Gonji: Red Blade from the East (10 page)

“Find me a horse, idiot!” Navárez commanded. Julio trotted off, chuckling, but Navárez had already forgotten him. He was watching Gonji clop gingerly over the littered corpses toward a group at the other side of the trail. The conquering barbarian. Navárez dusted himself off and spat through dry lips.

This ambitious slant-eyes was going to be a problem.

* * * *

Gonji appraised the cluster of horse-laughing mercenaries gathered around the grounded soldier. The man sat shaking his head, dazed and anguished. His left arm was in ruin. His helm, lost in the battle, had managed to save his skull from a blow, but an ugly scalp wound bled freely. It would have been better for him if the blow had gone through. He sat pathetically in the reddening dust and weakly appealed for mercy. But he didn’t beg. He merely closed his eyes, a prayer on his lips, as one of the bandits ran him through. There was a sound like a melon being split and a single eruption of blood and vomit. The bandit bellowed at the dead knight in cowardly triumph.

Tora loped up behind the executioners, and Gonji didn’t yank him back until they scattered in alarm, the killer knocked sprawling. He lurched to his feet, cocking his blade and cursing Gonji.

“That’s no way for a man to die,” Gonji said grimly.

The bandit saw the look in Gonji’s eyes and backed off. The samurai hated such dishonorable death, and he had seen far too much of it in Europe. A beaten man, forced to surrender, should at least be allowed the honor of taking his own life. Of course, that wasn’t the way here. Dignity was granted paltry few concessions.

Glumly, Gonji walked Tora around the scene of the carnage. The gray-clad patrol had fought well. Disciplined, brave men, overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. Fourteen soldiers dead, counting the two felled up the trail by the damnable pistols. About an equal number of the thinning Free Company joined them in the dark land. Among these...Hawkes. He bowed to the Englishman’s body. The wooden cross lay beneath the warrior’s slack jaw.

Gonji heard a grated laugh and turned to see the two Mongols grinning at him evilly as they wiped their blades clean. He held his temper in check and trotted away with a lump in his throat.

He had begun to take comfort in the quiet man’s presence despite the communication barrier between them. And Hawkes was the only man Gonji had trusted among the small handful who had seemed to come under the influence of his bravado. The others, he decided, were probably put up to it by Navárez.

On an impulse he returned to Hawkes’ body and dropped to the ground. Then he removed and pocketed Hawkes’ crucifix as a keepsake.

Looking down at one of the dead knights, Gonji studied his coat-of-arms, which he had never before seen: a green-and-red field divided horizontally, with a reclining lion in the upper half and a gold cross below. He wondered whether any of the mercenaries could blazon it for him, explain its achievements. They told all about their holder. Its motto:
In Vita Sicut in Morte
—“In Life as in Death.”

Navárez and Esteban rode to the head of the company, and the captain barked them into a gallop toward the mountain pass’s rugged southern track, over cracked and beaten earth that sloped gradually down to a boulder-strewn area that showed evidence of a fresh mudslide. There the narrow defile opened onto a wide trail bordering a vast expanse of timber that looked like a still, green sea held in check by the craggy shore of the great Carpathians.

A short distance down the road were concealed the mess and supply wagons and the two rickety skeletal drays that had made it this far into the rough mountain range.

Jocko hailed them from the rutty embankment, and Navárez halted the company and conferred with him awhile. Then Jocko and the other drivers whipped the slumping dray teams into action. The supply carts lumbered creakingly up onto the road with a
ruddle-de-duddle ruddle-de-duddle
, their worn timbers twisting and bending with the effort like supple caterpillars.

Having left Jocko with his instructions, Navárez again led the company at full gallop down the endlessly snaking road. They were heading for some sort of action, Gonji was certain, and the tension of expected conflict supplanted the bunch’s earlier exuberance.

