back straight at the monster’s horrid face, drawing the Sagami from its harness and sidestepping in the same motion.
The next lick of the proboscis was its last, the Sagami’s razor edge slicing off its end. The creature’s keening cry made Gonji wince.
Gathering up the halberd, he replaced the katana at his back. The windmill began to shudder violently as the Moonspinner struggled against the rope that tethered its claw.
Gonji made one errant pass at the monster’s horn-shaped, black-fire eyes as it wrestled the rope with terrifying contortions. Then he smelled the smoke.
Moon had set the windmill afire. The mill floor was already ablaze, the flames licking up the walls. Gonji’s own trap had been set against him.
He cast about futilely for a second or two, then calmed himself. He ran to the opposite window, which overlooked the bonfire, the tilting ground of moments ago. Tora, lying on his side, kicked uselessly at the black cocoon.
More immediately below: the long hind body segment of the Moonspinner, clawing and pushing; and one of the windmill vanes.
Gonji exhaled a determined breath, feeling the rising heat waves at his heels. Throwing the halberd as far from the burning windmill as he could, he poised in the window, praying to the kami of good fortune that the monster wouldn’t free itself. Better to die in the leap.
He launched himself from the sill, caught one edge of the vane, his breath jarred from his lungs. But the vane began to shred from his weight, and he slid down the framework. The shaft turned slowly, lowering him even more. Now he neared the struggling bulk of the monster’s lower half. His flesh crawled at the anticipation of its imminent touch.
When he brushed the shrieking monster’s smooth back carapace, he could stand no more. He pushed off and landed in the snow, his back flaring with pain as he rolled hard over the harnessed daisho.
But he was on his feet now. Free. And alive.
He looked up at the blazing windmill. The flames had reached the cap now and engulfed it. Infernal tongues belched from the windows. The monster’s frenzied efforts still had not freed it.
He found his halberd and took up a torch from the bonfire. He ran to Tora, finding his left ankle sore from the fall but paying it little heed.
“Tora—hold still!” he cried. “Easy, I’m not going to hurt you.” He burned the terrified animal out of its restraining cocoon, had some difficulty steadying him, and could not mount until Tora had become reoriented. Rearing, nostrils and eyes flaring against the patches of webbing that still clung, Tora at last allowed his master to take to the saddle.
They made slow progress at first as Gonji burned them a path through the magical webwork. But then the flames spread, preceding them, and all at once Gonji could see into the distance. Into the clear, cold night air. An invigorating chill swept through him as the wind poured through the widening hole.
He wheeled and looked back. The Moonspinner had been burned free of the windmill, losing its claw in the flame’s progress. It scrambled about the base of the fuming windmill in mindless insect terror on its surviving appendages. Then it made two unsuccessful leaps skyward before finally catching the underside of the web and laboriously working its way upward, dangling upside down.
Gonji remembered his bow and quiver and took the opportunity to ride back and collect them, though he had to dismount and pick them up on foot, for Tora would not approach the blazing windmill.
They rode off a hundred paces, and Gonji felt a lunatic thrill to see the awesome spectacle of the flames racing up the webbing with volcanic fury. It was a sight like none he had ever seen. The relentless fire raged through the network in beautiful patterns of heavenly tracery. An ephemeral work of art to please the sky kami. The searching flames at last caught up with the diminishing figure of the Moonspinner, flaring it incandescent. It fell to earth on an angular path, like a shooting star. Gonji gasped to see its supernatural effulgence as it grew in his vision with the amazing speed caused by the weird spatial distortion. For an instant he feared it would engulf him, then it crashed into the snow before the roiling windmill with a shower of sparks and steam.
With a bellow of triumph Gonji dismissed all thought of it to concentrate on the new problem: the mercenary troop on the hills, massing at the east end of the road to meet him. Their distance, he knew, was an illusion; they could be upon him in seconds.
They would have to catch him. His way lay westward; he would not abandon his course over the temporary inconvenience of a monster insect and an army of cutthroats.
Gonji laughed aloud to hear his own thoughts. It was a display he would not have liked others to observe, least of all his father, Old Todo. But his Norwegian mother would have appreciated it. It was the sometimes uncontrollable Western child part of him. He permitted it a moment to breathe and stretch.
Tora kicked up snow as they passed the shriveling carcass of the Moonspinner. Gonji had time for a momentary glimpse of the orange dart of bright flame that pierced the heart of the moon—a sight to inspire waka poetry in some future time of serene reflection. Then he focused on the road ahead. The road to Barbaso. A ribbon in the hills miles away, in a normal spatial framework.
He gained the gentle slopes in a minute’s ride. Several mercenaries angled down and closed in from both sides to snare him. The main force charged from behind.
At full gallop, he nocked an arrow and drew back on his longbow, the flames he’d left behind now rekindled in the depths of his dark eyes.
* * * *
The leader of the black knights gestured for his two comrades to remain at his side. His hand went thoughtfully to the shallow wound at his shoulder as he watched, with amazement, the whirlwind engagement on the hillock three hundred yards to the west.
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