"You've given this some thought."
"A lot of thought." Ahlert stopped walking. "I'm going to place myself in your power. I'm betting you'll resist temptation long enough to learn the truth." Hands shaking, the Mindak removed the Ordrope Diadem. "Squat down here."
Gathrid was frightened. He had an urge to say he believed, and never mind the truth. Then an imp of suspicion whispered at his ear. Suppose that was what Ahlert was fishing for? He dropped to one knee.
The Mindak accepted the challenge.
The Diadem seemed weightless. A man could forget he wore it.
Gathrid rose. Pale, grim, Ahlert stared at the ruby. His dark eyes glazed. His personality hit Gathrid like a sudden storm. The cold power of it drove the youth back against the cavern wall.
He rolled with the force, released mental channels worn smooth by the Sword's predations. He learned more than he wanted to know. He yanked the Diadem off, thrust it at its owner. To live with that continuously, seeing every man's bleak black deeps. ... It was too much. Ahlert had an incredible will.
"You saw?" the Mindak demanded.
Gathrid nodded. Ahlert had not lied. His Western army had gone mad. It had to be neutralized.
The impossible had become imperative. His conscience allowed him no choice. He and Daubendiek had to serve Ventimiglia in order that he might serve his own people.
The Toal awaited them beyond the cave mouth. It snapped its lance at the Mindak. Daubendiek leapt into Gathrid's hand, slashed across, altered the weapon's path.
But not enough. Its fiery head grazed the Mindak's left arm. Ahlert roared in pain and anger.
A mob fell on the Toal, raging and tearing like wild dogs, wielding weapons both magical and mundane. Mohrhard Horgrebe, possessed, chopped and slashed, its sword a deadly blur. Its armor turned both blades and sorceries.
Gathrid spared but a glance for the Mindak before wading in.
Ahlert neutralized the lance's wizardry with incantations forced through clenched teeth. He saved himself, but not his arm. In seconds it withered to a dry, useless appendage.
But for Gathrid's quickness he would have died. "Damn me!" he muttered. "And I was expecting it, too."
Feeling a hundred feet tall, Gathrid shoved through the Toal's attackers. He let Daubendiek have its head. The Dead Captain held its ground.
Nevertheless, the match was less even than had been their previous encounter. Gathrid and the Great Sword were melding. In moments Daubendiek slew the Toal's blade. It perished with a great metallic scream. Daubendiek drove in over the lifeless steel.
The Toal felt much as had the one taken in the Sa-vards: cold, evil, and under it all a flicker of despair that was all that remained of Mohrhard Horgrebe, once a champion of wide renown.
A shadow rolled over the canyon. A cold wind whipped dust and leaves up in violent little windwitches.
Mocking laughter made the hills shake.
The thing that had circled above raced toward the west, into a blood-red setting sun. With the flying beast, or in it, went the thing that had possessed the corpse of Mohrhard Horgrebe.
The Mindak seized an enchanted bow and spellbound silver arrow. He sped the shaft after the flyer.
His ruined arm betrayed him. The arrow fell to earth less than a mile away.
Nieroda had foreseen the alliance. She had planned for the eventuality. Confirmation was on its way to her.
Gathrid's Toal-haunt gurgled merrily.
"Good show, boy. Good show."
"What the devil?"
Theis Rogala pushed through the crowd. He bowed to Gathrid and the Mindak-then sprang back when he saw the light in Gathrid's eyes.
The youth considered running the dwarf down. Then he shrugged. There would be little point. He went looking for Loida instead.
His feelings had been correct. Rogala had been tailing him.
Chapter Eleven
Senturia Three days passed before Ahlert recovered sufficiently to travel. Gathrid spent the time with Loida or wandering through the hidden city. He avoided Rogala religiously. He discovered that the hopes of his eastward journey had been but shadows cast by futility. Excepting Belfiglio's Eye, the rich ore of this motherlode had, it seemed, been transferred to the Mindak's palaces at Senturia. In An-sorge he saw only ruins and more ruins.
The Mindak's people showed him where the Toal had been unearthed, in caverns far beneath Ansorge proper. The twelve crypts were incredibly old. When Gathrid viewed the place where Nieroda had slept he fancied he smelled sour evil still.
He returned from the caverns early the third day, after learning that they would be leaving next morning. As he joined Loida he thought he saw someone slipping through the rocks near their slightly separate encampment. "Who was that?"
"Rogala."
"What was he doing here?"
"Talking to Gacioch."
"There's a pair," Gathrid muttered. "Look, I don't want him hanging around."
"Grouch." Loida made a sour face at him. "How did it go down there today?" She had accompanied him once, had found the ruins too spooky for further visits.
"A whole lot of nothing. What they've found is already gone. What they haven't you can't see. The murals and reliefs and stuff don't make much sense."
"Lord Telani told me we're leaving tomorrow."
"I heard. I'm glad. I'm getting restless." He picked up a stick, drew figures in the dust.
"Movement becomes an end in itself."
"You can't run away."
"I know. I tried to leave the Sword down there today. It wouldn't let me. When I got fifteen feet away, I started shaking. It hurt. It made me run back and grab it."
"That's spooky."
"That's terrifying. I can't live with it and I can't live without it."
"Don't think about it." She leaned over a small fire and simmering pot. "A soldier gave me a rabbit and some vegetables." She raised the pot lid. Stew smells tantalized Gathrid's nose.
"Smells good."
"Then just think about supper."
"How soon?"
"I don't know. What do I know about cooking? I just did what the man told me."
Exasperated, Gathrid asked, "How long did he say?" He wished she would discourage these soldiers more.
"All right. Another half hour, I guess."
"I'm going for a walk, then."
What he did was run. Strongly and steadily, as he had not been able since his bout with polio. And as he ran, exhilarating in his ability, he reflected that the Sword was not all bad. It hadn't given him a lot, but had given something important.
And he thought about Loida and how her fears and his nagging depression kept them from communicating about anything that mattered, kept them from getting to know one another. She got along better with Gacioch and the young soldiers who kept buzzing round. She and the demon went on like a brother and sister comedy insult act.
He wished he could reassure the girl. He could not. They both knew their fears were not imaginary.
They would be heading for Ventimiglia's capital tomorrow. Loida would be in great peril there. So might he be, though reason said the Mindak had no excuse for treachery yet.
Near the end of his run he glimpsed the dwarf scrambling through the rocks, following him. He grinned. Served Rogala right, having to bust his tail to stay near the Sword. He upped his pace.
All the disorder, squalor, misery and crowding lacking in the country manors was concentrated in Senturia. Gathrid tapped his memories. He knew the slums well. These Quarters produced the soldiers who fleshed out the brigades. No other career offered such opportunities for the poor.
There was plunder to be had, out on the frontiers. A man who survived a tour with his brigade could buy his way out.