Gonji: Deathwind of Vedun: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Three

by T. C. Rypel

  “What have I done?” Simon asked. “Tell me.”

  Monetto shook his head weakly, a sob choking off any reply as he cradled Gerhard’s body now. His hands were smeared with the brilliant archer’s blood.

  “Can we...get ’em rolling now?” Nick Nagy asked meekly.

  Llorm dragoons splashed toward them from the east, arbalests clacking. A wagon driver screamed and leaped from his seat, falling into the street, clutching a steel-tipped bolt’s stole.

  The dragoons slowed and fanned out to see the werewolf’s menacing turn, as it rose and began to snarl. Nagy ordered the Hussars to deploy for a skirmish.

  The Llorm column halted, watched with uncertainty how the werewolf ignored the citizens and now plainly stalked them and their frantic mounts. The creature scooped up a dead man’s blade in each taloned fist and loped in a crouch toward them, massive back muscles bunching with lethal promise. In the werewolf’s wake, the 1st Rumanian Hussars charged, and for the first time, the disciplined Llorm troops were seen to retreat, bewildered by the night’s events.

  Monetto, kneeling beside Gerhard, observed the great golden man-wolf through puffy eyes. Wondered at the supernatural power that allowed it to keep pace with galloping steeds. In its ghastly, wounded state.

  “How long can he live...?” he wondered aloud. “Shot through like that?”

  “What is he, Aldo?” a man asked behind him.

  “That’s our Deliverer,” he said. He heard himself laugh in a lunatic voice, quivering as he babbled on: “Don’t you know? It’s shi-kaze—the Deathwind.” He fought back a sob, trying to feel what he thought he should feel, striving for control. “This is it now. Shi-kaze. The evacuation.”

  “What evacuation?”

  Monetto’s face went ashen, the man’s words sobering him at once. “The catacombs—your families—” he tried to clarify.

  “Jesus, what’s happening?” a woman puled.

  Moments later, after a hurried exchange, Aldo stared off toward the square. “Oh, no. Oh, dear God, no....”

  The people in the north central sector knew nothing about the evacuation.

  * * * *

  Garth Gundersen lumbered over the scattered corral rails, grimacing and wheezing, trying to recapture his breath. He leaned the Frankish axe on his shoulder to rest his thews, but kept jogging, circling an upset dray and the twitching, dying draft horse beneath it.

  He bellowed at the militiamen who converged in triumph around the downed soldier who held up a warding blade.

  “Nein!”

  They stayed their blows, puzzled.

  Garth pulled up to them, nostrils flaring. Shafts whistled by, wildly fired after desperately fleeing mercenaries. The smith looked down at the injured Captain Sianno, who gasped through grinding teeth, one hand clutching the arrow that had torn cleanly through his ribcage.

  “So, Iorgens...,” he whined, “...you’ve saved the...final blow...for yourself. Finish it...finish it, then....”

  “Pick him up,” Garth said levelly.

  “What?” one of the bushi cried in disbelief.

  “Pick him up and carry him into my home. Take his feet.”

  They looked from one to the other. “You’re out of your mind, Garth—”

  By the look in his eyes, they reasoned that they were quite possibly right. One of them bent to take Sianno’s booted feet.

  They lay the wounded Llorm officer on the worn sofa-bed in the Gundersens’ parlor-dining room. Garth dismissed the man who had helped him.

  “What are you going to do?” Sianno hissed. “It’s—it’s too late for me. You like being one up on favors?” He groaned and clawed at his side.

  “Ja-ja. Lie still.”

  Garth propped him on a pillow, gave him a cup of kvas. The captain drank, choking at first before swallowing a mouthful and exhaling with a harsh suspiration. Then the smith removed his helm and brushed the sweat from his brow. He grasped the stole of the war arrow in both sinewy hands—

  “No!”

  Snapped it cleanly in half with a flex of his powerful arms. Sianno cursed shrilly in Kunan. Garth eyed the red arrowhead that protruded from the back of his old friend’s ribs.

  “Leave it—will you?” Sianno rasped, pushing at Garth’s hand.

  Garth held a big fist before Sianno’s eyes. “See this?”

  “You don’t scare me, you—you muscle-bound ass—I faced it before—got back up, didn’t I—?” He lurched with pain.

