Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves (6 page)

“Actually,” Orozco piped in, “we’re only heading up to Burgundy for want of any place to call home. The samurai has effectively cut us off from our own country. And
he’s
got more places to go than he knows how to deal with. So we cast the dice, and they came up Burgundy, you see.”

“The dice,” Gareau breathed. He pushed aside the cards and withdrew a pair of dice from a pocket. These he held out to the Spanish lancer in challenge. Orozco made a sour face, jingled his lightening purse, and nodded sullenly. The scuttle of devil’s bones punctuated the ongoing conversation.

“Let’s say that I…made a promise to a friend that requires my presence in Burgundy,” Gonji clarified.

Perigor and Corbeau exchanged a cautious glance. The Crow bowed his head. “Fair enough. So your needs are as follows: A small, skillful infiltration troop, not lacking in courage in the face of either common or uncommon modes of death. Interpreters to deal with the patois of the territories you’ll pass through. You’ll pardon my noting that your inability to cope with the dialects of the
langue d’oc
will assure that those of the
langue d’oil
will be incomprehensible. You need guidance through the safest wintry Cevennes passes. Mmm…it’s likely the safest aren’t the safest, if you follow my meaning, under the present circumstances. So experienced guidance is indispensable here. Winter lies heavy on the land up north; this will be an unusually rigorous one. Money—are you well supplied in that area?”

Gonji remained expressionless. He nodded curtly.

“Then it would be wise to purchase a selection of the latest explosive weapons, and perhaps—”

“Edged steel and a good longbow have always served me in the past,” Gonji said blankly, having grown weary of this contention through many such discussions over the years.

Corbeau flicked his head sidewise. “Best not to dwell too long in the same habitat—”

“Noble, very noble,” Perigor added, “and your skills with the same are well documented.
And
I think we’ve all found that there’s an operative metaphysical truth about the righteous arm and stout heart being the surest weapons against sorcery and its monstrosities. However, small matters like hordes of purely human foes are best swept aside by efficient expedients, am I not right about that?”

Gonji sighed and conceded, “I have taken to carrying a wheel-lock pistol or two, in these confusing times.”

Corbeau’s lips twisted pensively.

Perigor shook his head. “One tiny ingot of death per charge is not exactly the peak of efficiency.”

“You Frenchmen,” Buey broke in, leaning his back against the wall and folding his arms over his breastplate, “what stake do you have in all this? No one asked you to join.”

Gonji’s glance from Buey to the others was imbued with the same suspicious inquiry.

“Money,” Normand Gareau said on a chuckling breath as he shook the dice. “We’re not idiots, you know. Plenty of fat nobles still ply the roads unawares or ill prepared, to be sure. But you’re funding a campaign, and that means you’ll be backed by plenty of gold. And if it’s papal coin that funds your crusade, then blessed be that gold!”

Laughter rang out in the tight confines of the room.

“Blasphemy,” Buey growled, unamused.

“Ah, a simple jest,” Sergeant Orozco countered. “God knows it’s true His Holiness could launch a few crusades against evil kingdoms and not feel the difference for a few crumbs off his dinner loaf.”

The dice clattered on the floor. Orozco saw their tally, winced in response to Gareau’s feline grin, and moved to stoke the dying hearth fire.

“So sorry, but it’s not the pope’s money that backs us,” Gonji apprised them. “Our means…do have an end.”

“So it’s true, then?” Perigor probed. “The long-dormant Knights Templars have emerged and made you champion of their nebulous cause?”

Gonji eyed him steadily. “You’ve heard that, too, then?”

Perigor nodded, eyes flickering with either mirth or dawning fascination. “You have made your mark, Gonji-san. There are some who will go along just to fight at your side. Others, for gold, since you won’t lack for patrons while your infamy makes you fashionable. And there are always other reasons. Your friend, the big Spanish lancer here, has said that you are awaited in Rome, whenever you choose to bestow your presence on His Holiness. Pope Innocent’s personally bestowed indulgence could go a long way toward easing the conscience of a long-fallen Catholic.”

Corbeau
tsked
and slouched in his chair. “Indulgences are worthless and a vile effrontery to true Christian spirit, Armand,” he said wearily, his tone echoing some contention between them.

Buey made a scornful sound. “Mind your tongue, Huguenot.”

Brett Jarret half turned in his seat and clenched his fist, leaning an arm that was fully three gallons of sculpted sinew against the table’s edge. “I suppose you gilded your mansion in Heaven plenty while you led whimpering old women to the Inquisition’s pyres, Spaniard.”

