waved the scattered mercenaries up the hill with a broad gesture, calling for them to cling close to their saddles.
Another volley of musket shot. Gonji pulled the ground to him and hugged as musket balls pattered around him like hailstones. Feeling no searing wound, he scrabbled to his feet and drove himself toward the low line of tree cover above. Somewhere nearby, Tora must be waiting. He still carried his swords in grimy fists.
Out of the corner of his eye Gonji caught sight of a swash of filthy color groping over the treacherous shale. A mercenary. Hurt. With a quick backward glance he gauged his chances of aiding the man while yet escaping. Not good. Mounted knights with lances had begun their ponderous ascent, followed by footmen, pikes and swordpoints marking their long line. A field of bright escutcheons dotted the base of the hill.
Oh, what the hell....
Growling with every stride, Gonji loped across the hillside. Arrows sprouted suddenly from ground and trees like a magically sown crop. Two mercenaries yelped and dropped from their saddles. A horse tumbled past toward the ravine, kicking and shrieking. The oppressive heat began to take effect, Gonji feeling as if he were in the body of a heavier man.
He reached the crawling man, sheathed the seppuku sword, and clamped a hand on his shoulder. With a fierce outcry the mercenary lurched onto his back, and Gonji found himself triangulated by a pair of flinty-black eyes and the point of a dirk. He threw up a fending hand and cocked the katana in defiance.
“Hey—alto! Alto! I’m here to help!” Gonji gambled on Spanish. His guess was correct.
The Spaniard’s pearly teeth gritted against his pain, and rheumy eyes glowered at the samurai feverishly. The swarthy face was streaked with grime, a crimson trickle issuing from beneath a bandanna like tattered fabric. A thick red wetness drenched his upper leg from the furrow a musket ball had gouged through the thigh. He was trembling. His curled lips relaxed, and he drew a labored breath.
“So then help—idiot!” he roared under flaring nostrils.
Gonji put up his sword and stooped to raise Navárez. The muskets exploded again, a torrent of lead ripping into the hill as they hit the ground.
Gonji swore through pursed lips. “That’s three, amigo. Too much luck for me. Now we climb or the next round drops us both, neh?”
The Spaniard groaned with the effort to rise. Gonji grabbed his arm and yanked him up, shouldering him as best he could and churning uphill.
But they had lost far too much time. It was all over now but for the crash of a bullet or the arrival of the cavalry that could be heard chunkering to their rear, hurling challenges to halt.
A horse whinnied just behind them. Gonji hurled Navárez forward with all his strength, sending him sprawling in a cursing heap. He pulled his blade, ready for desperate engagement.
Gonji faced the vanguard of the cavalry advance. The knight at the point grimly bore down on him, leveling his lance at Gonji’s chest. The samurai pulled the dirk from his thigh strap, timed the awkward stride, hurled—
The blade struck chain mail at a bad angle, snapping in half. But the force of the missile and the horseman’s flinch caused him to lose his seating. He rolled off his mount, jangling to earth and tumbling back under the hooves of his comrades.
Then, a small burst of gunfire. Not the muskets; these shots had come from above. Navárez’ survivors were giving cover fire.
The knights pulled up and scanned the forest. Another volley. A knight wrenched in the saddle, fell heavily from his mount. Two or three nearby steeds lurched back, throwing their riders. Cries of caution and metallic clangor—
Gonji wasted no time. He scrambled up the hill to where Navárez had groped ahead and then half-pushed, half-pulled the man to where Tora snorted and pawed the mossy fieldstone at his hooves. He hoisted Navárez into the saddle and led Tora the rest of the way up the hill on foot, all the while scolding the animal for its having foolishly followed him down the hill.
“What’s the matter with you, eh, dummy?” he called over his shoulder in Japanese. “You’re in a big hurry to die, is that it? Stupid beast! You’d like to see me walk through this godforsaken country, wouldn’t you?”
Tora, for his part, was too accustomed to these outbursts to be concerned. He said nothing.
Cresting the hill, Gonji halted them and peered below. The shouts of the cavalry could still be heard, but he saw nothing. The chase had seemingly been abandoned.
Comforted, Gonji took several deep breaths to settle himself and clear his head. Then he wiped the grime from his face with a kimono sleeve, seated his swords very properly in his thick sash, stretched his frame to the six feet he could almost reach in well-soled sandals, and strode up to the Spaniard.
He looked just about as fit for inspection as any unshaven, tangle-maned samurai with a threadbare kimono could look.
Navárez didn’t look up from the task of wrapping his injured leg as Gonji stepped near and bowed formally.
“I’m Gonji Sabatake, and you—”
At that moment two riders galloped toward them out of the pine-shroud. Gonji seized the Sagami’s hilt but relaxed almost immediately. The lead rider yanked to a halt and grinned a toothy grin at Navárez, his large dark eyes flicking from the Spaniard to Gonji. He held a horse in tether.
Spanish pirates, Gonji thought.
A glance at these two plumbed up vivid memories of the seafaring rogues of the Spanish Main. Both Navárez and the first rider were bedecked in the florid tastelessness of their decadent profession, from their lurid bandannas and opulent gold earrings down to their magnificent leather riding boots—wrenched, no doubt, from the refined feet of murdered gentry.
But what in the name of the Seven Devils were they doing so far from home? so deeply landlocked? and pitted against Holy Mother Church, with whom, in these territories, they’d best be sided if they ran afoul of Magyars or Turks?
The second rider pulled even with the flashy Spaniard and introduced further confusion. For here was a tall gaunt Aryan bandit whose ragged-brimmed slouch hat could scarcely conceal his patently fair features; the classic portrait of a northern backroad highwayman, his presence was as incongruous among these freebooters as a wolf would be among sharks.
Looking to Navárez, Gonji noted the dark shadow that etched the Spaniard’s features. Fine needles of tension prickled the air, and the second pirate’s grin faded. Without a greeting he wheeled abruptly and gestured to the north, and the two new arrivals galloped off the way they had come, leaving the spare horse behind.
“Julio-o-o-ooo!”
Navárez’ cry went unanswered, an ugly grimace settling over his battle-scarred face. His fist clawed at his wide leather belt, found empty air where once had hung his cutlass, lost in the valley conflict. He nodded gravely, a nod that marked some inner resolve.
Gonji cleared his throat, then spoke again.
“I say, amigo, I’m Gonji Sabatake, and I think we—”
“Agua,” the Spaniard grunted. “I see you have some.” He snatched the water skin from Gonji’s saddle and tipped his head back to slosh the liquid down his throat. Then he freely laved his face until his chin dripped like the jaws of a surfacing sea beast.
“Agua,” Gonji muttered low. “Help yourself.” He eased the water skin away from him and, before taking a pull, said, “You can thank me later.”
The Spaniard stared at him a moment and at last broke into a wide grin, chuckled softly, and then barked out a long throaty laugh that lasted until the burning pain of the leg wound again caught up with him. He massaged the area around the gunshot. Then he motioned to Gonji to board Tora and himself crawled onto the other horse, a groan accompanying the effort.
They looked back down the hill to where disembodied shouts and hoofbeats and sporadic gunfire could be heard in the distance.
“Vamos,”