Читать книгу Gonji: Fortress of Lost Worlds - T.C. Rypel - Страница 8

CHAPTER ONE

Panic…

Panic is what tumbles under stress from the clutter of an undisciplined mind.

Iye—no. That’s not quite right. Work at it. Keep thinking. Keep staving off…panic.

The vicious wind lashed the northern slopes of the Pyrenees, implacably buffeting the white-bundled horse and rider as they pressed onward. Negotiating the precipitous switchbacks at night in a blinding snowstorm was sheer madness.

The madness of the hunted and the hungry.

Sabatake Gonji-no-Sadowara had long since become accustomed to such madness.

He let his philosophic musings drift off with the echoed howl of the wind. For a space, he thought of nothing. Then he considered the grim possibilities of frostbite, which produced a cheerless frame of mind that evoked bitter memory. He saw visions of Vedun, a place he had learned to love and had helped destroy; and of the bizarre Simon Sardonis, the lycanthrope, perverse answer to Gonji’s ten-year quest after half-understood prophecy; of unfinished business and compromised principles; self-imposed duty and failed charge; of wondrous knowledge that brought no gain; of his own changing priorities and eclectic beliefs. There came the fleeting warmth of familiar faces—good companions and staunch sword-brothers—abruptly twisted by lines of pain and set in the blankness of death.

Who are they?

His thoughts plunged and shifted with the broken rhythm of Tora’s plowing hooves. It had been hours, he fancied, since he’d last looked back over his shoulder, back down the mountainside to see what followed. When last he had looked he’d been plodding through the forested lower slopes, unable to do anything but press on. Upward, ever upward toward the peaks that would dominate the Spanish countryside, that would lift him out of the bitter winter of loathsome France. There was, in the present circumstance, nowhere else to go: The Pyrenees yawned forever to the west; to the east beckoned an icy Mediterranean grave. And behind, the pursuers relentlessly tracked him.

Who in hell are they?

They had come in the night, a long-ago night following the Moon of Consummate Horror—when a town had been systematically destroyed, purged of its unspeakable foulness. They had approached almost casually, dark and silent, as if conveyed by the enshrouding hell-mist that preceded them. Their number seemed small; perhaps no more than a dozen. Their armament was unknown but for the deadly bowshot—from arbalest and longbow alike—that struck down half of Gonji’s party in the first volley with the random callousness of the plague. Half the remainder fell in the next, and broken, weary, and wounded as they were, the unsavory prospect of flight seemed their only alternative.

Gnawed to the point of shame by the feckless trail they had left in their wake, they would now and again wheel and charge their distant pursuers. Another adventurer would fall screaming, and still another, torn from the saddle by the impact of a bolt. In impotent rage they would count their losses, come to terms with the inevitable, and grimly resume their flight.

By the time they were three, they discerned the pattern in the pursuit. The hunters made their best progress by night. Indeed, by day they were seldom seen, giving ground as dawn approached and ceasing the chase altogether under the sun’s wintry glare. On the fateful day when they lost Cartier, they drove their mounts to near-frothing over the frosted land, creating false spoor, doubling back, strewing misleading artifacts, setting animal traps that suggested their present return.

Sleeping with confidence that night, they were roused about the Hour of the Hare by the whickering fusillade of shafts and Cartier’s mortal shrieks. Gonji and Emeric had bolted the encampment under fire, the latter’s horse shot in full gallop, forcing Gonji to double-up aboard Tora with his dazed friend.

They sought sanctuary in a village. Two nights later they were turned out by the aroused villagers, who were being murdered in their own streets and stoops. Gonji and Emeric had become a pariah, accursed and shunned of men. They had further accepted the premise that their pursuers were supernaturally empowered, but in all Gonji’s encounters with sorcery and magic, he had learned nothing that could help him deal with these hellhounds.

Ever did the ghostly army follow: silent, evil cloud shadow, rolling with inhuman implacability over the ivory night horizon.

