Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two (16 page)

“We have plenty of room. There’s vacant housing—”

“Ah—so then my master will give the city away to them! Certainly, give them everything. And when everything runs out—? What if Klann hires too many and his gold supply dwindles? Suppose they don’t like what they’re being paid—?”

Milorad choked on his mead. It trickled into his beard. “Hoo-hoo! That’s a laugh! They sacked Bratislava, and now they’ve got the good Baron’s treasure vaults, stuffed to overflowing with taxation from the plump years of Transylvanian commerce! Hee-heee—!”

They all chuckled, even Garth, for seeing Milorad so out of character wrung much of the tension from them.

“My, aren’t we the crew,” Gonji said, rubbing his painful rib wound. “Four drunks planning the future of an occupied city!”

They shared a hearty laugh of good fellowship there on the road to Vedun in the dark hour before dawn, bridles jangling merrily in accompaniment.

“You’re not drunk enough,” Garth said affably, holding out the ale-skin. “Here—drink.”

Gonji accepted the skin with a bow and pulled at it.

“All right,” the samurai began in a less argumentative tone, “then let us suppose Klann’s army has both gold and room enough to keep them placid. There are...other things.”

“Meaning what?” Flavio inquired.

“Mercenaries live at the end of a fragile tether. One that’s easily broken. They’re meant for the battlefield, not for occupation duty. Most of them are happiest when fighting. When they can’t fight, they chafe. They look for fights. You’ve seen that already in Vedun. Believe me, I’ve been with enough mercenary armies to know what I speak of. And they’re lustful. They’re not pleasant when their gold can’t satisfy all their lusts. How many pleasure women have you in Vedun?”

Milorad gasped. “Such talk!”

“We would hope there are none,” Flavio said uncertainly.

“Come now—I’ve been to the inns.”

“A few, perhaps.”

“Quite a few now, I think,” Gonji corrected. “And more will be coming to the city even as recruits are added. They’re natural camp followers.”

“We have an ordinance against them—”

“You have a new social order,” Gonji reminded him firmly. “Think about it, please.”

Flavio sighed sonorously, his troubles shadowing his face. “You paint a bleak picture,
signore
samurai.”

“So sorry, but it is an accurate one, I believe.” They guided their steeds around a curve. “The
giant
,” Gonji recalled suddenly. “What will you say of him in Vedun?”

The recollection of the creature, his strangely unsettling mixture of the terrible and the pathetic, caused a sweeping discomfort.

“I think...,” Flavio said slowly at last, “that it would be best to say nothing of him for now.”

Gonji’s lips twisted, and he shook his head ruefully over the Elder’s continued efforts to table matters of military concern.

“That must be the beast that broke into the treasury at Bratislava, the one Jacob Neriah and—” Milorad caught himself before he saw Flavio’s warning glance. He had been about to reveal the continued existence of the secreted Baron Rorka.

The conspiratorial silence that followed annoyed Gonji, made him feel once again the onerous lot of the outsider.
To be alone among companions....

“While we’re on the subject of threats to Vedun’s security, friend Gonji,” Flavio said with a hint of humor, “why did you allow yourself to become involved in that duel with Captain Kel’Tekeli? You might have killed him, and who knows what might have resulted?”

“Or, he might have killed me, and you’d be rid of my pessimistic counsel,
neh?
” Gonji replied cynically.

Flavio
tsked.
“Really, my friend, do you think that is my wish? Actually, I’m growing rather fond of your company. Your protective presence makes an old man feel important.”

“
Domo arigato
, Elder-
san
, but you
are
important. These people do need your guidance. It’s so obvious that they have great respect for you and faith in your administrative abilities.”

“Not so much as you’d think anymore,” Flavio replied wistfully.

Gonji smiled, deciding the time was right for the revelation. “But you needn’t have worried about the duel. My promise to you was never far from my thinking. The duel was a personal matter between myself and the arrogant captain. I could not refuse his challenge. But there was nothing to fear. After all, he, too...is my boss....”

“Wha-a-a-t?”

They all looked to Gonji for an explanation.

“What are you saying?”

“I hired on with him as a spy to reveal all your rebellious secrets. So
far
I’ve had little to tell for his money....”

“I don’t under—”

“But
why?
”

Gonji pondered his rationale. “To confound him. To relieve him of some of his money—I can’t tell you how good that feels! To play him for the fool. He’s done me grave personal insult, and until our time of final crossing I wished to keep him in the forefront as an object of revulsion....”

“I don’t like this one bit,” Flavio said, frowning and shaking his head. “Are you using both sides for your own profit?”

“Of course not—”

“You may cause untold damage with such meddling,” Milorad added.

“Very sorry, but I must point out the other side of the coin. Think of the potential for control over policy this could give you. I can impart to him whatever information you’d like that might be helpful to your cause. It has already helped. How do you suppose the banquet meeting was arranged? I suggested that Julian speak to Klann about it. He’s a direct line of communication to Klann.”

“But now we have established communication with the king,” Garth observed.

“Have we?” Gonji questioned. “We’ll see. And if we have, it was—so sorry—owing nothing to you, my friend. I believe you are not telling all you know of Klann and his intentions, and I cannot accept your simple reasoning for not telling your connection to him. Forgive me, and may all due honor attend your wife’s spirit.”

Garth stared, hollow-eyed, discomfited now to so abruptly have the conversation shift back to his former association with the Invincible.

“That’s uncalled-for, Gonji,” Flavio said. “I trust Garth implicitly, as do all in the city. His motives are above reproach.”

