Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves (40 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“What if they just make those rock bridges disappear?” Armand Perigor posed to Gonji.
“Poof—
no more Wunderknechten.”

They all peered down to the now water-filled curtains of age-old rock whose narrow tops served as the only land-bridges to the surrounding territory.

“And no more refugees,” Father Sebastio reminded, for hundreds of them now crowded about the upper reaches of the old fortress’ central keep, or stood in a long line along the banquettes behind the debris-strewn southern ramparts.

Gonji mopped his brow with the back of an arm, his
katana
still in his fist. He undid his topknot, shook out his hair, and scratched the nervous itch at its roots. Retying it hastily, he listened to their anxious counsel.

“They might—they might just knock down this whole crag we stand on,” another man proposed.

“Oh, I think not,” the priest countered. “If they had such power, they’d have done that already.”

“Look,” Monetto cried out, pointing with an axe. “Still more at the eastern bailey break.”

The dead had again quit their watery grave.

They were like a plague of humanoid slugs. Ghastly and bloated, relentlessly groping for human flesh to rend. Hard to dislodge in their sorcerous charge to pursue the living. Impossible to kill in their frustrating lifelessness. And apparently endless in number.

They crawled up out of the murky waters that swirled about the castle and slithered up the walls and gates in a ponderous ascent, as if possessed of some hideous suctioning power. At first they were little more than a revolting nuisance, men atop the walls prying them from their eerie purchase with polearms and levering them back to splash down into the waters.

But two of them had squeezed through breaks in the walls, and, though their milky white orbs seemed sightless, they had been guided by some unerring sense to wreak mayhem among the refugees. One woman had been torn asunder by the surprising strength in one creature’s sodden thews and decomposing hands. And a man had been grabbed in another corpse’s squishing grip. Before he could be separated from the creature’s foul embrace, a pulpy hand had clamped his nose and mouth shut long enough to suffocate him with its foulness.

“Nagy—can’t you keep those things at bay?” Monetto yelled to the growling old ostler, fifty feet along the wall.

Nikolai Nagy prodded one of the three invaders back through the gap in the wall with a grunting lunge of his halberd. It tumbled down the roof of an outwork and knifed headfirst back into the churning waters.

“God damn it anyway, Monetto! I’m doin’ what I can!” Nagy tore off his helm and threw it in Aldo’s direction, then joined his defenders against the other two forms that slid into the ward on their bellies, their flesh almost gelatinous as they conformed to every surface like evilly imbued sponges.

“Well, hold them in check,” Gonji shouted to him. He turned his attention to his leaders again.
“All-recht,
here’s what we do…”

A squad was sent through the miller’s gate, pushing a string of heavy, unhitched wagons, to test the safety of the southern rock bridge. Though sodden and crumbling from the eroding action of the deluge, the bridge seemed stable enough. An orderly evacuation of non-combatants, as well as those who chose not to remain and fight the siege force, ensued under the leadership of Jacques Moreau. The evacuation proceeded without incident, after good-byes and well-wishes were exchanged. The refugees were led across the rock curtains that were the only roads from the fortress and into the surrounding Alpine passes, to await the outcome of the battle for Burgundy.

The defenders dug in and waited apprehensively, hatching and discarding numerous battle plans before at last choosing the tactics proposed by Le Corbeau.

For the nonce, they waited.

By the second day after the evacuation, the snow from the freakish, other-worldly storm the Farouche had summoned was well on its way to melting.

“So much for their big storm,” Perigor noted smugly.

“Hai,”
Gonji agreed, watching the snowmelt drain into the waters of the chasm below the rock bridges, finally deciding that The Crow had been right: The water was receding in the gorge, draining off slowly through an unseen fissure, likely to swell the banks of the Saone to unprecedented flood levels. Eventually all thoughts of escape via water were precluded, as the incredible new lake visibly subsided. And the unstable rock bridges, like the spokes of a wheel with the Frankish castle at their hub, remained vastly important to those whose duty would keep them at that crumbling citadel.

The next night, the Farouche siege force’s vanguard, a brute army of Terran mercenaries and monsters from alien spheres, reached the forested slopes beyond the rock bridges and at a much lower elevation, as the bridges gradually sloped downward. It was suggested that there was some advantage to fighting an army that proceeded uphill.

No one derived much comfort in the notion, as Gonji’s company watched and speculated as to the nature of their entrenching enemies, judging by chilling sounds and distant glimpses alone.

