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

by T. C. Rypel

  Wilf leveled Spine-cleaver at Lorenz’s face. “He raised you from a whelp, you dung-eating bastard. Ja—bastard! He gave you everything. And that’s what made you crazy, because you don’t know how to deal with that much unearned love—” He exhaled raggedly, unable to control his flaring temper any longer.

  “Draw your sword,” was all Wilf cared to add.

  Lorenz sighed. “I supposed it had to come to that, knowing the quality of your mind. Well, come ahead, then, noble bushi.”

  The traitor drew steel and danced backward into the sumptuous chamber in en garde. Before Wilf advanced, he heeded the warning that flashed in the back of his mind. Something Gonji had taught: An enemy who regards you too casually probably has accomplices....

  Wilf lunged to the door and stopped. Lorenz flashed surprise. The young smith pulled a dirk from the back of his belt and cocked it to throw.

  “Nein—that’s not fair—!” Lorenz dropped his guard and staggered back. But Wilf suddenly dove through the portal and tumbled into the room, rolling to his feet in time to fire the knife—behind him, at the nearer of the two ambushers. The blade split open the brigand’s chest. He flung his saber and gasped, clawing at himself in death anguish.

  Wilf caught the flailing steel of the second accomplice’s schiavona in front of his eyes, saw Lorenz’s telegraphed advance for his injured side—snapped down a sparking parry of the rapier, before twisting out of their reach. The accomplice lunged deeply and low. Wilf bound his blade, circled a two-handed parry that drove the point far out of engagement, and struck out with a right hand thrust that tore into the brigand’s gut. The katana came free, its blade stained wetly red again. He turned to Lorenz.

  Breathing huffily, Wilf clashed with his wild-eyed brother, blades singing off each other again and again. Cursing and spitting imprecations, they danced around the room, Lorenz’s mad strength and well-rested body keeping Wilf at bay.

  “What’s wrong, Wilfred?—sensei didn’t teach you the coup de grace?—did you think I dawdled away those trips to France?—the finest fencers in Europe, Wilfred, the French—their teachers are the masters—did Gonji show you this—?”

  Lorenz lunged and dropped his point to new engagement in mid-thrust. Wilf missed his parry and the slim rapier grazed his already wounded side. Pain flared in hot white pinpoints. Wilf began to back away, falling into a defensive, iai-jutsu posture. But in his failing strength, his ripostes repeatedly fell short.

  He was soon backed nearly to the wall. His rear foot brushed the hem of the heavy decorative drapery. He was cornered, the canopy bed blocking retreat.

  Wilf batted Lorenz’s blade and feinted a two-handed lunge. Then he leapt onto the bed and slashed the canopy, a long ragged edge trailing him as he bounded out on the other side.

  “That’s my bed, you uncultured swine!” Lorenz fumed.

  “Ja,” Wilf taunted, remembering now a lifetime of needling Lorenz in his fastidiousness. “All your finery—”

  He slashed through a bedpost, the canopy flapping down in ruin. “How do you like it?”

  “Stop that! Wilfred—you son of a bitch!”

  “The same bitch that mothered you!” Wilf swept his blade through the velvet drapery. A long swatch fell to the floor.

  “Stop it, I say—!”

  Lorenz rushed around the corner of the bed, unhinged now, as Wilf shattered a crystal chandelier in a rain of shards. The traitor stamped forward and lunged. Wilf deflected his rapier. Its point dug into the wall and became bound up in the folds of the drapery. Spine-cleaver whirled up and over in a quick circle.

  The rapier snapped in two under Japanese steel. Lorenz glanced at his broken forte. Roaring out his refined indignation, he thrust with his half-blade—He plunged, spine-deep, onto Wilf’s point, as the katana returned to disciplined middle guard and thrust reflexively.

  Wilf withdrew the blade with a short tug and a gasp at what he’d done withal.... For an instant Lorenz seemed unhurt despite the leaking blood. Then he staggered back a few paces and fell, making no sound but the soft crumple of his form.

  Wilf stood over this evil stranger who was his half-brother, his mind a-reel. “I’m—Genya, Lorenz—where is she?”