“I spent no time in the Inquisition’s service,” Buey answered gruffly, his face reddening at the half-truth.

“Gentils,
bitte
,” Gonji
admonished, making a placating gesture.

The Crow swirled his wine and gazed into its golden depths. “There are those of us who undertake this venture for reasons less defensible still, in these troubled times,” he said softly. “Those who tire of the stench of evil which permeates French soil.”

“Hah!” Buey brayed. “Since when do Frenchmen fight for honor?”

Jarret’s stool screaked against the floorboards as he lurched to his feet.

“That’s it!” he bellowed. “You’ve been daring my hand all night. Let’s have at it!”

“Stop it,” Gonji commanded.

“Brett—”

“Oui,
by all means, Jarret,” Normand Gareau called out, pushing up and leaning forward from the far end of the table. “But do take your fight out into the street so that everyone can witness our camaraderie, eh?”

The two big men were both given pause by his words, glaring at each other but simmering.

“Forget it,” Buey said at length. Then added diffidently: “I’m sorry.” He glanced around the room, met each man’s eyes in turn. Heads bobbed in acceptance of his apology.

“Well,” Corbeau cast into the uncomfortable air, “that’s a step in the right direction. We’ve shown that we can indeed espouse the virtues of the Wunderknechten.”

“Now about the fighting company itself,” Armand Perigor began as the tension cleared. “Can you truly say you trust the mettle of these Italians who travel with you?”

“Iye
—no,” Gonji replied honestly, “I’ve yet to see them tested.”

“Well, we’ll find out soon enough. My men ought to be provoking them right about now in the inns and alleys.”

Gonji cocked an eyebrow. “You take a great deal of responsibility upon yourself—unsolicited.”

Perigor shrugged. “You have other things to think about. I’ll render a report in the morning. You know, of course, that a high percentage of those who will ride out of here on this fine crusade will be worthless camp followers—”

“Squires bent on earning knighthood,” Gareau added, “by merely riding in the shadow of their champion.” He offered a toast that was seconded only by Orozco.

“If I were you,” Corbeau advised, “I should not burden myself with any but the blooded—and
fanged,
I suppose, as well—on this venture.”

A spate of brittle chuckling followed the Crow’s remark.

“I’m afraid I can’t afford to be terribly selective in raising this company,” Gonji explained. “Those who ride with us are accountable for their own lives. My—my friend suggested that I’d need to bring an army on this quest. I promised him I would do so. It will be a lot easier to bring an invading force into French territory if that force is comprised largely of Frenchmen,
nicht wahr?”
The samurai sighed deeply and regarded them from under a lowering brow. “Lieutenant Noyes has pledged me a column of cavalry from his own garrison. I saw no choice but to accept. Apparently the Crown itself would not look too unfavorably upon a free company that would help bring this recalcitrant Burgundy into line.”

“Wonderful,” Perigor said wryly. “And if we succeed, I should imagine that I and my companions will be led back under guard for trial.”

“That will not happen as long as I am still able to command,” Gonji assured him, resting a hand on the hilt of the storied Sagami.

Perigor looked to Corbeau, who was shaking his head sternly. “An utterly abominable mess. A
corps perdu
—a Company of Lost Hope, riding headlong into damnation.”

“And you have other problems,” Perigor observed. “Corbeau?”

The Crow fixed a hard gaze on the samurai.

“You lead an incompetent, ill-trained, ill-equipped expedition—though I concede them a marker on the side of good intentions, for what it will be worth—against the Farouche Clan, the foulest, most feared name in France today. All hope of clandestine action is thoroughly compromised. Every field and furrow and mountain pass from here to Dijon whispers your purpose loudly enough to wake the slumbering gods of the Gauls. Clear my suspicious mind. Tell me that you have in this matter exceeded even the most incredible tale of your legendary oriental cunning. Tell us all that you have performed an act of legerdemain worthy of the greatest adepts. That you have orchestrated a masterful scheme of misdirection as to your true purpose.”

All eyes were on the samurai. Only the crackling hearth broke the expectant stillness.

Gonji’s gaze was unwavering. He spoke through scarcely parted lips.

“All is…for better or worse…as it seems.”

Corbeau drew back from the table, his countenance alight with amazement. Perigor began smoothing his eyebrows alternately with the sweating fingers of one hand. The rest of the warriors looked from one to the other, betraying their fleeting sensations of desperation in brightly flickering eyes.

