Ahlert seemed to walk a mile, so slowly did he approach. He stopped ten feet away.
He wore no armor. He had shed all weapons save a ceremonial dagger. He had robed himself as High Thaumaturge of Senturia, one of his many titles. His face was sad. His eyes were remote.
“I’d hoped we could avoid this, Gathrid. I felt like an older brother toward you. But the Great Old Ones are indifferent to friendships.”
“How well I know.” Get out of my heart, Tureck, he snapped at himself. Though Kacalief remained in the back of his mind, he added, “I’d hoped to avoid it too. I keep thinking of Mead. Can’t you go home? Can’t we end this any other way?”
“Ask your Sword, Gathrid. Ask your Mistress. If I dared defy Chuchain, if I dared turn away, what would happen?”
Gathrid pictured it. Daubendiek would leap into Ahlert’s back. He would not be able to stop the blade. “There must be a way.”
“Not for us. For us it’s too late. Only if They were conquered.... There’s no end to the Game, Gathrid. I learned that much in Ansorge. And we have to play. However it comes out, I’m sorry.”
“So am I. For you, for me, for everyone who’s died and for all of us yet to die. What are you after, anyway? Why are you here? What do you have to gain by overcoming me?”
Daubendiek whined impatiently.
Ahlert shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you know why you’re here? What’s Sartain to you, that its fate should matter enough to risk death?”
“As you say. We have to play. Even when we think we’re free, we’re being manipulated. You’ve come unarmed. Do you really expect to win past me? Or are you going to defy Chuchain by committing suicide?”
“Not likely.” Ahlert smiled. But his eyes hardened.
Gathrid never really saw the move, so swift did the Mindak swing his staff. Daubendiek lightninged up, absorbed most of the blow’s force. But the staff’s tip caressed his temple.
His ears rang. His knees wobbled. His head began to ache.
“The Staff of Chuchain,” Ahlert explained. “You didn’t see it in the Brothers’ War.... Aarant? Are you still there? The Great Old One showed me where the people of Ansorge had hidden it.”
He struck again. The Staff slid over and along Daubendiek to prod Gathrid’s stomach. Agony exploded at the touch, like all the cramps in the world. The Sword’s counterstroke rang like thunder as Ahlert turned it. “You don’t have Aarant to help you anymore, do you? And I have at last come into the fullness of my Power as the Chosen of Chuchain.”
Daubendiek wove a deadly pattern. Ahlert retreated a few steps into the tunnel. Its confines seemed to expand around Gathrid as he experienced the feeling of growth. All things mundane became beneath notice. Rogala, who chattered advice from an observation port, was no more worthy of attention than a chattering monkey. Count Cuneo, leaning out a sally port, was of even less account.
Daubendiek turned Ahlert’s third blow. Gathrid had a feeling of a universe sagging past on rusty wings as the Staff’s tip rocketed away from his face.
The Sword had encountered this weapon before, in ages past. It remembered. As it did, so did Gathrid.
Daubendiek had been defeated in their last encounter.
That battle had lasted two entire days. Then, as now, the fates of Empires had swung on its outcome.
Daubendiek had learned from that defeat. It applied its lessons now. But the Staff had learned, too. The two rang upon one another like demon hammers in the forges of Hell.
In Gathrid’s weaker moments Suchara shielded him with her umbra. Chuchain did the same for his servant. Ahlert fought in light that danced between shades of gold and scarlet. The face of his master appeared behind him, filling the tunnel, glaring past Gathrid.
The youth knew another such face blocked the passage behind him. He wished he could see Suchara’s material image. It would tell a lot about what she thought of herself.
He began to recover. He was able, occasionally, to unleash an offensive flurry.
Wits recovered, he could see that his situation was not as desperate as he had feared. The Staff was a mighty talisman, but was limited by the limitations of its wielder. Ahlert remained handicapped by the injury he had sustained before the gates of Ansorge. Evidently Chuchain could not overcome the bite of a Toal as easily as Suchara could the old gnawing of polio.
Daubendiek spotted the weakness. It began probing to Ahlert’s left, driving deeper and deeper into his guard. Soon the Sword was slicing air scant inches from the Mindak’s withered arm.
