The Swordbearer

Chapter Eight

Ventimiglia Honsa Eldracher won a resounding victory outside Ka-tich. Hardly an easterner escaped. The story would course through and excite the kingdoms of the Alliance, though thoughtful folk would shudder when they heard about the reappearance of the Great Sword. Its return portended grim times.

The outcome of the battle fought nearer the Bilgoraji border overshadowed and obscured the victory at Katich. There the presence of Nevenka Nieroda and the Toal tipped the balance. While the sorceries of the Orders, and of Ahlert and his generals, negated one another, the men with swords and spears decided the outcome. For the most part it was a bloody, unimaginative slaughter.

The Alliance Kings refused to subordinate themselves to their one competent commander. Count Cuneo, Ye-don Hildreth, might have won the day.

Nieroda and the Toal concentrated on the junctures between national forces. By nightfall the Kings had lost their arrogance. They knew they were doomed if they continued into the morrow. They surrendered themselves into Yedon Hildreth's safekeeping.

Hildreth repeated the ploy he had used at Avenevoli. He built the campfires high, then forced the exhausted troops to decamp. He force-marched back into Bilgoraj and dug in astride the Torun Road where the brushy north slopes of the Beklavac Hills crowded against the fetid immensities of the Koprovica Marshes. Ancient, bleak strongholds, perched on basaltic crags, frowned down on the high road. The Beklavacs themselves were steep-sided and densely overgrown. Forces smaller than Hildreth's had held those narrows against armies more vast than the Mindak's.

Ahlert's pursuit was indecisive. He had to keep one eye on Honsa Eldracher. Failure to fulfill his boasts had shaken his confidence. Consequently, he failed again.

A bold, swift follow-through would have carried him through to Torun and might have shattered the Alliance. Instead, he camped below the Beklavacs, tried to draw Hildreth out and sent home for fresh levies.

The Alliance Kings called for more soldiers too.

Gathrid was, by then, far away. He remained angry and desolate. He loathed himself for not having controlled the Sword. He wandered aimlessly, avoiding both sides.

He stole a horse and drifted eastward by back roads and out of the ways. For a time he bore Anyeck with him, intending to return her to the family mausoleum. The irreversible progress of nature forced him to abandon the idea. He consigned her to the earth near Herbig. He drifted onward.

He did not know where he was bound, or why. He did not much care. Movement was what mattered. It separated him from the scene of his despair, of his sin against his own blood.

He could not outrun the pain. He could only numb it with physical exhaustion.

He crossed the Grevenmg border without noticing.

One region of Ventimiglian occupation looked like another, though the farther east he traveled the more the land had recovered.

His thoughts became fixed on Tureck Aarant. He began to understand the man. Aarant, too, had slain his kin. He had murdered his own mother near the beginning of his tale.

Gathrid wished the Sword's history were better known. What he did know had been set down by Imperial scholars with other matters on their minds. The blade's past lay behind a veil of artful shadow.

Was the kin-death a rite of passage engineered to separate the Swordbearer from his earthly ties?

Had Rogala known the moment would come? The youth drank deeply of the sour wine of suspicion, judging Suchara, the dwarf, and himself in the harshest terms.

His brooding gradually came to a head. His unfocused anger coalesced. He set himself a goal. He would try to rid the world of abominations like Daubendiek. And Nieroda. And the Toal.

The notion was vague and grandiose. Only belatedly did he realize that it could cause him great pain. Had he not taken a step along that road by slaying Anyeck?

The voices within him mumbled and muttered and propounded a curious question: Had Tureck Aarant come to the same decision? He seemed to have ranged himself on the side of the weaker Power whenever he had done battle.

Every question and every decision lured Gathrid back to the same puzzle. Was he following the path of Aarant? Was it all foreordained, choreographed by the mysterious Suchara?

Where should he begin this self-appointed mission? Great Powers had gathered in the west. Left to their contention, they might destroy one another. He needed but wait, then go after the victor.

There seemed little doubt that Ahlert would triumph eventually. His mining of the past had put too much might into his hands.

Therefore, Gathrid reasoned, the Mindak should be weakened before their inevitable confrontation.

That dark shadow which once had been the controlling spirit of a Toal remained with him. He could feel it there, over his left shoulder, watchful and patient. It no longer strove to supplant his soul. It hovered on the border of awareness, full of fright and hopelessness. It could not find another host without guidance from the Mindak.

These days Gathrid was more disturbed by its patience than by its presence. It was immortal. It could wait forever. In its unbleak moments it seemed to be telling him that its chance would come.

It would give him time. Someday he would relax a little too much.

And yet it feared... .

