Gonji: Red Blade from the East (8 page)

“There was a matter of payment,” Gonji said. “A small advance would suffice, I think.”

Navárez smiled crookedly. “The
Señor
did save my life. I think we can trust him for a month’s advance.” He fluttered his fingers in a gesture of request, and Esteban grudgingly produced a hide pouch. The captain counted out ten golden coins, chinked them into the pouch, pulled the drawstring, and tossed it to Gonji.

The samurai hefted it, nodded, and set the pouch on the cask next to him.

“All right—now,” Gonji said, rising and stepping onto the cask with one foot, “about this commitment you speak of.”

“It is a simple matter, really,” Navárez said. “Or maybe,
not
so simple. It depends on each man. We have a ritual we do each month at the darkest hour of the full moon. As a group we chant an invocation, a kind of prayer of faith in the sorcerer Mord. It is he who protects us, brings his great magick against our enemies.”

“His protection didn’t seem to help back there,” Gonji said as innocuously as he could, nodding toward the west.

“They were
fools, bárbaro
,” Esteban said hotly, tilting his head so that the heavy-lidded eye centered on Gonji. “Their faith was weak. Don’t speak before you understand.”

Gonji’s eyes narrowed.

“Don’t make light of the sorcerer’s powers,” Navárez warned. “Those whose faith was strong are here to tell of it.”

“Don’t be a fool like those others,” the toady Esteban parroted.

Gonji’s nerve ends flared with his annoyance, but he spoke calmly. “What does this ritual involve?”

From a vest pocket Esteban produced a folded piece of parchment which he opened and held out. On it were three lines of characters in a spidery script.

“Would you like me to read it for you?”

“I can read it,” Gonji spat, snatching the parchment from Esteban’s hand. He peered at the script, which read:

Hemeska shob daktra sessem ib Mord

Akt’nessai im Mord, vookt-mirh, yod-mirh

Sha’nai, Sha’nai

Now
what the hell to do?

A chill shivered along Gonji’s spine as he scanned the words a second time. He had never seen the invocation before, he was sure; yet he knew enough of such things to avoid even forming the words on his lips as he read. Were they required to barter their souls in this army, or what?

“And what happens when the chant is sounded?” he asked.

“It is as I said,” the captain replied. “Soldiers receive the protective power of Mord in exchange for faith in the power itself. From this faith the sorcerer himself draws power. Is it not so with all religions, eh? The one thing important above all is that you have absolute belief in the sorcerer. Do as you would with any of the heathen gods you might worship, only...expect results.”

Navárez pointed at the chant, eyebrows raised for emphasis. “This is true power on earth.” His voice had shrunk to an awed whisper.

Gonji was troubled, unsure of what to say. His uppermost fear was realized in Esteban’s next offering:

“Why don’t you try to say the words now?”

“When the time comes I’ll know them,” Gonji shot back.

“See that you learn them well,” Navárez said, turning and walking off.

Gonji refolded the parchment and placed it in a sewn-in kimono pocket along with the gold as he made for the feed line, his mind in turmoil. He walked two steps, and Esteban halted him.

“I need some information—your name?” the Spaniard queried officiously.

Gonji glowered as Esteban cocked the scarred eye his way and casually swabbed his face with a bandanna.

“Gon-ji Sa-ba-ta-ke,” he pronounced with deliberate condescension. “Now look, I’m hungry—”

“Spell it.”

Unbelievable. He complied.

“Special qualifications?”

Gonji was aware of the eyes on him without having to look toward the clusters of mercenaries enjoying the show with their meal. Nearby sat the Mongols. With them, Julio and a couple of his cronies, all snickering.

Gonji stretched tall and square and strode arrogantly, hand on hilt, toward Esteban, whose eyes now mirrored a creeping apprehension. The samurai brought his face a hand’s width from the Spaniard’s temptingly outthrust jaw, swelled his chest, and said in a voice loud and swaggering enough to be heard by all:

“
Amigo, everything
I do is special.”

With that he turned slowly—body first, head last—and ambled easily toward the remains of dinner.

“I can get the rest later,” Esteban called after him weakly in an effort to salvage some pride. But Gonji was already busy choosing the cleanest of the bug-smeared pewter plates from a stack atop a tree stump.

“Braggadocio,” Esteban muttered to himself and entered the word in the “Special Qualifications” section.

Gonji’s annoyance dissolved as he took in deep draughts of the cooking aroma. Jocko cackled and blustered behind the serving line, shouting imprecations at those who had declined his stew, which had ceased erupting and now simply resembled a murky swamp. A few good-natured insults were tossed back at him.

The deer meat overhung two greasy platters in limp slabs. As Gonji probed through one pile of meat in search of the right chunk, he was dimly aware of someone lurking at his shoulder. He paid it no heed. Then as he decided on one particularly succulent piece of venison, poking at it to pry it from the platter, a curved dagger knifed past his hand and impaled the meat.

His head snapped around, and he found himself staring sidelong into the rheumy eyes of a leering Mongol.

The camp fell silent. Breathless.

“Ain’t nobody eatin’ this healthy stew?” Jocko yelled over their heads. No one heard him.

The Mongol yammered a long sentence in a mincing inflection. It made the sing-song nasality of his language even more pronounced. Gonji understood little Chinese but did manage to make out one term: “dung-face.” The barb stung deeply. It was funny how one quickly acquired and long retained the less agreeable vocabulary of an alien tongue.

