by T. C. Rypel
Gonji pondered it all for a space, then blew an exasperated breath and dismissed it, emptying his mind as he knew he must.
He lashed on his tanto knife and remaining poisoned darts, donned his kimono, tied his obi, and sashed his daisho at their threatening angles.
I shall depart Vedun as I entered it....
Moving out to the parlor, Gonji surveyed the street that coursed east-west across the entire southern stretch of Vedun. The rain fell in torrents, and the culverts were rising, but the clouds seemed to be breaking over the mountains to the north, and the full moon’s glow grew stronger, as the rain clouds fractured and it spanned the sky on its course. Stray animals wandered about aimlessly, some foraging in the gutters for food.
At that moment, Salavar the Slayer splashed past the house, headed toward the west gate. With him were three heavily armed adventurers.
Gonji ground his teeth as he watched them ride out of sight. He turned and bowed to all in the parlor, taking up a borrowed cloak.
“Soon, now,” he said. He appended a sign of the cross for all to see. “We’ll need the help of all gods that be, this night. Farewell, all of you.”
The tower at the square sounded eleven bells.
They wished him well and sent him off with their prayers. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Lydia as the rear door’s click banished him to the driving rain and cloaking darkness. Then the waka came back to him. The poem he had composed upon thinking of her on a sleepless night during the training:
She is the blossom
that blooms by night.
I am the sun—
The moon is her light.
Bracing himself against the shivers, he sprinted off into a bleak lane that ran awash with streaming ruts. He slowed to a lithe scamper, taking to the eaves for protection from the rain.
Behind him followed the one who had watched and waited for him, knowing he must leave sooner or later. Stealthy. Longbow wrapped in sailcloth to protect the string until it would shortly be put to use.
* * * *
Lady Olga Thorvald sidled up behind the brooding King Klann at his dais. She reached her hands around the chair carefully, a smile curling her red lips. Her long, painted nails met at his eyes.
“Can you tell who it is from the touch alone?” she whispered. Then: “Owwww!”
The king grasped her hands at the wrists and twisted them outward vigorously. She pulled away, her hands thrust around her sides as she squeezed at the pain.
“Did you have to do that?” she cried.
“Yes, we can tell from the touch who it is,” he said without looking at her. “The touch of the vixen, the viper.”
“That’s not what you once called me. You had many names for me when once I shared your bed, names of affection, attributes shouted in the heat of your lust!”
He turned, glaring at her, rising from the gilt-inlaid chair. “You forget again, scheming bitch—is your head chiseled of the same stone as your cold heart? That was another king. Another time....”
“A more grateful one,” she spat, “one who would have rewarded faithful service. Do you know what I’ve done for you?”
He stood looking at her, his emptied goblet trembling in his clutch. Her long flaming hair had been brushed in sultry waves that caressed her still shapely shoulders, her full bosom. Seductively undone at its front, the spring-green nightgown his brother had once so favored flowed gently along her outline, shifting with every breeze.
His lip curled in disgust. “You make me sick,” he growled. “Leave us!” He hurled the goblet at her, missing by inches.
Tears streaming from her angry, confused eyes, she stormed from the chamber, past the embarrassed sentries. Once in the central hall of the keep, she saw the sorcerer approaching at a quick pace.
“Mord,” she shot, “you’ve played me for the fool.”
“Whatever are you talking about, dear lady?” he replied impatiently, looking past her. The clock in the great hall tolled eleven vibrations through the castle’s stone skeleton.
“I’ve done what you’ve asked. You swore you’d mend the rift between myself and His Majesty. When will you fulfill your part?”
“Lower your voice, please,” he commanded in his voice like the rumble of a desecrated tomb. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
“I want the bargain completed, Mord,” she threatened, “lest I tell the king of your treachery.” She breathed heavily, afraid of her own boldness born of desperation.
There followed a short, deadly silence.
“Whatever are you talking about?” the sorcerer asked simply.
“You know,” Lady Thorvald replied, steeled by her desperate anger. “And tomorrow, he’ll know. Am I making myself clear?”
