Читать книгу Gonji: Deathwind of Vedun - T. C. Rypel - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

“Traitor....”

The word hissed out of Simon like the escape of some vile thing, and Gonji was relieved that the dark mood it provoked in his outre companion was not directed at him.

The samurai was overwhelmed by the strangeness of his surroundings. He had awakened at mid-morning in the concealed cave after a fitful sleep that left him aching and un-rested. Simon had long since roused himself and prepared a meal of broth and rabbit meat—cooked over a fire beneath a natural chimney in the rock that acted as a flue—plus a coarse dried bread and a rather bland Hungarian wine with which they washed it all down.

They spoke as they ate, Gonji filling in Simon on the details of the Vedun situation. The cave-dweller revealed by stages a compelling curiosity about gaps he hadn’t been able to fill via his own clandestine investigations and actions. This apparent reversal of his declared disinterest he covered with alternating shifts between petulance and stoic blankness that Gonji read easily and found amusing despite the sense of danger in the man’s presence.

Simon was clearly at a disadvantage in social circumstances, his unease obvious. As a social outcast in his own right, Gonji entered into an easy empathy with him. Yet he carried it only to a point; Simon’s bizarre existence and the tale of his enchanted birthing and curse engendered in Gonji a shameful feeling of superiority on a human plane. Yet he intuited that the feeling was mutual: Simon seemed to take a perverse delight in Gonji’s infidel status among European peoples.

It was just possible, the thought occurred to Gonji, that he alone among all men might penetrate the barrier of Simon’s shame and enlist his powerful assistance.

Gonji sat sipping wine, cross-legged, listening to the ringing echo of that single word “traitor” the other had just spoken, gratified that Simon, too, held treachery insufferable.

The samurai glanced about him at the effects of a hermetic existence: the sagging cot and crude table and stool; the oil-stained lamps on the walls; the bundled clothing; two stacks of books and scrolls of Scripture, poetry, philosophy, art, and science—a survey of the collected accumulation of current knowledge; in a wall niche, the tiny figures carven of wood, which drew his eye repeatedly; and the broken chains, the heavy manacles he had failed to notice on his first visit to the cave with Tralayn, covered with clothing in a clumsy effort at disguising the embarrassment of an accursed life.

Gonji watched Simon as the latter moved about with animal grace despite his six-and-a-half-foot stature. Watched the rippling of the sinew under his skin at every slight movement. The bristling of his coarse two-toned hair. The flash of his swept-back silvery eyes, eyes that reminded one of tales of the little people who dwelt in forest fastnesses no man could delve. The menacing dagger-point his hair formed above and between those eyes. The occasional twitch of a gently pointed, lobeless ear in response to sounds Gonji couldn’t hear. The hands, long and wiry, the nails blackened at their centers. Now and again when they were opened, Gonji could discern the white cross that blazoned, scar-like, in the palm of the left. His upper body was covered with burns inflicted by the foul blood of the wyvern, scars of assorted shapes and sizes, and Gonji winced to scan the two most recent: one on the upper left arm, the other—dealt him by Gonji—slashing the right shoulder. Both were sewn raggedly shut with ugly catgut sutures.

Gonji felt a pang of sympathy when struck by the forlorn image of a warrior extracting missiles from his own body, excruciatingly closing his own wounds.

Simon Sardonis spoke, cleaving the spell of Gonji’s thoughts.

“So Rorka and his knights are dead,” he said. “What will you do now that this traitor has undermined your planning?”

“As I said,” Gonji replied calmly, “we believe Mord works behind Klann’s back. Probably against him as well as the city. He seems moon-maddened with a lust for power and a hatred for Vedun. If he resists reporting what he’s learned to Klann, then we may yet attack them with a measure of surprise.”

Simon snorted, tearing off a chunk of bread and dipping it into his broth. “Utter folly,” he scoffed, “to plan an attack against a force of superior power that may well know all your plans—”

“We would seem to have little choice,” Gonji countered. “Mord is determined to destroy the city. Tralayn has assured us of that all along.”

“You ought to be wary of what she tells you,” Simon observed with a trace of bitterness.

