Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two

by Rypel, T. C.

  Wilf charged, howling a kiyai, and slashed at Gonji’s open belly.

  * * * *

  The old Master Oguni exercise occurred to Gonji just about the time he saw the practice duel turn into a campfire brawl. It was time to add spice to the training, time to become for them the emotionless fighting machine they needed to test their new skills.

  Wilf’s telegraphed slash was batted aside, the circular, upward return driving Dobroczy’s lunge up and over his head.

  “Jaaa!—Hey-hey!—” came the cries from the audience as the pair resumed the attack with renewed vigor, but Gonji’s seemingly effortless, lightning parries flicked their blows aside with a driving force that belied the magical grace of his small motions. Again and again they attacked and were rebuffed. They soon wore themselves out in their efforts. Their blows slowed. Gonji disarmed Vlad with a curling snap of his wrists like the sudden tautening of a rope, blocked Wilf’s overhead slash with a breathtaking high parry, executed with his back to him, then with a blurring half-turn, still fighting almost totally with his back to his opponent, stabbed Wilf full in the chest with a short one-hand thrust under his armpit, his left hand pressed forward to lend reaction force to the blow.

  A great cheer rocked the catacombs as the young smith stumbled backward, off balance. Dobroczy knelt on one knee nearby, shaking his head in frustration.

  “All right,” Gonji called out, waving down the cheering, “it looks as though these heroes need help! Who else would like to try to strike a samurai without fear of being unlimbed for it? A rare opportunity—come forward!”

  Paolo Sauvini stepped forward with a bokken, working his jaw nervously. He removed his jack, eyes gleaming. And a moment later three men tried to deliver a blow to Gonji’s unprotected torso and head. Without success.

  “Hey, Hawk!” Berenyi called, leaping atop a boulder as they paused to catch their breath again. “Stab him with your nose!” A chorus of laughter at the hook-nosed farmer’s expense, which he waved off exhaustedly. “Why don’t you try it, Nagy, you old fart?” Stefan taunted his partner.

  “Why don’t you get off my back, you young stud!” Nick Nagy retorted from the crowd below.

  Jiri Szabo joined the attack, and now there were three ken-jutsu students arrayed against Gonji, but it was the single European-style fencer, Dobroczy, who landed the first blow, a glancing shot to Gonji’s right shoulder after a deep lunge. Cheers rang out on the training ground. Vlad dropped to his knees out of weariness and gratitude, a crooked smile on his face.

  Gonji sidled over to him and bowed. Dobroczy rose and returned it. “Everything OK now?” Gonji asked.

  “Igen, jo,” Dobroczy answered.

  “I don’t speak Hungarian.”

  The farmer’s eyes became questioning slits, then softened. “Ja—gut,” he repeated in German. Gonji smiled, and they exchanged bows again.

  The exhibition resumed later, and Gonji proved to be, if anything, still more elusive. He broke his own bokken and Jiri’s with vicious parries. But the militia had trained hard and well and were improving daily, and by the end of the exhausting match, both Wilf and Jiri had struck Gonji with clean slashes.

  A festive mood took hold, and Gonji and the other leaders sensed that it was a good time for a break in the grueling training. The meal break was taken, and the usually disdained wine casks spilled their contents. Camaraderie and good cheer reigned. Even Rorka’s Grays were warming to Gonji, if not the baron himself, as fully half of them came forward to share a laugh and a few words, either in a common language or a cobbled together lingua franca.

  It was a warm, affectionate celebration, the first the militia ever shared. And even Gonji didn’t shrink from the hearty back-slapping of well-wishers, as he usually was wont to do.

  * * * *

  Klaus had studiously avoided the wine, as he always did, in his sincere effort at improving himself physically. It hadn’t helped.

  He clumped forward on a gray roncin, oversized burgonet jouncing comically on his head, and reached out with his broadsword to engage Lorenz, who stood his ground with a long, sharp guisarme.

  “Just bat it aside, Klaus, that’s all,” Gonji muttered under his breath in Japanese as he watched.

  Klaus swung his arm in a wide arc, Lorenz disengaged his pole-arm with a simple drop of the point, and the rider overreached, leaned too far—and spurred the roncin hard by accident.

