Gonji: Red Blade from the East (6 page)

He looked just about as fit for inspection as any unshaven, tangle-maned samurai with a threadbare kimono
could
look.

Navárez didn’t look up from the task of wrapping his injured leg as Gonji stepped near and bowed formally.

“I’m Gonji Sabatake, and you—”

At that moment two riders galloped toward them out of the pine-shroud. Gonji seized the Sagami’s hilt but relaxed almost immediately. The lead rider yanked to a halt and grinned a toothy grin at Navárez, his large dark eyes flicking from the Spaniard to Gonji. He held a horse in tether.

Spanish pirates, Gonji thought.

A glance at these two plumbed up vivid memories of the seafaring rogues of the Spanish Main. Both Navárez and the first rider were bedecked in the florid tastelessness of their decadent profession, from their lurid bandannas and opulent gold earrings down to their magnificent leather riding boots—wrenched, no doubt, from the refined feet of murdered gentry.

But what in the name of the Seven Devils were they doing so far from home? so deeply landlocked? and pitted against Holy Mother Church, with whom, in these territories, they’d best be sided if they ran afoul of Magyars or Turks?

The second rider pulled even with the flashy Spaniard and introduced further confusion. For here was a tall gaunt Aryan bandit whose ragged-brimmed slouch hat could scarcely conceal his patently fair features; the classic portrait of a northern backroad highwayman, his presence was as incongruous among these freebooters as a wolf would be among sharks.

Looking to Navárez, Gonji noted the dark shadow that etched the Spaniard’s features. Fine needles of tension prickled the air, and the second pirate’s grin faded. Without a greeting he wheeled abruptly and gestured to the north, and the two new arrivals galloped off the way they had come, leaving the spare horse behind.

“Julio-o-o-ooo!”

Navárez’ cry went unanswered, an ugly grimace settling over his battle-scarred face. His fist clawed at his wide leather belt, found empty air where once had hung his cutlass, lost in the valley conflict. He nodded gravely, a nod that marked some inner resolve.

Gonji cleared his throat, then spoke again.

“I say,
amigo
, I’m Gonji Sabatake, and I think we—”

“Agua,”
the Spaniard grunted. “I see you have some.” He snatched the water skin from Gonji’s saddle and tipped his head back to slosh the liquid down his throat. Then he freely laved his face until his chin dripped like the jaws of a surfacing sea beast.

“Agua,”
Gonji muttered low. “Help yourself.” He eased the water skin away from him and, before taking a pull, said, “You can thank me later.”

The Spaniard stared at him a moment and at last broke into a wide grin, chuckled softly, and then barked out a long throaty laugh that lasted until the burning pain of the leg wound again caught up with him. He massaged the area around the gunshot. Then he motioned to Gonji to board Tora and himself crawled onto the other horse, a groan accompanying the effort.

They looked back down the hill to where disembodied shouts and hoofbeats and sporadic gunfire could be heard in the distance.

“Vamos,”
Navárez said. “Let’s go.”

They picked their way along the savage trail, which was little more than a rain-rutted footpath. The piquant scent of pine oozed in the late afternoon swelter. Stinging insects, maddened by the humidity, launched in droves after the great loping human-animal clumps that pounded through their sanctuary.

As they rode deeper into the wood, the trail took an upward drift. Watershed country. A merciful damp-cool breeze chilled them under sweat-drenched clothing. Here and there a renegade golden sunbeam broke through the entwining pine-shield above and strobed them with dull heat. Now and again they ambled uncertainly over lumpy root fingers and tangled scrub, or slipped on treacherous smooth-worn stone iced with gray-green furry moss.

They rode in silence for a long while. Then the Spaniard dropped his steed into step with Gonji’s.

“Francisco Navárez,” he growled, as if to say the name should have been obvious all along. “Where are you riding,
bárbaro
?”

Gonji rankled at the insult. Few things needled him as much as being called a barbarian on this foul continent. He considered a particularly choice Spanish barb.

“I’m told that—”

“I know, I know—you’re Gon-shee Sa-ba-ta-keee,
corregir
? Right?” Navárez cut in.

“That’s right,
amigo
, now tell me—what is so fine a buccaneer as yourself doing so far from the ripe shipping lanes? And what does one do around here to set a full papist army yapping at his behind? Especially so deep into territory that must be Magyar or Turk?”

“In this army,” the Spaniard bellowed, “one finds himself in many unusual circumstances. Most of which requiring a certain skill with the sword. You
have
such a skill perhaps?”

Gonji smiled slightly, his gaze fixed on the trail ahead. He said nothing.

“Ah, but of course you do,
sí
. I did not imagine, did I, all those bodies dropping on the hillside, like lightning striking, no? Snick-snick—” He made a few quick passes in the air with an imaginary sword. “
Bravo, bárbaro, muy bueno!
Very good! No pistols, no body armor, and yet you jump right into a fight. I like that.”

“I don’t like guns. Not a very honorable weapon, eh?” Gonji said with a shrug. “Armor? Sometimes. I just don’t happen to own any right now. Anyway, the trick is not to get hit,
neh
?”

Navárez laughed heartily. “You are, no doubt, seeking to employ your skill?”

“That depends.”

“Don’t let the lack of pretty uniforms mislead you,
bárbaro.
We’re a unified army, whatever we look like. His chest swelled with a breath befitting a heraldic pronouncement. “I am Captain of the 3rd Free Company, Royalist Force of the Isle of Akryllon.”

Gonji blinked.

Captain?
he thought.
Royalist Force?
Now what the hell is this mangy dog trying to hand me? Great. Another lousy renegade bunch formed in uprising, with a title for every enlistee down to the third hind flea of the last straggling nag.

