Then he thought again of Tora, his noble steed, and his heart sank.
Then he saw the dark form knifing through the water, his hand going to his
katana.
It swam to the dinghy that trailed the galley on a rope lashed to a stern cleat.
The werewolf. Simon Sardonis. Rolling up into the dinghy to climb under a canvas shroud, where he would remain, Gonji knew, until the moon’s disappearance had transformed him back into a man.
Gonji felt a pang of sympathy for the forlorn being who so desperately needed a friend, yet resisted all overtures of friendship out of his shame.
And then Gonji blinked. His breath caught in his throat. His pulse pounded dully in his temples—
“
Iye…
it cannot be…”
They were there. On the shore. There was no mistaking it. A year of resisting the tug of the memory, of dealing with ugly reality, had not erased it for him. The barricades he had erected against believing in them—the near conviction that some fever-spell had created them in his own mind—had not consigned them to mere nightmare. And neither had the avalanche in the Pyrenees destroyed them.
A mile or more south of the village, the Dark Company—those silent, deathless assassins—sat their mounts at the edge of the sea. And though over the distance he could not see their faces, he knew they were staring at him alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They sailed southeast out of the inlet, making an obvious display of the course they’d set to influence possible pursuit in that direction. South of Ibiza, the warship and the carac would then circle the Balearic Islands to sail north for Genoa. Orozco reminded Gonji of the ironic similarity between the islands’ name and that of the samurai’s nemesis, Balaerik. It seemed that even here the evil
donado
had found a way to torture Gonji’s thoughts.
The galley’s progress was slower than that of the bigger ships, and rather than pushing on, it seemed Salguero had decided to hold the other ships back in escort of Gonji’s party for as long as possible. He either ignored or failed to understand the signals from the galley that he should leave them behind, and it was three days—and a position well south of Majorca—before the carac and the galleon languidly tacked northeast amid much waving and shouting of good fortunes.
Gonji had taken ill with an ague, compounded by the fever brought on by his deep shoulder wound. He stood weaving and perspiring at the stern cabin as his fellows departed, watching until their sails shrank to specks on the horizon. He bowed deeply toward their wake, praying to the sea
kami
for their protection. It was a melancholy time. He knew that he had left a sound prospect of sanctuary in Austria for the uncertain terrors of Africa. For the Fortress of the Dead.
Part of him yearned to be diverted from his course, to be relieved of the karma of this duty. Yet another part desired answers to the mysteries strewn across his tortuous questing path.
But for now, he spoke into the wind, as if to a jilted lover, judging by the awkward discomfort that clouded the faces of eavesdroppers on deck: “Farewell, Hispania…except for the Inquisition sadists, you are not what I remembered…infested with giants…insects the size of watchtowers…”
Gonji peered over his shoulder at an open-mouthed sailor whose face had gone gray. Then he sighed and kept the rest of his thoughts to himself.
* * * *
Seasickness was their first enemy. Many of those on board had had no prior contact with the sea, and it was several days of violent illness before some of them became acclimated. Others never quite did. Soon were heard the first mutterings of regret that they had not abandoned this vague and ominous quest in favor of joining the Knights of Wonder in Austria. So miserable was life at sea for those who had not reckoned on seasickness that even the treacherous overland route would have been preferred.
The early descent of a dreary Mediterranean winter did not help matters. The gray mantle of sky seemed to press lower each day. The stiff northern breezes churned the sea foam into a cold, rolling froth that spanked the galley southward, plunging and knifing with a queasy monotony. Even Gonji, who had much experience with the indomitable sea, found himself struggling with nausea for several days, though he knew that in his case the problem was based in his illness and injury.
He encouraged the others with the reminder of two things: The wind that tossed them with such perverse jollity saved them the chore of rowing, and they were seriously understaffed. Also, though they kept constant anxious vigil for the appearance of Spanish sails—and soon those of Turks or Barbary pirates—in the first week the only vessel they caught sight of was a harmless merchant ship fighting its way to the north.
* * * *
A week at sea enhanced camaraderie among the diverse band. There were seventy-seven on board, and someone idly reckoned that they had set a new nautical standard by gathering people of no less than nine different nationalities aboard the same ship. To which Orozco jovially appended: “Nine national origins—yet not a single national allegiance left on board;
thirty-nine
different ideas of what lies beyond the grave; and
seventy-nine
speculations as to what lies ahead in Africa—besides the grave itself.” When asked why the discrepancy in the latter figure by his chuckling audience, the sergeant advanced that he had at least three premonitions himself, each one worse than the last.
And despite similar misgivings shared by all of them, their spirits ran high. Even Pablo Cardenas had thrown over his sullen mood and stoically accepted things as they were. He’d become cordial with Gonji, more friendly with some of the Spanish renegades—particularly Orozco, whom everyone liked, and he lived on the heartfelt hope that he’d eventually be reunited with his family in Spain.
