Nieroda stepped through the gap. The courtyard tableau froze. Then a second black blade joined the slaughter.
Now there were Toal atop the wall. Ventimiglian soldiers tossed up grapnels and joined them.
Attackers poured through the gap opened by Nieroda. Here, there, a hard-pressed Toal simply pointed a finger and men fell, torn apart from within.
Anyeck whimpered, "Gathrid, we've got to get out of here."
He had never been this frightened. He thought the end was near. But he snapped, "Control yourself!" He turned and started downstairs.
She followed. "Where are you going? Don't leave me."
"To find myself a sword. Father can't stop me now." Brave words, he thought. He hoped his voice hadn't trembled too much. He turned away and limped down into the cool inwards of the tower that had been his home.
The keep gate exploded inward. Oak beams flung about like straws in a gale. A woman screamed.
Gathrid's palms were cold and wet on the leather-wrapped hilt of his great-grandfather's sword.
Men flung through the broken gate. His father's men, fleeing, dragging their wounded with them . .
.
"Here they come!" Gathrid shouted. The keep guards crouched behind a barrier of overturned furniture. Ventimiglian soldiers popped inside, keeping low behind their shields. The retreating Gudermuthers scrambled over the furniture.
An old man dropped beside Gathrid. "Belthar! I thought ..."
"I'm a tough old buzzard. You did all right here, boy. Your mother and sister upstairs?"
"Next level. Father? ..."
"I don't know. Hang on here. I'll get the women. We'll break out and run for the hills.'-' The old soldier darted away.
A Toal came striding through the shattered gate, a dark tower against the light. Someone hurled a boar spear. It missed. The Toal gestured. A bolt of power blasted a gap in the furniture wall.
Ventimiglian soldiers sprang forward. Blades darted and clashed. Men cried out. The Toal came on like something out of nightmare.
Belthar thundered orders. A boar spear smashed against the Toal's breastplate. The Dead Captain staggered. "Go!" Belthar roared. He slapped Gathrid's shoulder as he passed. The youth threw a clumsy stroke at the nearest Ventimiglian, joined the rush. His mother and sister were beside him, eyes huge with terror.
The Toal flung an arm around in a hard horizontal arc. People toppled like wheat at the stroke of a scythe. A black mailed fist smote Gathrid's chest ... and a darkness closed in. And then it went away, he knew not how much later. But enough later that he was left alone with the dead. He wept for his mother, who lay within his narrow field of vision.
It wasn't over yet. He could hear it going on still, elsewhere in the castle. He tried to move.
His limbs responded shakily.
Got to hide, he thought. Got to hide till I can get out and run to the peasants in the hills...
.
Chapter Three
The Savard The smoke no longer rose from the ruins. The Mindak Ahlert had gone on to enjoy the rape of Gudermuth. But the Dark Champion and the Twelve Dead Captains remained at Kacalief. They searched tirelessly, their dead eyes burning angrily. If Gudermuth would die before surrendering Daubendiek, so be it. The Sword's pommel would rest beneath the Mindak's palm even so.
Gathrid crept through the ruins like a frightened rat. The Twelve were everywhere. How long before they flung him onto the mound of dead and tortured flesh growing in the main court?
Those who had fallen, sliced like sausages by the witchblades of Nieroda and the Toal, had been lucky. The wretches who had not perished were singing arias of agony for the Mindak's questioners.
The screams were declining in number. Gathrid wished someone knew where the Sword of Suchara lay.
The knowledge could be traded for swift, merciful death.
Gathrid was trying to reach the gap Nieroda's sorcery had blasted through the wall. He was close enough to see stone that had run and lumped like tallow on the flank of a candle. He fought his impulse to jump and run.
There was no fight in him anymore. His only desire was to live.
His insistence on fighting now seemed like a childhood dream that had held no cognition of the horror of reality.
He could see the vineyards through the hole. Maybe he could risk the dash... .
Ventimiglian armor clanked nearby. He froze. Dark greaves appeared beyond fallen, fire-blackened timbers. He tried to crush himself deeper into ashes and broken stone.
The Toal moved stiffly, jerkily. The Twelve had done so even in battle. Yet each had been a killing machine no mortal had been able to match. And Nieroda had been worse.
They said even the Mindak feared Nevenka Nieroda.
This one was hunting survivors. They never gave up.
The thing that wore the corpse of a man stopped a dozen paces away. It turned. Gathrid held his breath. The dead eyes probed his hiding place. A black gauntlet rose to point... .
Gathrid sprang up. He hurled a fist-sized chunk of masonry, broke for the gap in the wall. The chunk hit the outstretched hand, wrenched the aiming finger's point aside. The remnants of a stable shed coughed, collapsed.
Gathrid had just time enough to reach the hole.
His mixed luck held. He skidded on slippery puddled stone and fell. The Toal's second spell-bolt chuckled in the wall. New-made gravel stung Gathrid's face.
He ran blindly till burning lung and leaden legs slowed his pace and quickened his thinking. He slowed to a dogged trot, turned toward the nearby finger of the Sa-vard Hills. He and his brothers had played and hunted those wild slopes and valleys often enough. He should be able to disappear there.
He glanced back once.
A dark thing on a dark horse cantered from the ruins.
Gathrid increased his pace. It was a mile to the nearest cover.
He slipped into dense scrub a hundred yards ahead of his pursuer. On hands and knees he scooted through brambles like a rabbit. His heart pounded as hard as it had the moment he had met the Toal's gaze.
Was the Dead Captain playing with him? It could have caught him... . Maybe the Toal wanted the amusement of a boy-hunt. Or thought he might lead them to the Sword.
Their search for the fabled Sword was baffling. But the Mindak and his wizard generals had shaken other fell and forgotten things out of the earth in their mad drive to revive the ancient sorceries. Among them were Nieroda and the Twelve Demon Kings from ages so eld even they had forgotten them. There were rings of power and amulets of protection the like of which had not been since the Golden Age of Anderle. They had recovered bows that could speed soul-devouring shafts the length of a kingdom. And swords against which little could stand. But none of those were Daubendiek, the Great Sword.
The pressure eased once Gathrid entered the tortuous and steep ravines of the Savards. The dark rider came on, but the advantage had shifted to the man afoot. Gathrid gained ground.
Late that afternoon, almost too exhausted to care anymore, he found a low cave mouth. It exuded no animal fetor. Too tired to worry about becoming cornered, he slithered inside and fell asleep.
He dreamed terrible dreams, of warfare and vengeance, of hatred and treachery in olden times, before the Fall, when Anderle's reach had encompassed two thirds of the continent and the Immortal Twins had ruled over a Golden Age. He dreamed of the winged tempter, Grellner, who had trafficked in whispers of unshared power.
He dreamed of mad, mysterious Theis Rogala, he of the quicksilver loyalties and golden, slippery tongue; he who had been esquire, servant and companion of the Swordbearer. He and Aarant had been more hated than the Tempter himself.
The Rogala of legend had claimed that Daubendiek chose its own master and cause. The question of treason was irrelevant. He was faithful to the blade.
Gathrid had never been so miserable. Even during the polio epidemic he had felt less distress. His muscles were coals of pain. His stomach was a nest of vipers. His bad leg throbbed. His mind ...