Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves

by T. C. Rypel

  Gonji’s wrenching upward slash drove the rapier from the howling attacker’s broken hand. The searing end of the poker hissed through cloth and flesh to bore into the man’s belly. The sonic force of the robed assassin’s shriek blared into Gonji’s face. Red-rimmed eyes bulged at their sockets as the ashen face tumbled past his vision.

  Luigi and Buey were beside him at once, yammering insensibly. With a single look to the trembling swordsmith, Gonji bolted for the open rear door. Reached it.

  Too late, he realized his mistake: As the first attacker wheeled off on a waiting mount, a third, secreted in the alley, took aim with his long-barreled wheel-lock piece. Gonji skidded to a halt and threw himself sideways, the belching pistol spitting leaden death at him. The ball sizzled through the air over his head as his backside hit the floor.

  He cursed his lack of caution. Any callow young samurai of the lowest rank would have exercised more wisdom. Indeed—he’d taught this principle himself to more young soldiers than he cared to ponder. And worse, under recent circumstances, his carelessness was inexcusable.

  He cast up an arm as Buey’s huge boots leapt over his head. The burly lancer squeezed off a fuming pistol shot in the direction of the clattering hooves. Buey spat out an oath of satisfaction—his shot had found its mark. But one of the assassins had ridden off, free to try his luck again another day.

  The samurai pushed up to his feet and stormed over to the stunned Calderone. Grabbing the Sagami from the wide-eyed swordsmith, Gonji smartly returned it to its scabbard with a practiced two-step motion.

  Then, just as suddenly, he drew it again. His eyes cast about the shop, as forms tumbled in. Voices shouted and swore in three languages. Luigi Leone was bellowing into Father Sebastio’s face; then Buey was pushing past Gonji and seizing Calderone by the jerkin, lifting him into the air—

  “Bastard! What part did you hold in this?”

  “Nothing! Nothing! I don’t know what—”

  “Why didn’t you throw him his sword? Why didn’t you help him?” Buey was shaking him such that Calderone’s voice croaked in rhythm:

  “I’m—smith—not—fencer!”

  Orozco was grimacing to see the belly wound Gonji had inflicted on his would-be killer with the red-hot iron. “This is no priest,” he said, indicating the shirt and nether garments under the brown robe. “We should have known.”

  “You should have known,” Luigi roared at Father Sebastio.

  “How was I to know, you young fool?” the priest shouted back.

  “Don’t you have some mystical sign between you or something, you priests?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Silence!” Gonji grated, squeezing the Sagami’s belted hilt for emphasis. “Kuma-san couldn’t have suspected treachery any surer than any of us might. We’re all to blame. We’ve all failed in our vigilance. The assassins are everywhere. Haven’t we learned that yet? We’ve stirred the depths of hell-slime against us, and now we must stand firm, sharp-eyed—Leone, why didn’t you suspect these impostors?” He pointed an accusing finger.

  Leone’s good eye glared defensively. “Why me? Why not the others? I’m a pox-eaten layman, for God’s sake. Why should I suspect priests, by all that’s sacred…”

  “Does anyone know anything of these men?” Father Sebastio appealed to the murmuring onlookers as the second corpse was dragged in from the alley. Heads shook negatively. No word of recognition was spoken.

  Sebastio approached Gonji.

  “Who are these people?” Kuma-san whispered hoarsely. “What evil arrays itself against us? Why haven’t they dealt us the final blow long since?”

  Gonji’s jaw tightened. “Humiliation. Discredit…They want us to crawl on our bellies first, Kuma-san. To plead with them…” He strode into the midst of the gathered crowd. “You may pass the word in this town that such is the fate of any who oppose our way. We ride under the protection of Pope Innocent…and our own hardy steel.”

  The crowd parted, eyes dropping earthward as he passed. As he climbed astride Nichi, he heard the sergeant muttering about Gonji’s armor again. And Luigi snarling at him. And Buey cursing and calling upon any man or band of men who would care to be so bold as to take him on by himself, with weapons or thews.

