Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two (13 page)

“Swinia!”
Genya whispered at his back. “
Jesu, Maria
—forgive me!”

“Let’s get on with it, then,” Gonji said. “Lie down on your back there, and try to ignore these ‘gentlemen’s’ interest.”

She nodded and hopped onto the table at his direction, lying back to many a hoot and howl. Gonji commanded a servant to bring over the largest of the melons, this one with a girth larger than Genya’s slim waist. He wiped himself down with a scullion’s rag, taking special care to dry off his sweating palms.

The melon was placed on Genya’s belly, and the throng went wild, drunken soldiers pressing close and jockeying for a better view.

Gonji moved up to the table, leaned near the girl.

“You know,” he said with a cocked eyebrow, “this works best with the melon on one’s chest.”

“Well, obviously that’s a bad idea...here.” She stared straight overhead.

“Obviously,” Gonji agreed.

He scratched his neck, dimly aware that he was reluctant to attempt this trick he hadn’t tried in longer than he could recall.

“I’m going to have to allow for the curvature of your belly. Why don’t you eat more next time?”

“You’ve got a good thumb’s width of corset to play with.” She rolled her eyes toward him and fluttered her lashes demurely.

This
, Gonji decided, was one hell of a strong-willed woman, whose like he had seldom seen in Europe. The thought crossed his mind that should Wilf ever be reunited with her his problems would only just be dawning.

He smiled and turned his back to her, facing the crowd, whose cheering rose to fever pitch. Respectful silence would have been nice, but....

Concentrate. Wash them from your mind. Feel the Sagami’s familiar hilt. Know the touch that would be required, even as you know the reach of your fingertips in the dark—

He drew the
katana
straight from the sheath high over his head in a mighty two-handed clench. The audience gasped and fell soundless as he shrieked a tremendous
kiyai
and whirled—

Every watcher would have sworn the girl was severed in two by the force of the vicious, whining blow that sheared the air, cleft through the melon, and...stopped. As if by an instantaneous mandate of the gods.

Gonji breathed, held his position. Short. He hadn’t cloven deep enough. Genya’s eyes bulged. She exhaled a choppy, tremulous breath and arched her back.

The melon fell from her belly in perfect halves.

The revelers screamed their approval, cheering madly, sloshing ale and wine over heads and tables and the greasy floor. Gonji bowed to king and crowd and smilingly helped the shaken but composed Genya from the table, then went in search of the cleanest linen or silk he could find with which to cleanse his blade.

“All right, samurai,” came Julian’s piercing voice at his back. “The time has come for the true test of fencing skills—a bout! My challenge—your weapons.”

Gonji turned ever so slowly, eyes narrowing.
What’s this bastard trying to prove?
The crowd noise diminished to expectant murmurs and hopeful jostling. There was nothing more they’d rather see.

“I must protest, sire!” Flavio said. “This is altogether uncalled for—”

“Wait a moment, Elder,” the king commanded, eyes flashing with curiosity. “Let’s hear him out.”

“I propose a fencing bout of the best of three touches, these to be determined by blooding—
nicks
only, Master Flavio, not to fear. Serious wounding would result in the disqualification of the offender. It’s a simple contest I’m sure the samurai has played many times before,
n’est-ce pas?
” Julian spoke in French now, the language of the country wherein he had learned the deadly little duelling game. Just one more decadent aspect of the French, for whom Gonji had no great love.

Gonji nodded sullenly.
Cholera.
Now what the hell? What was on Julian’s mind? Was he simply trying to pad his reputation at Gonji’s expense? He certainly had him in a fine position to do that. No wonder I have such difficulty finding honorable duty in Europe—with employers like Julian....

But he had to accept. And now they’d have some answers as to who was the better fencer. Neither had ever seen the other in a bout, only in exhibitions, but calculating from what he had seen of the swaggering captain’s control tonight—and in the lip-slitting incident at the Provender—coupled with the ominous buzzing he heard around him now, Gonji had to assume that his being challenged was quite an honor.

Gonji’s thoughts were a maelstrom. He would have to empty his mind, establish a free flow of being emanating from his
wa.
Thoughts were only a burden, and most dangerous among these was the passion for vengeance against this man who had done him grave insult.

Gonji removed his
ko-dachi
and the Sagami’s scabbard. They faced each other squarely with naked blades and torsos, each man unflinching, and bowed. Repeated the gesture to the king and the audience. Then they stared at each other for a space.

“Single blade or double?” Julian asked at length.

“Single,” Gonji replied without a pause. “Your wish is to test pure fencing styles. Double is best in combat.”

“Single is my forte, and my blade is more slender, lighter, more maneuverable. I fear the advantage is mine.”

“Advantage,” Gonji said evenly, smoothly assuming a two-handed middle guard position with the gleaming Sagami, “is seldom a property of steel.
En garde.
”

Julian sneered and brought his blade into engagement with Gonji’s. “A two-handed grip?
Really
, Sir Bodyguard,” he drawled.

The captain initiated a series of simple attacks at moderate speed: a disengage, a straight thrust, a cut-over. Each time Gonji defeated the attack with brisk flicks of his wrists, the movements scarcely seen, both blades
whanging
sharply, returning to engagement with disciplined economy.

Julian picked up speed. A lunge. A feint-a-disengage. A quick-stepping
pattinando
attack, saber point slicing for Gonji’s bare chest. Gonji easily parried each blow, swords clashing and clashing again, the audience heating up, crying out words of encouragement.

Gonji backed up a step, then another, watching, waiting, calculating unconsciously, practiced reflexes responding. He sized up the ever-swifter attacks of the captain, noting tendencies.

