Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two (36 page)

“What about their guns?”

“
Cholera
-pox on their guns!” Dead silence. “You have guns, and you’ll have more. And you have the longbows—
and
the long swords, always better than guns,
neh?
They don’t fizzle in the rain—and we’ll probably begin our action in the rain—and they don’t need to be spannered and loaded—”

“With all due respect,
sensei
,” Vlad Dobroczy broke in, “suppose you charge a mercenary in the rain, and you howl and swagger and swing your sword truly, but his courage doesn’t fail him and neither does his pistol? Then what?”

Gonji sheathed his blade and folded his hands behind his back. “Then you face the fact of death that is always with us, and you fall back on your final armament.”

“What’s that?”

“Your faith.”

Grumbling and crestfallen looks.... Rorka, standing at the back of the group, turned and walked off, shaking his head sadly.

* * * *

They sat in Tralayn’s parlor, sipping the jasmine tea Flavio had acquired from a traveling merchant, to Gonji’s great delight.

“Tralayn,” Gonji asked, suddenly serious, “what do you think happened to the crops?”

“Mord,” she replied at once. “Mord destroyed them.”

“
So desu ka?
To what purpose?”

“To incite a rebellion that would see the city crushed.”

“Klann wouldn’t want that,” Garth declared.

“Perhaps not,” she replied. Then she fixed her gaze on Gonji. “Gonji, I have a terrible suspicion, founded on an ill omen, that...something terrible has happened at the monastery. By your own admission you’ve been there since the invaders came. You must tell me now—what is the current circumstance of Holy Word?”

“You’ve been to the monastery?” Roric asked, surprised. He alone among them was not privy to the knowledge of Simon Sardonis or his connection with Father Dobret. “Why haven’t you said anything? People have tried to get there to see what’s become of the monks, but no one can get by the blockade of Borgo Pass, not without a fight.”

Gonji’s spirit sagged. The intelligence could be crushing to their morale and might shatter his fragile influence. But he decided to clear the air and told them what had become of Holy Word and the nearby peasant village, and of his part in the outrages.

“God in heaven,” Flavio breathed. A funereal dismay seized them all.

“Zarnesti. The village must be Zarnesti,” Michael said in a shaky voice, staring into his cup.

“Ja,”
Roric agreed.

“I’m sorry,” Gonji said at length. “It was because of these things that I left Klann’s free companions. I wish to make reparation at least in part by helping you free your city.”

There were sympathetic nods and half-hearted mutters that he should not burden himself with guilt over what surely would have happened anyway. But Michael and Roric shortly took their leave of them, after agreeing reluctantly to Gonji’s wish that he be allowed to tell Rorka himself, in his own time.

“I suspected,” Tralayn announced when they had gone.

“So there is no help forthcoming from the Church,” Flavio added somberly, “unless Rorka’s missing patrols are able to find it in Austria.”

“
Iye.
I’m afraid they never made it out of the province,” Gonji advised. His companions crossed themselves.

At length, as Gonji, Flavio and Garth sat sipping glumly, Tralayn asked the samurai: “What was the message you had for Simon Sardonis?”

“Just one of forbearance,” he replied. “Dobret wanted him to go on alone, without seeking vengeance against Klann for what happened to him at the monastery.”

“If you had told me when you arrived, I might have been able to persuade him to join with us in our efforts.”

“If I had told you when I arrived, I wouldn’t be part of those efforts. And you still owe me information about this...valiant loner Simon,
and
the Deathwind.”

“Loner, indeed,” she said, smiling wryly.

“You still spread this business about the divine Deliverer among the militia. He’s
gone
, Tralayn. The reluctant hero has fled Vedun in its time of need. I have my own idea about the identity of your Deliverer. And you yourself once wondered whether I wasn’t the—”

“No, he’s not gone. But we’re not acting in concert, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Two more mercenaries dead, on the road into the valley. I saw their bodies myself this morning. It was clearly his work...the work of the thing....” She drifted off dreamily. “Too late...and for the wrong reason. For vengeance, instead of the restoration of Vedun....”

She bowed her head. “I shall not be with you much longer.”

They looked to one another uneasily, troubled by the ominous portent of her words.

* * * *

Stefan Berenyi came running out of the wide tunnel leading into the valley, arriving breathlessly at the center of the training ground. A harbisher and metal founder waited at the tunnel entrance for some signal from him. The three had been behaving curiously since the break between sessions began, carrying bundled goods from other tunnels across the cavern in mysterious fashion.

Now Berenyi formed his hands around his mouth and tooted a heraldic fanfare. He pointed to the broad valley tunnel—

Klaus clanked onto the ground aboard a massive armored destrier of eighteen hands, himself covered completely with old-style plate armor. He carried a huge shield and battleaxe, the buffe of his burgonet swinging open on its hinge to reveal his broad grin.

The catacombs rang with cheers and laughter.

* * * *

The military council slumped around a table deep into the night. The late session had ended an hour earlier. The leaders were weary and irritable, and as always the sorest points of planning were dredged up at these times.

“So Phlegor continues to be a problem...,” Garth mused.

“What do you suggest we do about him, Gonji?” Michael asked. “You have an answer for every other question of policy.” There was neither sarcasm nor rancor in the statement, but rather an effort at levity.

Gonji shrugged. “I think my suggestion would be...unacceptable.”

“Render him...
hors de combat
,” Garth said, staring straight ahead, arms folded.

“Assassinate him?” Roric asked, shocked.

