Читать книгу Gonji: Red Blade from the East - T. C. Rypel - Страница 10

CHAPTER THREE

Navárez rolled off his mount and limped stiffly toward a tight circle of men who sat or knelt under a towering fir. Their multi-tongued chatter and bawling mirth died when they took note of the captain’s set jaw.

Navárez quickened his step when he came up behind the man called Julio, who turned at the sound of his approach but not quickly enough to evade the sharp slap. He hit the ground heavily, crying out in anger more than pain, his tankard of mead sloshing over him and the nearest observers.

Tense silence gripped the camp.

“You stupid, scabby bastard! You left me to die back there, no?”

Julio rubbed his reddening face, glared back. All eyes turned to him. “I thought you were dead, Franco! How in hell could I know?”

“I called out to you, fool, raised my hand. You rode right by like the coward you are.”

“I never saw you!” Julio cried beseechingly, throwing up his hands. “I was clinging low to the saddle. There were musket shots all around.”

“Now you say you didn’t see me. If you didn’t see me, stupid ass, then how did you come to think I was already dead?” Navárez leveled a finger at him. “The next time you wet your breeches in battle, coward, I’ll put a pistol ball right between your eyes, ¿me entiendes?”

Julio nodded sullenly. He cracked a nervous smile and shrugged sheepishly as he rose, gesturing awkwardly as if to restore himself in Navárez’ good graces.

But the captain was already turning away to see why the other men’s gazes had lifted to peer behind him.

Gonji sat rigid in the saddle, looking over the rolling vista of hostile eyes. A cool wind whipped the tree-rimmed clearing, fluttering loose clothing and hair as it sighed over the drama of silent expectancy. Tora nickered and pawed the ground.

“Ah, Señor Sabatake,” Navárez said, grinning and walking toward him. “This is the man who saved me when that dog left me to die. So, bárbaro, you’ve decided to ride with us after all. Bueno. Make yourself comfortable in the camp, eh? Jocko!”

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’, dammit!”

A fat and grizzled old wretch lumbered over in response, scowling and muttering to himself. His hair was a matted gray scrub, and a fringe of tangled beard seemed to have erupted from his face rather than grown.

“Now who’s callin’ Jocko and what’s the trouble this time? Nobody gets along around here without Jocko. Jocko this and Jocko—!”

“Callarse! Be quiet, you old buzzard!” Navárez shot, not without a grudging affection. “Take our new man here and see that he gets what he wants.” To Gonji: “I’ll speak with you later.” With that he hobbled off to another part of camp.

“Sí, make him feel at home,” Esteban snarled needlessly, tracking after the captain.

Jocko growled at the departing tormentor. “Goddamn weasel.”

He looked up at Gonji, shielding his eyes with a hand although the sun had sunk deep into the trees. Beneath a curled upper lip overhung by a ragged mustache, Gonji could see a rancid display of brown-and-yellow stained teeth.

“Well, come on, then, pilgrim.” And with that Jocko half-shrugged and hopped off toward a cluster of wagons and pack animals near the company’s unsaddled horses. Gonji dismounted and led Tora slowly after, stroking the weary animal’s muzzle.

As he played at talking to Tora, Gonji glanced around the encampment, taking in everything. He had been in many such mercenary camps, and little was different here. Gruff, surly voices barked out in a half-dozen languages as men jostled and joked, told ribald tales and challenged each other to mock combat. Blankets and gear were bunched into mounds here and there where men reclined and pulled at wineskins, or sloshed ale and mead from battered goblets. Insects buzzed everywhere, drawn by sweet-sour odors that mingled now with the mouth-watering aroma of a popping and crackling deer carcass spitted over a roaring fire at the center of camp. A few night birds cried in the treetops in response to the lengthening shadows.

The men in camp numbered about thirty. Of these a handful nursed various wounds. One in particular seemed in a bad way. He lay on a makeshift bed of blankets and boughs, one hand resting over a poor patch job done on his ghastly belly wound. The bandage had gone freshly red. His glazed eyes were rolled heavenward as he breathed spasmodically, a wineskin in his limp grasp dripping pale golden liquid. Men passing him did so somberly, with the warrior’s grim awareness of mortality. Tomorrow this might be any one of them. And tomorrow this one would be dead.

As for the rest of the men in camp, most were typically arrogant mercenaries, clanging an assortment of preferred blades and stolen bits of armor, brandishing a few pistols, affecting their sullen masks and shouting prideful boasts like merchants hawking wares in the marketplace. Only here the object was to sell not goods but intimidation. Spheres of privacy were sacred: A misapprehended stare could lead to a fight; a fight could lead to death.