  “You want to try me again sometime, don’t you? Now hold still.” Garth seized the bloody shaft and yanked hard downward.

  Sianno screamed in pain and arched his back. Then he collapsed, unconscious. Garth grimaced and tossed away the broken missile. Obtaining a poultice and water, he cleansed the wound, praying silently that his efforts would not be in vain. He bound it with some difficulty, using his own linen shirt.

  After a time Sianno came to, groggy and in considerable agony. Garth refilled his cup and mopped the man’s fevered brow.

  “You’re a fool,” Sianno complained with closed eyes, shivering. “By the gods—what they’ve done to you—”

  “Ja-ja, just be still,” Garth told him, a weary, downcast set to his face. “Or I’ll have to gag you.”

  The bell tower began to clang its alarm in the distance.

  * * * *

  “Cholera,” Gonji swore to hear Monetto’s jabbering intelligence. He moved away, sword in hand, as Monetto caught his breath and guzzled water from a skin thrust at him.

  The samurai stared with shining eyes out across the square, where the mounted knight Anton led ground troops against the occupation force’s pitched defense of the weapons cache and armored wagons. The drawbridge and portcullis were agape. Klann’s reinforcements stationed outside the walls were stayed in their effort to pour through by fusillades of rebel war arrows fired into the gatehouse, which by now resembled the hide of a porcupine.

  But Gonji’s mind’s eye fixed on the consequences of his error. “Another goddamned mistake,” he growled, infuriated with his lack of foresight. He should have checked that sector once his suspicions had crystallized.

  But why? Why had he done it?

  Wilf laid a hand on Monetto’s shoulder. “You’re sure—about Karl? That he’s dead?”

  “Of course, I’m sure,” Monetto snapped. “Do you want to check for yourself?” His expression changed to see the hurt in Wilf’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m just—”

  Wilf nodded sympathetically.

  “—it’s just that he and Lottie, they—” Monetto shook his head in bitter frustration. “They were just getting back together again, you know?”

  Gonji turned to him. “I never got to tell him that I was sorry for treating Lottie like that.”

  “Ahhh, he knew. He was just a hardheaded Teutonici, that’s all....”

  The bellowing of the cretin giant came to their ears from somewhere in the central district.

  “Where is our monstrous ally?” Gonji asked. “You’re sure he’s in control now?”

  “Si,” the biller assured. “He was with Nick Nagy and the cavalry. They’re fighting a Llorm party near Wojcik’s Haven. The wagons are tied up with them. I circled around it to get to you.”

  “All-recht, let’s go,” Gonji ordered. “Monetto, you get back to the north central sector and make sure those poor people understand that they’re leaving now. Come on, Wilf.” He strapped his sallet on tightly and leaped astride Tora. The young smith mounted beside him.

  “Now what?”

  “We’ve got to turn out the evacuees—all of them. Get them moving through the chapel, through Tralayn’s, onto wagons—whatever the hell we have to do to clear out this city.”

  They rode into the center of the square battle, where Gonji ordered Anton to seize the area at all cost. He optimistically sent a messenger to Galioto in the catacombs to start the innocents out into the valley to await the wagons. Then, enlisting a small band of mounted bushi, they surged off under shot a
nd steel to clear the chapel and the marketplace for the passage of the city-bound evacuees.

  They encountered little resistance until they reached the long market district. There, a harried company of militia footmen, fighting with pole-arms for the most part, found themselves pressed by the desperate remnant of one of Klann’s free companies.

  The brigands had fought their way up from the south, thinned, as they sallied forth, by family men who fired down on them from dwellings, as word of the imminent evacuation spread. Skewered and shot, clubbed and dashed by plummeting furniture and cooking pots, the frenzied adventurers charged into the rebel line at the market stalls. Driven, they were, by the distant vision of their army’s main strength, with whom they’d link at the square.

  Decimated by the militia pikemen’s tactics, they plunged through tents and stalls, trampling tables and wares and the bodies of the unfortunate who blundered into their path.

  Then the mercenary remnant emerged into the Street of Hope—to find Gonji and Wilf awaiting them with their small force, weapons drawn for engagement. The hired brigands paused for an instant, hearts sinking to view the intimidating charge led by the formidable samurai. Then they rose to meet it with a howl of hysterical fervor.

