So intent was he on furtive side glances that he nearly made a fatal error. Mounting a rise in the trail bordered by thick brush and evergreen, he caught the hint of lightning movement just ahead of Toras warning snort-too late to veer.

Snake, was his first thought, but almost at once he knew differently. The snaring vine creepers coiled about Toras forelegs, more following from the brush-thick, elastic brown tentacles-as the halberd came up and slashed down to the right-up, over Toras crest-down hard on the left- Once again to either side as the horse whinnied and fought its way backward.

Green splotches now discolored the pole-arms vicious edge.

Gonji listened to the clacking of reeds in the deadly plants base. Whether they communicated pain or anger he could not tell.

He calmed Tora and steered him wide under the trees to examine the predatory plant from safe vantage, a grimace frozen on his face.

It was the luna carnivora, a popular sorcerers snare. It grew in mated pairs, one on either side of the path, waiting in ambush behind concealing trees. Its endlessly elongating tendrils could squeeze the life from a bull, and once immobilized, the prey was slowly flayed and eaten via adhesive tongues that tore flesh in thin strips. A hideous death. The death of an insect.

Gonji hawked and spat bile from his throat. He viewed the reposing creatures with an ambivalent fixation. The hidden sides of the tree trunks were decorated with skulls, human and animal; the waving plants themselves, adorned with tinkling bones. It was said that in the base of the bole of each luna carnivora were set two pairs of eyes so chilling to the soul that meeting their gaze would cause one to feel revulsion in being looked upon til the end of his days. Eyes that made one curse his own power of sight.

Gonji resisted the urge and pushed on. But he was certain that he had heard that restrained laughter again.

The wood was an eerie place. The moon seemed huge and leering above the trees, and a fine gossamer mist seemed to trail in pinwheels from its dully glowing rim. But the samurai rode with confidence: He had yet to encounter any magic he could not fathom, nor any fabulous beast he dared not confront. But he did begin to wonder in what state of siege-or worse-he might find Barbaso.

The woods thinned again, and the trail conjoined with a broader road. The surrounding area looked as though it must have been under cultivation, a curving ladle of land ridged with furrows of snow. The farms of Barbaso. Farther down the road, bordered by tangled shrubs and a short, broken picket fence, was a country cemetery.

Gonji stopped here and strained up and outward from the saddle, his piercing dark eyes penetrating the moonglow. Several distant graves showed evidence of having been disturbed. Frozen earth had been churned up and strewn amidst the snow. An ill omen in any land.

Craning his neck to scan the road ahead, he proceeded through the pale golden glow of the moons silent scrutiny. Something drew is gradual, wary attention, as he approached it in curiosity.

The glimmer of colored lights bloomed on the snow, once on either hand, before the fire-blossom ring of blue and orange suddenly appeared in fullness, garish in its iridescence. A lovely, doleful young woman sat upon the snow within the imprisoning ring. Her eyes reflected resignation, then a disinterested acknowledgment of the pa.s.sing warrior.

Gonjis own stoic countenance matched hers in its disinterest, and as he was about to pa.s.s, her head tilted in curiosity.

"What battle do you flee from?" she asked in a melodic voice.

"Many," Gonji answered curtly.

"Im so cold and so lonely," she said mournfully. "Will you not end my imprisonment?"

The samurai reached into his sewn-in kimono pocket but found no silver, so he swept an arrow from his saddle-bound quiver, loaded his bow, and casually fired a pa.s.sing shot that skewered her porcelain breast. The arrowhead protruded bloodlessly from between the faery-maidens shoulder blades. She snarled and tore it from her ensorceled flesh, then easily snapped it in two.

"Good karma to you," Gonji said lightly, his eyes back on the road ahead.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she shouted. "So you know of me? Only a coward may see us, do you know that?"

"I dont know about that," he tossed back over his shoulder. "But only a coward would be attracted to your so carefully affected innocence."

She hissed at his back, but he offered not so much as another glance, riding on almost apathetically, bored with what the Dark Powers had made of their local grave-robbing. If this common faery-ring maiden were the worst the ruptured graves offered, he need not concern himself with them.

