Gonji: Red Blade from the East (30 page)

Then the shameful voice was smothered by a roaring defiance in the corridors of his mind.

He spun left to meet the strafing attack. A stream of searing excreta struck the wall beneath him as he scrabbled atop the merlon. He squared up and launched his arrow as the monster filled his vision to the periphery. The wyvern spewed a jet of acid saliva, as Gonji dove and flattened on the rampart, his head and left arm winding up dangling over the street twenty feet below.

There came a piercing shriek—the cry of the wyvern as Gonji’s shaft dug deeply into its belly! Foul fluid pulsed from the wound as the beast soared over the valley, clawing at the embedded irritant.

Gonji gasped for the breath that had been knocked out of him by the fall. He took stock: no burning pain.
Yeeee gods!
Heart hammering, he grabbed the quiver and scrambled for the stairway.

“Aveya, aveya!”

The Llorm guard remained stationed at the base of the stairs. To his right Gonji could hear the clatter of mounted troops as voices shouted perhaps no more than three streets off. Pinpoints of torchlight dotted the city.

A crossbow bolt whizzed past as Gonji, running in a crouch, plunged down the stair. He drew his dirk and cocked to throw at the sword-wielding Llorm. The helmed opponent flinched and fell back before the anticipated throw. Instead, Gonji leapt sideways off the stair and a second later was across the lane and melting into the deep shadow of Vedun’s tortuous back alleys.

Resounding hoofbeats and clinking steel swarmed above him in the pitch of the walled alleys. Shouts of command and confusion. Gonji ran, muttering curses aimed at the recklessness by which he had brought this about. He ran madly through the narrow maze, avoiding alleys aflame with ruddy light, flattening against walls, pressing into niches whenever mounted troops thundered by.

He turned right, left, right again; his faulty sense of direction began to fail him. Dimly aware of a roughly eastern course, he decided to first put distance between himself and the southern quarter, then circle back to Garth’s. His movement sent him against the grain of the pursuit. Risky. And he had to get a fix on his position.

He slung his weapons and scaled a wall. From a crouched vantage on a low-roofed dwelling he could make out the marketplace at the center of Vedun and, not far off on the right, the Provender—a hotbed of mercenary activity.

Then he was spotted. A mounted mercenary pointed at him and cried out, spurred his horse.

Before the shout of alarm had died out, Gonji was across the roof. He jumped to the adjacent dwelling, heard muffled voices within. He scrabbled across another roof and made a short leap to a higher building that placed him behind the cover of still taller peak-roofed dwellings. He seemed to be on a demarcation line between homes of recent vintage and a desolate, vacant-looking sector.

A single horseman clattered into the shadowed lane beneath him. A free companion in light cavalry armor and a low-brimmed sallet. Gonji clung to the roof ledge, watching the mercenary swivel his steed in confusion. Cries of command seemed to issue from all directions.

Then Gonji saw the wyvern.

The monster swooped low over the city’s eastern quadrant, searching for its tormentor. It was making its way gradually toward Gonji’s position. He made a quick decision.

The horseman in the lane below wheeled toward the end from which he had come. His horse took two strides, and then animal and rider both crashed to earth under the hurtling weight from above. Gonji dispensed the soldier to slumberland with a sharp blow to the skull, scooped up the sallet, and hastily unbuckled the man’s cuirass.

Time for a change of identity, Gonji-san
, he thought as he worked.
You’ve made a mess of this ninja business anyway. Shows what lack of practice will do, oh, hai, that is so....

He un-swathed his head, relief flooding him; rolled and tied the sash around his waist. Then he un-slung the bow and quiver and his swords and donned the cuirass. The quiver was empty, the remaining shafts scattered over the ground. Gonji clucked his tongue impatiently. The bow would have to go soon. It was proving cumbersome and was easily spotted bristling over his shoulder. But most importantly, the pursuers would be searching for a bowman. And so, presumably, would the wyvern.

He re-slung the weapons and put on the sallet, which was cut low to cover the upper half of the face, with eye-slits for vision. Good. The downed rider groaned just as Gonji finished and went after the pawing steed. He could hear pounding hooves in the intersecting street. Mounting, he cantered toward the egress cautiously, concentrating on relaxing and looking natural.

A small knot of horsemen passed the alley. Then a rider swung into it, a torch held high, parting the darkness with the blinding glow.

Gonji pointed eastward.
“Aveya!”
he called out.

The rider said something in an unknown language. He was a mercenary, dressed in slouch hat, jack, and tassets. A cavalry saber hung at his left, a pistol on the right. He peered closely at Gonji. But when his eyes fell on the
tsuba
and
fuchigashira
—the hilt and pommel—of the Sagami over Gonji’s shoulder, his face flashed bright with recognition.

“You,”
he shouted. It was one of the mercenaries from the Provender the day before. He went for his pistol.

No time for thought—

Gonji spurred and drew steel in the same motion. The horse lunged forward, and Gonji’s wicked slash tore through the mercenary’s jack and spilled him over his horse’s haunches.

Gonji continued into the broad avenue and yanked the reins hard right, eastward, almost at once encountering a ragged group of adventurers headed in the same direction.

“Aveya! Aveya!”
he shouted in authoritative tones, waving an arm to the east. The pack looked from one to the other a moment, Gonji readying for another draw. Then they shouted as one, brandishing swords and galloping toward the eastern wall.

Gonji watched them go for a few seconds, vaguely wondering what
“aveya”
meant. Then he nodded curtly and headed west, back toward the Gundersens’ stables, the only place he felt familiar enough with to call sanctuary.

To his left he could hear the sounds of the main body of troops doubling back. And from their midst: pistols cracking.