  Gonji experienced an instant’s nostalgic sympathy for their plight. He recalled a vision of himself in similar warrior-for-hire circumstances—just before he slashed their leader from his steed.

  The skirmish was brief and furious. Gonji and Wilf lost half their party to the adventurers’ desperation. Then it was over. The stragglers were run down and slaughtered by the pinch of infantry and emerging family men.

  For now the market square was theirs. Gonji fought Tora’s excited curvetting as he scanned the field. Nagy and the Hussars rumbled up from the east at the head of the long wagon retinue, looking embattled, shafts spindling nearly every coach. But they seemed in goodly strength.

  “You pikemen,” Gonji called, “hold this area. Let’s get the people moving through the chapel. Secure a path. Get archers up here.” To Nagy: “Nick, how many non-combatants have you?”

  “Not many,” the old hostler roared back. “Hell, we had to fight all the way—”

  “Split your column and send back half the wagons for those who can’t reach the chapel on foot. We’ve got to get them moving—”

  “What?” Nagy tore his burgonet free. His tangled gray hair bristled as he squinted at Gonji. “We just fought half the goddamn garrison to get here. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna—”

  “Just do it!”

  Cursing and slapping at his thigh, Nagy reluctantly wheeled off to comply.

  “Let’s get moving,” Gonji shouted, “back west. The evacuation is our priority now—Shi-kaze!”

  They angled back through the city’s maze of antiquated thoroughfares and side lanes, battling at the run, spreading word of the evacuation and coaxing frightened fighting folk out of hiding.

  When they slowed to rest their steeds as they crossed a sewage culvert, Wilf caught up with Gonji.

  “Who in hell was supposed to alert those poor fools in the north central sector?” he called at Gonji’s back.

  The samurai tossed his head impatiently, his manner peremptory. “I don’t know—forget it.” But it was a lie, for the north central sector alert had been entrusted to Wilf’s brothers, Strom and Lorenz.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Alain Paille hunkered in the bell tower, assessing the battle below, thrilling to the ferocious movement of men and animals and the tools men had fashioned. He fancied that he was witness to a movement of epochal, far-reaching consequence, and that he occupied a pivotal part in it.

  So it was that he drew poetically elliptical parallels between the raging elements and the wild human conflict they backdropped. His pen fairly flew, under the light of a flickering candle, scarcely able to keep pace with the images in his head: the rain and wind and blood; the mud and trench offal; the clash and thunder in darkness; the screams of the terrified; the forms of the dead and dying.

  The price, he wrote, of freedom....

  The stench of death suddenly thickened in his nostrils, then—

  Upon being fixated by the nightmarish vision, at first he thought it must be the wine he sloshed, heightening his sensibilities. Paille had known such effects before.

  But never such a shape as this that loomed up through the belfry hatch to pierce his soul with its demon eyes. The monstrous canine head, the head of a golden wolf, seemed to grin as the artist-poet gripped his dagger and raised it defensively. Paille’s eyes strained at their sockets. The wine jug tipped and sloshed.

  “What—what manner of Beastie might ye be?”

  When he heard the voice that came in impossible reply, he felt the warm trickle spread through his breeches.

  “Just another...Frenchman,” the creature rasped. And an instant later it was gone.

  Paille rose shakily and leaned out the belfry to see what ensued. “Deathwind,” he whispered. “The Deathwind—

  “The DEATHWIND, Vedun!” he screamed from the tower in his herald’s voice. “Your Deliverer is come! Shi-kaze! Shi-kaze!”

  He shredded his shirt and waxed the strips from his guttering taper. Stuffed them into his ears. Then he swung down the bell ropes and clanged the gonging alarm signal the city heard only in times of dire emergency.

  * * * *

  Anton the Gray knight saw his men fall back from the awesome sight of the Beast that stormed from the bell tower, hefting the giant sword and battle-axe that had once hung above the mantel in Tralayn’s ancient house: Mute omens of this day. Of unknown origin but clear and terrible purpose.

  The stiff resistance formed by mixed Llorm and mercenaries crumbled and retreated in horror before the werewolf’s attack. Seven-and-a-half feet of looming fury, gyrating those huge, verdigris-stained weapons that had become legendary in the taverns.

