boasts like merchants hawking wares in the marketplace. Only here the object was to sell not goods but intimidation. Spheres of privacy were sacred: A misapprehended stare could lead to a fight; a fight could lead to death.
Caution. Caution and tact. But never timidity.
As Gonji’s gaze passed over the international assemblage of fighting men in their wild array of sabers and broadswords, helms and chapeaus, jerkins and cuirasses, leather and hide, he was acutely aware that he was the center of attention, as was to be expected.
The stranger in town. Now began the careful assimilation into the group. It was all right; he had played the game many times before. No Magyars about. No encircling by bullying cliques as yet. And just as the thought came that his exotic uniqueness had passed first inspection, he caught the hot glimmer of two pairs of obsidian eyes.
Two fur-trimmed Mongol renegades transfixed him with lances of pure hate. There was no love lost between their peoples.
Gonji walked Tora past an unhitched dray that must be the field mess wagon. Scattered around its bed were grimy pewter plates and cutlery and an assortment of barrels and kegs. Jocko busied himself at a small fire above which was suspended a bubbling kettle of some unsavory looking mold-colored mulch. Gonji supposed it was stew, though it reminded him of the belching cone of Mt. Fuji.
The old duffer turned at their passing. “Nice animal,” Jocko said, scuffing over a few paces to stroke Tora’s muzzle. The stallion nickered contentedly. “We gonna take good care o’ you, fellah. What’s his name?”
“Tora.”
“Tora—a good name. Real fine name.” Then, just as suddenly as he had come over, the grizzled old man had returned to his foul ichor.
Gonji smiled as he brought Tora to the knot of shuffling horses and unsaddled him. He was proud of the noble steed, a strong, fast, dependable stallion who had somehow managed to live through a bizarre tapestry of adventures.
He had been complimented on the horse’s name before. When he had bought him—after a mad adventure during which he’d found, and then lost, the wild stallion—the handlers had agreed that Tora was a fine name, though in Japan Gonji would no sooner have called his horse Tora than an Englishman would have dubbed his mount “Tiger.” But in Europe the name had a splendid ring.
Tora. An equine god of ferocity.
The tinkling siren-song of a shimmering crystal brook beckoned him. Beautiful, it was, in the orange drench of filtering sunset, now that the ominous storm clouds had blown far eastward. A few kegs chilled in its sparkling wash. Gonji stripped off his kimono and tunic. He undid his topknot and bathed his upper body in the refreshing briskness.
Feeling better for the effort at cleanliness, Gonji loped back to camp with a lighter step. He stopped at his saddle, relieved to find his mother’s ceremonial sword still jutting from its cinched position. Foolish thing to forget. He wrapped it and tied it down securely under a deep saddle pouch, from which he also produced a throwing knife to replace the dirk he had lost in the valley. Strapping this inside his kimono, he strode easily toward the mess wagon, hunger rumbling in the empty chamber of his belly.
“How’s that venison?”
“Ain’t got time now, pilgrim—outta my way!” Jocko had lifted the sizzling kettle and lurched around, almost knocking Gonji down as he waddled past like a herniated ape. He had spoken only Spanish before, the main language of the company. Now his urgency had welled forth in his native Italian.
Gonji chuckled. “Make it fast, I’m starving!” he yelled in serviceable Italian.
The graybeard stumbled around to face him. His arms trembled with the effort to keep the steaming cauldron off his ample belly, and his brow knit in disbelief.
“I’m Sicilian,” Gonji said with a straight face.
Jocko bellowed a gravelly laugh that rose in volume and mirth until the glade echoed and hushing yelps issued from several men. He lumbered over to the roasting deer on bowed legs and dropped the kettle with a dull thud and a hissing splush! Then with a long pitted carving knife Jocko set to breaking the deer, hacking off a slab of venison and plopping it onto a silver platter.
“All right, you saddle-sore vermin with blistered behinds!” he cried in Italian, still looking, still laughing toward Gonji. “Come on up here and cram yer pig snouts full, hee-heeeee!” He was obviously delighted to have an audience.
“Look at ’em come!”
Gonji grinned and scratched his stubbly jaw, stretched broadly, touched the ground with his palms. He sat on a cask and leaned on one thigh, the other hand resting casually on a sword hilt.
No hurry. It wouldn’t be proper to go rushing into the meal line, not for a newcomer. There’d be plenty.
The deer meat smelled maddeningly appetizing. Looking at it, Gonji felt like a winter-gaunt wolf before a snow-blind lamb. Funny. It had taken a long time to acquire a taste for animal flesh, but once seeded, the roots ran deep.
He felt rather good. Still an outsider, but on the threshold. A warm human aura permeated the gray twilight and evening chill, the first campside companionship he had known in—how long? Quite a while. Not a monster or sorcerer in sight, he chuckled to himself. And even better, he had shared a rare laugh with another human being. A sincere laugh of common understanding. That was good, hai, very good. Sometimes that could turn to genuine friendship. And with a bit of luck a friend might even live long enough to be remembered.
“Hey, bárbaro!”
Gonji rankled at the unpleasant shattering of his reverie. He looked up at the stocky Navárez, who stood grinning with thumbs hooked inside his broad belt, the ubiquitous Esteban’s jackass jaw suspended over his shoulder.
“You decided to stay,” the captain observed, “and we must discuss your...commitment, no?”
Gonji pursed his lips, stared blankly a moment. His eyes flitted to Navárez: fresh blouse, new gabardine pantaloons—puffed a bit at the right thigh, where a heavy wrapping must bind the musket wound. He took in the cutlass in its ornate gold-filigree scabbard; the sleek pistol with the argent fleur-de-lis handle. Decadent elegance under a cocked hat.
“There was a matter of payment,” Gonji said. “A small advance would suffice, I think.”
Navárez smiled crookedly. “The Señor did save my life. I think we can trust him for a month’s advance.” He fluttered his fingers in a gesture of request, and Esteban grudgingly produced a hide pouch. The captain counted out ten golden coins, chinked them into the pouch, pulled the drawstring, and tossed it to Gonji.
The samurai hefted it, nodded, and set the pouch on the cask next to him.
“All right—now,” Gonji said, rising and stepping onto the cask with one foot, “about this commitment you speak of.”
“It is a simple matter, really,” Navárez said. “Or maybe, not so simple. It depends on each man. We have a ritual we do each month at the darkest hour of the full moon. As a group we chant an invocation, a kind of prayer of faith in the sorcerer Mord. It is he who protects us, brings his great magick against our enemies.”
“His protection didn’t seem to help back there,” Gonji said as innocuously as he could, nodding toward the west.