Valentina seemed to revel in their peculiar circumstances. She took regular shifts on watch, helped the men quite capably with tasks of the worst drudgery, and delighted in the respect and importance she was thusly accorded by the other women on board, who numbered fourteen in all. She engineered everyone’s adjustment to the makeshift modes of privacy necessary in the tight quartering and mixed company. Her frankness and earthy humor went a long way toward alleviating time-wasting embarrassment and fixing the limits and standards of decorum. And yet she mustered enough creative femininity to appoint the stern cabin in a way that even the most delicate of the women found satisfactory, though some of them still shied from her: Her salty tongue was a match for any man’s, and few dared challenge her to an exchange of insults. Only Orozco never resisted a verbal bout.
Gonji was pleased that they’d been able to rescue her from the stake. Valentina had brought them a badly needed vivaciousness, and she thumbed her nose at the road ahead in a fashion that caused the men in the band to plumb the depths of their own untested intrepidness out of shame.
The wayward woman of the streets had found a niche, and in the bond she’d formed with Orozco—though he was much her senior—Gonji hoped she’d found still more.
Buey’s imposing presence did much toward keeping the grumblers in line, and the samurai valued the man’s varied fighting skills, which might be pushed to their limit on some dread morrow.
Corsini and his wild Neapolitan bunch were a tonic to Gonji’s ailing spirits. Responding to his old sword-brother’s repeated blandishments, Gonji one day eschewed his carefully maintained dignity for a tilt at the rum cask. A score of men and three women sat below decks exchanging apocryphal tales of the road and drinking to stout health and the continued union of all their parts.
“Avaunt, blades that would dismember me! Avaunt, monsters who would devour my stinking innards!” LoPresti was shouting above the clamor, fisting an uncharged pistol. Michelangelo LoPresti was one of Corsini’s mercenary band. A short, muscular brigand with a broad, smiling face and curly black hair, LoPresti was ever festooned with an array of weaponry that made him look top-heavy. The noise he made when he moved into battle had caused Corsini to nickname him “Klank.”
“What is this ‘avaunt’ shit, Klank?” Del Gaudio asked jokingly. “What are we, limp-wristed
Francais
now? With all due respect to you limp-wristed
Francais
here,” he appended, evoking a rum-soaked round of laughter from the crowd. Another adventurer from Naples, Del Gaudio was a tall, wiry man in his mid-forties with thinning hair, wild dark eyes, and a penchant for keeping a straight face even in the highest mirth. His other penchant—unbridled lust—had seen him take a nodding interest in Valentina, though she fended his innuendos skillfully, and he generally kept his interest in check as it became known that she was Gonji’s woman. Del Gaudio could only shake his head in bewilderment over the samurai’s overt display of indifference toward her.
“All right, all right, everybody shut up,” Corsini was saying, waving a hand vigorously, “and I’ll tell you how I met this man—” Here he indicated Gonji, who sat back slowly, eyes brimming with the warmth of both the rum and the memories. “
And
how Luigi Leone here lost his eye!”
Luigi swore as the crowd roared its approval of the tale to come. The little man’s surname was not Leone. That had been provided by Gonji, when they had shared the deadly adventure whose recounting now stilled the crowd in the wave-tossed hold of the galley. Luigi had been perpetually anxious about the depth of his courage. Gonji had often enjoined him to think of himself as a lion—
leone.
The bizarre event, now some eight years in the past, involved the liberation of the people of a valley in the Schwarzwald from the unholy thrall of their feudal lords—a clan of vampires. Corsini’s tale was laced with nostalgic appeals to the ideals of those not-so-distant days, and to the contradictory aspect of the good money their mercenary company had earned. Most poignantly, with respect for the staunch friends who had died such grisly deaths in that campaign.
By the story’s end, the crowd was breathless, deeply saddened. Gonji’s jawbones worked tautly in his cheeks as he ground his teeth and stared into his cup. Luigi kept rubbing at his eye patch, the symbol of the proof of his courage, which had earned him for all time the nickname Leone.
And at the end, by way of dramatic punctuation, Corsini opened his shirt and displayed the marks of the vampires’ fangs on his neck and torso. Gasps of shock, as he explained that the scarred flesh around the raised pits of the bite marks were caused when Gonji burned away the Evil, purging the wounds with firebrand and holy water, even as Corsini was himself fighting the samurai off, transforming into one of the undead.
Gonji felt his head swimming with the memories, averting his eyes from the others that sought him out in wonder. He returned the thanks and the toast Corsini tearfully offered him.
“Monsters,” Klank LoPresti grunted. “People don’t believe in ’em anymore. Only those of us who’ve lost
buona amici—
”
Simon Sardonis, seated at the stairs, rose quietly and climbed to the deck, pushing past Cardenas.
A pall blanketed the crowd, broken by a few whispers.
“You talk too much, LoPresti,” Corsini said.
Gonji pushed up onto his feet and refilled his cup, then another. He moved up the stairs after Simon.
“Seems like a good idea,” Cardenas observed as he passed. “We may need him.”
“He needs us, too,” Gonji said, narrow-eyed, “whether he wants to accept it or not.”
Gonji found Simon at the prow guardrail.
