Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two (26 page)

“Gonji, where are you—? I want to go along.” Wilf trembled, heart hammering, but he craved an outlet for his anxiety and frustration.

“Stay,” Gonji commanded. Then his harshness became tempered with compassionate understanding. “You’ll have your time in battle, sword-brother, make no mistake. But for now do this for me,
neh?
It’s no mean charge I give you. If you fail to protect my employer, it is
I
who must forfeit my life.”

Wilf swallowed and nodded, not fully convinced. They exchanged a bow, and Gonji clamped Wilf’s right hand with his own—a rare gesture for him. Wilf followed him halfway down the steps, to where the king’s counselor spoke with the stern Captain Kel’Tekeli. He saw Gonji glare at the captain hotly before bounding aboard Tora to pound away from the square.

Seconds later Julian remounted and, calling over two other soldiers, clumped off with them in Gonji’s wake. Wilf felt a thrill of alarm, realizing Gonji’s grave peril both before and behind. What would he do—what would the city do—if Gonji were to die now? He shook off the thought.

Without him they would do nothing. They would submit to the invaders’ every whim.

Or would they?

“All right, Captain Sianno,” the king’s official ordered, “get the magician his...assistants.”

The bells began to clang discordantly. The wyvern roosted atop the tower, shaking its head inside the belfry and battering them. The creature croaked out a jubilant cry that was chilling in its almost human anticipation. And even from this distance Wilf could see that its red eyes were no longer red.

Now they were diamond-black and shining with cruel promise.

Captain Sianno raised his arm in a reluctant direction to the troops. And madness reigned in the square.

* * * *

Needled by the galvanic urgency of Tralayn’s peril, Gonji pounded a zigzag path through Vedun’s carven alleys, retracing his recent route with abandon, if not with surety. He clung close to Tora’s withers as they wove through the impromptu equestrian maze, the samurai trusting to his Spanish stallion’s patient training as he shouted warnings ahead of him to playing children and curious adults.

Tora stumbled once on loose paving stones but righted himself adroitly just as Gonji heard the first pistol shots and the wyvern’s strident war cry. He reined in sharply near the wagonage and patted the shuddering horse reassuringly. Looking back toward the square, he saw the flying beast’s vicious hell-dive, made out the jet of saliva it spewed earthward, heard the uproar beneath its strafing arc.

“Spirits of my fathers,” he breathed, visions of the monastery outrage dancing in his head.

An unseen rider stormed through an adjacent street. “The dragon’s attacking! Get to your homes!”

Gooseflesh broke out on Gonji’s arms and neck. The scruples of
giri
—the sense of duty—beckoned him to return to the square. Flavio might be in danger, as well as young Wilfred. And he had an account to settle with the blasted horror that claimed Vedun’s skies. But
ninjo
—the warrior’s moral impulse, his natural conscience, whose frequent conflict with
giri
was a well-known source of woe to the samurai—assailed him with thoughts of the rightness of his quest, of the need to remain on his fated path in the solution of the Deathwind mystery. His karma was to seek the Deathwind; and Tralayn might well hold the knowledge he needed.

Decide.

But he already had. Spurring Tora onward with a snarl, he galloped off toward the Gundersens’ livery and smith shop, cursing his cheerless thoughts.

He spotted Garth at the corral and stamped up to him, dropping to a canter. Tora snorted and tossed, now assimilating Gonji’s tension and spoiling for action.

“Garth! Where is Tralayn’s house?”

“Gonji!” the smith replied with a terrified grimace. “What of Wilfred and Lorenz?”

Gonji waved it aside impatiently. “At the Ministry—they’re
all-recht. Tralayn’s
, Garth!”

“Straight down that lane, all the way to the walls,” he called, pointing, as Gonji spurred off at a gallop. “It’s the tumbledown place with sagging eaves—a bolt-shot from the foundry—”

“Danke,”
Gonji yelled into the wind, leaning hard into the lane.

