by T. C. Rypel
He tossed the axe aside and unbuckled his other weapons, showing his empty hands.
Wilf bridled at the other’s challenge but continued to hold the pistol on him.
Henri Chabot emerged from a storage room, a short-barreled wheel-lock piece leveled in one trembling fist.
“You,” he grated at the slouch-hatted man who held Gaby in a standoff, “lower that gun barrel from my daughter.”
The pistol-wielding stranger blinked and then sighed in exasperation. “Tell your papa to please put down his own pistol. S’il vous plait, mademoiselle?”
“Drop yours first,” Gabrielle replied, her jaw jutting.
“Aw, shit, Brett,” Normand Gareau griped at his comrade, now lowering the pistol and removing his hat to wipe his brow. “I think they show some spirit, non?”
Brett Jarret ignored him and pointed at Wilf’s wheel-lock. “Come on, big mouth,” he taunted. “Put that down and show me you have what ‘leaders’ are made of. Rough and tumble, no holds barred. And I’ll only use my feet.” He lifted one booted leg.
“Come on, Brett—” Gareau grumbled. “This young lass looks like she can shoot straight, and the old man’s quaking might make that thing go off.”
Wilf clenched his teeth and faced Brett Jarret squarely. He laid the pistol on a stool, and when he looked down for an instant, Jarret moved fast—
“Watch out!” Gaby warned—too late.
Jarret’s thick leg swung up in a surprisingly graceful crescent kick that passed over Wilf’s head as he ducked nimbly. It was a set-up for the quick jumping front-kick that followed. Wilf caught the blow full in the belly, his breath bursting from his lungs as he stumbled backward.
Jarret moved in, feinting another front kick. Wilf recovered enough to reply with a snapping backfist that fell intentionally short, drawing a dodge that caused Jarret to lean out of balance.
Wilf’s hard-turning roundhouse kick thumped into the warrior’s ribs, eliciting a gasp of shock, as much as pain, and stirring Brett Jarret’s competitive spirit to new heights.
Then Gareau spotted something. “Brett, wait!” He tried to draw his friend’s attention—rather like dissuading a charging bull. Wilf’s and Jarret’s boots slammed together in fierce kicks that blocked each other, as Gareau put up his pistol in his belt and alternated between making placating gestures to Gaby and Henri and bellowing at Jarret—
“Brett—listen!”
“Shut up, Gareau!”
“Look at his sword—his sword, man!”
Brett backed Wilf into a corner, leapt, and lashed out with a high front snap-kick aimed at decapitating him. Wilf bobbed under the boot’s heavy lunge and dropped low in the tight quarters, spinning a stiff-legged kick along the floor with enough arc to sweep Jarret’s standing leg from under him. He crashed to the floorboards heavily.
“God damn it, Jarret, will you look at that damned sword? Where have you seen one like that before?” Gareau lurched toward the battlers but looked to Gaby. “Lady, put that gun down!”
Now Gareau was standing nearly beside Spine-cleaver, pointing at it.
“Look!”
Jarret lay dazedly rubbing the back of his head, scowling, but he did indeed now recognize the katana, the only other blade he’d ever seen designed like Gonji’s storied Sagami.
“Wilfred Gundersen, is it?” Normand Gareau said, smiling and nodding his head. “Correct? You’ll have to forgive Brett. All it takes to set him off is a single word questioning his fighting prowess. Wilfred of Vedun…I should have known as soon as I heard the girl call you Wilf, for Christ’s sake.”
“The girl’s name is Gabrielle,” she said petulantly, appraising Gareau more closely now.
Wilf breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you spotted the sword hilt. I was about out of samurai tricks.”
Soon after introductions, people began to arrive at the inn by the curious and vocal bunches as word spread of the new allies’ arrival. Henri Chabot ushered in Darcy Lavelle and a few other friends and militia leaders.
“What’s happening?” Darcy asked.