“I don’t believe it,” Corbeau declared quietly.

“Giri,”
Gonji said flatly. “Duty. Commitment.”

Wine sloshed into empty goblets, a bit more urgently than earlier in the night.

“This friend of yours,” Perigor advanced gingerly, “is he not the one known as the Grejkill—the Beast with the Soul of a Man?
Le loup garou?
The werewolf?”

“Hai,”
Gonji agreed stiffly, as though sealing the doom of their nascent compact.

Perigor and his companions seemed to lean nearer, awed by what this association might bode. Even Jarret drew his short-legged
tabouret
closer to the table.

“Tell me,” the highwayman continued, “is he truly as terrible as they say? Given to
boutades—
sudden
fits of awful temper?”

“They say he becomes a giant—”

“That the wolf walks upright like a man—”

“He
is
a man,” Gonji stated evenly, “first and foremost. All must understand that who partake in this quest.”

Orozco and Buey took over for a time, eager to impress the Frenchmen with details of Simon’s horrible transformations, with baiting remarks concerning how they had fought at the Beast’s side—and against him, as fate would have it—on the Mediterranean and in the bizarre journey to the ruined fortress in the African desert that had led them to the discovery of worlds within worlds. The Frenchmen were only too eager to take the bait, to inquire after every facet of the quest for Arcadia.

Gonji drifted apart from the
esprit,
his own vision wandering into the darkened spaces in the corners of his soul.

“Eh?”

Corbeau repeated his query. “I say, he spoke nothing to you of the Farouche Clan?”

“The name was new to me when I heard it on these shores.”

“Very peculiar. By all accounts your friend the Grejkill hails from Burgundy.”

Gonji nodded. “Somewhere thereabouts.”

“Perhaps there is some compelling reason why the Beast is being drawn to his homeland. Some…instinct only he can understand. His own…
giri.
The Farouche Clan—even their very name is an implied threat. It means ‘fierce,’ you know. And they’re said to be dabblers in the black arts. And themselves…shape-shifters.”

Gonji blinked, overwhelmed by a welter of conflicting feelings, thoughts, intuitions. Simon had told him next to nothing concerning his need to return to Burgundy, to the province of the mysterious Farouche Clan, whose insidious name the lycanthrope had withheld.

The woman
—Claire. He heard her name ringing like a tocsin in his mind again. And then, brushing all other thoughts aside, came the guilt. Duty—commitment—words that had become hollow shells of former noble aspirations. Lip service paid to concepts smeared indistinguishable by arrogance, unconcern, poor planning.

The death wish…

“You will excuse me,” he said, standing and reseating his swords in his
obi, “
but the crisp night air beckons.”

He firmly rejected Orozco and Buey’s offers to accompany him for security purposes, then strode out into the hall. He was joined in the street a moment later by Perigor.

“A moment,
mon ami
—I won’t offer to hold your hand as do the others.” He made an imploring gesture over Gonji’s objecting look. “I daresay their concern is unfounded.”

The samurai allowed the warrior to fall into step beside him. They ambled along the frost-slicked cobblestone way.

“Your bladesmanship is truly remarkable,” Perigor praised. “Your self-control, unsurpassed. You never flinched in our bout; changed nothing after being struck.”

Gonji smiled in spite of himself, wondering at how little he cared for such praise anymore. When had the hunger for approval, for acceptance, been sated?

“It wasn’t always so,” he found himself saying. “I’ve changed much, over many years in this land. Strange. The more I surrender to the inevitability of compromise—the more my European half overwhelms my years of youthful conditioning—the more I long to be purely Japanese. To embrace
bushido.
Yet, the farther from my grasp the pure way seems to drift. I’m a helpless pawn of two worlds…”

* * * *

Had he really made such an admission?

Hai…

Age had o’ercrept him on stealthy feet. He was looking back now, seeing change as only one can who has bowed to the indomitable siege of time…

Iye—
no. All is illusion, and as such can be overcome.

Fight
—

(Pain—another measure! and another!—chest constriction—despair…)

FIGHT—

* * * *

Gonji walked the cold and windswept lanes of St. Pons, refuse tumbling past his feet, the wind moaning through creaking rafters of upper stories, rattling shutters and roofing tiles. He could hear muffled voices in the gambrel-roofed houses, the clatter of hoofbeats and wooden wheels along the byways, occasional outcries of late-night roisterers in the festive quarters.

He encountered no one, save for the odd scavenging dog or cat, the scuttling of a gutter rodent.