Part 8 (1/2)
Moon had set the windmill afire. The mill floor was already ablaze, the flames licking up the walls. Gonjis own trap had been set against him.
He cast about futilely for a second or two, then calmed himself. He ran to the opposite window, which overlooked the bonfire, the tilting ground of moments ago. Tora, lying on his side, kicked uselessly at the black coc.o.o.n.
More immediately below: the long hind body segment of the Moonspinner, clawing and pus.h.i.+ng; and one of the windmill vanes.
Gonji exhaled a determined breath, feeling the rising heat waves at his heels. Throwing the halberd as far from the burning windmill as he could, he poised in the window, praying to the kami of good fortune that the monster wouldnt free itself. Better to die in the leap.
He launched himself from the sill, caught one edge of the vane, his breath jarred from his lungs. But the vane began to shred from his weight, and he slid down the framework. The shaft turned slowly, lowering him even more. Now he neared the struggling bulk of the monsters lower half. His flesh crawled at the antic.i.p.ation of its imminent touch.
When he brushed the shrieking monsters smooth back carapace, he could stand no more. He pushed off and landed in the snow, his back flaring with pain as he rolled hard over the harnessed daisho.
But he was on his feet now. Free. And alive.
He looked up at the blazing windmill. The flames had reached the cap now and engulfed it. Infernal tongues belched from the windows. The monsters frenzied efforts still had not freed it.
He found his halberd and took up a torch from the bonfire. He ran to Tora, finding his left ankle sore from the fall but paying it little heed.
”Tora-hold still!” he cried. ”Easy, Im not going to hurt you.” He burned the terrified animal out of its restraining coc.o.o.n, had some difficulty steadying him, and could not mount until Tora had become reoriented. Rearing, nostrils and eyes flaring against the patches of webbing that still clung, Tora at last allowed his master to take to the saddle.
They made slow progress at first as Gonji burned them a path through the magical webwork. But then the flames spread, preceding them, and all at once Gonji could see into the distance. Into the clear, cold night air. An invigorating chill swept through him as the wind poured through the widening hole.
He wheeled and looked back. The Moonspinner had been burned free of the windmill, losing its claw in the flames progress. It scrambled about the base of the fuming windmill in mindless insect terror on its surviving appendages. Then it made two unsuccessful leaps skyward before finally catching the underside of the web and laboriously working its way upward, dangling upside down.
Gonji remembered his bow and quiver and took the opportunity to ride back and collect them, though he had to dismount and pick them up on foot, for Tora would not approach the blazing windmill.
They rode off a hundred paces, and Gonji felt a lunatic thrill to see the awesome spectacle of the flames racing up the webbing with volcanic fury. It was a sight like none he had ever seen. The relentless fire raged through the network in beautiful patterns of heavenly tracery. An ephemeral work of art to please the sky kami. The searching flames at last caught up with the diminis.h.i.+ng figure of the Moonspinner, flaring it incandescent. It fell to earth on an angular path, like a shooting star. Gonji gasped to see its supernatural effulgence as it grew in his vision with the amazing speed caused by the weird spatial distortion. For an instant he feared it would engulf him, then it crashed into the snow before the roiling windmill with a shower of sparks and steam.
With a bellow of triumph Gonji dismissed all thought of it to concentrate on the new problem: the mercenary troop on the hills, ma.s.sing at the east end of the road to meet him. Their distance, he knew, was an illusion; they could be upon him in seconds.
They would have to catch him. His way lay westward; he would not abandon his course over the temporary inconvenience of a monster insect and an army of cutthroats.
Gonji laughed aloud to hear his own thoughts. It was a display he would not have liked others to observe, least of all his father, Old Todo. But his Norwegian mother would have appreciated it. It was the sometimes uncontrollable Western child part of him. He permitted it a moment to breathe and stretch.
Tora kicked up snow as they pa.s.sed the shriveling carca.s.s of the Moonspinner. Gonji had time for a momentary glimpse of the orange dart of bright flame that pierced the heart of the moon-a sight to inspire waka poetry in some future time of serene reflection. Then he focused on the road ahead. The road to Barbaso. A ribbon in the hills miles away, in a normal spatial framework.
He gained the gentle slopes in a minutes ride. Several mercenaries angled down and closed in from both sides to snare him. The main force charged from behind.
At full gallop, he nocked an arrow and drew back on his longbow, the flames hed left behind now rekindled in the depths of his dark eyes.