Mord laughed, low and minacious. “Tomorrow things will be different. You’ll see. Tomorrow you’ll be united with the king once again.”
“We’ll see,” she replied, stalking off.
Mord would have killed her straightaway for the idle threat had he not been troubled by matters of more pressing concern. He hurried to the chamber but was halted by the sentries.
“Out of my way,” he ordered. The sentries crossed their pikes and stood fast.
“Sorry, sir. No one permitted to see His Highness.”
“On whose order?” he bellowed.
“His physicians,” the Llorm guard answered, holding his gaze steadfastly.
The inhuman bellowing rage that issued from the closed chamber door answered Mord’s next question. It was followed by a thundering crash and shouts of warning in alternating human voices, male and female.
The Tainted One again. The primitive child, mindless and enraged.
Damn the stars! Mord thought. It was time for the chant, yet the garrison and the civilian population would do nothing about it until Klann had given his sanction. Mord would have to do something soon. He must have the fresh imputation of mana, must command the power necessary to control the Hell-Hound.
For the spirit of the territory had been awakened by the moon. Moved to fury beyond all rational control, it stalked somewhere very near. Too near, for the sorcerer’s comfort. Yet he knew that if he could destroy its corporeal existence, the enigmatic spirit within it would be allied to Mord.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hour of the Rat
Gola the Butcher, they called him.
Or so he said. And why not? Hadn’t he sliced two rebels to dog meat that very evening? sent their women into hysterics with his handiwork?
So he had, and there’d be more kills on the morrow. He’d see to that.
Gola sat, bleary-eyed, pulling at his wine, the single night sentry who watched over the sleeping mercenaries in the old granary in the southwest. Relishing his brutish memories. Listening to the snoring of the fatigued and drunken adventurers, who lay splayed on the blanketed floor, or overhung their cots.
In his stupor, not altogether sure he wasn’t asleep and dreaming himself, he watched the slow buckling of the oaken doors. The bending of the door bar from the strange inward pressure.... His imagination whirled and eddied, fashioning shapes of things which could cause such a phenomenon. Chuckling at thoughts of night-fiends he’d heard described over campfires by the superstitious.
“Password,” he growled, propped on one elbow. There came no response, only a brief stay of the buckling. Presently it began anew.
Gola scowled and slipped his saber from its sheath.
Nothing he envisioned in his dim fantasies prepared him for what cracked the doors, splintering them at their seams. His reverie had been an inadequate rehearsal. He saw a colossal, rushing mound of fur, for an instant; then the glint of firelight off slashing, razor-edged surfaces. Felt the horrible shock and pain of his body being rent asunder. Then he saw and felt no more.
He was the first to die. Twenty men died with him.
* * * *
Gonji leaned against a wall inside the three-sided sandstone outbuilding before the Provender’s veranda-
topped corral. He collected his breath as he cleansed the Sagami’s blade. Three men lay dead at the corral; three more, inside the stables. There were no more bandits in his way.
The rain eased in its force. The jammed corral and stable were alive with stamping, neighing horses. The violent events, the night’s foreboding aura—something had moved them to skittishness.
He wiped his face and peered around at the front of the noisy Provender Inn. How many soldiers? He expelled an anxious breath, then, eyes narrowing at the grisly sight of the two naked forms hanging upside down from the inn’s signboard—dead rebels on intimidating display.
Three more brigands rode down from the north, tied their steeds with the jostling animals lined before the smoky yellow light of the Provender’s windows. Two drunks emerged, exchanged surly greetings, mounted and trotted away.
Gonji could feel the staring eyes of the small party of Hussars in hiding, two hundred yards away. Champing at the bit. They had accepted with grim reluctance Gonji’s order that they must hold back until it was time to perform their given task, only half understanding the point of honor that dictated what he must now do alone.
One of the newly arrived brigands stopped at the door and brayed a laugh, giving one of the dangling corpses a spin. It was Vlad Dobroczy.
