Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two (55 page)

“A fine sentinel,” Gerhard grumbled at him.

Anna fluttered about them, relieved, offering the light meal she had prepared—which Gonji surprised himself by accepting gratefully. But he felt famished and might well need the nourishment for what came next. He fended off their endeavors at conversation with monosyllabic replies. Milorad was absent, having gone out to aid with the sorting of the wounded and the dead, the assessment of the night’s carnage. About the time the meal was done, Helena unexpectedly arrived with a bundle under her arm: Someone had sent her to fetch Gonji’s kimono and the Italian riding boots he had bought, retrieved now from the Gundersens’ home. Her eyes began to well with concern to see Gonji glum and taciturn, still bedraggled from his ordeal, some intuition conveying to her his inner torment.

“She was here almost all night,” Anna whispered to Gonji. “Helena—such a chance, you took....” She ignored the girl’s inability to hear, as she always did, guiding her to a seat at the table and taking the bundle from her. Gonji nodded to her, his steely gaze mellowing ever so slightly.

“You’re not really going,” Wilf said, desperately hoping for reassurance.

“I must,” Gonji replied. “What time is it?”

“Four bells of morning was the last I heard, I think,” Roric responded.

“I’ll want to see the body of my Master before I go down and turn the shambles of the militia over to Rorka.”

“You can’t go out there,” Garth said in mild caution, “the chapel area is like a beehive.”

“I must,” Gonji said again. “If they’re picking up the dead, then there will be many citizens about, too. I’ll mingle with them, if only briefly....”

Gonji washed his hands and face again and donned his kimono, sashing his
daisho
ominously.

“You’re going out there to die, aren’t you?” Wilf said, low and ominous, an edge of hostility in his voice. “You’re going to take as many of them with you as you can, and then you’re going to die with a big show of courage—a fat lot of good
that’s
going to do anyone! The soldiers will shoot you to pieces and then spit on your corpse, and what will you have left behind?”

“Calm yourself, Wilfred,” Garth cautioned.

“
Nein
, I won’t calm myself—you promised you’d help me rescue Genya,” Wilf accused Gonji. “What will happen to that promise?”

Gonji paused and thought for an instant but avoided Wilf’s eyes and moved to the window to scan the streets.

“If you go out there, I’m going, too,” Wilf announced.

“You’ll stay here,” Garth ordered.

“
Nein
, I’ll do as I please,” Wilf responded, turning on him. “Don’t say anything—just listen to me. I will never live down having struck you, Papa. It was unforgivable. But I’m still a man. I have a mind of my own, and I believe we’re
not
through. Have we trained so long, suffered through so much, to give it all up because Gonji’s pride has been hurt?” He saw the samurai stiffen as he stood behind him, but he continued: “
Ja
, that’s why you’re leaving as much as anything else. You know they don’t want you to leave, whatever they say. My father spoke in anger and exhaustion and fear. Nobody knows what in hell to do about all this, but your leaving isn’t going to stop it. The prophetess was right. Mord isn’t going to stop killing until we’re all dead, and some of us won’t stop fighting until we’ve won or died trying.
I
won’t stop—even if no one will help me—” He burst into tears of rage. “I’m going to get inside that castle,” he raved,
“with you or without you.”
He slammed off into another room, leaving deadly silence in his wake.

By now Paille was awake and, having taken in what was occurring by random snatches, he came to understand the tragic circumstances of Vedun and the fact that Gonji was going to leave them. He registered his protest with a rambling tirade that was largely ignored.

Gonji moved to Helena, who now sat weeping softly. She shook her head when he approached, indicating that he should not leave. She signed to him that she still loved him. He took her hands in his and set them on the table, nodded tenderly that he understood, but he closed his eyes with an eloquent finality that caused her tears to stream anew.

Lydia mounted the steps. Gonji aimed a telling look at her, one that was fraught with the strange ambivalence she had aroused in him during his stay. The knock at the front door broke the spell.

“Aldo Monetto,” Garth said, opening it. The bearded biller entered, out of breath.

“Greetings, gentils,” he said. “Gonji—good to see you up and about. Listen, everyone, they’re cleaning up the city. The body count of citizens seems something upwards of fifty—very few militiamen, I gather. But it’s awful—
God
, it’s awful what they’ve done. I saw some of the Zarnesti raiding party, and some others who want to know what to do. A lot of them are sneaking down to the catacombs, I think. So what now?”

Gonji remained speechless, though Monetto kept looking to him in confused appeal.

“That’s where I’ll head, too, then...once I’ve checked on my family’s well-being,” Roric announced uncertainly. He seemed about to reluctantly take up the new slack in leadership.

Gonji finally spoke. “Signora Vargo, let me borrow your husband’s capote,
dozo
, to cover myself as best I can.” She bobbed her head and brought him the hooded cloak. “The boots I’ll leave for whoever wants them. Can’t imagine why I ever bought them,” he continued distractedly.

“I’m going along with you,” Wilf said, returning to the room, “and no one’s going to stop me.” The firmness in his voice smothered his father’s overture of disagreement, and Garth turned away from him.

“Sayonara,”
Gonji said finally, to all, a note of reluctance detectable in his tone. “Do what you must.”

And as Gerhard whispered to a bewildered Monetto a quick recap of the grim events in the cellar, Gonji and Wilf slipped out into the pre-dawn gloom, a shroud of fog helping to mask their surreptitious movement. Moments later, Gerhard and Monetto left in a different direction, followed shortly by Roric.

“Well,” Paille began, watching through the shutters as Gonji and Wilf disappeared through the narrow rear lane, “there goes the best fighting man among us.”

