Gonji: Red Blade from the East (38 page)

Then it happened: Michael tried a reckless kick that Ben-Draba blocked with a raised knee; but the block must have stung his ankle, for the commander was instantly livid with rage. Michael lost what little form he had shown as the brute tore into him with a furious series of punches, rocking his head to right and left.

Then a sharp
crack!
that tore groans from the citizens’ throats, and Michael slammed to the boards, his nose bleeding profusely. From the sound there was no doubt that it was broken.

Ben-Draba looked down at him, bobbed his head in satisfaction, and kicked him in the thigh. Indignant roars rang in the square.

“Next challenger!”

Gonji kneaded his sweating palms. The commander was a sadist—and a great fighter to boot. He was going to make these people suffer, and sooner or later someone was going to be dead.

Several men hustled up to carry Michael off. The councilman was conscious but hurting. Wilf started to say something but was drowned out by a salvo of cheers—Garth Gundersen was stalking up the stairs, cap in hand, growling at the field commander.

Judging by Wilf’s widening eyes, this was indeed an uncharacteristic display of anger from his father.

Above the hooting and applause Garth shouted, “Childbeater! You disgrace your whole army and your king with this brutality. You know nothing of how to win with dignity.” He threw down his cap and stripped off his jerkin.

His words had had their effect, as for the first time Ben-Draba looked emotionally involved with his opponent. He sized up the brawny smith, his eyes falling on the short but massive arms.

“Come on, then, fat man,” the commander taunted. “Let’s lock horns.”

Garth moved in, his form rusty but serviceable. They studied each other a scant moment. Ben-Draba landed two quick blows, using his height and reach advantage. Then he tried a kick that Garth blocked neatly, and the war was on.

The smith galvanized the crowd, wading in with a frenzied series of slashing punches, and Ben-Draba replied in kind, as they battered each other toe-to-toe for ten seconds of bone-crushing punishment.

Spectators howled for their champion. The hawkers briefly forgot lining their pockets and looked to the action on the rostrum.

Garth bore in like a grizzly bear, bleeding now into his beard. But for the first time Ben-Draba was seen to give ground, falling back to recover his form, shaking his head to clear his vision, his left eye gone red.

For an instant Garth dropped his hands as if to quit. Then the frustrations of the invaded city erupted in the people’s voices as they begged him on. He raised his fists and came on again. Ben-Draba set his face and doggedly closed with him, to hurrahs from the soldiers.

Garth caught a heavy blast to the belly, and the wind burst from his lungs. Sensing a quick kill, Ben-Draba bounced two great roundhouse punches off the smith’s head. Garth rocked back but kept his feet. As Ben-Draba moved in swinging, Garth ducked under an arcing right hand and caught him around the middle in a powerful bear hug, squeezing his mighty locked hands against the spine as he butted his head into the commander’s chin. Ben-Draba’s teeth clacked sharply. Garth let loose and looped a short, stiff blow to Ben-Draba’s firm belly. The commander retaliated with a blast to Garth’s head that sent sweat flying ten rows deep into the audience.

Superior conditioning was beginning to tell. Garth reeled as they exchanged blows in the center of the platform. Mercenaries howled with glee as Garth’s eyes glazed over.

Crack!
A short, straight blow to the jaw—Garth was out cold on the rostrum.

Wilf was on the boards like a shot, others following on his heels. Ben-Draba came over and leered down at the young smith, who met his sadistic gaze and held it fast. The crowd fell to hushed murmuring. Many were now moving off, unimpeded by the soldiers. Howls of laughter hung in the swelter, sat heavy on the shoulders of the milling townsmen.

As they carried off Garth, Wilf supporting his head and shoulders, Ben-Draba called after them: “Take your fat papa to his dotage, boy.”

Wilf sought out Gonji, eyes welling with angry tears. When he found him, he gaped for an instant, then continued to help carry his father down the steps.

Gonji stood shirtless, swords and tunic in one hand, bowing curtly to Wilf. He had stayed out of it too long, and a friend had taken blows intended for him. He counted heads among the soldiers. Maybe twenty. Too many, and no escape route, even if Tora were at hand. He’d have to see it through here, come what may. Karma.

