Gonji: Red Blade from the East (20 page)

Two horsemen were spilled by insurgents with staffs and hastily procured bludgeons, but before they could inflict much injury, the rebels were scattered by a charging line of regulars, one townsman dropping beside his severed arm, a torrent of crimson gushing over the flagstones.

The incident ended quickly, and the injured were carried off to their homes. Wailing sobs and groans floated on the sweltering air. Flavio still stood where he had near the rostrum, pleading for rationality. Michael’s bride, Lydia, a slim and winsome woman with hair like feathered sunshine, had joined with him on the late battleground. The troops reassembled. Conscripted servants were huddled together, heads hung despairingly. Ben-Draba ordered three men to procure a wagon. Mord boarded his carriage and sauntered unhurriedly up to Flavio.

The city leaders cast about them at the scene, eyes mirroring their shock. Never had Vedun known such violence in their time.

* * * *

During the melee no one had noticed the curious rider who had plodded up an alley near the square, a horse in tether, to witness the violent drama.

Hell, he thought, so they
have
come here.

Panic-stricken townspeople dashed by, the horses becoming skittish. He scanned the mounted troops. A handful were Llorm, clad in their light cavalry armor and burgonets. They moved smoothly and efficiently. Hardened, disciplined troops. The rest comprised the most wildly arrayed and armed bunch of scoundrels ever assembled. Rapiers, broadswords, sabers, cutlasses, pikes—a variety of favorite weapons dangled at the sides and on the backs of men from every corner of two continents. Swarthy pirates, byrnied highlanders, a few more pigtailed Mongols—and even a warrior or two whose origin was beyond Gonji—set down an ill-timed and misdirected insurgent revolt at the square.

Gonji then took note of the troop leader. He was wiping his brow, but before he replaced his crested burgonet, there was no mistaking the brutal bastard who had delivered the death blow to the boy whose corpse the samurai had in tow.

Bad timing.

Then he remembered that he carried the bow of one of the men he had killed and quickly examined it for identifying markings. There was indeed a unique device on the quiver. He had conveniently brought along all the evidence needed for his conviction and execution.

He swerved the horses and doubled back to the livery he had passed near the west gate. His inquiry after the dead boy would have to wait.

Gonji dismounted near the livery stables, a smith shop, and a large corral alive with heat-rankled horses. The place was unattended, so he seized opportunity by the jaws. He removed the bow and quiver from the saddle and concealed them behind stacks of mantas piled beside the stable.

As he emerged from between the buildings, dusting his hands with satisfaction, he spotted a group of boys watching him from a doorway. He strode over to them and grinned affably.

“Hello, there,” he called in German.

The boys all laughed. He tried again in Italian and was answered by them, the boldest of the bunch marching out in an imitation of Gonji’s proud strut. He liked this kid already.

“Hello,” the boy said. “You’re a strange-looking man!” A new sprinkle of laughter emanated from behind him.

Gonji’s eyes twinkled at the sincerity of innocence. “Thank you. What’s your name?”

“Eduardo,” came the reply. “Why do you wear your hair like that?”

“In the country where I was born, all soldiers wear their hair this way—to show that they’re different from the other men. Can you tell me where I might find the smith?”

“He’s gone to answer the bell at the square. You talk funny!” More self-conscious titters from the other boys.

Gonji smiled. “So would you, in my land. Say,
‘do itashimashite’.
”

Eduardo tried, with the anticipated result, and all of them wound up laughing heartily.

“What does that mean?” the boy asked.

“It means ‘you’re welcome’.” Gonji tousled the boy’s unruly mane and turned back toward the horses, Eduardo following.

“Can you teach me how to use the sword?” Eduardo asked as they walked.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to take that up with your father.”

Gonji vaulted astride Tora and again took the bandit’s horse, with its grisly burden, by the reins. He wheeled to ride off before the boy became inquisitive about the tied-down bundle.

“What’s your name?” Eduardo called after him.

“Gonji.” And with a wave to the boys, he trotted off.

