by Glen Cook
Something seemed determined to keep her from collecting herself.
Gathrid began to despair of his survival. Though Aarant whispered soothingly, bidding him remain calm, panic threatened. The storm of Toal swords drove him to one knee.
Then the reinforcements arrived.
The reserve brigade turned the enemy flank. The other brigade, scenting victory, rushed to the marsh end of Nieroda's line.
The shock wave of Loida's charge reached Gathrid. The death dance devolved into chaos. The youth staggered to his feet, conquered a Toal Rogala had unhorsed.
The pressure faded momentarily. He surveyed the situation. The victor would be little better off than the vanquished, whichever way it went. The issue remained in doubt. He had to get Nieroda.
Daubendiek agreed. Gathrid was surprised that it would ignore the easier blood around it.
The blade was an instrument of Suchara. Suchara had interests beyond simple bloodshed.
Gathrid hacked his way uphill. The going became easier as he went.
The Dark Champion waited impassively. As he neared her, she grew as she had that day on the Bilgoraji border. This time Gathrid definitely saw a grinning, malevolent, red-eyed face behind the umbra, waiting, as if sure of the outcome of the approaching combat.
Gathrid, too, grew. He felt half-a-mile tall. The brawling, screaming combatants dwindled till they appeared to be insects scurrying round the walls of a shallow bowl. The Mindak's troops were boxing their adversaries.
A hundred yards separated Gathrid and Nieroda, yet he felt he could reach out and touch her. And still she remained motionless. "Careful," Aarant warned. Daubendiek, too, became wary. The Dark Lady was too confident.
Gathrid swung the Sword in a mighty arc. It flickered through a dozen planes. The aquamarine nimbus around him became intense. He could see it himself.
For an instant he felt Suchara's touch on his shoulder, could sense her cold eyes staring over his head.
Nieroda blocked his stroke, responded with an attack of her own.
Gathrid understood instantly. She bore a newly forged blade. It had been invested with both new and ancient sorceries. It had been hammered on the anvils of Hell and tempered in the oils of evil. It was a potential match for Daubendiek.
Gathrid's Toal-haunt gurgled merrily, for a moment drowning the soothing voice of Tureck Aarant and the frightened susurrus of lesser souls. The devil distracted him. It had not bothered him in a long time.
"I'll handle it," Aarant whispered.
Daubendiek turned Nieroda's blade. It was startled by its enemy's power, yet it gained confidence as it recognized the other's immaturity. The new sword was Daubendiek's equal only in potential. It was not experienced enough to complete the task Nieroda demanded of it.
Viewed from afar, the struggle looked like a collision between towering thunderheads. One was black, the other the color of the sea. The infantry battle ground to a halt. The Toal kept the cavalry fighting, gradually turning the tide against the Mindak again. Ahlert tried to extricate his riders and consolidate them with his main force.
Loida observed the striving of giants from a deep mental fog.
Gathrid suddenly realized that, once again, he faced an opponent trying to buy time. Nieroda knew she had little chance to defeat him. She had known from the start. Defeat had been calculated into her plan.
Why was she stalling? What was her game? He scanned the battle below. Was she giving her Toal time to slay more of his allies? Again, why?
He forced a bolder attack. She backed off a step, then a step farther. She fought with the cunning of ages, with the skill that had earned her the sobriquet Dark Champion. Every ploy and play sought his life. She was not dogging it. She would kill him if she could.
She did manage to delay till the westering sun neared the horizon.
Daubendiek studied the weaknesses of its adversary all that while. Now it took advantage. The flow shifted. Faster. Faster.
Tureck Aarant and the murmuring horde became ever more excited. But Gathrid's haunt kept laughing . . . .
Daubendiek pinked Nieroda-flesh at last. It was the lightest of touches. The end came minutes later.
Nieroda's umbra faded. Daubendiek lightninged through her guard. And there was nothing.
Nothing but symphonies of evil laughter. Once again she abandoned the flesh an instant too quickly.
Gathrid looked down at the thing that had been animated by the spirit of Nevenka Nieroda. It had been a woman once . . . . A voice within him screamed. It knew that flesh.
His voice. "Anyeck!" He had slain her again . . . .
She mortified before his eyes. His gorge rose.
Anyeck. How? He had buried her himself, way west of here . . . . What did Nieroda hope to gain by reminding him of past guilt? How many times could he slay his sister and still be morally stricken?
A hundred. Or a thousand. He felt her moving deep inside him, half-insane, hurting . . . . Never before had she been accessible.
He knelt, lifted a putrefying hand. It was cold with a cold deeper than death's chill. But the body was free. He sensed no sorceries upon it.
So, he thought. He would bury her at home after all.
"Beware," Aarant warned. "The others don't know Nieroda survived."
The spells on the Dark Lady's followers had evaporated with her departure. The battleground had fallen into total confusion. Some rebels were trying to escape. Some were trying to surrender. Some fought on. The latter rallied round the Toal.