Ben-Draba moved to the far side of the platform, panting, sweat- and blood-streaked, eyes shining.

“Anyone else?”

Gonji bounded lightly up onto the rostrum, laid his swords atop the borrowed tunic at the edge of the boards. The crowd, which had begun to disperse in funereal dismay after the sound defeat of their mighty smith, now halted and regarded the stage again.

All eyes were on Gonji as he strode toward Ben-Draba with a smile.

He bowed to the commander, then to the audience. Ben-Draba’s brow furrowed. He was clearly weary from his battle royal with Garth. His men spewed catcalls and racial slurs at the samurai.

Gonji paid them no heed. He faced the commander alone as he spoke.

“Well done, sir. You’re the best fighter I’ve seen in these territories. I’m neither a bandit nor a citizen here, and I bear you no grievance. But unarmed combat is a special interest of mine, so I’d be honored to say that I once shared the palaestra with so great a champion.”

He bowed low to Ben-Draba, and when he did he caught a glimpse of the swaggering Julian, clopping around the perimeter of the crowd on his black steed, eyeing him suspiciously. Very bad. He kept the position of his swords fixed in the back of his mind.

Ben-Draba looked him up and down scornfully, noting Gonji’s body scars, the small white patch on the recent shoulder wound.

“Well, they’re not getting any bigger,” he said to his lounging men, evoking laughter. He sidled around Gonji, smirking as if he were appraising trapped game that would soon be spitted. He massaged a shoulder.

Gonji’s eyes focused on a point straight ahead. “I believe the commander is wrong about these people,” he said. “They’re just sheep. And why punish sheep for the work of lions? Did not your own men tell me this very afternoon that the great flying dragon was wounded last night by bowmen?”

There were gasps from the throng at this loud disclosure, as he had hoped there would be. From somewhere deep in his sense of warrior’s compassion had come the wish to embolden them against the invaders.
Your final gesture of reparation, Gonji-san....

“That’s what you heard, eh, barbarian?” Ben-Draba stopped in front of him.

“
Sí
, and the people speak of a mysterious being, a man-beast called the
Deathwind
—” He breathed the name with reverential awe. “—it is this very thing, they say, that likely attacked the wyvern and your men—”

There were wide-eyed head turns and whispers now among townsmen and soldiers alike.

Gonji shrugged. “But no matter—may we fight now, if it please you?” Outcries of assent greeted this last.

Ben-Draba frowned at the insolence and spat near Gonji’s feet. “I fight no inferiors.” With that he walked to the rear of the rostrum, the crowd grumbling with disappointment.

“Luba,” he called to the seated mercenaries, and a shaven-headed brigand leapt up on stage with a fierce hoot, tearing off and flinging back his cuirass and shirt. The grumbling voices became enthusiastic yelps.

Luba circled Gonji, glaring menacingly. Gonji bowed and shrank into a fighting stance. Shouts and war cries. The well-muscled soldier waded in with rotating fists. He cocked for a blow, then—
urk!
Gonji’s lightning side snap-kick chopped him to his knees, tongue protruding, eyes bulging in their sockets.

A whopping left roundhouse kick slapped Luba full on the side of his head, sprawling him on the rostrum.

The crowd shrieked its approval, starved for any victory over their tormentors.

Gonji leapt astride the bandit, readied a finishing punch—but it was all over. Before Ben-Draba could take a seat, Luba lolled in dreamland, a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

Bowing to his downed opponent and the roaring citizens, Gonji resumed the center of the stage, smiling at Ben-Draba. He could feel Julian’s hot gaze, spotted his swords out of the corner of his eye.

Gonji watched Ben-Draba’s jaw set with murderous intent as he finished wiping down and resumed the platform. He knew he was in for the fight of his life. He must stay out of the brute’s grasp, must hit and run. The shouts of encouragement from the spectators energized him, made him feel the popular favorite. He tried to feed off the electric atmosphere, knowing its power could be utilized by the man who knew how.

