Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves (30 page)

Serge’s head snapped around when he saw a timber wolf downed by pistol fire on the periphery of his vision. Red-streaked lips drawn back in a canine grin, the werewolf sprang across the cobblestones in a low crouch, arms spread wide. He lithely scrabbled under the window from which the shot’s flash had issued.

Unleashing his blinding speed, he vaulted upward and crashed through the window to seize the man who’d fired the deadly pistol. A woman screamed over and over inside the house as Serge dragged the man out and raked out his viscera in a mad whirl of pawing strokes and splattering blood.

A moment later, the creature’s head loomed once again in the shattered window frame. Inhumanly keen night vision fixed on the dead man’s now-catatonic wife with cruel surety of purpose.

* * * *

Claude Aucoin reluctantly permitted his daughter, Francoise, to assist him in the loading of pistols. They huddled beneath the softly diffused light that gleamed through the glassware crowding the shelves of the shop.

“Your wine fountain,” Francoise whispered breathily, wiping the perspiration from her eyes. “It’s beautiful, Papa.”

He glanced over at the nearly finished
cristallo
masterwork, a tribute to the gaffer’s art.

“No need to make small talk now.”

“I meant it,” she said earnestly.

He nodded stiffly in gratitude. “It can never be the same as the one that inspired it.”

“Nothing can ever be the same, Papa. Everything changes. Dreams get broken. But sometimes you can replace them with new ones.”

He glanced sharply at her. “So now you’re the family philosopher, eh?”

She smiled uncertainly. “I only—”

There was a heavy thud and the squeal of broken hinges in the living quarters at the rear of the shop. Aucoin’s wife screamed from the back of the house.

“Christ Almighty—
stay here!”

But Francoise was already pushing toward the door ahead of him. She reached the hall and gasped. Her mother was being shoved toward her by a brigand who used the woman for a shield.

“Don’t kill her! Don’t kill her!” Francoise cried out, throwing down her wheel-lock piece.

“Ohhhhhhh!”

Aucoin flinched as he heard the blare of the gun from the hall before he could emerge to see the horror that had transpired. Francoise moaned pathetically and fell back toward him.

The killer had shot her mother in the back of the head.

Claude grabbed his daughter and threw her down on the shop floor. The murderer came through the archway with a cockeyed leer on his face. He’d decided that Francoise was alone and dropped his guard.

Claude’s pistol boomed at the brigand’s face from a scant five feet away, splitting it open like a rotten red melon. Francoise cried out again to see a second person dispatched in such nightmarish fashion. But almost at once she brought herself under control and sought out a weapon.

Her father caught up his second pistol as two more mercenaries barged through the archway, scrambling through low, firing their guns as they broke for either side of the shop.

Aucoin returned fire but missed them both, crying out as a searing lead ball lanced through his side in erupting blood. He sought another gun with pain-blurred vision.

The vicious intruders chattered a deluge of surly speech in an unknown tongue. Seeing that Aucoin was injured, they roared with glee and came on. One charged Claude, who heard the snick of a drawn sword in the darkness. The other enemy made for Francoise.

The mercenaries were served a dual surprise.

The man who caught Francoise around the waist from behind pulled her close, snarling at her yelping pleas. She grabbed a pointed chipping tool from her father’s workbench and lashed back over her shoulder. The mercenary screamed. Blood gushed from the deep wound in his neck. He lurched about the darkened shop, eyes agape, his voice gurgling as he tried to stanch his spurting blood. He reached for Francoise with a bloody hand, almost imploringly, then dropped to his knees and emitted a long, choking note of agony before falling silent.

His partner’s attention was thus drawn from Claude momentarily. When he hissed a shocked breath to see the other’s fate and then turned back to the wounded gaffer, Claude smashed the
cristallo
wine fountain into his face. Crystal shards exploded all about them as the brigand screamed and flung away his blade, grabbing at his glass-splintered eyes.

Aucoin found another loaded pistol. A shot rang out as Francoise blinked and hugged herself reflexively. Gasping for breath, she ran to her father.

“Papa—”

“It’s not so bad—it’s not so bad,” he assured, pressing at his injured side. “See to your mother.”

He himself was afraid to see. When he heard Francoise’s hysterical sobbing from the corridor, he rose numbly. A violent shuddering seized the glass-blower as his own tears of anguish began to fall.

