Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves (18 page)

“You don’t even know where they are, Wilf!” she exclaimed. “You don’t know whether they’re still
alive.
Be reasonable. The last time they were among us we lost our homes—”

“That’s not fair, Lydia,” Monetto said.
“You
think about what you’re saying now. You can’t keep blaming Vedun for Michael’s afflictions.”

“We’ve been over all this a thousand times,” Anton said, gesturing placatingly. “Vedun was no one’s fault—agreed? We’d all have been dead instead of…legendary heroes, if Gonji hadn’t taken such interest in people who distrusted him. He fashioned a passable militia in a fortnight.”

“I’m sorry,” Lydia replied on a gentle, breathy note. “I’m just afraid of all this fighting business starting again. Look how many we lost before. The broken families we’ve all wept with. It’s just—I can’t help thinking that if Gonji wanted our help, he’d have sought it long ago. Himself. Not by sending some…” Her words trailed off, her scorn for Claire evident.

“Gonji may not be involved in this at all,” Salguero reminded. “That’s Simon’s woman.”

“Oh, you know they’ll be together,” she said glumly.

“They may both be dead by now,” Salguero offered for grim consideration.

“I can’t believe that,” Wilf breathed. “If Gonji were dead, we’d have heard. Wasn’t it rumored that they returned from Africa bearing some terrible knowledge? That they’re mixed up with some secret of the old Templars?”

“They’re rumored to be
everywhere,
for Christ’s sake.” Nagy scratched his matted hair and winced at an ache in his arthritic knee as he shifted position.

“We’re not long for this place, you all know,” Wilf said. “Dear old Emperor Rudolf keeps raising the taxes on the province—some say because of us. Anyway, the Neriahs want us out. They blame it on us. This place hasn’t been exactly a paradise. Look what it’s done to Michael—”

Some of them averted their eyes from Lydia. Michael was their council Elder, assuming the job for which he’d been groomed in Vedun before the death of the community’s venerable founder, Flavio. But Michael had taken ill in Noricum. Some blamed old wounds; others, the evil spirits of the territory.

“Does he still see that old wizard?” Anton asked.

Lydia nodded, looking defeated. “I don’t know what to do. He plies my husband with roots and herbs and God knows what foul spells. I can’t get him to church. That old hermit has more influence on him than I do anymore.”

“I may as well speak plainly, Lydia,” Wilf said. “This attachment of Michael’s to that old wizard—it’s bothered a lot of us more than we’ve ever told you. Something nasty afoot there. I don’t trust that old shaman, and it’s as if hostility toward us has grown since he came. I’m damned sick of it. We’re oppressed on every side, getting nowhere, and all we do is sit here, entertaining pilgrims who come to us because we’re supposed to be the great heroes who started the Wunderknechten—
well, let’s be those heroes!”

A few
ayes
were served up in response. Lydia shook her head.

“What are you going to do, pack up everyone tonight and haul them off on this mad quest?” she asked. “Your children?”

“Nein,”
Wilf responded calmly. “Of course not. Just a hand-picked fighting force from the old militia.”

“Count me in,” Monetto said, leaping down from the shelf. “God knows how bored I am here, and the thought of fighting beside Gonji and Simon again is…well, better fortune than I’d ever hoped to see.”

“I’m afraid the years—and a few too many wounds—have dulled my enthusiasm for questing,” Anton related.

“Your leadership is needed here,” Salguero told him. “I go along, of course. And the warriors of my old company. Last I heard, there were other good fighting men still under Gonji’s command.”

“I got nothing better to do,” Nick Nagy advanced. “My old lady’ll toss me right out on my ass if she hears this came off and I didn’t go along.”

“Gentils,” Wilf said, raising a cup in toast.

“Oh, Wilfred, this is ridiculous,” Lydia grumbled. “Your wife is
pregnant.
Do you think she’ll let you do this crazy thing?”

Wilf swallowed. The thought of not being with Genya when her time came stung him. He hadn’t considered it before in the flush of the night’s events. “That’s…the way it will have to be. The decision must be mine.”

“Where will you men ride?” Lydia pressed. “You don’t have any idea—”

“But we do, senora,” Salguero said. “Simon swore to return to his lady love.”

