Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two (50 page)

“It’s madness, all right,” Paille interjected. “Do you want to know what your fine leaders have been saying, Gonji? Garth is spreading a tale about Klann being literally
immortal.
He says he died last night, just as the magician said, but then he rose again as a new person—they’re talking about him as if he were the
Christ
, for Christ’s sake!”

Gonji winced and rubbed his temples against the thrumming that had begun.

“There, you see?” Michael accused, “That’s
your
doing, Gonji. That’s the result of your decision not to tell the people Garth’s story of Klann’s enchanted origin.”

“Wait a minute,” Gonji growled, “why is it my fault alone? We agreed, so sorry, that it was best withheld. Who could’ve known it would come to this? Anyway, can any of us truly say that that’s what has happened, even on the good smith’s word?”

“Mother of God,” one of Michael’s friends whispered in awe, “the king is immortal?” He crossed himself. “Why weren’t we told what evil sorcery we—”

“Then the legends we heard are
true
—?”

“Stop that talk,” Paille snapped.

“No one knows for certain
what
ploys our enemies might be pulling,” Gonji reminded, pouring more wine. “Michael, we must make a plan for—”

“Stop creating enemies,” Lydia ordered. “You make enemies by
wishing
to find them everywhere.”

Wilf snorted, spilling his wine. “No, they’re not our enemies. They killed Radetzky and all the others because they like us.”

“Forget it, Wilf,” Gonji said low.

“Wilfred Gundersen, if I didn’t respect your good father so,” the councilman’s wife said, “I’d make you leave for speaking to me like that.”

“No one leaves here,” Paille countered. “This is the military council now, and martial law is hereby declared.” He tipped his flagon at Lydia.

“Paille, for you I have no respect—you can leave now!” she shot back.

Michael stepped forward, lips pursed. “Paille—you have no voice in council matters! Lydia—enough. Please stay out of this.”

“I can’t believe Garth is spreading this discouraging legend,” Gonji said, perplexed.

“He decided it best that everyone know...
now
, before Mord comes up with anything worse. He tried to make it look as though
he
raised Klann from the dead.”

“What do they have on their devious minds?” Gonji wondered aloud. “It’s all rubbish!” he suddenly decided. “Did anyone—anyone whose word we can trust—witness this transformation?
See
the new Klann?”

They looked from one to the other. Shook their heads uncertainly.

“Then it was all faked to produce exactly the effect we’re seeing, making the people wilt out of a false sense of guilt and responsibility. What a fine act,” the samurai drawled, gazing around the room sullenly, offering his goblet, reddened eyes glowing, “and all of you fell for it.”

“Correct,” Paille agreed. “I’ve seen the soldiers—they’re scared. They haven’t been let in on the game yet, either. But the
townies
are
cringing—
it’s a contest of cowardice, with defeat as the prize for those who can cower the longest! Now is the time to
fight
, while they fear the city’s quiet toughness.”

“Hear-hear,” Wilf offered.

Michael’s brow furrowed as he considered what was being proposed.
Such a decision....

“Shouldn’t...,” Michael began tentatively, “shouldn’t the
whole
council be in on so important a decision?”

“Hai—”

“Michael, you can’t be serious,” Lydia breathed.

“Lydia—
please
.”

“I agree,” Gonji said, “but it wouldn’t be taking on too much responsibility for you and me to at least alert the militia of the possibility of conflict. And the difficulty of the evacuation—
that
would no doubt have to be done under fire. That can’t be helped. Be we must do something
soon
, before they beef up the garrison again. They made a big mistake, riding out of here with so many men, if what you’ve observed was accurate. Almost....” Gonji grew pensive, fighting back the sting of exhaustion, the heaviness of the wine, “almost as if they
wanted
the city to do something. But
why?
”

“I can’t believe you’re all considering this,” Lydia said, easing onto a chair, trancelike.

“Nor I,” someone added.

“Nein,”
another agreed.

“Ahhh—cowards!” Paille slurred, his breath an alcoholic breeze from a night of tippling. He slugged at his wine, refilled the cup with a mock-chivalrous bow to Lydia.

“What are you thinking?” Michael asked Gonji, anxious to know what troubled the samurai.

Gonji mopped the moisture from his lips. He formed the words as he spoke. “If they—if they wanted to crush the city, then they needn’t resort to tricks to foment rebellion...so...so Klann couldn’t be in on the trick...so he
was
poisoned, and either they’re hiding that fact—there was no corpse? Nothing they carried out of the hall?”

“No—
nem
—
nein
—”

“All right, all right, then...then he was poisoned and it failed, and they decided to make him look immortal, for the morale factor...or they rushed him to the castle
before
he died, and there’ll be hell to pay when the furor is over, one way or the other.... Or—or he died...and Garth was right.” He looked up, eyes twitching, mind racing. “But if he was killed, then there was a killer. Tralayn said it was Mord—”

“Mord? But why?” Several listeners gasped in demurral.

Gonji raised his hand. “I don’t know. I don’t see how it could serve any purpose, unless Tralayn was right about his wanting to see Vedun in ashes.
And
Garth would have to be right. Mord couldn’t destroy Vedun without an army. No king, no army—Unless he thought they’d rally around
him.
But I doubt if the
Llorm
would, at least. They seem loyal only to Klann. And could Mord hate Vedun so much that he’d take that kind of chance?” He shook his head violently and asked for water to lave his face. “Ah, swine-karma! I wish we could all sleep before we had to make a final decision....”

“Ja,”
Wilf agreed, “I can’t say I feel much like doing anything right now. Everything sags....”

“Michael...could Tralayn have killed Klann?” Gonji asked suddenly.