  Gonji ground his teeth and yanked hard on the reins. Rancor and paranoia had poisoned the band in this fashion since the bitter retreat from France.

  * * * *

  Pain. Ragged breath dragged through sodden rice paper. A hand pressed to his forehead. Shame. Dishonor, to be reduced to such a state. A strained gasp in response to the effort at forming words. Then—darkness…

  * * * *

  Nichi.

  Nichiyoobi, he had named the defiant black mare—Sunday.

  “Don’t tell me,” Orozco had said, “you still think of that witch who could walk through bushes. You expect her maybe to talk to you from beyond the grave through this foul-tempered beast? That’s idiotic,” he judged upon seeing the samurai’s smile. “Look about you—there are far better animals to be had…”

  Nichi had just bitten the sergeant on the shoulder, nearly severing the coupling of his cuirass.

  Gonji had been attracted to the steed’s feisty nature, her proud and sturdy bearing, the sheen of her sable hide. For the ensuing fortnight he was preoccupied with her training, undertaken with an eagerness for the challenge. The samurai stoically applied the time-honored ba-jutsu horsemanship techniques of his fathers as he brought the recalcitrant animal into his confidence. And from his Nordic mother—an expert horsewoman—had come certain arcane Viking methods for winning a battle-steed’s trust and respect. The training had culminated with a two-day ordeal in which horse and rider had ridden off into the hills alone to undergo a rigorous exercise involving every aspect of their interdependence; every command and tactic and subtle pressure on rein and flank that might save them from the brink of death in combat.

  Upon his return Gonji had been satisfied that, while he might never replace the special trust he had placed in Tora, he could have done far worse than selecting this mare born of fire and nightshade. He had indeed named her in honor of the Spanish witch who had called herself Domingo Negro—Black Sunday, vaguely hoping for the sorceress’ aid from the land of the dead, even as it had come to him once before in the Inquisition’s hellpits. And by buying her out of a French herd, he fancied that he had made a small gesture of spiritual reconciliation with a land that had long been inimical to him. Never more so than the previous winter.

  His matched set of swords—his daisho—seated properly and snugly in the left side of his obi, the halfbreed samurai, son of the most noble daimyo Sabatake Todohiro, rode proudly back into the armed camp near the shores of the Mediterranean.

  Cold plumes of breath clouded about them from the approaching warriors, a spring frost upon the land.

  “Looks like you calmed her down some,” Buey said, reaching for her bridle.

  Nichi bit him on the upper arm, rending his sleeve.

  * * * *

  Faces bright with expectancy…portraits of lost loves…the trusting, the anxious, cool and serene, anguished and pleading…the friends, the enemies, the lovers…faces vague and unlined in death…

  * * * *

  Her name was Claire.

  It was many nights counsel under cold, bright Mediterranean stars before Gonji was able to extract from Simon the name he guarded so jealously, so preciously. Fascinated, amused, but with bushi no nasake—the warrior’s sense of benevolent sympathy, dictated by bushido’s profound code—Gonji fielded the lycanthrope’s inchoate interest in matters of the heart.

  Simon spoke haltingly at first, embarrassed to be illuminating the shadow-crouched corners of his being. But his words soon filled with eager curiosity about the female spirit. Gonji perceived the note of
wariness and the pang of despair ever seeping through Simon’s tightly shackled enthusiasm. He seemed intimidated, pessimistic concerning the prospect of ever knowing a woman’s love, yet hopeful in spite of it all, the way only one helpless in the throes of dawning love can be hopeful.

  To hear the Beast speak of love from between those massive, viselike jaws was an outre experience. And it was Gonji’s wonder at this that likely numbed his ability to apprehend Simon’s fear.