  Anton winced to see two mercenaries shredded in a single blow of the giant double-edged axe, their bodies sundered and cast aside in pieces. He heard Paille’s mad pronouncement from the tower, followed by the din of the alarm bells. He remembered what he had been told to expect this night—as if any expectation could have prepared him for this.

  And slowly, not certain that he was doing the right thing, he urged his resisting steed forward, rallying his troops around him. The militia began to press in as Simon’s bestial attack drove the shocked occupation force back through the gatehouse to reassemble.

  The weapons and armored coaches were again in the hands of the militia. Bolts peppered them from the walls, and an occasional lead ball from a well-tended pistol found its mark in their numbers. But Anton held them steady, and the weapons were furiously disbursed.

  Draft horses were brought from tether, some falling under fire before they could be hitched. But finally they were readied for movement, manned with pistoliers and bowmen, their missiles primed or nocked and aimed from behind steel-reinforced sides and coffin-cupolas. Armored drivers and assistants took up traces under the portable protective hoods affixed over their seats. Extra horses were lashed behind, and Paille’s adopted brainchildren were on the move.

  One moved east to join with Nagy’s Hussars; another, west to the evacuation gate with the refugee wagons. The third Anton kept at the square to help hold the position.

  At the chapel farther down the street, Michael Benedetto directed from the steps, trying to bring order to the stampede of women, children, and aged who streamed in, under the shaky comfort of the cruciform spire. Sporadic fighting played out around their caterwauling movement. Gunshots boomed at the ruined marketplace.

  Anton spurred his bucking stallion toward the gatehouse, calling out orders. The werewolf’s raging attack exacted a toll among the scattering troops. Bodies, armor, and horseflesh piled in mounds about him. But steady fire from troops, who now kept their distance, began to slow the Beast. He bled from a score of wounds. Now and again he would howl in agony and wrench a quarrel or shaft from his hide.


  The Gray knight’s horse threw him at last. He struggled to his feet and hobbled to the gatehouse, waving for hesitant men to assist the werewolf. Those few hardy souls who dared fight on foot amidst the carnage helped but little, lost in their brutalized fascination for the werewolf’s savagery, and over-cautious about avoiding his whirlwind death strokes.

  A small squad of Llorm crossbowmen crouched atop the allure above the gatehouse to fire a concerted volley down at Simon.

  “Archers!” Anton cried, pointing, but they responded too late. The arbalests clacked on order, two of them striking the Beast-Man in the back at acute angles.

  He shrilled and twisted down to earth, kicking and rolling in agonized frenzy. Hauling himself under cover of shadow, Simon painfully worked the bolts free. His silver eyes blazed up at his tormentors. But instead of hazarding a leap up to the allure he had once vaulted as a man, Simon seized his weapons and slunk off along the base of the girdling wall, limping badly, head hung low.

  Anton followed the creature’s movement, brow furrowed with amazement. “He won’t last long,” he said to the man at his side. He spat, the stench of blood and viscera nauseating him. “Not like that. Off to die in some...ditch.”

  “Or the blasted giant will get him,” the other ventured.

  Anton nodded grimly.

  “Do we drop the portcullis?” someone called from the gatehouse.

  The knight peered out the gate in judgment, where the mercenary company’s remnant gathered in force, joined now by another Llorm dragoon contingent.

  “Sonofabitch—no! Let ’em come. The more come through here, the less to hit the escape wagons.” He looked back toward the west. “Good luck, Gonji,” he breathed. Then: “Come ahead, you bastards!”

  Before his challenge was completed, a tremendous explosion in the east rocked the entire plateau, shifting the ground beneath their feet, some men falling, others unhorsed. Volcanic flames bloomed over the eastern wall, smaller concussions following.

  “Christ Almighty....”

  He scanned the ramparts in response to the shouts of alarm all about him. As if the thunderous explosion had been a signal, the reinforcements outside the walls had scaled to the allure on ropes and were dropping to the streets or descending the stairs in waves, each wave covered by the fire of the next. Some canny leader among them, espying Anton’s strategy, had eschewed the killing ground of the gatehouse for this new tactic.