  “Look out!”

  Horse and rider crashed to the ground in a jangling tumble. Klaus limped away, miraculously unhurt. The roncin had shattered a leg and had to be destroyed.

  Gonji separated Klaus from the rest of the men. “Klaus, listen to me—have you any money?”

  “A little,” Klaus responded, face brightening. “Why? Do you need some, sensei?”

  “Ja, I—nein, dummkopf. Not for me, for you! I have a new idea.”

  “New idea?” Klaus looked perplexed already.

  “Armor, Klaus. Lots of armor. I want you to see the harbisher and the foundry people. They’ll tell you their orders for armor are backed up, between Klann’s needs and the secret work they do for the city. But I’ll speak with them, and they’ll squeeze you in. Put all your money down on account, and don’t worry about squaring up with them. That can wait. You just get yourself armor that covers you from head to toe, verstehen Du?”

  The samurai squared his shoulders and strode off but, remembering something, turned and called out, “And a bigger horse, Klaus! A big strong one, neh?”

  And the slow-witted buckle-maker stood scratching his head, watching him march off.

  * * * *

  Then a bad turn of affairs occurred: A tanner named Danko lost an eye in a staff-training accident. The hard-working Nick Nagy had delivered the blow during a rapid exchange, and he dropped his staff and roared for help as Danko hit the ground, writhing and screaming, holding the gouged eye tightly with both hands.

  A crowd of their peers gathered quickly to stare in horror, ashen-faced, as Dr. Verrico pushed through them. The younger members of the militia seemed especially struck, for although they had learned to live with daily pains and some serious accidents, this was the first permanently debilitating injury sustained during training. Their sense of imminent mortality was aroused.

  Nagy surged around the crowd, jabbering nervously, crying out for forgiveness, trying to exonerate himself to any who would listen. Roric tried to calm him with gentle firmness, but he seemed inconsolable, and Gonji rushed forward, at once sensing the descent of an enervating new enemy—demoralization.

  “Nagy! Nagy! Get hold of yourself!” Gonji snarled in a low, snapping tone. He pushed the babbling hostler away from the rest, guiding him into a recess along one cavern wall. “Stop it now—”

  Nagy kept whining something repeatedly in Hungarian.

  “—control yourself. Can’t you see what you’re going to do to them? You’re older than these others, and you were a soldier once. You knew there was always this risk—and more! People may die in the coming conflict. They will die. But more will die without the training. Danko knew the chance he was taking. A slip the other way and it would have been you.”

  Danko’s screams had dwindled to a soft moaning. Nagy relaxed, though he still stared over at where the man was being attended. At length he nodded that he was all right, but Gonji ordered him out of the catacombs for the rest of the session. Training resumed shortly, but with a notable lack of zest.

  Danko took to wearing an eye patch and became a minor local hero, albeit one who provoked uneasiness whenever he would drop in on the training ground. He never again hefted a weapon. To the occupying troops he became nothing more than a curiosity, the occasional object of a cruel jest or insult. For none of them could interpret the black eye-patch as the ominous mark it was on the horizon of their boorish aggressions.

  * * * *

  (from the Deathwind of Vedun epic:)

  “...and the people of Vedun bore all injuries willingly and stoically, accepting all p
ain, embracing all hardship in the name of their noble purpose...and they laughed in the faces of their complacent oppressors, and went singing to their tasks, joined in heart and in spirit....

  * * * *

  Clear, brilliant skies and the happy chirping of birds greeted them as the people who had just finished the night training session streamed from the chapel, earnestly praying that their effort at washing from the trough in the catacombs had laved away the sweat and dirt and tiredness from their drawn faces. That their limps and aches would be sufficiently concealed behind their bright early-morning smiles and greetings, and that the Llorm dragoons they passed wouldn’t be moved to curiosity. So to chase their winces and smother their aches, they sang on the way to their jobs. They sang folk songs and patriotic anthems, each ethnic group singing in its native language, competing with the others in volume and feeling in a great cacophony that was the war song of Vedun.

