Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two (45 page)

Suffer me not the death of a coward....

Just remember what Gonji taught, relax, empty your mind—

He heard the surly laughter and shouting from the street.
Da,
you’ll be laughing when we.... Before the huts he could see water troughs and part of a canopied well, loose objects fluttering by in the wind. It seemed safe. He peered around the corner.

The mercenary nearly bumped into him, snarling in surprise.
Omigod—!
Jiri’s first impulse was to run when he saw the man claw at his belt, but there was no pistol, only a saber and dirk. Jiri leaped out from the cover of the huts and drew steel, came to two-handed middle guard, eyes popping.

“So you wanna fight, eh, kid?” the mercenary said in German. “Hey, Eugie, look at this!” But the partner the man had left several huts down the street was already dead, two militiamen standing over him with bloody swords.

They engaged, the mercenary probing, testing with his saber. Jiri parried his every attack crisply, but his
iai-jutsu
technique lacked completeness: he wasn’t finishing the circle, riposting after his parries. He fought totally in defense, backing, retreating, too timid to take the offense and dare the man’s blade.

Then he noticed the figure creeping up behind his ever more confident opponent. Jiri maintained his concentration on the man’s eyes, all the while sure that he would be dead in seconds if it were another free companion who approached.

But it wasn’t. It was Paolo Sauvini. The wagoner moved forward with catlike strides, the whites of his eyes shining in the darkness, both hands clutching his sword in a horizontal thrusting posture taught by the samurai.

There was a sickening sound of rending flesh and innards as Paolo’s running, driving lunge shot his blade completely through the man’s torso. And what came out of his belly with the point of the blade caused Jiri to grimace.

He turned away, gagging, as the brigand’s soul-chilling scream shattered the night.

* * * *

The village of Zarnesti exploded into violence.

Some of the brigands, assessing the raiders’ number and seeing their own hopeless plight, scrambled to the stables for their steeds.

Many of the foray party gave chase, most trying to run them down before they could take to horse, some hoping the others would get to them first.

Screams and curses sounded in the village, doors slamming.

The trooper named Riemann rolled off the cot in the hut he had taken for his own and fumbled on his trousers. The woman made small puling sounds, and her child began to cry fretfully.

“Shut that child up before I do it myself,” he grated. She couldn’t understand, only knew from his tone that her child was menaced and that if she couldn’t calm her, the monster would kill her just as he had killed the woman’s husband.

Muttering curses, leaving his jerkin behind, he loaded and spannered his wheel-lock pistol, then grabbed his sword belt and rapier and moved out into the night—adjusting his eyes to the darkness, trying to make sense of the carnage and hurtling shapes and pounding hooves—

“Care to try another shot, Riemann?” came a haunting voice in the shadows, and he spun down onto one knee and pointed the pistol at...what?
Where had he heard that chilling voice before?

A dagger chunked into the earth several feet away to his right. He rose and leveled his pistol in that direction. Too late, he heard the soft padding behind him. Whirled—Saw the glint of moonlight flash his death sentence—

The Japanese
...that terrible sword raised high over his head!—He never even had time to aim the pistol, the shot tolling his death knell squeezed off errantly, at the earth.

Gonji drew one quick breath and kept moving. He slammed the door shut on the screaming woman and child and launched off into the main lane.

People were running in all directions in bewilderment now; doors and window shutters burst open and were clamped shut. The sharp reports of pistols along a side lane—

The samurai saw some of his raiders dashing about in terrified confusion, projecting toughness by growling and waving their blades and pole-arms, but seeking no action. He called out a few brusque orders, sending them toward the activity at the stables.

Then he saw Esteban.

Navarez’s toothy sycophant rushed through the street at the head of three others, one bearing a flaming torch. Esteban’s good eye was cocked toward the far end of the main street. He held a pistol at the ready, another one angled up behind him in one of his followers’ fists. Gonji slipped into a doorway and waited until they had passed. He sprang after them.

“
Komban wa
—good evening—pox-ridden scum!” Gonji cried at their backs. The four spun and fixed their gazes on him, wide-eyed with dawning terror.

“You—bárbaro!”
Esteban gasped. “Franco-o-ooo!”

And then Gonji hurtled into their midst, his
katana
singing, tearing through flesh and bone. One pistol-wielder shot his crony in the back in his frenzied effort to get at Gonji. Esteban himself never had the chance to recover from the shock of the apparition. He lay dead atop his still un-discharged wheel-lock piece.

Gonji saw the horsemen lurching out of the stables, some of the militia engaging them. He knew the danger, should any of them escape. But Gerhard and Roric and Anton were there, and he turned instead toward the magistrate’s dwelling, where he knew Navarez had taken up residence.

There, peering dimly out into the street, a pistol hammered and leveled at his waist, stood the hated captain who had brutalized Gonji’s duty.

* * * *

Anton surged into the stables after the fleeing bandits, who rolled and scrabbled aboard neighing, bolting mounts, some unsaddled. Two horsemen lurched past him, knocking him aside. He slipped and fell in the hay. But a third bandit had been thrown from his steed. Anton peered up, leveled his pistol, cocked it. Sighted his downed adversary in the shadows. Too late—he caught the glint of the other’s pistol barrel in a stray beam of moonlight.

Both guns cracked and belched smoke at once. Anton cried out with the searing pain that jolted his leg, spun down onto the damp, pungent stable floor. But he heard the other’s groan, looked up tentatively through the cloud of smoke. In his gasping agony he felt a flood of relief: his pistol ball had split the brigand’s skull.

He collapsed, succumbing to shock and pain.

