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.
There seemed little doubt that Ahlert would triumph eventually. His mining of the past had put too much might into his hands.
Therefore, Gathrid reasoned, the Mindak should be weakened before their inevitable confrontation.
That dark shadow which once had been the controlling spirit of a Toal remained with him. He could feel it there, over his left shoulder, watchful and patient. It no longer strove to supplant his soul. It hovered on the border of awareness, full of fright and hopelessness. It could not find another host without guidance from the Mindak.
These days Gathrid was more disturbed by its patience than by its presence. It was immortal. It could wait forever. In its unbleak moments it seemed to be telling him that its chance would come.
It would give him time. Someday he would relax a little too much.
And yet it feared... .
It had taken this new, less aggressive stance after his confrontation with Anyeck. It had been impressed by the Power he had wielded then.
Days became weeks. He wandered into lands where Ventimiglian peasants had begun colonizing. They were a hardy, determined breed. They were more ambitious than the peasants of Gathrid's own Gudermuth.
He began to suspect that his separation from Rogala was not as complete as he had hoped. A
horseman seemed to be shadowing him from afar. He set an ambush. No one rode into it.
That in itself was suggestive. Rogala always knew what was going on. Gathrid gave up with a shrug.
He had to-assume the dwarf would follow the Sword. The two were inextricably linked.
Gathrid began to think, to plan. The thought of a Rogala pursuit jarred him into it. His gaze swung eastward, drawn like a compass's arm.
From Grevening he passed into Rodegast, then Sil-havy, then Gorsuch. Each was another small principality like Gudermuth. He saw no one but the occasional Ventimiglian colonist. In Gorsuch colonization was well advanced. New cities were growing where old had fallen.
The Nirgenau Mountains rose across his path. Beyond their high, bleak passes and chill peaks lay Ventimiglia itself.
The Nirgenaus were tricky. Levies bound westward crowded the one good road across. They were cheerful young men eager for plunder and glory. Some were as young as he. They reminded him of his brothers, or even of himself in that ridiculous time when he had wanted to go to war.
The pain reached in and squeezed his heart. Childhood had come to an end. He was a singleton now.
He had nothing and no one. ... He had slain the last of his kin himself.
The long, lonely weeks did not go solely to remorse. He practiced integrating and learning to tap the memories given him by the Sword. From them he learned of secondary trails seldom trod by the Mindak's soldiers. Following those, he reached Camero Marasco, the high, barren peak that marked the easternmost boundary of ancient Anderle, and the western frontier of modern Ventimiglia. From its wind-tortured, snowbound heights he studied the storied fortress called Covingont.
Covingont of the three pink towers, mistress of the Karato Pass, where Tureck Aarant had slain Cashion the Blind in the first blush of the Brothers' War. Covingont, where the gnaw of elder sorceries had left the Karato's granite walls permanently scarred, where even time had been unable to banish the dread memorials of the fury that had brought Cashion's doom.
One of Ahlert's predecessors had rebuilt the castle. It looked as formidable as the Covingont of yore. Gathrid touched the Sword. It remembered. The fighting had been grim. It had fed well.