  William Eddings walked alone from the chapel, his brother having stayed back to speak with the tanners. The tanners...Danko had lost an eye, and now listen to them all—singing! That was how the bloody fools would all go to the gallows one day—singing. Slavs and Huns and Italians—peasants and barbarians, all! He hated them, all of them. But most of all he hated the Jappo.

  He marched grimly toward his tiny sundrier’s shop, pulling his three-cornered hat low over his eyes so that the soldiers might not see their redness, then notice the weariness that weighted his arms and back and shoulders. His ribs ached with every step from the blow he’d suffered while fencing.

  Damn fools. They’d even brainwashed his father and brother. He’d tried to talk with them about leaving this place, but neither his father, nor John, nor even John’s gentle wife, would hear of it. Wasn’t this what they’d fled England to escape? Couldn’t they simply flee again to some other, safer, saner place? But no, his father had said, they’d set themselves up here and would stay, come what may, even if it meant dying with these people.

  He reached the shop and shuffled inside, breathing a sigh of relief that no soldier had stopped to question him. If they had, he was sure, he would have told them all, put an end to this madness. How many lives would be saved if the Jappo were strung up now, before he could do any more harm?

  Throwing his hat into a corner, Eddings slammed over a table full of the gaudy trinkets and fake jewelry the mercenaries were so fond of bestowing on their strumpets. Table and contents crashed into a jangling, tinkling heap. He slammed the door and drew the shade. Then he dropped onto a stool with a heavy thud, rubbed at his pinched face, and all at once began to sob uncontrollably.

  * * * *

  There was one birth and one natural death during the first week of training. Neither the christening nor the funeral was well attended.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The dancers whirled and gamboled and clapped their hands merrily in a great circle, the musicians driving them faster and faster until they had themselves reached a fever pitch, barely able to play in time. Flavio was pushed into the middle of the circle with Anna Vargo, whose arthritic joints caused her considerable suffering, but she made no complaint, so glad was she to see Flavio laugh and dance. A great cheer drowned out the strains of music as Flavio plunged into the dance with a spryness that belied his years.

  Gonji cheered as loud as anyone, warmed by the company of so many new friends. He danced and clapped lustily, the social ritual appealing to his gregarious nature. The dance finished with a frenzied flourish, the dancers on their knees applauding themselves, exhausted but ready for more.

  It was the annual feast of St. Stephen, a one-time king of Hungary, which coincided with the harvest. And despite the mysterious selective crop failure, the yield had been good, though there would be shortages. Bunting and banners proclaiming the event festooned the square. Gloaming shadows spread their cool tendrils over the city, and the moon, a bright ungular disc, rose early, racing after the first star of evening. Florid dresses swished by, their wearers chattering and laughing. Aromas of food and drink teased and beckoned, made one wish for the stomach capacity of a ruminant.

  Gonji was in his glory, his kinship with these people growing. He stood mopping his brow in a group that included Jiri and Greta—who had dragged Gonji into the dance, Monetto and his wife, and several others, who were listening to Flavio relate how the tarantella was believed to cure the madness brought on by the bite of the wolf spider. Michael stood behind the Elder, smiling with arms folded, supporting the legend with stories of his own. The protege appeared relaxed, darkly handsome in a corn-hued damask shirt and elegantly tailored breeches. His eyes had nearly returned to normal, but now in social garb it was more apparent than ever that his nose had sustained a permanent crook from the breaking.

  Lydia stood with him, hand in hand, smiling the smile of a benign, all-knowing goddess; lovely in her swaying skirts, bonnet and bow; interjecting her quiet wit at just the right moments. Gonji stole glimpses of her in the course of long, casual pans of the festival crowd, determined not to stare. Their eyes never once met. She was the mistress of social grace, at once coolly discouraging prolonged male attention and reaping the homage of its ubiquitous presence. She knew well her attraction and had long since learned to deal with it to her favor. Her elan was annoying, and Gonji had always refused to compete on the terms such women set. But she was difficult to ignore, and he found himself fighting the well-known internal battle of the samurai, that of giri—duty vs. ninjo—natural impulse.