Seeing the tide shifting, Ahlert abandoned attack. Hope faded from his eyes.
Applying his will and Aarant’s teachings, Gathrid forced Daubendiek down.
Suchara projected rage. Gathrid ignored her. “Will you go now?” he asked.
The Mindak leaned on the Staff, panting. He said nothing for a long time. Then, “I can’t.”
“Don’t be stubborn. I don’t want to do this.”
“I’m not. I really can’t. I don’t have the will to break his spell.” He readied the Staff.
“Damn!” Gathrid raised the Sword.
The pressure from Daubendiek and Suchara became intolerable. He gave them their head. Ahlert ducked and weaved, keeping his left covered while trying to trap Gathrid with his only hope, the Ordrope Diadem. The youth evaded with an almost instinctual ease. His one previous exposure had burned a lesson deep into his brain.
There was no doubt. This time Ahlert would perish. Even Chuchain, who drove his servant to mad extremes in a vain effort to nurse victory from the teat of fate, realized that. The Mindak could not overcome Daubendiek using one hand.
But Gathrid could control the manner of the man’s demise. He could allow Ahlert to perish with dignity intact.
He let the Sword think it had control. He encouraged its attack to Ahlert’s left. He pushed till he and the Mindak had danced through a half-circle.
He finished it with the long quiescent blade in his left hand. The surprise was complete. It took in not only Ahlert but Daubendiek and Suchara.
The Mindak staggered to the tunnel wall, good hand pressed to his wound. Blood darkened his fingers. Scarlet trickled along the Staff.
The younger sword groaned in triumph.
Daubendiek lashed like the tail of an angry tiger.
Ahlert sank till he rested on his knees, back against the wall. He beckoned Gathrid. The youth stepped closer, placed a foot on the Staff.
“Tell Mead,” Ahlert gasped. “Tell her I’m sorry. I couldn’t. Be what she wanted.”
“I will,” Gathrid lied.
“And trust no one. The Dark Woman. Is among you. I feel her. Very near.” He grimaced, ground his fist against his stomach. Only the Power of the Staff kept him going. “It hurts. More than I thought it would. The Sword would have been. More merciful. More to your benefit. Finish it now.”
Gathrid refused. He still nurtured some pale, pathetic hope that the Great Old Ones would relent.
Daubendiek lanced out. Gathrid tasted its spite.
The mind that had been the Mindak Ahlert was as strong as Tureck Aarant’s had been. It was as disorienting as it had been in that brief glimpse through the Ordrope Diadem. Gathrid staggered under its impact.
He returned to reality to find someone bending over Ahlert, trying to pry the Staff from his bloody fingers.
Daubendiek lashed out again.
Gathrid reeled as the stiff, stubborn personality of Yedon Hildreth hit him. He screamed. As he seemed to have done so many times before.
For two furious minutes he smashed Daubendiek against the stone of the Maurath. His rage was so overpowering the blade could not stay him.
Then a cold rationality returned. He bent over Ahlert himself. The Ordrope Diadem he shifted to his own head. He tucked the Staff under his arm. Someday, he thought, Staff, Diadem and both swords would accompany him on a long sea voyage. He could consign them to the deeps....
A shadow fell across the mouth of the tunnel. A feeling of th
reat tainted the air. Gathrid left off his silent apologies. His gaze met that of a Toal.
It was like none he had encountered before. This was a man in the flesh and armor of an Imperial Legate. The body still lived. But Gathrid recognized its spiritual stench. He knew those cold, dead eyes. He knew the Hell-stallion it rode, that only a Toal could master. No mortal animal would permit such a devil to bestride it.
So. Nieroda had found her way around Ahlert’s refusal to reveal how to introduce a Toal into new flesh. She had begun installing her fallen Dead Captains in live bodies. The bodies of Imperials.
She’s close, Ahlert had said....
This monster was a fit object for his wrath.
The youth hurtled out of the tunnel, oblivious to the possibility that the flyers might have returned. The Toal’s mount reared, screamed.
Daubendiek protested Gathrid’s action. The youth had seized total control. His will was behind his decisions. The soul, the stubbornness of Yedon Hildreth had tilted the balance away from Suchara. At that moment Gathrid was completely confident of his ability to master the Great Sword and defy Suchara.
