Next morning Ahlert announced, "Word from Belfiglio. She's going to turn our tactic against us. She's coming after our livestock today." Ahlert's party had plundered Nieroda's herds several times.
"You thinking ambush?" Rogala sounded hopeful.
"I am."
The usual raiding party assembled and raced to intercept Nieroda's raiders. The dwarf knew the perfect site for a bushwhacking, but it was far from the lines. They barely got themselves hidden in the brush and washes and gullies in time.
"Damn that Belfiglio!" Ahlert snarled when he saw the enemy approaching. "He didn't say he was going to hit us this hard."
Six Dead Captains led the enemy party. With them rode a mix of Nieroda's best soldiers. Their path would take them to Ahlert's extreme left flank, where the animals were grazing.
Gathrid found himself more nervous than the situation seemingly demanded. There was a wrongness in the air. The fight looked too big. He whispered to Rogala, "I think we'd better call it off."
Rogala was uneasy too. "I'll suggest we hit from behind, after they begin their attack on the main line."
Too late. The Toal entered the ambuscade. Ahlert signaled the attack.
Gathrid muttered, drew Daubendiek, joined the charge.
The Toal were not surprised. Six black-gauntleted hands rose, thrust out stiffly. Six Ventimiglian saddles emptied.
Spells previously prepared by both sides lightninged back and forth. The earth churned. The sky darkened. Horses screamed and threw their riders. The companies crashed together, mixed.
Nieroda and the remaining Toal appeared on a nearby rise.
"A trap within a trap," Gathrid shouted at Rogala, pointing. Daubendiek took control, howled about him, murdered sorceries and drank lives.
Nieroda had anticipated the Mindak. Perhaps she had fed Belfiglio disinformation to set her opponent up.
The Toal remained out of Gathrid's reach, but gradually enveloped him. He saw disaster taking shape. The Dark Champion's strategy had one obvious purpose: to strip her former master of his most potent ally.
Gathrid knew he was not invulnerable. Daubendiek had limits. Swordbearers had fallen in battle ere now.
The Toal and Rogala had their limits, too.
A band of the Mindak's warrior-wizards isolated one Dead Captain. Rogala got in among them and with preternatural quickness planted a dagger in the thing's side. The sorceries on his short blade were weaker than those on the thing's armor. His knife burst into flame. But it survived long enough to cripple and distract the creature.
A blurring stroke of the Toal's dark blade, moving faster than the nimble dwarf could dodge, raked Rogala's side. He yipped like a kicked puppy, spurred away.
The Ventimiglians invested six lives in unhorsing the injured Toal. They drove its own witchblade through its heart.
The battle was not going well, Gathrid decided. The casualties were too nearly even. And Nieroda had come a little closer. She might be tempted to get involved herself.
Daubendiek got the reach of a Dead Captain.
This time the disorientation seemed endless. Gathrid's mind threatened to shake loose from its foundations. This Dead Captain, when it had been a man, had worn the name Tureck Aarant.
Staggered, Gathrid thought, Are there other Swordbearers among the Toal? Will that be my fate?
Only eleven of a hundred ninety Ventimiglians survived the skirmish. Nieroda had crafted herself a cunning little victory. Of those eleven, Gathrid was the lone man to escape without a wound.
Of the flesh. The cuts on his soul were deep and painful, and festered immediately.
Ahlert sounded the withdrawal when he saw the Swordbearer go slack in his saddle. He grabbed Gathrid's reins, shouted orders and fled. Most of the men lost died covering his retreat.
Gathrid retreated, too, deep inside himself, where he faced a sad yet grateful Tureck Aarant.
"What's happened to him?" Ahlert demanded of Rogala. "He just seemed to fold up."
The puzzled dwarf replied, "I don't know. Some Nieroda trick. He cut a Toal down and . . . It was almost like the soul went out of him."
They approached friendly lines. A storm of arrows screened them from the pursuit. "Get him up to Covingont," the Mindak ordered. "I'll be there as soon as we turn them back."
Nieroda's whole army came up behind her raiders. They attacked all along the Ventimiglian line.
Somehow, the news had traveled ahead. Loida and several of Ahlert's best demonologists were waiting at Covingont's gate. "What happened?" the girl demanded.
Rogala ignored her. He cursed and gestured and bullied the fortress's garrison into lifting the youth off his mount and onto a stretcher. He used his own blade to cut the ropes binding Gathrid to the horse's back. "Come on. Come on," he snarled. "Let's get him out of this weather. He'll die of pneumonia."
Loida kept asking questions. Everyone kept ignoring her. The demonologists stayed close to the stretcher, trying to detect the presence of an attacking spirit. Rogala told them about the youth's Toal-haunt and expressed the opinion that that was not the cause of the present difficulty.
"It may not be the cause," one replied, "but it'll certainly take advantage if it can. We'd better prepare for it."
"Right. Right. Girl, what are you doing?"
