were growing bolder, their fears of the haunted Carpathians melting in the heat of acquisitive passion. With the instinct of vultures, they had sniffed out Vedun’s harrowing situation and now lay back in wait.
The locals would call this a bad omen at the very least, and Gonji decided to minimize the import of the sighting.
The Turks saw him and halted at once in their low chatter. Eyes and armament gleaming, they held their steeds steady. Gonji made no effort at concealment, his posture as stony and imposing as the mountains behind him. He had left his longbow with Wilf, but he had not come to fight. Looking back over his shoulder and hissing as if in command, he swept his long sword out of its sheath and pointed it at the Turks. Instantly, they wheeled their mounts and clumped off into the forest.
Rapacious bastards. Scouting, no doubt, and ordered to avoid any fight. Could Vedun be any more oppressed?
A peculiar feeling seized Gonji. He suddenly found himself wishing for one last swoop by the dead wyvern. One strafe at the Turks’ departing backsides.
He shook his head to reclaim his senses. Turning and trotting back toward his comrades, he acknowledged to himself the awesome scale of the dark powers now arrayed against the ancient city on the Carpathian plateau. Experienced a fatalistic portent of doom. Cursed the karma that had befallen Vedun, his loyalty to the city aroused anew.
When he returned he found Wilf and Vlad embroiled in an argument over the farmer’s having brought a forbidden pistol along, instigating the deadly incident.
“They recognized his horse,” Dobroczy kept repeating, indicating Tora, who had now turned his head and was pawing in docile approval of Gonji’s returning presence.
“And we might have convinced them otherwise,” Wilf argued. “Now we can’t get these horses up tonight whether—”
“I like staying alive,” Vlad snarled.
“Shut up, idiots!” Gonji railed. They all snapped to attention. He seemed different now. Sterner.
“You’re in more trouble than you realize, and there’s no time for your petty quarreling.” The samurai fairly strutted before them astride the borrowed horse, his eyes like marbled lava.
“Now I’ll give you your orders, and there’ll be no more...squabbling.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The vestibule chamber, a massive cavern that led to the catacombs, smelled of huddled bodies, pungent moss and earth. Dirty yellow light lapped the stifling air from torches ignited in wall cressets. Hats were removed and jerkins pulled open among the men. Sweat glistened on foreheads, and eyes glittered with anxiety.
Coughs erupted in the thick smoky air. Voices muttered like the gurgling cross-currents of intersecting brooks. In several languages it was rumored that the mighty man of valor had returned. The tall man with the super-normal powers. He who had battered the huge Field Commander Ben-Draba, broken the warrior’s neck before whole companies of his men, in broad daylight; then had leapt the fifteen-foot curtain wall that girdled Vedun, despite the arrow that had found its mark in his flesh.
Simon, they said his name was. Simon, the Beast-Man.
The by-now well-known, accented voice came in German, speaking words that muffled their chatter, mesmerizing them:
“So it’s come to this—fight or die.”
The samurai stood on a table near their center. He was dressed in only his breeches and sleeveless tunic. His daisho were sashed at his waist, their hilts in that ominous near-horizontal angle. Arms crossed over his chest, topknot bristling, he looked down at them imperiously.
An overseer. An accuser.
Some among the massed citizens glared back to hear his tone.
“Fight or die,” he reiterated. “Or perhaps there’s another way. One that nonetheless involves fighting...and dying.”
His gaze lofted over their heads as he turned slowly on the table. Stopping when his glance fell on the iron door that leaned against the rock wall, he peered into the gloom of the catacomb. Knew that his posted guards would be on watch within—faithful bushi who stood on duty at the tunnel exits. He had told them what to expect.
He rolled his vision back again over the audience, arranged in a semicircle of rough-hewn tables. No one dared sit too near the vestibule doorway, the portal through which Baron Rorka had so recently fallen in unnatural death.
Long faces and hollow eyes looked up to meet his stolid gaze. They were all here. All those he had called for. Those Gonji trusted the most—and the least. Few had known that he would be presiding over the conclave. For now whatever secrecy and surprise he could muster would be necessary.
Front and center sat Michael and Lydia Benedetto. The young heir apparent to Council Elder Flavio’s position cradled a crutch at his side. Flanking them were Garth Gundersen and his three sons on the one side; Milorad and Anna Vargo on the other. On Gonji’s left Roric Amsgard sat, an arm around the shoulders of his oldest son. Near them were Jiri Szabo and his betrothed, Greta. On the opposite side were Aldo Monetto, the lithe axe-wielder, and his ever-present companion, the dour archer Karl Gerhard. Deeper in the crowd were the sullen faces of Vlad Dobroczy, heading up a small contingent of farmers; and Paolo Sauvini, accompanied by his master, the blind wagoner, Ignace Obradek. Paolo seemed uncomfortable this night, withdrawn. It was rare indeed when the swarthy, ambitious Neapolitan eschewed the front ranks. Behind him Gonji could make out the hateful black eyes of Boris Kamarovsky, and Gonji wondered what those eyes would register to see the state of his late boss, the ill-fated Phlegor. Berenyi and Nagy sat at either hand of Nick’s wife, Magda. Nary an insult passed between them, for the moment. The bald pate of Anton, last surviving Rorka Gray knight, reflected the lambent torchlight from where he sat near one wall, at the end of a bench on which the entire Eddings family was ensconced, the faces of the men like facets of the same gem: father Stuart, brooding son William, brother John. John’s petite, fair-haired wife, Sarah, seemed dwarfed and frightened by it all. All on that side of the cavern appeared comically tugged as if by invisible strings, their ears cocked toward the cold, red-veined wall, where Alain Paille leaned with hands behind his back. Vedun’s quirky genius, the city’s most versatile translator, snapped out impatient interpretations in any language needed.
“What do you mean, sensei?” Monetto queried tentatively. “About...another way?”
Supportive murmurs.
“I mean that it is like this,” Gonji clarified. “We can foster no more hope of surprise, and time has failed us as an ally. There will be no more training. Every one among you must trust to what he has learned in the training thus far. All Garth’s efforts at seeing Klann have been rebuffed, so sorry. Even I had great hope for such a meeting. For Garth was supposed to make it clear to Klann that we suspect Mord of treacherous and evil designs against both Vedun and his liege lord, Klann.” Gasps of surprise at this disclosure, but more at the samurai’s next: “And that is not the worst.... The fact is that there is a traitor in our midst, who has compromised all our secret endeavors, revealed our plans to the sorcerer.” He waited for the exclamatory hissing to subside.
“You see, my friends, we tread now on the backs of turtles. Never knowing when the ground will shift under our feet. We cannot tell how much of our preparation is known to Klann. Only that Mord knows, and that he can use that knowledge against us whenever he wishes. Add to this burden the fact that the baron and his knights are dead—all save the worthy Anton—and