Gonji’s spirit sagged, and he sighed resignedly. “Who did you say your king was? Not a Magyar, was he?”

“Did I say? I think not.” A calculated pause. “We fight for King Klann the Invincible, son of the deposed king of Akryllon. We fight a wandering war, adding troops as we can, plundering for our survival. Sometimes at sea, sometimes on land. One day we’ll help him take back what is his, and we’ll all be richly rewarded. Until then, he takes good care of us.” He paused, and a distant, wistful look crossed his face. “He saved me from the belly of a shipful of condemned men. At sea I’m his third-in-command.”

Gonji strained to recall something. A legend, a fireside tale. Something.

“When we find Akryllon, we’ll tear it from the devils who hold it. Then—”

“When you
find
it?”

“Sí,”
Navárez replied, “this isle is never in the same place twice—it’s enchanted. Lorded over by sorcerers.”

Gonji waxed grim as the trail took a gently up-winding eastern hitch and a capricious breeze began to buffet them. Evening was drawing near. Gone was his earlier mirth as the samurai tried in vain to remember where he had heard such a story before. A wandering king, a sorcerous island....

Of course, Gonji wasn’t fool enough to embrace any such romantic tale without proof. Of sorceries, those which could be proven, there were few. Horrors, yes. Things that assailed the unsuspecting, shapes that haunted sleep—these existed aplenty. Experience attested to that. But magick was dying. As people clustered together in ever larger cities, more of that which was native to the spirit was lost, spurned, despised. And magick had become a lost art, something whispered about, disbelieved.

And for that reason, all the more deadly where it was to be found. And something about this....

“What did your king do to upset the Austrian priests enough to declare war on you?”

“We...sacked their treasury. In Bratislava.”

Gonji whistled thinly. “That would make them mad enough,” he said archly. “So what’s King Klann’s next move?”

Gonji saw Navárez’ neck muscles tighten, as if he were struggling with something.

“We’re going up there,” he said at length, gesturing to the jagged, snow-capped mountains to the east. “The Transylvanian Alps. To winter in, build our numbers. Prepare for a return to the sea.”

Gonji pondered this. It was late summer. Absurd to think of wintering in at such an early date. And in those mountains? Lunacy. He must be lying. Unless, that is, there was something Klann wanted up there.

Vedun?

“By all accounts,” Gonji said, reasoning out loud, “those mountains mark the pivotal point of territory contested by three great powers. Now why would a foreign king with a small army want to place himself right in the middle of—”

“Hey,
bárbaro
,” Navárez knifed in with a tone suggesting caution in such idle speculations, “if the King says we go up there to
die
, then that’s what we
do
.”

Most unusual, Gonji thought. A sense of duty, commitment, to something other than gold alone?

Gonji was intrigued. Moreover, he was probing a raw nerve—a favorite sport. He needled it anew.

“No amount of gold will send mercenaries happily to their deaths. How does Klann keep these free companions faithful? What power does he use?”

“There are powers beyond simple wealth,
bárbaro
, that men can draw strength from,” he answered cryptically.

Gonji turned this over briefly, filed it away.

They rode on without speaking for a time. Birds flitted among the towering pine peaks, and an occasional hare or deer would bound off, alarmed at their passing. And once, beneath a single morose willow that seemed to be on trial before an implacable pine jury, Gonji saw something black and serpentine slither by in the thatched weeds.

Navárez pointed at the several swords Gonji carried.

“What are you, a blade merchant?”

“Blade merchant,” Gonji echoed. “Has a nice ring to it. No, I just favor the style blade I grew up with, so I keep a spare. The ornamental sword was a present from my mother, and I suppose I’d best hide it away before it gets...lost,
neh
?”

Navárez sneered. Gonji couldn’t help staring. When the Spaniard sneered, his drooping mustache, with the frazzled black tuft under his nose, looked like a tarantula in relief.

Just then a peal of thunder boomed over the mountains, heralding a spidery branching of heat lightning that fractured the sky overhead and blazed for an oddly long time. It seemed as if the purpling sky might crack and fall in shards, and the jagged outline, to Gonji’s imagination, described an evil, hungry shape. An ominous thunderhead had mounted the northern peaks.

A rider pounded toward them on a midnight mare with white markings. As he pulled up and greeted Navárez with a harsh laugh, Gonji noted that the mare looked no more like a horse than did her master.

Still another luridly appointed Spaniard—and by now Tora must be feeling quite at home, for Gonji had acquired the steed in Spain—whose salient feature was the most obtrusive set of splay teeth the samurai had ever seen. The result was a perpetual grin, counterpointed by the gaping hole left by a missing bicuspid, that set one’s tongue running over his own teeth in comparison. The rest of the features on the long, shovel-jawed face seemed present as only a weak excuse to call it a face at all. One eye stayed permanently half closed and unblinking, the result of an angry scar, and the man rode with a spotted bandanna clenched in one hand with which he repeatedly mopped his sweating brow.

“This is
Señor
Sabatake, Esteban,” Navárez said. There was casual sarcasm in his voice, the kind a hard-nosed leader adopts when among his men. “He hauled my stern out of trouble back there. He has a good sword arm that he may wish to employ with us, is that so,
bárbaro
?”

Esteban chuckled in a way Gonji didn’t like. But he said nothing, made them wait.

Navárez’ eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward in the saddle. “This army of King Klann, it rides under the protection of a
sorcerer—te entiendo
? Understand? Can you pledge your faith in his power and your life to the king’s cause?”

Gonji cocked an eyebrow, momentarily speechless. His thoughts raced, a jumble of variables in an equation that made no sense.

“
Black
sorcery?”