Loida had managed to elbow her way through the crowd. She was holding Gathrid's hand as the stretcher moved along. She ignored Rogala.
Inside, Gathrid began to come out of shock. He began to explore this bizarre new soul that had, for a time, nearly displaced his own.
He knew he was lucky. Had Tureck Aarant had the habits of the creature that had possessed him, he could have taken control during the period of shock. But this Aarant was not the aggressive Aarant of legend. Indeed, he was a rather gentle being. But he had the impact of all the souls he had taken in his own time.
He shared some truths about the Brothers' War. They shattered the myths that had been handed down the ages. The Immortal Twins ceased being such ivory exemplars of righteousness for Gathrid. The great champions of the Brothers developed mean, small-minded dimensions. All those heroic names developed their human sides.
The Dark People of Ansorge had perished, but not without leaving a legacy. The last act of the last of their elders had been to make certain that Tureck Aarant became one of the Toal. They had foreseen enough of the future to know that the Toal would battle the next Swordbearer. In their efforts to break the rhythm and cycle holding the world in thrall they had bet on Aarant coming to blows with his successor.
How had Mead put it? Do what you can for those who are yet to live?
The last of Gathrid's innocence fled when he met Tureck Aarant.
Nieroda had known he was one of her Toal. She had brought them together, knowing Gathrid would be stunned.
The youth realized she had not known the whole truth, had not understood the Dark People's motives. She would not have faced the risks had she done so. Yet her ploy came within a whisker of success. Gathrid was in no shape for wrestling his haunt.
The stretcher-bearers carried him to a warm room deep inside Covingont. Loida, Rogala and the Mindak's people crowded in. "Build up the fire," someone ordered. One of the weary stretcher-bearers began chucking logs into the fireplace.
Loida kept on with the frightened questions.
Rogala snapped, "Girl, if you want to stay, get on round the other side there and keep quiet. The questions will answer themselves." He was surprisingly gentle. He turned, asked, "Has it started?"
The senior of the four wizards assigned to the youth replied, "Not yet. He seems to be in shock right now."
Rogala felt Gathrid's pulse, watched his breathing, considered the color of his skin. Shock, all right. He had seen it on a thousand battlefields. But no one had touched the youth. Why, then?
Gathrid suddenly arched his back and made a terrible sound deep in his throat. He began thrashing. Foam appeared on his lips.
"That's it," said the senior wizard. "
Hold him," he told the stretcher-bearers. "Let's get him into some sort of restraints. Rogala, see that he doesn't swallow his tongue. Put something between his teeth. He could bite it and drown in his own blood."
The dwarf seized a piece of kindling.
The wizards chanted, then listened with an inner ear, then chanted some more. The senior finally observed, "It's a strong one, this devil."
"One of the Toal spirits," Rogala replied.
"This's going to be hard work, then. If it knows how to install itself with outside help."
The wizards practiced their craft. Two days would pass before they dared relax, before they saw themselves safely through the crisis. The Toal haunt was stubborn and determined.
For a time the Gathrid inside, so weakly anchored to his flesh, did not realize who or what he was. He knew only that he was fighting for his existence. And in the beginning he did not have much motive for winning.
He seemed to be in a different world, an imaginary world. He formed an army of one, and upon an unseen plain he met another such host, a formless shadow that seemed to be mostly hunger. It leapt at him, and bore him down, and seemed about to devour him . . . . Then they were back where they started, facing one another again. It leapt at him, and bore him, down, and seemed about to devour him . . . .
Gathrid was baffled. Over and over, the same thing happened. And each time something broke the chain before the moment of disaster.
Then he felt Tureck Aarant in there with him. Tureck Aarant, who could have taken him, fighting to save him. And then there were other forces, things unseen, from outside the dream, which put constraints upon the shadow, and weakened it while he grew stronger.
There was no feel of time in there. Nor did Gathrid care, till caring returned and he began to fight more from desire than reflex. The battle turned the instant he rediscovered his will to survive.
"That's it," Aarant whispered. "That's it. We have it on the run now. Come. Let's destroy it." And in an instant they were in pursuit, flying across the unseen plain.
The youth's eyes opened. He needed several seconds to get his bearings. He found Loida holding his hand, looking exhausted and worried. "Hi!" he croaked, grinning a rictus of a grin.
"Gathrid!"
"I'm back."
She threw herself at him, hugging him. Then she shouted, "He's awake! He came out of it."
Rogala and several Ventimiglians charged into the room. "How you doing, son?" the dwarf demanded.
Weakly, Gathrid replied, "I think the worst is over."
"What happened?"
"Careful," Aarant whispered inside him.
"I was going to ask you. The Toal thing, I think."
"That's what we figured. Ooh, that Nieroda was crafty."
Gathrid tried to lever himself into a sitting position. Loida had to help him. "How long was I out?"
"Two days. And she used every second." Rogala told the tale.
