Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves

by T. C. Rypel

  “Is he not their kin?” a blacksmith fretted.

  “He is no kin of theirs,” Darcy replied. “He is the Wrath of God, granted magical abilities like theirs so that he may combat them.”

  “And what of Serge Farouche? Suppose he comes looking for his brother before the authorities can arrive from Paris?”

  Reynald Labossiere’s voice came in grim reply. “Then we all do penance for these men’s actions.”

  “Non!” Wyatt Ault bellowed, drawing his dirk and slamming its point deep into the floorboards. “It’s time to make them do a little penance.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Gonji found himself dozing with the monotonous rhythm of Nichi’s slapping hoofbeats, though the rain spanged incessantly off his low-brimmed Helmschmied sallet.

  The night lay thick, and a warm breeze blowing off the Adriatic made the rain mingle uncomfortably with the sweat of an unlamented day. The cavalry troopers in Milanese armor who had escorted them northward were by now two days’ ride into their return to the Papal States. Gonji and his small company of ronin had crossed the Adige River that day and were well along into Venetian territory.

  As for what lay ahead, none could say and none seemed to care. They rode on into the night, silent, sullen warriors, nothing left to say among them, no one caring enough even to call a halt to the day’s journeying.

  Gonji hesitated to call the sojourn in Rome a complete waste of time, as Orozco had. It had been…interesting, for the samurai.

  He smiled again, his memory plumbing up the face of the widowed noblewoman he had taken up with in response to his body’s needs. His timing could not have been worse, the others had said. But he recalled his feelings at the time. It was precisely because of his penchant for perverse manipulation of others’ regard for him—his game of testing—that he had chosen to do so.

  If the Wunderknechten accepted him as their spiritual leader, then it should be with full knowledge of what he was, of how he conducted his life. He was still half-Japanese…and samurai.

  As for the rest of his dealings during the weeks spent in territories owned by Holy Mother Church, those fairly well followed the normal course of Gonji’s life. Protected status, even in the proximity of His Holiness Pope Innocent, did little to deter either fanatics or the nefarious workings of evil.

  * * * *

  The field headquarters of General Lodovici of the elite guard…

  Gonji was startled out of his customary light sleep by the soft sound of tearing fabric. He blinked away the tightness in his eyes. Listened. Still blinded by the darkness. Night vision straining through parting veils.

  The tearing again. Scant feet away from the foot of his cot. A mean glint of vicious steel.

  He sucked in a harsh breath and rolled onto his side to reach for the sheathed Sagami. Then he promptly fell off the cot with a breath-stealing thump.

  He could not move his right arm. It was benumbed by sleep.

  “Cholera,” he cursed as the razor-edged halberd ripped the remaining tent fabric aside and the assassin clanked into the tent.

  Gonji grabbed for the katana with his cooperative left arm. He felt the familiar bamboo, slid his fingers along it to the tsuba and fuchigashira—the hilt and pommel. He snapped the hilt twice before the scabbard flew clear of the blade, a desperation draw that no sensei of the Katori ryu had ever taught him. Desperation was an instructor unto itself.

  He scrabbled to his feet, the merest prickling of sensation returning to his sleeping right arm. His opponent stood framed in the dim light seeping through the riven tent, and Gonji’s nape hairs bristled. It was a full field-armored knight, his helmet of the Todenkopf design, fashioned to strike fear in an enemy: shaped like a skull, with a grinning mouth engraved over the breath holes and an embossed nose with nostrils fuming simulated flame.

  Gonji had an instant’s flash of nostalgic recall—the masks of the Noh players that depicted demons—and then the halberd’s ranseur edge was plunging for his breast.

  The samurai parried it aside in a shower of sparks, his left hand coming to his rescue with a tight circular motion as it might for any kenshi—any skillful swordsman—though it had been some time since he’d concentrated on left-hand practice, and he felt uncomfortably imprecise.