Wilf was gesturing enthusiastically. “These worthy gentlemen have come from Gonji! They bring news that Gonji’s in the province, with more of our fellows!”
“The samurai?”
“Sensei to all Wunderknechten!”
“Now let’s see what the Farouche will muster to—”
There was a noisy commotion in the streets without. People cried out in shock. Their screams were unsettling at first; weapons sang out of belts and scabbards.
But these, it turned out, were squeals of unbridled joy.
Father Giroux turned out the citizenry to welcome home the rescued children.
Buey and Luigi Leone rode proudly at the head of the column, a small, dark-eyed boy sharing the saddle with Buey until he caught sight of his erstwhile grieving mother. One by one the children were helped down from their horses by eager hands.
“Henri!” Gabrielle called out gaily to her father. “Drinks on the house, n’est-ce pas?”
* * * *
“So, Jarret,” Buey blared, hefting an ale flagon, “you’re still picking on smaller men, eh?”
“I’d rather take on bigger, but I see you’ve already met your match for the day,” Jarret retorted, indicating Buey’s fresh scars from the knife fight at the well.
Buey was in good spirits for the first time since he’d killed Gonji’s young would-be assassin. Rescuing Lamorisse’s children had been a tonic for him, a catharsis of his guilt over years of violent endeavor.
“You buffoons fight all you want,” Luigi Leone said, adjusting his eye patch. “All I want to do is drink and…maybe make a few friends before we’re fighting for our asses again. Pardon, madame,” he appended for Blanche Lavelle’s benefit.
Darcy laughed. “First time we’ve heard such merriment in Lamorisse in…I don’t know—seems like a long time.”
“I just wish we could do something to cheer Wyatt,” Blanche added sadly at his side. Her eyes were brimming with tears as she glanced around the noisy inn.
“We best get this out of our systems quickly, gentle folk,” Wilf advised. “I hate to be a killjoy, but there are still the Farouche to reckon with. Buey’s people foiled whatever their plans were for the children. They’ll do something in retaliation, we can be sure.”
Nods of agreement followed Wilf’s observation.
“Have you heroes seen many monsters like those flying devils we shot down?” Leone asked. Assured by the others that Leone and Buey’s band had yet to encounter the worst of Farouche sorcery, the one-eyed Italian adventurer whistled and toasted their fellowship. “Here’s to our battling band, then—and one hell of an army we make, eh? It’s not going to be like last year.”
Hardy assents rang out in the auberge.
Wilf pulled Darcy aside. “You and I have plans to make. If I can, I’d like to link up with Gonji as soon as possible.”
As they moved off, Normand Gareau’s eyes narrowed when he caught sight of someone in the crowd.
“Chabot, who’s that man over there?”
Henri peered where Normand pointed, but Gabrielle leaned over the bar between them, “Reynald Labossiere,” she said without bothering to look, for her eyes were settled firmly on the dapper Gareau.
“I have news for you, ma cherie—that is not his name.”
Gaby watched Gareau amble over to the table where Reynald sat with his wife and a few Wunderknechten companions.
“I know,” she whispered after him.
Reynald seemed contented for the first time in months. And it had been longer still since anyone in Lamorisse had seen him and Faye seemingly enjoying each other’s company.
His smile plummeted when he recognized the face looming ab
ove his table.
“Monsieur…Duvier,” Normand said with complacent certainty.
Silence swept the table as the others took in Reynald’s expression.
“What is it, Reynald?” Faye asked, laying a hand on her husband’s arm. “Who is this man? What does he mean?”
Reynald swallowed, eyes swimming with the spell of the ale and the sudden churning of old memories. “He is…someone I’d hoped never to encounter. Someone who is very much as I once was. I told you you wouldn’t believe certain things I could say about my past, Faye…” He saw that people were staring now, and voices were muting throughout the inn. He steeled himself and went on. “We used to fight on opposite sides, this man and I. I killed one too many on his side, and a price was fixed on my head. He was set to claiming it…once.”