But again-black sorcery in this territory. The Archmage of Malaguer hed heard of was not given to dabbling in the dread art of necromancy.

He halted Tora and turned when he heard the high-pitched cackling approaching fast behind him. A small figure raced on foot over the snows, bearing a staff and swinging something round his head as he neared the faery ring. The hooting maniac hurled a rock from a slingshot that struck the evil apparition full in the face, bursting her eyeball to oozing ruin. She hissed at him as her hand darted out and s.n.a.t.c.hed the rock out of the air on the rebound. She railed at him in a language Gonji didnt know and threw the rock back. But it flared into white-hot scintillas as it pa.s.sed over the glowing blossoms, disintegrating at once in the frosty air. The wildly laughing little man ran up close to the ring and, turning, began kicking snow back at the faery like some frenzied rooster. The cascading snow turned to steam when it struck the deadly barrier.

The samurais hand gripped the Sagamis hilt as the lunatic ran up to him, laugh crinkles radiating from his black eyes. He was about thirty, too lightly dressed, and sported a ridiculously long cowl that made him look like a jester.

"I like that!" he was shouting, his words punctuated with breathless laughter. "I like your s.p.u.n.k. I may be able to use that. Come on, come see whats up ahead. Lets see how youll deal with that-"

And with that he ran on up the road, chattering incoherently.

"Hold it," Gonji commanded, but he was forced to trot up alongside the strange fellow before he could engage him again.

"Who are you?"

The little man laughed sharply and gasped for breath as he ran, speaking in gulps. "Who am I? Oh no, senor, I dont fall for that. You can...you can call me Luna Invierno-Winter Moon, eh? Hee-hee! I never give...my real name...you may be...a sorcerer, no?"

And he was right, of course. Some sorcerers gained power over a man merely by the use of his true name.

"All right, Moon," he said. "Whats your business?"

"My business? Hee-hee! Im a scavenger. A thief. Living off what the land will yield. Taking what it wont."

"And how is it that you manage to survive-with no horse, no sword-?"

"Ill match my staff against your sword anytime," he replied petulantly, "and my sling against your bow."

"Is that so?"

"And I know my share of magical protections."

Gonji shook his head. "The Archmage of this valley offers little challenge, it seems. The faery-ring maidens hardly require much-"

"Bah, theyre not his! This Domingo Negro-hes a mean one. Doesnt bother with minor spells and snares."

"Then there are other powers present here?"

Moon fluttered his lips with a finger, issuing a sound intended as ominous portent. "Many powers vie here. I thought you knew what you were doing."

Gonji bridled. "Never mind. Whats your business? What do you want with me?"

"I aim to rob Black Sundays Garden of Miracles. And youre going to help-if youve got the cojones for it. But come-see-what-lies-next!" His stamping footfalls underscored each word as he sprinted ahead toward a right bend in the road.

"Im not-" Gonji reined in, face contorted with aggravation at the little ferrets insolence. He kicked Tora into a canter and came abreast of the strange little man, about to remonstrate, when he spotted the tower of the windmill around the bend.

The sky had grown darker, a filmy vapor streaking it with ephemeral tendrils, delicate patterns now discernible where the mist pa.s.sed near the moons disc.

"See here!" Moon shouted, gesturing toward the windmill as it came fully into view in a small clearing, near a farmhouse. Gonji tried to shush him, but to no avail. "Look what hes done-he doesnt fool around, does he?"

And then the samurai saw. His lips curled at the sight. The windmill was flanked by huge barren oaks. And both the naked branches and the gently tilting vanes of the windmill were festooned with the bodies of Spanish troops.

Better that they had been dead than in their present state. For they hung like silkworms, paralyzed and suspended in dark, translucent coc.o.o.ns; murmuring like the mindless possessed, seemingly no longer human.

CHAPTER SIX.

"Looks like the table is set for something," Moon prattled in a singsong voice.