“Any volunteers for reconnaissance?” the samurai asked archly.

“Hell, I’ll go,” a young warrior said quietly, swallowing back his fear of the crashing sounds in the pine shroud.

“I was joking,” Gonji responded. “No one goes out there until they show themselves. We can’t afford foolish losses. We don’t even know what awaits us.”

“You’re getting soft,” Aldo Monetto taunted gently.

Gonji waxed serious. “We’re fighting sorcerers, my friend. Anyway, there comes a time when you’re struck by the fact that you’ve survived so much precipitous action that—that there must be a reason for your karma. And your continued survival. So you start slowing down and planning things a little better. I’m just learning that.”

“You mean you get less valiant?”

“Iye
—you get more cunning. Look—”

They all strained to see and hear through the cloud-darkened night and yawning distance. Some sort of frenzied berserker action was taking place in the monstrous Farouche army’s forest camp.

“What the hell are they doing?” Monetto whispered in wonder.

No one cared to offer a response.

* * * *

The two heavily armed mounted columns under Gonji split to right and left once they had crossed the rock bridge and entered the plain of scree-rubble and tufted grass.

Some lumbering, some sprinting with terrifying speed, the eerie siege force on clawed foot and cloven hoof and monstrous hairy steed broke from the tree line in their grotesque array. Men, shaggy giants and beasts of foul origin shouted their mixed cries of blood-curdling battle-fury and appeals to alien gods of war as they rumbled toward Gonji’s rebel cavalry.

Gonji slapped on his sallet at the head of one mounted column. Monetto called out words of encouragement to the band he led at the other flank. They would madly attempt to pincer the outnumbering force on the plain, while Le Corbeau and Salguero trained the fortress’ guns and bows on the attackers who might make it to the gorge.

The angry muzzle of the cannon trained on the canyon rim. Muskets and bows, polearms and spear-points bristled the turrets and embrasures of the castle.

“Just make damn sure you don’t blast all the bridges, Corbeau,” Sgt. Orozco was heard to shout.

The Crow tilted a crooked grin his way. There could be no such assurance.

Out on the plain, Gonji sat grimly astride Nichiyoobi, watching the barbarian giants approach like hurtling thunder. Nichi stamped under him, eager to fight, to stomp and kick and bite. She was aggressive by nature, and she could feel her rider’s tension.

“Jesus—look at the size of those…
things,”
a man fretted, licking parched lips.

“Steady,” Gonji called back without looking. “This is for your families, for your homeland…For Simon Sardonis. And for our slaughtered sword-brothers of last winter. Archers—ready!”

Gonji himself stood at their head, unlimbering his mighty longbow and plucking a clothyard shaft with a vicious arrowhead from his quiver.

“Drop them in the fore, if you can—throw their line into chaos.”

He nocked, held Nichi firm, performed a powerful draw, and launched. Three hundred yards off, a red-maned monster steed was struck in the head, crashing into the mount next to it, both falling.

Whistling fusillades tore into the pounding foes, animals and giants crashing to earth; loping boar-men and goat-headed demon-fiends crushed under their allies’ hooves or taking armor-piercer arrows through breastplates and helms, flesh and bone. The center of the rolling attack was thrown into disarray, its momentum diffused.

At one-hundred yards, some drew muskets, praying for steady hands and unerring accuracy. They could fire each piece but once before the clash’s outcome would fall to their skills in close mounted combat. For that they held their pistols in check.

Monetto’s column fired first, followed by Gonji’s. The besieging horde was raked by the musket and archer fire, many creatures falling, their places quickly filled by still more beasts from alien spheres.

At a prearranged signal, the two columns of warriors swung near to each other to draw the enemy horde into a massed clump that drove toward the center of the enemy skirmish line like a living wedge. But when they were thus concentrated, just as steel was about to clash, the center of the rebel line broke and swept to the sides again, opening to allow the foremost giant flailers to pass through without a tilt. Scores of the mounted barbarians bolted past on heavy horse, slowing their charge in confusion, such that their fellows ran up their backs, thudding into each other and tumbling into an entangling chaos of bodies and buckling armor.

The Wunderknechten swept back from engagement again, turning to launch another lethal volley of bowshot at the bewildered beast-men on the enemy flanks, who replied with their short crossbows.