  The assassin resumed the attack at once, slashing at his torso in deadly earnest as he clanked forward in his foreboding armor. Gonji dropped his point from its horizontal engagement and skipped back a step, the lethal polearm’s edge whizzing by to crash through a tent pole. The tent roof sagged to head height on one side.

  Another slash—the assailant lacking speed, coming on inexorably, unhurried, sure of himself. He made no sound but for the clangor of his metallic shielding.

  Gonji caught the halberd on a short returning arc and twisted it groundward, stamped it down hard and crashed his blade against a forearm, just above the elbow. The katana sliced deeply into the foe’s armor, causing him to release his grip with the injured arm. But the killer made no outcry, nor did blood leak from the wound.

  Where were the guards?

  The samurai felt the returning sensation in his right arm, burning needles stinging him from shoulder to fingertips. He brought his blade into a two-handed grip, feeling imbalanced, as though fencing with a transplanted limb on one side.

  Amazingly, the assassin brought his own wounded arm back into play.

  Gonji parried, blocked, sang his keen blade off the savage ranseur head, chipped wood from the haft of the polearm, dancing in and out, seeking an open line by which he might riposte deeply enough to be effective.

  A whistling slash meant to behead him—

  He drove the polearm up overhead and darted in, feeling the blood again coursing vigorously through his right arm. His short, curling push-stroke smashed the jaw hinge of the Todenkopf, and a hard downward cut parted the attacker’s hand from his wrist. Bits of steel armor jangled on the ground. The halberd was batted sidewise to land in a dark corner of the tent.

  Cursing, Gonji executed a series of furious right-left-right torso-twisting slashes, shattering the attacker’s breastplate. Metal screaked and splintered, flying off in all directions. Through it all, there was still no sound from the unhinged killer. And then none was possible—the samurai swept a powerful two-hand stroke cleanly through the armored gorget, the hideous Todenkopf helm leaping off the man’s shoulders to bound away in the darkness with a clattering din.

  Gonji retreated in surprise. The armor teetered, fell toward him. Even in the uncertain illumination he could tell that the decapitation had left no gouting stump of a neck.

  The headless armor began to crawl toward him.

  His assassin was not human.

  Grimacing, the samurai slashed through another tent pole, downing the roof onto the ensorceled armor. Two more slashes admitted a rush of clean night air, and Gonji scurried outside to wheel about in confusion. Soldiers were coming on at the run, and he brought his blade into middle guard until he saw that some of his companions were among them, all flourishing weapons in the perplexity of disturbed sleep.

  Two guards lay dead, one on either side of the collapsed tent, their throats cut by the heavy blade of the halberd such that their heads lay half-sundered.

  The rasping of armor came to their ears from beneath the heavy fabric. Two papal guards in Pisan-style armor and close-helmets brought their double-bladed halberds to bear on the sorcerous armor, exploding its contents into open view.

  Crushed at its center, gasping a last breath of unholy life, was a tiny humanoid figure. A shriveled gnome with lifeless black eyes and a wide crescent mouth. Its hairless body was infantile in its lack of musculature, and its fingers and toes ended in curved talons. Some dark enchanter in the evil conspiracy that bedeviled Gonji’s wanderings had briefly empowered it to stalk the earth as an equal to
men, to vent its hatred of the inheritors of this world in a savage vendetta focused on the samurai.

  Its spell eroding as it succumbed to death, the small figure…faded from view, vaporized, leaving the shell of its shattered armor as the sole evidence of its work.

  “Have you ever seen the like of this before?” Gonji asked the scowling General Lodovici.

  The general mopped his brow. “I—I saw nothing.”

  Gonji sighed as he wiped down the blade of the katana and returned it to its retrieved scabbard. So that was the way it would be here. In civilized areas men stubbornly denied the belief in magic intruding upon their lives. Gonji had witnessed this stiff-necked denial many times before in Europe’s populous regions. And he’d seen how it allowed evil to romp unchecked in shadows men sought to dispel by enforced ignorance.

  “Do you often have days like this?” It was Kuma-san, a twinkle in his eye.

