by T. C. Rypel
But Simon Sardonis was not among them.
In bewildered defiance, Gonji blared upward into the swarming fog: “Simon! I’ll be back, Simon!”
And then he remembered. The turning. The beginning of the retreat. Minutes—hours ago? Simon had been there, urging them to fight on. Simon had said something to him then. Words whose meaning had been jumbled by the constant ebb and flow of the ferocious struggle.
Forget me, Simon had said. You shall find only the corpse of the great golden wolf. Shi-kaze—Deathwind, samurai…
“Give me something to kill!” Buey was shouting, head snapping about in search of a focus for his hatred, halberd whizzing at nothing. Its broken shaft shook in his grasp. “Come on, you filthy bastards! Come at us warm and living, or dead and twisted—I don’t give a shit! God, grant me something to kill—”
* * * *
Nightmares…
And the nauseating tang of blood…
* * * *
“He’s leaking again—where’s that goddamn barber-surgeon?”
Orozco…Carlo-san…
“What in God’s holy name did you see there, you poor wretches?”
Kuma-san…
* * * *
Spring came to Ostia in balmy drafts. Smothering warmth would hold the seaport city in a thrall of lethargy for days on end. Abruptly, the blistering sirocco would lash the sea inland in slanting sheets, dashing the languorous spell of comfort and security.
It was the rain that Gonji liked the best. It suited his entrenched mood and lent an atmosphere that imparted new depths to his meditations.
Always in the evening, when Gonji’s meditation was at its end, the boy would come and bring him his meal, keeping respectful silence until sure of his welcome. Then he would ply Gonji for more tales of the quest. Of the many roads to high adventure.
Then, one night, the boy unexpectedly inquired about that tragic venture of the Wunderknechten into the haunted province in the French Alps.
Gonji was taken aback. The subject had been taboo among the survivors who had accompanied him back across the sea. But somehow, he thought, the boy’s innocent curiosity might prove a potent emetic. At some point, they would have to reopen the wound again.
And so he did.
When he had finished, his story having found form in the words of merciful gallantry such tales must, out of necessity, be couched in, he found that he had indeed experienced something of a catharsis. A fine film of sweat had broken out, his palms cold and moist, his throat dry. But he relaxed into a sense of purging, his guilt diffused.
The boy, a helmsman’s mate of about fifteen, poured him wine. He’d grown pale and somber during the telling of the tale, and Gonji was glad that he’d spared the lad any effort at objectifying the details that filled his nightmares.
The boy brought him his covered tray and, lifting the lid, said, “You left my brother to be feasted on by devils. You’re evil, and you belong in Hell—”
The boy grabbed the pistol from behind the tray’s lifted lid. The gun’s heavy report echoed in the small room. Gonji’s pistol-proof cuirass shattered on impact. Imploded. Shards of steel lodged in his chest.
Gonji knew staggering pain. Vertigo, as he bowled over. The door crashed in under Buey’s battering shoulder. An outcry—another—
Then burning blackness…
* * * *
Bright faces and happy banter greeted Gonji’s first lucid moments since he’d been shot. His companions alternated between giving thanks, jostling one another to dispel their pent-up anxiety and nervous tension, and filling him in on the latest news.
Gonji, for his part, was glad to see those who were still among the living. But his attention span was short, and he still seemed bewildered to be conscious, his senses focusing again, slowly, weakly.
He took a sip of water from Father Jan Sebastio and caught sight of Luigi Leone’s red-rimmed good eye. “You’re always so emotional, Leone-san,” the samurai said in a parched voice, the others laughing and nudging the raw-boned Italian brigand.
“I never said I wanted to be a bloody samurai,” Luigi replied, evoking more mirth.
“I dreamed…about the witch, Domingo Negro,” Gonji rambled, his companions nonetheless listening intently. “How is Nichiyoobi?” he thought to ask, the association at once dredging up memories of the black mare he had named after the witch.
“Spiteful as ever,” Orozco said, smiling toothily, his long mustache twitching.
Gonji’s face flashed sudden pain, then softened to a placid set as he found a more comfortable position. He nodded gingerly. “Perhaps the witch came from the netherworld to aid me in my distress.”
Sebastio grunted bluffly. “You know I can’t sanction talk like that, Gonji-san. More likely it was the prayers of those who love you—”
“Or the masses Father Jan celebrated every day in your name,” Luigi added.
“Kuma-san,” Gonji asked of the priest, his brow knitting, “did we ever send anyone to look after the well-being of Pablo Cardenas’ family?”
They looked uneasily from one to the other. Gonji was obviously still only tenuously in touch with reality, with time. His mention of the solicitor from Spain whose life had been lost in the battle at the mystical fortress in Africa was an irrational stroke.
“Of course,” Sebastio answered. “Months ago.”
Gonji bobbed his head, satisfied. Then he turned his attention to Orozco. “I hope, Carlo-san, I’ll never again hear you mention that damned pistol-proof armor.” He tried to laugh, wound up coughing wetly and taking another sip of water.
Orozco shook his head morosely. “No. But that damned thing probably saved your life—you know that.”
