stupid bravado. It’ll never work. It’s sheer suicide to take these ill-trained citizens against a veteran army.”
“Who are you to judge? What do you know of our training?”
“I’ve watched. I was even with you during the entire cavalry exercise in the rain that night—”
“Then you’re a poor judge of military matters. They were quite sharp that night, despite all their discomforts. And that was but a fraction of the active militia. Did you also miss the display of group-mindedness in their presentation of—”
Simon grunted. “Engagement with phantom enemies is rather different from the real thing.” He rose and returned the ointment to its niche.
“Then you should have seen the attack on Zarnesti, when they freed the village from a whole company of mercenaries. They took it without a single casualty. I was quite proud of them that night.” Gonji’s eyes narrowed and he added softly: “Most of them.”
Sardonis refilled his wine cup and sat on the cot, resting his chin on a fist. “So what will you do next?”
Gonji smiled thinly. “I have a plan involving—” The smile faded. “Why should I tell you, if you refuse to help?”
Simon raised his head indignantly. “I said I’ll stay to help eliminate Mord.”
“Will you aid the militia, if it comes to war? Many must die, I fear—” The other was shaking his head, and Gonji’s voice became earnest, intense, full of painful frustration. “Feel you no sympathy for the little ones, Monsieur Christian? The children whose lives may be destroyed in this madness?”
Simon cast the hard-packed earth a flickering glance, inhaled deeply. “Oui...I do—for the little ones. But not for what they become when they grow older—hateful, craven worshipers of the unblemished, of the normal. Stoning and burning every unfortunate soul, turning their backs on every plea for mercy from out of the darkness....”
Gonji bowed his head in sympathetic understanding. But his eyes shone with expectation.
“There’s one other thing,” Simon advised. “Whatever is done must be done after the full moon, two nights hence.”
The samurai stared at him a moment, selecting his words carefully. “What will you do...on that night?” He indicated the broken chains behind the overhanging cloak.
Simon averted his eyes. “I’ll have to be far away...or perhaps at the castle.”
“Iye,” Gonji disagreed at once, “we must act in concert or not at all.”
“It was only a thought. Only an idle, boorish thought. In any case, I would likely die there, and I have no wish to die before I’ve achieved my purpose.” He paused. “And I’ll not allow the Beast to vent its bloodlust, whatever the stakes.”
Gonji considered the dread portent of the man’s words. “How many do you think you’ve killed—in Klann’s command, I mean?”
Stung by the naked morbidity of the question, Simon became uncomfortable. His lips trembled as he spoke. “His...roster is probably dotted by deserters by now. A dozen? A score?” He shrugged impatiently. “I haven’t kept count. What sane man keeps a tally of those who’ve died by his hand? I quit trying to take on more than two at once a few days ago, though. I’m not the greatest swordsman, and some of these rogues can fight.” He patted the raw scowl that was the arm wound. Then he glared at Gonji. “Why do you report to that captain?”
Gonji jolted to attention. “You mean Kel’Tekeli?”
Simon nodded in grave assent, and Gonji explained the double-dealing game he played as a counter-agent.
“I suspected as much,” the man of legend told him when he had finished. “You’re damned fortunate, though. Once I thought to kill you when I saw you with him—the night I dealt with that child-murdering commander.”
Gonji held his gaze. “You might have found that difficult.”
Simon laughed harshly. “I admire your fearlessness in badgering me. I’ve seen little of that. Unless, perhaps, from the boy...Mark. Strange, what one finds comfort in. I’ve already spoken more to you in the past hour than I have in the past several moons. It helps to drown the vicious Thing’s whispering....” He reddened, his voice trailing off, the shame of its mention swelling in him again.
“Even a leper should not be so ashamed of his lot as you are of yours.”
“Not the same,” Simon replied grimly. “It may be that—only Klann would truly understand.”
Gonji was anxious to dispel his ill humor. He rose noisily and stretched. “I’ve been here before, you know,” he said cheerfully.
“I know your scent.”
Gonji blinked. Then the creeping apprehension assailed him again, the concern that Simon might know of his involvement in the monastery outrage via some similar inhuman power. Iye—no, his reason told him. I’d have known by now, given his temperament. So it must remain a secret for the nonce, at least.
“You ask nothing of my quest,” the samurai said, “though I’ve said it involves you. Are you the Deathwind I’ve sought all these years?”
“Nein,” Simon retorted sharply, “stop calling me that. It means nothing to me, nor does your quest.” But Gonji realized that his disappointment must have shown, for Simon appended: “I wish only to be a man, not a legend.”
For a time they spoke nothing of consequence, finishing the remains of the food and keeping to their private thoughts. Gonji felt his strength returning, grateful, for he knew he might need every iota in the ominous days to come. Outside it began to rain, the droplets rustling through the vine creepers at the cave entrance like a rodent horde. Yet there was comfort in the sound, solace in its very normality, its cleansing of the earth’s wounds. Gonji had begun composing a waka to the rain as he relaxed, when the vague unease he had been feeling blossomed into an agonizing remembrance.
“Cholera,” he breathed, reaching down and sliding the Sagami from its scabbard.
From the stool where he sat skimming through a scroll, Simon looked up with wary curiosity.
Gonji dropped to his knees in the dirt, the gracefully curved katana held before him like an injured child.
“You’ve scarred my soul with your wild man’s anger.”
The magnificent blade, a masterpiece of Japanese swordmaking skill, bore a fierce nick halfway along its forte.
“It’s a sword,” Simon reminded.
“It’s my soul!” Gonji shouted, but at once he regained composure, sighing heavily. “It’s a rare European swordsmith indeed who might heal this.” He shook his head morosely.
“You’re a knight in Japan?” Simon asked with mild interest.
“A samurai,” Gonji answered, and for a time they spoke of the Land of the Gods, and of Gonji’s quest, and his longing for the ethereal shades of home. At length Gonji’s attention was again drawn to the tiny figures carven of wood that reposed in a gouged wall niche.
“May I examine them?” Gonji asked. “They remind me of the haniwa of my homeland. Clay statuettes in the tombs of ancient warriors.”
Simon seemed about to object, but he looked away in apparent acquiescence.
The samurai took down each in turn. They were delicate figures of a fragile beauty and charm that were all the more disarming in view of who it was that created them. There were figures of Rorka knights; one of the dead boy, Mark; others of Flavio and of Tralayn; and most surprising of all, there was a marvelous likeness in soft pine of Gonji himself, replete with sashed swords.
He looked to Simon in wonder, but the man was again regarding the scroll with evident discomfiture.
“I