking. What I’m risking.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re leaving Vedun—”
Wilf sucked in a breath and stepped forward, slack jawed. “But—”
“—for the nonce,” Simon added.
* * * *
Garth clopped along at the center of the hanging party, not feeling the rain, the chill. Benumbed now, considering the events of his life and embracing his faith. Knowing that in moments he would confront his Creator; wondering whether he would be permitted to ask the Lord God why he hadn’t been felled by the great heart seizure before he had had the chance to spill so much blood.
His hands, twisted and bound at the center of his back, tingled from constricted circulation.
Sianno turned them into an alley, narrow and littered, a place children had always been warned away from, as it dead-ended dangerously at a sewer drain.
So this was to be the place of his execution.
Lord God of all, give me the courage to—
“What’s that?” Sianno grated, halting them. The three mercenaries drew steel and wheeled their mounts to and fro, casting him questioning glances.
“What, sir?”
“What did you hear?”
“I’m not sure,” the captain replied, gazing with narrowed eyes into the darkness. “Came from up ahead there.”
They peered into the blackness before them.
“Maybe we should hang him somewhere else,” a brigand judged, chuckling nervously.
“You two ride ahead, but be careful.”
The pair demurred a second, then walked their horses ahead warily, swords upraised. Only the dim lights from nearby dwellings cast what humble illumination the alley could claim.
Garth watched them ride, momentarily heartened. The sensation was short-lived. Rats, probably, he thought. Garth had held for a time the faint hope that they would blunder into a militia ambush, but this forgotten alley had never been considered in the rebellion plan. Besides, if rebels attacked, Garth would surely be the first to go.
Dear God, protect my beloved sons from....
The snick of steel behind him. A strangled outcry cut short by the crashing descent of a broadsword and a cry of mortal terror. Garth turned in time to see the spurt of blood that erupted from the remaining mercenary’s neck.
Then Sianno was riding up to him, dirk in hand, slicing the bonds. Tossing him the dying man’s saber, calling orders to him in a voice that seemed lost in the pounding of blood in Garth’s ears:
“Here! Follow me!”
Garth caught the saber but almost lost it, the feeling returning to his hands only gradually. He kicked his mount through the alley, a length behind Sianno. They were on top of the bewildered scouting team in seconds. The two men’s hesitation in the face of their superior’s charge cost them their lives.
And then Captain Sianno, Garth’s comrade in a time long past, was seated across from him, breathing hard through flaring nostrils.
“Don’t think I’m doing this out of compassion,” Sianno said. “You think I’m soft, is that it?”
Garth was shaking his head dimly, lost for words.
Sianno went on. “Well, you’re probably right. I am going soft in the head, with the passing of years. All of us are. You, especially. What the hell did you get involved in something like this for? And don’t think this is for Italy, either. You were just doing your duty then, I know. But I remember....
“Julian Kel’Tekeli—Field Commander. Fie on the Kel’Tekelis! Arrogant bastards, one and all! And Julian’s the worst, the little cur. He was just a pup when you and I fought for Klann in the noble days. When all this meant something. When we really believed....”
He caught his breath and dismounted. Garth did likewise. They stood looking at each other for a long, nostalgic moment. Garth smiled after a while, and they hugged each other warmly. Then Sianno drew away, broke the eye contact.
“Iorgens,” he said sadly, “I know a terrible injustice has been done you—”
“Don’t,” Garth fairly pleaded. “For the sake of sweet memory. Let’s think only of those days when we rode together in the name of righteousness, of an ideal.”
Sianno bobbed his head. Garth winced to see the captain slice his own arm open with a wicked slash of his dirk, letting the blood drip across the front of his weathered breastplate, staining the seven interlocked circles of the Klann crest.
“Part of my cover,” the captain explained, smiling wryly.
“Is that really necessary?”
“It will be in this case. Our old friendship hasn’t been forgotten. That’s why that sadistic popinjay sent me to carry out your execution.” Sianno waxed serious. “Do you think you can lie low awhile? Or better still, flee this city? It�
�s no good for you here, Garth. No good at all.”
“Ja...awhile,” Garth allowed.
Sianno studied his expression before sighing and nodding heavily. He caught up his reins and patted the muzzle of his gray roncin affectionately. The animal nickered and pawed the mud.
“Do you recall the mount you gave me that day when mine went down?”
Garth looked puzzled, then remembered. His eyes crinkled merrily.
