a retreat so lustily. The thought was cut short. Somewhere over the horizon a large dark shape momentarily loomed above the line of mountain peaks, then dipped out of sight again.
“What the—! What the hell was that, Tora, eh?”
But the charge had passed him by, and Gonji wheeled Tora to follow it along the cliff ledge. Several hundred yards onward the woods encroached to the brink, and he was forced to plunge into a stand of pine for a half mile or so, losing sight of the valley. He cursed petulantly as Tora’s pace was slowed by the dense underbrush. His mind whirled; this was the first armed clash he had seen in weeks, and it aroused his fighting instincts.
He spurred Tora through a gauntlet of slapping pine boughs and snaring thickets, finally emerging in a sun-baked clearing. The precipice again lay bare against the mountain vista for a space of a few hundred yards. Beyond, it sloped gently toward the eastern end of the valley, where the cliffs broke to permit descent.
Gonji trotted to the edge of the escarpment and reined in. Below, the main body of knights had ceased pursuit and was falling back toward the command center, columns occasionally splintering off to lend aid in rooting out straggling mercenaries. Voices crying out in command or anguish and the rumble of hoofbeats now supplanted the din of combat. It was over. Gonji slapped his leg and cursed, shaking his head. He had arrived too late. The fighting itch prickled deeply as he considered a course of action.
Then a pistol shot exploded somewhere beneath him, followed by another. Harsh cries rolled up the cliff face, punctuated by an occasional scream. He leaped off Tora and leaned over the ledge for a better look. A hundred yards to the east a band of mercenaries was trapped in a shallow, dusty canyon by a mixed company of Austrian cavalry and infantry. A single rank of lightly armored horsemen blocked the canyon exit, shields raised before them to deflect arrows and pistol balls. To their rear, longbows and arbalests launched volley after volley into the cornered bunch, who scrambled for cover behind horses, rocks, and brush. Their return fire served only to prolong the agony.
Steeds dropped, kicking and screaming, under the Austrians’ insistent fire. Here and there a man would panic and scrabble uselessly up the crumbling shale prison wall, only to be bristled like a burr by a hail of arrows. At these the Austrians roared their approval, reveling in the thrill of an impromptu pheasant-shoot.
A squad of infantry, some with crossbows, had flanked the mercenaries on the slope beneath Gonji—their one possible avenue to escape. These approached the ragged company’s desperate position, cautious only for the trapped men’s pistol fire. The last strands of the spider’s snare were immobilizing the fly for the kill.
Gonji absently hummed a battle hymn he had heard while he watched with gritted teeth. The heat of battle readiness swelled in his gut.
“Time to earn a living, Tora.”
He leaped astride the charger and seated his swords comfortably, glancing along the cliff to calculate the swiftest path.
“Which side do we choose this time, eh? Eeyahhh!” They galloped off, the question hanging in the humid air, as unintelligible to the horse as its answer was obvious to the man.
There was no choice here. He had run up against Hapsburg power before. To them he was an infidel, a heathen savage. They would no sooner have him among their number than they would invite a plague into their camp.
But mercenary armies always welcomed another skilled warrior, and there was always stolen gold aplenty waiting to reward the stout bladesman. Gonji had learned to abide the guilt, the samurai’s hatred for the crass life of the mercenary, for it was only by the hiring out of his battle savvy that he had been able to survive these long years in barbarian Europe. But this life had fixed him as ronin—masterless samurai. Knowledge of this unspeakable outrage would, he knew, cause his father to take his own life out of shame. Indeed, Gonji himself should have long since committed seppuku, the ritual suicide!
The sun peaked in the burnished blue of the sky as Gonji strove to strangle off his thoughts. He began to concentrate. A plan, a battle tactic.
Tora’s hide glistened with a light film of sweat as he loped easily sidewise down the breakneck slope, sensing the urgency that gripped his master. The noonday swelter washed over Gonji in undulating waves. As he approached the rear of the flanking footmen’s position, the trees thinned. Little cover here, but he had to get closer.
Lightly quitting the saddle, he unhitched his bow and quiver. Stringing the bow in a single adroit, powerful motion, he left the stallion in a place of relative safety and scampered down to the edge of the tree line, a scant fifty yards from the backs of the nearest of the creeping foot soldiers.
His eyes flashed brightly, squinted against the glare. A bawling cry rose from the mercenary leader, his oath clipped by the sharp report of his pistol. A knight’s mount shrilled and toppled on the canyon floor, sending its rider crashing to earth. Two more pistol shots split the air. A bowman at the canyon mouth clutched his chest and fell. A fusillade of arrows whickered into the canyon. Cries of warning. A mercenary shrieked in mortal agony, writhing and tearing at the wooden death spindling his torso.
Gonji riveted his gaze on the breach in the knights’ line created by the fallen horse in the canyon. He checked the squad of footmen below him; he hadn’t been spotted. He took two deep breaths and nocked an arrow, drew back mightily on the bow, his left side braced against a foot-thick larch. He rotated the bow overhead and down into line.
Breathe. Hold. Feel. Fire.
A difficult shot—he was nearly parallel to the cavalry rank. The shaft arced sleekly, slammed through a knight’s arm, bit into the ribcage. The shocked rider spurred his horse and was thrown backward, his foot locking in the stirrup as the beast broke ranks and dragged his metallic ruin through the canyon.
“Still got it, eh, Gonji-san?” Gonji’s jaw was set with battle fervor. He glanced over the field; still hadn’t been noticed. Good. He turned his attention on the foot soldiers farther down the slope. Perhaps a dozen. But how many bows?
As if in answer four of them rose in unison and fired their clacking arbalests at a mercenary clawing up the far canyon wall. Two bolts shattered flesh and bone. A wild pistol shot from the mercenaries zanged into the packed earth between the foot soldiers and Gonji, who flattened in alarm, indignant.
He grimaced. Damned fools! I’m trying to help you!
The Austrian commander clumped to the head of the cavalry rank, sword raised, and shouted orders. The footmen to the rear of the cavalry massed for an attack. Then a pistol ball crashed into the commander’s steed, unhorsing him. Confusion reigned.
Time to clear the path.
Gonji emptied his quiver and laid out the shafts for rapid firing. He dropped to one knee and seated an arrow, braced, fired. A flanking crossbowman seventy-five yards downslope was skewered squarely through the back. The others froze, stared.
Before they could react, another lay thrashing at their feet, a crimson shaft protruding from his ribs. Ten sallets whirled, their wearers wide-eyed. A third man was knocked cleanly off his feet by the impact of a great cloth-yard shaft that clove his surcoat and breastplate.
Gonji fired at the last arbalester, missed, and a crossbow quarrel thunked into the larch, splintering bark in all directions. Gonji ducked behind the slim bole and nocked another arrow as the footmen clawed up the slope, low to the ground, howling epithets.
Then Gonji saw Tora, not twenty yards up the hill, nosing toward him curiously.
“Get out of here, dummy!” he cried, waving the animal back. “You want to get killed?”
The samurai spun into the open, bobbed tantalizingly to draw the crossbow’s fire. He launched an arrow that split a shin, the soldier flinging his mace wildly in rage and pain. Gonji rolled behind the tree.
“Tora—move!”
A bolt crunched into the ground at Tora’s hooves, erupting stones and clumped earth. Tora got the message and peevishly hopped up the hill at a lazy pace.
The