  “Keep silence with me,” the werewolf would whisper in the still of the night, and the samurai would see in his silvery eyes that familiar inward searching, the sense of heightened perception. They would sit for a space, listening to the rhythmic wash of the waves upon the shore. Then:

  “It sleeps…”

  The soul of the Beast had been suppressed, slumbering in its secret curling place. And Simon Sardonis would be freed to speak of desires he dared not allow the cohabiting thing to know, lest it use them as cruel weapons in their spiritual warfare. Or worse…

  “…she made me feel—for the first time, really feel—the things I was taught to revere. Noble things. Wholesome things. Do you know what I mean, monsieur le samurai?”

  “Hai. Her affection lent you a sense of worth. Outside yourself. Of being needed, for another’s well being, so desu ka—is that so? There is, is there not, a feeling of guilt…lifting. As though one had been forgiven his transgressions, his failings.”

  “Oui, oui—it’s very much like that,” the werewolf grated with waxing fervor. But the uplifts were always short-lived: “Only…”

  “Only you fear that even in your noblest intentions…you’ll fail to guard your love. To protect her. Perhaps—perhaps even destroying her. The Beast being too strong to control—”

  “Non—never! I am in control of it. I would destroy myself first!”

  Gonji thought before replying. “So sorry, my friend, but you seem to contradict yourself, neh? I must make painful reminder of the fury of the Beast in the full of the moon. You have yet to master its power on that night, though you’ve shown you can when the need is urgent enough. The siege of Vedun—do you recall? Can you swear to yourself that you’ll find the strength to win that struggle every month, perhaps in her very presence?”

  The lycanthrope hissed him to silence. “I speak only of tendre—tender feelings—not of commitment. You read too much into my words.”

  The mood was shattered.

  “So sorry. Again I am presumptuous. It is one of my faults.” Gonji watched the great golden-furred form rise to its full towering height—well over seven feet—amazed at the almost childlike naivete exuded by this formidable creature.

  * * * *

  Reiko—lost to him through treachery, painful duty…karma. Rima—valiant warrior, woman of passionate whim. Helena—blind child of devotion. Theresa—the tragically betrothed, bearer of his seed. Hildegarde—mighty daughter of Norse gods! Valentina—la strega, courageous, carnal object of unfulfilled desire—fool! Lydia…surrogate of Reiko, so different, so like, so unattainable. Forbidden. Unforgotten.

  By all nameless kami, what karma I bear…

  * * * *

  Varazze…

  It was north of Varazze that Gonji had had his first encounter with a gathering of the Wunderknechten—the Knights of Wonder, whose religious and intellectual tolerance movement his actions and legend had spawned in Europe. Their code was a strange hybrid of Judaeo-Christian-Zen Buddhist-bushido thought, aimed at engendering respect, brotherhood, love of duty, and opposition to the workings of evil. It had spread swiftly, permeating European culture and religion, its roots unknown, its stance ranging from the purely intellectual to the overtly militant.

  Gonji’s bewilderment deepened as he rode into the midst of the cheering throng, the verdant woods alive with waving banners and upthrust weapons. Tents had been pitched; voices sang out in several tongues amid the aromas of food and drink.

  They had raised Gonji up on a table before them and asked him to speak concerning the seven virtues of bushido, of the ways of the Land of the Gods, of the extent to which they should carry their militancy in the effort to spread tolerance of all ways and beliefs and politics. The samurai found himself pontificating in areas in which he held few opinions, harbored little concern. And at length he called a halt to the audience, moving off into the forest alone to sort his thoughts.

  He felt a curious wonder at this mystique that had attached itself to him, and a detachment from these people who held him up as an exotic demigod and a new light in their firmament of Renaissance champions. Their lionization of him in his simple awe at the cosmos seemed absurd; their belaboring as revolutionary the attitudes commonly accepted by the Shinto as sublime and impenetrable truth made them somehow annoying. Years ago Gonji had struggled to establish his reputation in Europe, chafed when his heroic acts had gone unnoticed or been misconstrued. Now he was oddly disturbed to have achieved the fame—or notoriety, as some would have it—that had focused its withering light upon him. He rankled to find others dependent on him; so many others had suffered, once placed thusly in his charge.