He cavorted about the area, unconcerned with the forms suspended in living death. Now and then he would glance into the sky, cackling nervously. Bounding through the snow with amazing energy, Moon suddenly cartwheeled up to a hitching rail before the abandoned farmhouse, which stood beside the nearer tree. Never stopping, he made an acrobatic leap over the rail, a tumble through the snow, and then a springing double somersault that landed him feet first onto a blood-stained skeleton in the snow that had been picked nearly clean.

Brittle bones exploded in all directions.

"Hee-heeeee!"

Gonji gritted his teeth but said nothing, as he looked again at the hanging forms, mortified. Their eyes had been gouged out. They seemed paralyzed, their exposed heads lolling in slow motion, slack mouths emitting idiot sounds.

He dismounted and began to cut the wretched victims out of the cottony black coc.o.o.ns, one by one. "Help me here," he commanded.

"Are you loco?" Moon replied. "Forget them. Their cause is lost."

"Thats no way for a warrior to die. Honor demands that-"

"What rubbish!" Moon scoffed. "Name me a good way to die! Theyre just hanging meat now."

"Theyre soldiers. A warrior deserves a better death."

"Youre loco, as I thought," Moon said. "What land do you come from that rates one death as better than any other? Come on, theres a warlocks treasure to loot. And if you let this bother you so much, youll never make it that far. There are worse things waiting up the road."

"Im not here to loot anything," Gonji said coldly as he went about his grim business.

Moon bobbed his head scornfully. "As I thought-youre on the side of the soldiers. The warlock will make you regret that, methinks." He crowed a laugh and bounded away toward the farmhouses rear.

The samurai gathered the wretched troopers-fifteen in all-and ritually beheaded them. He piled them before the windmill, wrapping their heads in their jacks. The mystical coc.o.o.n material was strange, dissipating when shredded gently, like heavenly dust. But opposed by resistance such as dead weight, it had been strong enough to suspend full-grown men. Gonji labored over an hour at the grisly task, feeling a mixture of fatigue, wrath, and emptiness of soul.

Ambling grimly to the farmhouse to find dry wood, Gonji found the door bolted from within. In no mood to trifle with resistance, he removed his swords from his obi, drew back, and skipped toward the door. A hard side snap-kick slammed it open with a thunderous report.

"Not bad," Moon said from a short distance away. He wiped his lightly bearded lips with the long ta.s.sel of his cowl. "Your feet are almost as limber as mine." He sat among the soldiers effects, sipping from a wine jug. They had been using the farmhouse as a station or command post.

"The back door was open, though. Still-not bad."

Gonji cast him a scowl and set to gathering the wood. Outside again, he constructed a blazing bonfire that became the funeral pyre of the soldiers. The coc.o.o.ns went up like dry chaff. Moon pranced up to him.

"Somethings not going to be happy about that," Moon warned. "Youll probably be taking their place for dinner, senor warrior. Look up there."

Gonji followed his gesture. The sky had indeed become still filmier, gauzelike; webbing over with ethereal patterns that seemed to radiate from the moon, now reaching almost to the ground in spiraling tracks. Tora, too, had begun to sense the waxing peril, tossing and curvetting from his tether.

"Who are you?" Gonji demanded of the other.

Moon snorted. "I told you-Im a thief. I would steal the warlocks treasure that some would preserve and others would destroy. Those are the choices for any who would course this valley. Neutrality is impossible." He looked up to the sky again, chuckling. "And now I see that escape for you is also impossible; so youll no longer be needing your horse."

He grabbed up his staff and ran toward Tora. Seeing Gonji draw his katana and race after him, he let out a whoop and pole-vaulted over the anxious steed.

"Hah-hah! I dont need a horse-stupid, noisy, nervous animals! I just wanted to show you how altogether impotent you are."

Gonji stamped toward him, sword clenched vertically for a two-handed strike. His mind reeled, trying to make sense of the madmans mania, and thought cost him reflex. Moon somersaulted over him and struck him a pa.s.sing blow, high on the back, with his staff.