By this time they had adjusted their metabolisms to nocturnal habits, and the perspicacious Emeric, ever as optimistic as he was adroit with the saber, had begun to find reason for hope even in their present situation. He noted how the creeping rot of evil spreading through Europe in these days had been forestalled at several major engagements involving Gonji. Had not the Evil One himself become so vexed by his concern with this singular samurai warrior that he had set this Dark Company to confounding Gonji’s way? Either that or, according to Emeric’s meaningless but perversely pleasing cross-cultural concept, Gonji had become “karma’s whipping boy.”

Emeric further noted how the Dark Company closed faster when the pair despaired most. The notion was sobering: Gonji had long ago noted the strength inherent in faith and conviction; the power of righteousness itself when arrayed against supernatural evil. But how long could one nurture a withering faith in goodness when nothing was gained save stasis itself?

The revelation was noble Emeric’s own death knell.

Not long after, the blizzard had descended. Pressed by the eerie hunters into the corner formed by the barren Mediterranean shore and the oppressive mountain range, they knew their alternatives were two: ascend the torturous snowbound passes or turn and face certain doom.

Part of Gonji yearned for a savage end to his wanderings, but a nameless instinct told him to move on. There was more to know. There were matters to settle. He was yet needed in Europe.

But Emeric could go no farther. Weakened by fever, starved by many days without food, Emeric had surrendered his spirit. Gonji could still feel Emeric’s dying clutch about his ankle after that impossible bowshot—intended, he knew, for himself. He’d had to pry the man’s fingers from his boot, and in his enraged flight up the storm-battered mountainside, he’d prayed until voiceless that the kami of war would send him something to kill and the power to kill it.

And what of Simon Sardonis? Many times during the chase Gonji had imagined hearing the cry of the werewolf in the night wind, barely restraining a triumphant roar of vindicated hope.

But no. The Grejkill—the Beast with the Soul of a Man—had long departed him, painstakingly avoided his efforts at renewed partnership and examination of the prophecies that linked them. And Gonji had tired of the pointless game of rejection.

* * * *

Tora stumbled and nearly pitched him headlong into the snow. Gonji had no idea what kept the steed climbing anymore, how it picked its way. Reference points were obscured. Gonji could not tell how close to the brink of the trail they staggered; the fear of a fatal plunge had diminished with the numbness and waves of hunger pain. He fancied that he was beginning to see spirits. Twice he reached for the Sagami with useless fingers when the taunting wind whipped cascading snow into almost palpable airy sculptures. Creatures out of white nightmare danced at his side, and he realized he’d best do something to forestall the demons that stole one’s sanity.

He took stock of his weapons.

His swords were frozen to his sash. His halberd was mounted imposingly from lance-cup through saddle-cinch, though he couldn’t feel its shaft. The splendid longbow bestowed on him by the militia of Vedun loomed over his shoulder—unstrung and useless, the rolled string probably ruined by the moisture that had by now penetrated through layer upon layer of winter-wrap. The pistols he had come to appreciate after years of resistance to the dishonorable nature of such a weapon still bulged from a sturdy, well-oiled pouch, but his powder had likely gone the way of the bowstring.

Hai, Gonji-san, you’re in fine condition for a—

Suddenly it consumed the narrow mountain trail before them—an outcropping brow of granite, encrusted with snow and ice, blockading their way as surely as any double rank of Austrian Landsknecht Lancers.

“Tora! There before you!” he roared in a cracked voice, unsure whether the reins were conveying the message. “Halt, stupid beast!”

Tora snorted and whinnied, momentarily disoriented. The horse swerved to the right, and Gonji gaped to see the brink of the escarpment over the animal’s armored crest. His withered stomach lurched once. Then they were facing the way they had come. It was as surely dammed by the banked and drifting snow as the way ahead. How had they gotten this far?

