Gonji: Red Blade from the East (15 page)

“That wizard ain’t nothin’ seemly to talk about, pilgrim. He’s pretty new around here. Got too much pull already with this army, I’d wager. Things happen that ain’t never happened before. Can’t see as we need it.” He looked up uneasily to the black, sifting sky. “Sometimes you’ll be ridin’ along and word’ll come that ya don’t look up at the sky—unless ya want yer soul ripped outta yer body. Then some big hulk rushes by over yer head—ya couldn’t look up if ya wanted to.”

A fleeting crop of gooseflesh, as Gonji remembered the dark shape on the horizon during the valley battle. He started to ask, but something caught their attention across the cultivated fields. Two riders pounded along the road that arced toward the farther end of the village.

Gonji peered at the approaching horsemen. He stiffened. Something was familiar about them, but what?

“Riders from Klann, I guess,” Jocko said, jerking a thumb toward them.

They watched them pound toward the village until they were out of sight, then Jocko asked, “Say, whipper, were you married before all this?”

Gonji was taken aback. He shook his head. “What makes you ask?”

“Oh, nothin’, nothin’...I was once. Prob’ly still am,” Jocko said, chuckling. “Most o’ these dung-eaters are, I fancy. That’s one good reason they’re on the run!”

“Jockooooo!”

The chorus of cries had come from the street. Jocko leaped to his feet and chugged toward the alley.

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’, dammit!”

As the son of the
daimyo
Sabatake Todohiro watched the old man go, a deep gloom settled over him, penetrating the sensory glut of the fever. And with it came the loneliness. His spirit hung heavy, bleaker than the darkly dripping night sky. How piercing, how complex were the feelings evoked by Jocko’s words. Like the others Jocko had spoken of, Gonji too was on the run from a woman. Only not from some despicable shrew of a wife; rather from a woman he both loved and respected. The woman who was honor-bound to kill him.

Being alone among companions is the most dreadful sort of loneliness.
...

Jocko returned momentarily with two horses in tow, one a roan, the other—Gonji breathed a silent oath as he took in the steed the handler was clucking over admiringly.

A white Arabian. Goodwin’s horse. The Englishman from the inn a few days back. He stared, his angry prophecy of doom fulfilled. Had he caused it by wishing it? Had those men suffered their fate through the stain of contact with him, the man of destiny who had brought death to so many by his passing?

“
Muy bello
, eh, pilgrim?” Jocko declared, wiping down the proud animal. “Guess we’re gonna be here awhile, according to what them messengers say. Holdin’ down the province. Stuck in the middle o’ nowhere again. Damn me fer a whores’n! What
are
we anyway—?”

—No, that’s foolishness. I’m not accursed. It’s just this stupid land and these stupid people and their god-cursed double standards. First they preach about the value of every inconsequential peasant’s life, then, just when they’ve got you believing it, they start killing each other with abandon. For a lousy pair of boots. Or a horse. Barbarians. If they could only see themselves through civilized eyes. Every gravedigger’s soul worth as much as every priest’s—

“—rider comes from Klann and says take that village as an outpost. Rider comes from Mord, says burn that monastery and string up them priests. King says, Do this; sorcerer says, Do that—what the hell are we, a weathercock? We do both, get paid all the same, though, no? Duty, eh?” Jocko said sarcastically.

—
Duty.
What is one’s duty in this land? Especially one who can’t even be true to himself—

“—seems to me there’s too many chiefs around here. Everybody’s a boss. You wanna be one, too, pilgrim? Everybody’s a big chief, and they all got titles, y’know: Klann the Invincible. Mord the Enchanter—Me?” Jocko removed his hat and struck a theatrical pose. “I’m Giacomo Battaglia, henceforth to be known as...
King
Jocko the Impossible!
Bona, bona, sí?
You got a title, too, sonny?”

Gonji’s last morbid thoughts passed, and a sad smile tugged his lips. “
Hai
...Red Blade.”

“Que?”