“His lady love,” she repeated scornfully. “Why do you think you owe this to Gonji, Wilfred? He never even bothered to see what’s become of us these past few years.” There was a curious trace of bitterness in her tone. Though she doubted the others knew, her cheeks reddened a bit when she recalled Gonji’s attraction to her in Vedun. He had admired her from an honorable distance, respecting both her marriage to Michael and the warding shield of propriety she staunchly projected. And yet, since that last cataclysmic night in Vedun, she’d regretted stopping Gonji from declaring his love in the face of imminent death.

And she was never sure whether that had indeed been his intent. Yet she was curious, in spite of herself.

“I do owe him, Lydia,” Wilf replied in a determined voice. “Genya and I would never have known a life together—I would never have
had
this child—but for Gonji. That’s all I intend to say. Except this—once the company is chosen,
no one,
not even Michael, must know where we go. Agreed? I’ll have to explain the quest to the Neriahs. There’s no choice there. Gonji and Simon’s mystique, along with their father, Jacob’s, friendship for the pair of them, might help keep them off the community’s back till we return.”

“If
you
return.”

“Ja,
perhaps. But we’re going to do this the way Gonji would do it. Secretly. No chance of compromise. He used to say that for the lips of every friend there are ears on a thousand enemies. No one will know what we’re about except those who absolutely must.”

Lydia sighed resignedly.

“Sonofabitch,” Monetto muttered,
chunkering
another keen axe-head into the wooden post. “I wish Karl were here to join us…”

One by one, their heads lowered respectfully in memory of Aldo’s friend, Karl Gerhard, a magnificent archer who had fallen in Vedun.

* * * *

Beads of sweat laced the air, spattering the floor of the rearranged smithshop as Wilf pushed himself through the Katori
ryu kata
for the seventh time. Spine-cleaver began to exert its mystical influence over him as he became immersed in his practice. Deadly earnest informed every stroke.

Wilf had hefted the
katana
—Gonji’s spare killing sword, bestowed on Wilf during the Vedun militia training—almost daily during the past few years. He would often reflect on the costly victory over Klann the Invincible and his evil sorcerer Mord. He had replayed his part in the six-man siege of Castle Lenska, and the reunion with Genya, with every practice maneuver.

But there was a renewed intensity to his training now. Wilf worked assiduously at the patterned strokes Gonji had taught, conjuring speed and swiftness of foot in the cleared space. Precision. Strength. Concentration.
Mushin no shin
—the “mind of no mind” Zen quality of banishing all conscious thought, all technical planning, all external distraction.

He did not notice that dawn had replaced the night; nor did he take note of Genya, who had sat watching him for nearly an hour, grimly aware of the meaning of the
hachi-maki—
the samurai’s “headband of resolution”—tied about his forehead.

Exhausted, Wilf finally bowed his head to touch the forte of the glimmering blade and ceased his practice.

“So you’re going, then,” Genya said matter-of-factly, surprising him.

Wilf regulated his breathing before answering. “I have to, Genya. You know that.”

“Not enough excitement around here these days, I suppose.” She looked deeply hurt.

He sat beside her and explained the warriors’ intentions, the need for secrecy.

“I see,” she said coldly, breathing deeply and forming her hands around the distended bulk of the child she bore. “So you’re going to be off for no one knows how long in some place you’re not even sure of. All alone with that French woman.” She said it as if pronouncing the name of something distasteful.

“Genya—”

“In her purity and innocence she fell in love with a
werewolf.
Can you truly believe such a thing, Wilfred?”

“I do,” he said defiantly, “and for God’s sake, I’m not going to be alone with her. We’re going to escort her home and then see—”

“Can you imagine any sane woman loving that
thing
we dragged out of the rubble of Castle Lenska?”

“How can you say that? You’re talking about Simon Sardonis, milady. Without him and the samurai we’d both be food for the worms long since.”

“She looked pretty desirable, though, didn’t she?” Genya pressed, hot tears welling in her dark eyes. “Enough to make men believe any story she concocted.”

“This is a lot of horseshit, Genya. I can’t think of any woman more dangerous to cast an eye at than Simon Sardonis’.”