People began to ease back from the table.
Gareau paused for a long, tense moment, then tipped his flagon toward Reynald and bowed to the apprehensive Faye. “Once,” he echoed. “But now we fight on the same side. Monsieur…Labossiere. Madame.” Gareau smiled, touched his hat brim, and returned to the bar.
Buey shortly took up his late place at Reynald’s whisper-huddled table.
“You know,” the Ox said to the still shaken man, clearing his throat nervously, “I killed one person too many once, too, and…well, I think now that there’s forgiveness enough in Heaven for such as we are…”
Reynald watched the huge warrior humbly drift away from the table, mystified. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes as he pulled his wife close to him.
Gaby moved along the bar to face Normand Gareau again, eyeing him conspiratorially.
“I knew his name wasn’t really Labossiere, too, you know.”
“Really?” Normand answered. “How so?”
“I have dreams,” she replied. “Some people think they’re prophetic. Like about the castle. I knew the Wunderknechten would be using that haunted old place again. And I’ve had…other dreams.” She smiled coyly.
“Is that so? Like what?”
“Like about the dashing young knight who rides into town and carries me off on his bold charger.”
Gareau gazed into his empty flagon. “Do you have an ale called Ehrenberg?”
“A good one,” she replied, “and not easy to get. But I think I could scare up a measure for such a valiant young swain.”
Their eyes met, but before Gaby could move toward the ale stores, they were all clearing out of the inn in response to the outcries of alarm in the streets.
The moon had risen. A bloated, grotesque oval that loomed impossibly large over Lamorisse. No one had ever seen it so huge. It seemed as if it had drifted near the earth in ominous portent of what was soon to follow.
The sky overhead began to swirl.
A dark, roiling mist spiraled and fumed in the northern sky, like storm clouds stirred by the hand of an angry god. There was a roaring in the heavens and a series of luminous flashings behind the vast, whirling maelstrom, eliciting shouts and outcries from the frightened townsfolk.
Someone, something was plying forbidden arts. There was little doubt as to whom was behind it.
“Time to make ready,” Wilf called out.
“For what?” Darcy Lavelle snapped back, his face etched with atavistic fear.
At the door to the inn, Gabrielle Chabot stared, trancelike, straight ahead and spoke in a voice too low to be heard.
“For the storm…and the flood.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Under the enormous, sickly glowing moon of an alien sphere, the worshipers of Dark Power pursued their “faith” rite. For so the denizens of the present earthly sphere would have described it, lacking the knowledge to explain what to them could only be pure magic and mysticism and sorcerous arcana.
Mercenary soldiers and subservient followers of the Farouche, alike, obediently flung themselves into the ritual.
Garish flames of orange and blue and sunset red burst from the rocks, their sources unguessable to the robed acolytes, who swayed and chanted and ogled in abject terror the phantasmagorical shapes and light-and-shadow wonders the Farouche Clan conjured.
They pronounced the words they’d been given. Seven times they repeated the rhythmic chants to the earth “elementals” who were said to control all power in the cosmic system of interlocked spheres. Then the participants slashed their arms as they’d been shown, each one contributing droplets of his life’s blood to the common bowl that symbolized their oneness.
Even as they watched, benumbed, their world became translucent, overlaid and then wholly supplanted by another. And that one was superseded by still more, fragments of the alien spheres melding, juxtaposing, fashioning at the last an eerie landscape that was none of them yet all of them at once.
A Conjunction of Spheres—of the most earth-magic-sensitive spheres that had once comprised lost Arcadia, whence came all sentient beings, along with all atrophied powers of sub-atomic manipulation which the humans of Gonji’s world once might have plied, but which they could now only apprehend as frightening sorcery and superstition and spiritual warfare of unknowable gods.
Serge Farouche stalked through the crowd, in bestial monster avatar, leering at them, intimidating those whose faith failed them in the grislier moments of self-injury.