His heart pounded and sweat stung his eyes and healing wounds as he approached the broad southern lane that abutted the bailey wall. He swung Tora to the right, and immediately the mob scene at Tralayn’s dwelling came into view. A small band of mounted mercenaries were held back from the house by twenty or thirty grim-faced citizens. Among the latter were Roric Amsgard, in bloodied apron, a meat cleaver at his side; and Karl Gerhard, his hunting bow nocked with a clothyard shaft.

Three men lay on the ground, at least one of them a Klann hireling. There was no sign of the prophetess.

Gonji reduced Tora’s gait to a trot and set his face into a mask of self-assurance while his mind examined and discarded one course of action after another. He drew near the battle line, marked by the dead or injured, heads turning at his approach. Someone called out his name among the townsfolk. He restrained the impulse to draw the Sagami; no cause for that yet. The citizens seemed encouraged by his appearance. The small detachment of free companions shrank back a bit in implied warning, blades and pistols held at the ready.

The samurai rode up close, gingerly stepped Tora over the bodies of the dead—two citizens and a side-skewered soldier.

“What’s going on here?” Gonji growled in Spanish, displaying the swaggering confidence of a personally involved high official.

“The prophetess—”

“These pox-ridden scum want to arrest her—”

“They shot Gyorgy and—”

Gonji waved them to silence. “Roric?” Gonji called to the provisioner, who moved forward to speak, but the mercenary leader spoke first:

“We have no quarrel with you, barbarian. We’re here by order to escort the witch woman to the Ministry. And now we’ve got rebels to arrest, as well!” He clopped ahead and pointed his saber at Roric, and the townsmen roared at him in defiance.

“You’ll take no one,
scoundrel!
”

The mob pushed forward. Gerhard half-drew his longbow and pointed his shaft at the leader.

“Stop this now—all of you!” Gonji commanded, calming the outburst. He picked over his thoughts, trying to choose the right words by which he might sort out the deadly situation. Still the prophetess had not appeared outside the house. But more citizens were gathering in the street, hefting staffs, clubs, and axes, threatening an escalation of violence. Now was not the time.

In the northern distance: the wyvern, shrilling and diving down at the square.

Cholera, it’s all happening so fast, and so disorganized....

Then there was a clattering of hoofbeats along a nearby alley. Shouts of alarm, as people spilled to the sides of the lane before the charge of Julian and his cohorts. The captain brought them to a halt. To his rear rode the recent arrival whom Gonji had nicknamed “The Armorer”: the sullen-eyed bandit aboard the armored black Turkish gelding who bore enough military hardware to open a battlefield stall. Blades at his waist and back, pistol half-hammered and aimed overhead, arquebus lashed to a weathered saddle, the mustached warrior sneered at Gonji under a sallet festooned with throwing daggers.

Four pistols now in evidence. Damn the devisers of these blasted firearms!

Julian walked his steed to the leader of the arresting party and obtained the clipped and biased account of the resistance incident. And although his situation was precarious, Gonji knew that he must attempt to prevent the arrest of Tralayn by whatever means necessary.

“Well-met, good captain,” Gonji said, smiling blandly when the mercenary had finished his account. “If you will pardon me, I believe you are just in time to—”

But Julian ignored him and clopped past to face the mob. “Who killed the free companion here? Step forward.”

No one responded. The commander of free companions rose up tall in the stirrups and scanned them.

“You, there!” he called to Gerhard. “What are you doing with a bow?”

He had spoken in Hungarian, and someone muttered a German translation.

“I’ve drawn my bow legally this day from your armory. For the hunt. The captain may check, if he wishes.” The hunter and fletcher looked around him at his countrymen, and if he had been fearful before he was past fear now, Gonji noted. “But I’ll use it here if our holy woman is threatened—” His final words were drowned out by the assents of the angry mob that shouldered together and raised their motley weapons in agreement.

Julian clenched his teeth and looked them over sullenly.

