by DeadMan
“Wanted to watch you handle yourself. You did fine. Get some sleep. We’ll have to be on our toes tonight. They’ll try again. Once isn’t enough to convince that sort. Here. Let me take care of this mess. That’s what an esquire is for.”
The sun had not drifted far westward when Gathrid was wakened by an argument. One voice was Rogala’s. The other was unfamiliar, and spoke too softly to be understood. When the dwarf slipped inside their resurrected tent, the youth asked, “What was all that?”
“Messenger from Gerdes Mulenex. Old fatty summoned us to his presence. Ordered us to attend him. Whatever you say about him, he’s not short on nerve.”
“What did you say?”
“Told him he knows where to find us if he wants to talk.”
“Sounded like you said more than that.”
Rogala laughed. “A little. The man’s attitude irritated me. The others were at least polite.”
“Others?”
“Sure. Heard from almost everybody in camp. Some of them had some interesting propositions. But they all had nothing but their own gain in mind. You’d think they never heard of Ventimiglia.”
“Depressing, isn’t it?”
“There are times when I think the gods ought to scrub the whole human race and start over. Go lie down. Night will get here all too soon.”
Chapter Seven
Gudermuth
A gentle hand wakened Gathrid. Another covered his mouth. “It’s time,” Rogala whispered.
It was dark. He had been more tired than he had thought. His haunt had not bothered him.
How did Rogala manage?
They crept from the battered tent, concealed themselves in a firewood dump nearby. The camp was still. The fires had burned low. Crickets and night birds called against the darkness. Scurrying clouds masked the moon.
Gathrid reflected on himself while he waited. He had changed. He had grown, had gained self-confidence. He had begun looking for ways to seize the helm of his own destiny.
For instance, he had decided to do something about Anyeck. And he still owed Nieroda. There would be an accounting with Ahlert’s Dark Champion.
Anyeck puzzled him. He thought he knew his sister. He believed himself free of illusions about her character. He had been her confidant. How could she have possessed the Power and have kept it hidden?
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he had jumped to a conclusion only because he thought he knew her. She could not have kept the Power hidden. She was too greedy and compulsive not to have used it. Wasn’t she?
Who else could the witch be, then?
His thoughts drifted back to childhood years, to silly, blind years of games and little pleasures, when the most difficult moral dilemmas had been the decision whether or not to tell the truth when a question about Anyeck’s conduct arose.... There had been a noncom in the garrison who had informed their father of one of her misdeeds. Gathrid had forgotten the exact circumstances. He did recall that the soldier had, immediately afterward, been stricken dumb. No one had been able to explain. Then there had been the time...
“Here they come,” Rogala whispered.
Gathrid chivied himself out of the wilderness of memory, peered round the woodpile. Men with drawn swords were stealing toward their tent. He took the Sword’s grip....
Rogala’s touch stayed him. “Let them be disappointed. Let’s see who they run to.”
“Good thinking.”
Finding no prey, the assassins withdrew. They did not panic, nor did they forget to cover their backtrail.
The army had begun stirring. It was to move out at dawn. Tracking the assassins proved difficult. A series of interlocutors made tracing the heart of responsibility almost impossible.
“Levels,” Rogala muttered. “He’s no fool.”
Between them they managed to maintain contact. The trail ended at the pavilion belonging to Gerdes Mulenex.
“Tit for tat,” Rogala promised solemnly. “But we have to wait our turn. We’ve got to move with the army.”
“Thought we were letting them fight their own battles.”
“We are. But I want to be there to watch.”
The camp crawled like an anthill as the noncoms turned their men out early.
Gathrid’s homeland had changed. The smoke had cleared. The birds sang across the countryside, celebrating the gods knew what. The few Ventimiglians he and Rogala saw were hurrying toward Katich. The Mindak was gathering his forces outside the capital’s walls. “He knows the Alliance is moving,” Rogala averred.
He and Gathrid did not move with the army itself, but parallel to it, within a few hours’ ride. They avoided Ventimiglians, Alliance patrols, and all but one group of refugees. Those they quizzed. They learned that Ahlert had bragged he would reduce Katich and destroy the Alliance army the same day.