Aucoin still gripped a piece of the wine fountain in a blood-stained hand as he shuffled out to the hallway.

* * * *

Reynald and Faye Labossiere had taken refuge in the upper rooms of the clothier’s shop when that doughty soul had departed to join his Wunderknechten blade-brothers.

The pair now huddled among the rolls of cambric and tables piled high with a fresh consignment of fabrics from foreign lands. They listened to the sounds of carnage, the clash of steel, the feral cries of the beasts, from the streets below.

Somewhere nearby, the ravening wolves had cornered some unfortunate quarry. Pistol shots and screams mingled in sharp counterpoint to the melody of the battle skald that composed itself in the nighted streets of Lamorisse.

“Jesus God Almighty,” Reynald swore, crossing himself. “So many lives lost foolishly. If only—”

“If only
what,
Reynald?” Faye shot back, eyes shut as if to eradicate what her world had become. As if their reopening might somehow create a world without fear. “They’ll die, that’s sure. But no more foolishly than we will once they find us here…” She rambled on, not seeing her husband’s tensing. “We’re too much alike for our lives to have worked out together. Two people like us can only—”

“Shh.”

Faye opened her eyes and glanced at him. He held a finger over his lips. Boards creaked on the stairway that led up to the storage rooms. Lambent torchlight could be seen through the crack under the door.

Faye’s expression contorted, terror crinkling her eyes.

“Hey! Down here!”

The shout had come from the floor below, and footsteps clambered back down the stairs in response.

But the torchbearer remained to inspect the upstairs shop. A door was kicked open on the landing. Then another, nearer.

“Wait here,” Faye told him quietly, rising stiffly. “Maybe it’s…someone I know.”

Reynald’s hand shot out and grabbed her ankle. He shook his head. “Not in my presence,” he whispered.

“Well then, what are we going to do?”

Wild light shone in Labossiere’s eyes.

“Watch,” he replied, meeting her gaze steadily as he pushed up from the floor. He moved in front of her as the door to their sanctuary burst open under a stamping boot.

The torch flared the room into shadowy luminescence. One of Serge Farouche’s hand-picked killers strode inside. He bore a pistol in his other hand.

Recognizing Faye and then Reynald, he began to laugh softly.
“Monsieur…
Labossiere,
non?
Out looking for another beating? Perhaps this time his last.”

The brigand put up the pistol and drew his saber.

“Please,” Reynald pleaded, “leave us be. We’re not part of this—”

“For Christ’s sake, Reynald, don’t
beg
him,” Faye said with revulsion.

The mercenary scanned her vertically, evidently pleased by what he saw. “By all means,
do
beg,
monsieur.
I like a humble man…a man who knows his place…” He popped buttons off Reynald’s shirt with the saber as he spoke. “Now…on your knees.
Both
of you.”

“Stop this now,” she replied. “Just stop it, and I’ll go with you. I’ll do whatever—”

“Non,”
Reynald said in a whining voice, “not again.” He bowed his head submissively and slumped as if to bend his knees.

The brigand relaxed, laying his blade casually on his shoulder and lowering the torch to admire Faye’s form again. That was his undoing.

Labossiere’s foot shot out and kicked the flambeau straight back into the man’s face. He shrieked as sparks coruscated about his burned face. His pot helmet flew off, and his beard fringe and eyelashes had caught fire. Reynald snatched the man’s wrist, twisted the saber out of his grasp with a grunting maneuver, and yanked his arm hard behind him.

Faye fell back against the wall in shock. “Kill him, Reynald. You’ve got to
kill him!”

When he hesitated, the stricken killer pulled his pistol from his belt and aimed it over his shoulder at Reynald. Labossiere’s head snapped out of the way as Faye screamed and the wheel-lock fired with a thunderous report. Reynald dislocated the man’s elbow with a sharp twist, then ran him through with his own saber.

Faye’s eyes goggled. She pounced on the pistol. “Get his powder flask and shot,” she ordered breathily.

She paused and looked up at her husband, who still stood gazing down at the dead man. The saber fell from his fist.

“Who
are
you, Reynald?” she asked, mystified.
“What
are you? Why do you play at being the coward, the world’s whipping boy?”

“No one understands,” he replied somberly. “It has taken me more courage to embrace Christian convictions than it ever did to…” The glazed look melted from his eyes. They heard shouts and heavy footfalls. “We’ve got to get out of here fast!”