CHAPTER TEN

Flavio, Garth, Michael, and Lydia stared at the key, each hoping that none of their faces betrayed their shock, the violent incident of moments ago all but forgotten. Michael’s breath came in hot gasps, the blood pounding in his temples as he fought for control. The merest touch from Lydia’s hand signaled her urgent warning.

“Recognize it?” Ben-Draba was saying, tossing it into the air casually, then turning it over in his hand.

“No,” Flavio lied, “I’ve never seen it before. Where did you get it?”

“I found it in the valley. The magician thinks it’s possessed by some kind of...emanation. It’s a big one, though, eh?”

Mord stared at them from the coach, his golden mask aglow with hostile energy as it reflected in amorphous patterns the figures huddled before him. “I’ll find out what it’s for, rest assured,” he said smugly.

The wagon arrived, and the sullen conscripts were herded aboard. Ben-Draba called over a richly adorned captain named Julian Kel’Tekeli, a proud and handsome soldier who carried himself with the haughtiness of a barnyard rooster. They spoke for a time in an unknown tongue.

The four townspeople stood silently, contemplating the day’s portentous events, watching stiffly as Rorka’s standard came down from the walls, supplanted by Klann’s threatening arms.

“What has happened to the castle servants and families of Baron Rorka’s men?” Flavio asked, a pained expression evincing his concern for his people’s welfare.

“They were foolish,” Mord replied. “They chose to throw in their lot with their old master.”

“They were people,” Michael said in a tremulous voice, eyes glazed, “...women and children....”

“They were rebels,” Mord said simply.

“And you are the children of evil!”

All heads turned to view the speaker whose outburst rang in the air like a heavenly trump. No one had seen the prophetess Tralayn standing alone in the dusty square, her green robe fluttering in the sultry breeze, thin wisps of flowing black hair swirling about her shoulders.

“Who dares address the forces of King Klann in this manner?” Mord demanded.

“What does it matter?” Tralayn responded, her emerald eyes ablaze. “Know this, sorcerer—you have dealt foully with children of the Lord, and His anger will be kindled against you.”

“Do you presume to threaten us?”

“I say only what has been revealed to me.”

For a long moment Mord and Tralayn exchanged stares of crystallized hatred. Finally Mord broke the tension:

“Back to the castle! Commander, let us leave these cross worshippers to mourn their dead. The stench offends me.” Then, to Flavio: “Tonight you shall know
fear.
Tonight your skies will fling dung in your faces!”

With a parting word to Julian, Ben-Draba led half the troop out the north gate in escort of the coach. Julian fortified the ramparts with archers from among the regulars. Then he rode off with the occupying mercenaries.

Flavio and the others hurried to Tralayn and poured out a deluge of anxious words, to which she remained strangely unresponsive. She continued to stare after Mord even as the grim assemblage surrounding Gonji approached, bearing the now uncovered body of Michael’s younger brother, Mark.

Michael screamed the boy’s name and pulled the body down from the saddle. Gonji halted Tora and looked on somberly.

Flavio comforted Michael and Lydia as they cradled the boy’s body tearfully. Then he rose to address the gathered mourners. “Who brought the boy’s body into town?”

Several people indicated Gonji, and Flavio proffered a thank-you without really seeing the samurai. Gonji began to speak, but the council Elder absently turned away and engaged the attention of Garth, drawing him a few paces away from the others.

“I think it must have been bandits,” Gonji called out to no one in particular. “There were three men dead near the boy.”

“It was a bandit, all right,” Michael responded without looking up, his voice choked with tears. “I know who it was—oh,
God
, why did I let him
go
?” He fell into pitiful, racking sobs, and the onlookers lowered their heads in helpless sorrow.

“Michael,” Flavio called to him gently, “Lydia will look after your brother’s body. Some of you men will help her get him to the chapel, won’t you?” There were mutters of assent. “We need a word with you here, my boy,” the Elder continued. “It’s most vital.”

Gonji hoped he had done nothing to implicate himself in the crime, but he felt satisfied that having brought the body had exonerated him. It would be interesting, he thought, to see what happened here, though. The boy had been related to someone of importance in Vedun. Would they move against the little army of cutthroats?