“That much arrogance might become its own reward,” Rogala observed as they rode off to well-wishes from folk with whom Gathrid had shared his meager supplies. “A man makes brags, he’d better deliver. A couple failures and some ambitious general will take a shot at snatching his job.”
“He could have the power and know it.”
“Of course he could. He obviously thinks he does. But a wise man does his deed, then he brags. There’s less chance of looking a fool that way. What’s kept him out of Katich so long? A quick victory there might have awed the Alliance into backing down again.”
Gathrid returned to an argument they had been pursuing since he had revealed his suspicions about Anyeck. “Theis, I meant it about stopping my sister. It’s something I have to do. I don’t care if it is free help for the Alliance.”
He kept bouncing back and forth between that and his question about what profit he could expect for his misery as Swordbearer. Rogala answered curtly when he would talk at all. At that moment he entered his sour and silent phase again.
“All right. All right. A man does what he has to. Do what you want. You won’t listen to me, and I’m getting sick of listening to you.”
Gathrid grinned. The dwarf’s scolding reminded him of his mother’s.... The memory left a bitter taste. They had been close, he and she.
Vengeance was necessary.
Alliance patrols became more numerous. They saw more bands of Ventimiglians. Occasionally they came across the wrack of skirmishes, then a field where a small, fierce battle had been lost by Malmbergetan infantry.
“One of the Toal was here,” Gathrid said. A trail of corpses marked its path through the action. “No ordinary blade would have cut that deep.”
His Toal-shadow, lurking at the edge of consciousness, became excited by the supposed proximity of its fellow.
Rogala shrugged. “There hasn’t been much sorcery so far. I find that interesting.”
“So far. Maybe it hasn’t been needed. Weren’t we here before?”
“Yes. There’s a plain the other side of that ridgeline. I’d guess they’ll meet there. A set battle. Lots of blood. Victory to the stubbornest. No strategy, no finesse. The only soldier I saw in that lot was Count Cuneo, and they gave him command in name only. They’ll interfere all the way down the line. Politicians!” He snorted, shook his head, growled. “If war is too important to trust to generals, then policy is too important to trust to politicians.
“Well, that’s neither here nor there. Right now I want a look from yon hill. Katich is only ten miles on.”
“Where’s the desolation?”
“You’ll see plenty from the hill.”
Rogala, Gathrid reflected, had a remarkable memory. “Has the land changed much? I mean, since the Imperium?”
The dwarf frowned, shrugged. “Some. It’s wilder now. Unkempt, you might say. During the High Imperium, while the Immortal Twins reigned, the Inner Provinces were like parks. In those days they weren’t preoccupied with wars, politics or juggling the Treasury. Life wasn’t iffy till Grellner showed up. After that all you had to do was look around to see what was coming. The land started getting wooly, the way a man gets sloppy when he’s p
reoccupied.”
Rogala’s loquacity puzzled Gathrid. How could he keep the dwarf talking? He might let some answers fall.
It also made him suspicious. Rogala seldom took a deep breath without having an ulterior motive.
They climbed the hill Theis had chosen, picking their way up slopes scattered with bodies and scolding ravens.
“Here we have an allegory of most warfare on the mortal plane,” the dwarf growled. “The Ventimiglians had a force posted here. The Bilgoraji decided they wanted the hill. So they took it. And after all these lives were spent, they changed their minds.”
“What?” Rogala was sliding out of character today. He was criticizing a bloodletting? This sounded like the pot calling the kettle black. What was going on?
Each time the man opened up, he became more a mystery. Gathrid sometimes felt there were three or four personalities behind the dwarf’s haunted eyes. Or one so complex no mortal could hope to comprehend it.
The youth gasped, awed, when he saw the armies spread out beyond the hill.
To the west, gaudy as peafowl, lay the Alliance forces, spreading till their flanks climbed the sides of the hill-walled plain. The Ventimiglians, to the east, looked like a dun-flecked black glacier making an inexorable journey westward.