Gonji waved at the obscuring white curtain, clinging to Tora with his knees against the wind’s buffet. He saw breathtaking whiteness, extending in mounds that stretched forever. Craggy mountain peaks—invisible only hours earlier—that speared the roiling night sky. A gleaming slickness in the eastern distance that might have been the sea.

And below—an unguessable measure below on an adjacent slope—

The Dark Company.

Gonji could not draw the Sagami. Stretching himself tall in the saddle and resting his left hand on the pommel of the storied katana, he bellowed his clan’s war cry into the uncaring storm:

“Sado-wa-raaaaaa!”

The rumbling began near the permanent snow line, somewhat beneath them now. It was echoed and repeated from all directions, it seemed to Gonji’s ringing ears. It was, he told himself, a majestic, glorious sight, worthy of the attention of any such as he who craved experience of the endless wonders of existence.

It was a fitting way to die.

Even had he been able, Gonji doubted that he’d have used his seppuku sword first, in ritual suicide. He would ride the avalanche to oblivion and rebirth. He had found the only way possible of ending the Dark Company’s ineluctable pursuit of his soul.

With glazed eyes he witnessed the magnificently orchestrated collapse of the lower slopes, reveled in the rolling vibration. When the first rush of snow pelted him from above, he steeled himself for the great plummet. Then, abruptly—as he’d heard told by mountain folk—the awesome event was over. All movement ceased below but for surface sifting on the reshaped landscape. Only the echo remained, and this, too, presently died.

I remain unchanged.

The world has turned to heaven a new face.

Mountains tell the tale.

Gonji mused over his feelings a long moment, resolving to turn the event into a proper waka poem one day. He scanned the slopes beneath the mountain trail, his senses quickening now, his manner more cautious. He could see no sign of the demonic hunters. Could nature have been so kind? Had Emeric missed witnessing the answer by a few scant nights?

Tora nickered and edged left, up the trail again, pawing at the fresh drifts in their way. Something drew the horse toward the granite shelf that had barricaded their path. The vibration had shaken free the snow cover: It was a hollow in the cliff face. A concavity.

Gonji’s breath hissed expectantly. He urged Tora forward, but the steed would not challenge the mounded snow before him. The samurai rolled down from the saddle with an ache-bidden groan. Once he had found balance, he began burrowing through the snow with almost childlike glee, dragging the reins behind him. When he reached the outcrop, he emitted an audible sound of relief.

It was shaped like a great eye socket in the mountainside. And it was more than a cavity. It was a cave. Tall enough to easily admit the pair even if Gonji were sitting the horse.

The samurai led his steed into the darkness, unconcerned with it, caring not at all how he might light a fire or feed them, savoring instead the respite from the storm, the solid feeling under his returning foot circulation. He stamped his wrapped boots, both to enhance sensation and to test the solidity of the new environment. The ground sloped downward into the cave, the drifted snow giving way to smooth stone a short distance inside. Judging by the echo, the cave must be of appreciable size. Soft and indefinable sounds welled up from deep inside the mountain, placing him on the alert, but Tora’s impatient nudges at his shoulder kept him moving.

He was about to halt then, to capitulate to weariness and drop to the ground to take careful stock of his parts, when he noticed the soft, enchanting glow in the indeterminate distance of the cave’s rear quarter.

An almost misty sunset evanescence played over the stones at ground level. Tora snorted wetly behind him. He drew on the reins again and, encountering no resistance, led the horse toward the eerie display. Almost at once Gonji felt the lap of welcome warmth at his face. His soul flooding with relief—though his cold-fettered left hand instinctively pressed at the Sagami’s hilt—he quickened his stumblings toward the phenomenon.

A shadow slithered before him where the darkness parted. Gonji’s breath hissed, and he nearly tumbled headlong in his tensed surprise.

But the shadow was his. The waxing light, emanating from the rocks themselves, now seeped from cracks and fissures in the walls and floor of the cave, serving up his own wavering shadow. He began to fear that he had fallen too easily into some terrible trap when he noticed the behavior of the rock glow: When he moved his hand toward certain of the glowing rocks—for not all the cave’s substance acted this way—their buried light intensified, irradiated from a dull red to hot ruby to autumn flame, lending warmth and light in corresponding measure.