“That seems possible,” Lydia opined before her husband could reply. “She’s been in favor of violent overthrow since the occupation.”

“But would she kill a child of our own?” her husband probed. He shook his head negatively, refusing to accept it.

“Iye,”
Gonji agreed, “I don’t think that sounds like her either.”

“Well, what are we going to do, gentils?” Paille asked, weaving before them.

“Michael?” Gonji asked. “It’s your city.”

Michael slumped into a chair. His voice was meek, resigned. “I don’t think we can do anything until we see the next move generated by the Castle.”

“That’s it, then,” Gonji said, his mouth twisted. “We drop it. More wine,
dozo.
” Paille obliged him. Lydia looked at them both with distaste.

Gonji’s bewilderment over the mystery of the king’s assassination dovetailed with his disappointment over the city’s attitudes to cause him to eschew sleep for a sullen drinking bout. Paille and Wilf joined in lustily, though the young smith succumbed to slumber before long, and even Michael embraced the bleariness of drink over more lucid pondering of his city’s dreadful future, of the terrible circumstances into which his child might be born. And before long thoughts of the coming child caused him to withdraw from the drinking. Soon Flavio’s protege fell into quiet, private brooding.

Paille and Gonji exchanged banter, ever less sensible with the passing of the hours. The samurai recounted the details of the Zarnesti raid.

Lydia paced from room to room, wringing her hands nervously and scowling at them when she passed, occasionally peering out the shutters into the harsh blue light of day. The sky was cloudless, the city uncommonly quiet. Many had gone to their jobs in a hopeful effort at normality, but there was little commerce. The Benedettos’ other guests excused themselves one by one, having become stir crazy, and braved the city’s streets. Soldiers clopped by in increasing numbers, and by three bells of afternoon, Lydia decided that her house was being watched, as was Flavio’s, nearer the square.

Gonji waxed maudlin, surly, and vulgar in alternating mood shifts that worried her. No one had ever seen him so totally devoid of his much vaunted self-control.

“Cowards,” Paille brayed at the windows.

“
Hai.
And it was my bad karma to fall in with them,” Gonji said gloomily. “Their own God must laugh at their childishness. Twice cursed past and thrice in the future—that is you, Gonji-san...the lark recalls my duty.... The tainted one—what’s that?” Gonji wondered dully. “Paille, who wrote of ‘the tainted one’?”

“I don’t know,
monsieur
...not I.”

Lydia peeked through the crack in the shutters again. No question—they were watching the Benedetto residence. At least four of them. Fully armed. The looks they leveled at the house were stone-cold sober.

* * * *

“Looks quiet,” the free companion in the slouch and leather jerkin told his companion.

The fat man riding beside him snorted. “Yeah, they’re scared shitless. I don’t blame them. Who could live in this place? What about this stuff the captains are saying—” They guided their steeds down a walled lane. “You think everything’s right up at the castle? This army comes up with some wild stories. But I guess they know what they’re sayin’ when—”

The marauding band charged them seemingly out of nowhere, slamming them off their whinnying mounts with staffs and pikes. The bandit in the slouch was dead before he hit the ground. The fat man’s shrill cries were silenced with a single blow of a woodsman’s axe. Their armament was stripped, their horses commandeered in seconds.

Phlegor bounded astride one of the horses, his face glowing with the flush of success over the bold daylight attack.

“All right—” he said, breathless, “—onward. Split up and take these lanes. Pistoliers and bowmen hold them. You run into big trouble, you lead them back to one of our snares. Got it?” And when the others assented readily: “Let’s go.”

About forty craft guildsmen under Phlegor divided into small squads and began their hit-and-run attacks against straggling mercenaries. Emboldened by their early success, they swiftly spread their skirmishes from the center of the city toward the fringes, avoiding only the square and the areas where the troops were garrisoned, on the extreme east and west ends.

Soon they were joined by a dozen militiamen under Paolo Sauvini, he being the only one among them who had taken part in the Zarnesti raid. Paolo had gone home and related his tale of personal valor to his indulgent wife, then had ignored her urging that he lay low at home, heading instead out into the streets to see what effect the alleged murder of Klann was having. Linking up with a few curious, if badly shaken,
bushi
and Squires, inspiring them with his report of the foray, he encountered Phlegor and a band of about ten near the provisioning district. The craftsmen had ambushed three Austrian highwaymen, dispatching them shortly and savagely.

Phlegor tossed Paolo a pistol. “How about it, Sauvini? You ready to free your city?”

Paolo hefted the piece and grinned wolfishly. “What about the militia leaders? Gonji...and the others?”

The guild leader cast a thumb over his shoulder. “Your monkey man’s down in the southern quarter. I saw him there myself,” Phlegor lied. “He’s left
us
the tough job up here. You game?”

Paolo nodded resolutely. “All right—rebellion, then,” he said to his companions. “
Kill
the invaders.”

They mounted and surged into the twisting, narrow lanes, bloodlust in their eyes. Soon the revolt was joined for fair.

Phlegor’s killing grounds were hastily established but effective in the early going. Pockets of mercenaries were lured into alleys and culvert lanes to be tripped up with ropes or blocked by debris, arrows and bolts raining down on them in their frenzy. Their armament was swiftly appropriated and used against other bands.

Word of the revolt spread through the city, people closing their shops and sealing their homes against the upheaval. Confusion reigned. Some of the actual city militia began to wander out to investigate, unsure of whether to become involved. An alert plan for such a rebellion
had
been established, but no relay teams had spread the word that this was a sanctioned action by the council; yet the fighting was fierce, and it was spreading in both outreach and intensity.