The Swordbearer - Glen Cook

by DeadMan

  “Excuse me a minute.” Gathrid took twenty. He spent them chatting with Guardsmen, soldiers and militiamen. He found them less beaten than he had supposed. To a man they still believed in Daubendiek, the possibility of victory, and in Count Cuneo.

  Gathrid told Rogala.

  “You want to see morale rise, stick around.” Amidst everything else, Hildreth had been organizing a counterattack against the Ventimiglians on the ramparts. It was now near jump-off time.

  “How so?”

  “The old fox was holding back. On everybody but Elgar and a few engineers. Apparently even the Mindak’s mindreader missed it.”

  “What?”

  “That there are tunnels connecting the Maurath with the outer fortresses. They’re designed collapsible. And completely secret, so the men stationed out there wouldn’t get lax knowing they had an easy out.”

  Gathrid felt he had to re-evaluate Hildreth once again. As long as Ahlert had been willing to spend lives to take the satellites, Hildreth had been willing to defend them. He was a hard commander.

  Gathrid glanced outside. Belfiglio knew about the tunnels now. He had informed his master. Troops were racing back to the fortresses, hoping to seize the passages before they were destroyed.

  “They’re too late,” Rogala observed.

  Sections of grainfield were falling in. From the dungeons of the Maurath came the clatter of the garrisons arriving.

  “We’d better move now,” Gathrid said. “While they’re disorganized and we’re in good spirits.” The counterattack was ready. Redistributed according to their talents, he hoped the Brothers would make possible a counterstroke unhindered by flyers.

  The key was a noxious gas. He had found a White Brother using it to protect a remote tower.

  Hildreth could not climb back to the higher levels. Gathrid took over for him. He assembled the men in a hall below the Maurath’s roof, told the White Brother to explain.

  The man indicated several big copper kettles and a mound of rags. “Tear off strips of cloth and soak them in this brine. Tie them around your faces, covering your mouths and noses. As long as you breathe through the rags, the spells on this brine will protect you from the gas. Take an extra cloth to wipe your eyes and use if you lose what you’re wearing. If you do find yourself breathing the gas direct, get below as fast as you can. Prolonged exposure will make you quite miserable. Sir?”

  Gathrid went first, and allowed the White Brother to adjust the rag bandana he fixed across his face. “How long will this last?” he asked.

  “There’s enough oil in the mixture to make it good for an hour,” the Brother said. “If the mask starts feeling dry and salty, you might want to duck back down and get a fresh one. That’s a point. Don’t use the same one over again.... “He went on till Gathrid lost patience.

  “Let’s get on with it,” the youth snapped. “You men, line up. Brother, get up there and start your gas.”

  Fifteen minutes later the youth gave the signal. Men yanked the bolts holding the heavy doors. Gathrid charged besiegers amidst a rolling cloud. Ventimiglians coughed and gagged around him, heaving up their breakfasts and clawing their eyes. They went down under Daubendiek’s furious blows. The flyers, blinded, began colliding. Gathrid kept pausing to wipe the sting from his eyes with a rag he carried in his left hand.

  He felt terrible, even protected. How much worse the enemy felt he did not care to imagine.

  The counterattack spread like oil on water, groups from different sallyports joining forces. Brothers came out behind the soldiers. They hurled their Powers against the flyers.

  Gathrid ripped through Ventimiglian platoons like a scythe through wheat. He searched for enemy captains.

  The most important were obvious. They were men of Power, standing in small islands of sanity, trying to disperse the gas. Spells Aarant recognized as wind-callings rumbled across their lips.

  It was a slaughter till one Ventimiglian did manage to summon a breeze. Daubendiek stole so many lives Gathrid became lost in their complexities. Aarant was supposed to integrate them, but could not handle the flood.

  Some of the enemy trampled their brethren in their haste to escape.

  Gradually, the gas did disperse. And then the flyers could not be turned back. The counterstroke collapsed.

  “Valiant effort, lad,” Count Cuneo said after Gathrid abandoned the action. He had come within minutes and yards of clearing the ramparts. “It bought time. It’ll be dark before they regain their strength. Let’s hope they wait till morning to break in. Meantime, I need your help down here.”