“The Red Blade from the East, I’ve been called,” Gonji said. “I sometimes—”

Jocko laughed lustily. “
Mama mia!
Some fellahs are lookin’ fer
you
, pilgrim!”

Gonji lurched achingly upright. “Who? Where?”

“Back west. While you boys was at that monastery. Magyars, I guess. Mean-lookin’ bastards.”

“Big graying chieftain with a drooping mustache and—”

“Sure, sure, that’s the one. Jesus God A’mighty, what’d ya do to get ’em so mad?”

Gonji sighed. “What do I ever do? It was a family dispute. Clan trouble. They hired me to settle it, then decided they’d made a mistake after the job was done. So who gets the blame, eh? Hey, you didn’t say anything—?”

“Yer among friends, aintcha?”

Their eyes locked, twinkling, and they shared an ironic laugh. Gonji couldn’t help liking this bluff old fart.

Jocko took note of Gonji’s wheezing and went inside to fetch him another cup of broth. As he busied himself in the shop, the two men exchanged banter. Gonji’s eyes were heavy-lidded with fatigue and fever and burning from the acrid smoke of the dying fire. Jocko served up the broth and rekindled the flame as the samurai told him something of his youth in Japan. Gonji longed for sleep and hoped the weariness in his tone would convey the message.

“Another king’s son!” Jocko said gaily, plopping down on the stool with a cup of wine. “Now ain’t an old man lucky to meet up with so much royalty. That’s the great thing about life. There’s a piece of a kingdom fer everybody. I’m still waitin’ fer mine. Can I be yer—uh, retainer or counselor or somethin’, sonny? How about the court stud? I’d make one helluva court stud!”

Gonji laughed breathily. He wanted to be angry but couldn’t. “Well, you asked about my past, you mangy dog.”

Angelo’s ears quivered as a rumble of thunder cannonaded the valley. The village had fallen quiet, most of the soldiers probably having succumbed to slumber. The steady hiss of the rain now sounded deceptively peaceful.

“About Klann,” Gonji said, unable to dismiss the questions that harried sleep. “Do
you
think he still lives?”

Jocko became troubled. “
Sí, amigo
, I believe he lives.”

“And the stories about him?”

“That...I don’t like to think about.”

Gonji pondered this a moment, but before he could comment, Jocko continued:

“One thing’s sure, though; from what I been overhearin’ it don’t sound good fer that city up there.” He nodded toward the mountains, a world-weary melancholia creeping into his voice. “People wanna pretend all these horrors don’t exist, ain’t it? They tell me all the scholars and writers o’ the books in the big cities, well, they jot down only the things men wanna think about. They don’t write about the things that won’t let ya sleep with both eyes closed. All the things I seen—men torn apart so’s ya wouldn’t know they was men—all just rubbish. All our lives—just offal, eh?”

“Nobody wants to remember bad things,” Gonji agreed in a hoarse whisper. “Someday, maybe in the next generation, all the horrors men live with today will be...only legends. Dimly remembered. Whispered about around campfires. That’s the way it’s always been. New fears, new terrors to replace yesterday’s.” A raspy sigh. “Let me get some sleep, you old goat.”

“Good idea. Navárez’ll be comin’ around before ya know it, rousin’ everybody fer that chant business. I’ll
try
to get you out of it—ya don’t sound too good to me.”

“Gracias.”

Jocko took the stool into the shop and set it against a far window from which he could watch the soggy main street. He sat resting his head in one hand at the sill.

“Pilgrim?”

“Hai?”

A long pause, then: “Hope ya find yer kingdom, son.”

Gonji blinked, smiled wanly. He could see the frazzled silhouette of the old duffer’s head at the window. He lipped a silent
domo arigato
and pulled the blankets close over his trembling, raging body. He coughed violently once, and before fitful sleep overcame him, he watched for a long time through half-closed eyes Jocko’s fretful head turns. From Gonji, to the street, and back again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was the mule’s braying that saved Gonji’s life.

