by T. C. Rypel
Wilf took down another warrior with a similar hit-and-run tactic, roaring in mirthless battle glee. Near him, Garth, armored and helmed, exacted a toll with his broadsword and Frankish axe—now throwing with deadly accuracy, now delivering punishing blows, bloodshed marking his wake.
A guisarme flashed over the samurai’s head just behind Wilf’s shout of alarm. A trailing rider aimed his wheel-lock over his steed’s ears. It sizzled and misfired in the dampness. Gonji ducked instinctively, katana whirling in an arc that took out the horse’s forelegs. Its plunge knocked him over, stunning him a bit. Then he was struggling to his feet. Two short, choppy blows finished the spilled, cursing mercenary.
Gasping for lost breath, Gonji sprang for a corner of the corral, where he knelt, his sword’s forte on his shoulder, for a moment’s much-needed respite. When he saw the figure huddled in the shed behind the wagonage, he angled toward it, mayhem in his eyes.
* * * *
Oh no, no, no—not yet. Not there, too many—uh-uh. No, not for you, Arvin. You’ve got to wait for a good spot. That’s all. Maybe one backing up. Right onto your sword. Hee-hee.... No. No, it wouldn’t matter. You could never—You couldn’t bear to watch anybody die from so close, could you, Arvin? Could you? Not even her....
So let’s just wait till they’re all looking to save their asses. Then we’ll just creep up to the allure when the soldiers are busy, and then up and over and—
O my God. O Merciful God in Heaven. Not him. Not him! Not—
“Jesus save my immortal soul!”
* * * *
Disheveled and soaked, bleeding and blooded, begrimed and aching with present pains and the certain expectation of those to come, Gonji advanced toward the cowering figure at the wagonage shed. He recalled the face from the catacombs, but not the name—Arwin, maybe? Like the street? An undistinguished trainee, like so many. Shock of hempen hair. Pale blue eyes effusing reluctance. Sallow skin and sunken cheeks. Wiry, capable frame that seldom exerted full effort....
Lips spreading to reveal clenched teeth, Gonji sprinted at him, sword trailing in a stiffened right arm, chasing him from hiding and out into battle, where his friends and neighbors fell to buy him precious moments of freedom.
He stopped when he heard the man’s piercing cry in a strange dialect. But he heard the name of Iasu, and knew what must have been meant, feeling a mixture of contempt and pity, and then nothing more, as the craven militiaman disappeared into the fray.
The fighting folk of Vedun now turned out in increasing numbers, though their tactics were egregious at first and strategy was hatched on the run. The thinning troop strength at the western end was pressed back steadily toward the all important west gate through which the wagons must roll—when and if it became safe for the evacuees to turn out of their homes, though it was known that some already had, and with certain disastrous results.
The immediate stable area cleared of occupation troops, work parties having saddled mounts and hitched what few wagons were available at the place, Gonji purposed that he must move to the square. The armored wagons and weapons caches must be returned to the hands of the militia, if there was any hope of seeing the evacuation through.
And Simon. The Thing that was Simon—
“By all the saints and heaven itself, Gonji!” a warrior swore when he entered the Gundersens’ dwelling, Wilf racing in close behind.
“Gonji—?” Wilf began, but he was drowned out.
“He’s a monster, for Christ’s sake! Is that what you’ve brought us as a Deliverer?” a mud-soaked bushi cried out.
“You might as well have asked Mord to help us,” another man griped.
“Shut up! Stop sounding like cowards,” Gonji fired back. “He’ll bring it under control—”
“He? Who in the hell is he?”
Garth heaved in through the door, blood-spattered from boots to beard. He flung his helm on the floor and grabbed a proffered flagon. “That’s Simon Sardonis,” he wheezed at the others, between gulps, “and you’ll be speaking kindly of his pitiful soul while you’re in my house!”
Gonji nodded to him. “Arigato, friend.” He stripped off his filthy, tattered kimono and quickly laced on his pauldrons and vambraces; the back harness for his swords, and the low-brimmed, eye-slitted sallet he’d come to like. He obtained help in stringing his longbow.
