by Rypel, T. C.
Gonji smiled and leaned forward over Tora’s withers to peer into the bunched men and animals coming down the road. Strom’s reedy piping could be heard wafting down to them on the receptive morning air currents.
They made a sharp right turn along the road, and Gonji snapped a rein. “Cholera,” he swore, tossing the broken piece away. “Now I’ve got to pay a foster’s bloated fee.”
Garth chuckled. “We have a good one.”
“Must you use that awful term?” Milorad asked wincingly.
“Cholera?” Gonji repeated. It was his favorite Slavic epithet, descriptive of a vile intestinal disease whose epidemic outbreaks produced revolting symptoms. It was, in fact, one of the few Slavic terms Gonji understood. “I like it.”
“It’s such a foul peasant word,” Milorad clucked. “And in any case your accent bleeds off all its...vigorous vulgarity!” The adviser shrilled a laugh, feeling a tipsy satisfaction with the sound of his words.
“Ahhhh,” Gonji growled at him.
Flavio suppressed a smile. “Gonji,” the Elder asked, “tell me something—what’s in all this manipulation of yours, besides the payment, that keeps you here?”
The samurai thought a moment, a certain warm exuberance filling him that caused him to speak with candor. “I rather like this city of yours, if you must know. I think I’ve made some friends here, a rare and special occurrence for a lonely half-breed. And these days one must work at keeping friends alive. I do anyway. But, so sorry, that’s all silly sentimental talk that probably doesn’t answer your question.”
“Ah, but it does. Please go on.”
“Nothing more to say. Whatever you believe about Klann’s intentions, I say you’re in deep trouble. I speak from experience. There are other things I—” He drew the line at revealing the savagery he had helped perpetrate in the province while riding with Klann’s 3rd Free Company. He shrugged. “And I’ve told you of my Deathwind quest. I think its secret awaits me here. Maybe you people will help fill in missing information when you decide to—dozo yurusu—please forgive—when you loosen your tongues.”
He looked sidelong to the Elder with an accusing eye. But Flavio’s gaze held the road before him noncommittally.
“What was that key business about last night?” Gonji asked, remembering the object’s curious familiarity to him.
“I don’t know,” Flavio lied. “Something Mord keeps pressing us about that no one can identify.”
“It occurs to me that I’ve seen it around here before,” Gonji advanced, seeing the Elder’s shoulders stiffen. Damned stubborn people.
Sheep and cattle rumbled by all around them now, lowing noisily. The nearest farmers and herdsmen were nearly upon them, quickening their pace and calling out unheard greetings.
Garth looked up the hill to where Strom sat with his flock. “I think I’ll go up there and have a word with my son, by your leave.”
“Of course, Garth,” Flavio said.
And then Gonji remembered.
“Garth!” he shouted at the former commander’s departing back.
Garth turned. “Ja?”
“That business with the pistol last night.... What is this obsession Klann has about no firearms in his presence?”
Garth glanced down at his roan’s neck and smiled wanly.
“Well, you see,” he replied tentatively, picking his words carefully, “you would be too—he was killed by a pistol once. Tonight, eh?” And he wheeled the roan and loped up the hill without bothering to appraise the amazed looks that followed him.
And then they were surrounded by excited townsfolk, led by the farmers Vlad Dobroczy and Peter Foristek. Several voices piped up at once, mostly inquiring after the welfare of loved ones at the castle.
“And how fares the city?” Flavio asked.
“Well, Master Flavio! There was no trouble last night!”
“Most of the soldiers were gone to the castle—”
“We should have knocked out the rest and taken their weapons!”
“Ja!—sí!—nyet, that would be crazy!—”
“What is Klann like?”
“Did you see my daughter—please!”
“Sí, she was there, she’s fine, she sends her love and her assurance that—”
“How about my brother?”
“—Anina?”
“No, I’m afraid I—Mil, did you?”
“Ja-ja—in the kitchens, I’m sure of it....”
“Did you see the giant?”
Gonji understood little of it, for most of the speakers continued to use Slavic tongues which, in his most cynical moods, he was inclined to view as hostility, bigotry, and suspicion directed at him. But he was used to it, and he saw none of the cautious looks or bleak stares that were proffered in his direction. For now his eyes were following Garth.
