Gonji: Red Blade from the East (27 page)

“They said we could leave, they did. Then they sent a
monster
after us!” More screams from behind them. “Let me go!” He pushed Wilf back and ran off.

“
Please
, give us sanctuary—the
children
—”

Garth tried to calm the jostling refugees. “Easy now. You’re in Vedun now. You’ll be safe—”

Gonji felt a twinge of unease, an almost psychic pang of alarm. He ran to the rear of the crowd, searched back along the road, the skies to the west. The people spoke mostly in Rumanian, but he had caught the single word “monster.”

First from afar, then ever nearer, the wind began to beat, to pulse rhythmically, unnaturally. The castle refugees screamed and covered their ears. Some threw their arms over their heads and dropped to their knees. Other pushed and dragged puling children over the ground toward the stables. Some charged for the light slanting from Garth’s open door. The Gundersen party cast about in awed befuddlement. Primitive terror bound them all. Then the patterned rush of wind approached the stables and Gonji’s eyes sought to part the star-flecked blackness to see what it was that blotted great clusters of stars with a shape darker than the night.

“Oh my God!”
someone cried.

Pandemonium.

Enormous devil-bat wings passed overhead, flapping, furling like a sudden unveiling of a pirate vessel’s dread black sails. It soared by with tremendous speed, tearing hats off heads, shearing through the night air toward the southern quarter.

Most of the refugees flattened, some cringing against walls, hovering protectively over children. Voices wafted skyward from all points in the city. Doors were flung open along the Street of Charity.

Garth called for the others to help him as he huddled the people together and moved them to the shelter of nearby homes. People bounced off one another like tenpins. Some flailed about, seeking lost kin.

Then the beast circled overhead again with a whooshing beat of monstrous pointed wings, and by now Gonji’s night vision had sharpened. He saw it.

Amid the screams and clamor and pounding feet and rearing, shrieking animals, Gonji saw his nemesis. He spun into a crouch as it flew by, his face a mask of hate and revulsion. Again it came—that mindless horror that made him want to flee, to be a thousand miles away. Someone slammed into his leg, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from the thing.

The beast, some sort of ghastly flying dragon with curved talons at the ends of drawn-up haunches, arced about the circumference of Vedun. Screams girdled the city, marking the beast’s passing in a way that, in some other context, might have been almost comical.

“A
wyvern
!” came the grated whisper at Gonji’s side. It was Garth, hefting two children whose heads were buried in his bear’s chest.

“You’ve seen such a thing before?”

“Only once—a long, long time ago,” Garth replied. “In the British Isles. Never—never so close. It’s a fearsome, filthy thing. Everyone must take cover at once.” He was breathing hard, eyes slanted upward as he spoke. “Its—its saliva—and its waste—they’re—”

“I know—lethal,” Gonji finished for him. Shuddersome thoughts leapt in his mind. A kaleidoscopic vision of mutilated monks and his own cold-sweat ride of panic and children huddled against searing death. And his shame and rage intensified.

“What’s happening? Genyaaaaa—!” Wilf cried to the skies in mindless terror.

“Wilfred—you others,” Garth called, “get these people indoors.” He carried the children to his house.

Gonji made to move, found that he was restrained: a child, a small blonde girl, had attached herself to his leg and was clinging in abject terror. He experienced a surge of compassion for the pathetic waif, whose father perhaps had been a Rorka trooper slaughtered at the castle.

“Come, little one.” He scooped her up and bounded off toward Garth’s house.

“Vedun, your skies mock you!”
The one called Paille again.

Somewhere, amid the screams of primal fear—laughter. Klann’s troops, enjoying the spectacle of a city swept by the wilting fear only sorcery can inspire. As he reached the smith-shop canopy with the child, Gonji glanced toward the south bailey wall: two dark burgonets caught the glint of moon rays. Llorm archers at their posts.