The mounted men now numbered an impressive eighteen, and Gonji couldn’t help wondering what good they were to anybody right now. He had ridden with worse—

He had been part of an infamous mercenary army once raised to rid the Black Forest of its last dragon. They had thought the venture a marvelous jest and decided the best way to go about it was to charge in pig-stinking, saddle-weaving drunk. Gonji was one of the few survivors, and to this day, as far as he knew, the dragon was in flaming good health.

Yet by now this 3rd Free Company was little more than a pack of highwaymen of average prowess in battle, for all the noise they made, and must surely be on their way to link up with the main body. The sooner the better, as far as Gonji was concerned. He had had his fill of these dregs and itched to find out more of this King Klann and his intentions.

There could be little doubt now that they were heading for Vedun, the fabled ancient city high on a Carpathian aerie that was Gonji’s own destination. Perhaps fate had been good to him after all. Entering the city as a conqueror might afford him some leverage in finding what he sought. His mind ached with questions, and the bright promise of answers teased coyly: Klann, Mord, the invocation, the dark shape in the sky...the
Deathwind.

The muggy air lapped about them as they rode, and the sky hung low and overcast like a soaked mantle. The opaque white orb of the sun glowered angrily but couldn’t penetrate the translucent gray. Rain would be welcome in the prickling dampness, but so far its promise had been vain. For several days the clouds had played a tactical game with the sky without releasing a drop.

Gonji snuffled and cleared his rough throat. The oppressive humidity had ceased to bother him; nor did the hateful, snarling Mongols trouble him for the past day or so. Now the Englishman Hawkes was dead, but that was karma. His current annoyance came from a different source: a lousy fit of the ague.

Yesterday he had been fine. At the night’s encampment Gonji had even volunteered for perimeter guard and had enjoyed his first glimpse of the pine-swathed Transylvanian Alps. Then the diamond-crisp dawn had broken with its piercing dewy chill, and Gonji had awakened to double misery: the jackal Esteban barking commands in several languages and the fever, sniffling and hacking of the ague. He would have given his month’s gold for some tea, a difficult commodity to come by these days. He had settled for a pungent, cloudy broth thrust on him by the chortling Jocko. It had tasted the way soaking bark looked, and when he asked what was in it, he was soon sorry he had.

A rider had pounded into camp that morning on a frothing mount. Gonji’s interest had been aroused. As the soldier conferred with Navárez, Gonji had drifted near and looked him over carefully. He was clad in scarred brigandines and tassets, pauldrons and vambraces covering shoulders and arms, and high black boots. The soldier’s begrimed face was heavily shadowed under a burgonet that had seen some action. Strapped to his waist was a long straight sword with a winged handguard.

But the most intriguing accoutrement was the coat-of-arms emblazoned on his surcoat: Divided diagonally from the viewer’s lower left to upper right, it featured on the left some sort of monstrous golden winged dragon with a second fanged head on its tail; to the right and bottom was a simple device consisting of seven interlocked black circles, two of which were filled in a bright purple that stood stark against the silver field. The motto at the base was indecipherable from Gonji’s distance.

That was the first time that day he had wished for a friend who could blazon such heraldic achievements.

“Llorm Dragoon,” Jocko had said.

“What?”

“
Llorm
—those are the regulars in this army.”

The dragoon had ridden off on a fresh horse, and not long after, two more riders—mercenaries—arrived and conferred with the Spanish captain, who seemed rather perturbed at what they had to say. After some stormy discussion over a tattered map, these two had departed. The camp had been struck with frenzied speed, and the company had galloped into the mountains.

Gonji had dealt stoically with the stuffiness and nagging ache of the ague as the troop clanged through the passes, dabbing at his raw nose with a rag thrown to him by Jocko. Then the ambush, and he had forgotten his discomfort. Until now.

Karma.

* * * *

Father Dobret was deep in thought when he caught sight of the lone rider slumped over his horse’s mane.

The priest was making his way through the well-tended orchard adjacent to the monastery’s east wall. He had finished performing his afternoon office by the peaceful solitude of the lovely stream that gushed down sculpted slopes to irrigate the mountain valley.

