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.
CHAPTER TWO
He’d 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, he’d discovered the winter of another world. Milder, evenly snow-crusted, less enervating in its frigid bite. He’d 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 shimmered 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 moon’s face reflecting off the polished earth.
The dull pain of hunger had begun to paralyze Gonji’s keen appreciation of nature’s art. The poet’s soul was shouted down by the warrior’s 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 he’d happened on had been inhabited by the sort of superstitious 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. He’d found no fish, his efforts at trapping game proved futile, and he’d 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 ignoble contraption as he’d done many times before, he’d 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 he’d do when he caught up with it. He’d 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.
He’d lost it again, then found it hours later, worrying the carcass of a small rodent it had caught as if in mockery of his own pathetic hunting luck.
Now the hunt had begun for fair. He’d galloped after it endlessly across the snowy plain, twisting and turning, rushing it time and again, discovering that the spear he’d fashioned was a poor substitute for a proper lance in the sport of pigsticking. And, sadly, that Tora’s old wounds and the ravages of time had slowed the staunch warhorse as he’d long suspected.
But they’d pressed on, driven as much by pride as by hunger. Twice more he’d raked the boar with spear and the katana’s vicious edge. Then, unexpectedly, as if at last understanding its advantage, the boar had turned and charged. For an instant Gonji had thought of the Dark Company, whether they had been as surprised to see him turn as he was to see the wily animal bear down on him. Then the boar’s lancing tusks had caused Tora to lurch backward, throwing Gonji to the ground. Only the snow had kept the samurai’s tailbone from taking up residence in his empty belly.
Now he knelt on one knee in the snow before the wild boar’s lair, with the Sagami leaning on his right shoulder. This would end the way it should have started.
“Stupid beast,” he spat at Tora, fifty yards off. “Doddering old drayhorse! You’re home now. Can’t you show some pride in your native land?” His backside ached with every move.
A golden sunset shadowed the snowy wasteland, sketching the absurd churned-up ruin his hunt had made of acres of virgin snow. He hoped no enemy had observed any part of it.
With a snort of challenge, the boar plunged at him from the gathering shadows.
Roaring at its tormentor, angling its eight-inch tusks for a rending blow, it surged through the sluicing white mist, its breath pluming hotly.
Gonji feinted, twisted out of its path, and struck it across the shoulder. The deep cut spilled redness onto the snow in the animal’s drunken three-legged progress.
The boar charged Tora in a wild, bellowing rage. The chestnut stallion whinnied and bolted. Gonji swore and sprinted after the injured prey, watched it circle back almost lazily toward the lair. Then it stopped, fixed him in its black, hate-filled eyes, and roared after him again in raging pain.
The samurai raised his blade high over his right shoulder, hands spread along the hilt, fingers caressing the sharkskin in a grip that almost looked slack. He struck the wounded boar a blow across the hindquarters, downing it. A rapid double slash—
Gonji shouted to the twilight sky to join him in his hard-won triumph. His mother’s Nordic ebullience came through in a brief impromptu dance of victory. He quickly composed himself and set to finding wood, his mouth watering.
But his prayer of thanks to the kami of good fortune was premature.
Hurrying to secure what seemed good kindling, he hastily prepared a campsite in a hollow at the base of the cuesta. Defying caution, he built a blazing fire and warmed himself briefly, savoring the tantalizing feast to come.
Moving out into the moonlight to relieve Tora of his burden and settle him for the night, Gonji realized his mistake too late. He saw the danger light in Tora’s eyes, the fear in the horse’s tossing head, before he heard the sifting wind