Caution. Caution and tact. But never timidity.

As Gonji’s gaze passed over the international assemblage of fighting men in their wild array of sabers and broadswords, helms and chapeaus, jerkins and cuirasses, leather and hide, he was acutely aware that he was the center of attention, as was to be expected.

The stranger in town. Now began the careful assimilation into the group. It was all right; he had played the game many times before. No Magyars about. No encircling by bullying cliques as yet. And just as the thought came that his exotic uniqueness had passed first inspection, he caught the hot glimmer of two pairs of obsidian eyes.

Two fur-trimmed Mongol renegades transfixed him with lances of pure hate. There was no love lost between their peoples.

Gonji walked Tora past an unhitched dray that must be the field mess wagon. Scattered around its bed were grimy pewter plates and cutlery and an assortment of barrels and kegs. Jocko busied himself at a small fire above which was suspended a bubbling kettle of some unsavory looking mold-colored mulch. Gonji supposed it was stew, though it reminded him of the belching cone of Mt. Fuji.

The old duffer turned at their passing. “Nice animal,” Jocko said, scuffing over a few paces to stroke Tora’s muzzle. The stallion nickered contentedly. “We gonna take good care o’ you, fellah. What’s his name?”

“Tora.”

“Tora—a good name. Real fine name.” Then, just as suddenly as he had come over, the grizzled old man had returned to his foul ichor.

Gonji smiled as he brought Tora to the knot of shuffling horses and unsaddled him. He was proud of the noble steed, a strong, fast, dependable stallion who had somehow managed to live through a bizarre tapestry of adventures.

He had been complimented on the horse’s name before. When he had bought him—after a mad adventure during which he’d found, and then lost, the wild stallion—the handlers had agreed that Tora was a fine name, though in Japan Gonji would no sooner have called his horse Tora than an Englishman would have dubbed his mount “Tiger.” But in Europe the name had a splendid ring.

Tora. An equine god of ferocity.

The tinkling siren-song of a shimmering crystal brook beckoned him. Beautiful, it was, in the orange drench of filtering sunset, now that the ominous storm clouds had blown far eastward. A few kegs chilled in its sparkling wash. Gonji stripped off his kimono and tunic. He undid his topknot and bathed his upper body in the refreshing briskness.

Feeling better for the effort at cleanliness, Gonji loped back to camp with a lighter step. He stopped at his saddle, relieved to find his mother’s ceremonial sword still jutting from its cinched position. Foolish thing to forget. He wrapped it and tied it down securely under a deep saddle pouch, from which he also produced a throwing knife to replace the dirk he had lost in the valley. Strapping this inside his kimono, he strode easily toward the mess wagon, hunger rumbling in the empty chamber of his belly.

“How’s that venison?”

“Ain’t got time now, pilgrim—outta my way!” Jocko had lifted the sizzling kettle and lurched around, almost knocking Gonji down as he waddled past like a herniated ape. He had spoken only Spanish before, the main language of the company. Now his urgency had welled forth in his native Italian.

Gonji chuckled. “Make it fast, I’m starving!” he yelled in serviceable Italian.

The graybeard stumbled around to face him. His arms trembled with the effort to keep the steaming cauldron off his ample belly, and his brow knit in disbelief.

“I’m Sicilian,” Gonji said with a straight face.

Jocko bellowed a gravelly laugh that rose in volume and mirth until the glade echoed and hushing yelps issued from several men. He lumbered over to the roasting deer on bowed legs and dropped the kettle with a dull thud and a hissing splush! Then with a long pitted carving knife Jocko set to breaking the deer, hacking off a slab of venison and plopping it onto a silver platter.

“All right, you saddle-sore vermin with blistered behinds!” he cried in Italian, still looking, still laughing toward Gonji. “Come on up here and cram yer pig snouts full, hee-heeeee!” He was obviously delighted to have an audience.

“Look at ’em come!”

Gonji grinned and scratched his stubbly jaw, stretched broadly, touched the ground with his palms. He sat on a cask and leaned on one thigh, the other hand resting casually on a sword hilt.

No hurry. It wouldn’t be proper to go rushing into the meal line, not for a newcomer. There’d be plenty.

The deer meat smelled maddeningly appetizing. Looking at it, Gonji felt like a winter-gaunt wolf before a snow-blind lamb. Funny. It had taken a long time to acquire a taste for animal flesh, but once seeded, the roots ran deep.

