In the adjacent cavern most of the rocks were too large. He selected a few small ones, looked them over as they began to glow, mind racing to fashion an efficient plan. Put them inside his wraps? In Toras saddle pouches? What?

He dropped these inside the coat, where they gathered at his belt. He began to feel foolish. He moved into the main tunnel, heedless of the chanting now. With the Sagami in the crook of an arm, he picked up more glowstones of useful size. He was about to turn back when his eye caught the wash of yellow glare spilling from one-two-nearby caverns.

The stones fell from his arms.

The chanting was mixed with satisfied grunting now, and clearly the latter issued from the brightly glowing caverns ahead. More chants split from the main chorus, becoming localized, nearing his position.

He watched the garish light with dawning fear. Remembered the soft magenta tones that had burned in response to his own bodys needs.

Tora shrilled and bucked in the exit cavern, bellows of savage mirth mingling with the sound of animal panic.

The samurai surged back toward his frenzied steed, skin p.r.i.c.kling. Stumbling once and then again, he gained the entrance caves glaring white hole in time to forestall the monsters from destroying the wildly bucking horse. His roar of fury froze them an instant that would remain locked in his hall of nightmares.

The hunters had returned. Ogros.

Ogros-canibalis.

Two of them. Huge and hairy, whether pelted or sporting their own fur, he could not be sure. They were humanoid, but Gonjis blood froze to see the slightly elongated snouts that flourished canine fangs and long, red tongues.

Cholera-they might be ten-, twelve-feet tall, judging by their stoop.

The nearer one raised the cudgel with which it had been threatening Tora. With a blare of triumph, it stalked Gonji with the shouldered weapon. The samurais thews responded with a high-guard stance that might have been comical in other circ.u.mstances, so disparate were their sizes.

He eyed the growling ogre steadily, his peripheral vision sketching out the hefted cudgels deadly head. One side featured a sort of razor-edged scoop, partially filled with snow. The other side-just razor edges.

The monster heralded its strike with a bellow, and Gonji dove beneath its arc and tumbled into the cavern. The wall where hed stood exploded in sparks of white-hot glowstones. Some of them landed in the creatures fur, and it beat at the scorched spots in primitive fury.

Gonji rolled to his feet with a grimace, burdened by his winter garb. These beasts were faster than they looked. He raised his katana overhead defensively and eyed the second beast, which came on with a vengeance, dropping its slack burden-an all too predictable, human shape.

Tora reared and kicked madly at the second ogre. It hefted its cudgel too swiftly and bashed the cave ceiling, throwing itself off balance. The samurai charged it, stamping left and right, the Sagami gleaming as it whirled through a double feint. The beast swung its weapon awkwardly down on him in a black-taloned simian grip. He spun to avert its descent and slashed the monster halfway through the knee with a wicked rotating blow.

Dark blood spouted from the wound as its terrible shriek blocked Gonjis left ear. It fell toward him, grabbing at the ruined knee, and when its great form tumbled past, the samurais returning one-handed slash shattered its lower jaw, blood and bits of stained tooth peppering the snowy entrance hollow.

Its screams were quickly forgotten in the rush of wind from the first monsters sweeping bludgeon. Gonji ducked too late. One viciously honed glaive point shredded the fabric of his garb, gouging the flesh of a shoulder. The force of the blow twisted him off his feet. He rolled twice before the creatures furious onslaught, then ran out of cave floor as he struck rock.

He was trapped in a corner of the cave.

The ogre snarled to intimidate him but eyed the Sagami with respect. It was unused to such speed and skill in the unwary travelers that were its kinds usual prey.

The monster growled and sc.r.a.ped its weapon menacingly on the ground before the samurais niche, like a man trying to dislodge some dangerous vermin.

Suddenly it realized its advantage and sprang like a guard dog, leveling the cudgel for a battering-ram blow. In the same instant Gonji caught up a dirk from his boot, launching it with an overhand snap as he dodged the plunging metal blades.