Opening up his attack, Julian added complexity to his movements, slashing right—left—feinting a slash and cutting over with a quick straight thrust, redoubling his attacks again and again as Gonji remained content, for the most part, to fence passively, occasionally offering a token riposte.

Then, when Julian was lulled into false confidence by virtue of his carrying the attack, Gonji made a quick circle with the Sagami, enveloping the captain’s blade, confusing him for an instant. The samurai’s lightning lunge and sharp
kiyai
drew a gasp from the audience as his sword point whickered past Julian’s left ear, bringing in response a wild parry that would have been ineffectual had Gonji aimed at the man’s face. Gonji had made his impression. No one watching would have believed his two-handed clench would have allowed so swift and deep a lunge. Julian’s eyes were an angry blue line as they returned to engagement. For the first time he had broken good form out of sheer desperation.

The battle was joined for fair.

Slashing, clashing, moving ever faster, the two combatants executed a marvelous series of strokes, parries, ripostes, counter-ripostes.... Each man’s eyes held the other’s center with admirable form and courage, ignoring the dancing, all-but-invisible sword-points. Every witness to the duel knew that something special was transpiring: the classic meeting of Eastern and Western technique, Gonji’s exotic
ken-jutsu
style holding the popular favor over the tyrannical captain’s, which was nonetheless the apotheosis of European fencing.

Julian backed Gonji near a tableful of shoving, shouting mercenaries, stamping feet vying with clanging steel and blustering voices. Gonji knew his danger even before he heard the outcry:

“Watch the table!”

Julian lunged deeply before the cry was through. Gonji stiffly slapped the thrust aside with the flat of his blade and executed a cunning undercut at Julian’s chin from an awkward position. The captain blinked and parried, sword arm bound up close to his chest.

And then Gonji vaulted the table using one arm for a pivot, landing in the midst of a staggering, laughing bunch of brigands, who parted at once before the shimmering
katana.
They poured out from between the tables to give the fencers room.

They eyed each other over the tabletop, stepping balletically like stalking predators toward the end of the table, blades circling tightly.

When they reached the end, Julian attacked at once—low-high—low-high—broad, then tight. Then a demonically fast lunge, parried by Gonji, followed immediately by another to a higher line.

Gonji missed his parry, deceived, slipped his head to the right and saw the saber slide by wickedly.

His teeth ground together as he leaped back, fury broiling in his innards—the thrust had been meant to relieve him of an eye. Julian was playing tough.

What the hell is he doing?

They reengaged, Julian sensing the turn, Gonji’s confusion. The samurai’s mind reeled with tumultuous thoughts, the enemies of reaction. They clashed, clashed again faster than the eye could follow. Gonji felt the ache in his healing shoulder—

And then the red-hot pain in his wrist. The
phrase d’armes
was ended. Blood ran down Gonji’s left arm, plinking to the floor.

“Touché,”
he said sullenly, jaw tight with the effort at control. His lips had flared once with the pain, his face instantly returning to a composed set as Genya rushed up to bind his bleeding wrist with a dark scarf.

All right, so the phrase is done, forget it. Next phrase
—cholera!
This bastard is good....

Murmurs and shouts and scurrying bodies animated the hall, revelers hurrying to refill empty cups before the fencers could engage again.

They approached each other. Julian saluted; Gonji bowed. Both were breathing heavily, recovering. Sweat ran freely along both their bodies, its pungent smell thick about them. It burned Gonji’s wrapped wound, made his thick hair heavy and matted. Julian’s chest and neck were red with his exertion.

“Your defense is admirable, but your attack leaves something to be desired,” Julian appraised, cocky now with his one-touch lead.

“So desu ka?”
Gonji countered. “Is that so? Very sorry, but attack must not be too impetuous before one knows the enemy.”

Julian showed his fine white teeth and confidently angled his blade out for a low engagement. And in the moment before he rejoined his maddening opponent, Gonji realized how wrong all this was for him, what a fool he’d been to accept the challenge out of a bloated sense of pride, his loathing for Julian, and his rigid adherence to the
bushido
code which, given the circumstances, was at best ill-advised. Paille had been right, at least partially: Compromise of principle was inevitable in this land, and the sense of guilt attendant on it was unwarranted. This contest was absurd. It negated the chief function of the
katana
, which was a killing sword, designed for slashing. In Japan such practice bouts were fought with wooden
bokken.
To fight a duel of cuts with so brilliant a swordsman as Julian stretched the demands on Gonji’s skillful control to unimaginable levels.

And what did you hope to do, dung-head? Disarm
him, as you have so many other fencers? Shatter his thin, flexible saber as you would a heavier blade? Never have I seen such adroitness as his....

And then Julian renewed his attack with a vengeance, sensing his psychological advantage, closing for the finish. The mercenaries howled with excitement, heady drinks mixing with the fury of the bout to arouse the berserker in all of them.

Gonji gritted his teeth and reached deep inside for fresh energy and a heightened spirit of aggressiveness. Their swords sang and flashed, blue and white scintillas sparking as the samurai turned back thrusts and cuts to every quadrant; pressing, pushing, lashing back, until it was Julian who began to give ground.

Taxed muscles forced out grunts and gasps as they dueled, eyes flaring with the passion to win.

Julian leapt back and dropped his point, inviting attack. Gonji feinted, drew a parry, beat Julian’s saber to one side, feinted again, then beat the rushed parry across the captain’s body, throwing him off balance.
Then
Gonji lunged, the second-intention attack just falling short of an exposed shoulder.