Gonji: Red Blade from the East Read Online Free PDF

glare. A bawling cry rose from the mercenary leader, his oath clipped by the sharp report of his pistol. A knight’s mount shrilled and toppled on the canyon floor, sending its rider crashing to earth. Two more pistol shots split the air. A bowman at the canyon mouth clutched his chest and fell. A fusillade of arrows whickered into the canyon. Cries of warning. A mercenary shrieked in mortal agony, writhing and tearing at the wooden death spindling his torso.
    Gonji riveted his gaze on the breach in the knights’ line created by the fallen horse in the canyon. He checked the squad of footmen below him; he hadn’t been spotted. He took two deep breaths and nocked an arrow, drew back mightily on the bow, his left side braced against a foot-thick larch. He rotated the bow overhead and down into line.
    Breathe. Hold. Feel. Fire.
    A difficult shot—he was nearly parallel to the cavalry rank. The shaft arced sleekly, slammed through a knight’s arm, bit into the ribcage. The shocked rider spurred his horse and was thrown backward, his foot locking in the stirrup as the beast broke ranks and dragged his metallic ruin through the canyon.
    “Still got it, eh, Gonji-san?” Gonji’s jaw was set with battle fervor. He glanced over the field; still hadn’t been noticed. Good. He turned his attention on the foot soldiers farther down the slope. Perhaps a dozen. But how many bows?
    As if in answer four of them rose in unison and fired their clacking arbalests at a mercenary clawing up the far canyon wall. Two bolts shattered flesh and bone. A wild pistol shot from the mercenaries zanged into the packed earth between the foot soldiers and Gonji, who flattened in alarm, indignant.
    He grimaced. Damned fools! I’m trying to help you!
    The Austrian commander clumped to the head of the cavalry rank, sword raised, and shouted orders. The footmen to the rear of the cavalry massed for an attack. Then a pistol ball crashed into the commander’s steed, unhorsing him. Confusion reigned.
    Time to clear the path.
    Gonji emptied his quiver and laid out the shafts for rapid firing. He dropped to one knee and seated an arrow, braced, fired. A flanking crossbowman seventy-five yards downslope was skewered squarely through the back. The others froze, stared.
    Before they could react, another lay thrashing at their feet, a crimson shaft protruding from his ribs. Ten sallets whirled, their wearers wide-eyed. A third man was knocked cleanly off his feet by the impact of a great cloth-yard shaft that clove his surcoat and breastplate.
    Gonji fired at the last arbalester, missed, and a crossbow quarrel thunked into the larch, splintering bark in all directions. Gonji ducked behind the slim bole and nocked another arrow as the footmen clawed up the slope, low to the ground, howling epithets.
    Then Gonji saw Tora, not twenty yards up the hill, nosing toward him curiously.
    “Get out of here, dummy!” he cried, waving the animal back. “You want to get killed?”
    The samurai spun into the open, bobbed tantalizingly to draw the crossbow’s fire. He launched an arrow that split a shin, the soldier flinging his mace wildly in rage and pain. Gonji rolled behind the tree.
    “Tora— move !”
    A bolt crunched into the ground at Tora’s hooves, erupting stones and clumped earth. Tora got the message and peevishly hopped up the hill at a lazy pace.
    The footmen were almost upon him. One more shot and he’d have to quit the tree’s cover. He nocked, pulled, drew a breath.
    Stepping out on the opposite side, he met the crossbowman’s eyes, dared his hand. Thirty yards or less separated the two archers. A dirk whizzed by Gonji’s left leg; he paid it no heed, blanked out the imprecations of the raging swordsmen.
    The crossbowman aimed deliberately—too deliberately. Gonji’s cloth-yard arrow tore through his breastplate, rent half-a-length deep in flesh and bone, wrenching him backward and deflecting his bolt harmlessly into the sky.
    Gonji cast away