“Hai. But better a clean, swift death, if ever I’m shot like that again. I want no lingering death. No…teetering on the scales of the kami of fortune.” He pondered something a moment. “Kuma-san, did you commit my spirit into the hands of Iasu while I lay helpless to defend myself?”
Sebastio arched an eyebrow, for Gonji’s reproach had been tinged with undisguised amusement.
“Si—like it or not, you’re a baptized Catholic now. Your father needn’t know.” The priest smiled beguilingly.
Gonji sighed raspingly. “Domo arigato. I suppose one can use whatever protection he can get in this mad land. This mad cosmos…”
But now his attention was attracted to Buey, who alone among them seemed beyond cheer, though generally grateful that Gonji had survived the assassination attempt.
* * * *
The ensuing weeks were spent in a dogged effort at recovering strength, which Gonji directed into vigorous exercise. The others were amazed at the samurai’s grim determination to regain his martial skills. He worked his body endlessly, scratching and clawing for every fresh increment of stamina. Running, stretching, resistance training, and sparring occupied his mornings. Afternoons would find Gonji practicing kata alone with his deadly swords in the hills, working at the complex techniques of the Katori ryu; then dueling with wooden bokken against one, then two, and finally as many as six fencers. Gradually, none were able to score a touch through the maelstrom of his lightning strokes.
Kyu-jutsu—the art of the bow—returned its demanding skills more grudgingly due to the localized damage incurred in the chest wound. The powerful pulls required to deploy the shafts of the mighty English longbow came hard to Gonji’s traumatized muscle. His response was to work even harder, to launch more arrows daily in a progressive outreach for Zen perfection that saw him at last exceed the thousand arrows per day he had shot as a youthful archer in Japan.
After supper he could be seen in the hills again, working with a variety of weapons. Urging his black mare, Nichi, through myriad battlefield gyrations that caused the curious to wonder what demons drove thi
s strange halfbreed. And what enemies he anticipated meeting.
Gonji’s effort inevitably carried him beyond the limit of his body’s waxing endurance, and he fell victim to a severe ague that laid him low for a week, restricted his assiduous workouts. He recovered, and then relapsed, his fever more serious this time. His friends at last were forced to steer him into curtailing all activity until he was fully recovered, by refusing to assist him.
Seeing the concern and genuine affection in their well-considered advice, he complied. But when he was back on his cat-quick feet again, he redoubled all efforts in a way that caused even his seasoned allies to wonder at the power of his steely will.
As for strangers who looked on during those days of splintering wood, blood-chilling kiyai, and steel flashing bright and molten in the sun’s dying rays, there could be no mistaking their thoughts: Surely this man was possessed of an unsavory spirit of vengefulness.
The time came for Gonji’s company to leave Ostia with the hearth-fire memories of their sojourn. Their welcome had in fact long since turned to vinegar. Buey, in unbridled rage over the shooting of Gonji, had broken the neck of the boy who had done the deed—a lad much favored by the seafarers who had taken him as an apprentice. With the death of his brother under Gonji’s command in Burgundy, the boy had been left without family. Now, friends aroused by Buey’s vindictive act of violence had begun to cry out for justice. The Ox was always accompanied by at least one other member of their company, though the local sbirri, unsettled by Father Sebastio’s impressive letters of transit from Rome and unwilling to become entangled with the legendary samurai’s influence, had dismissed any case against Buey.
So local tolerance of the company’s presence had soured withal. And yet ironically, no one was more upset by the boy’s unseemly demise than Buey. He was a veteran warrior who had come to terms easily with the situational ethics of killing, many times in the past. But now the strain and guilt over this boy’s murder showed in every crack and fissure of his broad face, in the slumping of Buey’s erstwhile blocky shoulders. For in the harsh light of reason, there was no rationalizing his brutal act.
Gonji breathed a deep sigh of relief to be leaving Ostia, as they pulled out one dreary, fogbound morning. He rode beside Father Jan, warily watching the silent forms that leaned in porticos, or peered from upper windows with hostile eyes that bid them good riddance. Orozco cantered just behind them, waving to an occasional good-natured well-wisher—compadres he’d courted in the wine-sloshing, ribald nights in the osterias.
The samurai patted Nichi’s raven-wing mane. “I’ve had swifter mounts and stronger,” he said, “but none so mean spirited.”
“You call that something to boast of?” Orozco called out from behind.
Gonji laughed heartily, for he did indeed, his former bond with the feisty mare renewing, growing deeper with each passing day.
“Dare I ask where we’re headed?” Father Sebastio ventured.
“Duty—Roma,” Gonji replied, eyes twinkling. But there was more to their sparkle than simple merriment or the yearning for good fellowship on the road.
Sebastio swallowed. “And then…Dai Nihon?”
Japan.
The priest’s inquiry was shot through with hopefulness, and a pall gradually descended over the band when word drifted through their number that Gonji had not answered. For lately he had begun to murmur a name that filled them all with a mixture of wrath and terror—Balaerik, the evil donado who had twisted the Church into persecuting Gonji and his terrible ally, the werewolf Simon Sardonis.
And Balaerik, to the best of their knowledge, was still at large in Spain, where the price of return for some of them was the hangman’s noose.