The monster howled in pain and rage amid splintering rock. It stepped on Gonjis legs with a clawed foot as he scrabbled away. The cudgel was forgotten. The flesh-eating snow beast tore at the invading knife in its chest.

Gonji cried out with the agonizing effort as he twisted under the monsters huge padded foot. His scythelike rake of the Sagami hamstrung the flailing creature.

Behind, the other downed monster continued to pule in agony, and other sounds approached from within the cavern system.

Gonji heard none of it. He pushed to his feet, his left leg aching badly. His footwork was imprecise and ungainly but the katana struck repeatedly with awful accuracy as it sang in the icy cavern. He leapt in and out, relieving the creature of half a matted paw, opening deep wounds in both legs. He raised his blade for another strike, but a wild backhand blow batted him against the wall, his breath gushing out of him.

His vision swam, and for a moment he was unsure of where his sword lay. He saw Tora in a blurry haze. And the body of a man-Spanish cavalry jack-caved-in face- The great hairy fist caught him up by the waist and pulled him close to those blazing eyes. He felt the creatures hot, rank breath in his face. The crushing grip born of vengeful mortal agony. And he knew its intent. It would crush his head in its canine jaws.

The ogre gurgled something at him in a moist, guttural voice, perhaps a final taunt in its own language. In that instant Gonji drew the seppuku sword in his left hand. His right palmed the short blades forte in a circular pushing motion, crisp and wetly arcing through both the monsters eyes, the bridge of its nose. The foreshortened return plunged the ko-dachis fierce point into the screaming predators throat, choking off its cries.

Gonji dropped to the ground with a groan. A momentary reflection pa.s.sed: Again the seppuku blade, which might someday bring him ritual death, had spilled the blood of another.

Then he was s.n.a.t.c.hing up the Sagami and belting both blades as he led the snorting Tora from the cave, out into an angry silver morning. The packed snow of the mountain trail made a welcome crunch under Toras hooves as he mounted and kicked the animal past the cave, up the cleared trail that continued the climb through the Pyrenees pa.s.ses. Ridged bites in the snow evinced the clearing efforts of the night hunters-ogros canibalis-and their vicious cudgels.

The samurai could hear them bellowing behind, but the sounds receded, and he somehow knew the nocturnal hunters would not change their time-honored ways out of vengeance. Few creatures but man tempted the Fates thusly.

He who defies nature courts the unnatural. Who had said that? A fellow adventurer of days gone by. Which one? He could not recall.

Nor did he look back. The same saddle-blistered philosopher had also told him the proverb concerning the faces of yesterdays dead.

He rode on for a time, counting his pains-the shoulder wound was not deep, but his lower leg was throbbing, as was his skull-and, not surprisingly, yearning again for shelter from the cold, the suns glare. The storm had ended, and as they pa.s.sed across to the Spanish slopes, the pa.s.ses became both less treacherous and less s...o...b..und.

The glowstones, he discovered, were bereft of their sorcerous properties once removed from their environment. He wondered in amus.e.m.e.nt what an onlooker might think to see him reach inside his greatcoat and toss out chunks of useless stone. And only two of the sweet red mountain fruits survived intact; red pulp stained the entire front of his tunic and kimono.

He fed the solid fruits to Tora and settled comfortably into the saddle. Before long, the day being his normal time for slumber, he nodded off, his salleted head bobbing with the horses slow gait. His last thought was of this single similarity between himself and the cannibal ogres.

The only difference being that their slumbering berth never brought them to the icy brink of a parapet, as his did several times that day.

CHAPTER TWO.

Hed tracked the wild boar two days and a night now, at last locating and blockading its lair, though it had led him on a merry chase.

Red-eyed and bone-weary, he had found his days and nights at last becoming reordered, though he had slept little for either since descending the barren Spanish slopes of the Pyrenees. He had spent half a night lying in wait of his pursuers, but the Dark Company either had perished in the avalanche or ceased to find the game amusing. A third possibility was dismissed with a curse and a grim resignation: Perhaps their new tactic was to lull him into false security only to fall upon him in their cold fury two nights, three nights, ten nights down the trail.