Gonji gritted his teeth and slid past the cover of the tethered steeds, once the soldiers had gone into the inn. He wiped his eyes with the hood flaps of the cloak, blinking back an angry sting. The two bushi had been obscenely dealt with before they had been killed. Feathers from Salavar’s lance had been pinned to Vlad’s flesh with a small, deeply embedded dagger. Freshly felled game on display.
The samurai peered through a window, hand on hilt, counting.
Sixteen free companions, two Llorm regulars, as near as he could make it. And Captain Julian Kel’Tekeli, leaning over the bar.
He steeled himself, fists clenched as he made a brief prayer to the kami of strength. And made his move.
The small sack of gold sailed across the room and clinked on the floor at Julian’s feet.
“I quit...soldier,” came Gonji’s voice from the doorway.
Tables and chairs grated and careened all over the inn as the troops lurched to their feet, sweeping out pistols and blades. Gonji threw off the cloak and drew his katana with a flashing twist, stopping it in a hypnotic instant.
“Halt! Stop right there!” he cried in German. “If those pieces aren’t loaded, primed, and spannered, then you best lower them now and back off.”
Sweat coursed from his armpits. His anxiety was reflected on the rapidly sobering faces of the troops. Some, dull-witted with drink, could not remember reloading their touchy ordnance; others knew they hadn’t; but all had seen the havoc the endless rain had wreaked with their black powder.
There was a breathless pause. Only the two Llorm continued to approach slowly, swords held before them, while the innkeeper, Gutschmidt sidled along behind the bar softly.
Julian turned with deadly calm. He looked at Gonji in amusement and, lost for words, began to laugh.
“Arrest that...man of honor,” the captain said at last, still laughing. Some of the men moved to obey, but Gonji leveled his blade at each, in turn, in snapping motions whose meaning could not be misinterpreted.
“Stay your hand, or you die,” the samurai said earnestly. “My fight is with Julian now, your well-bred captain. I’ve come for him alone.”
“You contemptible cur,” Julian sneered, drawing his own pistol. “This one, you’ll find, is primed and ready.”
Gonji took a breath, prepared to charge, when two clicks sounded behind the captain.
“Ja,” Gutch said, “and so are these. And I’ll lay ten-to-one that you’re the first to go.”
The captain half-turned. A dour and menacing Gutch sat atop a high stool, pearl-handled pistols braced on his knees, aimed at the captain’s head.
Julian laid the wheel-lock on the bar carefully. “I’m surprised at you, Gutschmidt. I thought you were a man with more class than to side with this...inferior. We’ll take this up later, you and I.”
“That’s gonna be real tough with a big hole in yer head, goatsucker.”
Gonji smiled thinly and drew himself up tall, suddenly a figure of threatening command. “Draw back,” he warned the others, “and let me pass.”
“Seize him!” Julian shouted.
The brigands began to shuffle uncertainly. The Llorm urged them along. Gonji’s rotating blade cut the air with slow, balletic grace—one-handed, two-handed grips, snapping and snaking—warding them back with the promise of flashing death.
“Hold on,” someone said in their midst. The free companion moved forward. Gonji recognized him at once. It was Stanek, the man whose lip Julian had split in almost that very spot in the inn, when Julian and Gonji had first crossed paths. The bandit self-consciously ran a finger along the scar above his chin.
“I’d like to see this,” Stanek continued, a bit wild-eyed with drink and the night’s predations. “I’m sure the captain would like to prove himself before his men.”
“You mutinous pig—arrest Stanek, too!” Julian roared, his face reddening now. The two Llorm took a step, but Stanek flourished his swordpoint in their faces. They backed away, uncertainly, in this breakdown of discipline. The others followed, falling slowly toward the walls. Julian’s eyes widened in astonishment.
“Take that man!”
“Sí, mi capitán,” Gonji said, smiling ferally. He sharply, portentously returned the Sagami into the lacquered scabbard in his obi, with a smart, two-step maneuver. “Seize that man! Charge, you cowards! Attack them! Do my dirty work! You never do anything dangerous for yourself, do you, Julian, you swaggering coward!”