Gonji drew on reserves of steadiness, strove to calm the prickling tension that pervaded his body. He breathed evenly and deeply, tried to slow the pounding of his heart. He was oblivious to the oppressive stillness that had fallen: no one chewed or slogged or belched; not a whisper was heard save for the sibilant rush of tight, heavy breathing. A thin smile pulled at the corners of Gonji’s lips as he eyed the curve-handled dagger, the swarthy yellow grasp and gritty black fingernails.

“Nice thrust,” Gonji ventured in Spanish. Disappointed “awwws” and coarse laughter broke in reaction to the declined combat.

Moving to the more picked-over platter, Gonji peered over at Jocko, who squinted a warning. And to no one’s surprise, as the samurai again flipped through the slices of meat, the brutish Mongol skewered half the overturned stack. But this time Gonji had timed the maneuver and adroitly speared a thick chunk of meat while the other’s point was engaged.

He moved off with a sly grin.

The Mongol came up close behind Gonji and jabbered a string of scalding insults—clear enough from the inflection alone. He caught something that might have been “whore-son,” and a seething anger roiled in his gut. He was facing the Mongol’s cronies, about a dozen paces distant. The second sneering Chinese glowered at him under a fur-brimmed helmet. He had risen to one knee and with a rhythmic
snick!
was lifting and dropping his sword portentously in its scabbard.

Gonji’s mind filled with wrathful voices as he tried to plan the best way to handle the confrontation, all the while keeping his reflexes relaxed and free. He calculated his chances for an instant. He could feel the threateningly angled dagger at his back, heard the Mongol call out a challenge.

Then he gambled on the unexpected.

“
Por favor
, a cup of wine,
amigo
,” he called to Jocko in a loud, affable voice. The old man sidled over to a keg and drew off a half-cup of the ruby liquid, all the while eyeing Gonji quizzically.

Then Gonji began moving about in a broad theatrical manner full of elaborate gestures and cocky tosses of his head. Menacing grins plummeted into puzzled frowns, like the unfurling of tapestries, as he flourished his plate and dirk and spoke in a resonant monologue—in Japanese:

“Do you know something? A long time ago my father, the great
daimyo
Sabatake Todohiro, instilled in me the understanding that no man can affront another, such as you have done to me here, without being challenged for it.
Hai
, that is so. By rights I should kill you—
all
of you!”

He picked up the wine goblet with a smiling nod to Jocko and sipped, set it down. Took up the dirk again and waved it suddenly in the direction of the kneeling Mongol and his seated cohorts. All gaped at him in slack-jawed bewilderment.

“But I’m not going to. No. You are very lucky, and do you know why?”

Still carrying the plate of deer meat, Gonji ambled toward the perplexed watchers, head tilted to the majestic heavens.

“You see, when he, told me that, he was referring to intelligent, civilized men. You are obviously not,
neh
?” He pointed the dirk at one of the seated men, who jerked back in surprise and offered a wide-eyed sheepish smile and a vapid nod.

“True, quite true, I thought so! Very good. You see, by your fat, puffy faces—”

He skillfully sliced off a bite of meat and speared it.

“—I can see that you’re
pigs
, not men. And as such you’re no doubt equipped with pigs’ brains. That’s right,
you
and
you
and
you
—this wretch back here—”

He had stopped in his tracks to point out various mercenaries, ending by cocking his blade back at the simmering Mongol. He passed the brigand a scornful look and shoved the morsel into his mouth, chewing it noisily in the charged silence.

“My father was right, you know, but only as far as the Land of the Gods is concerned. I’ve come to believe that in a land of dregs, one must make allowances for ignorance.
Hai
, very necessary. The world does that to you,” he sighed resignedly. “Compromise. Always the crumbling of time-honored principles....

“But that’s very good for you, you ugly toads, because I won’t have to kill you!” He made an open-armed gesture that took in the whole audience. A rolling night-breeze leaned into the camp, mingled with Gonji’s adrenaline rush to produce in him an odd sense of euphoria.

“And so now, as I’ve granted you a reprieve, by all means, go back to your mindless banter. But first...be sure to thank your gods, won’t you?”

Spellbound, the mercenaries whispered and chuckled cautiously as the samurai breezily strode back to the casks for his wine.

But the dagger-wielding Mongol charged forward and seized Gonji’s reaching arm. He froze. Sibilant hushes sprouted all about them.

He had lost the gamble.

Gonji faced the Mongol squarely, holding his plate before him, the dirk dangling limply at his side. Their eyes locked stonily. The wind tufted the fur on the Mongol’s peaked helm, and the drooping tendrils of his mustache wriggled as he whined something plainly venomous.

Gonji spoke gravely in Spanish. “Look—why don’t you let this drop, you stupid savage?” By now Gonji only half cared to himself; in Japan, to grab another out of malice was an insufferable insult.

The Mongol hawked and spat onto his plate.

Gonji breathed deeply, his heart hammering. He heard the scuffle of men rising behind him, the soft whine of steel. In his mind: the cold black door of the end. There came fleetingly the words of an old teacher:

The mighty guard their faces

While the small make off with their toes

He heard Navárez’ shout, but it came too late.

Gonji tossed the dirk sideways into the air. The Mongol instinctively followed its harmless course. In that instant Gonji splatted him in the face with the plate.

The Mongol cried out and lunged awkwardly with his dagger. Batting it free with a sharp knife-hand blow that snapped back the snaking arm, Gonji pulled the Sagami and slammed the pommel hard into the Mongol’s belly. He thudded to his knees, groaning and heaving, as Gonji coiled into a striking stance.

Sporadic shouts, as men scrambled to their feet and produced steel. Gonji stared along a horizontal crop of circling blades. Down the barrels of half-hammered pistols.

So it ends....

Navárez was roaring, holding the Mongol’s friends at their tethers for a moment that seemed endless. Then something else happened.