As soon as he had fallen into troubled sleep, a kaleidoscope of nightmare tableaux had opened to his mind’s eye. Charging horses, big as warships, with the heads of snarling men and swords in their teeth, bore down on him as he struggled to escape through a mucky dreamscape. Falling, ever falling, yet still moving nearer the enemy. Dark shapes hovered near, caressed him nauseatingly. The swords turned into serpents that spat hissing missiles. The nearest face, ugly and angular, spread wide starting at the mouth, and a huge red tongue fluttered toward him as the gaping rictus emitted an ear-splitting bawl that severed the cord of sleep.

And he found himself fighting for his life.

The first Mongol flung himself down hard on Gonji, clutching his throat with one hand, a glinting dagger descending in the other. Gonji choked and in his bleary half-wakefulness reacted just quickly enough to deflect the first thrust with a handful of blanket.

His legs kicked, but the Mongol’s weight pinned him and his feet became entangled in the blanket. Still disoriented, gasping for breath, Gonji lashed out madly with his fists. But the blade found an opening as the savage Chinese drooled into his face with the exertion.

The knife bit into Gonji’s shoulder a half-inch, and he roared with shock and pain and rage. He leaped convulsively, tossing the Mongol in a heap at the rim of the fire.

Lurching to his feet, the Mongol tipped half into the blaze, shrieking as his hand dipped in and then out of the flame like a shot from a mangonel.

Gonji cast about for his weapons as the second Mongol charged him from the alley.

Angelo continued trumpeting, finally rousing Jocko, who had drifted to sleep at the sill. The handler rushed out in time to see Gonji fling a chunk of kindling at the charging Mongol. It stopped him in his tracks as he flinched, the log
thunking
hard into his side.

Then the first Mongol was at Gonji’s back, knife plunging. Gonji took a quick step forward, as if to run, glancing over his shoulder. But his knee snapped up and a leg shot back and blasted the knife-wielder cleanly off his feet.

Jocko bellowed a warning, and a slim Chinese blade arced through space where an instant earlier Gonji’s head had bobbed.

But now he had the Sagami.

The
katana
sang in the mist and
clanged
the Mongol’s sword nearly out of his hand. Gonji leaped forward, feinted once, twice. The Mongol staggered back, lost composure, and opened wide his middle guard. The Sagami whizzed downward like a scythe in the two-handed grip. The Mongol’s torso split open diagonally in a gaping red cascade.

The other Mongol rose groggily, holding his aching abdomen. He looked up, and the pain in his face became helpless alarm. He saw Gonji’s eyes. And he knew the moment of death.

An instant later the Mandarin-mustached head bounced in the muddy lane.

Shouts from the street. The slapping of running feet. Gonji scooped up the
seppuku
sword and ran, scabbarding the Sagami and shoving both swords into his sash as he made for the stables.

“
Move
, pilgrim—yer on yer own!”

Bandits ran and yelped in confusion through the village, a few carrying hissing torches. Whining issued from huts as the villagers’ terror came anew. Gonji pushed through the startled horses, searching for Tora, cursing. He knew he couldn’t make it. Only the motions to go through now. The survival instinct.

Two men pushed in the street-side doors just as he found Tora—fully saddled! The gods were determined to prolong the spectacle.

He rolled astride the snorting horse and spurred for the door. The other animals jostled and parted before the charge, and Gonji hurled a hoarse war cry at the two mercenaries. Both dove sideways, avoiding the furious charge and whirling blade.

Then Gonji was barreling through the treacherous quagmire of the street, bearing down on a small huddle of men blocking the egress to the main road.

Someone he passed threw a torch. Tora whinnied and swerved to avoid it, skidded in the mud, nearly toppling them. Gonji righted the steed, saw a pistol leveling at him from the pack ahead.

“Cholera!”
he shouted, reining in and clinging low, wheeling the horse back the way they had come.
The fields. Escape across the fields.
The shot cracked behind them, the ball whizzing by.