After being ignored once or twice, he succeeded in ascertaining the location of the inn. He tried the livery stables again first and found them still unattended, and he impatiently wheeled Tora in the opposite direction. He had been told that the nearest inn was located at the eastern end of the city, and this would be a good opportunity to familiarize himself with the layout. Passing a bath house, he made a mental note to stop there on the return trip.

Vedun had been laid out in a peculiar fashion by its architects, at once fascinating and grotesque, the latter characteristic enhanced by the more recent structures that clashed aesthetically with the age-old groundwork. Main roads, paved with cobblestone and mostly named after esteemed Christian virtues, were broad and open. They contained the heart of the city’s commerce, the marketplaces and craft shops, the town Ministry and office of the Exchequer, meeting halls and business establishments. Secondary streets, back lanes, and alleys narrowed to a point where the tightest of the latter could scarcely allow the passage of two horsemen abreast without scuffing their boots and bruising their horses’ flanks. And most of these smaller byways were lined by high walls of granite and studded with tight archways. The overall appearance made one mindful of descriptions of ancient cities in the Middle East. A splendid place for insurgent action. An invading force would be hard-pressed to assault such a sprawling labyrinth and weed out pockets of defenders.

Still, Klann had come to power with evident ease....

He wound his way through the back lanes of the southern quarter, mentally mapping as he went, although his sense of direction wasn’t one of his more salient qualities. He passed a closed cobbler shop, weavers and clothiers, and a sign indicating the home of the town physician, Dr. Verrico.

Here began a residential section of homes built in a variety of designs, rendering a tableau of horrid tastelessness. The original dwellings were mostly one-story houses of stone with flat timber roofs. Around them had sprung up a motley array of mixed wood and stone homes, many of two floors, with peaked roofs of thatch and shingle, gabled outworks, and designs reflecting an assortment of ethnic origins. Color patterns were starkly individualistic as well. Red, green, brown, and yellow hues vied for unsightly attention. Animal pens and flower and vegetable gardens backed or flanked many homes, and domestic animals padded through the lanes freely. Dogs barked at Gonji’s passing. Scruffy looking cats pounced after mice and rats near the sewage trenches. The area was uncommonly quiet at the moment, but Gonji could feel the eyes peering out at him from behind curtains. Occasionally a shutter would slam as he clopped past a dwelling, and here and there a child playing outside would be yanked indoors.

Every fifty paces or so the baked earth of the lane Gonji traveled was broken by a fenced timber boardwalk. Beneath these were open trenches that cut into the sewage tunnels under the street. Here the denizens of Vedun dumped their trash and offal, to be washed out when the culverts were flushed through the sluice gates. A sewage system of recent construction, but unfinished: some of the ancient back lanes still were scored along their centers by open sewage trenches, as, for example, near the foully reeking slaughterhouse area.

A sudden low rumble approached from behind him. As if his thoughts had caused it, the sluice gates were cranked agape and the diverted river water roared under the streets, finally reaching the culvert atop which he had stopped, swelling up to reveal the stinking waste beneath, which roiled about for a moment and then drifted off to be jettisoned out the gates and down the cliff face.

Gonji’s face screwed up at the loathsome sight, and he spat to clear his passages of the almost palpable stench. More than ever he felt the need for a bath.

Emerging from a claustrophobic alley onto one of the avenues—the first he had seen whose name reflected secularism rather than religiosity, it being called Provender Lane—he passed the long pavilion of an open market. Here for the first time he observed a return to the jostling hum of daily commerce. Here, too, the cosmopolitan nature of Vedun was in evidence. Men in jerkins and waistcoats, breeches and gabardines, hawked their wares in a multitude of languages. Women clad in mantuas, panniers, and palette-bright peasant dresses swished by, searching for the day’s bargains. An intoxicating variety of food odors filled the air: fruits and vegetables, fresh baked goods, salted meats and fish, spices newly acquired from traveling merchants. Children and animals scampered underfoot and darted through the streets in boisterous play.