Gonji: Red Blade from the East (18 page)

A rush of enormous bat wings and a stirring in the trees—the beast crossed his frenzied path and spat wetly. The trees overhead crackled, the searing fluid cutting a swath through yellowing branches.

“Cholera!”
Gonji cried, fisting the Sagami in blind rage, clinging tightly to the straining horse’s neck. He beat a path up a rise and angled for the thickest fastness of cover he could see. The creature’s keening shriek of challenge echoed in the valley. It swept overhead again, and the foliage a score of yards behind sizzled.

Gonji and Tora shuddered as one. Their breaths came in heaving gulps as they cowered in a thicket. “By all the gods, what in the name of hell is
that
? It’s an obscenity. Nothing in nature ever produced
that.
”

The beast soared over the hills again, then once more, each time widening its radius. Then its piercing cry and soughing wingbeat receded in the distance, and its final mocking almost-human laugh diminished to an echoed memory.

Gonji sat unmoving aboard Tora for a space of half an hour, besieged by angry, indignant thoughts. He was deeply ashamed of his panicked flight. There was scant relief in the fact that no one had been there to see it; it had still happened. He had fled a challenge like a frightened hare. He patted the snorting war horse and sought to bring peace to his unsettled
wa
, his harmony of spirit.

No longbow, he told himself. If I hadn’t left my bow in that damned valley, that monster would be draped in the trees right now.
Hai
, right—damn it all! What’s happening in this place? I’ve never seen anything like that. A monster like that has no place in the world of men. Someone’s called it forth from the unholy places.
And
someone had best send it back. Me? Hah!
Hai
, you’re a big brave one, all right! Lucky you didn’t break your neck scampering away from it! But that was then. I was surprised,
neh
? Be different next time.

Next time, hell.... It’d be well to pray you never see that thing again.

Deep in thought, for the first time feeling his confidence in his chosen course shaken, Gonji rode slowly back through the pass by which he had entered the valley. He kept an eye on the heavens but saw no sign of the foul beast. In no particular hurry he clopped along the main road toward Vedun. He passed a band of peasants with two rickety drays laden with fresh produce and thought to ask them of the flying beast and news of Vedun. But on approaching him they gave so wide a berth and cast such anxious stares that he disdained engaging them and moved on with a sigh.

In a broad, flat plain south of the road, Gonji saw encampments of gypsies, and some distance beyond, on the dim horizon, he thought he could make out the disciplined movement of cavalry. Whether Turks or Magyars or Klann’s own army he couldn’t tell.

Then he arrived again at the defile that led to the ill-fated village where Gonji had parted ways with the 3rd Free Company. Seated on the rocks at the crest of the pass a few hundred yards distant was one of Navárez’ men. Gonji strained to see the sentry better.
The fool’s drawing a bead on me!

He laughed and, with his usual aplomb, turned fully sideways in the saddle and spread his arms wide.

“Here I am, dimwit!” he called in Spanish.

The shot fell well short and its echoed report reached Gonji’s ears just as he offered the guard an obscene gesture. He kept laughing and bowed expansively.

The mercenary next tried out his bow, and Gonji stretched up tall and motioned for him to let fly. He pulled the spare
katana
and waved it at his behind like a pheasant’s tail. By the time Gonji had cleared the man’s coign of vantage, the quiver had been emptied and the roadside was decorated with errant shafts.

“Nice shooting, asshooooole!” Gonji cried out through cupped hands, and his surge of laughter at the fine sport took a long time to subside. It had made him feel better, laid his troubled thoughts to rest for a time.

Soon after he came in sight of the jagged peak he had been told to watch for: a huge granite formation hunched over the road in the shape of a stooped crow. He sat and admired its natural wonder for a space. The sun beat at his back in shimmering waves as afternoon spent itself. Birds soared lazily from their nesting places in the crow’s beak. Gonji slapped absently at the biting insects that attacked in their heat-induced madness.

At length Gonji trotted under the leaning crow. At its far side the road split, the left fork branching north. He held up. The view was breathtaking. An ocean of lush, misty verdure stretched below. The great Transylvanian territory that filled the curving ladle of the Carpathians. Magnificent. But it could not be crossed in the remaining daylight, that was sure.

He gazed at the sinuous road ahead, which snaked into the bowery overgrowth and was lost to sight. The thought of another night alone in this haunted territory was more than a little threatening. But then the warrior in him took charge, rankled at the vague fears and indecisiveness.

I
am samurai
....

With a bold
hyah!
Gonji cantered into the valley and was soon swallowed up as if by an emerald sea.

* * * *

Morning. The night had passed uneventfully, for which the samurai was only too grateful. As the haze lifted, he could make out the thin line of the walled city of Vedun, perched unmistakably on the brink of the plateau, backdropped by white-capped mountains. The jutting plateau looked like a steppingstone into the Carpathians for some forgotten race of giants.

Gonji felt invigorated. The valley held a life-affirming aura that one could draw on with every breath. It was a beautiful land where the night air smelled like something good to drink. Strange to think that evil could invade such a stronghold of unsullied goodness, Gonji found himself thinking. Yet it always found a way to hound the tracks of men. Perhaps in the good places most of all....

He traveled in the spoor of a thousand hoof- and footprints and deeply rutted wagon tracks that even the heavy rains had not been able to eradicate. Impossible to gauge the size of Klann’s force, which this spoor surely indicated.

He scratched pensively as he rode. Jocko had said the 3rd Free Company would be holed up in the village indefinitely. But would any of them have occasion to ride into Vedun? That could mean trouble. But that was karma. His course had been set long before he had the ill fortune to throw in with that bunch. He spurred Tora into a gallop for a time, anxious to reach the city.