PART TWO
Decisions at the Crossroads
“To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind”—Byron
CHAPTER ONE
The couple thrashed under the hedge in volcanic rapture. Even had they not been so engaged, their senses would have been ill equipped to mark the fast, stealthy approach of the interloper.
Soundless, unrevealed by the glimmer of the cloud-frothed crescent moon, Simon Sardonis swept along with the summer breeze to lurk among the thickets of the serene bocage, only the harmless denizens of the fields noting his passage.
Cloaked in dark breeches and shirt and leather hunter’s jerkin, his features concealed by a drooping slouch hat, he crouched behind a wild berry bush. Arranging the crossed axe and broadsword more comfortably in his wide belt, he submitted to the roiling of his aching belly with a few berries. Scowling to hear the sounds of passion a few scant yards away, he shouted down by angry thought the blandishments of the energumen, its foul urgings that he join in the couple’s ecstasies. He spat out the chewed berries in abrupt self-denial.
As usual, he avoided thinking of Claire until the demon spirit had been banished to its curling place deep within their arena of cohabitation. When he was satisfied that the lovers’ passion had been spent, he rose and bounded over the hedge to confront them like some vindictive god of moral censure.
The woman emitted a strained outcry, grabbing at her discarded petticoat and holding it about her defensively.
“Dammit!” Her paramour lunged for a pistol. Simon’s stamping foot drove his wrist into the moist earth, causing him to grunt in pain.
“Make another sound and you die,” Simon rumbled, low and menacing. They stared at him, wide-eyed, glancing from the imposing figure he cut to the bright edge of the exposed axe-head.
“Woman,” he said when their compliance was clear, “hie yourself to that tall run of hedge down there. Get dressed. And sit. Until I call for you. Quietly.” The woman’s eyes flicked from Simon to her lover. She hurried off, pausing to scoop up garments dropped in her haste.
“What’s this all about?” the man demanded anxiously, rubbing at his sore wrist.
“I’ll ask the questions,” Simon replied somberly. He removed his slouch hat with a sweeping movement. “Do you know me?”
The man’s eyes strained at their sockets. His breath came in short gulps. “But surely—surely you’re one of—” He stared fixedly into Simon’s backswept silvery eyes. “Non, you’re—” He exhaled raspingly. “O Great Beast—!”
“Oui. You’ve been seeking me. Are you an avant-courier? A scout? Does it please you now to know that your boasting about discovering my whereabouts has led to this?”
“But you’re—you’re their brother,” the man breathed, panting now in atavistic terror.
“Am I?”
“I work for them faithfully, you know. That I do. You wouldn’t harm a faithful servant. I know now why your family is at odds with you, but I—I—” He went for his jack, but Simon’s threatening stride forward froze him. “See—see the device blazoning my jack—your family crest—I’m only a hireling, I tell you. I know nothing of why you feud. The words I spoke—words spewed from a wine cup—”
“Silence,” Simon commanded sharply, hissing to see the hated crest of the Farouche Clan—a silver-eyed black wolf, rampant-regardant on a red field. “Your ignorance is grounded in satanic deceit. You know, or suppose, well enough why I oppose them. Tell me, did they promise you immortality? And how many innocents did you help them kill to secure the witchery that would empower them? Did they also tell you that immortality is not the same as invulnerability?”
Simon glowered down at him, and the man lurched for his pistol. The piece was hardly in his clammy grasp before the lupine curse-bearer was atop him, slamming him down, bursting the breath from his lungs. Simon’s left hand clutched the man’s throat, squeezed. His hand, though attenuated by months of hardship, was rigid against the brigand’s frenzied flailings. His right hand locked about the pistol-bearing wrist.
“Give me one—good—reason why I shouldn’t claw out your heart and feed it to you—”
“Non—your actions earn you no quarter—”
There was a final surge of death-defiance, and the man lay still. Simon sharply withdrew his clawed hand from the livid marks about the crushed throat.
He gasped and bolted to his feet, glancing about him. Felt his face, his ears—the protrusion of his jaws and the exaggerated pointing of his ears receded slowly as his rage was spent. The old desert mufti had been right: He could at least partially control the transmutations into the wolfish body. He had worked at that control for some time now, enraging the tormenting spirit within him, whose feral form it was.
But he had to be careful. There was a corollary to unleashing the Beast without the moon’s mystical power. Extreme violent emotion now occasionally precipitated transformation, and that was bad. His enemies might thus be drawn to him, by scent or sorcery or even some unknown sense based in their kinship to the creature.
Simon sought out the woman, found her obediently seated under a wild shrub. Her arms encircled her drawn-up knees, and she stared blankly into the distance, as if stoical in the light of inexorable destiny. She was attractive, even as Simon had gathered from his surreptitious observation of her unseemly activities. Her long blond hair lay in gentle waves across her shoulders. Her lips were full and ruby red, drawn downward in a perpetual pout that lent her the cast of a self-pitying, if willing, victim. The cheerless depths of her aquamarine eyes were both fetching in their languor and repelling in their emptiness. They’d examined life’s options and found them wanting.