“Grandsire of this trusty fellow,” Sianno related, his fond expression sagging at once.
The captain drew his sword again, and Garth gasped to see him strike the steed’s skull. It went down to its knees, whinnying in shock and pain. A second blow silenced it. Its twitching carcass shuddered in the rain.
Sianno stared down, grimacing.
“But why?” Garth demanded.
Sianno’s voice was strained. “They also know how much I love this horse....”
At length they remounted. Sianno clamped shut the buffe of his burgonet when he sat astride a dead bandit’s horse. His left arm was coated with blood, and the tasset and boot of one leg, where he had knelt into the blood of his roncin for dramatic effect.
“Gen-kori,” Sianno said ominously, though he used the Kunan term of affection, “should we meet again, out there....”
Garth nodded in understanding.
* * * *
Gonji’s swords described an X in his back harness as he stood with the apprehensive bushi in Flavio’s well-tended garden. Atop these he slung his longbow and the nearly empty quiver with the few remaining envenomed war arrows.
Simon moved apart from the rest, the hood of his traveling cloak pulled up. He shivered as if from an attack of ague.
Wilf’s eyes were on Gonji. He looked hostile, as if feeling betrayed. “You can’t go now,” he said in an anguished voice.
“Just be ready to move when you get the word,” Gonji ordered.
“There isn’t going to be any word,” Wilf despaired.
Tumo blared in the square, causing them to stiffen as if movement might allow the giant to sniff them out.
“We must stop this madness,” a woman fretted from the doorway.
Gonji bowed to them and took two steps, paused and glanced around the company. “Don’t allow yourselves to get stiff—keep your thews flexing—take heart—we may yet get the people out of here—”
“Come on,” Simon growled in a chilling voice.
“What about Mord’s giant?” one of the warriors begged.
“That’s a giant, not a god,” Gonji snapped, pointing toward the square. “He can die....” And then he and Simon were off at a run through the back lane.
They took to the walls, scrabbling along at a crouch. Then they were clambering over rooftops until they were facing the square, a hotbed of troop activity. They could see the armored wagons—three of them—into which the confiscated weapons had been loaded.
The cretin giant sat in a blubbery heap among them, grotesquely gnawing a whole raw pig. The couplings of his body armor had been unfastened, such that folded rolls of fat protruded from the sides and spilled over his broad belt.
Gonji halted Simon.
“We haven’t time for that now,” Simon argued, seeing his intent.
“They need it,” Gonji said stubbornly, nocking one of the poisoned shafts. “What made you come back?”
“Look about you,” the other rasped from beneath the hood. “The fine shambles you’ve made. I figured in your infidel’s pride you’d be laying part of the responsibility for this on me.”
Gonji flinched imperceptibly, scanned the square for observers, pulled slowly overhead, drew down and aimed, kneeling behind the roof’s retaining wall.
“And there’s something I want you to see—”
But the twang of the release cut short Simon’s words. The shaft hissed through the drizzle and struck the giant’s loose-hanging breastplate at a poor angle. It stuck but failed to penetrate to the flesh of his chest.
Tumo roared in surprise. Soldiers took note. Shouts of command, as they darted in all directions after the sniper—
Simon grunted with some undisclosed pain, scrabbling away across the roof. “To the west gate,” he growled over his shoulder. “Now.”
“Then what?” Gonji asked.
“Over the wall, where the land begins to drop away—and make sure they see you. Then meet me as soon as possible at the north tunnel.”
Gonji rubbed his itching nose and nocked another shaft. At the fountain: Tumo casting about in mindless confusion on his barrel legs.
The samurai rose above the wall, fired. And was spotted.
Tumo blared and stumbled backward as the poisoned shaft thucked home in the pulpy flesh of his side. He tore it free with a howl, the worm venom already darkening the white flesh, bruise-like. But even the deadly substance could not reach the giant’s vital organs or circulatory system before it was diluted in the massive layers of fat.
Gonji bounded over an arch and skipped across the slick, narrow ledges of the walled lanes, finally dropping to the paving stones and making his way to the west gate. He saw the gate cranking open, the small drawbridge over the moat landing in place. At least a dozen mercenaries manning the gatehouse. And beyond—an indeterminate number of Llorm sentries.
A dragoon party clattered through the gate.