Ahlert became magnanimous immediately. He spared anyone willing to rejoin his army.
Gathrid frowned. That man was running against the wind, but he pursued his dream nevertheless.
Loida finally shook her fogginess. She saw Gathrid kneeling over Nieroda. She urged her mount toward him.
"Don't do it, girl," Gacioch croaked. His warning came too late. Gathrid heard the hooves.
Ahlert! he thought. This would be the moment for the Mindak to strike. And this was the moment to end the threat from the east. Nieroda could be hunted down later. She had become the lesser danger.
He let the hooves approach.
Aarant did warn him that Suchara was a jealous mistress.
It was all as inevitable as death itself.
Gathrid whirled. Daubendiek flicked like a serpent's tongue. The youth screamed. Screamed for Loida Huthsing, who could not scream for herself. The poor girl did not realize what was happening till it was over . . . .
Gathrid swore he heard Nieroda laughing in the distance.
Chapter Fourteen
Torun
Gathrid sat between the corpses of the women. The two long black swords flanked him. Hints of fire rippled along their blades. He rocked slowly and incessantly. His thoughts were so turned in upon themselves that even Tureck Aarant could not penetrate them.
How many more? he wondered. Anyone who would ever mean anything? Was there no way to stop this?
He went hunting the shadows, searching for Loida. He wanted to explain, to apologize, but he could not find her. Like Anyeck, she had burrowed deep and curled around herself like a grub in the earth. There was no sign of her.
He tried to find Anyeck. Surprisingly, he caught a trace here and there. Something had wakened her. When he did make a ghostly contact, she fled with a whimper. For an instant he had an image of her as she had been at Katich, only running away, a gown of moonstuff flying around her calves.
She was Anyeck still, still living in dreams.
"She was a beauty," Aarant murmured.
"Yes." Gathrid was becoming accustomed to these internal dialogs. He was becoming accustomed to Aarant, beginning to like the man. "But she wasn't a good person. Except to me."
"I'm sorry for you. I know how you feel. They made me kill my mother."
"I know. In a way, though . . . Anyeck earned what she got. She was looking for it."
"That doesn't make it right. There has to be an end to this cruelty."
Aarant ha
d tried to broach the topic before. Gathrid had slipped away every time, though he did not know why. He agreed now. He had been thinking the same thing since Anyeck's death. "Look there." The sky had darkened in the east. "See the comet?"
"Yes. The same one foretold the fall of Anderle. It's almost gone. If it goes like before, this mess will turn real bloody once it disappears."
"It's not bloody now?"
"Bloody enough."
A hand touched the youth's shoulder gently. He glanced up into Rogala's eyes, surprised a tender moistness there. The dwarf did not look at all well. His face was not suited to a display of compassion.
"We've got to get out of here," Rogala said. "Before the Mindak has a brainstorm and realizes his future would be less complicated without a Swordbearer in it."
"We've only been allies a little while."
"Long enough. He needed you to beat Nieroda. She's gone. Now he's going to head west. He knows your first loyalty lies there. And that without you the Alliance won't stand much chance. The pragmatic course would be to eliminate you now. That's bound to strike him before long."
Gathrid had a feeling Rogala was telling but a part of the story, but was too distracted to pursue the matter. Ahlert would try, given a chance. That was his nature.
The sun was setting but there was enough light to show prisoners being herded about the grisly field. The Toal and a few survivors were retreating to the southwest. Ahlert would come soon if he came.
Aarant agreed with Rogala. "Better move."
Aloud, Gathrid said, "I was sitting on this hill when Symen brought the news that Grevening had been invaded." He glanced at Rogala. The dwarf remained pained. "I never thought it would come to this."
"It does begin to grate. Come on. We've got to go."
"All right." Gathrid collected the swords. Rogala had brought horses and supplies. "Ever the efficient esquire, eh?"
Gently, the dwarf removed a silent Gacioch from beneath Loida's still form. "I try, son. I try." He said nothing more till, days later, they neared Katich. Gathrid had only Aarant for company.
"He's changed since before," Aarant observed at one point. Gathrid had been watching the dwarf's back. They were riding single file. "I can't believe he's the same man. The Brothers' War must have had a tremendous impact."
"How has he changed?"
"He's become unpredictable. And emotional. I don't think I ever saw him show anything but anger before."
"I think he's losing his faith. I don't know how he fits in, but I think he's gotten sick of his part."
"Probably right. It's bad not knowing what it's all about, but maybe it's worse knowing. Maybe there's no point at all and that's what's getting to him."
"I think he believed there was a point, and now he's begun to doubt."
The discussion went on all the while they crossed Gudermuth. Gathrid found himself liking Aarant more and more. They were much alike beneath the cruel armor of experience. He suspected they could become friends.