  Gathrid was staggering. “I need some rest.”

  “One of the tunnels didn’t collapse the way it should have,” Hildreth explained. “They managed to get some people through. We’ve got to push them out before we can demolish the passage.”

  Ahlert kept Gathrid rushing hither and yon all night, stemming threat after threat. And all the while the Ventimiglian wizards and engineers kept grinding away at the tunnel, to the Causeway.

  Dawn came. It brought Rogala with news. “The flyers have left us.”

  “What?” The youth was too tired to concentrate.

  “They’re all attacking the island now. Folks over there are showing a little ingenuity. They’re rigging nets over the Causeway. Under the nets, carpenters are boxing in a wooden passage.”

  “What good does that do?”

  “We’re cut off till they get here. We couldn’t get out if it turned bad. Meantime, Hildreth wants to hit Ahlert’s tunnel crew. Sartain is done for if they break through.”

  Sighing, Gathrid took up the Sword once more. Soon he found himself astride a horse, about to lead a hundred men in a charge from a hidden sallyport.

  Fearful sorceries met the surprise attack. Brothers in the Maurath replied with sorceries of their own.

  Gathrid hacked and slashed in fighting so close the dead remained upright in their saddles. The Ventimiglians concentrated on him. In those brief intervals when he won a respite, he stood in his stirrups and searched for the Mindak.

  The man was nowhere to be seen.

  But he was out there, employing archers and slingers with a callous disregard for the allegiances of the men being hit by his missiles.

  There was little Daubendiek could do to shield Gathrid from a random arrow. “Back inside!” he ordered. “We’ve done all we can.” He covered his companions’ withdrawal.

  As Rogala removed Gathrid’s helmet, the youth sensed bad news. Count Cuneo’s eyes were distant. His face was rigid with despair. “What happened?”

  Hildreth opened his mouth. Nothing came out but a croaky gobble.

  “We’ve been suckered,” Rogala replied. “We’ve been thoroughly swindled.”

  “How?”

  “This whole attack was a diversion. The Count finally managed to contact the island.”

  “And?”

  “The Imperial Brigade landed near Galen during the night.”

  “What? How did they manage that?”

  “With boats. A lot of boats. Seems Ahlert commandeered every boat and barge while coming down from Torun. He cleared the Blackstun and the Ondr. He assembled them behind the promontory there. Last night they slipped out and made a landing on the island. The Count’s best men are out here. Nothing but militia in Sartain.”

  Gathrid handed his horse to a groom. He sat on the floor, rested his back against a wall. “And we can’t send help because of the flyers.”

  “Right. Even if we could afford to break the men loose.”

  “There’s a million people on the island,” Gathrid muttered. “Can’t they hold off one brigade themselves?” He realized he had slipped into Suchara-thinking. Damn the casualties! He was disgusted with himself. “How bad is it, Theis?”

  Rogala shrugged. “Who can tell? They’re holding out. They’re covering the Causeway. But Ahlert put in his best. Only time will tell.”

  Time had nothing to reveal before sundown. Though weariness depressed t
he tempo of the fighting, it continued. News from Sartain remained sketchy. A quarter of the vast city appeared to have been captured. The Imperial Brigade had bogged down for lack of strength to exploit its coup. It appeared to have trapped the Fray Magister in the Raftery.

  That night Gathrid found time to sleep. And for the first time in months his Toal-haunt plagued him.

  He was dreaming confused dreams, his brain laboring at the Augean task of integrating the souls Daubendiek had devoured, when it began. Sudden, vicious, determined, it hit him. It was a cold evil intent on making him its own. There was no warning. One moment there was nothing, the next a reverberating shock as it smashed in, driving tentacles into his soul. The sleepy semiawareness that was Gathrid of Kacalief almost succumbed.

  Tureck Aarant never slept. He was like Rogala in that respect. He fought the Toal. He gave Gathrid time to assume control, to begin resisting.

  They seemed lost in another universe, the youth and his enemy.