It had taken this new, less aggressive stance after his confrontation with Anyeck. It had been impressed by the Power he had wielded then.

Days became weeks. He wandered into lands where Ventimiglian peasants had begun colonizing. They were a hardy, determined breed. They were more ambitious than the peasants of Gathrid's own Gudermuth.

He began to suspect that his separation from Rogala was not as complete as he had hoped. A

horseman seemed to be shadowing him from afar. He set an ambush. No one rode into it.

That in itself was suggestive. Rogala always knew what was going on. Gathrid gave up with a shrug.

He had to-assume the dwarf would follow the Sword. The two were inextricably linked.

Gathrid began to think, to plan. The thought of a Rogala pursuit jarred him into it. His gaze swung eastward, drawn like a compass's arm.

From Grevening he passed into Rodegast, then Sil-havy, then Gorsuch. Each was another small principality like Gudermuth. He saw no one but the occasional Ventimiglian colonist. In Gorsuch colonization was well advanced. New cities were growing where old had fallen.

The Nirgenau Mountains rose across his path. Beyond their high, bleak passes and chill peaks lay Ventimiglia itself.

The Nirgenaus were tricky. Levies bound westward crowded the one good road across. They were cheerful young men eager for plunder and glory. Some were as young as he. They reminded him of his brothers, or even of himself in that ridiculous time when he had wanted to go to war.

The pain reached in and squeezed his heart. Childhood had come to an end. He was a singleton now.

He had nothing and no one. ... He had slain the last of his kin himself.

The long, lonely weeks did not go solely to remorse. He practiced integrating and learning to tap the memories given him by the Sword. From them he learned of secondary trails seldom trod by the Mindak's soldiers. Following those, he reached Camero Marasco, the high, barren peak that marked the easternmost boundary of ancient Anderle, and the western frontier of modern Ventimiglia. From its wind-tortured, snowbound heights he studied the storied fortress called Covingont.

Covingont of the three pink towers, mistress of the Karato Pass, where Tureck Aarant had slain Cashion the Blind in the first blush of the Brothers' War. Covingont, where the gnaw of elder sorceries had left the Karato's granite walls permanently scarred, where even time had been unable to banish the dread memorials of the fury that had brought Cashion's doom.

One of Ahlert's predecessors had rebuilt the castle. It looked as formidable as the Covingont of yore. Gathrid touched the Sword. It remembered. The fighting had been grim. It had fed well.

Having slain Cashion, Aarant had vanished into the east. He had been gone a year. Grellner had kept the cauldron of war boiling. His whispers had sabotaged every effort to reconcile the Immortal Twins.

Then Tureck Aarant had come across the Karato again, a changed man. His sojourn in the east remained forever unilluminated. Never again was he Tureck Aarant the young warrior. He had become Tureck Aarant the Swordbearer, and friend to none. He had become a force, not a man.

He had hunted the sorcerers of both sides with an implacable ferocity, barely pretending to be anyone's ally. His legend had come into being during the following year. It was a story that looked a decade deep when seen from centuries down time. No man should have done so much in so little time.

Then Tureck had died. He was not yet twenty. Rogala still stood accused of his murder.

Gathrid stared at the pink granite towers. He shuddered. The chill of the Karato had little to do with his shaking.

Once again he was following a trail blazed by Tureck Aarant. Was he meant to share that previous Swordbear-er's fate?

He thought he heard a ghostly chuckle over his left shoulder. He whirled, hand flying to Daubendiek's hilt. He saw nothing.

"The Toal," he murmured. He had forgotten the Dead Captain. It could have stolen into him. ... He shuddered again.

And again the Toal expressed mirth.

Gathrid spat in disgust, slapped his hands together to get his blood moving. Had Aarant ever felt the way he did now? Like the walls of reality were pressing in? Like he was being herded down a long road between two facades that, instead of coming together because of perspective, were really constricting the way? His options were dwindling. He had few moments in which to occupy himself with anything but Rogala, the Toal, Ahlert, Nieroda, and just plain staying alive.

His lack of choices angered and frustrated him. He thought he understood why Tureck had become so violent and vicious. A mocking history may have rewritten spiteful savagery as heroic battling.

He had done nothing yet himself, Gathrid thought. Unless murdering Anyeck counted as a mighty deed. Surely the forces toying with him had a greater purpose than that.

Again he heard the ghostly chuckle of his haunting Toal.

Traveling Ventimiglia without drawing attention proved difficult. Gathrid discovered it to be a crowded land of countless feudal estates, all lying cheek by jowl. There was very little untamed land. Hiding places were scarce. The nobility, men of Power from among whom Ahlert's officers were drawn, lived in squat, dark fortresses within sight of one another. Each fortress was surrounded by peasant hovels like a hen surrounded by chicks. Neat networks of rammed earth road formed the boundaries between neighboring manors.