Gonji ambled over beside the captain, their eyes meeting levelly. Both their horses snorted in the prickling air. “The captain will do well to recall that this woman is sacred to them.”

“
I
didn’t generate the order,” Julian spat defensively, and Gonji was emboldened to witness the captain’s crumbling purposefulness.

“They’ll not surrender her, I think, without much bloodshed. And the king would appear anxious to preserve the peace. Their dead currently outnumber yours,” the samurai continued gently. “Perhaps....” He let the suggestion fill itself in.

Julian steeled himself against an angry tremor that afforded Gonji some small sadistic pleasure out of its rarity. He wheeled back to the arresting party.

“Pick up the dead man. Disperse them,” he told the squad leader.

“And the witch?” the man asked.

Julian eyed Gonji, his lip curling. “Leave her for now.”

“But the adviser’s order—?” The soldier’s eyebrows arched in surprise.

“I’ll take it on my responsibility,” Julian snapped. “I’ll answer to His Majesty. Get it done and report back to me.”

And Julian rode off for the square with his party. Gonji watched him go, stifling his satisfaction, breathing a long sigh of relief. There were screams wafting up from the square. He cursed softly at their portent and shuffled Tora but decided to see about Tralayn first.

When he dismounted, it was to much back-slapping and expressions of gratitude, which he growled at and waved off. But they saw through his facade, recognizing the shared sense of triumph, and lavished their praise and thanks.

Gonji and Roric mounted the steps and knocked at Tralayn’s door while several men turned to the grim task of removing the dead and apprising their families.

“This will get worse,” Gonji said tellingly, indicating the two dead men. He studied Roric closely for a reaction.

The homely provisioner, an ex-cavalryman in Austria, nodded gravely. “And we shall be ready,” he replied.

Gonji caught the sincerity and determination in Roric’s words, judged that they were backed by the same courage implicit in the saber scar that marred the man’s face.

“This was a fine display of teeth and claws today. But your people will need a lot of bravery and solidarity to weather what may come. Not to mention training...planning...organization....” Gonji rubbed his stubbled jaw thoughtfully, then he hammered at Tralayn’s door again. “How do you know she’s in?”

Roric looked puzzled. “She entered just before this started. Told us not to worry about her.”

Gonji scanned the milling, buzzing crowd again, saw the exhilaration in their quick gestures and sharp whispers that even their morbid task couldn’t dampen. They bore away the bodies of the two dead citizens with grace and dignity. Julian entered his thinking again. It occurred to him that the captain always sent subordinates out to do the dirty work, ever careful to sidestep a fray. He had never seen Julian less than spotless except at the castle touch-duel, where he had evidently expected to win with ease and had displayed considerable loss of composure when victory had proven hard won.

I wonder how the dashing captain’s
courage holds up on the field?
How does he comport himself under fire and sword? Common engagement too plebeian for him? Mmm. And Klann...? Another mad outbreak of violence, apparently at his order. Seemed like a jolly enough sort who wouldn’t be given to this kind of terrorism.
Kami
, but he’s an unpredictable bastard! Can Garth’s strange tale of enchanted linking be true? Does Klann obey the caprice of several minds?
Cholera
—the flying beast again...the square!

His thoughts dissipated like smoke. Roric had pushed open Tralayn’s creaking door: the house was empty. The butcher called her name. No response. They entered. Her parlor felt warmed as if by recent habitation but deadly still now. Dust and cobwebs whirled and floated in the newly stirred air.

“Your sanctimonious soothsayer has fled,” Gonji said in Japanese.

“
Was
—what?”

“Gone,
neh?
”

And then they spotted the weapons: the monstrous battleaxe and broadsword suspended above the fireplace in symbolic reminder of the terrible annihilation curse that o’erhung Vedun. Their eyes locked in an instant of chilling awe, a shared sensation of momentary insignificance. And whether by their apocalyptic portent or their presence in the prophetess’ home—neither man could have said—the weapons assumed an almost religious import.