Sorcerous fire—lava light—the foyer of Hell?

It was invigorating, of that he was sure; and for that he cared only, in his present state. Gonji’s hands and feet tingled with life-affirming needles of pain. And Tora proffered no animal-caution against proceeding.

They reached another doorway, the magical light suddenly flaring the way to a large antechamber that was the nexus of a series of tunnels and chambers that quite possibly honeycombed the mountain, judging by their size at the adits. Crossing through, Gonji again found cold stone responding to human need. Strange—the rocks behind him had ceased their glow—he could barely perceive the wind-lashed cave entrance; but the stones around him effulged their welcome as if stoked by an unseen frost giant’s forge and bellows.

It must be, the samurai reasoned at last, that this place functioned as a complete refuge, responding to the need of whatever creature sought shelter here.

Whatever creature sought shelter here.

Gonji’s skin prickled. He glanced about the cavern circumspectly, but there seemed nothing to fear. He had crossed the Pyrenees several times, knew its lore, yet he could recall nothing about this.

Still, something troubled him. There was a long-ago campfire warning. Whose? Concerning what?

He shrugged at last and moved deeper into the system of caverns. Which was to be preferred: succumbing helplessly to the pitiless wrath of winter or matching strike for strike with some unknown, faceless terror?

They crept deeper into the beckoning womb of the glowing cavern system.

Hearing the gurgle of water, Gonji discovered a small cavern wherein bubbled a cool mountain stream. Wending down from the snowmelt high above them, it poured through a fissure and meandered along an eroded course that carried it into other caves beyond. Flowing like molten gold in the basking rays of the heat stones, it emerged clear and cold in the samurai’s scooping sallet. Tasting it gingerly at first, Gonji found it delightful and, abandoning all caution, slaked his thirst. Tora awaited no invitation, doing likewise.

In this cave Gonji discovered shelves of rock, untouched by the light of the glowstones, in which sprouted mushrooms of a familiar, edible variety. These he wolfed down with audible appreciation, staying his eagerness after a while out of both discipline and common sense. For although his belly grumbled for more, it would be tender in its shriveled state; further, the warrior who glutted himself to bursting in the face of possible enemy action burdened himself with two enemies.

Higher up on the cave wall—a short reach from Tora’s stirrups—there grew a curious dwarf tree that, upon close inspection, was found to yield small berries that were tart but edible. These Tora took a liking to, though his interest soon switched to the leaves of the tiny tree itself.

The tantalizing thought occurred to Gonji: What else might I discover in this mount-of-plenty if I move still deeper? But he quickly remembered that his life followed no such serendipitous progression and dispersed the seductive vision of a cave in which table was set with trout, fresh bread, and French wine. Instead, he sat back and counted his blessings, then inventoried his fingers and toes.

The layered weather-wrapping he slowly removed had barely preserved his digits against permanent damage, but indeed no serious harm had been done. When the prickling burn of frostbite had ceased, he rose and tried to make Tora as comfortable as possible while soothing and examining the faithful steed. Satisfied, Gonji was again drawn to the amazing heat stones.

Gathering several of these into a pile, he scraped and chipped at them with his tanto knife. He learned that as he worked off outer layers of the rock—which crumbled readily under pressure—the stones grew both brighter and hotter. The core itself, he painfully discovered, would cook flesh or boil water in its blinding yellow or cobalt sear. He constructed a fine hearth and nodded with self-satisfaction.

No more running. Here I make my stand this night.

With deep reverence and measured movements, he sat cross-legged before the pulsing glow. Holding the magnificent Sagami horizontally before his vision, he drew its gleaming blade slowly from the scabbard. His eyes diminished to dark slits of flickering ebon as he studied the heavenly coruscations flashing from the wave pattern of the blade’s working.