If it came to that, then so be it.

Karma.

Upon entering Spain, hed discovered the winter of another world. Milder, evenly snow-crusted, less enervating in its frigid bite. Hed doffed some of his heavy wraps, riding now in tunic and breeches, short kimono, and traveling cloak. His thick tabi and Austrian cavalry boots were sufficient enough to protect his feet.

The northern Spanish winter was an icy natural wonderland. The great waterfalls of the shallow foothill terraces had diminished in force, their torrents abating to sparkle in a clear crystal sheen. The U-shaped cirque valleys shimmered below, their symmetrical beauty and perfection broken only by the brilliance of ice-diamond pools and furrows. By day, a multihued aurora borrowed from the smiling kami of the sky; by night a silent, eerie land of stark shadow, the moons face reflecting off the polished earth.

The dull pain of hunger had begun to paralyze Gonjis keen appreciation of natures art. The poets soul was shouted down by the warriors belly.

Winter forage was proving no easier in Spain than in France. The frozen land yielded little. He had encountered one heavily guarded caravan from the silver mines which, upon espying his half-breed Oriental strangeness, had taken him for an unsavory character and warded him off with brandished weapons, refusing even to allow him near enough to speak. The single tiny village hed happened on had been inhabited by the sort of superst.i.tious peasantry that had long been a bane to him. Doors and windows had been locked and shuttered in his face; weapons leveled from arrow loops. Hed found no fish, his efforts at trapping game proved futile, and hed persuaded no animal to drop dead at his feet-although Tora currently headed the list of beasts upon whom he wished such a fate.

They had discovered the wild boar scrounging for food in a copse of slender trees and hardy scrub. His bowstring having already snapped in the process of stringing, he had placed his faith in his black powder. Loading calmly and quietly, he had approached the boar on foot, gained a surprisingly advantageous position, and squeezed off a pistol shot that flashed and fizzled ineffectually. Cursing the ign.o.ble contraption as hed done many times before, hed watched the startled boar run off at an easy gait, snorting scornfully at his effort.

Thus had begun the chase.

Gonji had tracked it on horseback for a day and part of a night, feeling alternately foolish and frustrated, uncertain what hed do when he caught up with it. Hed lost it once when it went to ground, found its lair in another copse near a fifty-foot cuesta, skimmed its back with his sword when it had surprised him with a sudden erratic charge-and resumed the chase.

Hed lost it again, then found it hours later, worrying the carca.s.s of a small rodent it had caught as if in mockery of his own pathetic hunting luck.

Now the hunt had begun for fair. Hed galloped after it endlessly across the snowy plain, twisting and turning, rushing it time and again, discovering that the spear hed fashioned was a poor subst.i.tute for a proper lance in the sport of pigsticking. And, sadly, that Toras old wounds and the ravages of time had slowed the staunch warhorse as hed long suspected.

But theyd pressed on, driven as much by pride as by hunger. Twice more hed raked the boar with spear and the katanas vicious edge. Then, unexpectedly, as if at last understanding its advantage, the boar had turned and charged. For an instant Gonji had thought of the Dark Company, whether they had been as surprised to see him turn as he was to see the wily animal bear down on him. Then the boars lancing tusks had caused Tora to lurch backward, throwing Gonji to the ground. Only the snow had kept the samurais tailbone from taking up residence in his empty belly.

Now he knelt on one knee in the snow before the wild boars lair, with the Sagami leaning on his right shoulder. This would end the way it should have started.

"Stupid beast," he spat at Tora, fifty yards off. "Doddering old drayhorse! Youre home now. Cant you show some pride in your native land?" His backside ached with every move.