He wondered what it would be like to share his brain with his best friend.
They topped a rise and faced Katich.
"That was needless," Rogala said. For a moment Gathrid thought he meant the destruction of the city. But the dwarf had turned in his saddle and was looking eastward.
"Thank you, Theis." It was the best he would get from the man. Perhaps the best anyone ever had gotten. Aarant again mentioned his astonishment at the changes in Rogala.
Over campfires and during the boring rides across wasted countryside Gathrid often studied the sword he had taken from Nieroda. It had been defeated. It remained bruised and weak. But, like a living thing, it had a capacity for recovery. And it presented him with a moral dilemma.
Could the world endure the existence of another such blade? One seemed curse enough.
What could he do? He did not possess the Power to destroy it. He feared that no one did, not even its creatrix.
"Keep it," Aarant urged. "I have a feeling about it."
Gathrid, too, felt something. He thought a day might come when he would be glad to have the blade available. On the plus side, it did not have Daubendiek's insatiable hunger. Though hammered on the forges of evil, it was not of itself insane and black of heart. Unlike Daubendiek, it remained a controllable tool.
It was an infant still. It could become a Daubendiek had it the tutelage of a Suchara.
When Gathrid's thoughts did turn outward he had to face what had happened to Gudermuth. The little kingdom was a state no more. It had become a vast desolation. The native survivors seemed to have become brigands who existed by preying upon one another. Plague and famine had taken up where war had left off. Gathrid wondered if the stolid endurance of the peasant would suffice him during this disaster.
"You think we'll face much trouble?" he asked as he and Rogala crossed the Bilgoraji border, following the Torun Road. Even the boundary marker had been destroyed. The waste went on.
Rogala shrugged. "We've yet to be challenged."
"Hildreth might attack us."
"I doubt it. He won't be pleased to see us, though."
A few miles beyond the border, at Pletka, they encountered a Gudermuther company which had attached itself to Yedon Hildreth's Guards Oldani. Their reception was cool, though Captain Sir Baris Kraljevac became warmer in private.
"Your return might help clarify the situation," he told them over a supper attended only by themselves and a Blue Brother who insisted on anonymity. "The political scene has gone strange lately."
"How so?" Gathrid asked. He listened with only half an ear. He was more interested in devouring his meal.
"At Sartain," the Blue replied. "Since Misplaer was murdered . . . "
"What?" This was the first Gathrid or Rogala had heard of events farther west.
"We thought you knew," Kraljevac said. "I would've mentioned it earlier if . . . "
"Then Mulenex . . . "
"He's trying to grab the Raftery. Naturally. Count Cuneo and the Emperor are using their moral force to resist his election. They think he had Misplaer and Eldracher killed. They think he was behind Katich's betrayal, too."
The Brother continued, "Mulenex denies everything. Naturally. And nobody can prove anything. There's an understandable scarcity of witnesses."
"Seems suspicion would suffice where Mulenex is concerned. I've never heard anybody say a good word about him."
"He has his friends," the captain said. "He'd be impotent if he didn't."
"These are troubled times," the Blue Brother observed. "Opportunists are crawling out of the weeds with an eye to the main chance. Mulenex isn't unique. The Orders are filled with his ilk. We seem to attract as many villains as idealists."
Gathrid told Rogala, "I should've killed him when I had the chance."
"You wouldn't have seen the logic then. Wouldn't have mattered anyway. Like the man says, there're always more Mulenexes waiting."
Gathrid rewarded the dwarf with a sour look. That perpetual kibitzer, Gacioch, laughed and made snide remarks.
"How would my return change anything?" Gathrid asked the Blue.
"It'll scare people into jumping one way or the other. The Orders feud a lot, but we like to present a united front to the world. Hell, your coming back might even wake up the mundanes. Let's hope so. Right now Ahlert could walk to Sartain unmolested."
Kraljevac added, "The Empire is starting to amount to something again. The Emperor and Count Cuneo are doing a good job of getting people to see them as symbols of stability. The Alliance is a dead letter. Its members are all squabbling and trying to pass the blame. I'll make you a bet. Before the summer is over, somebody will sell out to the Mindak."
"Why?"
"There's a rumor going round, says there's a vice-regality over the old Imperial Home Provinces going to the King or prince who joins Ahlert. That would tempt most of them. They're used to ruling less."
"It's really that bad?"
"Or worse."
"And at the m
oment when Ahlert is at his weakest," Gathrid muttered. When a western victory could be finalized with ease. If westerners would stand together. Curious how fate wriggled and turned. "Sounds to me like Mulenex is dragging everything down the road to Hell."
The captain said, "Some would agree, I think." He grinned.
The Blue Brother snapped, "His dreams aren't that much different from Elgar's. He wants a restoration of the Empire and a union between Imperium and Raftery. It's a dream popular on both Faron and Galen. It's just that some of us don't think Mulenex is the man to run things."