If any night fiend or cave-haunt dare disturb my harmony…

Memories tortured his serenity. He ground his teeth when he thought of the gargantuan cave worm that had tried to eat its way through the militia of Vedun. Of the wyvern’s strafing flight, spewing missiles of filth; of the Black Forest dragon; the weeping vampire sisters; Wolverangue, the Hellspawn…

Gonji smiled thinly and replaced the splendid blade. He laid it along his left side—the place of easy draw—and set about heating water for a ritual cleansing that was long overdue. This he pursued with many a thought, many a reworking of unfinished poetry, given to marking the events of an itinerant life of mystery and wonder. He laved each major body scar as though it were a shrine, pausing long at the cicatrix along his shoulder blade to recall a paean to lost love.

Dressed again, he ate more of the mushrooms as he pored over an unfurled map.

Hai. He nodded as he formed his resolution, there lies the next station of unfinished business.

Without consciously acknowledging it, he had been drifting toward Spain—toward Aragon again—for a long time. Ever since, in fact, the lycanthrope had begun to take such pains to obliterate his spoor. In Aragon, Gonji would confront Duke Alonzo Cervera, explain at last, whatever the cost, the complete details of their wretched crossing three—was it four now?—years before. The full tale of Theresa’s horrible fate in Hungary during the Szekely clan war.

Theresa’s—and that of Gonji’s unborn child.

He nodded grimly to see the course he would have to follow if he were to be direct: To reach Zaragoza without delay, he must cross the Segre River. Must pass Barbaso and the dreaded Castle Malaguer. Must, perhaps, dare the hand of the Inquisition itself.

Karma.

* * * *

The panic of disorientation.

Gonji rolled away from the glowing mound and drew the Sagami with a sharp whine.

He was sweat-drenched. His eyes cast about wildly before fixing on Tora’s snorting muzzle. The chestnut stallion’s face looked slick, his eyes frenzied.

The warmth had lulled Gonji into slumber. He had no way of knowing how long, what time of day it might be in the world beyond the mountain sanctuary. But what had awakened him?

Ogros.

The samurai licked at cracked lips. Ogros—what? The legend—now he remembered, at least partially. An old woman, smiling old woman, telling her Gypsy lies to a captive campfire audience.

Beware Ogros. Ogros what?

Something. The Hunters of the Night. Children of the ancient mountain. Older than man, and still more ravening.

For endless minutes before he began gathering his belongings, Gonji listened to the chanting that rumbled up to his ears from somewhere—everywhere—in the cave system. Rhythmic, heavily accented, undeniably primitive.

He was the invader. The interloper. He had used their mountain uninvited. The hunters—the Hunters of Night—he had arrived at night—invaded their home while they hunted—who?

Ogros.

It mattered not in these things whether fact followed supposition. Sanity demanded that the lurking shapeless terrors be named and objectified.

They moved from the cave as warily and noiselessly as possible, Tora being little help there in his eagerness to find open air. The darkness seemed to part less readily before the quickening of the glowstones. Gonji fought back the gooseflesh that accompanied his sudden realization that the enchanted caves’ operation rendered him a conspicuous target.

The chanting rolled through the tunnels, vibrant and vigorous.

And Gonji realized with sagging heart that, even as they made their escape, he had no idea where escape lay: His poor sense of direction had done him in again. Cursing, he moved them in a different direction. They crossed the mountain stream twice before he thought he recognized a cavern they’d been in. Gritting his teeth, he dragged a recalcitrant Tora through the archway.

He stepped on something that gave under his foot, emitting brittle snapping sounds as it seized him by the boot.

The samurai gasped aloud and drew his katana, the keen blade flashing downward but striking empty air. Gonji kicked viciously twice before shattering the maddening thing against the wall. The illumination of the glowstones at last caught up with his slashing vision: a rib cage.

