Damned ignorant fools! Snobbish, money-grubbing merchants! I’m no highwayman. If so I could have hefted their burden of gold with little trouble. I’m not some hell-spawned satyr come to ravage the countryside. Let them stumble along their course, then. Let them trust to those three dolts with the dangling rapiers—probably each with a virgin edge, neh? They’ll be fair game for bandits and night fiends before long. I need no puffy-faced riding companions with sagging behinds. They’re a burden, worthless in a fight—a bane on all of them! Friends often turn traitor. More often turn up dead. If I’m to ride alone, then that’s my course. Chosen. Ordained. That is karma. Am I not my father’s son? Above them all in the scheme of things, firstborn of the great daimyo of the Sadowara clan, birthed of the womb of the storied golden she-wolf of the northern ice lands?
I am Sabatake Gonji-no-Sadowara....
...and I am samurai.
He had sat alone for a time, feeling the tension grow thick at the inn, staring into his sullen reflection in the pale wine. Guarded whispers wafted over to him through the musty smell of rotting floorboards. The fat innkeeper fluttered about the Englishmen like a wet nurse, jabbering in mixed French and Slovak: “Pan Goodwin! Pan Lancaster! Let me put you up for the night. Do not venture into the hills after sunset. It is not safe, good sirs!”
More toadying, more simpering. (The clink of their coins was truer than his.) Then a snatch of something barely whispered:
“—the Weeping Sisters—”
A pang.
He had risen with an appropriate flourish, cast some coins noisily on the table, (hearts skipping a beat) and strode out of the squalid inn with a pride born of his noble heritage.
Done with them. And glad to be alone.
* * * *
They tracked upward into the mountain foothills, the samurai lost in his thoughts, the sturdy animal sure-footed even in the increasingly rugged terrain. Long shadows pointed the way before them. Cool draughts of pine-tinged breeze washed down over them, but the heat of the dying sun held fast at their backs.
A mile or so into a sloping stand of timber Gonji reined in and swung lightly to the ground, patting Tora’s shuddering haunches. The horse shuffled and nodded with relief, poked at the wild grass. Unhitching his swords, Gonji removed his damp kimono with a grimace that evinced aching muscles. He stretched elaborately a few times, then replaced the swords at his waist.
He paced laterally along the banked earth a few yards, sniffing at the fragrant air, the rugged sandals laced about his thick tabi crunching sharply in the stillness.
He froze.
Both hands shot to the hilt of the killing sword as he crouched slightly in a defensive posture. He fixed the target in his vision. The Sagami sang free, scarcely touching wood, and cleft center of the object.
The samurai snatched the blade back into its sheath with an efficient two-step sliding motion, then set himself. Again. Off a bit this time. A third time—quicker, sharper. Again—better still. Several more—real time was all but forgotten. A final blurring pass—
Excellent.
Silver death in a mote of time.
He executed a leaping full turn, drawing and slashing in midair, a growling kiyai roaring from deep in his chest, echoing through the hills. He had landed with feline grace and splendid form, breath held in check, his mighty challenge unanswered.
Tora kept nibbling and paid him no heed.
Gonji picked up the heaped kimono and returned to his mount, breathing deeply, feeling the tension flow out of him, the light rippling of his well-toned muscles. A mild breeze feathered his damp armpits, causing a brief outcropping of gooseflesh. He tied the kimono around the spare killing sword lashed to the saddle and tugged loose a square of white cloth. He rubbed his face on a tunic sleeve.
“Again you ignore me, eh?” he spoke, stroking Tora’s neck. “What’s become of us? You used to find me so amusing!”
Tora nickered and shot his head from side to side, and Gonji chuckled, fishing a bag of oats from a pouch and sifting the last few handfuls. “See? Plenty for everyone, neh? Eat, proud fellow.”
The glowering orb of the sun pressed the western edge of the world.
“Do you know something?” Gonji said, sighing expansively. “We’re heading back the way we came again. Yes, that is so. Oh, not so far north this time. Through the mountains. This time we’re looking for a—how did he say?—‘stone sanctuary perched on a mountain aerie.’ Sanctuary...do you think it will be a sanctuary for us, Tora, eh? Do you think those mad Hungarians are still looking for us? Ahh, you don’t think at all, do you, dumb beast? Or you’d have slowed and let them catch us and you’d probably be in stud right now!
“Strange people. Strange. Bad as Mongols. Give them what they hire for and they try to kill you. For a while there I thought we had a home for a time....” He gazed wistfully into the distance, his face a mask of sadness.
“I’ll tell you something,” he said cheerfully, “if we meet in the next go-around, I’ll have a turn at the bit and you do all the thinking! How does that suit you, eh? You like that, don’t you? You like that....”
Gonji hopped backward a few merry paces and affected a passable imitation of the innkeeper’s bloated carriage. He waddled about Tora, bowing obsequiously and flapping his arms in mock solicitude.
“I go to get some food now, Pan Tora, yeh?” he mimicked, puffing his cheeks.
Taking the white cloth, he loped off to a nearby thicket in which he had spotted some wild berries. He ate a few handfuls to appease his grumbling belly while he filled the cloth, then scanned the hills ahead to determine the best shot at a stream near which he might make camp for the night. Perhaps there he might catch some fish.
A vague unease gradually cost him his interest in hunting for his dinner. Then with the graying shadows of hazy twilight came the dark and nameless fears he had known since the first night in this territory. The thought of another campfire shared with the things that rustled and coiled and stared from beyond the fringe of light brought a surge of bitterness that he fought to swallow back. Something was happening in these mountains. Something evil. And it was aware of the intruder.
Gonji’s eye caught a fallen limb.
Could it be that downed tree? Had he circled back to the same wretched spot—No. It wasn’t, he was sure. Days past. Miles away. There would be in that place a shriveled corpse, by now worried by the beasts that thrived on carrion.
A man. An ancient, withered hermit. Dying. The stench of death, ugly death. The horrid odor of some racking, consumptive disease. Leaning against a fallen limb, arms spread along the wood. Reclining in crucifixion.
Circle wide, circle cautiously, wear the scowl of distaste only a warrior knows at thoughts of such plague-ridden death. He stares, eyes bulging like rotted eggs. A sere hand trembles free of the supporting limb. Is it a twig or a lean brown finger that points (at me!) as the slack jaw works:
“Here there be...monsters!”
(vile wretch!) Draw and kill the ogre! How dare he? Step carefully forward and rend him (still pointing)—rend him.
A long rattling sigh.... His last. Already dead. You’ve been the fool. Stupid, fearful, mistrusting fool. Still he points, but not at you, no, not at you but at....
...the road you travel.
Gonji’s eyes refocused, and he shrugged off a sudden chill. Bounding up to Tora and swinging into the saddle he glanced about him in a wide arc.
“I am Sabatake Gonji-no-Sadowara,” he stormed to the mute hills. “Ride with me if you will, against me if you dare!”
And with a hearty laugh he spurred Tora onward at a gallop. Deep