Magnolo Belfiglio relayed the news that the west's political problems were settling out. Yedon Hildreth was in Bilgoraj again, clearing the Beklavac narrows.
Nieroda continued to await a response from the Mindak.
Rogala did not win all his points. The horses did not go to the butchers right away. Their destruction was too much for even the Mindak to swallow in a single lump.
Nieroda moved steadily nearer, finally establishing a line of fortified camps five miles west of Ahlert's position. For weeks the only contact between armies came when scouting parties skirmished. Each host awaited the other's first move.
Ahlert lost patience first. He led Gathrid, a grumbling Rogala and a select company of warriorwizards into no-man's-land, hoping to provoke Nieroda into some ill-advised action.
She refused the bait.
Ahlert tried again. And again. The Dark Lady responded by sending a Toal's brigade to savage the Ventimiglian right while her opposite flank was being irritated by Ahlert's raiders.
Next morning Ahlert announced, "Word from Belfiglio. She's going to turn our tactic against us.
She's coming after our livestock today." Ahlert's party had plundered Nieroda's herds several times.
"You thinking ambush?" Rogala sounded hopeful.
"I am."
The usual raiding party assembled and raced to intercept Nieroda's raiders. The dwarf knew the perfect site for a bushwhacking, but it was far from the lines. They barely got themselves hidden in the brush and washes and gullies in time.
"Damn that Belfiglio!" Ahlert snarled when he saw the enemy approaching. "He didn't say he was going to hit us this hard."
Six Dead Captains led the enemy party. With them rode a mix of Nieroda's best soldiers. Their path would take them to Ahlert's extreme left flank, where the animals were grazing.
Gathrid found himself more nervous than the situation seemingly demanded. There was a wrongness in the air. The fight looked too big. He whispered to Rogala, "I think we'd better call it off."
Rogala was uneasy too. "I'll suggest we hit from behind, after they begin their attack on the main line."
Too late. The Toal entered the ambuscade. Ahlert signaled the attack.
Gathrid muttered, drew Daubendiek, joined the charge.
The Toal were not surprised. Six black-gauntleted hands rose, thrust out stiffly. Six Ventimiglian saddles emptied.
Spells previously prepared by both sides lightninged back and forth. The earth churned. The sky darkened. Horses screamed and threw their riders. The companies crashed together, mixed.
Nieroda and the remaining Toal appeared on a nearby rise.
"A trap within a trap," Gathrid shouted at Rogala, pointing. Daubendiek took control, howled about him, murdered sorceries and drank lives.
Nieroda had anticipated the Mindak. Perhaps she had fed Belfiglio disinformation to set her opponent up.
The Toal remained out of Gathrid's reach, but gradually enveloped him. He saw disaster taking shape. The Dark Champion's strategy had one obvious purpose: to strip her former master of his most potent ally.
Gathrid knew he was not invulnerable. Daubendiek had limits. Swordbearers had fallen in battle ere now.
The Toal and Rogala had their limits, too.
A band of the Mindak's warrior-wizards isolated one Dead Captain. Rogala got in among them and with preternatural quickness planted a dagger in the thing's side. The sorceries on his short blade were weaker than those on the thing's armor. His knife burst into flame. But it survived long enough to cripple and distract the creature.
A blurring stroke of the Toal's dark blade, moving faster than the nimble dwarf could dodge, raked Rogala's side. He yipped like a kicked puppy, spurred away.
The Ventimiglians invested six lives in unhorsing the injured Toal. They drove its own witchblade through its heart.
The battle was not going well, Gathrid decided. The casualties were too nearly even. And Nieroda had come a little closer. She might be tempted to get involved herself.
Daubendiek got the reach of a Dead Captain.
This time the disorientation seemed endless. Gathrid's mind threatened to shake loose from its foundations. This Dead Captain, when it had been a man, had worn the name Tureck Aarant.
Staggered, Gathrid thought, Are there other Sword-bearers among the Toal? Will that be my fate?
Only eleven of a hundred ninety Ventimiglians survived the skirmish. Nieroda had crafted herself a cunning little victory. Of those eleven, Gathrid was the lone man to escape without a wound.
Of the flesh. The cuts on his soul were deep and painful, and festered immediately.
Ahlert sounded the withdrawal when he saw the Swordbearer go slack in his saddle. He grabbed Gathrid's reins, shouted orders and fled. Most of the men lost died covering his retreat.
Gathrid retreated, too, deep inside himself, where he faced a sad yet grateful Tureck Aarant.
"What's happened to him?" Ahlert demanded of Rogala. "He just seemed to fold up."
The puzzled dwarf replied, "I don't know. Some Nieroda trick. He cut a Toal down and ... It was almost like the soul went out of him."
They approached friendly lines. A storm of arrows screened them from the pursuit. "Get him up to Covin-gont," the Mindak ordered. "I'll be there as soon as we turn them back."
Nieroda's whole army came up behind her raiders. They attacked all along the Ventimiglian line.
Somehow, the news had traveled ahead. Loida and several of Ahlert's best demonologists were waiting at Covingont's gate. "What happened?" the girl demanded.
Rogala ignored her. He cursed and gestured and bullied the fortress's garrison into lifting the youth off his mount and onto a stretcher. He used his own blade to cut the ropes binding Gathrid to the horse's back. "Come on. Come on," he snarled. "Let's get him out of this weather. He'll die of pneumonia."
Loida kept asking questions. Everyone kept ignoring her. The demonologists stayed close to the stretcher, trying to detect the presence of an attacking spirit. Rogala told them about the youth's Toal-haunt and expressed the opinion that that was not the cause of the present difficulty.
"It may not be the cause," one replied, "but it'll certainly take advantage if it can. We'd better prepare for it."
"Right. Right. Girl, what are you doing?"
Loida had managed to elbow her way through the crowd. She was holding Gathrid's hand as the stretcher moved along. She ignored Rogala.
Inside, Gathrid began to come out of^hock. He began to explore this bizarre new soul that had, for a time, nearly displaced his own.
He knew he was lucky. Had Tureck Aarant had the habits of the creature that had possessed him, he could have taken control during the period of shock. But this Aarant was not the aggressive Aarant of legend. Indeed, he was a rather gentle being. But he had the impact of all the souls he had taken in his own time.
He shared some truths about the Brothers' War. They shattered the myths that had been handed down the ages. The Immortal Twins ceased being such ivory exemplars of righteousness for Gathrid. The great champions of the brothers developed mean, small-minded dimensions. All those heroic names developed their human sides.
The Dark People of Ansorge had perished, but not without leaving a legacy. The last act of the last of their elders had been to make certain that Tureck Aarant became one of the Toal. They had foreseen enough of the future to know that the Toal would battle the next Sword-bearer. In their efforts to break the rhythm and cycle holding the world in thrall they had bet on Aarant coming to blows with his successor.
How had Mead put it? Do what you can for those who are yet to live?
The last of Gathrid's innocence fled when he met Tureck Aarant.
Nieroda had known he was one of her Toal. She had brought them together, knowing Gathrid would be stunned.