  Gonji’s lips twisted wryly. “Only in the company of Catholics…”

  * * * *

  Gonji had never before encountered the famed mercenaries comprising the Swiss Guards. Nor they, him…

  “Weapons in the presence of His Holiness—an outrage!” the monsignore in dignitary attire complained. His face turned plum-hued with creeping rage at the oriental guest’s insolence, and he nearly lost his biretta as he gesticulated.

  Two burly Swiss Guards moved on his command and crossed their pikes to bar the samurai’s entrance into the palace vestibule. Gonji stood before them, eyeing them squarely.

  “My swords accompany me everywhere,” Gonji announced quietly, his bearing cool and dignified. “They are as close as I come to the holy vestments which you are bound to display. There is nothing further to discuss in this matter.”

  Father Sebastio interceded, his position as official papal messenger carrying considerable weight. Calmer tempers prevailed, and Gonji’s companions relaxed. The livid monsignore’s brothers joined with Kuma-san in mollifying his indignance, and Gonji’s friend and former mentor succeeded in articulating the meaning of the cultural custom the samurai would not waive. Sebastio explained the mystical status the sword enjoyed among the warrior elite of Dai Nihon, and a compromise was struck.

  An ornate sword rack was swiftly obtained while the party waited in the courtyard. Gonji entered the vestibule after wiping his feet outside to do it honor. He removed the Sagami and reverently mounted it on the rack at the right side of the archway. A guard was placed on it with strict instructions not to touch it for any reason. After some further uneasy discussion, it was permitted for the samurai to carry his ko-dachi—his seppuku sword—in his right hand, the place from which it could not be easily drawn, signifying the trust he placed in his hosts.

  The problem uneasily solved, the party continued into the palace under the wary gaze of the Swiss Guards.

  The remainder of the day was spent in a monotonous round of introductions and bureaucratic shuffling at seemingly endless clerical checkpoints. The pope was not encountered that day.

  In the evening Gonji and his company were permitted to freely explore the Vatican environs, always under Swiss Guard escort. They viewed the art masterpieces and the archeological artifacts in the Vatican’s sprawling museums. Tiring of solemn chambers and the pungent airs of incense and musty tomes, they at last took to the streets, where the contadini regarded them sullenly and crossed themselves or strolled through their horses’ paths with impudent disdain of the samurai’s growing notoriety. Word of the disagreement at the Vatican Palace had spread quickly.

  But always, always the escort of Swiss Guards anticipated and averted trouble. Gonji studied them closely, appraising their mien, their close-knit efficiency as a unit, their smooth handling of weapons. They exuded competence and never wasted a motion; they missed nothing, evaluated every potential threat swiftly and surely, and projected only so much implied force as was necessary to deal with it.

  He decided they’d be worthy allies in any armed clash.

  * * * *

  Pope Innocent…as near to a Taiko as Europe could boast…

  His Holiness sat in regal splendor beneath the baldacchino that hooded his throne. His smile was sublime, his presence imposing, as he stood, clutching his staff, and rose to the considerable height his mitre imparted.

  “We received word that you had been shot to death,” the pontiff said with grave concern once introductions and formal proprieties had been dispensed with. “We prayed it was not so. A Solemn High Mass was celebrated in that hope.”

  “Ah, so desu ka?” Gonji replied, bowing perfectly. “And surely some must have prayed that it was true. Explain, dozo—do you believe that Iasu weighs the prayers on either hand, and the heavier hand will out? If so, then I am grateful. Domo arigato.”

  The samurai made an immediate impression on the Church hierarchy with his self-assurance and the facile way in which he moved and spoke in the present august company. They, in turn, left an impression on him. They had allowed tales of his adventures in Europe to become hopelessly twisted; their regard for him was clouded by doubt and fear…

  “It has been said that your involvement with Count Victor Szekely may have been instrumental in undermining his power and thus smoothing the way for the Magyars to win control of Hungary. The Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph the Second, is said to be rather piqued with your supposed actions.”