“And the finest leader.”

They all turned at the sound of Michael’s voice. The protege leaned against the cellar jamb, supporting his weight with both arms. “But still a man...a man who needed understanding, like any other....”

* * * *

They darted through the darkened lanes, using the shadows and the fog, weaving their way to the square not far off.

“You can’t go,” Wilf kept whispering, his voice ever on the edge of furious tears. “I didn’t think you’d ever let those cowards influence you.”

“Quiet, Wilf.”

“What about those who trained hard to become
bushi?
We still need training. If we can’t overthrow them now, then why not next week, next year—
sometime?
”

“Stop it before someone hears you, dammit!”

Wilf snuffled in a breath, gripping the sheathed hilt of his
katana
. “I’ll not surrender this sword. You’ll have to
kill
me to get it back.”

“Oh, shut up, already—Spine-cleaver is yours to keep forever. You know that.”

Wilf grabbed his shoulder as they hunkered down in a cul-de-sac, waiting for a mounted party to pass. “How was I supposed to be sure? Can I believe any of your promises? You also promised to show me how to get into that castle and free Genya.”

Gonji threw off his hand and glared back into his eyes, but Wilf didn’t flinch. Gonji turned away, struggling internally. “Come on, they’ve passed.”

From between two market stalls they viewed the terrible result of the night’s slaughter at the square. Bodies of the dead were heaped near the chapel for identification by survivors. Soldiers’ corpses were loaded onto drays. The square crawled with troops. There was no getting to the chapel entrance to the catacombs for them, but Gonji’s mind was not on that problem now. His grim stare was fixed on the lightly dangling body of Master Flavio, swinging with the air currents from the ironic gibbet of the great crucifix between the fountain and rostrum.

Gonji nodded. “May
Iasu
take him to the reward he lived for—let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Tralayn’s.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Mord had worked feverishly through the night since his return from the too easily thwarted rebellion in the city. He had failed there, thanks largely to the traitor’s inability to get to him sooner. That owed much to the blasted oriental’s security measures; there’d be much to pay him back for, once his usefulness was done. But there was nothing for it now but to forge ahead with an alternative plan. Specifics would be pursued later. For now...the groundwork.

He hastily prepared his subject for the dramatic presentation he would make to Klann. The king had to be appeased in his renewed demands. And the thing he would show, Mord thought, should prove quite convincing. After all, what did any of these common mortals—or even one as
uncommon
as King Klann—understand of magick gramarye?

Next—a fresh imputation of mana for his additional sorcerous manipulations.... Soon, the invocation at full moon, and then these extreme measures of acquiring dark power, via the draining of life forces, would be unnecessary. And
this
full moon would be special, he felt sure. It would mark the achievement of his and the League’s Grand Scheme, with the sorcerer annexing to himself both the manpower and the wealth left over from the holocaust. But for now....

He lured five Akryllonian children into the tower, using as an enticement the strange malleable man-forms, the “dolls,” they all loved to handle, the ones that moved when the children ordered them to. Next he told them a story—and how they all were rapt by Mord’s way with tale-spinning! They would sit hand-in-hand in a circle while he wove his mastery about them, all the while draining them of their life essence, drawing from them the mana he would need to work his sorcery. Soon they all were asleep, exhausted. Their parents would blame the late hours they had kept, or their miserable peripatetic life, or changes in diet, or the spirits that roamed the territory, called down upon them in curses by the despised people of Vedun. They would blame anything, in short, except the dreaded sorcerer, who was, of course, working on their behalf. And the children wouldn’t tell them where they’d been; they were all forbidden to bother the magician in his tower.

Mord had them carried to an unused chamber by mercenaries who drew pay from both the king
and
the sorcerer, though Klann knew nothing of their latter employment. Then, with some remonstrance from Mord at their childish cowardice, the mercenaries queasily hefted the wrapped subject that would be shown to Klann.

Now remained the most difficult task of all: dealing with the holy woman, who had been granted a hearing rather than the summary execution Mord had hoped for....

* * * *

“See how the sorcerer bleeds your people!” Tralayn cried, raising her shackled arms to swing them over the audience in the main hall. “He has poisoned you, and now he is killing your people!”

“Yes, keep talking, by all means,” Mord blared from the gallery, where he stood flanked by mercenaries. “This is all quite fascinating to the king and his subjects alike, I’m sure, witch woman. You guards with her, keep her arms down, that she may wave no vile enchantment over anyone in this hall. We’ve seen quite enough of her power lately.”

Murmurs in the crowd. They had momentarily forgotten her notoriety, so shocked were they by her accusations against Mord, her denunciations of their king.

“Indeed, tell us more,” King Klann commanded, glancing toward Mord suspiciously.

“I have no more to say to you,” she replied, her impassioned obloquy at an end, “save to say that you’ve been the fool, Klann. You’ve opened yourself to use by the Evil One; chosen the Dark Way as a shortcut to power that is denied you. And your folly will see your life dashed.” People began to shout her down, cursing in the Kunan tongue and crying out for her blood, to hear their king so reviled. “The Lord God will send to Vedun his Deliverer—” she continued, shouting now over the din, “he who will turn your blood to ice for his very sight!”

A Llorm pikeman leapt forward and thrust his lance through her heart, and there came a blinding flash of light in the hall that tore screams from their throats as they buried their faces in their hands. But when they timorously uncovered their eyes, everything had returned to normal.

Tralayn lay across the table, her face set in the peace of death, her emerald eyes staring hollowly.

The king and his retainers craned their necks from their side of the gallery. “What
was
that, Mord?” King Klann asked.