“Then you did find her attractive?”

“I didn’t notice. Can we drop this?”

“She found you attractive,” Genya minced. “In fact, you were the only man she looked at the whole time—”

“We’re going to see that she’s safely reunited with Simon,” Wilf said with rising anger. “Do you understand me? The way he helped me to get back to you.”

“Simon was in Africa, Hernando said. With Gonji. Who can say where they are now?”

“Ja,
well, others have heard that they made it back. Simon promised Claire that he’d return to help her people, and you know how he and Gonji are about duty. I intend to be there to help them.”

“While I stay here alone and try to explain to our child why it has no father. What about
your
duty, Wilfred?”

He sighed. “Genya…I’ll be back. I promise. You know I have to go.” He took her by the hands, drew her close, and gazed deeply into her moist, accusing eyes. “I’ve never felt as useful, as fulfilled, in my life as when we drove agents of evil before us in Vedun, when we could reach out and grab them by the throat, slash them to pieces. We were accomplishing something. How many men are ever privileged to know that they risk their lives for
something?
Something they can point to with pride. That won’t be forgotten? Living an unfulfilling life is a terrible thing. We’re biding our time here in Austria. Doing nothing. Not a damned thing. We’ve had only trouble since we settled. We can
feel
that we’re opposed by faceless enemies who’d like nothing better than to crush the survivors of the famous Vedun campaign. But we don’t know what to do about it.”

“So you go off to fight in
France?”

“It’s a start.”

Genya paused before speaking. “You’re not happy married to me, are you, Wilf?”

“You’re not listening to me,” he replied with a frustrated head toss. “I don’t express myself well in these things, but
you
know what I mean, how I feel. I’m happy with you, but I’m not happy as a smith. I hate this place. We’re like ducks on a pond, ringed in by hunters. Maybe rejoining Gonji will start something. I’ve got to have meaningful duty, Genya. Just like him. I could have been very happy as a samurai. Or even a goddamn dragoon…”

She made a throaty, scoffing sound. “You never used to think about these things when we were first married,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder.

“Ever since
Vedun
I’ve thought about these things. Ever since my father died at—”

“It’s because I’m so fat, isn’t it?”

He held her at arm’s length. “If this were our wedding night, I’d probably still be leaving in the morning on this quest.”

It had been the wrong thing to say. Genya’s jaw clenched tightly, and she stalked off to the living quarters at the rear of the shop.

Wilf spent a few regretful moments gathering his thoughts and settling himself. Then he moved to the chest where he stored his weapons and armament. He sheathed Spine-cleaver, then laid it out along with his pistols, cuirass and buff-coat, pauldrons and vambraces, short sword, and Zischagge helmet.

He slowly unfurled the banner he had kept since Vedun. It had been fashioned by the militia as a rallying ensign. White field; Rorka crest in sinister; a crude
katana
in dexter. The motto: a Latin translation of the inscription on Gonji’s Sagami—
There is nothing that a man need fear / Who carries at his side this splendid blade.

* * * *

Two nights later the party of three French travelers—rumored, by way of secrecy, to be cousins of a minor official in Noricum—departed for home. Under cover of night, a company of eighteen adventurers, led by Wilfred Gundersen, left by twos and threes at staggered intervals to rendezvous with the French pilgrims at dawn near the western border of the province. They rode out with no fanfare, their armament under wraps until they were far from home. Even council leader Michael Benedetto was unaware of their destination, a festival in Vienna being the most common cover story.

As Wilf said his good-byes to Genya, she presented him with a linen shirt to wear beneath his buff-coat. On it she had embroidered a saying in Hungarian:
I
survived Vedun.
Wilf felt embarrassed, struck by a sense of silliness to it. But he donned it and thanked her warmly, remarking, “Maybe this will start a trend or something,
ja?”

“While I await the baby,” she said, “I’ll do another like it about France. And next time, Wilfred Gundersen,
I
go along. I can aim a pistol at least as well as you can.”

Wilf embraced her, aware of an apprehension about what might lie ahead. He felt his first serious pang of doubt about the journey, and as he made his way westward toward the Alps, he was grateful for the feel of the shirt with the oddly naive message.