  Gathrid interpreted the struggle in symbols he could understand. While aware that his body lay on a rude barracks cot, foaming at the mouth and speaking in tongues, he lived a savage unarmed combat with a faceless foe whose muscles were iron, who whispered of devouring him. Back and forth across a cold, featureless plain they battled, beneath moons and stars that might have been the faces of mocking gods. The chill evil of the Toal filtered deep into his being, to the dark recesses where his worst fears and blackest desires lay hidden, straining at their chains.

  Rogala, Hildreth and a dozen Brothers and physicians stood by, unable to help, unsure, even, that this was the attack of Covingont being repeated. At first the dwarf thought Gathrid’s mind had snapped under the assault of too many new personalities.

  In that inside place Gathrid realized that he was losing. His opponent knew neither fear nor fatigue, and had nothing to lose. It could maintain the assault indefinitely. Panic lashed the youth.

  In a moment of inspiration, Rogala placed the Sword in his hands.

  Another apparition materialized on Gathrid’s subjective plain. Tureck Aarant looked down on the struggle. He radiated an infinite sadness. He was his own master no more. His ancient mistress had reclaimed him.

  He waded in with the chill fearlessness of the Aarant of legend. Suchara’s will drove him. Hatred marred his features, curses distended his mouth. There was no escaping the mistress.

  His was a hopeless mission. His ages enslaved to a Toal had left him vulnerable. As it had promised Gathrid it would do him, the Toal-monster did Tureck Aarant.

  Others of Gathrid’s stolen souls bombarded him with unwanted advice. They feared for him. He was their immortality.

  He did accept the advice of an assassin from Torun. He got behind the Toal and tried strangling it with a forearm....

  Those were his perceptions. The reality was a pure battle of wills.

  Aarant’s will was not strong enough. As the Toal twitched in Gathrid’s arms, before spinning away into the plane of Hell whence it had been summoned in ages past, it took a last killing bite.

  The saga of Tureck Aarant ended at last. His personality faded. Only his memories remained. Gathrid felt hollow, incomplete, as if some critical organ had been ripped from his chest.

  He had lost his best friend.

  He sat and wept. For a while he shook uncontrollably. Great moaning sobs racked his body.

  The body in the Maurath responded in the same fashion. Rogala gaped.

  And outside the Maurath the battle continued. The attempt to connect island and fortress beneath a wooden canopy collapsed. The Ventimiglian penetration of the fortress highwatered and began to fade. But Ahlert’s wizards had the great tunnel two-thirds cleared.

  All through the night Ahlert’s boats ferried troops to Sartain. A dark stain spread on the map of the island. Anderle’s diminutive navy intercepted many of the Mindak’s boats. The Imperial Brigade proved unable to take the Raftery.

  Ahlert had lost his momentum.

  Gathrid regained his self-control. He covered his embarrassment with a show of business. “It’s been two days. Any news from Malmberget?” His companions shook their heads. Hildreth, looking ashen, did not respond at all. “What’s wrong with the Count?” the youth asked.

  “Had a go at their gate-clearing party,” Rogala replied. “Took an arrow. Stubborn old coot hid it. Nobody noticed till he was ready to keel over from loss of blood.”

  “He do any good?”

  “Not enough. I figure they’ll break through in another hour. We’ll cut them up some while they make the passage, but there’s no way to stop them all.”

  “Thought this place was supposed to be able to hold out forever. Katich did better without our resources.”

  “Katich didn’t have to deal with those flyers. Even so, you’ve got a point. The engineers should’ve given more thought to the fact that the defenders might have to face sorcery.”

  Gathrid reflected. The gantlet would be expensive for the men passing through. Each one who fell in the tunnel would make the journey more difficult for others. The Mindak might waste half his army before succeeding.

  Gathrid was sure Ahlert would try. His obsession would compel him. “Theis, better think about what we’ll do if Sartain falls.”

  A messenger rushed in. He tried to report to Count Cuneo. “The flyers are back! They’re driving them inside.”

  “Inside the Maurath?” Gathrid asked.

  “Yes, Sir. They’re all over the upper level.”

  The youth dragged himself upright. “Help me with my armor, Theis. We should’ve expected this.”

