She's close, Ahlert had said... .
This monster was a fit object for his wrath.
The youth hurtled out of the tunnel, oblivious to the possibility that the flyers might have returned. The Toal's mount reared, screamed.
Daubendiek protested Gathrid's action. The youth had seized total control. His will was behind his decisions. The soul, the stubbornness of Yedon Hildreth had tilted the balance away from Suchara.
At that moment Gathrid was completely confident of his ability to master the Great Sword and defy Suchara.
Daubendiek whined in fright. Gathrid bid it slay the Dead Captain.
Suchara fought him. Fought him for no better reason than because this was what he wanted to do.
Had he not wanted to slay the Toal, She would have driven him.
"Kill it!" he thought at the Sword. Reluctantly, the blade went for the Toal.
The false Legate tried to flee.
Gathrid slew its mount with the younger sword. He allowed the Toal itself no chance to gain its footing. He drove Daubendiek through its breastplate.
Deep inside Gathrid, the half-forgotten soul of Mohr-hard Horgrebe cackled evilly, spitefully, feeling its former possessor suffering.
Gathrid did not let the Toal flee with the smoke rising from the corpse of Legate Cervenka. On a subjective level, with his newfound will and a year of anger, he seized the fell spirit. They struggled for a moment, crashing around that nowhere place where he had destroyed his own haunt.
He took that demon by the throat and shook it the way a terrier shakes a rat.
It ended quickly.
Gathrid bent, recovered a glowing Toal-sword. He tossed it to Theis Rogala, who had pursued him onto the Causeway. "Hang onto that."
The dwarf gulped, bobbed his head. He was pale and frightened. He could not believe what he was seeing, what he had heard when Ahlert had spoken to Tureck Aarant.
Gathrid smiled at him, his eyes narrow. "Greetings from Tureck, Theis." Rogala flinched. He would do some heavy thinking before using his dagger to complete this cycle of the Sword's history. . No need to worry yet, Gathrid thought. Suchara would not order him murdered while Nieroda yet remained in the game.
Or would she? Would she be that frightened?
He shrugged. Rogala was too disturbed to try anything soon.
He stared at Sartain. The Dark Champion was there somewhere. The Toal had proved Ahlert's statement. He reached inside and read Legate Cervenka. Sometime after Hildreth and the army had moved into the Maurath, Nieroda had descended on the Raftery. Now she was subverting the Imperial Palace.
The youth smiled, though he was not amused. Gerdes Mulenex had made a pact with a devil at Katich.
The devil had come to collect.
That was what the Mindak had meant by saying she was looking over their shoulders.
The youth examined his surroundings. The flyers had vanished. Ahlert's wizards had packed up their witcheries. Easterners lined the ramparts of the Maurath. In their faces he saw awe, fear and dismay. Their officers were trying to get them to withdraw.
They knew what had happened to their Emperor. The hopes that had brought them west had died with him. Despair had fallen on them like a deadly cloud.
Gathrid thought of Mead again. Belfiglio, too, would know. The task of informing the Mindak's wife would fall to the old slave. Gathrid did not envy him his mission.
Hildreth's senior officers began gathering in the tunnel. "Let them depart in peace," Gathrid said, pointing upward with the younger sword. "Muster your battalions. We have work on the island.
Nieroda is there."
He was sure they would revolt. Someone must have seen him fell Hildreth.
His previous usurpations had accustomed them to accepting his authority. There were no witnesses to Hildreth's murder, apparently. They began forming their units.
Gathrid gazed down at Count Cuneo. He indulged in a moment of self-loathing. Suchara and Daubendiek had surprised him again. He swore it would be their undoing.
Being free of self-doubt was a new experience. It pleased him.
He went roaming through the soul of Legate Cervenka, his quarry knowledge of Nieroda and the Toal.
The Legate knew very little. He had been seized during the night, by Red Brothers, while directing a militia regiment in counterattack against Ahlert's Imperial Brigade. He had been spirited into the Raftery. He had been unconscious, so did not know how he had been taken through the Ventimiglian lines. He had wakened possessed by the demon. Nieroda had handed him a Toal sword.
The lights had gone out again. He had wakened back at his command post, under instructions to break the siege of the Raftery.
That siege seemed to bother Nieroda. She had revealed herself in order to press the counterattack.
The imminence of conflict between Ahlert and the Swordbearer had caused her to rush Toal Cervenka to the Mindak's aid, judging him to be the weaker man. The Toal had arrived too late.
Two thousand weary survivors of the battle for the Maurath assembled on the Causeway. The rest Gathrid left to oversee the Ventimiglian withdrawal.
A Colonel Bliebel, who had been an intimate of Count Cuneo, protested the force's weakness arid exhaustion.
"I just want you to keep order, Sir. I'll handle Nie-roda and her devils myself. Theis. My horse."
Ever efficient, Rogala had the animal ready.
Gathrid mounted, started toward Sartain. He searched the sky, wondering what had become of the flyers. Only their dead remained.
It won't be long before Theis draws his dagger, he thought. The dwarf had developed a sudden slyness, an evasiveness, which suggested thoughts he did not want to reveal. Might Suchara be ready to concede this round to Bachesta? She might fear losing the Sword more than she disliked losing the Game.
He surveyed Rogala from the edge of his vision. The dwarf was watching him intently, nervously.
Should he disarm the man?
No. That would make him more dangerous. Suchara would provide another blade, in an inconspicuous time and place. And Rogala himself would become less predictable.
A committee from the Imperial Palace met them at the Causeway's end. They bore instructions from Elgar, who wanted the Raftery relieved. Despite the efforts of the Brotherhood and Anderle's militia, Ahlert's Imperial Brigade remained solidly entrenched.
The easterners were aware of their Mindak's demise. But their commander, Tracka, felt obligated to fulfill his final charge. He had abandoned all his other operations to concentrate on rooting out Nieroda and the Dead Captains.
Gathrid glared at the messengers suspiciously. He did not have to be schooled in the treacherous ways of the Great Old Ones to see that, on at least two levels, it was in Elgar's interest to let the Ventimiglians reduce the Raftery. They would settle a personal score with Gerdes Mu-lenex and rid Anderle of the long-standing problem of the Brotherhood. An eastern victory would devour the leaders of the Orders.
He merely nodded to the messengers, then led the surviving Guards Oldani toward Galen.
"Peace," he told the first Ventimiglian patrol to cross his path. He waved his followers back out of earshot. "Please inform Thaumaturge-General Tracka that the Swordbearer would like to confer."
He was, it developed, not unexpected. Tracka arrived within fifteen minutes.
Gathrid had met the brigadier but had seldom spoken to him. Their paths had crossed at both the Karato and Kacalief. Tracka respected the Power Gathrid represented, but did not fear him. Ahlert had been known to remark that his leading commander had only one weakness. He feared nothing at all.
"You fought well here, General," Gathrid said. "I'd say brilliantly, considering your resources.
We've been both enemies and allies. I want to suggest an armistice now, while there's yet something to be saved."
Tracka, like many men of his class, physically resembled Ahlert. Gathrid had little deja vu flutters while speaking with him.
Tracka frowned. He was the most taciturn of the eastern commanders. He communicated more by gesture and expression than by the spoken word.