Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two by Rypel T. C

Author:Rypel, T. C. [Rypel, T. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: historical fantasy, Fantasy, magic, Japanese, sword and sorcery
ISBN: 9781479409570
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2013-07-18T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Gonji stepped up the training’s intensity and complexity.

More controlled fighting was done with steel weapons. Techniques became more specified and involved. Squads were selected. Actual battle plans were laid, objectives defined. Potential killing grounds were studied via Paille’s detailed miniature of Vedun. Those less adroit with weapons were organized into harassing squads which would rush the deadly spiked-steel calthrops and barrier planks into place in alleys and courtyards. Then archers and pole-armed footmen would descend on them like maddened hornets.

Dangerous skills were introduced: rider against footman; pikeman against rider.... In the latter clash Hildegarde proved outstanding. Strong, intrepid, and with an aggressive abandon born of years of hearing exaggerated tales of the toughness of the male hide, she soon became a fearsome sight with a pole-axe to any rider bearing down on her. Garth was at last forced to caution her against ferocity when she had caused two severe gashes through leather jerkins and spilled a rider so hard that he had broken an arm.

And now the injuries, too, increased in proportion to the intensity of training. The elderly surgeon, Dr. Verrico, and his aides were kept busy, stitching and splinting.

* * * *

“Butchers!” the doctor growled in Gonji’s ear. “Every one of you—Klann and all his vermin included!” Verrico jabbed his needle a bit harder than necessary into Gonji’s side for emphasis. The samurai’s nearly healed duel wound had split in a fall from a broken scaffold.

“Easy there, old fool!” Gonji chided. “What kind of healer increases a victim’s pain?” He gritted his teeth and pursed his lips, accepting it stoically.

Verrico grunted irascibly. “What kind of man sets himself up as a victim?”

* * * *

“Would you have hurt Strom?” Garth whispered thinly, watching Gonji work.

Gonji paused and regarded him, smiling. “Nein, mein Freund,” he answered softly, “just frightened him a bit.”

Garth nodded, satisfied. Under Dr. Verrico’s direction the militia learned methods of aiding the wounded in the field. Gonji was in the process of splinting Garth’s leg. Other wounds were described, the treatments broached.

Gonji caught the murmur of fear that rippled through the audience and began to extemporize in his inimitable fashion:

“The human body, you see, is like this piece of leather—” With his sword he poked at the cuirass of a man seated in the front row. Almost at once Gonji’s German was rendered by translators into half a dozen languages. “It has to be beaten and tanned, cured before it reaches its final toughness. That’s how wounds are—that’s the positive end they serve. When they’re treated, when the skin grows back together, then it’s stronger than it was before. The more healed wounds, the tougher the man....”

There were skeptical looks among the more educated, but mostly rapt attention. Gonji assumed an expression of smug conviction and mentally patted himself on the back for this fine bit of prevarication. Hell, it might even be true—that knife-long jagged scar along his shoulder blade, while itching like a column of chigger bites sometimes, certainly was twice as thick as the surrounding skin.

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