And what an evening tonight promised to be. He slapped his thigh and gripped the Sagami’s hilt, once again flooded by a tantalizing sense of destiny, a conviction of the rightness of his being here in this place, at this point in time.
(Julian)
A pox on Julian. Forget him.
“There will be full discussion and disclosure at a council meeting,” Flavio was saying. “You’ll all be notified.” Spreading encouragement, smiling, he smoothly extricated himself from their pressing attentions.
They pushed ahead toward the city, a rather serious Garth joining them farther down the road. Gonji, feeling a sudden pang of sympathy for his master’s administrative problems, loped up alongside Flavio, grinning.
They said nothing more of a coherent nature, all remaining energy spent fighting drowsiness and the spates of chortling and tittering they shared until they clopped up under the shadow of the great walls of Vedun. Before the gatehouse Flavio urged upon them a staid countenance and what decorum they could muster.
Old Gort the gatekeeper greeted them warmly in his cackling tone. His brown, hairless chest was already shirtless, though the sun was still but a glowing ember in the eastern Carpathian peaks, and his shriveled frame and the large growth on his neck lent him the appearance of a baby bird that had fallen from its nest. Not quite dead but with little hope left.
A few mercenary gatehouse guards stood nearby. Gonji appraised them lazily. There was at least one he had not seen before, a sallet-helmed wild-man with furry boots who glared balefully at Gonji from astride a black Turk gelding. The mustached brigand was a small arsenal: He wore a broadsword at his waist, a smaller blade angling up from his back. A pistol and dirk hung from his belt; smaller throwing daggers jutted from his boot tops and either side of his helm, the latter pair projecting upward like horns. Lashed to his saddle was an angry looking arquebus; a formidable figure.
One may concentrate on but a single weapon at a time, came a sage voice of experience in Gonji’s head.
Gonji ignored the bandit’s gaze, long used to such surly assessment. Each new reputation-seeker would feel compelled to regard him like this, especially now, as tales of his battle skills spread.
They rode into the city to see the early risers—and perhaps some who had gone sleepless—clustered around the rostrum and under the infant cupid amoretti at the fountain. The square reeked of animal stench and food odors, echoed with the sounds of men and beasts. Upon seeing Flavio, people rushed over for word of the portentous meeting.
Flavio dealt with them briefly, displaying a tact and grace that Gonji found remarkable, given his weary state.
Gonji shivered in the dewy chill and pulled his kimono close at his throat as they rode toward the Via Fidei and Flavio’s home. Garth bid them guten tag and took his leave of them, saying he’d send for them in the evening.
When they passed the chapel they heard a shouting commotion, and there appeared from around a corner three drunken free companions, scattering an angry farmer’s pigs with a staff. They were prodding two rutting swine toward the chapel steps when they saw the delegation party. Milorad tsked and crossed himself, lip curling with disgust. Flavio eyed their amusement gl
umly but said nothing.
Gonji angled Tora toward them at a slow walk. His left hand clutched the pommel of the Sagami suggestively, and his raw, reddening eyes lanced down grimly.
The three mercenaries stopped laughing when they saw him coming. Whether by Julian’s censure against provoking him or the threatening sight of the samurai himself, they looked from one to the other and mutely agreed to abandon their sport. Dropping the staff, they staggered off down the lane, their braying laughter resuming only after Gonji was out of sight.
Gonji shot a telling look at Flavio, but the Elder averted his eyes and prodded his mare onward, erect and dignified in the saddle.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“That’s as much as he would say?” Phlegor fumed above the other dissident voices.
“I think he was quite conciliatory, given the power he holds over us,” Flavio countered. The Elder removed his capuchin in the foyer of his manse, which now resembled a meeting hall. Dozens of people crowded in to hear the result of the long-awaited meeting with Klann. The steps and portico without had looked like the entrance to a rescue mission. Some had camped out there overnight, and with the coming of dawn they were joined by curious early-risers.