“Can he do it, Garth?” Gonji asked softly. “Bring it under control?”
“Who can say?” The smith shrugged.
Wilf grunted. “So you knew about this, too, nicht wahr? Nice that you share things with your family—”
“Sei still, verdammt mal!” came Garth’s impatient remonstrance. “Shut up, damn it!” Wilf shrank back a bit from his father’s unaccustomed anger.
“That’s our Deliverer,” one of the grumblers took up again, with Gonji, “the one you promised us—a goddamned raving monster out of some peasant’s fever-dream!”
“I promised you nothing,” Gonji shot back, ears reddening at once in acknowledgment of the half-lie. “Just the possibility of success in this business, if you all did your part. It was—so sorry—if you will recall, your late prophetess who promised your God’s Deliverer. So you will, dozo, take your belly-aching to Him—or her—in the future.”
He pushed past the man, lashed a quiver of war arrows to Tora’s saddle and rolled his kimono behind. He patted the chestnut stallion affectionately and mounted him with a sigh of relief to at last be reunited with the brave steed. A half-dozen men joined him.
“Domo arigato, Wilfred-san.” It was Wilf who had readied Tora in faith that the samurai would be along to use him.
“Still Wir-fred,” his friend joked, mounting beside him. “What’s your problem?”
“Let’s go, smart ass.”
“Where to?” Wilf reared his destrier anxiously.
“The square,” Gonji answered over the sound of nearby clattering hooves.
“Gonji,” Wilf said, “the captain—Julian—you—I heard....”
Gonji snorted a laugh. “Ah, so desu ka? Do you feel better now? Your confidence restored?”
Wilfred flashed his teeth. “Lead me to the castle, sensei!”
“The square first—hyah!” Gonji reminded, charging ahead astride Tora, with Wilf and several others following close behind.
“The innocents—!” Garth cried at their departing backs. “Take care for their protection, above all else—”
Then a line of skirmishers, Austrian renegades, for the most part, both mounted and on foot, howled with bloodlust and spilled from lanes and over fences and garden walls, from the east.
The aroused bushi, now firmly ensconced in homes and shops around the livery area, leaned out windows and crouched behind barricades, drawing beads on them with bows and firearms.
Gonji, Wilf, and their small escort clattered away under fire, one man among them crying out and slumping over his horse’s withers, keeping to the saddle for as long as he could. Falling, finally, when the bell tower was in sight over the rooftops.
* * * *
The stable battle raged anew. Horses stampeded, some falling under fire. Others were recaptured, penned and tethered, only to be dispersed again in their panic as the nearby metal foundry exploded with a stunning shockwave that blew windows and doors from some structures in the south quarter. A pillar of livid flame and billowing black smoke blotted the moon’s anemic disc, affording but a moment’s respite and diversion from the struggle.
Men and women cried out in pain and death amid explosions and gunshots and the din of steel, the slosh of plummeting bodies and the shrilling of frenzied animals.
In the mud and blood of the slipping, sliding carnage, the man began to feel himself drift.
He saw, though his eyes were shut, the faces that passed over him, peering down in an instant’s grief; or kicking him, without effect, in smug satisfaction, only to shrink away quickly as survival demanded. Friend or foe—it didn’t seem to matter. A few said his name—what may have
been his name—and he heard it only dimly. And neither did that matter, anymore. Such designations seemed...temporary...ephemeral now.
The frightening pain and stress were departing gradually, a numbness supplanting them. He tried to speak, fancied that he heard a voice in response, then felt a sensation as if he were crossing a relentless current, engulfed in a black wave. Then the feeling was gone. He experienced a mild euphoria, knowing that the moment of crisis was past. He would be all right. Yes....
He gazed down at the face, feeling pity for that one less fortunate than he, when he realized, with neither fear nor regret, that it was his own still and mud-spattered countenance that he looked upon. He wondered at the grave expressions of new passersby, surging and rushing and grimacing, shaking their heads.... He earnestly wished to convey to them that there was no pain now. He was merely sleeping. In a moment...in a moment....