The leader of the black knights gestured for his two comrades to remain at his side. His hand went thoughtfully to the shallow wound at his shoulder as he watched, with amazement, the whirlwind engagement on the hillock three hundred yards to the west.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
Although it was only midday in Barbaso, already the streets were alive with the sounds of revelry. Drunken roisterers, from the soldiery and townsfolk alike, sang and danced at the square, in the inns, on the rooftops. Lancers who had abandoned all reason and hope fatalistically carried out their sentry and patrol duties. Festooned with weapons slung wildly from belts and harnesses, bedecked with religious artifacts, ropes of garlic, and pockets full of local charms and potions, they prayed hollowly that their armament would be sufficient to guard them against the warlocks powers. But all the while they alternated the grasp of weapons with the sotted clutch of tankards full of spirits.
Their hope of victory had been traded for the despairing desire of painless death.
Captain Salguero listened despondently to the sounds of civilization unraveling, only now and then hearing the droning voice of the accusing young official.
”So you wont make an effort, then, to obey your orders?” Pablo Cardenas was saying. ”Despite their coming from your own High Command?”
Salguero was weary of arguing the point, tired of defending an indefensible position, sick of their accusations. The town itself was as much responsible as he. Or so his pride insisted.
He looked at Cardenas. The well-dressed, close-shaven Pablo Cardenas, the towns solicitor, was one of the few educated men in Barbaso. Yet he was one of the handful the captain least enjoyed discourse with. His insistence on maintaining appearances and order in the present circ.u.mstances was vexing.
Guilt.
”Well, captain?”
”Well, captain?” Salguero barked back, startling him. ”Well, well, well, Senor Cardenas? Where would you have me start? Ill tell you where Ill start. Ill begin by ordering you to sequester your people in their homes and keep them away from my men. Then Ill-”
Shouts and broken screams from the street halted his tirade. Salguero drew his pistol and ran out onto the steps of the town hall, Cardenas at his heels.
A horse galloped by, a dead rider slung over its neck. It was not a lancer, and Salguero suspected that once again they were under attack. He craned his neck down the main street, where two more steeds, these riderless, parted the gathering gawkers.
Another horse-this one with a corpse bent backward over the saddle, feet locked into the stirrups.
Two more-one frothing from fatigue and injury; one dragging a sword-slashed body by a single entangled boot.
Mercenaries, they might have been. Or bandits.
Another horse, dropping from a canter into a walk. This rider was conspicuously alive.
Salgueros eyes bulged. His cheeks began to twitch.
”Kyoos.h.i.+?” he whispered, smiling at the memory of the word.
”They must be the warlocks men,” Cardenas said, but Salguero had already broken into a trot, then a full run, toward the expressionless rider.
”Kyoos.h.i.+!”
Gonji reacted in spite of himself to hear the long unheard word in the heartwarmingly familiar voice. Teacher, the voice had called him, and he responded with the j.a.panese word for captain: ”Senchoo.”
A pistol report split the air. Gonji heard the familiar siiizzz of the heavy ball that tore past his face and impacted on the cobbled way, kicking up snow. It seemed like a long time later that his mind processed the screams that followed, and he found himself steadying Tora. He heard Salguero shouting orders, saw men scrambling to comply. He hadnt slept in a day and a half, and his fatigue suddenly overwhelmed him. His only reaction to the fact that hed just been shot at was to realize dimly that hed been fighting all night without his sallet. He unfastened the helmet from where it hung and slowly strapped it on as he gazed up at the window from which the shot had issued. All the while his expression remained unchanged, less from discipline than from numbness. He still felt nothing but the vague happiness to see Salguero, when the struggling townsman was dragged before the captain by two lancers.
The man was held with his hands behind his back. A pistol was turned over to the captain. Gonji heard something about ”monsters” and the ”G.o.d-cursed warlocks devils.” He had evidently been mistaken for someone else. The would-be a.s.sa.s.sin was shortly ushered away after severe remonstrance from Salguero. The matter was abruptly over.
Salguero stood beside him, holding out a hand, asking whether he was injured, registering concern as he pointed at Gonjis kimono. There was redness there. A stain of some kind. Ah, he was thinking: the red pulp from the fruit in the ogros canibalis caverns. But he only shook his head in answer to Salgueros anxiety. He watched another riderless horse tramp by, blood splattering the saddle and haunches, vaguely cognizant that hed had something to do with its state.
He looked up at the window again before he spoke.
”Unfriendly town you have here, senchoo,” Gonji was saying.