Ventimiglia, Gathrid concluded, was a land shaped by generations of military success and by devotion to order. Everything seemed as perfect as an illuminated manuscript. Even the woodlots-in one neat square for each manor-were parklike. Every plant, animal, man and structure had its place.

That stood at odds with stories he had heard in Gud-ermuth. He had been taught that Ahlert was an emissary of chaos and destruction.

In a sense he might be, though the chaos existed only along Ventimiglia's frontiers.

Gathrid had his difficulties, but found ways to slip through the countryside. He abandoned his horse early, sure it would give him away. He traveled by night. Days he usually spent sleeping in trees in woodlots, or beneath the bridges on the roads.

By the time he had put a hundred miles behind him he had concluded that good and evil were matters of perspective. Ventimiglia was a peaceful, happy, prosperous land, not the hell he had been schooled to expect.

The voices of the dead reminded him that there were perspectives and perspectives. What he saw had been purchased at great cost. He was not seeing all of Ventimiglia. Few of the men he had slain had sprung from these bucolic environs.

The conflict between preconception and reality only confused him. He coped by rejecting all conclusions.

Months passed. He slipped past cities named Lo-biondo and Bozeda. He was approaching Senturia, the Ventimiglian capital. All three cities were supposed to be nests of the darkest sorcery. He had seen nothing to support or refute the charge.

Senturia was a mighty city. It was said to be populated by more than a million souls. That was more people than had lived in Gathrid's native kingdom. He could not comprehend so many people having gathered in one place.

Two hundred miles beyond, to the northeast, lay the city Dedera. It crowded the feet of the Chromoga Mountains. Somewhere back in their ore-rich canyons, rumor claimed, lay the mouth of the tunnel Ahlert had discovered. At its nether end lay the subterranean ruins the Mindak mined for his Power.

Gathrid thought of the place as a library of past evils. A place where all sorceries had been recorded.

Gradually, without conscious consideration, the Library had become his destination. There were things he wanted to learn. About Nieroda, about the Toal, about Suchara and about the Sword. He was sure the information could be found there. Ahlert had uncovered most of it already, hadn't he?

His extended run of luck ran out east of Senturia.

He had, after all those miles and weeks, finally found himself a forest. It was a tamed and tended wood, but still the best cover he had seen since leaving the Karato. Its keepers had allowed large sections to remain semiferal. Though it was inviting, it made him nervous. It had the air of a hunting preserve. Still, it gave him a chance to travel by day. He had not been able to since leaving the Nirgenau Mountains.

It began shortly before noon one day, when he thought he heard the distant-faint bray of horns. He paused, listened intently. Finally, unsure, he resumed walking.

He heard the sound again an hour later. It was much closer. This time he had no doubts. He was in the path of a hunt.

His trepidation was shared. Trees rustled as squirrels went into hiding. Rabbits dashed here and there, their white tails bouncing. A boar, then a stag, crossed his path. Each broke into panicky flight after spying him.

"Better hide," Gathrid muttered. He glanced round, ran after the stag. He needed a remote thicket or cave.

Proper thickets were scarce. He hadn't the speed or wind to stay with the stag long enough to discover its hiding place. He did find a cave, but beat a hasty, ignominious retreat upon finding himself nose to nose with a she-bear and her cubs.

The horns sounded again. The hunters were getting close. Was he the quarry? That did not seem possible. They were coming from ahead, not from his backtrail. And even Ahlert hadn't the arrogance to announce his coming to the Swordbearer.

Pure dumb luck was about to betray him.

He had to move fast. After a moment of dismay and indecision he flung himself at a post oak. He shimmied up and transferred to a larger beech, which he climbed till he could crawl out a branch and get into another oak. This was a many times grandfather of the first, and one of the largest trees he had ever seen. Sixty feet up he settled into a fork and watched a brook gurgle along a dozen yards from the tree's base.

The horn again. He listened for hounds, heard no baying. A good sign, he thought. They would not stumble onto his trail.

The horn again. Then the quarry passed beneath him, exhausted, staggering toward the brook. "A

girl," he said softly. He leaned for a better look.

She was ragged, scratched and bruised, and hardly older than he. Though he considered himself a poor judge, she appeared reasonably attractive.

She paused to scoop water from the creek. She was in command of her wits. She turned downstream after drinking.

And slipped on a slimy stone. She fell with a little wail of despair and pain. She stayed down.

Though she tried valiantly, weary muscles and a sprained ankle refused to be tortured further.