His favorite spot for the placid hour was a fragrant greensward between two guardian oaks, where the fresh clean scent of mineral water mingled with the headier aromas of ripening apples, cherries, and apricots and the piquant redolence of Tokay grapes. Dobret was glad that, as a visitant, he wasn’t bound by the laws of the order that demanded presence in the chapel for offices. He much preferred the beauty of the outdoors to the mustiness of solemn chambers at such times.

Shuffling along the path that twisted among oaks and beeches straggling up the valley wall, he brushed back his long white locks and gazed at the gray vaulted sky. His heart was heavy. Tonight would be the full moon—always a troubled time but especially so here in this ancient mountain range, haunted since time immemorial. Evil was present here, grasping and hungry, rearing its head mightily for some new and terrible purpose.

All the monks knew, though none spoke of it openly. There had been signs and foul omens: animals dropped dead in their tracks; crops rotted overnight in patterns that were uncomfortably familiar; peasants from the farside villages spoke of men who were lost in the forests at night and wandered out never to smile again; nature was perverted, harmless creatures turning predatory.

This time the full moon would be...different, in some fearful way. And Father Dobret wondered uneasily what would become of the other—the Wretched One—this night.

But then the horse was ambling toward the main gate bearing its injured rider, and the priest’s fears fled before concern as he quickened his pace. Several brothers had already rushed out to the rider’s aid.

Then—something else: suspicion. It was all wrong. The woods that cradled the valley had fallen silent. The wildlife bore mute witness—it was a trick.

Several footmen broke from hiding and swept along the low bailey wall to storm the open gate. Cries of alarm, as shocked monks were shoved back into the courtyard. With a soul-chilling cry, a line of mounted men charged out of the trees and clumped through the gate, swords upraised. The shamming rider laughed coarsely and bowled over a knot of brothers as he spurred his horse through them.

Why, in God’s name—?

Father Dobret breathed a frantic prayer and began to run. As he reached the southeast corner of the bailey wall, hoofbeats thundered up behind him. He winced back the fear of a sudden blow and ran harder. Voices shouted for him to halt, and he found himself complying.

I’m acting like a frightened child. Have I no faith?

The priest turned slowly, his heart pounding. He strove to control his trembling, ashamed of his fear. In his agitated condition, all was a blur; he couldn’t even focus on the riders’ faces. Two men with grim, sweating brows. Naked blades and snorting horses. They pressed toward him. He could hear screams and the clashing of steel in the courtyard. He began to ask why—

“Garba! Sangini!” A thickly nasal voice.

The two men reined in at the sound of the voice. They turned, caught a gesture from the third bandit, and then bolted past the priest with a mocking laugh. The second man steered his horse so close that the priest was forced to lurch back against the wall to avoid being trampled. Dobret looked up meekly at the horseman who cantered up beside him, hand on the hilt of his sheathed sword.

The priest was taken aback. This mountain bandit was most unusual. An oriental, tall and dark, yet with the high cheekbones of a European that lent him an aristocratic cast. He was unwashed, unshaven, and threadbare but rode with the noble mien of the highborn. There was piercing intelligence in his dark, angular eyes. And something else. Sadness, perhaps. And the hot flicker of fever.

The bandit spoke: “I have no wish to harm thee. Only to surrender.”

Dobret raised his eyebrows.
Latin.
Clumsy phrasing, thick with ague, but Latin, there was no mistaking. The priest pulled himself erect, absently stroked the crucifix that depended from his hempen belt. Their eyes met for a long moment of weary sympathy.

“Nor I thee,” Dobret said softly. The oriental’s turn to lift his eyebrows in surprise. He began to say something, coughed and faltered, and Dobret continued: “What is thy intent?”

The rider simply shook his head sadly and pointed toward the gate. Dobret craned his neck abruptly and the blood thudded in his brain.

Pistol shots. Cries of dying men. And something burning.