And suddenly Simon Sardonis appeared out of the shadows and raised his arms before them like a haunter of the dark. The dragoons’ mounts, trained war chargers though they were, neighed and bolted, throwing the gatehouse into a frenzy.
And then Simon was dashing through the center of them, slashing with his broadsword.
Gonji heard pistols crack amid the chaos as he bounded for the stairway to the allure. He crouched in the gloom until the two Llorm crossbowmen passed overhead at the run. Then he took the steps by twos, felled a sentry with a shaft that struck him between the shoulder blades, and hang-dropped the fifteen feet into the waist-deep water of the culvert.
He sloshed out, unhurt, and loped through the brush that bordered the Roman road, saw the guards whirling in dazed confusion. Simon had taken to shadow again. There were few Llorm stationed outside the gate now, but more could be seen galloping around the distant curve of the wall.
Gonji checked his armament. A lone dragoon pounded past, reining in not far off and panning the forests to the north of the road. Gonji raced from concealment, twenty feet off when the Llorm finally heard him.
The dragoon managed a single strangled sound before the ninja dart pierced his throat under the open buffe of his helm. The samurai slashed him twice in the blink of an eye and dragged him, already dead, from the saddle. He calmed the peevish steed and towed him to where he had left the longbow.
Scooping it up but flinging away the empty quiver, Gonji spurred to the center of the road, where he made a broad gesture of farewell to the small band of mixed Llorm and free companions who regarded him uncertainly from near the west gate. He raised his sallet with cavalier elegance and bowed.
Recognizing him, they spurred toward him with a vengeance.
“Sayonara, Vedun,” he cried. “It’s been great fun!”
With a “hyah,” he wheeled the animal. Before he had made three strides, Simon again leaped from the brush at the valley side of the road to spook the lead mounts of his would-be pursuers, sending them and their riders crashing in a wet clangor that sprawled over the road, slowing their trailing comrades.
The enchanted misanthrope then sprinted with eerie speed toward the forest that sloped upward into the northern foothills.
Gonji yanked to a stop and watched. An alert adventurer, dismounting to steady his hand, squeezed off an echoing shot. It struck Simon with an unmistakable jolt of impact as he reached the trees.
Gonji scowled and raced for the north trail that wended through the pine forest, the route by which Klann’s human force had attacked Castle Lenska a month before, and thence toward the secret northern tunnel to the catacombs.
* * * *
Simon’s breath wheezed alarmingly. The black hole at the small of his back shone in the bleak light of the full moon, which had risen now to search them out, a baleful eye through the gray wadding of cloud and the black steepling pine boughs.
The tethered bandit horse began to whinny and strain at the bit. Simon clutched his cloak’s hood shut with one hand like a leper. Gonji watched in rapt fascination, mesmerized by the coarse hair growth at the back of the man’s now enlarged hand.
“How can you do anything tonight, hurt like that? Someone’s got to remove that ball from your—”
“It won’t last,” the voice replied, now a totally alien voice, from the hunched figure. “And neither will you. Now see—see what you must—and then begone, quickly—the moon will wake it soon—”
A bristling hand shakily indicated a berry thicket. Simon yanked the hand back in pain.
Tight-lipped, Gonji marched to the thicket, his hand warily cupping the pommel of the Sagami. In the bush lay a mound. On closer inspection: a body. A dirk protruded from its back.
He looked over his shoulder, suppressing the chill. Simon was on his knees, doubled over, his breathing labored. Yet he seemed to be growing somehow, bulging like a filling sail on a brigantine.
Gonji stooped and turned the body, sucking in a breath.
It was Strom Gundersen. He laid the shepherd on his side and examined the dirk. There were a hundred like it in Vedun, among the citizens alone.
“Strom,” he whispered. “But why—?”
A half mile below, the voices of soldiers could be heard, chattering in several languages.
“You’ve seen it. Now take your ruminations away from here.” Simon’s voice was a rattle of winter-dried branches.
Gonji’s heart hammered in his chest, his jaw working as he pondered. “Lorenz? Boris? One of the herdsmen? The soldiers? Who?” he wondered aloud. “And why?”
Clumping hooves and muted voices ascended the trail below.
“Stay, man of the East,” came the eerie, malevolent voice. “You’re halfway into your grave....”
Gonji whirled and drew steel. Such a voice could not have issued from Simon. But there was no one else.
The horse shrilled and bucked, tearing the bit from its bleeding mouth, stamping insanely into the woods.