Then Gonji’s company charged, volleying again at the run in a wild, howling attack.

Shields sprang up; axe and sword and halberd were unleashed, as the fray was joined in a screaming din of exploding metal.

The invaders’ rafts were pulled wide around the armed clash, unbothered, as Gonji had ordered his men to leave the castle siege force to the capable attention of their entrenched fellows at the ruins.

Men and mounts, giant berserkers and snorting beasts went to ground in the first shattering, blood-spurting impact of clashing lines, bodies and armor exploding in a shock of mortal cacophony. The rebels skirted the giants’ lethal axes with shining eyes of fearful respect, when possible. They concentrated on the beasts afoot, especially the boar-men, who took a toll of Gonji’s troops’ sturdy destriers with their low-slashing techniques and fearlessness against horse charges.

Gonji’s twirling halberd alternately cut and pummeled the raging humanoid beasts as his weapon’s blurring figure-eight employed both its ends, in the time-honored
naginata
techniques of his homeland. The creatures kept their distance to see their fellows thus slashed and battered. And when any took to frontal attack on Nichi, she reared and flailed her hooves, bit and butted with her lowered head.

Aldo Monetto wound up quickly unhorsed, fighting on foot atop heaping, mangled corpses. His axe whirled over his head, hewing any assailant in its redoubtable path. He took a glancing blow that severed his shoulder coupling, his cuirass hanging half off.

Monetto ripped it free and flung it at a spearing ram-headed horror. He fell backward over a mammoth horse’s carcass—landed in a pool of swirling mud and horse blood—came up firing a pistol that downed an oncoming attacker.

He pulled his other primed pistol, screaming with bloodlust now, panned the area, saw the giant bearing down on Perigor’s unprotected back—

Monetto’s shot split the nosepiece of a huge battle helm, tore through an eye and out the side of the bearded giant’s head. He barely had time to draw a satisfied breath when he was forced to whirl, stagger back, reclaim his downed axe, and bind another spear shaft with a deft, upward stroke…

* * * *

Armand Perigor took a spear thrust in the side, roaring in pain and jerking his mount around to engage the lancing boar-man that had wounded him. He fixed on it in his maddening agony, heard it bray a blood-curdling note of challenge as he kicked his horse the short distance toward it.

But an unseen enemy downed his steed with an evil-edged blade thrust. The animal screamed and crashed to earth in its own gore, spilling Perigor, who cracked his head against something solid, losing his pot helmet. He lurched to his feet to engage another spearing monster. Sidestepping its lunge, Perigor skewered it through the belly with his rapier, pressing his bleeding side with the other arm.

Three boar-men surged toward him with short, tri-bladed swords that were poised for mayhem. Primitives, they were unskilled in fencing technique. The vicious blades they whirled had evidently been bestowed upon them—they smashed them downward like cudgels.

The beasts crowded too close as they rushed him, and the sweating Perigor engaged all three with his dancing blade as his left arm pressed his rent side. Darting in and out, grimacing and yelping in pain, he parried and riposted, again and again.

All three were lanced by the slim, snaking blade before the first had finished his fall.

But now three more came at him, seeing the imposing threat of this canny foe. Perigor drew a pistol in his left hand—his eyes grew bleary now—and shot the nearest through its fur-timmed breastplate. Cursing and hurling an insult at them, Perigor spent his flagging energy in a flashing, sparking swordplay that saw him drop the other two. They were no match for a skillful bladesman, but Perigor’s wound was draining him.

Again he was fallen upon. Now two wounded, boar-headed monstrosities were joined by a spear-hefting, satyr-like, blaring ram and a charging giant on foot.

Perigor sucked in a ragged breath, knowing he must try to flee. He grabbed at some tossing reins, tried to swing astride a bucking horse, but failed in his terrible pain.

Holding the saddle-bow for leverage, he lashed out violently with a booted foot and struck a boar-man in the snout, turning its charge. Next he weakly slashed his sword over the head of a ducking foe. Drawing back for another strike, he felt the new, searing pain in his back.

Perigor dropped his rapier, pulled a dirk from his belt, screamed in battle frenzy and hurled it toward the face of the hulking giant…just as the great broad-axe sheared the air over his head.

Armand Perigor saw, as much as he felt, the burst of white agony that flashed suddenly crimson, in his stricken vision, and then swallowed his consciousness in a shroud of darkness.

* * * *