  Gonji remained expressionless as he tried to explain his split commitment in Hungary, several years earlier, though the memories were bitter. He had himself suffered the loss of an unborn child in the grim affair and had since been accused of perpetrating the death of the woman who bore the child, a woman who loved him desperately.

  “…and so, you see, I was enlisted in Count Szekely’s service when he was manipulated by an evil agent, forced by tragedy to commit a reprisal against his Magyar cousin.”

  “And you led a party to attack the Magyar on his behalf, you say?”

  “Hai. That…was my original duty, yet I was forced by circumstance—by the foul deed I had uncovered—to defend the castle of the man I’d come to kill.”

  “Then you foreswore your vaunted sense of duty?” The interrogator postured smugly.

  Gonji remained dispassionate toward the entrapment attempt. “Iye, I served my master by trying to forestall him from destroying his cousin needlessly. Until we could expose the evil conspiracy that opposed them both, that reveled in the chaos their enmity spawned. I was not party to what happened later, when the Magyar count’s allies avenged him. But I do say that Count Szekely brought most of his troubles upon himself. His failure to recognize evil in disguise caused the death of both his cousin and himself. I was involved, hai. I was younger, more easily manipulated. But you—in your divisiveness, I understand, you’ve even allied yourself with the Turk invaders against your own brothers!”

  When the indignant uproar had been controlled, the investigators—many of whom were associated with the High Office of Inquisition itself—tried a new tack.

  “You have, at various times, served the interests of Holy Mother Church, heretics, and pagans alike. Whom do you ultimately serve, Signore Sabatake?”

  Gonji patiently launched into an explication of his eclectic personal philosophy. He had rarely before tried to explain his complex beliefs to the stubborn theosophists of the West; yet he felt a compelling need to do so now, He spoke with warmth of the complicated system of life in Japan, as a byproduct of delineating his delicate personal situation. His daimyo father had wed a shipwrecked Norwegian warrior-woman—a former captive of Portuguese traders—who adhered to the old pagan Norse traditions. His father tolerated the Christian priests in Japan out of respect for his mother’s Western origin and the mutually profitable trade they had brought to Japan. Gonji befriended the priests who tutored him in his youth mainly out of respect for his father’s wish that he broa
den his education. Later, he entered into true friendships with certain Catholic priests—like Father Sebastio and Brother Friedrich, who was slain by the same agent of evil who instigated the Szekely Clan War. But out of deference to his mother’s wishes, he had refused to be baptized.

  “How then will you be saved?” a fervent young prelate was quick to ask when Gonji had concluded.

  “I shall have to make my own reconciliation to Iasu, neh? It is difficult to explain to your way of thinking, but I see no contradiction in following more than one way, heeding more than one system of belief. Oh, and—in any event, my friend Kuma-san, Father Sebastio, has already taken it upon himself to baptize me into Christianity when I was helpless to do anything about it.”

  Gonji turned his smiling attention on Sebastio, who looked sheepish to suddenly be the focus of the theologians’ icy stares.

  As the days passed, Gonji saw increasingly less of the pope and more of the High Office theologians. Kuma-san apologized profusely to Gonji for the turn this command visit had taken. For Gonji was once again seemingly on trial by the High Office of Inquisition, though under more pleasant circumstances this time than he’d known in Spain.

  Gonji, for his part, was surprisingly content with the proceedings to date. He’d finally been given a chance to pierce the mystical aura that surrounded him with the cold light of truth.

  * * * *

  “The Deathwind of Vedun Epic of Alain Paille”…

  For the first time, Gonji was treated to passages from the book written by Vedun’s antic genius, Alain Paille, who was said to be imprisoned somewhere in France. The theologians who read asked him to clarify passages wherever appropriate, and Gonji did so enthusiastically, listening with extreme interest. The book was said to be used as a freedom text by communities similar to Vedun which had insisted on religious tolerance. Pockets of such Wunderknechten persuasion were developing throughout Europe.