So intently did he concentrate on the grimly stalking, flexing fighter that Gonji never noticed the tossing steeds of the dragoons at stage right. He caught nothing of the strange rippling that parted the crowd like a shark knifing through water.

He saw Ben-Draba’s astonished gaze swing past him. Then he turned in alarm—tried to. He got halfway when he was seized in a steel-trap grip.

Gonji cocked his leg to lash back but froze when he looked into the visage of the man who held his arms, for here was a most extraordinary sight.

He was tall and gaunt, sunken-cheeked. His eyes were silver or leaden, narrow and angular—but not in the way Gonji’s oriental slant set him apart; this man’s eyes were...swept back, and too large for his face. His hair was golden, but black at the tips in spots, and so coarse that its considerable length bristled like porcupine quills at the back and sides, along his narrow, lobeless ears. And when Gonji peered closely at the sinewy gripping hands, he saw that the nails were blackened in their centers.

It was some satyr come to dabble in the affairs of men....

Tearing free from the grasp and backing away slowly, Gonji felt like an intruder, out of place in some great fated encounter. There was an eerie silence in the square, hundreds having fallen breathless at the strange man’s appearance. He hadn’t looked at Gonji during the time he had held him but rather stared unflinchingly at Ben-Draba with those enormous silvery eyes.

There was a quiet rustle of bows and pistols at the perimeter of the rostrum. A flicker of fear appeared in Ben-Draba’s severe eyes. But the commander cast a look back to his men, saw their hungry weapons, and drew upon a new reserve of courage.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“Who I am is inconsequential,” the stranger replied in a low, raspy voice. “I’ve come to square accounts.”

“Accounts? Another avenger?” Ben-Draba said through curled lips. “Take off that cloak.”

The stranger wore an austere brown traveler’s cloak. This he doffed at the commander’s order to reveal not the concealed weapons Ben-Draba had suspected but rather a slender, wiry frame that rippled with catlike sinew at the slightest movement. His suppleness was almost hypnotic.

Gonji backed off the platform, put on the tunic, and sashed his swords. The air around him seemed palpably thick with bloodlust. Someone was about to die.

Amid sibilant whispers the stranger sidled up to Ben-Draba open-handed, almost casually, but for the glaring pearl-gray eyes.

“Now, child-killer,” he breathed, “defend yourself and ease my guilt.”

Seized by rage, Ben-Draba surged ahead and snapped out with his punishing fists. But to the gasping spectators he appeared to be lashing out at smoke. The stranger slipped his blows with effortless grace and countered with blurring speed. A fusillade of blows rocked the commander’s body like cannon-shot sailcloth. Ben-Draba fell back, back toward the edge of the platform, fending off the furious attack with flagging strength. An arcing punch, fast as the strike of an adder, sent a rain of blood across the rostrum, from the commander’s crushed lips.

Gonji watched pistols being drawn, loaded, spannered. Blades whizzed out of scabbards, and dragoons unshouldered their arbalests. The samurai cast about in frustration for something to do to help the stranger—he’d be a dead man in seconds.

“Don’t shoot—you’ll hit the commander!” Julian shouted. “Stop the fight—now!” He charged his mount through the crowd, which began to disperse at the mention of shooting. “Arrest that man!”

The mercenaries who were nearest the two fighters, anxiously looked from one to the other, fearing to approach the rostrum. A few Llorm infantrymen pushed in from behind.

Ben-Draba was dazed, his hands down, weaving on his feet. The stranger had stopped pummeling him and now closed fast, clutching him in a bear hug from behind, turning him to and fro, giving the circling pistolmen pause. It became a temporary standoff, one the satyr-like fighter could only lose in the end.

The stranger whispered something in Ben-Draba’s ear, and the field commander’s eyes bulged. He tried to scream from a blood-smeared mouth. The other’s snaking arm choked off his wind. Squeezed.

“Get him!”

Soldiers charged the rostrum. There was a hollow snapping sound—and the stranger hurled the limp field commander into their midst!