He lifted slowly, resignedly, unbidden reflections of his life filling his sphere of transcendence as if they were his new body, the substance of what he was.
Then, with a last look to what had been called him, but was not, he lofted above the silent, futile strife of the battlefield and moved toward the pinpoint of light so very far away. The end of life’s struggle and quest.
A pleasant, buoyant withdrawal.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hour of the Ox
Two pairs of mercenaries, growling in argument as they cantered along the narrow alley in the north sector, swung carefully through the sinuous channel, blades held out to scrape the walls and keep their distance where the labyrinthine turns were darkest.
The first two passed under the arch. The second pair never saw the hurtling Aldo Monetto until he had dropped between them, spilling them both from their startled mounts. The bearded biller regained his feet first and downed the nearer brigand with his short axe as the enemy attempted to rise. The other was momentarily lost to view behind a stamping mare.
Then Monetto saw the brigand—broadsword drawn, teeth bared—over her haunches. He hefted his axe before him, ready for engagement, breath coming in ragged gasps.
Ahead, the lead pair fought to turn their steeds in the tight quarters, cursing. One held up a pistol, cocked it. Gerhard’s armor-piercer shaft, fired from the roof above, lost eight inches of stole through steel plate and leather, flesh and bone. The second man looked up in time to see the sleek trajectory of spindling death, a gout of blood staining the arrow’s shaft.
Monetto leapt over the top of the mare’s saddle, crashing downward wildly but missing with his axe. The bandit hurled an oath at him and darted around the horse to stab at the rebel, who ducked and swung low, opening a deep gash in the soldier’s leg. He yowled and struck the mare with the flat of his blade, causing her to rear and stamp. His flinch laid him open for Monetto’s gut-splitting blow.
Monetto sucked in a cold breath to see what damage he’d done. His dying foe screamed and kicked on the soaked ground.
“God—God!” Aldo cried to smother the screams, as his overhead chop ended the man’s suffering. He fell on one knee and covered his face. “Verily, friend—verily do I ask your mother’s forgiveness....”
“Hey, Aldo—you all-recht?” Gerhard lowered his bow to the alley and hang-dropped down seconds later. He scanned the downed enemies and nodded succinctly. Monetto had begun to gather their armament, his face drawn with grief.
“You’re unhurt—ja? A good wheel-lock piece here,” the archer jabbered nervously, grabbing up the gun. “So she said we might pull it together again,” Gerhard continued. “So what do you think?”
Monetto shrugged. “Lottie’s a nice girl. You’re a nice jughead.”
“Nein, come on, dummkopf,” Gerhard pressed, eyes shining, “do you think I’m too old for her?”
“Does she think so?” Aldo moved past the arch to where a terrible wheezing issued from a downed victim of Gerhard’s deadly longbow. A sucking chest wound. Hopeless. Monetto grimaced.
“Nein.”
Monetto trembled slightly as he knelt to disengage the pistol from the dying man’s belt. “I guess...I suppose it won’t make any difference—your ages—ten years from now,” he spoke absently.
“Ja-ja, that’s what I’ve been thinking.” Karl coaxed one of the horses, calming it, swinging astride.
“How different, an unhorsed enemy,” Monetto said low, awash in sadness.
“Was?—what?” Karl wondered.
Aldo swallowed, checked the pistol. Loaded and primed. He gazed deeply into the man’s pleading eyes. He considered a moment, then laid the pistol gently on his belly. “I can’t offer you any words of good cheer...a prayer maybe....”
“Aldo—horses coming down the street!” Gerhard clucked the steed into a trot toward the sounds in the Street of Hope. There was fighting at Wojcik’s Haven.
With a last look at the downed enemy, Monetto lithely scaled to the rooftops again and sprinted across the crenellated alley wall in pursuit of his archer friend. He reached Hope Street to find Gerhard swearing at a hysterical cluster of non-combatants who scurried toward the square.