The chamber was filled with bones. A charnel cell filled with discarded skeletons of men, animals, and things that were part of both but altogether neither. There were paintings on the walls, their subjects unpleasant enough that Gonji turned from them quickly and, setting his jaw and concentrating on calming his fears, turned back again. Certain now that no escape lay in that direction.

The savage chanting echoed in the depths of the mountain as they searched for the exit. Gonji kept the Sagami fisted at his side as he peered into one chamber after another, awaiting the framing of each slowly dawning vision in the indifferent light of the magic stones. Blade clenched in two-handed middle guard, he anticipated in each murky glow the attack of some coil-sprung horror. Now and again Tora would stamp back so fretfully from a cavern entrance that the samurai would back away from that haunted cell, sword at the ready, until another would threaten with its imminent adit.

He at last happened on a chamber whose contoured arch seemed familiar. Furthermore, a wash of frigid air pulsed from the cave—by now a welcome sensation; the bite of the merciless winter wind was much preferred to this nefarious place. But when he stepped into the archway, there issued no nascent sparkle, no hint of magic from the ensorceled stones. Only a peculiar odor coming in wisps that the cold air sought to deaden.

Gonji selected a stone about a span in diameter that glowed magenta in his gloved hands. He beat one side of it against a wall until it blazed like the August sun, and he could no longer hold even its farther side. This he tossed into the freezing antechamber.

Even in the bounding, strobing light, the shock of what he saw set his hair to bristling. Carcasses hung in the deathly air of the cave. Animals and men. Streaked with the reflected colors of frost and blood. Suspended upside down to swing gently in the air currents. Some whole, some sectioned. Preserved or curing for obvious future use.

The samurai grimaced, his fingers working over the hilt of the Sagami. A naked man hung nearest him, arms reaching limply for the floor, face set in a rigid distortion by gravity and dishonorable death.

Gonji’s breath came in gasps of frustrated anger as he yanked Tora around and hurried back the way they had come. He moved too swiftly for the rock glow to keep pace, relying now on faulty memory of their steps, pausing scant seconds when he became too disoriented, the chanting welling up through the foreboding mountain tunnels.

He found the stream again and used its splash to set his course, eschewing caution for speed. He felt certain that he must turn off to the left at some point. But where?

After a tortured few moments of plunging through the threatening darkness, he paused and cast about helplessly, straddling the stream gully, allowing the stones to ignite, illuminating the tunnel and drying his wet boots. He regulated his breathing while he calmed Tora with a reassuring hand. Was it his imagination or was the chanting growing louder? Nearer. It was insistent in its pulsating rhythm. Now Gonji fancied that he could discern syllables: huk-huk—huk-huk—Throaty and militant. A chant suitable for the breaking of backs and skulls.

There issued from a cavern farther ahead a soft, shadow-dappled archway flicker. The telltale sign of habitation. It waxed and waned tauntingly, sunset red to burning rust.

Gonji gritted his teeth and let go the reins. He could not resist a look at the enemy, for surely it must lie in wait beyond that arch.

Huk-huk—huk-huk—

He scampered in a crouch toward the cave, blade at the ready. Negotiated the head-high slope to peer warily within.

Nothing moved inside. The outre glow emanated from piled glowstones heaped into four mounds. A branching of the stream—or perhaps another stream altogether—formed a serene raised pool near the cavern’s center. The gnarled branches of a tree—a larger version of the one he’d partaken of—veined the air above the pool. On it the berries grew to palm-sized bulbs resembling tomatoes. Sustenance for a long, cold ride.

Gonji scurried into the cavern and selected several of the ripest fruits, stuffing them inside his greatcoat. He sampled one. They overflowed with sweet pulp and cloying juice. Then he caught the scent—the unmistakable scent of searing human flesh. And he at once understood the meaning of the mounds of glowing stone.

He dropped the fruit he’d been eating and rushed back to Tora. They hurried along the stream. Into an empty cave, and through another. The chanting increased in pitch, the reverberating echo turning Gonji to and fro in search of safe exit. His lips wove a tapestry of favorite imprecations.