Gonji ignored it. “Anyway, whatever his ultimate intent, Klann has allowed enough outrages that our casus belli are sundry and sound. The city must fight back.” Gonji pounded a fist on his knee for emphasis but at once changed his tack when he realized that he was allowing emotion to interfere with clear-headed thinking again. “Of course,” he continued sedately, “there are also sound reasons for favoring an avoidance of fighting. Garth will try to speak with Klann about Mord’s treachery, if he can gain an audience.”

“Difficult words to frame,” Simon reminded, “without telling the king of your own planning against him.”

Gonji nodded. “Quite true,” he said glumly.

“Garth...,” Simon began pensively. “Who would have thought he’d have ridden with this mongrel army?”

“Hai,” Gonji agreed, “and I think there’s more he can tell us. If I can, I’ll learn from him what else he hides.”

Simon grunted. “Tell me what happened the night you rode out with the thirty—the madness in the city—the martial law that night.”

“Ah,” Gonji said, smiling. And he proceeded to relate the Zarnesti raid; and the tale of Klann’s seven lives, the legend told by Garth’s ancient parchment; and of the king’s murder and apparent resurrection as a new personage on that night. Simon absorbed the tale eagerly, with a more consuming interest than he had shown in anything Gonji had had to say before. At the story’s conclusion the mysterious warrior’s brow furrowed, a faraway glimmer drawing his eyes beyond the simple reality of the cave.

“So...that is why I couldn’t—An enchanted king, a being who cannot die, whose sibling kin reside within him....” Simon chuckled harshly, less a laugh than a gurgle of ironic triumph. “Oui,” he continued in French, “that is why—if this is true, then he’ll be a different man now from the one I saw—”

“So sorry,” Gonji cut in, frowning, “but you’re losing me. Speak German, dozo—did you say you saw Klann? When?”

Simon smiled, the first time Gonji had seen him do so, the angles of his face taking on a feral set.

“I’ve been inside the castle.”

“Ah, so desu ka?” Gonji intoned in surprise. “You’ve been in there and gotten out again? Why in hell didn’t you kill Klann or Mord, if you’re so foolish—”

“That was my objective,” Simon interrupted impatiently, “after I’d seen what they did at the monastery. Only I—I couldn’t go through with it. I found Klann’s chamber, killed his guards, and then I had him. I had him—there—as close to me as you are. But I couldn’t finish it. I didn’t know why then, but now it’s clear. The reason I felt that strange empathy with him...and the other feeling...that precognition that killing him would be futile, that my anger would be misdirected. By then Mord must have sensed my presence. He began calling out to the—the thing—the beast in me. And it to him. And then the whole castle was awake, and even by moving in shadow I couldn’t escape all of them. So I was forced to flee, leaving my good wishes with the bailey guards. I took this, though—”

He absently stroked the savage wound stitched together on his arm like the map of a jagged red mountain range. Gonji stared at him, spellbound at the man’s valor and capabilities. And Simon went on in a maundering fashion, his voice lapping the stillness like wind-swept waves.

“So that’s the reason for the purpure circles on the Klann crest...one for each dead brother. And the reason I felt the empathy. Misdirected anger...Mord...so it’s Mord, then....” His eyes abruptly became sharp silver lances, meeting Gonji’s squarely. “There is a thing of evil here...like few I’ve felt anywhere. There be signs of ill omen. That’s the reason I’ve stayed in the territory. Holy Word Monastery....”

He gently touched the burns he’d taken in the fight with the wyvern. The ointment he’d spread on them gleamed dully in the firelight. Gonji could smell its pungent tang. The samurai’s abdomen ached in reminder of the other’s tackling blow that had saved him from the searing strafe of the wyvern. Neither man spoke for a moment. Then Simon rose and took the jar of ointment from a carven niche in the rock.

“When were you at the monastery?” Simon asked suddenly. “And what exactly did Father Dobret tell you?”

Gonji was stung. He sat in the lotus position with arms folded at his chest. Sweat coursed in chilly traces down his ribs, but he met Simon’s gaze levelly.