  A small, whining laugh. “You’ll find her...with her new lover—Mord.” Lorenz began to speak in a strange tone, prattling a dream of empire, as his eyes began to cloud and grow sightless. Unable to bear it, Wilf mopped his face and, signing the cross, hurried from the room.

  * * * *

  “Olgaaaaa—”

  She stood with her back to Garth in a chamber doorway, the four Llorm guards around her turning at the tortured shout, leading from a corridor of the central keep that swarmed with rushing, fleeing people. Servants’ quarters were at the end of the hall; chambermaids had found refuge wherever they could when the madness had struck.

  Some of them stopped in their tracks now and covered their mouths to see the state of the best-loved man in Vedun, now that Flavio was gone.

  Lady Olga Thorvald also turned slowly and faced her husband. The Llorm swordsmen brandished their blades in warning, but their officer, knowing the former Captain Iorgens, stayed their hands.

  Garth drew a shuddering breath, and a pained expression dawned when he saw her cold smile. To him, she was still his wife, still breathtakingly beautiful.

  “Stand fast,” he told the escorting guards, “and let me speak with my wife. Then...then you may do with me as you will.”

  Olga kept smiling as she backed confidently into the chamber, eyeing the guards, backing past another woman in a traveling mantua, who stepped backward lightly to give them all space. Garth stalked his wife, his crushed spirit and broken heart plain in his eyes.

  His left side was coated with blood from shoulder to boot as he spoke to her. “Why?” he asked, raising a pleading hand. “Why all this horror, Olga? Wasn’t it enough that you—”

  “You looked just as I imagined, Garth,” she broke in, “that day of the banquet. Of course Klann forbade me to attend, but I couldn’t help myself—I sneaked a peek at you from the gallery.”

  “Why?”

  “To win back the king’s love, why else?” she answered. “I needed to regain the place I once held in his life. And Lorenz wished to be with me, to be with King Klann in his glorious return to Akryllon. We didn’t know it would come to all this. No one did. It’s not what we wanted.”

  Garth seemed astonished. “Akryllon is a lost dream,” he said in a labored voice. “Surely even Klann accepts that by now. We knew it all those years ago. After that terrible voyage. Akryllon is something men may never again possess. How could you do this? Lead Lorenz into a hollow dream. He murdered his brother—have you no remorse?”

  She held her head high. “I would do it again, if I thought my liege lord would benefit by it, as would Lorenz. Do you know, Garth—he reminds me of his father. So elegant, so cavalier. A prince, who wrote songs to me under the stars, while you boasted of your brutish kills.”

  Garth snorted. “And so God laid me low, for I wrote you songs with my sword, thinking—fool that I was—that that was what you wanted....”

  “A woman such as I was could have no limits inscribed around her desires, Garth.”

  “Your collusion with the sorcerer has driven you mad, Olga,” Garth said in amazement, pressing at his torn shoulder.

  “What are you talking about?” she retorted acidly.

  “Did you have no compassion even for your sons?”

  “Your sons. Those cubs you forced on me by your strong-armed attentions. And now I understand you’ve become a Roman Churchman, nicht wahr? For a long time the king and I both feared what you might do, if you found out about us. And now your new faith won’t even permit you that final victory, will it?”

  Anger broiled in the smith’s red-rimmed eyes. “There are many men dead in my wake back there, Olga.”

  “Ah, but fighting men,” she qualified, as he advanced at an awkward shuffle, the guards twitching toward him
breathlessly, behind him at the doorway. “You couldn’t strike down a helpless woman, could you? Unarmed, soft of flesh—a woman you still love?” She smiled in imperious triumph.

  Garth took a heavy step and raised his broadsword. The Llorm guards tensed but remained in the corridor, but for the officer, who eased up with a ready blade aimed at the smith’s back. “As God is my witness—I—” Garth lowered his steel heavily and fell to one knee, breath shivering out of him as he rubbed his eyes to clear his fading vision. “It is...not for me...to judge you....” He looked up at her serenely smiling countenance. The last thing he ever saw.

  The war arrow tore into his back. Garth fell on his face, dead instantly from the well-aimed shot.

