Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves Read Online Free PDF

worse, certain trusted comrades failed to take part in the venture: Luigi Leone had taken up with a young widow, claiming discontent with his long life on the road; and Father Jan Sebastio, while offering a halfhearted blessing on the pier, had refused to be an accessory to any such militant affair, gently reminding Gonji of his appointment with the pope.
    Disembarking in France, Gonji found still more sinister problems awaiting him. The company was received with great fanfare by a French contingent of the Knights of Wonder. To his horror, the samurai learned that their purpose had preceded them, compromising any hope of silent, secret entry into the golden werewolf’s deadly cause.
    Angered by the bitter irony of it all—he had once longed for the celebrity that now confounded his way—Gonji nonetheless allowed himself to be feted by the French chapter of tolerance-seekers who named him their champion.
    * * * *
    The outdoor festival honoring the celebrated oriental warrior had been held in the sprawling square of St. Pons, near the southern end of the Cevennes Mountain range. The regional adherents of the Knights of Wonder movement had gathered in force, represented even by some of the French light cavalry troop garrisoned in the city.
    An all-day conference, replete with food and drink, benediction and song, was presided over by a local cure, a middle-aged priest who had embraced the peaceful coexistence precepts of the Wunderknechten. Heady aromas spiced the air. The converse of a thousand voices and the clamor of footfalls and hoofbeats, jangling traces and jostling bodies, were dampened by the whip and whine of the icy mistral. Good cheer mingled with the chatter of ongoing disputes, most of which the samurai had been expected to settle.
    Gonji accepted their hospitality with gratitude, but he declined their suggestion that he address the audience en masse and tried to avoid becoming involved in their trivial arguments over details of Knights of Wonder attitudes. He was, for instance, unwilling to mediate their disagreement over the charges of the Wunderknechten crest—the third such he had seen. This one, designed by an artist from Gascony, featured a white cross over a red sunset, inset with stars and all-seeing eyes, the central device cupped in a huge hand, and underscored by a crossed sword-and-palm-frond.
    Gonji winced and shook his head when he viewed it.
    “The vain efforts men make,” he had declared, “to objectify their wonder at the mysteries of life. Always trouble, neh? Wonder is internal, shared with nature on a personal basis.”
    The artist had stalked off in a huff.
    Other focuses of contention were far more potentially destructive to the movement’s unity. There was a faction that spoke of militating against those who refused to accept the tolerance principle central to the movement. Gonji refused even to comment upon that absurdity, so amazed was he at its fatuousness.
    Their penchant for stubbornly segregating themselves into Catholic Knights and Huguenot Knights led to their posing bizarre hypothetical questions regarding the movement’s political and social standards, most of which Gonji sidestepped, to no one’s satisfaction. And when maneuvered into declaring his belief in the separation of clergy and state—with leadership being conceded to the ruling family—he alienated many among both the devoutly religious and the democratically disposed revolutionary thinkers. Only the soldiery’s esteem was boosted by his attitudes toward selfless duty and loyalty.
    Gonji was largely bewildered by the wayward evolutionary offshoots certain of his cherished beliefs had sprouted. He took perverse gratification in but one fact that emerged amidst the Wonder Knights’ diffuse fervor: The name of Vedun—storied Carpathian city that had been ravaged by steel and flame, netherworld beast, and valiant militia defense against an outnumbering horde—had become legend, a feared symbol and a rallying