“After the wyvern had done its...abomination. I spoke with your priest friend. He told me to tell you to help, not to seek personal vengeance.”

Simon swallowed hard, nodded with resignation, kept applying the clear ointment. “Even I dare not ignore the signs of the evil epoch that is upon us. Perhaps even Grimmolech is about—my nemesis.” His voice ground at the name as if a millwheel churned at it in his throat. “I’ve felt no such power of evil since—Could it be that Mord knows where I might find the Monster?” His eyes became argent wings that lofted him back through the past moon. “Do you recall the silence—that awful, total moment of lifeless silence that seized the world on that first night of the city’s occupation?”

Gonji remembered the palpable fear of the experience, the fleeting vision of the terrified, ghostly faces of the refugees in Garth Gundersen’s home that night. He nodded reverently.

“I knew then,” Simon went, “that a thing of evil had descended.... I’ll give you this: I’ll stay and help you kill Mord, once I’ve had the chance to wring some answers from him. That much I’ll do against this onslaught of evil.”

Gonji’s face, his entire posture where he sat, took on an adamantine cast. “Not enough,” he judged, shaking his head gravely. “You must be willing to help should we make war on Klann’s minions. You must help these suffering people.”

“Your words are laced with stupid bravado. It’ll never work. It’s sheer suicide to take these ill-trained citizens against a veteran army.”

“Who are you to judge? What do you know of our training?”

“I’ve watched. I was even with you during the entire cavalry exercise in the rain that night—”

“Then you’re a poor judge of military matters. They were quite sharp that night, despite all their discomforts. And that was but a fraction of the active militia. Did you also miss the display of group-mindedness in their presentation of—”

Simon grunted. “Engagement with phantom enemies is rather different from the real thing.” He rose and returned the ointment to its niche.

“Then you should have seen the attack on Zarnesti, when they freed the village from a whole company of mercenaries. They took it without a single casualty. I was quite proud of them that night.” Gonji’s eyes narrowed and he added softly: “Most of them.”

Sardonis refilled his wine cup and sat on the cot, resting his chin on a fist. “So what will you do next?”

Gonji smiled thinly. “I have a plan involving—” The smile faded. “Why should I tell you, if you refuse to help?”

Simon raised his head indignantly. “I said I’ll stay to help eliminate Mord.”

“Will you aid the militia, if it comes to war? Many must die, I fear—” The other was shaking his head, and Gonji’s voice became earnest, intense, full of painful frustration. “Feel you no sympathy for the little ones, Monsieur Christian? The children whose lives may be destroyed in this madness?”

Simon cast the hard-packed earth a flickering glance, inhaled deeply. “Oui...I do—for the little ones. But not for what they become when they grow older—hateful, craven worshipers of the unblemished, of the normal. Stoning and burning every unfortunate soul, turning their backs on every plea for mercy from out of the darkness....”

Gonji bowed his head in sympathetic understanding. But his eyes shone with expectation.

“There’s one other thing,” Simon advised. “Whatever is done must be done after the full moon, two nights hence.”

The samurai stared at him a moment, selecting his words carefully. “What will you do...on that night?” He indicated the broken chains behind the overhanging cloak.

Simon averted his eyes. “I’ll have to be far away...or perhaps at the castle.”

“Iye,” Gonji disagreed at once, “we must act in concert or not at all.”

“It was only a thought. Only an idle, boorish thought. In any case, I would likely die there, and I have no wish to die before I’ve achieved my purpose.” He paused. “And I’ll not allow the Beast to vent its bloodlust, whatever the stakes.”

Gonji considered the dread portent of the man’s words. “How many do you think you’ve killed—in Klann’s command, I mean?”

Stung by the naked morbidity of the question, Simon became uncomfortable. His lips trembled as he spoke. “His...roster is probably dotted by deserters by now. A dozen? A score?” He shrugged impatiently. “I haven’t kept count. What sane man keeps a tally of those who’ve died by his hand? I quit trying to take on more than two at once a few days ago, though. I’m not the greatest swordsman, and some of these rogues can fight.” He patted the raw scowl that was the arm wound. Then he glared at Gonji. “Why do you report to that captain?”