“Not now, you idiots,” Karl shouted, fighting the horse’s skittishness. “Stay indoors until you get the order—”
A roaring band of soldiers galloped by, swinging at anything that moved. The people fell back into doorways and the spaces between buildings, but one woman was hideously trampled, her family screaming her name. Gerhard drew back and nocked a shaft, dropping the rearmost rider. A pistol ball shattered sandstone beside him.
“Gesu!” Gerhard swore.
“O my God,” Monetto echoed.
A straggling horse bolted past. A Llorm dragoon was bent backward in the stirrups, lolling over the animal’s haunches.
His head was gone.
The people broke into the streets again, mingling with a few sheep and a solitary cow in a bleating chaos the two bushi tried to sort out. Then another tattering of hoofbeats. More soldiers, rotating their blades wildly overhead—
Gerhard spurred into the street, roaring in horror. Monetto bellowed helplessly—
A child sat crying near the sewer at the center of the wide avenue. Horsemen bore down on him. The archer nocked as he rode, snapped off a shot that struck the lead horse in the skull. Horse and rider slammed down, rolling, hooves high.
Karl leaped down, dragged his unwilling steed before the child to shield him from the onrushing troopers, and then reached down for him.
A passing dragoon reined to a halt. His saber slashed Karl Gerhard from behind, cutting three inches into his neck and tossing his helm six feet through the air. Karl’s eyes glazed over as he fell, blood spurting from a severed artery.
“Noooooo!” Monetto vaulted a cornice, hit the ground, tumbling, and came up running, falling, scrabbling through the mire to reach his friend and the child.
“Karl—you’re all-recht, Karl—there’s nothing to fear—” he yelled through choking sobs. But then there was everything to fear.
Gerhard’s horse whinnied and clambered off. And the Thing the soldiers had been fleeing stalked Aldo Monetto, alone now with the child in the Street of Hope.
A clutch of wagons, freed from Wojcik’s, rumbled to a halt behind the lone bushi. The lead coach skidded and overturned with a crash to see the stalking horror. But Monetto could only stand and stare, paralyzed with terror. He had lost his axe somewhere. Now he drew his sword dimly from its back harness, holding it loosely at his side.
“Now, don’t cry, child,” he whispered, hearing the mewling voice of the tot he straddled. “Aldo has a little one...just your size, at home.”
He heard voices shouting behind him, but he could only stare at the monstrous shape, hulking and rippled with sinew; the snarling jaws, fangs bared, stained and slavering; the black talons; the golden fur, streaming blood from shaft and lead ball.
Monetto bent slowly and pointed the sword at the bestial creature’s heart. With his other arm he enfolded the tiny child. He began to lose control of hi
s bladder.
“God in heaven will not permit this,” the biller hissed.
An arrow skidded by the werewolf, shattering on the cobblestones, and as if he’d been struck, the nightmare beast fell, doubling over, eyes suffused with an inner fire.
There was a long moment of terrible struggle, as the Beast seemed in its death throes. Simon’s soul, aroused to righteous wrath as it awakened, confused, now wrenched in hellish struggle with the energumen’s controlling animus. The whispering bushi and fleeing refugees were paralyzed but dared not inch closer, watching with dazed ambivalence the scene of profound bloodless violence.
And then the energumen, craven seeker after comfort that it was, surrendered in its satiety, having known its fill of flesh and blood this night. The red glow faded from the demon canine eyes, and the silver glint some of them recognized at once washed into them, flickering with gathering reason and intelligence. Some of the bolder watchers crept closer.
“Simon,” Monetto whispered through quivering lips.
“I...am...man.” Simon blinked repeatedly, regaining his vision.
“That’s him—that’s Ben-Draba’s killer—Simon, they call him—it can’t be—”
Some moved closer still, encouraged despite the fear that simmered just below the surface.
“I told him...,” the werewolf rasped in its voice like a barely intelligible growl, “...not to move...until all was well. Why?”
Tears rolled down Aldo’s cheeks. “Gonji? He—he couldn’t wait,” was all Monetto could offer in reply. He dropped the sword and bent to pass the quaking child to an old woman. Then he fell heavily in the sewer on all fours.
Nikolai Nagy eased forward from the wagon escort, the rest of the Hussars keeping their distance.