(something to kill and the power to kill it)

Another blast of cold air from a passed cavern entrance. This one clean and sharp with the tang of ice. The nerve-racking languid glow filled the entrance at last. He recognized it, knew their location. Through this one into the next—

Blinding silver sunlight—tongues of sifting snow—he’d found it!

Dragging Tora inside, he halted and considered: the stones. Very useful when building a fire was impossible. Nodding curtly, he turned back.

“Hai. Wait here, dumb beast.”

In the adjacent cavern most of the rocks were too large. He selected a few small ones, looked them over as they began to glow, mind racing to fashion an efficient plan. Put them inside his wraps? In Tora’s saddle pouches? What?

He dropped these inside the coat, where they gathered at his belt. He began to feel foolish. He moved into the main tunnel, heedless of the chanting now. With the Sagami in the crook of an arm, he picked up more glowstones of useful size. He was about to turn back when his eye caught the wash of yellow glare spilling from one—two—nearby caverns.

The stones fell from his arms.

The chanting was mixed with satisfied grunting now, and clearly the latter issued from the brightly glowing caverns ahead. More chants split from the main chorus, becoming localized, nearing his position.

He watched the garish light with dawning fear. Remembered the soft magenta tones that had burned in response to his own body’s needs.

Tora shrilled and bucked in the exit cavern, bellows of savage mirth mingling with the sound of animal panic.

The samurai surged back toward his frenzied steed, skin prickling. Stumbling once and then again, he gained the entrance cave’s glaring white hole in time to forestall the monsters from destroying the wildly bucking horse. His roar of fury froze them an instant that would remain locked in his hall of nightmares.

The hunters had returned. Ogros.

Ogros—canibalis.

Two of them. Huge and hairy, whether pelted or sporting their own fur, he could not be sure. They were humanoid, but Gonji’s blood froze to see the slightly elongated snouts that flourished canine fangs and long, red tongues.

Cholera—they might be ten-, twelve-feet tall, judging by their stoop.

The nearer one raised the cudgel with which it had been threatening Tora. With a blare of triumph, it stalked Gonji with the shouldered weapon. The samurai’s thews responded with a high-guard stance that might have been comical in other circumstances, so disparate were their sizes.

He eyed the growling ogre steadily, his peripheral vision sketching out the hefted cudgel’s deadly head. One side featured a sort of razor-edged scoop, partially filled with snow. The other side—just razor edges.

The monster heralded its strike with a bellow, and Gonji dove beneath its arc and tumbled into the cavern. The wall where he’d stood exploded in sparks of white-hot glowstones. Some of them landed in the creature’s fur, and it beat at the scorched spots in primitive fury.

Gonji rolled to his feet with a grimace, burdened by his winter garb. These beasts were faster than they looked. He raised his katana overhead defensively and eyed the second beast, which came on with a vengeance, dropping its slack burden—an all too predictable, human shape.

Tora reared and kicked madly at the second ogre. It hefted its cudgel too swiftly and bashed the cave ceiling, throwing itself off balance. The samurai charged it, stamping left and right, the Sagami gleaming as it whirled through a double feint. The beast swung its weapon awkwardly down on him in a black-taloned simian grip. He spun to avert its descent and slashed the monster halfway through the knee with a wicked rotating blow.

Dark blood spouted from the wound as its terrible shriek blocked Gonji’s left ear. It fell toward him, grabbing at the ruined knee, and when its great form tumbled past, the samurai’s returning one-handed slash shattered its lower jaw, blood and bits of stained tooth peppering the snowy entrance hollow.

Its screams were quickly forgotten in the rush of wind from the first monster’s sweeping bludgeon. Gonji ducked too late. One viciously honed glaive point shredded the fabric of his garb, gouging the flesh of a shoulder. The force of the blow twisted him off his feet. He rolled twice before the creature’s furious onslaught, then ran out of cave floor as he struck rock.

He was trapped in a corner of the cave.