Gonji jolted to attention. “You mean Kel’Tekeli?”

Simon nodded in grave assent, and Gonji explained the double-dealing game he played as a counter-agent.

“I suspected as much,” the man of legend told him when he had finished. “You’re damned fortunate, though. Once I thought to kill you when I saw you with him—the night I dealt with that child-murdering commander.”

Gonji held his gaze. “You might have found that difficult.”

Simon laughed harshly. “I admire your fearlessness in badgering me. I’ve seen little of that. Unless, perhaps, from the boy...Mark. Strange, what one finds comfort in. I’ve already spoken more to you in the past hour than I have in the past several moons. It helps to drown the vicious Thing’s whispering....” He reddened, his voice trailing off, the shame of its mention swelling in him again.

“Even a leper should not be so ashamed of his lot as you are of yours.”

“Not the same,” Simon replied grimly. “It may be that—only Klann would truly understand.”

Gonji was anxious to dispel his ill humor. He rose noisily and stretched. “I’ve been here before, you know,” he said cheerfully.

“I know your scent.”

Gonji blinked. Then the creeping apprehension assailed him again, the concern that Simon might know of his involvement in the monastery outrage via some similar inhuman power. Iye—no, his reason told him. I’d have known by now, given his temperament. So it must remain a secret for the nonce, at least.

“You ask nothing of my quest,” the samurai said, “though I’ve said it involves you. Are you the Deathwind I’ve sought all these years?”

“Nein,” Simon retorted sharply, “stop calling me that. It means nothing to me, nor does your quest.” But Gonji realized that his disappointment must have shown, for Simon appended: “I wish only to be a man, not a legend.”

For a time they spoke nothing of consequence, finishing the remains of the food and keeping to their private thoughts. Gonji felt his strength returning, grateful, for he knew he might need every iota in the ominous days to come. Outside it began to rain, the droplets rustling through the vine creepers at the cave entrance like a rodent horde. Yet there was comfort in the sound, solace in its very normality, its cleansing of the earth’s wounds. Gonji had begun composing a waka to the rain as he relaxed, when the vague unease he had been feeling blossomed into an agonizing remembrance.

“Cholera,” he breathed, reaching down and sliding the Sagami from its scabbard.

From the stool where he sat skimming through a scroll, Simon looked up with wary curiosity.

Gonji dropped to his knees in the dirt, the gracefully curved katana held before him like an injured child.

“You’ve scarred my soul with your wild man’s anger.”

The magnificent blade, a masterpiece of Japanese swordmaking skill, bore a fierce nick halfway along its forte.

“It’s a sword,” Simon reminded.

“It’s my soul!” Gonji shouted, but at once he regained composure, sighing heavily. “It’s a rare European swordsmith indeed who might heal this.” He shook his head morosely.

“You’re a knight in Japan?” Simon asked with mild interest.

“A samurai,” Gonji answered, and for a time they spoke of the Land of the Gods, and of Gonji’s quest, and his longing for the ethereal shades of home. At length Gonji’s attention was again drawn to the tiny figures carven of wood that reposed in a gouged wall niche.

“May I examine them?” Gonji asked. “They remind me of the haniwa of my homeland. Clay statuettes in the tombs of ancient warriors.”

Simon seemed about to object, but he looked away in apparent acquiescence.

The samurai took down each in turn. They were delicate figures of a fragile beauty and charm that were all the more disarming in view of who it was that created them. There were figures of Rorka knights; one of the dead boy, Mark; others of Flavio and of Tralayn; and most surprising of all, there was a marvelous likeness in soft pine of Gonji himself, replete with sashed swords.

He looked to Simon in wonder, but the man was again regarding the scroll with evident discomfiture.

“I am honored,” Gonji declared, great sincerity in his tone.

Simon shrugged. “One does what one must to remain sane in the long lonely hours.”

“May I buy this one?”

The man fixed him with a hard gaze fraught with the self-consciousness of one who fears he’s being ridiculed. “Take it,” he said with a dismissive wave.