Daubendiek whined in fright. Gathrid bid it slay the Dead Captain.
Suchara fought him. Fought him for no better reason than because this was what he wanted to do. Had he not wanted to slay the Toal, she would have driven him.
“Kill it!” he thought at the Sword. Reluctantly, the blade went for the Toal.
The false Legate tried to flee.
Gathrid slew its mount with the younger sword. He allowed the Toal itself no chance to gain its footing. He drove Daubendiek through its breastplate.
Deep inside Gathrid, the half-forgotten soul of Mohrhard Horgrebe cackled evilly, spitefully, feeling its former possessor suffering.
Gathrid did not let the Toal flee with the smoke rising from the corpse of Legate Cervenka. On a subjective level, with his newfound will and a year of anger, he seized the fell spirit. They struggled for a moment, crashing around that nowhere place where he had destroyed his own haunt. He took that demon by the throat and shook it the way a terrier shakes a rat.
It ended quickly.
Gathrid bent, recovered a glowing Toal-sword. He tossed it to Theis Rogala, who had pursued him onto the Causeway. “Hang onto that.”
The dwarf gulped, bobbed his head. He was pale and frightened. He could not believe what he was seeing, what he had heard when Ahlert had spoken to Tureck Aarant.
Gathrid smiled at him, his eyes narrow. “Greetings from Tureck, Theis.” Rogala flinched. He would do some heavy thinking before using his dagger to complete this cycle of the Sword’s history.
No need to worry yet, Gathrid thought. Suchara would not order him murdered while Nieroda yet remained in the game.
Or would she? Would she be that offended?
He shrugged. Rogala was too disturbed to try anything soon.
He stared at Sartain. The Dark Champion was there somewhere. The Toal had proved Ahlert’s statement. He reached inside and read Legate Cervenka. Sometime after Hildreth and the army had moved into the Maurath, Nieroda had descended on the Raftery. Now she was subverting the Imperial Palace.
The youth smiled, though he was not amused. Gerdes Mulenex had made a pact with a devil at Katich. The devil had come to collect.
That was what the Mindak had meant by saying she was looking over their shoulders.
The youth examined his surroundings. The flyers had vanished. Ahlert’s wizards had packed up their witcheries. Easterners lined the ramparts of the Maurath. In their faces he saw awe, fear and dismay. Their officers were trying to get them to withdraw.
They knew what had happened to their Emperor. The hopes that had brought them west had died with him. Despair had fallen on them like a deadly cloud.
Gathrid thought of Mead again. Belfiglio, too, would know. The task of informing the Mindak’s wife would fall to the old slave. Gathrid did not envy him his mission.
Hildreth’s senior officers began gathering in the tunnel. “Let them depart in peace,” Gathrid said, pointing upward with the younger sword. “Muster your battalions. We have work on the island. Nieroda is there.”
He was sure they would revolt. Someone must have seen him fell Hildreth.
His previous usurpations had accustomed them to accepting his authority. There were no witnesses to Hildreth’s murder, apparently. They began forming their units.
Gathrid gazed down at Count Cuneo. He indulged in a moment of self-loathing. Suchara and Daubendiek had surprised him again. He swore it would be their undoing.
Being free of self-doubt was a new experience. It pleased him.
He went roaming through the soul of Legate Cervenka, his quarry knowledge of Nieroda and the Toal. The Legate knew very little. He had been seized during the night, by Red Brothers, while directing a militia regiment in counterattack against Ahlert’s Imperial Brigade. He had been spirited into the Raftery. He had been unconscious, so did not know how he had been taken through the Ventimiglian lines. He had wakened possessed by the demon. Nieroda had handed him a Toal sword. The lights had gone out again. He had wakened back at his command post, under instructions to break the siege of the Raftery.
That siege seemed to bother Nieroda. She had revealed herself in order to press the counterattack.
The imminence of conflict between Ahlert and the Swordbearer had caused her to rush Toal Cervenka to the Mindak’s aid, judging him to be the weaker man. The Toal had arrived too late.