Inside Garth’s home were Strom and Boris, anxiously patting a man, three women, and four children who pressed together in a corner beyond the blazing hearth. One woman seemed catatonic; she clutched at her breast a bloody gauntlet.

“Better move them all to the bedchambers,” Gonji directed. “Looks like you’ll be having a
few
guests tonight.”

Boris seemed reluctant to respond to an order from Gonji. He and Strom exchanged a look.

“We have a cellar,” Strom said, eyes downcast.

“Good. That’s probably best. Get them moving.” Gonji heard Paille again. “Who
is
that idiot?” Retrieving the Sagami, he ran into the street just as the others returned. All kept one eye on the threatening sky. The wyvern had tightened its orbit and now passed short of the stables. It swooped down over livestock pens and croaked a raucous challenge at the lowing cattle.

Like a knell of doom the tocsin in the bell tower at the square began to clang the midnight curfew. But the wyvern veered off its flight path to soar over the tower, and the tolling ceased well short of twelve bells.

“Boris!” Garth called to the house. “We’re going now.”

Boris scurried out, shaking visibly as he scanned the sky.

Gonji thrust the Sagami into his sash. “You take no weapons, Herr Gundersen? I’ll accompany you to see that you arrive at your meeting safely.”

“Nein, nein,
“Garth replied. “Please—we’re in the hands of God. We’ll be fine. I’d feel better if you’d guard my house tonight. Those poor refugees....”

“I’ll...see that it’s secure,” Gonji replied uncertainly, bowing. His brow furrowed with dismay at the charge, for he had other things in mind.

“Let’s go then.” With this Garth turned and led Lorenz and Boris away along the Street of Charity.

Gonji watched them for a space as they loped off under the scant protection of the eaves of buildings lining the long avenue. They were totally unarmed. Helpless. Were they so naive, or did their faith truly run so deep? He squeezed the hilt of the Sagami. Then he turned at the shrilling squall in the northern sky: the wyvern was sweeping back this way, its jackal-like head, topped by what seemed to be incongruous knobby antlers, inclined toward the stables.

The samurai scurried into the smith’s house and slammed the door behind him. Wilf stood near the window, his face mirroring his anxiety. Sober now, he rubbed sweating palms on his thighs. A door dropped heavily into place in the floor of the larder, and Strom emerged from the narrow room. His squirrelly eyes bulged as he nodded curtly. The refugees were safe in the cellar.

Then both Gundersens were staring as Gonji swiftly doffed his kimono, revealing a light, bloodstained tunic and breeches. Using a leather harness trace, he strapped the killing sword to his back with practiced adroitness, then the
seppuku
blade, slightly lower. Unrolling his sash to its full width, he tied the garment around his head in such a way as to reveal only his eyes, in the manner of the
ninja
, the silent assassins. Strapping a dirk to his thigh, he snatched the spare killing sword and strode up to Wilf.

He held out the sheathed blade like an offering.

“Take care of this for me,” he said. “It’s called a
katana.
Only unsheath it if you intend to use it. And if you use it, don’t disgrace it.”

Wilf swallowed once, took the sword from Gonji and held it before him reverently. “But what will you do?”

“I’ve an errand.”

“Now?” Wilf asked, perplexed. “I mean—what—?”

“It just occurred to me. Now stay here and keep watch for your father and brother to return. I’ll be back soon. Say nothing of this, please, to anyone.”

He turned to go.

“Be careful, Gonji,” Wilf said in a small voice.

The oriental paused at the doorway and peered back from the folds of his improvised mask. Both brothers gaped at the inscrutable figure before them. The faintest smile lines crinkled the corners of his eyes.

“I am samurai, friend. Caution is a
kami
that hovers at my shoulder.”

With this Gonji was off into the murky night. He dashed nimbly to the pile of mantas under which he had hidden the bow and quiver. Grabbing these, he skulked into a shroud of shadow, becoming one with the darkness.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Take up arms! Drive them from the city!”