Garth seemed to be struggling with something. “I think...perhaps the time has come for an accounting. Gonji is right. Tonight at my home I will read you all a document that will clarify many things about Klann. But come prepared to hear a most curious and frightening tale. Tonight, then.”

Riding along with the nagging pain of his wounds and the settling ache the chill brought to his weary thews, Gonji nonetheless felt a surge of triumph. His persistence had broken through the smith’s shell of secrecy. Now, perhaps, they’d have some definitive answers to the questions surrounding the wandering king.

But what was it that he had intended to ask Garth about the banquet? Some harping memory buried by the whirlwind events and disclosures of the night....

“
Iorgens
, is it?” Flavio said gaily to Garth. “Just when we begin to think the years have revealed all there is to know of someone!”

“
Ja
, it is my true surname. Gundersen was my mother’s. All will be told tonight—all that I can say I truthfully know. After we sleep—and after I’ve had the chance to speak with my sons privately first.”

“Of course,” Flavio agreed readily.

Milorad belched. “To Iorgens!” he toasted, slugging at his mead. The others laughed and joined in, Gonji again sharing Garth’s ale, enjoying the warmth that spread through his belly.

“Why dishonor your name by repudiating it?” Gonji asked.

“I wished nothing of my former life to intrude on my new one. That’s the simple truth of it.”

They clumped over a gently rolling hillock, the mighty walls of Vedun coming into view in the south.

“Did you really believe Klann wouldn’t remember you, Garth?” Milorad asked, still grinning crookedly.

“Hai,”
Gonji added. “After your obvious importance to him in the past? You saved his life
twice?
”

“His, but
not
his,” Garth replied cryptically. “You see...that’s not the Klann I served. I saw him today for the first time, even as all of you did.”

His companions casting about in shocked confusion for an explanation, Garth chortled lightly. “Later,” he said. “Tonight, I’ll tell all, and you can choose to believe what you will when I’m done.”

The road sloped down to the plateau’s cultivated lowlands on the left. To the right were the gracefully curving foothills of the Carpathians, the verdant meadows on which flocks already grazed, among them the charges of Garth’s son Strom. Above and behind, stretching forever into the western horizon, swept the brooding pine forests whose denizens shrugged off the mantle of sleep and began to cry and chirrup a new day’s survival concerns. Straight ahead, low on the southern horizon, lay Vedun. Steaming vapors from the flatlands and the valley beyond the city hung thick and dreamlike around its enveloping walls, cutting it off from the precipice that anchored it. It appeared almost to float in the air on a cushion of ethereal mist. A fabulous city out of the realm of dreams.

Out of the swirling mist far down the road, herdsmen approached with their flocks and herds. Behind came rattling drays drawn by draft animals, farmers with their implements. Some were pointing in the direction of the delegates.

“Time to lay up the wineskins, I think, and affect some semblance of decorum, gentlemen,” Flavio cautioned. “Mil, I’m going to need your support in a moment.”

“Of course, old friend,” Milorad assured. He hiccuped and rubbed his red face self-consciously.

Gonji smiled and leaned forward over Tora’s withers to peer into the bunched men and animals coming down the road. Strom’s reedy piping could be heard wafting down to them on the receptive morning air currents.

They made a sharp right turn along the road, and Gonji snapped a rein.
“Cholera,”
he swore, tossing the broken piece away. “Now I’ve got to pay a foster’s bloated fee.”

Garth chuckled. “We have a good one.”

“Must you use that awful term?” Milorad asked wincingly.

“Cholera?”
Gonji repeated. It was his favorite Slavic epithet, descriptive of a vile intestinal disease whose epidemic outbreaks produced revolting symptoms. It was, in fact, one of the few Slavic terms Gonji understood. “I like it.”

“It’s such a foul peasant word,” Milorad clucked. “And in any case your accent bleeds off all its...vigorous vulgarity!” The adviser shrilled a laugh, feeling a tipsy satisfaction with the sound of his words.

“Ahhhh,” Gonji growled at him.

Flavio suppressed a smile. “Gonji,” the Elder asked, “tell me something—what’s in all this manipulation of yours, besides the payment, that keeps you here?”

The samurai thought a moment, a certain warm exuberance filling him that caused him to speak with candor. “I rather like this city of yours, if you must know. I think I’ve made some friends here, a rare and special occurrence for a lonely half-breed. And these days one must work at keeping friends alive. I do anyway. But, so sorry, that’s all silly sentimental talk that probably doesn’t answer your question.”

“Ah, but it does. Please go on.”

“Nothing more to say. Whatever you believe about Klann’s intentions, I say you’re in deep trouble. I speak from experience. There are other things I—” He drew the line at revealing the savagery he had helped perpetrate in the province while riding with Klann’s 3rd Free Company. He shrugged. “And I’ve told you of my Deathwind quest. I think its secret awaits me here. Maybe you people will help fill in missing information when you decide to—
dozo yurusu
—please forgive—when you loosen your tongues.”

He looked sidelong to the Elder with an accusing eye. But Flavio’s gaze held the road before him noncommittally.

“What was that key business about last night?” Gonji asked, remembering the object’s curious familiarity to him.

“I don’t know,” Flavio lied. “Something Mord keeps pressing us about that no one can identify.”

“It occurs to me that I’ve seen it around here before,” Gonji advanced, seeing the Elder’s shoulders stiffen.
Damned stubborn people.

Sheep and cattle rumbled by all around them now, lowing noisily. The nearest farmers and herdsmen were nearly upon them, quickening their pace and calling out unheard greetings.

Garth looked up the hill to where Strom sat with his flock. “I think I’ll go up there and have a word with my son, by your leave.”