  They had bestowed on him a sigil in the form of a medallion, a signet designed to represent the Knights of Wonder. He had worn it graciously about his neck as he and his company had ridden off.

  Tarrying so near the Papal States and the powerful influence of the Holy Roman Church, they had quickly come to know the disfavor in which the Wunderknecht movement was held; they seemed ever under the watchful, hostile gaze of columns of comb-morioned light cavalry. But when the ambush struck as they made their camp in an inland valley on the night following their departure from the Knights’ assembly, they knew not whether the attack was generated by political, fanatical, or conspiratorial evil forces.

  All would have had their reasons.

  Gonji’s company struck camp under fire. They fought from horseback for a space of miles until they had climbed out of the valley. Breathless and blood-spattered, their steeds lathered and maddened by fever and injury, they had reassembled and counted their losses. Three Milanese adventurers, two Austrian Landsknechts, and a young idealist from Lucca who had joined their wandering band had fallen. Numerous wounds had been taken: Gonji suffered cuts to the thigh and forearm; Orozco had taken a lead ball in the leg; Father Sebastio’s priestly robes had not spared him the cleaving sword thrust that had shallowly opened his side.

  Their assailants had been mercenaries, but the only one taken alive was run through by Buey’s vicious ranseur before he could be made to talk—the free companion had pounced on Luigi Leone in an effort at seizing his pistol.

  Later, they had bound their wounds and buried their dead in grim silence, their common thinking reflected in the face of every warrior: Perhaps there was no direction under the sun in which they’d left behind them no enemies. The powers of darkness plotted against them endlessly, circumscribed them in every land.

  Perhaps they had reached the crossroads: Choose a path that promoted the common good—a way to noble death, or shatter the fellowship…for the common good.

  “Pistol-proof armor,” Orozco had said through gritted teeth as his leg wound was cleansed by a solemn barber-surgeon. “That’s the stuff we need. They’ve perfected a pistol-proof armor up north. Guaranteed under pain of death to the manufacturer—my personal guarantee! Costs a goddamn golden shit-brick. But thanks to Gonji’s benefactors we’ve got nearly as much money left as we have secret enemies…”

  Gonji had not shared in the others’ mirth. He had instead had been watching as his old friend Kuma-san took up the hilt of a schiavona, which hefty blade the priest thenceforth carried lashed to his back, as they made their way toward the sea.

  Father Jan was an expert with the staff—the weapon of merciful chastisement. He had decried all other weapons for their violence. Now even he had taken up the sword. />
  And the samurai was deeply troubled, for it was because the devoted priest had joined Gonji’s company that he now compromised a deep-seated conviction.

  * * * *

  Dancing now, hand-in hand…a cloying field of wildflowers in night-blooming opulence…his partner cool and distant…the touch unfriendly…smiling…faceless…

  Yet smiling…

  * * * *

  “What is the proof of their virtue, their fidelity, their—their reality? How can you know when a woman is…what she says she is?”

  Gonji emitted a soft whuff of breath as he pondered the werewolf’s questions. Cold rain slanted across his line of vision, enmeshing the sea’s far-off swells in dreamy gauze.

  “How can you know when anything is what it seems to be? All life is illusion and deception, you know, my friend. Have you gazed into any moonlit pools lately?”

  Simon gurgled something low in his cavernous throat.

  Gonji peered closely at him, eyes narrowed, his voice waxing sincere. “I know something of the insecurity you feel. But there are no sureties in these things. The souls of all creatures are hidden from view. For my part, I have always played a game of testing.”

  “Testing?”

  “Ever probing into the heart of the hidden truth around me. Prodding people to gauge their reactions. Haven’t you watched? Always…challenging the allegiances of those who call themselves friend. Some call that cynicism. For me it has ever been just another tool for survival.”

  Simon exhaled sonorously, dissatisfied with the answer.

  “You must devise your own tests,” Gonji concluded. Then, smiling benignly, he added: “I don’t envy you. Surely the test of love is the most complex, the most difficult to evaluate. But there are ways. Have you chanced to…know this woman, carnally?”