Gathrid went first, and allowed the White Brother to adjust the rag bandana he fixed across his face. "How long will this last?" he asked.
"There's enough oil in the mixture to make it good for an hour," the Brother said. "If the mask starts feeling dry and salty, you might want to duck back down and get a fresh one. That's a point. Don't use the same one over again... ." He went on till Gathrid lost patience.
"Let's get with it," the youth snapped. "You men, line up. Brother, get up there and start your gas."
Fifteen minutes later the youth gave the signal. Men yanked the bolts holding the heavy doors.
Gathrid charged besiegers amidst a rolling cloud. Ventimiglians coughed and gagged around him, heaving up their breakfasts and clawing their eyes. They went down under Dau-bendiek's furious blows. The flyers, blinded, began colliding. Gathrid kept pausing to wipe the sting from his eyes with a rag he carried in his left hand.
He felt terrible, even protected. How much worse the enemy felt he did not care to imagine.
The counterattack spread like oil on water, groups from different sallyports joining forces.
Brothers came out behind the soldiers. They hurled their Powers against the flyers.
Gathrid ripped through Ventimiglian platoons like a scythe through wheat. He searched for enemy captains.
The most important were obvious. They were men of Power, standing in small islands of sanity, trying to disperse the gas. Spells Aarant recognized as wind-callings rumbled across their lips.
It was a slaughter till one Ventimiglian did manage to summon a breeze. Daubendiek stole so many lives Gathrid became lost in their complexities. Aarant was supposed to integrate them, but could not handle the flood.
Some of the enemy trampled their brethren in their haste to escape.
Gradually, the gas did disperse. And then the flyers could not be turned back. The counterstroke collapsed.
"Valiant effort, lad," Count Cuneo said after Gathrid abandoned the action. He had come within minutes and yards of clearing the ramparts. "It bought time. It'll be dark before they regain their strength. Let's hope they wait till morning to break in. Meantime, I need your help down here."
Gathrid was staggering. "I need some rest."
"One of the tunnels didn't collapse the way it should have," Hildreth explained. "They managed to get some people through. We've got to push them out before we can demolish the passage."
Ahlert kept Gathrid rushing hither and yon all night, stemming threat after threat. And all the while the Ven-timiglian wizards and engineers kept grinding away at the tunnel, to the Causeway.
Dawn came. It brought Rogala with news. "The flyers have left us."
"What?" The youth was too tired to concentrate.
"They're all attacking the island now. Folks over there are showing a little ingenuity. They're rigging nets over the Causeway. Under the nets, carpenters are boxing in a wooden passage."
"What good does that do?"
"We're cut off till they get here. We couldn't get out if it turned bad. Meantime, Hildreth wants to hit Ahlert's tunnel crew. Sartain is done for if they break through."
Sighing, Gathrid took up the Sword once more. Soon he found himself astride a horse, about to lead a hundred men in a charge from a hidden sallyport.
Fearful sorceries met the surprise attack. Brothers in the Maurath replied with sorceries of their own.
Gathrid hacked and slashed in fighting so close the dead remained upright in their saddles. The Ventimigli-ans concentrated on him. In those brief intervals when he won a respite, he stood in his stirrups and searched for the Mindak.
The man was nowhere to be seen.
But he was out there, employing archers and slingers with a callous disregard for the allegiances of the men being hit by his missiles.
There was little Daubendiek could do to shield Gathrid from a random arrow. "Back inside!" he ordered. "We've done all we can." He covered his companions' withdrawal.
As Rogala removed Gathrid's helmet, the youth sensed bad news. Count Cuneo's eyes were distant.
His face was rigid with despair. "What happened?"
Hildreth opened his mouth. Nothing came- out but a croaky gobble.
"We've been suckered," Rogala replied. "We've been thoroughly swindled."
"How?"
"This whole attack was a diversion. The Count finally managed to contact the island."
"And?"
"The Imperial Brigade landed near Galen during the night."
"What? How did they manage that?"
"With boats. A lot of boats. Seems Ahlert commandeered every boat and barge while coming down from Torun. He cleared the Blackstun and the Ondr. He assembled them behind the promontory there. Last night they slipped out and made a landing on the island. The Count's best men are out here.
Nothing but militia in Sartain."
Gathrid handed his horse to a groom. He sat on the floor, rested his back against a wall. "And we can't send help because of the flyers."
"Right. Even if we could afford to break the men loose."
"There's a million people on the island," Gathrid muttered. "Can't they hold off one brigade themselves?"
He realized he had slipped into Suchara-thinking. Damn the casualties! He was disgusted with himself. "How bad is it, Theis?"
Rogala shrugged. "Who can tell? They're holding out. They're covering the Causeway. But Ahlert put in his best. Only time will tell."
Time had nothing to reveal before sundown. Though weariness depressed the tempo of the fighting, it continued. News from Sartain remained sketchy. A quarter of the vast city appeared to have been captured. The Imperial Brigade had bogged down for lack of strength to exploit its coup. It appeared to have trapped the Fray Magister in the Raftery.
That night Gathrid found time to sleep. And for the first time in months his Toal-haunt plagued him.
He was dreaming confused dreams, his brain laboring at the Augean task of integrating the souls Daubendiek had devoured, when it began. Sudden, vicious, determined, it hit him. It was a cold evil intent on making him its own. There was no warning. One moment there was nothing, the next a reverberating shock as it smashed in, driving tentacles into his soul. The sleepy semiawareness that was Gathrid of Kacalief almost succumbed.
Tureck Aarant never slept. He was like Rogala in that respect. He fought the Toal. He gave Gathrid time to assume control, to begin resisting.
They seemed lost in another universe, the youth and his enemy.
Gathrid interpreted the struggle in symbols he could understand. While aware that his body lay on a rude barracks cot, foaming at the mouth and speaking in tongues, he lived a savage unarmed combat with a faceless foe whose muscles were iron, who whispered of devouring him. Back and forth across a cold, featureless plain they battled, beneath moons and stars that might have been the faces of mocking gods. The chill evil of the Toal filtered deep into his being, to the dark recesses where his worst fears and blackest desires lay hidden, straining at their chains.
Rogala, Hildreth, and a dozen Brothers and physicians stood by, unable to help, unsure, even, that this was the attack of Covingont being repeated. At first the dwarf thought Gathrid's mind had snapped under the assault of too many new personalities.
In that inside place Gathrid realized that he was losing. His opponent knew neither fear nor fatigue, and had nothing to lose. It could maintain the assault indefinitely. Panic lashed the youth.
In a moment of inspiration, Rogala placed the Sword in his hands.
Another apparition materialized on Gathrid's subjective plain. Tureck Aarant looked down on the struggle. He radiated an infinite sadness. He was his own master no more. His ancient mistress had reclaimed him.
He waded in with the chill fearlessness of the Aarant of legend. Suchara's will drove him. Hatred marred his features, curses distended his mouth. There was no escaping the mistress.