Cholera.
Gonji felt a surge of guilt.
Don’t let them start shooting innocents now.
...

He was the lone rider on the avenue, the Street of Faith, and that was a mixed blessing, for he could hear the awesome furling of the wyvern’s wings somewhere nearby. He reined the horse to a whinnying halt at a side lane and swung down off it.

“Off with you, brute,” he commanded, slapping its rump. “A Tora, you’re not.”

Time to ditch the bow. Dashing down the lane, which separated two files of modest stone dwellings, he arbitrarily chose one of the crossing paths behind a rank of houses. He turned right, running along the packed earth that bordered rail fences, small gardens, sheds and animal coops. He brushed too close to a henhouse, and there issued a raucous squawking that found him nervously shushing the hens and feeling like an idiot. Gonji snorted a laugh despite his circumstances. But the advance of hoofbeats, accompanied by human footfalls and low, gruff chatter, set him off at a sprint again.

The voices sounded too close. He vaulted a fence into a yard with a neatly tended garden, a storage shed, and two stacks of piled kindling. The muted clumping of feet was nearer in the lane. The chatter had dwindled to whispers.

Get rid of the bow.

He cast about aimlessly a moment, his eyes finally falling on the shed. There was room behind it for the bow and quiver. He stuffed them in back of it and wedged two fagots into the space at the end. Satisfied, he brushed his hands and scanned his surroundings. He’d have to find a—

It was then that he spotted the girl.

She stood in the window framed between the open shutter wings. Gonji raised a hushing hand, made calming gestures as best he knew how. But there was no mistaking that look, that wide-eyed, open-mouthed tremulous prelude: She was going to scream.

He removed his sallet to reveal his pleading eyes, repeated his gestures, all the while moving closer.

The girl backed from the window, mouth quivering, hands pressed at her sides. A horse nickered in the lane a score of yards away, and running feet pounded along the dirt path behind the next row of houses. So Gonji did the only thing he could think to do: He dove through the window and into milady’s bedchamber, rolling into a seated position with a clinking of armament, all the while shushing and pleading like an overwrought nursemaid.

“Dozo—bitte—por favor—please!”
He shook his head rapidly and pointed out the window. “I’m not one of them,” he whispered, “not one of the invaders. My name is Gonji, I’m—” Her hand went to her throat, but the screaming tremor had subsided.
Now don’t blow it....

“I’m sorry, really, but this was necessary, do you—do you understand German?” She showed not a glimmer of understanding. She was a pretty, slender, sloe-eyed girl of about twenty. Dark and a trifle exotic in skin tone and features. Her long hair lay about her shoulders, its lush fullness tangled now by sleep. Her thick floor-length night dress revealed nothing of her, not that it mattered to Gonji at that moment. But the amusing thought occurred later that she could have weighed 250 pounds—or been only a head propped on a stick—and Gonji would have known no difference, so assiduously did he avoid casting her any upsetting glances.

Outside, two mercenaries trudged along the path, swords bared, searching the yards and the spaces between houses. They
had
to have heard him. Gonji indicated them to her, then gently eased the shutters closed but for a crack. A slim shard of moonlight revealed the bedchamber to be only a larder fitted with a cot, a small oaken table and stool, and a ewer and basin.

“Those men out there,” he whispered, this time trying Spanish, “they want to kill me. All because I tried to attack their monster!” He forced a little laugh, then cleared his throat and became sober-faced. She had displayed no amusement.

He stayed seated on the floor but moved nearer to her, trying hard to maintain an inferior position.

“Listen,
por favor
, I know this is all
loco
to you, but I must ask you to trust me. Please don’t scream. I need your help. You mustn’t betray me. It’s—it’s important to me. It means my life. Maybe the lives of your neighbors....”

He thought about the words, deeply regretted the possibility of bringing reprisal on the city for his actions. Maybe even endangering this girl, who looked so damnably vulnerable. “Will you give me your word that you won’t betray me, that you’ll say nothing to anyone?”

She moved back against the wall, dropped the hand from her throat, and now seemed more fascinated by him than frightened. Her large, liquid eyes examined him minutely. But still she refused to answer.

Gonji’s lips trembled with anxiety and frustration as he said, “All right, no promises. But for tonight at least,
neh
? You won’t raise an alarm tonight? I’ll be back
mañana
—tomorrow I’ll return for my things behind your shed,
sí
?”

A shout issued from the lane. The searching mercenaries sped off in answer to it.

Gonji opened the shutters again, replaced the sallet on his head. “I’m going now,” he said, fastening the helm. “Thanks for your help.”

He gave her a little wave, then, espying the tiny cross that hung around her neck, he made a sign of the cross in the Christian fashion, feeling a bit more confident in her for having done so. Then he was gone into the night.

* * * *

Moments later the girl’s mother burst into the room carrying a taper, to find her gazing out the window. Harsh voices and the clamor of men and mounts could be heard nearby. A crisp, cool breeze lilted the girl’s long hair, extinguishing the candle.

“Merciful heavens—Helena!” She rushed in and took Helena’s arm, gently guided her from the window, closed the shutters. A strange look had settled on Helena’s face, a wistful smile softly creasing her lips. Her mother signed to her:

Daughter, what is happening? I thought I heard voices.

Mother, a man came to my room. A very special man.

Her mother’s brow furrowed.

A man? Did he harm you?

No, no, Mother. He was very kind. He came like—like a guardian angel in the night.

Helena climbed onto her cot, still smiling gently, and was asleep seconds later. Her mother could only gaze at the shutters. She locked them, kissed her daughter lovingly on the forehead, and sat on the stool with a puzzled frown.

She knew no sign for the things that troubled her now.