  “There’re a lot of things we should have expected,” Rogala said. “Only we didn’t.”

  “They won’t have room.... “Hildreth protested weakly. He seemed to be coming back.

  “They don’t need any,” Gathrid retorted. “They just have to keep us distracted till Ahlert breaks through.” He addressed the Brothers present. “Block the stairwells and barricade the doorways. Keep them off the tunnel levels.”

  “What’s Ahlert going to do with Sartain once he gets it?” Rogala asked. “He hasn’t taken the Maurath. He’d have to fight his way out again.”

  Gathrid could not answer that. Only the Mindak knew why he wanted the Queen City so badly.

  He considered allowing a reversal of roles. For an instant only. There were a million people on the island. He and these soldiers were here to protect those people, not to defeat Ahlert. The Mindak would show them little mercy.

  Rogala would say, So what. Let Ahlert through. The people of Sartain would fight. They would hurt their conquerors. Malmberget could clean up what remained.

  The dwarf’s focus was a little narrow sometimes.

  “Theis, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t know why he wants Sartain himself. I don’t think he’s thought about it. It’s a move in Chuchain’s game. It’s an end in itself.”

  “Dumb.”

  “Not so tight with that lace. I want both arms loose. And you don’t have room to criticize, Servant of Suchara.”

  Rogala yanked the lace tight. “Sartain is symbolic to the Power Ahlert serves,” he admitted. “Chuchain will score a few points if his champion captures the city.”

  Gacioch whooped crazily. Rogala glared at the demon. “That was a howler, eh?”

  Gathrid listened carefully. That was one of the demon’s augury laughs. They always presaged some special unpleasantness. As usual, Gacioch refused to elucidate.

  “Theis, that critter is starting to irritate me.” His latest bout with his Toal-haunt had left everything to do with higher and lower planes, demonology and Power irking him tremendously. He had lost his only friend.... Why, of all times, had it chosen to strike now? In what way had Nieroda profited? “I think I’ll stuff him in a sack with fifty pounds of rock and drop him into the Sound.”

  Gacioch hooted merrily. “Not today, son. Not today. You’re going to be busier than a one-legged sword dancer.”

  Gathrid gath
ered his weapons.

  “What’re you doing?” Rogala demanded. He did not like the Nieroda-blade.

  “What I should have done a long time ago. I’m going after Ahlert. Make sure the tunnel control areas are sealed. Especially at the Causeway end. And bring enough Brothers to neutralize anything his wizards throw around. Find me a couple of carpenters.... “

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Raftery

  The Maurath’s engineers allowed the last stones to slide back into their shafts. The passage through was open save for a lumber barrier across the Sound-side mouth. Flyers chewed and clawed at those timbers.

  Inside the barrier, Gathrid stood with his palms on the pommels of his swords, waiting. A mob of Ventimiglians swept toward him. He glared into their startled faces.

  The twin blades whined and slew. Daubendiek protested having to share. Gathrid smiled grimly. The blade could not refuse to perform. If it would not respond to his will, it must to that of Suchara.

  She was there with him. He felt her displeasure. She was being compelled to serve the will of a servant. But Aarant, lamented Aarant, had shown him the ways. She had to support him or abandon all hope of success in her own enterprise.

  Gathrid heaped bodies before him. The Ventimiglians lost their momentum. They fell back, tried sorcery.

  Sea-green light blazed. It blinded them. They charged again. Again they failed to best the Swords.

  It may have taken minutes or hours. Time had little meaning when Gathrid had Daubendiek in hand. Finally, he sensed the Mindak approaching.

  The man was reluctant. There was a feel of panic about him. He did not want this meeting. But both Chuchain and his own obsessions drove him to it.

  Mead’s ethereal beauty ghosted through Gathrid’s thoughts. He wished there were another way.

  The flyers stopped assaulting the Maurath. The constant clangor of combat faded as an uneasy truce developed. Gathrid smote the timbers blocking the tunnel and stepped outside, onto the head of the Causeway. He would have more room there.

  He waited.

  A silhouette appeared in the tunnel’s mouth. It bore nothing save a tall staff.