The moon sank lower and lower.
Weariness devoured Gathrid's sword arm. The feeling of giganticism faded. His leg burned.
Daubendiek had begun drawing on him.
He saw Rogala rushing toward him. Probably to salvage the Sword if its Bearer fell. To pass it on, he thought.
The upper limb of the moon perished behind the hills.
The witch's power frayed. Her spear of light faded.
Gathrid forced himself forward, limping. His leg hurt more than when he had been stricken with polio. His sword arm sagged, dragging the silver beam with it. Daubendiek's bloody tip began tracing a line in the barren earth.
He faced her from the foot of the platform. Anyeck, definitely. She recognized him, too. She showed more fear than surprise.
They exchanged stares. Defeat had stamped out shadowed hollows in her once beautiful face. Her golden hair had become a moonlike silver. She looked older than their mother had on the day of her death. And the surrender of Kacalief had aged their mother terribly.
Gathrid felt no sense of triumph. He was tired and disappointed and profoundly sad. He had clung tight to a wan hope that this moment would not bring him face to face with his sister.
Communication came in almost imperceptible gestures. Gathrid frowned questioningly. Anyeck responded with a slight shrug. She did not know why, only that she had been drawn. Chosen. Just like her more successful brother. She frowned a What now?
He nodded, meaning she should come down.
Strength, flowing from the final reserves deep within himself and the Sword, gradually eased his weariness. His leg ceased aching. He regained control of his eye.
From his saddle, Rogala observed, "We'd better get moving. The natives are getting frisky." He pointed with a dagger.
The Ventimiglians were coming out of their daze. And Honsa Eldracher was making a sortie from Katich. He looked likely to rout the easterners.
Minor sorceries began clashing nearer the city.
"I suppose. Where's my horse? And round one up for my sister. We'll take her with us. She may serve the Alliance better than she served the Mindak."
Rogala shrugged. Gathrid thought he saw an evil little smile cross the dwarf's lips.
Anyeck set foot to earth. Nervously, she awaited his will.
Daubendiek struck.
It was sudden, unexpected, and surprised Gathrid completely. The blade simply flashed out and plunged deep into his sister's body.
Their shared screams seemed to echo on forever. The taking of her went on and on and on. As she became a part of him, her pain and anger took effect. Her hatred joined his and became a thing almost superhuman, almost as powerful as the Sword itself. He sensed a faint apprehension in the blade.
She died her little death with a single soft cry. Gathrid cried out at the same instant, hating himself for the pleasure he felt through the misery.
The moment passed. The Sword's control slipped.
Gathrid whirled. He charged Rogala.
The dwarf was quick as a cat. He rolled off his mount an instant before Gathrid's stroke clove air over his saddle. His eyes were huge and his teeth were bare. Only continued preternatural quickness saved him from his horse's hooves.
Gathrid slew the animal and started round after Ro-gala.
A Ventimiglian got in his way. Gathrid dropped the man. Another replaced him, then another and another. The besiegers were running from Honsa Eldracher. Out of his head with anger, Gathrid raged among them, punishing them for his loss.
He kept trying to reach Rogala, but the dwarf was too quick for him. He soon disappeared.
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.