Gonji: A Hungering of Wolves Read Online Free PDF Page B

cry to freedom-lovers. This the samurai found hauntingly quaint and deeply nostalgic.
    Thus lost in maudlin reminiscence, Gonji had failed to take note of the threat until the gleaming-eyed fanatic had approached to within ten paces and drawn a bead with his long-barreled pistol.
    The bearded young man screamed something at him in a dialect he didn’t know, only the words “infidel” and “Satan” intelligible to him. Before anyone could stop him, the shot was fired, but the ball missed Gonji.
    The crowd pressed in and disarmed the assassin. Buey bounded over a table and charged the man, felling him with a mighty blow.
    Gonji watched and listened and wondered, almost dreamlike, amidst the din and surge of protective bodies that ringed him in. He felt strangely detached from the spectacle, as if he had had no part in it. His spirit withdrew again, feeling the need to flee this mystique that had grown about him, unbidden.
    “I’m weary of this,” he’d said to no one in particular.
    “Weary of what?” Orozco had replied. “You’re an old hand at dodging assassins’ bullets by now.”
    When the piercingly cold night descended, he quietly extricated himself from the tumult, gathered his few close friends, and sent the cursing Buey off in search of a few bottles of good French wine while he and the others planned to sequester themselves in an upper room of a poor-quarter hostel. Orozco again began sputtering about special armor. The others growled in frustrated anger over the incident. Gonji declined to speak of it. His sullen mood had spread through the band by the time Buey returned.
    But before any hearth had been brought to blazing or any wine uncorked, swords had crossed in that singularly unexpected way Gonji had long since come to expect.
    * * * *
    “You will dismount and surrender your weapons at once, monsieur,” the cavalry lieutenant was saying as the samurai and his small party turned a corner and arrived in the torchlit cobbled lane below the hostel.
    But Gonji and his band were not the ones being addressed. They halted and watched the confrontation.
    The lieutenant’s French cavalry troop had been attracted by a disturbance—the rasping and clangor of drawn weapons among a motley party of bickering brigands.
    “You and all your companions, at once,” the lieutenant repeated.
    The leader of the band of nine mounted warriors padded his steed forward three paces and reined in firmly. “I have said, Lieutenant, we shall not. But, s’il vous plait, you may introduce me to the gentleman we have ridden so far to meet. I believe he approaches.”
    The leader indicated Gonji, still somewhat distant.
    “Bandit!” the cavalry commander shouted. “The only acquaintance you’ll make in St. Pons is that of the prison.” The officer glanced back at his troops, who outnumbered the outlaw party better than two-to-one. “Now, for the last time—”
    “Pardon, Lieutenant,” Gonji interrupted, clopping up and stopping at the left end of the massed confrontation. Gonji’s companions flanked him on both sides, fingering their belted weapons edgily. Now a crowd of citizens began to gather, bearing lamps and flambeaux, whispering anxiously. The samurai lightly rested his left hand on the pommel of his katana.
    “You’d be well advised to steer clear of this business, monsieur,” the officer of cavalry advised him sharply.
    Gonji peered up at him closely, his expression defiant. He’d been drawn to the streets by two things: his intuition that this commotion concerned him personally and a curiosity as to just how much influence he wielded in his exalted position.
    He looked the strangers over, his swift, casual glance revealing much to his practiced eye. These nine were rugged adventurers who had seen much action and ridden together a long time. As cavaliers en corps, they were impressively disciplined, their battle-scarred steeds holding fast, their line spread for skirmish against the outnumbering