Outside, a sword-swinging mercenary on horseback engaged the wily Roric, whose pike pointed steadily at the chest of the oncoming rider. The swordsman howled his berserker’s cry and lashed down and out. But Roric sidestepped the slash and lunged—

There was a horrendous scream and
chunkering
of honed steel against plate and bone that caused heads to turn nearby. The free companion’s momentum skewered him on the pike, tearing him out of the saddle. The horse galloped off, riderless, as Roric felt the great weight on the end of his pole-arm that wrenched his grasp downward. The weapon’s head had nearly gone completely through the rib cage.

Monetto bounded up, sword in hand, open-mouthed. “You—you—” He couldn’t catch his breath.

“Look out!” Roric yelled.

Two more horsemen were upon them, splitting up to skirt the carnage. One whirled a cutlass, but the other was aiming his pistol for a passing shot.

There was nowhere to hide.

* * * *

Wilf heard the cries behind him as he clashed with his opponent between the huts. Spine-cleaver flashed and whined, backing the Austrian highwayman, who waxed increasingly desperate, though he sneered and taunted Wilf. The young smith held his concentration.

Clang-clang-siizzzzz!
—a rapid exchange of attacks and ripostes and Wilf s leap over a low slash designed to hamstring him—The
karumi-jutsu
training had made the timing feel natural and easy. His confidence grew.

He backed his man down the lane, steel, teeth, and eyes gleaming in the darkness. Wilf felt his stomach knotting.
(have to finish it)
They passed from murk through shards of yellow light from an unshuttered window that illuminated their sweating faces, then back into deep shadow again.
(for the city, for Genya)

He missed a parry and the saber
whanged
off his sallet, knocking it awry. He flung the helm off as the brigand took a step back and, encouraged, lunged into a straight attack. Spine-cleaver deflected the blade, slid along, shot forward in a two-handed lunge—

A wet gurgle and a spout of dark blood—

Wilf withdrew his point from the man’s throat like a shot, as if having been caught doing something he shouldn’t. The soldier fell heavily in the lane.

“Get down, Wilf!”

The cry had come from behind; the pistolier stood in his path, not ten paces distant. Wilf dropped like a sodden sponge. Heard the report of the pistol and the sizzle of something overhead. A body fell—the bandit’s.

Wilf looked up, then behind him. Karl Gerhard stood there, nodding curtly, his now emptied bow lowered to his side. Wilf blew out a hot breath.

“You
all-recht?
”

“Ja, danke,”
Wilf replied.

“
Kommen Sie
, then—the stables.”

Gerhard sprinted off, reaching back into his quiver for another clothyard shaft. Wilf rose, recovering his sallet, and stared at the grisly form of the bandit he had dispatched.... Walked around him twice in disbelief....

“Cholera.”

* * * *

Seeing Monetto and Roric’s peril, Nick Nagy charged the pistol-wielding horseman from the blind side, slashing his exposed ribs. The horse’s flank brushed him, and Nagy stumbled backward, cursing. The wounded bandit fell in a jangling heap at his side. Nick had lost his blade, reached for it as the groaning mercenary tried to rise, pressing in his rent side. But Paolo Sauvini rushed him and finished the job with a savage blow across his neck and shoulders.

Nick pulled away as the brigand crashed to earth almost on top of him. Roric and Monetto surged over to them, as Paolo leapt back, crouching, chest heaving, looking for more enemies to engage.

“Holy shit! Stop him, somebody!” a voice cried.

They all looked down the street: The other horseman had evaded Roric and Monetto as they dove for cover from the pistol. He was headed for the gate far down the main village road. If he were to escape, get to Klann with word of this....

Roric seized the downed man’s pistol, took careful aim, and fired—missing. “Perimeter guards will have to stop him,” the butcher said, all of them looking after the fleeing bandit anxiously.

But then through the shrieking and pounding of feet there came a sizzling hiss. An arrow skewered the fleeing free companion full in the back. They looked across the street. There stood the saturnine Gerhard, his great longbow still vibrating from the magnificent shot that had spilled the man over his horse’s withers. The animal continued to gallop out the gate, but now it bore only a dangling corpse.

A dozen men cheered as Karl simply nodded with finality as he did on the archery field. Then Roric muted their celebration.

“All right, all right, calm down. We’ve yet to—”

A bellow from behind cut him short. And though the action seemed over, for the most part, two things beckoned their attention: the shouts for help from behind the stables; and the crowd that was gathering before the magistrate’s house.

They split up to check them out.

* * * *

Gonji charged Navarez, the Sagami trailing behind him, pointed rigidly upward in his right hand. He dared the captain’s cocked pistol, racing at him with flaring nostrils, zigzagging with the litheness of a leopard.

“Bárbaro?”
Navarez whispered dimly, squinting against the harsh light that flared from wind-whipped torches.
“Bárbaro!”
he shouted at last, recognition gripping him with the certainty of oriental justice.

He waved the pistol and fired, missing badly.

“
Bárbaro
—Gon-shee—I—” he stammered, fending off the charge with raised hands.

Then Gonji was on top of him. The
katana
arced sleekly, struck the captain’s head from his shoulders—The tarantula-mustached head thudded on the steps, jaws still working mutely.

One of the militiamen ran up behind Gonji, saw the gushing neck, the rolling head. He fell on his knees and began to vomit. Others gathered. The emboldened villagers began to creep from their homes and congregate at the magistrate’s, their deliverance becoming understood.

Paolo came up beside Gonji, triumph in his bearing. Seeing the horror on some of the raiders’ faces, he intoned, “Well, that’s the way it looks, boys.” Then, turning to Gonji: “What’s our next move, Gonji? What’s the plan? Vedun next, eh?”