Moon alighted, squared up, and they faced each other, came to engagement. The thief executed a series of feints, then a rapid high-low-high spearing attack. Gonji slapped the staff aside easily each time. He timed the next strike and parried, slashing the staff aside with a vicious counterattack, then whirled into a figure eight of glinting steel that drove Moon backward.

With a derisive t.i.tter, the thief somersaulted backward, using the staff for leverage, then sprang into a low lunge that Gonji leapt over. The samurai moved to attack an inside line as the long staff arced around. His foot slipped in the snow, but he managed to deflect the circling blow aimed at his midsection. They clashed and clacked, neither gaining advantage.

"You fence pretty well for a man who insists on keeping both hands on his sword," Moon taunted.

Two circling parries chipped wood from the staff. Then a sudden underhand snap of the Sagami chopped six inches from the staffs end, leaving a sharpened point.

Moon brayed a laugh and blew him a kiss. "So be it, then-you die by your own device."

But when Moon lunged, Gonji snicked out his ko-dachi with an eye-blurring movement, catching and turning the now deadly staff in a twisting X-block with both swords. He drove its point into the snow, and his one-handed swipe with the Sagami forced Moon to release his grip or lose his head. The samurai bore down on the now unarmed, backstepping thief with crossed blades.

"Too late," Moon gasped. "Youve lost anyway-look."

Hors.e.m.e.n ringed them in, descending from the hills. They bore no recognizable colors or uniform. Even in the dark it was clear that this was some mercenary bunch. They must have been forty in number, but they were still quite distant and s.p.a.ced too far apart to close the trap.

What sort of cavalry technique is that? Gonji found himself wondering.

"Ill let you ride with me," the samurai declared, "but if you offer me one-"

"You still dont understand, do you, fool?" Moon said, laughing, backing away in the direction of the house. "I know the way out of here. You dont. You cant escape them. Theyre the warlocks men. You think theyll stop for that cross you hang on your horse? The warlock doesnt fear any symbols of the Church. Maybe theyll let you join them-if you throw yourself on their mercies."

Gonji untethered Tora and mounted. When he scanned the approaching band again, he had to resist an urge to rub his eyes. Had he momentarily fallen asleep? Had he been bewitched?

They were almost upon him now. No more than a hundred yards distant!

What foul sorcery-?... What horses could move so swiftly?

Their hooves seemed to touch earth, yet their advance was uncannily fast. They grew in the vision like a spreading stain upon water.

The samurai walked Tora toward the bonfire, uncertain how he would meet this final a.s.sault, dashing away the lifetime of memories that vied for audience, the juggled factors of the meaningless equation of his life. Then he abandoned all thought, which dragged the bushi down in battle, with its weight.

He decided to stand his ground before the blaze. He drew his longbow and a fletched shaft, preparing for a shot at the advancing riders. He could hear those who approached from behind-there, a second shaft would find ready nesting.

"Hold there!" the leader commanded him, trotting near, his approaching motion now normal, as though he had left sorcerous ground for that of the earth Gonji trod.

The band was composed chiefly of mercenaries, that was sure: Theirs was a motley array of weapons and garb, much as hed seen in numerous free companies hed ridden with and against. But three men were clad of a piece. The one who came near, as well as the pair who flanked him, wore a thin-sh.e.l.led back armor of an obsolete design. There was a strange, soft shimmer to the armor. Its surface looked murky, as if encased in flat black mist. He had seen its like before...where?

The leader rode up to within ten paces, unconcerned with Gonjis bow. He removed his burgonet. A youthful, serene face gazed into the samurais.

"You can put up your bow," he said in a cultured voice. "Im afraid youd find it ineffectual."

Gonji said nothing but complied, for he had by now recalled what armor this must be, and if its lore were true, the black knights claim would be borne out. The knight smiled and bowed curtly in grat.i.tude.

"I represent the Archmage Domingo Malaga y Colicos," he said, pausing before going on. "You probably know him as Domingo Negro. A terrible name, if you represent the rapacious Church." He indicated the cross that depended from Toras neck.