Gonji stood in a corner of the parlor with Paille, who could barely contain his glee over the general dissatisfaction with Klann’s concessions. His eyes flashed wildly, his grin a crooked gash from a night of evident carousing.
The samurai was sleepy, sore, irritable and bored in equal measures. He watched the jostling, head-shaking grumblers with growing detachment, suppressing a big yawn, all the while wondering where the old statesmen, Flavio and Milorad, found their source of endless diplomacy. Even Milorad now had shaken off the effects of the night’s excesses and aided the Elder in dealing with these complaining townsfolk, not one of whom could have begun to construct a plan for the future of Vedun.
Gonji felt himself reeling where he stood. He straightened but let his knees relax. His face felt drawn and squeezed, and his mind was drifting in that peculiar way the mind does when it demands sleep, when even the most pressing concerns dwindle in importance. The burning pain in his wrist and side helped keep him awake in the stuffy parlor.
Tralayn the prophetess leaned against an arch with her hands behind her, her expression sagely sad. The hood of her cloak cowled her sheeny black hair. When she saw Gonji looking, her emerald eyes flashed a tiny smile. The confident lioness. Not long ago she had been a handsome figure of a woman. Hell, still was.
Gonji shook himself and set a scowl on his face. Cholera, where did Flavio derive his patience?
“—the craft guilds will not supply goods to these brigands—”
“Phlegor—”
“—positive steps must be taken to—”
“Phlegor, why do you remain here in Vedun?” Flavio asked, his patience at last wearing thin. “There is always a demand for militant Churchmen in Austria, you know.”
“Afraid of losing the advantages of his status in the great upheaval to come,” Paille whispered to Gonji, who displayed no reaction. “So this is how the aristocracy lives,” the artist continued, this time in a conversational tone as he rolled a sardonic grin around the manse’s rich appointments.
“Shut up, Paille,” Gonji said barely above a whisper.
“Mon frère!”
“The man deserves respect, and he is my employer.”
“Indeed so. And how does one’s overseer compare to the chronicler of his glorious achievements? I am deeply hurt, monsieur.”
But purveyor of histrionic emotion that he was, Paille quickly altered his deep hurt to mere superficial pique when Gonji made no effort to dignify it with an apology. Seconds later it was all forgotten.
“I’m for breaking my fast. Will you join me?”
Gonji grunted an assent.
The angry discussion in the parlor had turned to plans for a council meeting the following night, most of which were hammered out in provincial dialects. Gonji strode up behind Flavio and cleared his throat.
“Will you be in need of your bodyguard this morning, Master Flavio?”
Flavio clapped him on the shoulder amiably, and Gonji passively allowed the gesture. “No, my friend, rest. We’ll speak later.”
“By your leave, then.” Gonji bowed and left the room, irascibly ignoring Tralayn’s smiling composure as he moved out onto the portico. No one deserved to look so rested when he felt like a wad of chewed-over cud.
“Decadent,” Paille criticized, mashing a feathered cap onto his skull and examining the amoretto on either portal and the Madonna and Child mezzo rilievo on a stone column. “Decadence. Precious frippery and religious iconography.”
Michael Benedetto clumped heavily up the steps, looking tousled and sleepless. He seemed about to say something but merely nodded in answer to Gonji’s curt bow as he passed. His twin black eyes had resolved now to ugly green and purple bruises.
“I thought he might have joined you at the feast after all, last night,” Paille observed. “I saw him out riding. God knows the poor devil’s had his troubles lately.”
“Well, at least he can take solace in his woman,” Gonji observed, thinking of the radiant and stately Lydia.
“What—the Polish duchess?” Paille said caustically. “And may we speak French this fine morning, s’il vous plait?”
“Let’s stick with German. I’m too tired.”
Paille sighed. “German...the swaggering Hun language—all-recht, as you wish.”
“And no talk of your brothers, eh? Your parents must have run a rabbit warren....”
They mounted and rode off, Gonji aboard Tora, Alain jouncing whimsically astride a sway-backed mare.