  He suddenly felt awkward with this group, but Greta was a great help. Jiri sat while the bubbly girl took Gonji for her partner as the musicians broke into a rousing mazurka. Gonji and Greta became one of eight couples, and the samurai learned the step readily. When the dance was done they sat at a long table cluttered with food and drink, facing the marketplace on the Street of Hope.

  The Festival of St. Stephen very nearly had been canceled by the city leaders for fear of trouble with the occupation force. But the traditional-minded and those who felt the tension-release was needed—Gonji among the latter—urged that it be held as usual. Captain Sianno had been alerted to the potential for mercenary bullying, and he had readily agreed to double-up the normal Llorm dragoon street patrols. Drunken, leering mercenaries had, in fact, been drawn irresistibly to the celebration, but they had been forewarned against aggression and remained on the perimeter of the square, leaning and sitting in surly bands who called out lewd comments and empty threats but proffered no physical menace.

  Gonji saw a group of them exchange words with a few citizens—Phlegor and his craft guildsmen—across the square. A Llorm patrol clopped by and quickly put an end to it, dispersing the rowdy bunch.

  He reached down to the bench for his swords. But they were not beside him. He remembered, smiling slightly, and then saw them. Wilfred had taken custody of the daisho, wrapping them in a silk cloth. They were being handed along the table from the end where Wilf sat sulking. Jiri held them out, bowing, but then he withdrew them from Gonji’s grasp at the last instant.

  “Wait,” Jiri said, “let me place them.” He walked around uncertainly to Gonji’s left, started to lay them down, but stopped. “Iye,” he said, remembering the significance of their position. Then he laid them on the bench at Gonji’s right.

  “Peace, sensei,” he said, grinning. They all laughed.

  Gonji bowed. “Hai, arigato, Jiri-san. No trouble tonight!”

  A new dance began. Karl Gerhard took Sylva Monetto by the arm, leaving Aldo with the couple’s three children.

  “Hey!” Aldo shouted. “You dance with my wife, you better behave yourself, sí?” He closed one eye and fixed the other on Gerhard, shaking a fist.

  Karl made a face and pawed the air in return threat.

  “Somebody watch that sneaky Hun,” Monetto declared as he took the children to the food stalls. Gonji chuckled with the others and tossed off the last of his wine. His head began to swim as he moved gently with the music. It was a grand time of sharing, and he
felt warmed all over by the good cheer of friends, the smiles of pretty faces.

  Nick and Magda Nagy dropped in at the table with Stefan Berenyi and the girl he escorted. Soon the two hostlers were carrying on a spirited argument regarding whether the corral at the Provender had been locked and who had been responsible for it. It culminated in the pair leaving their women and storming off to check, cursing and pointing accusing fingers at each other. The women sighed and spoke in Hungarian, exasperated.

  Another woman came by with a small cask and refilled the empty goblets. Gonji accepted his refill with a grateful smile.

  “When are you going to marry him already?” she said in German when she stood beside Gonji. She had spoken to Berenyi’s girl, who tittered and whispered something in reply.

  Marry. Gonji smiled hollowly and drummed his fingers on the table in time to the music. He began to feel bored, tense—something he couldn’t quite define—as he sat surrounded by other men’s women, wishing for some lively conversation.

  Too bad Wilf had taken to brooding over Genya again. The young Gundersen sat swirling his wine at one end of the table, a pretty girl Gonji had seen somewhere before seated behind him, speaking to him over his shoulder. Wilf kept repeating the story of last year’s Festival of St. Stephen, when he and Hawk Dobroczy had fought over Genya. The girl made sounds of sultry-sweet sympathy while she twined her hair seductively.

  At the next table most of the men, including Flavio, Roric, Milorad, and Michael, rose to visit the stalls. The women remained. Gonji played a game of discipline: he resolved not to look over at Lydia even once during her husband’s absence.

  He looked across the grounds to where Phlegor and his trade brothers had begun shouting drunken insults at passing soldiers. A strange reversal of the norm in Vedun. Those fools were going to create real trouble soon. Shaking his head and scowling, he panned around the grounds, stopped when his eyes fell on Helena.