Gonji: Red Blade from the East Read Online Free PDF Page B

the longbow and drew his swords, a scowl of defiance twisting his features as he regarded the seven puffing footmen like a treed predator. They slowed, yammered to each other in a Germanic dialect unknown to him, then began to spread in a flanking movement.
    The three centermost swordsmen charged. Gonji leaped to his right and skipped laterally along the hill to neutralize their line and isolate an end. The advantage was his as long as he could string them out and strike downward.
    Then a hail of whistling pinpoints bristled the sky. Gonji flattened, choked on a mouthful of dust as shafts chunked into the hard earth, one nestling a heart’s width from his ear. The nearest soldier screamed and dropped, pierced through the neck by his own army’s errant shot.
    Six.
    The squad of bowmen below readied for another upslope volley, but before they could launch, Gonji scrambled to his feet and closed with his foes, slamming down the first and engaging the second with twin arcing blades in a breathless instant.
    Glinting silver-yellow—blue sparks and the krang! of steel—a blink, a gasping rush of spent breath—
    The swordsman slashed, cut empty air as Gonji slipped the blow. The Austrian re-cocked his arm for another strike, and the samurai lunged forward, bound his opponent’s blade in mid-arc with the short sword and ripped the Sagami through dead center of the white cross emblazoned on his surcoat.
    The shocking moment of death. Dead before the gasp of despair had escaped the small “o” formed by the mouth. Before the red gout had splashed to earth.
    Gonji had leaped back and begun circling again. Eyes alight with cold cunning, his hypnotic, patterned movement momentarily keeping his foes at bay.
    The four remaining soldiers spread out to a respectful distance, grunting with contempt. Their squad leader dead, one among them assumed command and cautiously directed them to surround the samurai in a box. Low, nervous chatter. At a word the four unfastened their sword-belts and flung them down in a jangling clatter of hasps and sheathed dirks. As one they slung their bucklers on their forearms and leveled stout steel at Gonji’s coiled stance. Here was a strangely frightening new enemy, different both physically and in fencing style. He was a twin-fanged animal, all teeth and claws and primitive speed and strength.
    Each swordsman swallowed back the coppery tang of fear and advanced a tentative step.
    Gonji didn’t need to understand their language to catch the meaning of the Austrians’ oaths and imprecations. They were afraid, afraid to die when, in the final analysis, all that they were, all that they had ever hoped to be, had ushered them to this moment. And so they swore their oaths and spat their anger, thinking to freeze the blood in his veins when their own was tinged with frost.
    He was wary. Four swordsmen should drop a single man with ease and usually did; but in battle no victories are taken for granted. And misdirected force has a weakening effect, each man relying on the strength of another, relaxing his own.
    The warriors edged nearer. All were oblivious to the clamor on the battlefield below.
    The senses work faster than the thews , Oguni always said. Let them work hand in hand. Sense movement with the feet. Smell the enemy’s courage — or lack of it! — in his sweat. The metal in the blade may be tasted in the air before it reaches its target....
    Gonji rotated slowly. A panorama of anxious eyes, bobbing blades and bucklers. The continuous snaking of his slender swords left no spot uncovered. He emptied his mind and gave free rein to his reflexes. The heavy blades advanced another pace, arms trembling with their weight. Their heft told a great deal, dictated technique and strategy. Boorish insults issued at Gonji from under brows dotted with moisture in the heat. Gonji blinked back the salt burn.
    From somewhere, the burst of a hundred muskets. Nerve ends flared. A soldier bellowed hoarsely.
    And