A golden sunset shadowed the snowy wasteland, sketching the absurd churned-up ruin his hunt had made of acres of virgin snow. He hoped no enemy had observed any part of it.

With a snort of challenge, the boar plunged at him from the gathering shadows.

Roaring at its tormentor, angling its eight-inch tusks for a rending blow, it surged through the sluicing white mist, its breath pluming hotly.

Gonji feinted, twisted out of its path, and struck it across the shoulder. The deep cut spilled redness onto the snow in the animals drunken three-legged progress.

The boar charged Tora in a wild, bellowing rage. The chestnut stallion whinnied and bolted. Gonji swore and sprinted after the injured prey, watched it circle back almost lazily toward the lair. Then it stopped, fixed him in its black, hate-filled eyes, and roared after him again in raging pain.

The samurai raised his blade high over his right shoulder, hands spread along the hilt, fingers caressing the sharkskin in a grip that almost looked slack. He struck the wounded boar a blow across the hindquarters, downing it. A rapid double slash- Gonji shouted to the twilight sky to join him in his hard-won triumph. His mothers Nordic ebullience came through in a brief impromptu dance of victory. He quickly composed himself and set to finding wood, his mouth watering.

But his prayer of thanks to the kami of good fortune was premature.

Hurrying to secure what seemed good kindling, he hastily prepared a campsite in a hollow at the base of the cuesta. Defying caution, he built a blazing fire and warmed himself briefly, savoring the tantalizing feast to come.

Moving out into the moonlight to relieve Tora of his burden and settle him for the night, Gonji realized his mistake too late. He saw the danger light in Toras eyes, the fear in the horses tossing head, before he heard the sifting wind of the horrors descent on his camp.

He froze an instant when he saw it. The pirouetting of its great wings caused him to believe himself under wyvern attack again. But this creature was smaller, more birdlike than the acid-spewing flying dragon. It dovetailed downward in an impossible air ballet, scarcely moving its wings, until it hovered a foot above the carca.s.s of the boar.

Calling out to Gonji in a mewling, yammering singsong voice filled with sentient taunting, it grasped the great bulk of the boar-well over a yard in length-and flapped laboriously upward. Its taloned feet and clawed humanoid hands clutched while its powerful wings beat against gravity. Slowly it rose, making steady progress toward its roost atop the cliff overlooking the crackling fire.

"Iye," Gonji breathed, eyes filled with the vision of the departing carca.s.s, the prize so dearly won.

"Noooooo!"

Gonji drew the Sagami as he ran through the crunching snow, yielding it impotently in his right hand. By the time he stood beneath the lofting creature, his katana in pointless low middle guard, it was already cresting the cliff. He watched it disappear over the edge with an anguish that a lifetimes discipline could not keep from his face.

Above, the bird-thing peered over the brink, its supple beak emitting a mocking warble. Its piercing, intelligent eyes gleamed with self-satisfaction and cunning. It made a swift motion in the moonlight.

The boars genitals dropped in the trampled snow beside Gonji.

The campfire tinged the area with sultry hues. Before its glare knelt the samurai, all thought dispersed by his deep meditation. His shadow loomed large against the base of the steep cuesta at his back. Before him lay the sheathed Sagami, storied sword of uncounted legends.

His methodical ritual ablutions completed, he dressed, retied his topknot just so, and lashed his daisho-the matched set of long and short swords-to his back with the harness hed used since Vedun. He placed his tanto in his boot, then carefully sifted through his remaining black powder, obtaining what seemed enough dry charge to load both pistols. These he loaded and spannered, fixing them at last inside his obi. Then he rose and grimly eyed the roost above, where his tormentor whooped and nattered.

It peered down at him, scuffed the ground with a hind claw. A piece of the boars entrails dropped straight at Gonji. The samurai batted it aside with a swift circular block.

He tied around his forehead the hachi-maki-the headband of resolution. All the while, barbed thoughts dropped into his mind. Leaden ingots of karma, dragging down ones soul, Gonji-san...

