He burst through the brush concealing the cave mouth. The Toal's head turned.
The Sword eased the physical processes of fear without softening intellectual trepidation. He could not help remembering that these monsters had slaughtered champions far greater than he.
His martial training was limited almost entirely to what he had seen his brothers learn, and to imagination. How could he fight this thing?
Daubendiek sprang to guard. Surprised, clumsy, Gathrid stalked the Toal.
It seemed puzzled by his challenge. To have the quarry turn... . That was beyond its experience.
Its gaze shifted to the Sword. It nodded as if all were explained. It turned to face Kacalief. Iceeyes stared thither for a long moment, then returned their fell weight to Gathrid.
A spellbound blade as long and dark as Daubendiek whispered from its scabbard. The Toal's mount came to life.
Gathrid's mind remained paralyzed by fear, but his body acted. He leapt to his right, to take the Toal on its shieldless left arm. Daubendiek clove air with a joyous howl.
The Dead Captain leaned away, kicked with a spike-toed boot. Gathrid's ribs received a painful caress.
The youth's next stroke reached for the turning horse's hamstrings. The beast staggered. The Toal plunged off.
Gathrid charged. His opponent's movements were as jerky as ever, but so swift and sure that it was on guard, waiting, when he arrived.
Daubendiek rose like a headsman's blade, descended too swiftly for the eye. The Toal's blade blocked it with ease.
The swords met with a thunder far surpassing steel kissing steel. Sorceries clashed. Cold agony climbed Gathrid's arm. For an instant that became a subjective eternity, the weapons clung like magnets. A dark wind howled about Gathrid. Leaves and branches fell from trees behind the Toal as though invisible giants wrestled there. Daubendiek whined like a whipped dog.
The Toal's sword screamed like a roasting infant.
When the blades separated, Gathrid knew he could win. His weapon bore the more dreadful sorceries.
Nothing could defeat him! He released a shout of exultation.
In one corner of his mind something whispered that he was being seduced by the Sword. He didn't care. Not then, not with a savage revenge for his parents attainable.
With his whole being he wanted to slash and tear and deliver pain.
Amazement filled the Dead Captain's eyes. It took a step backward, glanced toward Kacalief, for an instant seemed to listen. Then, as if bowing to a distant command, it resumed combat.
Its blade danced like a wind-whipped flame, darted like a viper's tongue, searching for that fractional gap in Gathrid's defense that would allow it to prick him with its evil. Daubendiek anticipated every maneuver. The swords wailed and screamed. The Toal's avoided meeting Daubendiek squarely.
Gathrid began to feel uncertain. The invincibility of the Sword might not guarantee victory, only that the Toal's blade would not reach him. Rogala had hinted that it had slept too long.
In lulls when the weapons were not singing their grim chorus, the silence was fraught with unpleasant promise.
Then Gathrid heard distant hooves.
Nieroda was coming to claim Daubendiek.
He glanced at Rogala, silently pleading for guidance. The dwarf was in a trance, enchanted by the struggle. He did not respond.
The Sword sensed his desperation, hurled itself against the Toal's blade, wove lightning nets of death, drove the enemy back in sparks and pain. The force of the blows jarred Gathrid into a moment of rationality. How could Daubendiek control him so easily? In his way, he had become as possessed as the Toal.
For the moment he had no choice. He could not run. He had to fight, and win, or die. Or worse, let Daubendiek fall into Nevenka Nieroda's bloody hands.
They might have been giants, flailing one another with lightnings, smoky towers lashing one another with invisible whips both deadly and long. Their wild slashing and chopping ruined brush and trees. Streamers of smoke coiled up from the leafy forest floor and misted thinly as swordstrokes ripped them apart. A sapling murdered by Daubendiek glowed as redly as a living ruby.
Long furrows striped the earth in mad, zigzag patterns.
The Toal retreated, circling slowly. Gathrid realized it was trying to turn his back to Nieroda's approach. He could overcome the maneuver only by forcing Daubendiek through the thing's guard and destroying it.
Always there was the doubt. The Twelve had remained undefeated since the Mindak had raised them from the Hells where they had lain since time immemorial, when ancient sorceries had struck them down.
And Nieroda. What of Nieroda? What was Nieroda? Controlling spirit of the Toal now, but something Ahlert had drawn from the dreaming sorceries of yet another age, similar to the Toal in aspect and invincibility, but a thing possessed only by its own inner evil. The shade and bones of someone who had been a Power equaling that which the Mindak hoped to become. A world-shaking evil so antique time had devoured all memory of its native age-except within the archives of the mysterious Library rumor said that Ahlert had discovered and turned to his own wicked purposes.
By what dread power did the Mindak bind Nieroda's fell spirit? Only the Library could reveal that dark secret.
A second Toal appeared.
Gathrid had thought Daubendiek a swift and wild thing already pressed to its limit, but again it intensified its assault.
Now he received intimations of the weapon's own uncertainties. It was expending its ephemeral energy prodigally. It was confident no longer.
But the Toal's defenses were weakening. It withdrew more rapidly, trying to keep its blade from being beaten back into it. Again and again Daubendiek probed deep enough to sear the Dead Captain's armor. Occasionally little chunks flicked away.
Two more Toal arrived. Like statues they sat watching.
Why did they not interfere? Would they let their fellow be destroyed?
Daubendiek pushed past the Toal's blade, sliced armor, for an instant lightly caressed the dead flesh within.
At one time, long ago, that would have been the battle. But the Sword was too weak to do more than sip.
A shock unlike any Gathrid had ever experienced coursed through his arm and body. Daubendiek surged triumphantly. He wanted to reject the feeling, to put it away from him, as a monk might the orgasmic experience it resembled. Yet he also lusted for it, as would the monk. He sensed its narcotic quality.
From the Toal came the first sound he had heard one make, a low, distant moan. Its fellows, now four strong, jerked as if stung, but did not interfere. Their heads turned toward Kacalief.
Gathrid knew he had to take control. He could not let Daubendiek rule him completely. He would become an observer riding an automaton existing solely as a device by which the blade could kill.
But how to do it? And when? Fighting the Sword would be suicidal with the Nieroda-fate drawing near.
He inserted himself into the fight by feigning a stumble. The Toal immediately sprang to the attack.
Gathrid retreated toward Rogala, fighting Daubendiek more than the Toal, making himself appear clumsy with weariness. The Dead Captain tried to bring the battle to him.
More Toal arrived.
Gathrid gave Daubendiek its head. The Sword screamed, instantly drove past its opponent and pinked the Toal through its armor. So sudden did it strike that the Toal was, for an instant, stunned into immobility.
In that instant Daubendiek delivered the killing blow.
Gathrid screamed. And screamed. And screamed. For the Dead Captain.
For, after a moment of renewed pleasure, he had become one with the thing whose unnatural life Daubendiek was devouring. The entire experiences of one Obers Lek-loves, hatreds, losses, joys, fears, hopes and the silent despair of being possessed-flickered across his consciousness. He relived the totality of Lek's life. The child and man became part of him while his vampire blade nursed the teat of a soul.