* * * *

Three huge timber wolves caught the scent as one. They drew back from their savaged and half-eaten prey in the alley—a local merchant—and turned to bare their fangs at the threatening presence that stalked them with upraised broadsword.

The great golden werewolf, Simon Sardonis, glared at them, silver eyes beaming like twin prongs of cold vengeance.

The wolves spread out cautiously, bewildered at this threat posed by one who should be their brother. Reacting to the clear menace, they sprang as a body.

Simon’s arcing blow crashed against the skull of the first. He whirled with animal grace and gutted the second wolf as its powerful jaws sheared off a ragged chunk of his ruff. The third took him in full charge and knocked him off balance as their jaws clashed. Both their snouts were punctured in a clacking, biting frenzy of grinding canine teeth.

But Simon possessed keen intelligence, superior strength and size, and human dexterity. He locked his taloned hands about the wolf in a viselike grip. He bent and squeezed and pressed against the terrified animal’s frantic resistance until its back snapped with the sickly sound of rotten kindling.

Simon pushed up unsteadily. His old escape wounds bled anew. Recovering his broadsword, he turned slowly to face the new intruder, whose hated scent was unmistakable.

Serge Farouche loomed at the head of the alley, massive corded shoulders rolling in expectation as he spread his hairy arms wide. He worked his thick, dark fingers eagerly, displaying razor-sharp, horned claws.

“So…
brother.”

Simon tossed his broadsword from hand to hand, the specter of doubt rushing out at him from unseemly crevices of his mind. He cursed his lack of preparedness, knowing Serge’s power as well as his own weakened state. It was not enhanced by the lingering traces of the half-bottle of claret he’d downed. All at once he heard the mocking laughter of the awakening spirit within him, already celebrating the triumph of its brutish kin. Prematurely…

Stupid monster,
Simon thought by way of a rare, direct spiritual communication with the creature.
Do you not understand what this means? They’re sending you to your grave, along with me. What they can’t control, they must destroy…

He felt the energumen recoil in despair to hear it, and in that instant he tore into Serge Farouche with whirling steel.

The dark monstrosity made no move to evade him. And when Simon delivered the crushing sword cut, he found to his dismay that he was unable to finish. He struck Serge a glancing blow that so astonished him that he looked to his weapon to see whether it had somehow been ensorceled, turned to a harmless illusion while his attention was split.

Then he remembered. He’d been forced to drink the potion of Farouche blood. Grimmolech had robbed him of the power to deal out vengeance by dint of his fell sorcery.

Despair.

Simon snarled and ran past the leering Serge. Charging out of the alley, he encountered a ringing cordon of sweating faces and begrimed armament, both on horseback and afoot. Serge’s band blocked his panicked flight, standing their ground out of sheer terror of their master.

Pistols and crossbows poised for the kill.

“Stay your hands,” Serge commanded. “This one is mine alone.”

The black werewolf strode to an oil-lamp post at the front of a millinery shop and leveled it with two fierce shoulder blows. The lamp crashed down, and a flaming oil slick ignited on the cobblestones. Now Serge stalked Simon with the huge post at port arms.

Simon cast about him for some alternative weapon, calculating some ploy by which he might combat Serge, defeat the sorcery which denied him any hope of victory. Something non-threatening—? Simon’s mind whirled in near-panic.

They were near the marketplace and the pens provided for animals put up for sale. Simon allowed Serge to back him toward the pens, then turned and loped toward them, the mercenaries clattering over the paving stones to string out their mounted line and contain his flight.

Simon ripped a long wooden post from one of the pens.

Serge howled in canine glee at the challenge and came on at the run. The rail and lamp post clashed with a tremendous, splintering impact that echoed along the strife-torn street. Embattled citizens of Lamorisse now took note of the eerie battle being contested at the market stalls.

They clashed again and again, their ponderous blows effecting little damage. Simon was able to deflect Serge’s attacks, but he apprehended the shape-shifter’s intent: He would wear Simon down, humiliate him with a display of superior power. And then squash him ignominiously. It was inevitable.

Already the rail was beginning to shatter from the heavy blows of the lamp post.

Suddenly—the hissing of bowshot—two pistols barking from covered positions—

Three of Serge’s men fell, and half the remaining troop split from the others to take on the Wunderknechten rebels who’d come to Simon’s aid.