The ogre snarled to intimidate him but eyed the Sagami with respect. It was unused to such speed and skill in the unwary travelers that were its kind’s usual prey.

The monster growled and scraped its weapon menacingly on the ground before the samurai’s niche, like a man trying to dislodge some dangerous vermin.

Suddenly it realized its advantage and sprang like a guard dog, leveling the cudgel for a battering-ram blow. In the same instant Gonji caught up a dirk from his boot, launching it with an overhand snap as he dodged the plunging metal blades.

The monster howled in pain and rage amid splintering rock. It stepped on Gonji’s legs with a clawed foot as he scrabbled away. The cudgel was forgotten. The flesh-eating snow beast tore at the invading knife in its chest.

Gonji cried out with the agonizing effort as he twisted under the monster’s huge padded foot. His scythelike rake of the Sagami hamstrung the flailing creature.

Behind, the other downed monster continued to pule in agony, and other sounds approached from within the cavern system.

Gonji heard none of it. He pushed to his feet, his left leg aching badly. His footwork was imprecise and ungainly but the katana struck repeatedly with awful accuracy as it sang in the icy cavern. He leapt in and out, relieving the creature of half a matted paw, opening deep wounds in both legs. He raised his blade for another strike, but a wild backhand blow batted him against the wall, his breath gushing out of him.

His vision swam, and for a moment he was unsure of where his sword lay. He saw Tora in a blurry haze. And the body of a man—Spanish cavalry jack—caved-in face—

The great hairy fist caught him up by the waist and pulled him close to those blazing eyes. He felt the creature’s hot, rank breath in his face. The crushing grip born of vengeful mortal agony. And he knew its intent. It would crush his head in its canine jaws.

The ogre gurgled something at him in a moist, guttural voice, perhaps a final taunt in its own language. In that instant Gonji drew the seppuku sword in his left hand. His right palmed the short blade’s forte in a circular pushing motion, crisp and wetly arcing through both the monster’s eyes, the bridge of its nose. The foreshortened return plunged the ko-dachi’s fierce point into the screaming predator’s throat, choking off its cries.

Gonji dropped to the ground with a groan. A momentary reflection passed: Again the seppuku blade, which might someday bring him ritual death, had spilled the blood of another.

Then he was snatching up the Sagami and belting both blades as he led the snorting Tora from the cave, out into an angry silver morning. The packed snow of the mountain trail made a welcome crunch under Tora’s hooves as he mounted and kicked the animal past the cave, up the cleared trail that continued the climb through the Pyrenees’ passes. Ridged bites in the snow evinced the clearing efforts of the night hunters—ogros canibalis—and their vicious cudgels.

The samurai could hear them bellowing behind, but the sounds receded, and he somehow knew the nocturnal hunters would not change their time-honored ways out of vengeance. Few creatures but man tempted the Fates thusly.

He who defies nature courts the unnatural. Who had said that? A fellow adventurer of days gone by. Which one? He could not recall.

Nor did he look back. The same saddle-blistered philosopher had also told him the proverb concerning the faces of yesterday’s dead.

He rode on for a time, counting his pains—the shoulder wound was not deep, but his lower leg was throbbing, as was his skull—and, not surprisingly, yearning again for shelter from the cold, the sun’s glare. The storm had ended, and as they passed across to the Spanish slopes, the passes became both less treacherous and less snowbound.

The glowstones, he discovered, were bereft of their sorcerous properties once removed from their environment. He wondered in amusement what an onlooker might think to see him reach inside his greatcoat and toss out chunks of useless stone. And only two of the sweet red mountain fruits survived intact; red pulp stained the entire front of his tunic and kimono.

He fed the solid fruits to Tora and settled comfortably into the saddle. Before long, the day being his normal time for slumber, he nodded off, his salleted head bobbing with the horse’s slow gait. His last thought was of this single similarity between himself and the cannibal ogres.

The only difference being that their slumbering berth never brought them to the icy brink of a parapet, as his did several times that day.