“So many!”
“I’ve seen larger.” Rogala seemed far away. He stared intently. “The Alliance looks stronger, numbers-wise. But Ahlert has the advantage of a unified command.”
Troops of cavalry roamed the plain between the hosts. “Why aren’t they fighting?” Gathrid asked.
“They are. Skirmishing. Testing each other’s nerve. They’ll rest and bluff and look each other over today. The fighting will start in the morning.”
They watched the horsemen race around, taunting one another, trying to isolate one another at a disadvantage. Nothing much happened.
“Not the best site, this,” Rogala observed. “Just ground where chance brought them together. Nobody has the sense to back off to a better place.” He glowered at both camps. “The sorcery might make a difference. From the feel of them, I’d say Ahlert has the edge there.”
The dwarf muttered along in total detachment. He was no more involved than if this battle-to-be were one that had taken place centuries ago, between nations which no longer existed. He seemed unable to connect with the blood and tears about to be spilled.
“We’ve got to do something,” Gathrid insisted.
“They turned us down, remember? Anyway, you want to see about your sister. Right? Okay. That means we’ve got to travel. All night, maybe, to get around Ahlert to Katich.”
“You don’t waste time on life’s frills, do you?”
“Frills?”
“Eating. Sleeping. Little luxuries like that.”
Rogala grinned. “We’re getting a sharp tongue on us, aren’t we?” Then his humor evaporated. He muttered something about getting his debt paid as soon as possible. He added, “In troubled times no head rests easy, neither just nor unjust.”
Dawn found them deep in the desolation round Katich, atop a rise facing the city. Since they had seen the city last a major effort had been made to breach its walls. Stains and wounds of fire and sorcery marred its ramparts and the surrounding earth. “The defense held,” Rogala said. “But it looks like it was a close thing.”
Countless biers, elevated on poles in the Ventimiglian fashion, stood ranked outside the combat zone. Beneath each, numbered according to the importance of the dead, were the bodies of natives who had been slain to provide the warriors with slaves when they reached the other shore.
Gathrid averted his eyes. The necropolis had taken the fight out of him.
“Gruesome custom,” Rogala conceded. “But this is an old world. It’s seen even stranger. Remind me not to ride downwind.”
Gathrid ignored him. He was worrying about Anyeck. Her perfidy, if the witch were indeed she, had to be countered.
Where was the witch? He saw nothing unusual amongst the Ventimiglians surrounding the city. “You think she went with Ahlert?” he asked.
“No. There.” Rogala pointed.
Gathrid saw it now, a gibbet-size platform that faced Katich’s main gate, beyond the range of conventional weaponry. He had missed it because it was camouflaged by countless siege engines.
Rogala pontificated about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of placing one’s dead where the enemy could count them. Then, abruptly, he demanded, “What’re you planning?”
The query caught Gathrid off balance. Theis seldom asked. He told. “You’ll back me?”
“I have no choice. It’s my job. My fate. My curse. But try to finish in time for us to catch how the big battle turns out.”
He was so calm about it. So bloody indifferent.... Uncertainty racked Gathrid. How would he handle it? Deciding to stop Anyeck was easy. Doing so was something else. He had had no luck at home. Nothing swayed her once she made up her mind. “What can we expect?”
“Only way to find out is the hard way. I suggest you get started before we’re noticed.” He pointed.
There was activity round the gibbet now. Trumpets blared. A sedan chair came from among the Ventimiglian tents. That was the kind of thing Anyeck loved, he thought. Pomp and honors. If she was the witch, she would make sure there was plenty.
“I’d better go down.”
His heart hammered. His hands shook. Perspiration beaded his forehead. Afraid Rogala would see him and mock him, he spurred his mount.
His mind darted off in a hundred directions. All he could extract from the chaos was an urge to flee. He seized the hilt of the Sword for comfort.
The horns became stilled. A curtain of silence swept across the world. A thousand faces turned his way. The sedan paused in its passage. A face peeped out. He could not be sure at this remove. It was pale enough. And Anyeck was vain. She always protected herself from the sun.