Blaise, now a fawn, performed ritual sacrifices at the altar stone raised at the center of the grotto. He presided over the carnal sharing—the drinking of blood and devouring of flesh. The living human and animal offerings who had not been as fortunate as the children of Lamorisse.
From some of these were gleaned actual, useful transference of death-energies; others were merely for theatrical effect over the superstitious crowd.
Roman Farouche—a great white, two-legged cat—and Anton Balaerik lorded over the proceedings. They worked in turn, alternately bowing out in deference to each other, players on a sublime stage before an unenlightened audience. They gathered unto themselves the tremendous energies released by violent, shrieking death of the sacrificial animals; absorbing the somewhat lesser energies extracted from the fervent emotional vibrations proceeding from the faith of their followers.
The Farouche—adepts from a higher-planed sphere—bled their “worshipers” for fear, for blood, for the human potential wrung from willfully captive souls.
Roman and Balaerik began to display their renewed psychic energies—their “sorcerous” power. They levitated ever larger objects, opened ever vaster gateway views into worlds contiguous to the present Terran sphere.
And now these Masters were ready for the Lost Ones. Those who had failed in their service to the Farouche. These were largely weaker mercenaries who had been defeated by the rebel forces; who had fled from engagements; or thought to redeem themselves by bringing useless intelligence to their lords when they might have more worthily remained in the field to die in Farouche service. Still others were grumblers who’d been heard to boldly question Farouche power in view of the many allies who’d fallen recently.
They wore the special garb. The lurid flame-hued gowns they’d been told were called the Red Robes of Recommitment. Each man proudly displayed his own favored edged weapon, slung over his shoulder.
They were to be infused with renewed strength and courage of purpose.
These penitents mounted the grotto steps to kneel just below the dais of power, where Roman Farouche and Anton Balaerik chimed out a dual incantation and gestured over their heads. The only words spoken regarding them that they could understand were these last—the last words of any kind they would ever hear:
“Thus are your energies recommitted—”
Balaerik’s arms waved symmetrically, swanlike.
The robes tightened about the penitents, binding them helplessly. Their weapons quit their fastenings to hover mystically over the
ir heads. And as they watched, wide-eyed, pleading in utter helplessness, their throats were slit. Slowly. Their shrieking, liberated life-forces were recaptured by Balaerik, in the small ivory receptacle by which he could control their now-enslaved corpses.
The reanimated bodies rose, shucking their garments, to stand naked before their lord and master and the fearfully sweating, trembling observers. Lifeless eyes gazed up at Balaerik obediently. The necromancer’s new slaves took up their weapons and shambled off to stand, weaving, in a double rank at one end of the grotto. Undead automatons, to be used as Balaerik saw fit.
Now Roman and Balaerik allowed their acolytes to engage in bacchanalian, orgiastic revelry—led by Blaise—while they tested their fresh input of cosmic energy. Roman worked at extending his control over ever more distant inanimate objects, while Balaerik concentrated on plying the gateways into useful spheres. Spheres already conquered by the cross-world conspirators. Primitive spheres, whose power was easily appropriated.
Balaerik opened doorways to terror and might, dreadful sights and brutish power. Monstrous forms began to pour through into the present world: Thus did he outfit his army that would exact retribution from Burgundy—
Great hulking barbarians, shaggy and clad in armor of plate and hide; horse-legged bipedal beasts reminiscent of the satyrs, though these bore the heads and tusks of boars; moldering corpses still clung with the rusted armor in which they’d died in Balaerik’s service on other spheres, weak at arms but far more valuable for the will-sapping, valor-shriveling function they performed so well; ram-headed cannibalistic fiends from a world that reveled in warfare and celebrated the art of pain over all others…
Balaerik watched his regiment form in the grotto. When he dared not strain the gateways with further transferences, he closed the portals to the tongues of land—called jetties—that might lead these creatures home. For they would never go home. When their work was finished here, they would be disposed of. Efficient use of energy precluded the enormous power waste needed to maintain transit-locks.