Two thousand weary survivors of the battle for the Maurath assembled on the Causeway. The rest Gathrid left to oversee the Ventimiglian withdrawal.
A Colonel Bleibel, who had been an intimate of Count Cuneo, protested the force’s weakness and exhaustion.
“I just want you to keep order, Sir. I’ll handle Nieroda and her devils myself. Theis. My horse.”
Ever efficient, Rogala had the animal ready.
Gathrid mounted, started toward Sartain. He searched the sky, wondering what had become of the flyers. Only their dead remained.
It won’t be long before Theis draws his dagger, he thought. The dwarf had developed a sudden slyness, an evasiveness, which suggested thoughts he did not want to reveal. Might Suchara be ready to concede this round to Bachesta? She might fear losing the Sword more than she disliked losing the Game.
He surveyed Rogala from the edge of his vision. The dwarf was watching him intently, nervously.
Should he disarm the man?
No. That would make him more dangerous. Suchara would provide another blade, in an inconspicuous time and place. And Rogala himself would become less predictable.
A committee from the Imperial Palace met them at the Causeway’s end. They bore instructions from Elgar, who wanted the Raftery relieved. Despite the efforts of the Brotherhood and Anderle’s militia, Ahlert’s Imperial Brigade remained solidly entrenched.
The easterners were aware of their Mindak’s demise. But their commander, Tracka, felt obligated to fulfill his final charge. He had abandoned all his other operations to concentrate on rooting out Nieroda and the Dead Captains.
Gathrid glared at the messengers suspiciously. He did not have to be schooled in the treacherous ways of the Great Old Ones to see that, on at least two levels, it was in Elgar’s interest to let the Ventimiglians reduce the Raftery. They would settle a personal score with Gerdes Mulenex and rid Anderle of the long-standing problem of the Brotherhood. An eastern victory would devour the leaders of the Orders.
He merely nodded to the messengers, then led the surviving Guards Oldani toward Galen.
“Peace,” he told the first Ventimiglian patrol to cross his path. He waved his followers back out of earshot. “Please inform Thaumaturge-General Tracka that the Swordbearer would like to confer.”
He was, it developed, not unexpected. Tracka arrived within fifteen minutes.
Gathrid had met the brigadier but had seldom spoken to him. Their paths had crossed at both the Karato and Kacalief. Tracka respected t
he Power Gathrid represented, but did not fear him. Ahlert had been known to remark that his leading commander had only one weakness. He feared nothing at all.
“You fought well here, General,” Gathrid said. “I’d say brilliantly, considering your resources. We’ve been both enemies and allies. I want to suggest an armistice now, while there’s yet something to be saved.”
Tracka, like many men of his class, physically resembled Ahlert. Gathrid had little déjà vu flutters while speaking with him.
Tracka frowned. He was the most taciturn of the eastern commanders. He communicated more by gesture and expression than by the spoken word.
“I know your orders, General. I commend you for trying to execute them. But I think it’s time you passed this task on. The Western Army is headed home. The wives of the men of the Imperial Brigade await them just beyond Covingont.”
“Vermin infest the Raftery.”
“Is that your opinion, or just the Mindak’s?”
Tracka’s face became as lifeless as that of a corpse. “Mine, Swordbearer. The place must be scourged and scoured.”
“I’ll go along with that. The point I want to make is, your people don’t have to do it. I’ll handle it. I owe the Mindak that much.”
Tracka shrugged. “I haven’t been relieved of my obligation.”
Gathrid felt Ahlert fuming inside him. “Damn all stubborn men!” he growled. “Can’t you compromise? To save the lives of good soldiers?”
The intransigent general stared at Gathrid for more than a minute. His gaze moved over the youth’s swords, neatly avoided the trap of the Ordrope Diadem. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “If you can convince me that the traitors will be destroyed.”
“Tell me about their defenses.”
Tracka peered again. His right cheek twitched nervously. He scratched at it, shrugged. “The usual. And the Toal. We’ve handled them with massed ballistae fire. They keep finding new flesh, though.”
“You gain with every Brother slain.”
“Exactly. They have to run out of bodies sometime.”
“What about Nieroda?”
“She’s most evidenced by her absence. She hasn’t involved herself in the fighting.”