Michael shuddered. “But that’s...murder.”

“Not necessary to go that far,” Garth corrected.

Tralayn rocked back on her stool. “If only we could destroy the evil wizard,” she thought aloud.

“
Hai
, sounds easy, doesn’t it?” Gonji said with a wry face. “Just mow down his monsters and—Anyway I’m not convinced Klann will do as he says, so sorry, friend smith. I don’t think he’s any more trustworthy than old goldface. And his hired killers will make Vedun a living hell.”

“What about those monsters?” Rorka said. “Once and for all, what are we going to do? Gonji, what are these secret plans you’ve smugly saved for dealing with the wyvern and the giant and who knows what else—”

“What do you suppose I’ve been planning? Isn’t it obvious?” He waved his arm toward the weapons cache. “Longbow, spear, what pistols we have; pole-arms and swords against the giant...the flapping filth, when he alights. The
hearts
of
men!
What other resource have we, in the absence of magick of our own? Faith and steel and righteousness—” The baron was rising petulantly, and Gonji raised his voice. “—and you’ve been no help at all, so sorry, with your defeatist attitude! You know they look to you for support of my every statement, and what do they see? An old man with head held low, slinking away....” He caught himself, regretting the words at first, but glad to have spoken his mind. The others were speechless.

“
Ja
, an old man,” Rorka replied, reaching for his cloak, “but at least this old man will not have on his conscience the deaths of many
young
men who believed in the impossible. You’ve done a good job of molding their minds, preparing them for a death they can’t even conceive. Your...
bushi!
”

“So sorry, Herr Baron,” Gonji responded, also on his feet now, “but you also did a good job of losing your castle in unheard-of brevity, and you all did a fine job of giving away your city. Now the only way to get it back is to fight, and some will die, and they must know that fact and accept it, or they cannot fight.

“And, so sorry—” Gonji shouted, his rancor rising with every word, abandoning at last the self-control he lived by, “—but I think you should not leave until you’ve heard all there is to tell, while we’re being honest with each other.”

Rorka kept walking away across the cavern floor, and Gonji raised his voice still louder. It echoed through the cavern.

“The help you await will not be forthcoming! Do you understand?”

The baron stopped and turned slowly, like a man helplessly listening to his own death sentence. He shuffled back toward them, the lines around his eyes etched with dawning horror.

Roric stood and cleared his throat. “Gonji, maybe I’d better....” The provisioner took it upon himself to tell the story of Gonji’s grim duties while a member of the 3rd Free Company of Klann. Gonji and Rorka glared at each other all the while, across the wide table.

“Then it’s finished,” Rorka spoke with evident anguish when the tale was done.

“Iye,”
Gonji disagreed, “now it has only begun. What I have done is my own evil karma. You bear the pain and I, the guilt. We
both
have lost face—we share the shame. Now we must strive to erase it. We owe it to these people to help them cast out these brigands. It is our duty.”

“Duty,”
Rorka spat. “Do you ever do anything on feeling?”

“More often than I care to admit,” Gonji replied. “But the two are one and the same here.
Sayonara
.”

The meeting was over, the two of them stalking off in opposite directions.

* * * *

Wilf felt, more than saw, the flashing blur that was Gonji’s
katana
, waiting, watching, holding back his
bokken
until his reflexes themselves dictated the proper moment to strike. He focused on Gonji’s eyes, as he had been taught, knowing that they mirrored the opponent’s soul. His motion had become more economical, swifter as a result, explosions of energy reserved for only the propitious moments in the fray. He knew Gonji reserved special attention for him, Michael and Jiri’s blows causing him less trouble, probing more shallowly. But Wilf had to use their attacks to his advantage, if he were ever to land a blow.

They turned and clashed repeatedly, the long minutes slipping away. Wilf emptied his mind of all intent, that his body might not betray him—
now!
Michael and Jiri attacked almost as one, Gonji’s blinding parries fending them, as Wilf lashed out and across, right-to-left.
Thwak!
Somehow, incredibly, Gonji had found Wilf’s
bokken
and turned it in a twinkling, but Jiri struck downward immediately, the samurai’s wicked high parry splitting his wooden sword as Wilf’s wrists and forearms twisted with the well-oiled grace and speed of constant practice—

“Sesshoku!”
Gonji cried.

“Halt!” Roric stormed at once, rushing forward.

Wilf’s horizontal slash had again broken open Gonji’s stitched ribs, blood seeping from the wound caused by Julian.

They bowed to each other as the trainees buzzed about the inspired bout. Despite his shock over having reopened Gonji’s wound, Wilf felt a flush of warmth and pride. A great burden had been lifted from him. He no longer felt like a foolish child posturing himself after a role model. He was a warrior.
Bushi.
When he had landed the blow to Gonji in the earlier bout, the nagging suspicion that the samurai had allowed the trainees to hit him for the good of their morale taunted him. But this time he knew that it had been real.

And he knew that the others knew.

Now, soon, he would be ready to go after Genya....

* * * *

“Come on, Klaus!—Do it!—You’ve got him!”

The clumsy buckle-maker, by now embraced by most of the militia as their favorite reclamation project, clanked forward aggressively, swinging his battleaxe in great circles over his head. Paolo Sauvini, waxing more wrathful by the minute, feinted and lured, stamped ahead with uncertain lunges of his broadsword, now using one hand, now the two-handed grip. He could make no opening, no headway against the sure, steady, uncomplicated advance of Klaus, who seemed to draw energy from the rousing cheers of support.