Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel. T. C. Rypel

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СКАЧАТЬ Gonji’s hand a blossom of a wildflower.

      “Give that to Genya,” Wilf said in a strained whisper. “Tell her...tell her I’ll be coming for her soon.”

      And with that he yanked his white steed around and lurched off through the parting crowd. Gonji half-smiled and nodded, pocketing the token. He repositioned his swords more comfortably and waited.

      Upon Julian’s flashy command, echoed by the subordinate behind them, the delegates joined with the soldiers in the long double column that clattered over the paving stones to the gate. A cheer rose from the crowd as they started off, and Gonji recognized several faces among them: Paolo Sauvini, Aldo Monetto and Karl Gerhard, Lorenz Gundersen on the steps of the Ministry; then he saw Lydia Benedetto, and felt the smile that crinkled the corners of his mouth, and only realized that he had been staring when he saw the smoky eyes of her husband, Michael, over her shoulder. Then he squared his shoulders and set his face in grim dignity, snorting to chase his mild embarrassment and nodding to the waving crowd on both sides of him.

      And in an effort at employing the crowd’s positive energy, he imagined that it was for him that they were cheering, for their champion.

      * * * *

      The farmer Vlad Dobroczy stared hard at Gonji as the delegation party pounded past with clumping hooves and jangling traces and armament.

      “I still can’t believe Flavio took him along. As if he meant anything to Vedun. That horse’s ass Wilf Gundersen probably had something to do with it, through his old man.” Dobroczy scowled after the long column as they rode through the gatehouse, where Old Gort waved them through, smiling toothlessly.

      Peter Foristek towered at Vlad’s side, shifting his scythe from one shoulder to the other. His face was just returning to normal, the lumps shrinking, the bruises fading, from the savage beating he had received at the hands of Ben-Draba.

      “You still think he’s one of them, Hawk? He’s a good fighter, that’s for sure.”

      “He’s a stranger,” the hook-nosed Dobroczy growled. “And no stranger can be trusted, not anymore. Don’t forget it. Remember what they tried to do to your sister.”

      Foristek’s face darkened. He shifted the scythe again and nodded solemnly.

      * * * *

      “So say it already,” Michael whispered to Lydia as he gazed at the departing column over her shoulder.

      She half-turned. “Say what, Michael?”

      “Whatever’s on your mind.”

      A studied calm crept into her large blue eyes, and she smiled sweetly. “There’s nothing on my mind right now—really.”

      Michael pursed his lips and pushed off through the crowd, Lydia watching him go for a moment and then peering back toward the postern gate, a puzzled frown creasing her soft features.

      * * * *

      Tralayn the prophetess stood on the northern rampart, the Llorm sentry casting her a sidewise glance as he passed. Her arms were folded into the ample sleeves of her long jade robes. Her green eyes were sullen slits, heavy-lidded and dreamy, as if she were about to doze off even as she stood. But her thoughts were of dreams that could never be, of the vain and misfit hope of peaceful coexistence with the minions of evil.

      * * * *

      Strom Gundersen and Boris Kamarovsky sat with the former’s flock on a hilltop northwest of Vedun’s encircling walls, gazing down at the delegation and its military escort.

      “There goes Papa. He’s not too happy about this,” Strom observed. “What a grouch this morning.”

      “Look at that monkey-man,” Boris sneered, “riding like he’s the cock of the yard.”

      They shared a laugh, and Strom piped a merry little tune on his reed pipe in accompaniment of the trotting hoofbeats.

      “Monkey-man,” Strom said then. “Where’d you get that?”

      “That’s what Phlegor calls him.”

      “Well, he better not let Gonji hear it.”

      “Gonji,” Boris spat. “What the hell kind of name is that?”

      “He’s pretty tough.”

      “Aw, hell, that’s just when he fights with his feet like a rooster. Know what the soldiers’ll do if he starts any more trouble?”

      Strom looked at him questioningly.

      Boris sighted along his hand, which he shaped like a pistol.

      “Boom.”

      * * * *

      The north road out of Vedun was paved only as far as the old Roman road it intersected about half a kilometer from the walls. At this point the plateau melded into the foothills of the Carpathians, and the north road continued as a broad, packed-earth track that meandered through the timbered hills toward Castle Lenska, whose tallest spires and towers could barely be made out from the flatlands.

      The banquet delegation rode past the hillock on the left, where Strom’s sheep scurried like windblown down. On the right began the checkerboard expanse of cultivation and orchards that fed the province. Beyond, the distant roar of the river that swept past the city to the cataract that emptied into the southern valley.

      The road swung left into the hills, and for a time the castle towers were lost to view among the bristling forested woods. The road coursed ever upward, the horses laboring with the increasing strain. The party emerged from a delve in the hills, and suddenly the facade of Castle Lenska lay open to view.

      Gonji was momentarily breathless. This was the closest he had ever been to the storied fortress, and its legends seemed indeed warranted. It rose imposingly atop a pine-crowded peak, shimmering in the mist against the jagged gray-white caps in the northern mountain fastness. Men on horseback were dwarfed by even its outer bailey wall, and that one, crowded with soldiers, crouched before a still taller inner curtain, which was also dotted with moving figures.

      “Whew,” Gonji breathed. “Marvelous.” It was not so sprawling a place as Japan’s incredibly complex fortresses, which were composed of acres of mazelike walls. But here in Europe there were none so formidable as this one. The thought struck him again that Lenska should have proven impregnable to so small a command as Klann led. And he was stirred with an eagerness to get a look inside.

      A lark cried in the treetops nearby, and the bird’s call mingled with the memories of Japan to raise up the long-buried details of an occasion he had thought of earlier that day.

      The song of the lark, and his death poem. The waka he had recited to Paille, which hadn’t passed his lips in many a year....

      He was twelve, charged with tending a garden at the teahouse of a cousin. The cousin’s wife, a lusty, voluptuous woman of about seventeen, was alone within for the afternoon. Gonji’s awakening sexuality and spirit of mischief had caused him to sneak a look at her through a shoji screen while she undressed. But then she had spotted him. And had smiled. He had been seized by fear of discovery and the certainty that his cousin would surely dispatch him СКАЧАТЬ