  “Oh, Garth—” the tall woman in the mantua said. She flung away the arbalest and strode forward to gaze down upon the great warrior’s silent form. “It is only by my hand that you should die, for it is by my foolish kin that you were slain, so long ago—curse your intemperate heart, lost brother! And it was your own son, Iorgens, whose deadly aim ironically enabled me!”

  “A—a well-placed shot, milady,” Lady Olga Thorvald cut in apprehensively.

  Slowly, Klann looked up at the scheming woman. The new Queen Klann, the fifth personage of the royal seven-in-one, was a tall, statuesque, and powerful woman. Sure of herself, certain, in her furious despair, that she alone among the progeny of the House of Bel might have regained lost Akryllon.

  “Look at him, my worthies,” she said to the gathered guards, though her eyes were still on Thorvald. “Here lies the noblest of warriors. A curse on you, powers that be—why am I emerged so late?.... Too, too late.... I could have loved him. I did. Helplessly. I would have taken Garth to husband, and together we would have taken back what was mine—ours—gone forever! And you, spiteful bitch—how I envied you....”

  She began advancing on the wide-eyed Olga, stopping to look back at Garth again. “You gave him the sons we could never have because of our accursed birthing. And then you destroyed them in your madwoman’s passion!”

  “Milady—I—” Olga was terrified now, as she saw the queen reach down for Garth’s broadsword.

  Queen Klann held the blood-stained steel before her eyes.

  “Know ye the price for faithlessness and treachery,” she said in a harsh whisper. She moved for the weakly protesting Olga. “By this hallowed warrior’s blade...I do avenge him!”

  Lady Thorvald raised a fending hand, stumbling backward against a bureau, shrieking as the plunging blade pierced her belly. And then again. The gasping woman doubled over, clutching her leaking innards with bulging eyes, falling to her knees. And Queen Klann struck her head from her shoulders in a single fierce blow.

  Klann exhaled, the spell of the moment broken. “Get me armor,” she ordered curtly. She hastily donned the proffered Llorm outfit and, with a final look to Garth, hurried out into the chaos of Castle Lenska.

  There were screams and explosions in the wards as the new queen assessed her situation. Her personal guard remained with her, but she found that she could command little additional support; few were aware of, and fewer believed in, the new Rising. The imposing dark-haired woman’s commands brought mostly stares and epithets. She watched in bewilderment as curtain walls and outbuildings exploded, felt the singeing heat waves from the track of the Hell-Hound as it plodded after the werewolf, pulverizing the castle section by section.

  Queen Klann could not tell how many or even what nature her besiegers were, now. Tears of rage began to flow over a grimace of disillusionment. She could sense the end of it all—untold years of quest, dashed forever. Mercenaries had begun pouring into the hills, carrying off what spoils they could. She and her Llorm retainers were forced to tilt with several mutinous free companions. She killed two by her own hand, outraged and indignant at this turnabout. The queen lusted after the destruction of the invaders, man and demon alike, as she watched the broken families of her hereditary army scale the walls in frenzied flight, soon to be lost amongst the peoples of the continent, their heritage and blood mingled, diminished, until Akryllon itself would become mere legend, sneered at by the ignorant, recounted in sodden folklore.

  The gods had abandoned Klann and her people. All that remained was vengeance. She watched even her hereditary army scatter in dismay, and her hatred began to focus on the devilish agent of this dire turning of her line’s fortunes—the dark sorcerer Mord, whom her impetuous brother had foolishly trusted.

  Gesturing to her three surviving elite guards, shouting down the two very different voices that remained to cry out within her, Queen Klann stormed toward the dungeons.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Gonji and Wilf nearly collided—and almost engaged swords—at a corner of the castle keep’s labyrinth. So disheveled and gore-streaked were they, that it took them an instant to recognize each other.

  Young Gundersen grabbed Gonji excitedly and, crying out in pain both physical and emotional, he recapped what he’d seen and done as they took a short breather, unnoticed in the chaos.

  Then Gonji led him to the chamber he’d found, where Garth and Olga lay dead, but the samurai’s effort at preparing him for the grisly sight merely forestalled Wilf’s anguished reaction.

  He fell on his knees in the room and began to weep bitterly, choking out futile oaths. “It’s the first time I ever remember seeing my parents together...,” were his first words when he had collected himself.