Someone behind him ran out into the street. The sound of a horse splashing off. Gonji paid it no heed.
He began to walk slowly toward Julian, narrowing the distance with measured strides. His left hand gripped the belted Sagami’s hilt. Sweat broke out on the captain’s forehead. He rubbed his palms on his breeches. His saber dangled at his own left hip.
“Seize him—obey me—I’m the great Captain Kel’Tekeli,” Gonji went on acidly. “Even your men want to see what you’re made of.” He stopped, the distance halved. “You know, I’ve been wondering about your prowess in battle since that fencing bout I was so foolishly lured into. I’ve been wondering about your guts. Your willingness to die. Are you willing to die, Captain? I am. Let us see who’s more comfortable fighting under the certainty of death....”
Mesmerized, Julian began to tremble slightly, sweat rolling along his well-formed jawbones as the samurai began to stalk him again.
They were in engagement distance. A simple, mutual draw, and their blades would mesh. But Gonji’s right hand—his drawing hand—was relaxed at his right side, far from the sword hilt under the samurai’s off-hand grip.
“For insulting me and my family—for murdering my master, Flavio, and committing sundry crimes against the people of Vedun, I am going to kill you.”
Julian’s open right hand reached delicately across his front to where he knew his saber’s grip would be. But then the moment was past.... They were too close. Impossibly close for sword engagement. Neither man could draw cleanly and move his arm into play.
And still the oriental moved closer. Now his nose was a hand’s width from the captain’s.
“You bastard,” Julian whispered into Gonji’s face, to stave his own quaking.
An instant’s flashing of electrified eyes—Julian grasped the saber’s basket hilt—a blinding sequence of movement—
Gonji’s left hand brought the Sagami halfway up out of the scabbard. His right caught the forte inches from its point, and the blade twisted horizontally, inside out, over the top of Julian’s draw and across in a silver lick. There was an instant’s resistance and a soft tearing. A scattering of droplets just behind the blade’s arc—a tiny shriek of air escaping—
Then a lap of blood that goute
d onto the thigh-length hem of Gonji’s short kimono....
* * * *
The Llorm soldier behind Gonji saw the samurai’s shoulder blades rotate and his elbows flap—he had somehow hit the captain.
The trooper puffed out a breath and advanced, broadsword cocked toward the wanted renegade’s back....
The Austrian highwayman at the left saw what he thought was the gleam of a dagger, then the captain’s stiffening. Then blood, gushing blood. He blinked, kicked a chair out his way—and charged....
The brigand with the clearest view, standing just to Gonji’s right, involuntarily groaned, upon seeing what happened. Somehow the samurai devil had unleashed that deadly blade in impossibly tight quarters—reshaped it!—and sliced the captain’s head half off, such that it fell on his chest like a wet gunnysack. Hair standing on end, mouth a screaming rictus, he aimed his primed pistol....
* * * *
Pandemonium reigned.
The explosion of Gutch’s pistol caused Gonji to blink as he continued turning to his right, blade still gripped cross-handed, at hilt and tip. He saw the pistolier’s face shatter, the gun in his hand cracking off an errant shot.
Gonji whirled and caught the katana’s hilt in both hands. An underhand, upward snap of his wrists unhinged the jaw of the onrushing swordsman. Another pistol exploded, and there was a crashing of pewter on the shelf behind the bar.
The tumbling of furniture and splatter of falling cups—shouts and stamping feet and a metallic din—
Gonji began to move, darting and striking like an asp, motion his only chance against so many. He ran down a backward stumbling pistolier who raised his hands to stave the charge and tumbled over, disemboweled. The samurai leapt atop a table and back down to the floor, striking down another bewildered swordsman with a vertical slash, in passing.
The valiant Gutch’s second pistol barked and bowled a man backward with the ball’s impact. The samurai hurdled the falling form and charged at two bladesmen who barred his way to the door. He froze an instant, drawing their swings. His whirling steel whanged off both blades, parrying them aside, but then he felt the motion behind him, instinctively whipped a high parry over his head and bound an overhead slash.