Part 2 (1/2)
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 fas.h.i.+on an efficient plan. Put them inside his wraps? In Toras 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 bodys 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 p.r.i.c.kling. Stumbling once and then again, he gained the entrance caves 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 Gonjis 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 samurais thews responded with a high-guard stance that might have been comical in other circ.u.mstances, so disparate were their sizes.
He eyed the growling ogre steadily, his peripheral vision sketching out the hefted cudgels 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 hed stood exploded in sparks of white-hot glowstones. Some of them landed in the creatures 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 Gonjis left ear. It fell toward him, grabbing at the ruined knee, and when its great form tumbled past, the samurais 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 monsters 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 creatures 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 kinds usual prey.
The monster growled and sc.r.a.ped its weapon menacingly on the ground before the samurais 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 Gonjis 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 monsters 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 gus.h.i.+ng 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 creatures hot, rank breath in his face. The crus.h.i.+ng 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 blades forte in a circular pus.h.i.+ng motion, crisp and wetly arcing through both the monsters eyes, the bridge of its nose. The foreshortened return plunged the ko-dachis fierce point into the screaming predators throat, choking off its cries.
Gonji dropped to the ground with a groan. A momentary reflection pa.s.sed: Again the seppuku blade, which might someday bring him ritual death, had spilled the blood of another.
Then he was s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 Toras hooves as he mounted and kicked the animal past the cave, up the cleared trail that continued the climb through the Pyrenees pa.s.ses. 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 yesterdays 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 suns glare. The storm had ended, and as they pa.s.sed across to the Spanish slopes, the pa.s.ses became both less treacherous and less s...o...b..und.
The glowstones, he discovered, were bereft of their sorcerous properties once removed from their environment. He wondered in amus.e.m.e.nt 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 horses 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.
CHAPTER TWO.
Hed tracked the wild boar two days and a night now, at last locating and blockading its lair, though it had led him on a merry chase.
Red-eyed and bone-weary, he had found his days and nights at last becoming reordered, though he had slept little for either since descending the barren Spanish slopes of the Pyrenees. He had spent half a night lying in wait of his pursuers, but the Dark Company either had perished in the avalanche or ceased to find the game amusing. A third possibility was dismissed with a curse and a grim resignation: Perhaps their new tactic was to lull him into false security only to fall upon him in their cold fury two nights, three nights, ten nights down the trail.
If it came to that, then so be it.
Karma.
Upon entering Spain, hed discovered the winter of another world. Milder, evenly snow-crusted, less enervating in its frigid bite. Hed doffed some of his heavy wraps, riding now in tunic and breeches, short kimono, and traveling cloak. His thick tabi and Austrian cavalry boots were sufficient enough to protect his feet.
The northern Spanish winter was an icy natural wonderland. The great waterfalls of the shallow foothill terraces had diminished in force, their torrents abating to sparkle in a clear crystal sheen. The U-shaped cirque valleys s.h.i.+mmered below, their symmetrical beauty and perfection broken only by the brilliance of ice-diamond pools and furrows. By day, a multihued aurora borrowed from the smiling kami of the sky; by night a silent, eerie land of stark shadow, the moons face reflecting off the polished earth.
The dull pain of hunger had begun to paralyze Gonjis keen appreciation of natures art. The poets soul was shouted down by the warriors belly.
Winter forage was proving no easier in Spain than in France. The frozen land yielded little. He had encountered one heavily guarded caravan from the silver mines which, upon espying his half-breed Oriental strangeness, had taken him for an unsavory character and warded him off with brandished weapons, refusing even to allow him near enough to speak. The single tiny village hed happened on had been inhabited by the sort of superst.i.tious peasantry that had long been a bane to him. Doors and windows had been locked and shuttered in his face; weapons leveled from arrow loops. Hed found no fish, his efforts at trapping game proved futile, and hed persuaded no animal to drop dead at his feet-although Tora currently headed the list of beasts upon whom he wished such a fate.
They had discovered the wild boar scrounging for food in a copse of slender trees and hardy scrub. His bowstring having already snapped in the process of stringing, he had placed his faith in his black powder. Loading calmly and quietly, he had approached the boar on foot, gained a surprisingly advantageous position, and squeezed off a pistol shot that flashed and fizzled ineffectually. Cursing the ign.o.ble contraption as hed done many times before, hed watched the startled boar run off at an easy gait, snorting scornfully at his effort.
Thus had begun the chase.
Gonji had tracked it on horseback for a day and part of a night, feeling alternately foolish and frustrated, uncertain what hed do when he caught up with it. Hed lost it once when it went to ground, found its lair in another copse near a fifty-foot cuesta, skimmed its back with his sword when it had surprised him with a sudden erratic charge-and resumed the chase.