Nieroda's forces had ripped and torn at the army blocking the Karato. A finger of one assault had high-watered in the snows below fortress Covingont. The Mindak was still trying to drive that thrust back. The old scars on the walls of the pass had been obliterated by new ones.
Gathrid smiled. "What good would winning do her? Winter will hold the pass better than any army."
Rogala shrugged. "The seasons turn."
Gathrid tried to get to his feet. "I've got to get down there and help."
The Mindak entered. He examined the youth. "You aren't going anywhere for a few days."
"But . . . "
"You're too weak. To be honest, I don't want you going out there and losing the Sword."
Rogala agreed. "You just stay put. Take it easy. Girl, keep an eye on him. Yell if he gets too frisky."
They forced him back down on the cot. And once down, he found he did not mind having Loida fuss over him.
In his shy way he was fond of her. He did not yet know her well, but he did feel good when she was around. He was tempted to stretch his convalescence.
Loida was first to sense the changes in the Swordbearer. He had returned to the world possessed of an altered perspective, a new determination, a new hardness, a new hunger for the destruction of the forces toying with mankind. She found this new Gathrid frightening. She liked the old one better.
Chapter Thirteen
Gudermuth Again
That Nieroda was an inspired commander became ever more obvious. Rogala's prophecy of defeat seemed likely to come true despite a defense that he had guaranteed to be a sure thing. The dwarf began to doubt it himself.
Then, after having subjected the Ventimiglian host to seven days of savagery, Nieroda decamped and raced westward. Ahlert's people were too weak and weary to do anything but thank their gods that they had survived.
Nieroda told no one her intentions. The Mindak's man Belfiglio could tell his master nothing. The Eye could not look into the minds of Nieroda or the Toal.
Nieroda had a week's lead before Ahlert became organized enough to follow.
Now Rogala's scheme revealed its weakness. There were not enough draft animals to draw the supply train. Ahlert stumbled westward, losing ground every day.
Nieroda reached Gudermuth while winter still gripped the little kingdom. Her army was tired and cold and hungry, but confident.
In her absence Count Cuneo had managed to restore much of the Alliance's shaky fighting spirit. Morale had risen when his vigorous campaign broke through the brigades holding the Beklavac narrows. In an effort to solidify the Alliance further, he marched on eastward and relieved the capital of Gudermuth, adding his own Imperial troops to those of Honsa Eldracher and Katich's native defenders. He believed further successes there would seal the remaining vacillators into the pact.
Nieroda challenged Hildreth and Eldracher as soon as she reached Gudermuth.
"They've seen a hell of a fight," Eldracher observed. He was a tall, lean, weathered man of middle years. In manner and bearing he resembled his friend, Yedon Hildreth. He and the Count were of a class that had become inbred. "What do you think?" he asked Hildreth.
Nieroda's vanguard did look ragged and panicky, as if in a hurry to escape. Her main force, a hill farther away, seemed to swirl and surge, as if hurrying along in disarray.
"The rumor is true." Hildreth scowled ferociously. "The boy made big talk, but he's gone over to the Mindak. He's no better than Aarant was."
"Stopping Nieroda seems a sound enough reason."
Hildreth's scowl deepened. He was a black or white man, this Count. His viewpoint held little room for compromise. "They'll hit the city," he guessed. "They'll want our food stores. It's just possible they don't know I'm here. I'll go out and hit them first. See if your spook pushers can find out how close Ahlert is."
"Of course."
Neither Hildreth nor Eldracher was a man easily misled, yet each, attaching too much weight to Gathrid's shift of allegiance, leapt to the conclusion that Nieroda was fleeing in defeat.
Hildreth first suspected the truth three hours later. Nieroda's arrival and shift to combat order was too smoothly and confidently executed. Her renegade wizards came into play easily, with their strongest and subtlest spells prepared. He realized he had been sucked in. He would have refused battle had Nieroda come up in good order.
Easy disengagement was impossible. Nieroda and the Toal were applying pressure all along his line, which he had thrown across their path a mile from the city.
Eldracher became ever more puzzled as he searched for the Mindak. He could not locate the man. Nieroda appeared to be fleeing ghosts. He tried searching her far flanks.
"My god!" He called for his weapons and armor and bodyguard.
He had discovered the truth too late.
A mounted brigade had circled the city. It erupted from the hills southwest of Katich, thundered into Hildreth's rear. A strong, Toal-backed force attacked and screened the city gates. Hildreth then had nowhere to retreat.
Eldracher reached the wall in time
to watch the disaster unfold.
Hildreth had brought half the Alliance's strength out of Bilgoraj. Already half that had fallen here. The survivors were being crushed against Katich's walls. They were fighting bravely, but would be dead before nightfall.
Three times Hildreth tried to clear the enemy away from the gate. Three times the Toal hurled him back. Eldracher did what he could from above, with covering fire, and hauling the wounded up by rope. His efforts were fruitless. Come midafternoon Hildreth himself ascended to confer.