Gathrid started down even before the hunters arrived. He froze while they passed beneath him, exchanging quips about their prey. Having absorbed Ventimiglian from Daubendiek's victims, he understood. The girl was an escaped sacrifice meant for a slow, painful death in rites that would give them command of a familiar spirit.

There were five of them. Behind each rode an esquire. They were cruel young men who inspired Gathrid's loathing. They dismounted, surrounded the girl. They taunted her, laughed at her, kicked her down again when she tried to rise.

Gathrid crossed to the beech. One of the esquires turned, cocked his head then resumed watching his master's sport.

Sometimes, Gathrid thought, you have to compromise a moral resolution to meet the demand of a greater obligation. He had been determined never to draw Dauben-diek except in self-defense.

Rogala would have called him a fool for interfering.

He dropped the last dozen feet, landed quietly on the soft grass. The sharp-eared esquire turned again. Gathrid drew the Sword.

The esquire tried to shout, could only gobble.

Gathrid felt the familiar growing sensation, the eagerness of the blade, the momentary vertigo as Daubendiek drank a soul. The Ventimiglians froze when they sensed the surge of Power.

Gathrid raged among them, slaughtering all the esquires and two of the nobles before they could defend themselves. The others, after crossing the brook, began some hasty sorcery. Two moved toward Gathrid's flanks while the third retreated. A red mist roiled in the pocket thus formed.

Within that mist an anthropoid, bow-legged, squat, long-armed, hairy and toothy thing took shape.

It looked at the girl and grinned.

Despite its origins it did not seem all that remarkable till Gathrid splashed across the creek and attacked it.

Daubendiek behaved like an ordinary blade swung into a hardwood post. It cut, but with no more effect than that ordinary blade would have affected that mortal oak.

Though Gathrid was startled, Daubendiek was not. It beat about the demon in an almost invisible storm. Chips of monster flew. The Sword clanged like a beaten gong.

The demon seemed astonished that it was vulnerable at all. Rocking with each blow, grin waning, it kept trying to reach Gathrid. The three who had summoned it kept yelling in amazement.

Gathrid remembered the field where his father and brothers had practiced with their horses and weapons. The demon began to take on the target-post's well-hacked look.

Daubendiek would strike for the creature's neck, then go for a leg when it raised an arm protectively. The Sword fell into a rhythm of high and low, staying a move ahead, till one demon leg parted at the knee.

Daubendiek howled gleefully.

While the demon sat staring at its severed calf, Gathrid slew the nearest Ventimiglian and charged after the other two.

He caught one, but the last captured a horse before Gathrid overtook him. He escaped as a scream drew the youth's attention back to the brook.

The demon was after the girl, stalking her on all fours, looking like some weird wolf spider awaiting the right instant to pounce. The girl kept scooting away. She seemed unable to take her feet.

Swinging Daubendiek with both hands, Gathrid severed the demon's head from its neck. It rolled down into the chill water. Its mouth broke the surface and began cursing in fractured Ventimiglian.

The decapitated body crawled round the slope- hands feeling for the missing head. When it encountered a stone of appropriate size, it tried settling that atop its shoulders.

Gathrid turned to the girl. She cowered away from him. She seemed more terrified of him than she was of the demon.

Though the Sword protested, Gathrid forced it into its scabbard. He offered the girl a hand. She accepted as if afraid refusal would bring reprisal. Gathrid did not know whaf to say, so said nothing. Ventimiglian words would not roll right on his tongue anyway. He helped her climb the bank, leaned her against a sapling while he rounded up horses and examined his enemies' gear. He found their memories more interesting than their, equipment. They knew the way to the Library. It was there that the Mindak had gifted them with their demon.

Said demon kept cursing in the streambed.

He was wasting time. He helped the girl onto a horse. Then, on impulse, he scrambled down and salvaged the talking head. He bound it to his saddle by its wiry hair. It chattered right along, telling him what it thought.

The girl spoke for the first time when Gathrid started to leave. "What about me? What am I supposed to do?"

He looked into her dark, frightened eyes. He shrugged. "Whatever you want. You're free now."

She understood despite his recalcitrant tongue. "No. I'll never be free. I've been dedicated." She indicated the head. "The thing's masters will compel them. They can't break their bargain with it.

Nor it with them. The one who escaped. He'll bring friends. Powerful men. The high sorcerers. The fathers of the ones you slew."

Gathrid shrugged again. What could he say or do? He had not thought beyond her rescue. "Come on."

His plans had no room for companions, yet he could not abandon a responsibility once assumed.

She hesitated. She was afraid of him. She did not want to remain near a man so deadly. Yet he had saved her from the devils she knew.

Shortly after he shrugged a third time and started off, exchanging unpleasantries with the head, she called for him to wait.