Sound returned to the earth. Horns and drums howled and growled in Katich. Their voices were defiant. A gate opened. A knight in glowing blue armor surged forth. He rode a prancing charger. It was the biggest animal Gathrid had ever seen. The warrior’s lancehead seemed to have been wrought of living fire.
The Ventimiglians ignored him.
“That would be Honsa Eldracher, eh?” Rogala shouted as he pounded up beside Gathrid. His yell seemed to come from far away.
“Probably.” Gathrid found his own voice unnaturally loud.
“Watch the moon!” Rogala bellowed. “She’s the lady of the moon.”
Several Ventimiglians started their way.
Gathrid glanced toward the western horizon. The silver of the moon hung a half-hour short of setting. The comet looked like a silver blade stabbed through the fabric of the sky.
Rogala laughed. “Looks like they don’t want us hanging around.”
Gathrid wondered why the dwarf was amused, then realized that, of his own volition, he was carrying Daubendiek unsheathed. Sharp disgust fluttered across his mind. No wonder Rogala was cheerful. There would be blood for Suchara.
The blade had seduced him into wielding it without thought.
He rebelled. For just a second. Then he thought, this once Suchara’s interests are my own.
There was little he could do anyway. Daubendiek would not be sheathed unblooded.
The feeling of growth came over him. He gazed with scorn on these puny mortals who would dare try delaying him. When he dismounted and stalked toward them, a susurrus of awe swept the Ventimiglian encampment.
They were afraid.
He whirled Daubendiek overhead and laughed as he strode toward the witch.
Silence gripped the land. Fifty thousand chests ceased heaving in mid-breath. The sliver of setting moon waxed brighter, till it rivaled the sun. Sudden ropes of silver danced around the witch. Her arms rose. Her fingers moved in intricate patterns. Her liquid voice seemed to come from everywhere as she sang forth her Power. The ropes wove themselves into brilliant nets. Soon she was a singing spider at th
e heart of a scintillating web.
Around her, in a faint mist, a huge feminine face could sometimes be seen.
From one of Gathrid’s stolen memories came the thought that the spider image was apt. No man without great Power could hope to escape soul-devouring destruction once in the web’s grasp. In that way it was like Daubendiek.
A strand snaked his way, questing like a blind serpent. It lashed out. Daubendiek severed it. The loose end darkened, scorched the earth, faded into mist.
Then there were a dozen attacking strands. Daubendiek became a blur. Gathrid continued toward the platform, trailing red-blackened earth.
The web thickened till he could no longer discern the woman. Daubendiek moved so swiftly that it destroyed strands faster than the witch could spin them.
Occasionally one strand would penetrate his guard and for a moment touch him with a draining coldness. The Sword’s power shielded and fed him, but each touch left him a little weaker. In snippets he felt what it was like to receive Daubendiek’s cool kiss. His leg began to ache, his eyelid to droop.
He saw with clarity greater than ever before, as if the cold caresses were freeing his mind while Daubendiek took complete bodily control. He discovered ways he could regain control if he desired, but dared not attempt lest he divert the Sword’s attention. Their purposes were one just then. Anyeck had to be rescued from her folly.
He was sure his sister stood at the heart of the web. There was a flavor to it redolent of her personality.
The web drew inward as the witch realized she faced no easy foe. She formed a dense silver chrysalis around herself, adjusted the web till the only strands remaining were those attacking Gathrid. Their number increased.
He wondered if she knew whom she faced.
He also wondered if this were the sorcery intended for Katich. He could picture the web crawling over the city, sending strands into barracks and homes. The Blue Brothers and Honsa Eldracher might protect themselves, but ordinary, powerless citizens would be slaughtered. She would grow stronger. The Ventimiglians would move in, unresisted, to finish with steel those engrossed in surviving the sorcery.
Almost imperceptibly, Daubendiek weakened. Deep as it had drunk since awakening, it did not have the strength to withstand this forever. Gathrid felt its first faint stir of uneasiness.