the rolled string probably ruined by the moisture that had by now penetrated through layer upon layer of winter-wrap. The pistols he had come to appreciate after years of resistance to the dishonorable nature of such a weapon still bulged from a sturdy, well-oiled pouch, but his powder had likely gone the way of the bowstring.
Hai, Gonji-san, you’re in fine condition for a—
Suddenly it consumed the narrow mountain trail before them—an outcropping brow of granite, encrusted with snow and ice, blockading their way as surely as any double rank of Austrian Landsknecht Lancers.
“Tora! There before you!” he roared in a cracked voice, unsure whether the reins were conveying the message. “Halt, stupid beast!”
Tora snorted and whinnied, momentarily disoriented. The horse swerved to the right, and Gonji gaped to see the brink of the escarpment over the animal’s armored crest. His withered stomach lurched once. Then they were facing the way they had come. It was as surely dammed by the banked and drifting snow as the way ahead. How had they gotten this far?
Gonji waved at the obscuring white curtain, clinging to Tora with his knees against the wind’s buffet. He saw breathtaking whiteness, extending in mounds that stretched forever. Craggy mountain peaks—invisible only hours earlier—that speared the roiling night sky. A gleaming slickness in the eastern distance that might have been the sea.
And below—an unguessable measure below on an adjacent slope—
The Dark Company.
Gonji could not draw the Sagami. Stretching himself tall in the saddle and resting his left hand on the pommel of the storied katana, he bellowed his clan’s war cry into the uncaring storm:
“Sado-wa-raaaaaa!”
The rumbling began near the permanent snow line, somewhat beneath them now. It was echoed and repeated from all directions, it seemed to Gonji’s ringing ears. It was, he told himself, a majestic, glorious sight, worthy of the attention of any such as he who craved experience of the endless wonders of existence.
It was a fitting way to die.
Even had he been able, Gonji doubted that he’d have used his seppuku sword first, in ritual suicide. He would ride the avalanche to oblivion and rebirth. He had found the only way possible of ending the Dark Company’s ineluctable pursuit of his soul.
With glazed eyes he witnessed the magnificently orchestrated collapse of the lower slopes, reveled in the rolling vibration. When the first rush of snow pelted him from above, he steeled himself for the great plummet. Then, abruptly—as he’d heard told by mountain folk—the awesome event was over. All movement ceased below but for surface sifting on the reshaped landscape. Only the echo remained, and this, too, presently died.
I remain unchanged.
The world has turned to heaven a new face.
Mountains tell the tale.
Gonji mused over his feelings a long moment, resolving to turn the event into a proper waka poem one day. He scanned the slopes beneath the mountain trail, his senses quickening now, his manner more cautious. He could see no sign of the demonic hunters. Could nature have been so kind? Had Emeric missed witnessing the answer by a few scant nights?
Tora nickered and edged left, up the trail again, pawing at the fresh drifts in their way. Something drew the horse toward the granite shelf that had barricaded their path. The vibration had shaken free the snow cover: It was a hollow in the cliff face. A concavity.
Gonji’s breath hissed expectantly. He urged Tora forward, but the steed would not challenge the mounded snow before him. The samurai rolled down from the saddle with an ache-bidden groan. Once he had found balance, he began burrowing through the snow with almost childlike glee, dragging the reins behind him. When he reached the outcrop, he emitted an audible sound of relief.
It was shaped like a great eye socket in the mountainside. And it was more than a cavity. It was a cave. Tall enough to easily admit the pair even if Gonji were sitting the horse.
The samurai led his steed into the darkness, unconcerned with it, caring not at all how he might light a fire or feed them, savoring instead the respite from the storm, the solid feeling under his returning foot circulation. He stamped his wrapped boots, both to enhance sensation and to test the solidity of the new environment. The ground sloped downward into the cave, the drifted snow giving way to smooth stone a short distance inside. Judging by the echo, the cave must be of appreciable size. Soft and indefinable sounds welled up from deep inside the mountain, placing him on the alert, but Tora’s impatient nudges at his shoulder kept him moving.
He was about to halt then, to capitulate to weariness and drop to the ground to take careful stock of his parts, when he noticed the soft, enchanting glow in the indeterminate distance of the cave’s rear quarter.
An almost misty sunset evanescence played over the stones at ground level. Tora snorted wetly behind him. He drew on the reins again and, encountering no resistance, led the horse toward the eerie display. Almost at once Gonji felt the lap of welcome warmth at his face. His soul flooding with relief—though his cold-fettered left hand instinctively pressed at the Sagami’s hilt—he quickened his stumblings toward the phenomenon.
A shadow slithered before him where the darkness parted. Gonji’s breath hissed, and he nearly tumbled headlong in his tensed surprise.
But the shadow was his. The waxing light, emanating from the rocks themselves, now seeped from cracks and fissures in the walls and floor of the cave, serving up his own wavering shadow. He began to fear that he had fallen too easily into some terrible trap when he noticed the behavior of the rock glow: When he moved his hand toward certain of the glowing rocks—for not all the cave’s substance acted this way—their buried light intensified, irradiated from a dull red to hot ruby to autumn flame, lending warmth and light in corresponding measure.
Sorcerous fire—lava light—the foyer of Hell?
It was invigorating, of that he was sure; and for that he cared only, in his present state. Gonji’s hands and feet tingled with life-affirming needles of pain. And Tora proffered no animal-caution against proceeding.
They reached another doorway, the magical light suddenly flaring the way to a large antechamber that was the nexus of a series of tunnels and chambers that quite possibly honeycombed the mountain, judging by their size at the adits. Crossing through, Gonji again found cold stone responding to human need. Strange—the rocks behind him had ceased their glow—he could barely perceive the wind-lashed cave entrance; but the stones around him effulged their welcome as if stoked by an unseen frost giant’s forge and bellows.
It must be, the samurai reasoned at last, that this place functioned as a complete refuge, responding to the need of whatever creature sought shelter here.
Whatever creature sought shelter here.
Gonji’s skin prickled. He glanced about the cavern circumspectly, but there seemed nothing to fear. He had crossed the Pyrenees several times, knew its lore, yet he could recall nothing about this.
Still, something troubled him. There was a long-ago campfire warning. Whose? Concerning what?
He shrugged at last and moved deeper into the system of caverns. Which was to be preferred: succumbing helplessly to the pitiless wrath of winter or matching strike for strike with some unknown, faceless terror?
They
