The beast was swift. It stopped dead, leapt into the air. Its wings flashed and slapped, making a gonglike crash. It slew Rogala's horse with a single snap of trap-like jaws. It barely missed Rogala as he threw himself over his mount's rump.
The Toal lost its seat too, yet recovered quickly. Gathrid wheeled for the kill. He found the thing setting its lance like an infantry pike.
"Forget him!" Rogala bellowed. "We've got to get out of here!" He pointed. Crossing a distant ridgeline, airborne on a beast resembling that just injured, trailing a fluttering black cloak, came help for the Toal.
"Nieroda!" Gathrid urged his mount toward the dwarf, scooped him up, kicked the animal into a gallop. The thing that Rogala had wounded bit a chunk from its own flank as they passed, became more enraged. The Toal had to slay it in self-defense.
"Hope that wasn't a family heirloom you left back there," Gathrid shouted over his shoulder.
"Knives I can replace, boy. My skin I can't. Shut up and ride."
The youth glanced back, saw the Toal's arm thrust their way. It was about to use the weapon Gathrid had seen at Kacalief. He tightened his grip on Daubendiek. A chuckle redolent of the thing that haunted his dreams seemed to echo from everywhere around him. A blast of light took his sight away. Daubendiek quivered, groaned, absorbed the sorcery. Gathrid looked back again, vision quickly regained. Nieroda was closer. His flyer seemed slow and clumsy. They crested the far wall of the valley and saw that this would not be a long race. The Bilgoraji border was nearer than they had suspected. Astride a road which wandered in from their left stood a city of tents, a forest of standards. "We've struck the Torun Road," Gathrid guessed. "That's the Alliance army."
Gasping, he identified the banners of most of the Allied kingdoms, and those of several Brotherhood Orders.
Rogala grunted with each piece of information absorbed.
"Why haven't they done something?" Gathrid wondered.
"Get us there and we'll find out!" Rogala snapped. Nieroda had seen the army, too. He put on more speed by steepening the angle of his glide. He closed fast. Gathrid struggled to ready himself and the Sword.
There was a stir ahead. Knights and men in the robes of the Brotherhood rushed toward the frontier. They remained just beyond the customs shed delineating the border.. That puzzled and angered Gathrid. A scrupulous respect for Gudermuth's already shattered sovereignty suggested political intrigue. "There'll be an accounting," he muttered.
"We're not going to make it," Rogala told him. "He has room for one pass. I'll tell you when."
They were little more than a hundred yards from the border when Rogala growled, "Get ready to swerve. Now!"
Gathrid yanked his reins. His horse screamed. Rogala flung himself off, lit and rolled like a professional tumbler. A bolt from a crossbow lying across Nieroda's lap blistered the air where Gathrid's mount had been, struck earth at Rogala's heels, left a fist-sized, smoking black hole.
The dwarf responded with mountain-moving curses.
Daubendiek lightninged up and opened a yard of the flyer's belly.
The creature's soul was as alien as the thing that had possessed the slain Toal. Gathrid sensed only coldness, bloodthirst and a feeling of the thing having spent ages asleep. It was another of the Mindak's past delvings.
The thing screamed. Its wings beat like gongs. The very air seemed to try fleeing. Nieroda roared angrily. Mount and rider hit earth in a thrashing tumble.
The Dark Champion got off another bolt while falling. This one Gathrid could not evade. Daubendiek could not turn it. Gathrid jumped. His horse took the impact, moaned, collapsed. A charred flesh smell filled the air.
The earth came up too fast. Gathrid knew he would be knocked senseless. Yet he managed to land lightly, on his toes and free hand.
Nieroda stood twenty paces away, blocking his path to the border. He swelled into a black giant behind which loomed an even larger, nebulous entity.
For an instant Gathrid was frightened. Then Daubendiek's power flooded him as never before. He suffered a moment of disorientation.
The earth dwindled beneath him. Everything human faded into insignificance. He existed alone with his Enemy, and had a self-confidence that was godlike. Never had he felt so alive, so competent, so inconquerable. With a laugh that echoed mockingly off the hills, he brought Daubendiek up to salute his dread opponent.
This was how Tureck Aarant must have felt before his great combats. Daubendiek must have come into the fullness of its Power.
To one side a small, hairy something groveled on the earth and whined, "Suchara be praised.
Suchara be praised. Your servant no longer doubts."
"Come, Hellspawn. Come, Nieroda. Receive the kiss of Suchara," Gathrid thundered. He put his lips to the quivering blade of the Great Sword. It had grown hot.
Over the border the Alliance ranks began to show gaps as fainthearts fled. Even those in the colored robes of the Orders looked ready to panic. Gathrid saw, and did not care.
But he could not see himself.
From across the frontier they saw Nieroda huge in an envelope of Cimmerian mist, and past him a blinding man-shape of fire surrounded by aquamarine haze. The haze had about it suggestions of a woman's face. Some even saw blood-red eyes burning over the Swordbearer's shoulders.
Daubendiek, too, had its apparent growth and backing aura. For a moment the Swordbearer had a fist filled with blades, as if Daubendiek itself were but the iceberg tip of an enchantment spanning multiple dimensions.
For Gathrid the world continued to diminish, to narrow, to become unreal, till his universe contained but one concrete object. The Enemy. The thing that called itself Nevenka Nieroda.
A vagary crossed his mind. Had Nieroda ever been human?
The darkness and its content remained motionless, waiting, ignoring Gathrid's challenge. It seemed indecisive, as if no longer certain that its own challenge had been wise.
With a Daubendiek that seemed a half-dozen yards long Gathrid clove the Nieroda-darkness. A bolt like that which had slain his horse ripped into the haze surrounding him. He laughed. It tickled.
More than ever, Daubendiek demonstrated a life and will of its own. It moved in deadly patterns no mortal eye could follow, punishing to the limit the weapon which strove to turn it. That was a blade brother to the one once borne by Obers Lek. It had no hope of victory. It screamed out its life as Daubendiek chopped shrapnel from its edge. The Sword sang in a high, exultant voice.
The end came swiftly. Nieroda's blade died with a despairing wail, becoming mortal metal which Daubendiek cut as easily as spidersilk. With a berserker's one-handed backhand swing, Gathrid removed Nieroda's head.
The dark mist faded. A headless little man collapsed. A susurrus of awe ran through the Alliance army.
And Gathrid knew that he had been cheated. He had won a hollow victory. He had slain another man already dead. The thing that had been Nevenka Nieroda had abandoned the body moments before the mortal blow. It remained alive to work its mischief elsewhere. They would meet again, and next time Nieroda would bear crueler weapons.
Gathrid looked around. Whence he had come a half-dozen Toal on dragon mounts had turned their backs and were departing. He would not be able to catch them even were he so inclined.
The small, hairy thing pranced and babbled at his feet, pointing westward. Gathrid stalked toward his motherland's frontier with her protector, Bilgoraj. "Kimach Faulstich, you great King, why have you forsaken your neighbor?" He hoped his words thundered off the hills behind the Alliance army. He was in a vicious rage. King Kimach had failed to keep faith. There would be a reckoning.
They sensed his wrath, over there, though they did not hear it. Hundreds fled. Thousands remained, rooted in their fear.