"Here they come," Rogala whispered.
Gathrid chivied himself out of the wilderness of memory, peered round the woodpile. Men with drawn swords were stealing toward their tent. He took the Sword's grip... .
Rogala's touch stayed him. "Let them be disappointed. Let's see who they run to."
"Good thinking."
Finding no prey, the assassins withdrew. They did not panic, nor did they forget to cover their backtrail.
The army had begun stirring. It was to move out at dawn. Tracking the assassins proved difficult.
A series of interlocuters made tracing the heart of responsibility almost impossible.
"Levels," Rogala muttered. "He's no fool."
Between them they managed to maintain contact. The trail ended at the pavilion belonging to Gerdes Mulenex.
"Tit for tat," Rogala promised solemnly. "But we have to wait our turn. We've got to move with the army."
"Thought we were letting them fight their own battles."
"We are. But I want to be there to watch."
The camp crawled like an anthill as the noncoms turned their men out early.
Gathrid's homeland had changed. The smoke had cleared. The birds sang across the countryside, celebrating the gods knew what. The few Ventimiglians he and Rogala saw were hurrying toward Katich. The Mindak was gathering his forces outside the capital's walls. "He knows the Alliance is moving," Rogala averred.
He and Gathrid did not move with the army itself, but parallel to it, within a few hours' ride.
They avoided Ventimiglians, Alliance patrols, and all but one group of refugees. Those they quizzed. They learned that Ahlert had bragged he would reduce Katich and destroy the Alliance army the same day.
"That much arrogance might become its own reward," Rogala observed as they rode off to well-wishes from folk with whom Gathrid had shared his meager supplies. "A man makes brags, he'd better deliver. A couple failures and some ambitious general will take a shot at snatching his job."
"He could have the power and know it."
"Of course he could. He obviously thinks he does. But a wise man does his deed, then he brags.
There's less chance of looking a fool that way. What's kept him out of Katich so long? A quick victory there might have awed the Alliance into backing down again."
Gathrid returned to an argument they had been pursuing since he had revealed his suspicions about Anyeck. "Theis, I meant it about stopping my sister. It's something I have to do. I don't care if it is free help for the Alliance."
He kept bouncing back and forth between that and his question about what profit he could expect for his misery as Swordbearer. Rogala answered curtly when he would talk at all. At that moment he entered his sour and silent phase again.
"All right. All right. A man does what he has to. Do what you want. You won't listen to me, and I'm getting sick of listening to you."
Gathrid grinned. The dwarf's scolding reminded him of his mother's... . The memory left a bitter taste. They had been close, he and she.
Vengeance was necessary.
Alliance patrols became more numerous. They saw more bands of Ventimiglians. Occasionally they came across the wrack of skirmishes, then a field where a small, fierce battle had been lost by Malmbergetan infantry.
"One of the Toal was here," Gathrid said. A trail of corpses marked its path through the action.
"No ordinary blade would have cut that deep."
His Toal-shadow, lurking at the edge of consciousness, became excited by the supposed proximity of its fellow.
Rogala shrugged. "There hasn't been much sorcery so far. I find that interesting."
"So far. Maybe it hasn't been needed. Weren't we here before?"
"Yes. There's a plain the other side of that ridgeline. I'd guess they'll meet there. A set battle. Lots of blood. Victory to the stubbornest. No strategy, no finesse. The only soldier I saw in that lot was Count Cuneo, and they gave him command in name only. They'll interfere all the way down the line. Politicians!" He snorted, shook his head, growled. "If war is too important to trust to generals, then policy is too important to trust to politicians.
"Well, that's neither here nor there. Right now I want a look from yon hill. Katich is only ten miles on."
"Where's the desolation?"
"You'll see plenty from the hill."
Rogala, Gathrid reflected, had a remarkable memory. "Has the land changed much? I mean, since the Impe-rium?"
The dwarf frowned, shrugged. "Some. It's wilder now. Unkempt, you might say. During the High Imperium, while the Immortal Twins reigned, the Inner Provinces were like parks. In those days they weren't preoccupied with wars, politics or juggling the Treasury. Life wasn't iffy till Grellner showed up. After that all you had to do was look around to see what was coming. The land started getting wooly, the way a man gets sloppy when he's preoccupied."
Rogala's loquacity puzzled Gathrid. How could he keep the dwarf talking? He might let some answers fall.
It also made him suspicious. Rogala seldom took a deep breath without having an ulterior motive.
They climbed the hill Theis had chosen, picking their way up slopes scattered with bodies and scolding ravens.
"Here we have an allegory of most warfare on the mortal plane," the dwarf growled. "The Ventimiglians had a force posted here. The Bilgoraji decided they wanted the hill. So they took it. And after all these lives were spent, they changed their minds."
"What?" Rogala was sliding out of character today. He was criticizing a bloodletting? This sounded like the pot calling the kettle black. What was going on?
Each time the man opened up, he became more a mystery. Gathrid sometimes felt there were three or four personalities behind the dwarf's haunted eyes. Or one so complex no mortal could hope to comprehend it.
The youth gasped, awed, when he saw the armies spread out beyond the hill.
To the west, gaudy as peafowl, lay the Alliance forces, spreading till their flanks climbed the sides of the hill-walled plain. The Ventimiglians, to the east, looked like a dun-flecked black glacier making an inexorable journey westward.
"So many!"
"I've seen larger." Rogala seemed far away. He stared intently. "The Alliance looks stronger, numbers-wise. But Ahlert has the advantage of a unified command."
Troops of cavalry roamed the plain between the hosts. "Why aren't they fighting?" Gathrid asked.
"They are. Skirmishing. Testing each other's nerve. They'll rest and bluff and look each other over today. The fighting will start in the morning."
They watched the horsemen race around, taunting one another, trying to isolate one another at a disadvantage. Nothing much happened.
"Not the best site, this," Rogala observed. "Just ground where chance brought them together.
Nobody has the sense to back off to a better place." He glowered at both camps. "The sorcery might make a difference. From the feel of them, I'd say Ahlert has the edge there."
The dwarf muttered along in total detachment. He was no more involved than if this battle-to-be were one that had taken place centuries ago, between nations which no longer existed. He seemed unable to connect with the blood and tears about to be spilled.
"We've got to do something," Gathrid insisted.
"They turned us down, remember? Anyway, you want to see about your sister. Right? Okay. That means we've got to travel. All night, maybe, to get around Ahlert to Katich."
"You don't waste time on life's frills, do you?"
"Frills?"
"Eating. Sleeping. Little luxuries like that."
Rogala grinned. "We're getting a sharp tongue on us, aren't we?" Then his humor evaporated. He muttered something about getting his debt paid as soon as possible. He added, "In troubled times no head rests easy, neither just nor unjust."