The gradual upgrade soon became more difficult for Tora to negotiate, and he had decided to rest the horse when a faint cry reached him from somewhere to the west of the road. He tethered the stallion in good forage and investigated the sound on foot.

He had padded about two hundred yards from the road, looking about circumspectly, when the trees thinned at the eastern end of a small glade. At the opposite side four figures were huddled around a small, limp shape tied to a tree. The biggest of the four was dressed much like the Llorm rider of a few days ago, save for the loose sailor’s cap that flopped to the ground as he delivered a mammoth blow which snapped back his victim’s head.

Already Gonji didn’t like what he saw. Still smarting over his shameful flight from the winged monster, he tested the seating of his swords and repositioned the dirk strapped to his thigh under the kimono. Scratching his beard nervously, Gonji inched to the edge of the tree line.

The big man stooped and wrenched an object from around the neck of the slumped figure—now revealed to Gonji as a youth of twelve or thirteen. The others laughed at something the man said as he lithely bounded astride his horse and trotted off, angling toward the road ahead of where Gonji had stopped.

Gonji noted the burly soldier’s face as he rode off and then appraised the three cronies, who seated themselves under a tree, their horses grazing nearby. More mercenary dregs, there was no question. Their garb was motley, their weapons mismatched. A crude shelter erected between trees indicated that they were probably on outpost duty.

Gonji saw no pistols and feared only one thing: a bow and quiver which leaned against a tree. But his hatred of bullies and their brand of aggression made his course clear.

The toothless brigand who sat in the middle was first to notice the odd character who strutted toward them. He patted one of the others and gestured in Gonji’s direction. His rawboned partner on the right squinted at the oncoming apparition, then rolled over and grabbed the bow.

“Want me to drop him, Zito?”

“Nah,” Zito answered, “I want to see this up close.” He spat between rotten gums and wiped his mouth with a broad motion. Then all three rose and drew their swords.

Gonji looked them over carefully as the space between them narrowed. No bow, no pistols. Two rapiers and a broadsword....

“Need any help?” Gonji called in Spanish. “I can use some food.” He casually rested his left hand on the hilt of the killing sword as the three rogues stopped four paces in front of him.

“Would you look at this,” Zito said in High German, “a woodland elf dressed like a priest!” The others laughed coldly. “And he talks Spanish. That is, I
think
it’s a he. Look at them eyes! Where’d you get them, elfie?
Sie sprechen Deutsch, Dummkopf
?”

“I speak it,” Gonji said disdainfully, his smile twisting into a sardonic grin. “And you boys don’t seem very friendly.”

“Don’t we, really?” Zito minced. He leveled his rapier at Gonji’s chest and glanced at his partners, who slowly separated to circle the motionless samurai. The gaunt man now stood behind him, out of sight, and the third, a paunchy cur with a sarcastic sneer, edged to Gonji’s left.

“Well, now,” Zito continued patronizingly, “I think you’re wrong. I think we might be just friendly enough to share equally whatever bounty an elf might carry. C’mon now, what’ve you got?”

“Now wait,” Gonji said, his hand upraised, “I do have a gift for you, and a well-deserved one at that.”

“What’s that?” Zito asked suspiciously.

“Death.”

The gaunt man in the rear plunged forward. Gonji whirled, dropped to one knee, and took the man’s leg off at the calf. The fat man charged and sliced downward, and Gonji’s short sword whirred in a left-handed parry. A flashing arc of cold lightning from the killing sword spilled the man’s bowels to the earth. Zito’s face was a mask of terror as Gonji calmly replaced the
seppuku
sword. The toothless bandit took two steps backward and then turned to run. Gonji sprang, and his two-handed slash laid open the man’s spine. Zito half-turned, eyes bulging, then fell like a sack.

The samurai froze in position, surveyed his fatally wounded attackers, then relaxed. His movements had been minimal and efficient; that part of him that was his father’s son was satisfied. He inhaled deeply to normalize his breathing and walked away from the quivering carnage.

As he neared the fallen boy Gonji snapped his wrist earthward to shake the blood from the Sagami. He picked up a black silk scarf lying beside a wineskin and finished the job properly. His wounded shoulder began bleeding again. He dabbed at it, reset the bandage. Then, wiping his brow, he knelt down and examined the brigands’ victim.

Dead. How wasteful. A fine, strong youth, and they’d mangled him. Gonji had seen enough of this to hate such outrages. In youth was hope, if there was hope anywhere in this miserable land. Nothing left to do now but try to see that his family received the body.

But where was he from? Vedun? Another village? What the hell was he doing out here with an invading army ravaging the territory?

Gonji tied the boy’s body to a bandit’s horse and led the animal across the glade. On an impulse he trotted back after the bow and quiver and lashed them to Tora’s saddle. Feeling better for this additional armament, he continued his journey.

Without further encounter or incident, Gonji negotiated the road as it inclined up the west slope of the plateau. The world soon became level again, and the horses snorted their approval. Atop the plateau this road from the southern valley junctured with a broader way that coursed east-west, paved in stretches by ambitious ancients.

Gonji plodded east toward the city and passed a trail which meandered up into formidable foothills. Through breaks in the trees, great castle spires and battlements, dwarfed by the distance, shimmered in the heat on the summit of a hill to the north. Castle Lenska. Beyond this was the imposing Carpathian Mountain range immortalized in ballads by the minstrels and spoken of in whispers by the peasantry. To the right lay the steepening precipice. As Gonji drew near the city a fleeting awareness dawned: This was no place to get oneself trapped.

Then the walls of Vedun came into view.

Massive. Magnificent. Every bit as impressive as he had anticipated. He felt a sudden thrill at their sheer antiquity, for this city was of no recent vintage. By all architectural style that Gonji understood, this fortified city would be more at home in—what? The homeland of the Turks?