“Monsters and demons plague us!”

“It’s the invaders’ doing—”

“Our families are in danger of that flying beast—I’m for home! Who’s with me?”

Hysterical voices bellowed above the strident chatter of the gathering.

“Be seated—all of you!”

Flavio had lost his usual equanimity, and as he raised his arms in restraint to the group which was now leaping to its collective feet, it was all the aged Elder could do to quiet the throng and address the volatile issue. His protégé, Michael Benedetto, stood to his rear. Far from assisting Flavio in calming the gathering, he seemed rather distant, detached. But much of his insensate fury of earlier had by now abated.

In the sprawling catacomb beneath Flavio’s home, a secret sub-cellar gouged into the earth by long-forgotten dwellers, the leaders of Vedun had gathered in conclave. Dank stifling air encroached from the bowels of the earth. The glazed eyes of angry, frightened men gleamed in the dim light served up by cresset lamps set in carven niches. Oily sweat glistened on every brow as the wise and trusted Elder let the fury of protest spend itself. At length he restored a semblance of order to the meeting. The city leaders, representatives from all areas of commerce and provision, yielded the floor to their patriarch and the craft-guild leader Phlegor, who as usual had raised the loudest protesting voice. The heat was oppressive.

“And so, Master Craftsman,” Flavio said, “you would have us abandon all our peaceful principles and lash out at a trained army, eh?” Flavio’s supporters muttered in assent.

“It would be suicide,” Milorad piped in.

“That’s no army!” cried Phlegor. The craft master’s face reddened beneath a crop of stiff rust-hued hair. He gestured with wiry arms as he spoke. “Those are the hirelings of some bandit warlord. I’ve fought their kind before—no discipline, little courage—There are other ex-soldiers in Vedun, men like me who aren’t going to be pushed around. Citizens have been slaughtered, Flavio.”

“Are we going to be fed to that monster in the sky?” cried Vlad Dobroczy, a strapping, hook-nosed farmer.

“What about my son?” bellowed a man at the rear, whose boy had been conscripted into Klann’s service.

“And mine!”

“And all the others at the castle!”

Again hysteria spread. Flavio and his supporters pressed for silence and sanity as a score of outraged citizens mounted their benches. Michael sat down at Flavio’s left, mute and sullen.

“Phlegor—all of you—listen to me,” said the Elder. He spoke in the local Rumanian dialect, and there was a low babble of voices doing translation as he continued. “When I founded this community years ago, I fostered a dream. This abandoned citadel seemed a godsend. And I wanted Vedun to be a haven, a refuge. Free from the strife and scurry and intolerance of the rest of the world. Until now our city has been the realization of that dream. We’ve worked together and built a flourishing, self-sufficient society that’s been a welcome retreat for so many—and yes, I’m talking to you craftsmen. Many of you weren’t here when we struggled through those first trying years.

“We’ve established a strong outpost of Christianity in these mountains that some call accursed, and the Lord has taken care of us. Bestowed His bounty. We’ve been fortunate to enjoy the protection of the good Baron Rorka for many years. But now power has passed from him; it rests with another, this King Klann. Only in heaven does one King reign supreme forever. Here on earth we are bound to the inevitable changes in rule which always have—and always will—cause suffering.

“I ask of you only one thing. Now, I do not ignore the crimes committed against the city. I intend to approach Klann and seek redress, to urge the return of those taken against their will. But until I can do so, you must promise that you will not take matters into your own hands. We must avoid violence at all costs and give Klann a chance to act as Lord Protector.”

“Violence! What kind of Lord Protector kills his own people?” Dobroczy yelled out amidst supportive cries.

“A dreadful thing,” Milorad advanced, concern knitting his brow. “And make no mistake that we shall impress upon King Klann the gravity of these crimes and demand the punishment of the guilty. But you must know that such acts are often perpetrated by violent military men, always anxious to prove their strength.”