Gonji bowed and placed the figurine into an inner kimono pocket. He sat on the cot across from his companion and leaned forward. “What does it feel like, having such a thing living inside one?”

The effort at control showed on Simon’s face as he answered reticently. “Constant...exercise of the will. A conscious suppression, concentration...to keep it in its foul secret place in my soul.”

A tingle of foreboding stirred inside, yet Gonji pressed on in unquenchable curiosity. “Does it have a name?”

Simon replied nothing, but he smiled stiffly and with a tense smugness that seemed so filled with emotion that Gonji dared ask no more of it.

“Your pain is evident,” he said, “and I honor your noble effort at stoicism. But why do you so resist fellowship? Good friends can so often serve as a rampart against anguish.”

“Ramparts shatter under assault, and friends die too easily.”

“Ah, so desu—the inescapable fact of death hounds you. So sorry, but it is an immature attitude to allow the certainty of death to affect the way one lives his life. That is an incongruous fear among many Christians that has always puzzled me. Still, I myself have often lamented at how soon friends have betrayed my trust by dying on me—” He chuckled humorlessly. “But that’s never stopped me from seeking after kindred spirits to share my strange karma.”

Simon sighed and leaned back on the stool, then tossed the scroll on the oaken table. “The parasite feels as I feel, knows what I know. Why should I grant it the comfort of a friend?”

Gonji thought for a space and then shook his head, for deep in his heart he could not bring himself to understand. He stood and took up his daisho, sashing the swords so that their hilts bristled from his waist.

He moved toward the cave exit but paused and turned to Simon. “Is it with you now?”

“Of course.”

“What does it say?”

A bleak shadow crossed the man’s visage, moving, threatening. “That I should tear out your heathen heart.” A flash of white teeth. A slow-spreading grin.

Gonji’s brow creased. The spell of the man’s presence was dashed. “You punish yourself to punish the Beast, Herr Grejkill. It’s probably just as well, then, that you choose to live as a hermit. If friends are such a burden, imagine your difficulty if you had chosen to take a wife.”

By Simon’s sudden tensing, the glow that colored his cheeks, Gonji knew the words had borne even more of a malicious sting than he had intended. Discretion.... He eased out into the rain to clear the air and permit Simon private space.

The tranquility of the rain-dappled forest sank into Gonji as he sulked under a dripping eave of granite. Suspicious jays arked in their tree lofts, and starlings gathered to drink from a misty pool, fluttering away when the spray suddenly grew to a hard drizzle. Gonji moved out from under the eave and turned his face up to the rain.

To be alone among companions is the most dreadful sort of loneliness. Hai, that is very so....

He sensed Simon’s presence behind him.

“Don’t ever expect to understand my suffering,” came the words in a tone that pleaded for the very understanding they denied. Gonji turned slowly. The pearl-gray luster in Simon’s eyes surprised him, an uncommon sentimentality softening their predatory sheen.

“I’ve learned to confide in no one,” Simon went on. “All who have known the truth of my condition in the past would see me dead....” He waxed wistful. “Sometimes I’ve gone to the city out of hopeless desperation, by night. Sat beneath a window and listened to a mother sing soothingly to a child frightened of the dark. I imagine I am that child. And then I—I—I say too much.” He broke off in a strangled voice, turning away.

Gonji swallowed. “I’m afraid I spoke too soon before, gomen nasai—I am sorry. You see...I, too, have been called a monster in these territories. So I do understand, at least in part.”

Simon spoke without looking at him. “How can an infidel come to love a Christian people?”

Gonji sputtered. “It doesn’t matter how. The fact is that I do care for many here, and I wish to help them. There are other things, as well...debts to repay...failed duties to atone for. And a final duty still to be done.”

He looked to his sash, grasped the hilt of his wakizashi, the short sword used in seppuku, the ritual suicide. Then he broached the forbidden subject again:

“Simon...why not the Beast, Simon? Why can’t the Beast be used after the full moon in the defense of the city? Is it true that you then control its—”

“Nein! I’ve told you, insolent fool! None may see what it does to me. I’ll not suffer that pain for any man—”

“Damn you!” Gonji fumed. “Don’t you think all other men know pain? Don’t you think Vedun has known suffering? With more to suffer?”

