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magnificent flurry of sharp parries in all four quadrants—
    And Gonji dropped to one knee, ripped a scything slash under the Frenchman’s guard, and sheared through his brigandine, broken lames flying off in all directions. A thin line of blood leaked from the edges of the cut fabric.
    Two of Perigor’s men rushed forward to his aid. Waving them off and wincing a bit, he stepped back a pace and saluted Gonji.
    “Touche,” Perigor pronounced loudly. “And concession of defeat.”
    “Non! That’s but one touch!”
    The thick-chested axe-wielder from Perigor’s band had stamped up beside him, scowling and shaking a fist.
    Perigor shook his head. “You haven’t been watching closely enough, Brett. True, that was the first bloodletting—fortunately,” he said, gingerly bringing up a reddened hand from the superficial belly wound. “But that was the third—or was it the fourth, monsieur?—of his wounding blows. The samurai is equal to his legend as a fencer. He struck me repeatedly, Brett, with the edgeless forte of his lithe blade. If your intention, monsieur, was to serve up a lesson, the point was well taken. I yield to your superior ability, eh, this time.” He grinned his broad grin and put up his rapier, moving forward to clasp Gonji’s hand.
    “You are right, monsieur,” Gonji told him. “ Escrimer is a good test indeed. You are a premier fencer and a man of considerable honor, Monsieur Perigor.”
    He bowed to the highwayman, and a cheer-filled, spontaneous outburst of appreciation sprang from the crowd, their tension subsiding. The French knights, however, remained wary, their commander uncertain as to whether to pursue his accusations against the strangers.
    “My men and I ride with you on your quest—provisionally,” Perigor told Gonji, tipping his head and scratching his cheek thoughtfully. “We must speak.”
    “Hai, that seems necessary.”
    But the warrior named Brett strode up beside him again and regarded Gonji’s companions with hostility, “I have no wish to talk, unless it be with my axe. I have no desire to join this…mutual admiration fellowship. You didn’t say anything about siding with goddamn Spaniards.”
    He spat audibly on the ground between them, and Buey took a threatening step forward, teeth and fists clenched, eyes visored to shining slits beneath his beetling brows. The pair seemed well matched, for although the Ox was a few inches taller, Brett had a chest like the prow of a galleon and arms like mortar barrels.
    Perigor made a mollifying gesture, and the young cavalry officer clopped up to the volatile, jaw-jutting parties. “Have a care, monsieur,” he told Gonji. “I wouldn’t trust these bandits beside me if they rode head down over their saddles.”
    “Be at ease, Lieutenant Noyes,” the samurai replied. “I think Monsieur Perigor knows that his pledge of fellowship must necessarily come under narrow scrutiny. Survival demands caution in these times, neh?”
    Perigor mopped his brow and bowed. “No man would be a worthy ally who did not take such pains. Corbeau—the wine—the Moselle—”
    A cadaverously thin mounted adventurer nodded and removed his burgonet, then dismounted and brought a sack whose contents—three bottles—clinked as he shifted it to his bony shoulder. Corbeau then donned a roundly beaten slouch hat and presented Perigor with another, a more foppish example, sleek and unmarred and topped with a long gray feather.
    “Here’s a vintage they’ll not have graced you with, I’d wager,” Perigor said, uncorking a bottle and passing it to Gonji, the samurai declining out of his sense of decorum.
    “A vintage the merchant who carried it can no longer boast of either,” one of the French brigands added archly, too softly for the soldiers to hear.
    Perigor chuckled. “This is Normand Gareau, a welcome blithe spirit when the road grows long and wearisome. The burly fellow is Brett Jarret—mind his grip.”
    Gonji bowed shallowly to