He was a fool, a rabbit, a b.u.mbling failure. His ancestors turned their faces in shame. Old Todo would order him to commit seppuku at once, if he found him incapable of protecting even his own victuals. His hated half-brother Tatsuya-hai, even dead Tatsuya must laugh from the world unknown: See the blonde tigress cub-even the birds mock his skill!

The merest trace of a smile perked Gonjis lips. He banished thought, clearing his mind for the encounter to come. Calmer now in his determination, where once the antic.i.p.ation of single combat had filled him with the eager fury of an inferno.

The wonder of lifes vicissitudes.

On his left hand he wore a spiked gauntlet-the nekode-as an aid in scaling, after the fashion taught by the old ninja master who had secretly befriended an artless young samurai against his fathers wishes. Then, emptying his mind and allowing the karumi-jutsu climbing technique full sway, he began to ascend the slick wall of the cuesta.

Digging and sc.r.a.ping, Gonji utilized the nooks in the almost sheer cliff face. The nekode gouged c.h.i.n.ks where there had been none. He used his fingers and toes for purchase, clinging like a spider, teeth gritting with the effort. He fought off the numbing chill, flexing and relaxing muscle groups in turn, shifting his weight, feeling out the easiest advance upward, testing and probing, lightening his body as the time-honored, almost mystical method had taught.

The first three yards came easy. Five. But how high to the nest? Fifteen-eighteen yards?

Wygyll.

All at once, as the monster bird took note of him with a quizzical shriek of disbelief, Gonji remembered its name. Not the name it would be called here in Spain. That one he could not recollect. It was the English name he remembered. The English, he had heard, had their names for everything. Things they knew well; things they would not admit to believing in.

This creature was a member of an old race, older than man. Scavengers who roosted on cliffs and ledges.

Wygyll. The wygylls aerie. Forty feet above.

Something stinking and moist landed on his shoulder. Some part of the boars viscera. He shrugged it off. Soft crumbling sounds descended past his position. Then a rock cracked him on the skull, scintillas of starlight lacing the momentary blackness of his vision.

"Cholera!" he swore, his favorite European imprecation having the venting effect it sometimes manifested. He shook his head to clear it, sure that he had been cut. His skull throbbed at the point where it swelled.

Above-the soughing of wingbeats as the wygyll lofted from its perch. Gonji steeled himself, wary but relaxed.

Must maintain the hold, he told himself. What was their favorite technique? Ah-four claws extended; clamp with the hind, rake with the fore. A simple attack pattern that could leave an ox in shredded ruin.

In his peripheral vision he could see the fifteen-foot wingspread looping lazily about the area, tipping gently at the extremities of its flight path to sail into a graceful figure eight knotted behind the clinging samurais unprotected back.

Without warning the air ballet ended. With a war cry more penetrating than the teeth of the wind, the wygyll dove. Wings trimmed, talons tensed for a strike.

Gonji willed his thews to relax. He inched up another span. Felt the rush of the approaching marauder. Sensed the closing distance between them. He drew a pistol smoothly, c.o.c.ked it, turned outward from the wall, maintaining a three-point grip- But it was coming on at too indirect a tangent. He knew he was firing from so oblique an angle that he threatened his own precarious hold with the recoil.

The wygyll did not recognize the menace the firearm posed. It swooped in with searching talons eager to rake and tear.

Gonji fired-splfszzzz.

"Sonofab.i.t.c.h-cholera!"

He gathered his senses at once, even as the wygyll cried out in terror of the misfired pistols spluttering powder. His right hand flung off the useless piece and went to the hilt of the Sagami at his shoulder. But the wygylls fear of the harmless pyrotechnic caused it to swerve into an ungainly tumble. Feathers fluttered off its wings from the violent directional change.

The flying predator soared from side to side of the broad cirque valley, whether gathering speed or wrath, Gonji could not tell. It strafed Tora once, twice, the valiant steeds hooves lashing up to ward it off.