He felt rather good. Still an outsider, but on the threshold. A warm human aura permeated the gray twilight and evening chill, the first campside companionship he had known in—how long? Quite a while. Not a monster or sorcerer in sight, he chuckled to himself. And even better, he had shared a rare laugh with another human being. A sincere laugh of common understanding. That was good, hai, very good. Sometimes that could turn to genuine friendship. And with a bit of luck a friend might even live long enough to be remembered.

“Hey, bárbaro!”

Gonji rankled at the unpleasant shattering of his reverie. He looked up at the stocky Navárez, who stood grinning with thumbs hooked inside his broad belt, the ubiquitous Esteban’s jackass jaw suspended over his shoulder.

“You decided to stay,” the captain observed, “and we must discuss your...commitment, no?”

Gonji pursed his lips, stared blankly a moment. His eyes flitted to Navárez: fresh blouse, new gabardine pantaloons—puffed a bit at the right thigh, where a heavy wrapping must bind the musket wound. He took in the cutlass in its ornate gold-filigree scabbard; the sleek pistol with the argent fleur-de-lis handle. Decadent elegance under a cocked hat.

“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.

A tall, gaunt highwayman in subdued attire and a moth-eaten slouch hat drew up beside Gonji. The oriental’s eyes flared a threat, but the other turned and faced the opposing contingent. He drew a pistol and aimed it at the second Mongol’s head. Uneasy looks betrayed faltering resolve.

Navárez and Esteban sensed the opportunity to bound between the mismatched sides in the stand-off, and a great relief swelled Gonji’s insides.

Reprieve. Again. But the perverse traces of bushido training chafed inside, only half appeased.

Gonji replaced his sword and bowed to his unforeseen benefactor, smiling slightly but gratefully. One was properly curt and respectful, never fawning. The tall man wiped his brow with the slate-gray slouch, pursed his lips and nodded in quiet satisfaction.

Navárez was pushing men back, calming them, the sycophant Esteban dogging his steps. The captain advised with snarling arrogance that if any blood was to be spilled in this camp, he would do the spilling. Gonji cast him a scornful glance, then sauntered back to the serving line to refill a plate.

“How ‘bout some o’ this stew fer that bugger—that’ll bring ‘im around!” Jocko was calling to the two men who were helping the injured Mongol to his feet. They paid him no heed, and the mule packer’s raucous laughter rose to the skies. He leapt about and clapped his hands like a drunken gnome, kicking at the casks in his mirth.

Gonji found a quiet spot under the pines fringing the camp and sat down to his meal. Night had fallen, layer upon layer, during the course of the incident, and he found the thickening gloom of the camp’s perimeter somehow more comforting than the bonfire near which most of the men drew. He was glad for Jocko’s churlish good humor, which cut through the sinister muting of the campfire banter.

He knew he was being discussed.

The tall man who had sided with Gonji sat alone under the trees at the far end of the glade, his back to the camp as he sipped his ale. Gonji hadn’t noticed the warrior before, but he wasn’t surprised: Loners who drifted into mercenary camps generally made themselves scarce. One simply steered clear of them out of respect for whatever private misery they suffered. And although Gonji ached for pleasant conversation, he left him to his solitude.

Gonji turned away from his view of the unfortunate belly-wound victim, who had begun to moan pathetically. He thought melancholy thoughts, his spirit at low ebb.