“Ah, what a night it was in Vedun without all those brigands,” the artist prattled in desultory fashion, denying Gonji a moment’s peace. “All the regulars turned out at the inn for the first time in a week. But I’d venture you had quite a night, as well. What’s the warlord Klann like? What did the bastards do to you there?” He pointed to Genya’s blood-soaked scarf, still wrapped tightly around the wrist wound.
“Nothing to speak of.”
“Couldn’t best you, eh?”
Gonji thought of Julian, began to wonder why he was riding with the yammering artist to Wojcik’s Haven, half asleep as he was. Ah—the broken rein. The foster. Then sleep.
The harsh morning sun gloated like a conquering enemy, making Gonji wince. A headache began to pulse over his left eye.
They arrived at the inn. Paille’s breakfast consisted of a roll stuffed with salt pork, and an ale. Gonji had corn-meal cakes and milk, followed by a large goblet of mountain water. He relieved himself in a privy, and they resumed their mounts.
“Listen, Paille,” Gonji said, remembering, “what was that death poem, the one from your friend in England?”
Paille thought a moment. “Oh—
‘No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell....’
“—that one?”
“Hai.”
Paille translated the sonnet into French, as Gonji nodded beside him, absorbing it.
“What was the poet’s name?” Gonji asked.
“Shakespeare.”
“Shake...speare,” the samurai repeated, bobbing his head in time to Tora’s walking gait and yawning broadly. “Who’s this foster Garth spoke so highly of?”
“Probably meant Radetzky, but go to Anton Torok. He’s cheaper.”
“Is his work as good?”
“Perhaps not, but he has two nubile daughters who work in the shop.”
Gonji squinted over at him, saw Paille’s puckish grin.
“Harness traces are harness traces. But pretty women are something else.”
Gonji shrugged. When they reached Radetzky’s, Paille’s laughter roared to the skies: Gonji passed it by and pulled up in front of Anton Torok’s open foster stall. Gonji purchased a new harness for Tora, feeling rather ridiculous for having been talk
ed into this so easily. He could feel Paille’s suggestive grin boring into him as one of the Torok girls displayed the available traces and sold him on a harness he might not have bought had he not been in such a hurry to remove the lasciviously leering Paille from the premises. A second daughter eyed the proceedings from a work bench at the rear of the stall. This one Gonji recognized as a friend of Genya who had greeted Wilf once when he and Gonji had ridden together. Both girls were attractive in an earthy, unstudied way, but the father hovered near suspiciously and made Gonji wish to be on his way.
When they were through at the foster’s, a sudden inspiration drew Gonji to the nearby stall festooned with belts and straps that advertised the lorimer’s craft. Gonji found the pungent smells of freshly tanned leather and animal fat pleasant and invigorating. This was the stall formerly owned and operated by Lottie Kovacs’ late father. It was now in the hands of his partner and an apprentice, who were suspicious and ill-at-ease when Gonji and Paille ambled in under their canopy.
Gonji was made mindful of a piece of armament, a cross-work harness for carrying his swords on his back comfortably and snugly, which had been stolen long ago. His efforts at improvising the device—such as on the night of his foray against the wyvern—had always proven inadequate. He attempted to order one from the partner, who feigned ignorance and was engaged by Paille in a Slavic argument, the substance of which was not lost to Gonji, who had long since grown used to the hostility and prejudice inspired by his unusual appearance. He was by now growing annoyed with it in Vedun, however, given all he believed the city owed him. But he stood by patiently and watched the irrepressible artist threaten the lorimer with a balled fist.
The apprentice, who had looked on with interest, suddenly moved up to Gonji and, smiling, asked him to describe the device he wished fabricated. The young man was an Austrian, and using a Germanic lingua franca, they established communication. The apprentice at last nodded his understanding, obviously pleased with the challenge of an unusual piece of work.
Paille invited Gonji to sleep the day away in his loft above the millinery shop, and the samurai agreed. But the bath house beckoned when they passed. They tethered their steeds and entered, confronting the horrified boy who tended the baths. Gonji’s appearances in the establishment always seemed to catch him off guard, and the sight of his swords would leave the lad speechless. Today, though, he tried to stammer something in Polish, Paille abruptly cutting him short and commanding him to be about his work. He hurried off to see to the coals in the steam chamber.