Simon glared at him. “You’ve heard women describe the anguish of childbirth? Imagine, then, the pain of childbirth racking one’s entire body, yet without the joy of bringing forth life. My pain gives birthing to death.”

Gonji sighed with annoyance. “Where in hell will you go to be so far from warm-blooded creatures, in the full of the moon?”

Simon pointed to the encircling Carpathians. “Up there. There are places I know, far above the snow line, which should seal me off from the world of men. And the animals will know their peril and abandon their shelters for safer ones on that night. Then I can bear my cross alone...in silence.”

Gonji stared at him, his brain itching, and he thought: All that this man’s God allowed to befall him was no worse than what he had done to himself.

Simon strode back inside the cave, and Gonji followed.

“When we’re back in the city we could have Garth fashion shackles for you in some well-fortified—”

“Out—of—the—question!” Simon roared, his back to him.

The samurai blinked at the finality of the outburst. His expression sagged with defeat. Shuffling over to his now unstrung bow, he stuffed the string into an inner kimono pocket, where it would remain dry.

“We’d best strike out for Vedun. There is no more time to lose,” Gonji decided. “At a good pace we can make it by nightfall, if our legs don’t give out first.”

“You go ahead,” Simon said bleakly. “I’ll join you in three days when my...time has passed.”

“So sorry,” Gonji countered firmly, “but if you are to help, then your presence is required at once.” He saw Simon about to object and raised his voice in intensity and pitch. “There is no time to lose in planning immediate actions. How will you know our circumstances or tactical decisions if you’re not with us to help form them? Three days from now, we could all be dead.”

Gonji stretched out with his will, defiant of their tenuous relationship, of the man’s tight tether. It would be his way or no way.

Simon ran a white-knuckled hand through his coarse hair, matting it down. After a moment’s indecision he retrieved his sword, which he strapped about his waist, and a threadbare traveling cloak. On second thought he went to a chest in a back corner of the cave and plucked out a short, hooded mantelet. This he tossed at Gonji. The samurai bowed gratefully and smiled, a smile that Simon didn’t return. They donned the cloaks and stepped through the brief entrance tunnel and out into the soft rain, Gonji carrying his unstrung longbow and quiver.

“Mayhap we will cross the path of some brigands with horses,” Gonji said as they began to trudge across the green, misted glade. “Horses that they would be only too willing to lend us.”

“It would do me no good,” Simon responded wanly. “No animal will bear me.”

“Well, there are steeds trained for battle and the hunt that have learned to keep their instincts in check, neh?” Gonji said in an effort at optimism. “We’ll find you a fine destrier that—”

“Forget it, monsieur. My own legs have borne me thus far.”

“But with that limp—”

“The limp is abating,” Simon assured mordantly. “And it will pass, as all my wounds do.” He bent and picked up a long straight stick, which he proceeded to use for a walking staff.

Gonji blew an exasperated breath. “Well, surely you’ve ridden a horse before.”

Simon moved ahead rapidly, answering not a word but steering them east along the brook until they came to the place where they had slain the wyvern. Gonji was struck wide-eyed, gasping to see its state. Already it had taken on the aspect of a thing long dead, overgrown with moss and slime, its entire bulk slumping, collapsing, sinking back into the earth that could not contain it when it lived its ghastly life. Leathery flesh petrified and shriveled like bark, antlers spindling the air above its crushed jackal’s head, it resembled nothing so much as a downed tree of a curious species. Days from now, passing travelers might regard it as a momentary diversion, a freakish arboreal hybrid, shrugging off its origin in casual bewilderment while giving short shrift to local tales of the flying dragon that had ravaged the countryside.

Gonji stared for a long while, scowling, leaning on his longbow, at last shaking his head in disappointment, the specter of illusion laughing at his mind’s sudden discomfort with its definition of reality.

When he turned Simon was already far along the brook, wending northward at a vigorous pace.

The hours passed in aching silence and weariness of foot.