Another compromise. Again I let a man walk away from me after insulting me to my face. Hai, but he’s not walking very well, as far as I can see! He’ll think of me whenever he feels his belly in the next few days, that’s sure. I should have lopped off the fool’s head. Him and all his gibbering ape friends. I wish they’d start something right now—Come on, you bastards, I’ll drop you like.... No, fool, you’ll do nothing. Just like before, just like in Spain and France. You’ll let them squat on your honor and you’ll strut away with a great show of manliness because it isn’t worth dying for, isn’t that what they say here? Honor means nothing, does it? Bushido is a joke to you, neh, samurai? Neh? Samurai—Hah! You’re nothing. Nothing but a dung-eating ronin, a landless insect, a dishonored beast who can’t even stay duty-bound to himself, so he plays at duty for every scum who tosses him a filthy bag of gold! My spirit is crushed by karma. What will become of me? I’m just like the rest of the dregs on this squalid continent, a filthy barbarian—why why why? I preach bushido and pretend to live by it but it’s a lie, all a lie. I’m nothing but a half-breed ronin in whom the ugly half holds full sway—Mother, did you birth me for this? Why? I hate my heritage here and yet.... Yet it’s all I have left, isn’t it? Funny. I kill a man I felt honor-bound to kill (her sword arcs) and it was right and fitting at the time and—gods!—it destroyed my life (I’m bleeding) in the land I love (she raises it again) and then I come to this land of pestilence and monsters and hunger and (she is samurai) death where they perversely believe the life of every louse-ridden beggar has value (she weeps) and I let a man spit in my food and walk away (she guards his body) because there will be consequences to pay for killing him—what honor is there in this land? What is my lot here? I spurn the things that should have meaning to me and seek meaning in the meaningless (she hates me now, hates me). Oh, you’re a fine samurai, you are, Gonji-san! Old Todo, if you’re dead, I pray your restless spirit wanders elsewhere! Or if you’ve become a viper in rebirth, as your enemies swore you would, then tonight I’ll be swelling up with venom! I’m just like them, like all of them. The good are dead, and I live on so I must be one of the bad, neh? Wonderful, splendid—the majestic poet-warrior from the shimmering paradise has come to save you from yourself, O Europe! When they’ve seen enough of my sword they’ll no doubt make me field commander of this grand army. I’m probably lucky for these bastard Mongols; at least the others have seen orientals in this camp. Oh yes, it’s made things very easy for me here, hasn’t it? More enemies and more dung-filled duty and—aahhhh! Who cares anymore? Karma, neh? Karma and karma and karma, all is karma. I live for myself and if I try hard enough I’ll learn to accept it. There. Finish. Cholera-pox on all of it! Navárez, you bastard, I offer you my worthless duty; O King Klann, my liege, I tip my now empty goblet—which will soon be refilled, not to fear!—I tip it to your idiotic plans; and to you, O Mord, Sorcerer Most Sublime, I pledge my blistered backside. May yours ache you as mine does me.

Gonji spat noisily. He pushed himself up and stretched easily from side to side. Ambling over to the wine casks, he was glad for the velvet blackness and bonfire glare that hid the sullen eyes watching as he refilled his cup. Seeing the pregnant moon’s glowing ring in the sky, he judged that it probably meant rain; he hoped so for no particular reason.

Making his way over to his saddle, he noticed that the tall man now reclined near Gonji’s bundled belongings. He brightened a bit. Certainly he at least owed the man a word of gratitude; failing his bold entry into the confrontation, Gonji might be a tad heavier now from the weight of the pistol balls in his carcass.

He nodded a greeting, and the lanky highwayman tipped his hat in response. Gonji made himself comfortable and sipped his dark wine awhile, gazing at the angry stars that glowered at a gently swaying pine ballet.

Gonji grew wistful. He thought of sake and cherry blossoms, of his noble parents and his favorite horse in the Province, of friends whose faces were forgotten, of Reiko....

“Have you been with this bunch long?” Gonji asked suddenly without thinking or facing the tall man. He had hoped the other would speak first and felt vaguely as if he had lost a game in breaking the silence. He didn’t realize for a long moment that he had spoken in Japanese.

He tried again in Spanish. No reply.

He was a trifle piqued as he looked over to the gaunt warrior. The man pushed up the brim of his slouch with one finger, and something—sadness, Gonji thought—softened his eyes. He had been tugging absently at a small wooden crucifix that depended from a leather thong around his neck. He placed it inside his shirt.

“No Español.”

Gonji considered something but then snorted and shook his head when he remembered his bad manners.

“Gonji Sabatake,” he said with a thumb jerk.

“Hawkes,” the man replied. “Hawkes.” Gonji grinned. An Englishman. Of course. He looked and dressed like one. Gonji tried out his execrable French. Hawkes shook his head. He tried Latin, High German. No luck. Frustrated, Gonji motioned for Hawkes to take a stab at communication.

“English,” he said.

Uh-oh.

Gonji grew languid, sank resignedly into his bedroll. Most of the few English words he knew were not addressed to a friend. Hawkes made another half-hearted try at a strange language—he supposed it was Dutch, from the sound. Gonji sighed and shook his head. Hawkes nestled back and pulled his hat brim low.

A nighthawk shrilled, and somewhere a wolf howled long and plaintively. Gonji tossed off the rest of the wine and felt his eyeballs begin to swim from the spreading warmth.

It took him a long time to summon the courage and sincerity, but finally Gonji found what he was sure were the right English words and took a deep breath.

“Thank...you,” he said haltingly, lifting himself up on an elbow. But Hawkes was already asleep. And Gonji’s words echoed in his ears mockingly, mingling with the Englishman’s snoring.

It took a long time for Gonji to drift off into fitful slumber.