  Gonji found himself deeply grieved. He took Wilf by the shoulders and led him away with a gentle urging that there were yet things to do and dangers to face.

  They leapt over many strewn corpses in the halls, Wilf identifying one as Chooch, the Steward of the Larders, whom Lottie Kovacs had implicated for his perversity. Then, drawn by the clashing in another hall as they wended their way toward the prison tower, they spotted the woman who led the tiny Llorm detachment—and Gonji somehow intuited what must have transpired.

  “Klann—” Gonji breathed. “She must be...Klann.”

  “But how—?” Wilf began.

  “I just know,” the samurai replied.

  They followed her party down to a first-level prison tower door, accosting her as she gained the open portal.

  “Klann!” Wilfred cried out, circling her in the corridor nexus. The three Llorm bodyguards fanned out menacingly, blades flourished for engagement. “I am...I am Wilfred Iorgens,” he blared.

  The queen gazed at him in surprise, her mouth widening and her dark eyes shimmering in a look almost of exultation. Then she tossed her head back and laughed loud and long at the bitter irony of it all. Gonji stood coiled for a strike, a spear-length from the nearest guards.

  “So be it, then, young Iorgens,” she declared. “I’ve struck down your noble father and your bitch of a mother! You intend to avenge them? Then fight well!” She ordered her guards to have at Gonji and immediately attacked Wilf with his own father’s broadsword.

  Gonji was backed down the hallway, fighting defensively against the pinch of a halberd and two long blades. Wilf’s last sight of him was a glimpse of the samurai ducking a stone-shattering blow in an archway and riposting with a low scything slash. Then Wilf was through the portal after the queen, who alternately pressed a surprisingly aggressive two-handed power assault and fell back toward the dungeon stair.

  Their blades clashed and echoed in the dank chamber of the prison tower, under murky torchlight. She spoke to him as she fought, though he understood little of it, most of it in the Kunan tongue his father had shared with her kin.

  Ultimately they found themselves on the dungeon stairwell. A hard push would send one or both of them crashing to the stones. But both held their ground as they descended to the cellar level, filled with the echoing mewlings of the half-humans still farther below.

  And Wilf began to marvel at the savagery of her attack; awkward and imprecise though it was as she learned the limits of her new form, she seemed fearless and cunning. His mind served up natterings of doubt, his
waning strength beginning to tell, though he employed every skill, every blade trick he had practiced so assiduously under Gonji and his father. Klann’s confident chiding of him over his strange sword style ate at him; they cut each other once, twice. Fought down to the sub-cellar, the chaos above ground forgotten for the nonce, in the immediacy of their deadly engagement....

  He slammed her broadsword against the grimy wall with a mighty twist, saw the defiance in her regal eyes, and snarled back.

  His blade flashed unbidden in the lightning-fast riposting technique driven home by Gonji—As it completed its ghastly strike, Wilf’s eyes clamped tightly shut.

  * * * *

  Mord clamped a putrid gloved hand over Genya’s mouth, the saber in his other fist pressing her soft throat with its gleaming edge. His serpent eyes brightened as he heard, and sensed, and understood....

  They leaned behind the door of his chamber of spells, Genya’s eyes wide with horror to see the altar stone, the stained manacles suspended above it by rusted chains.

  “Do you hear, girl?” he said in sudden amusement. “Klann is dead—long live...Klann!” He broke into a booming laugh that might have issued from the keeper to the gate of Hell. “Would you like to see the king who so doted on you, clever girl—to see what he’s become?”

  Genya seized the moment of his foul mirth to wrench and break from his grasp. She ran to his shelves of phials and retorts. The dark conjurer continued laughing as she hurled objects at him; the chamber filled with splashing explosions. Genya prayed that her lost dagger might be returned to her hand, as the sorcerer herded her to the door at sword point, grabbing her again and turning the key to force her out into the dark corridor, though she beat and clawed as if at a thing composed of nerveless leather.

  Genya screamed: “Wilf!” And she could make no sense of the bizarre scene before her—

  The hideous monster had seized the young smith with the long, web-fingered hands of an elongated arm and flung him against a wall. Wilf cried out with the impact, then slumped along the mossy floor, to lie helpless before this creature out of twisted nightmare.