“Let it drop,” Simon said without looking back at him. “I’m beyond being offended by drunken faux pas.”
“Why don’t you rejoin us below, then?” the samurai asked. Simon shook his head to see the extended cup. “Another hour,” Gonji went on, judging to see the lowering sun, “and you may need this. Did you ever try a good—”
“When I want your quaint diagnosis of my needs, I’ll ask for it,” Simon snapped.
“Speak German,
bitte
,”
Gonji replied. “I’m afraid I didn’t understand you—again.” He still held out the cup of rum.
Simon eyed him peevishly, then grabbed the cup out of his hand, sloshing rum over the rail. “All right,
monsieur le samurai
,
I can play at being—human, just as you sometimes can.” He tipped his head back and slugged at the rum.
“Good,” Gonji said, smiling.
“Lower the dinghy. It’s my time.”
The samurai bowed shallowly to him, watching him amble off toward the deck. But stopping on a companionway, Simon turned and cast him a skewed glance.
“Do you think you could…burn
me
with firebrand and holy water, should the need arise?”
Gonji stared at him evenly. “
Hai
.”
Simon rumbled out a low laugh. “I think you’re probably the one who could, if it comes to that.”
“Would that stop you?”
“
Nein
,” Simon replied. “I am not a vampire.” He began to climb the creaking steps again, but Gonji halted him.
“What’s on your mind, Simon?”
The accursed warrior’s face twisted.
“The full of the moon.”
He bounded over a rail and descended to the deck. Gonji called out to the men on duty to lower the dinghy for Simon’s lonely anguish. Then he saw Ahmed Il-Mohar crouched under the crowned roof of a gun port, tapping the fuse of a cannon with an unlit taper. The dark-skinned Morisco smiled enigmatically and made a small gesture at him.
Gonji abruptly felt uneasy in the way he always did to see Ahmed’s complacent smile. He wondered what was on the Morisco’s mind.
* * * *
“What is it?”
The renegade lancer on stern watch shook his head slowly. “It’s very small, whatever it is. Doesn’t seem to threaten us. It’s just sitting there.”
“Not sitting,” his partner corrected. “Keeping pace with us.”
“I don’t see how,” the lancer replied. “The sails are furled.”
“How long has it been there?” Gonji asked.
“About an hour.”
“An
hour
?”
Gonji grated. “Why wasn’t I told sooner?”
The lancer shrugged. “Sergeant Orozco—he said not to awaken you unless we were certain of danger.”
The werewolf growled deep and sonorously in the dinghy below them, drifting to starboard. Gonji peered down. The small boat bobbed like a toy at the end of its long mooring line.
“Was it bad tonight—for him?” the samurai asked earnestly.
“
Si, senor
,
for awhile, I think. Then—he came out from under the canopy—and
laughed
at me.” The soldier’s brow crinkled anxiously as he searched Gonji’s eyes.
“Laughed at you?”
Another doglike growl from the boat. Gonji saw a glint of huge fangs as Simon opened his gaping jaws to full extension and hissed up at him in the moon’s straying rays. A man’s head might be bitten off in those jaws, with room to spare.
“Simon,” Gonji whispered, “are you all right?”
Something gleamed in the werewolf’s taloned hand. There was a strident creaking sound as of a metallic vessel being crushed. Then Simon hurled the object up onto the deck.
The second watchman retrieved it: It was the rum goblet, twisted now into formless scrap.
Another gurgling half-bark from the dinghy, and one of the men laughed breathily. “Your friend
lobis homem—
I
think he is drunk,
senor
!”
“No,” Gonji rasped sharply. “He had only one cup of—” His attention was drawn to the tiny boat illumined by the cloud-bound glow of the waxing moon.
“Simon,” he called down, pointing out to sea.
The lycanthrope turned slowly to see where Gonji indicated, and it seemed to the samurai that his grotesque friend sported what could only be described as a
canine
grin. Simon crawled to one side of the dinghy as he peered at the small shape. The dinghy listed to starboard such that the watchers aboard the galley thought it would capsize. Then—
Simon drew back, his wolf’s head and humanoid shoulders striving up toward the sky as he howled at the moon. His keening note diminished to a long-drawn baying.
“Jesus-Maria—”
Much of the crew was awakened, pounding feet clattering on deck in response. Some of the rudely startled women in the stern cabin began to scream hysterically despite Valentina’s efforts at calming them. Half of them moved below decks, refusing to sleep so near the werewolf’s nocturnal station again.
* * * *
When Gonji arose in the morning, it was to see Simon hovering over him in the dim ship’s hold.
“Never again,” he said firmly.
Gonji groaned and rolled upright, beginning his stretching regimen. “
Hai—
what was that all about last night? Everyone thought you’d turned on us.”
“Don’t make light of it.”
“Were you…drunk?”
His swept-back silver eyes blinked rapidly, and he seemed to consider his answer carefully. “I…I think so. It was very strange. I think it put the thing—the energumen—the possessed spirit I host—it put it to
sleep
?” He seemed dazzled, like one discovering for the first time something wonderful, yet commonplace and not a little embarrassing.