"Of course."
Neither Hildreth nor Eldracher was a man easily misled, yet each, attaching too much weight to Gathrid's shift of allegiance, leapt to the conclusion that Nieroda was fleeing in defeat.
Hildreth first suspected the truth three hours later. Nieroda's arrival and shift to combat order was too smoothly and confidently executed. Her renegade wizards came into play easily, with their strongest and subtlest spells prepared. He realized he had been sucked in. He would have refused battle had Nieroda come up in good order.
Easy disengagement was impossible. Nieroda and the Toal were applying pressure all along his line, which he had thrown across their path a mile from the city.
Eldracher became ever more puzzled as he searched for the Mindak. He could not locate the man.
Nieroda appeared to be fleeing ghosts. He tried searching her far flanks.
"My god!" He called for his weapons and armor and bodyguard.
He had discovered the truth too late.
A mounted brigade had circled the city. It erupted from the hills southwest of Katich, thundered into Hildreth's rear. A strong, Toal-backed force attacked and screened the city gates. Hildreth then had nowhere to retreat.
Eldracher reached the wall in time to watch the disaster unfold.
Hildreth had brought half the Alliance's strength out of Bilgoraj. Already half that had fallen here. The survivors were being crushed against Katich's walls. They were fighting bravely, but would be dead before nightfall.
Three times Hildreth tried to clear the enemy away from the gate. Three times the Toal hurled him back. Eldracher did what he could from above, with covering fire, and hauling the wounded up by rope. His efforts were fruitless. Come midafternoon Hildreth himself ascended to confer.
"Nieroda's won this one," he said. "It's all over but the slaughter."
"I could sortie."
"That's what she wants. You'd lose the gate. And the city. I'm going to break out to the south. If I get through, I'll run for Bilgoraj."
Eldracher nodded. "All right." It was the only real hope for Hildreth's men. "I can hang on here."
"Did you find Ahlert?"
"No. He's nowhere near here."
"Wonder where he is. What do you think he's planning? I won't bring another column out just to get torn up."
"Maybe she finished him."
"He had the Swordbearer with him."
"The Nirgenaus are closed for the winter. Maybe he never left Ventimiglia."
"Maybe. If it looks that way, I'll relieve you again. Maybe we can get this settled before the season shifts. If we could smash Nieroda ... that'd pull the Alliance together. They'd give me what I need to make sure Ahlert stays home. I'd best get back."
His absence had begun to tell. Some units were dissolving.
"Until we meet," Eldracher said. They clasped hands. They had been friends a long time, just as their masters were friends. Neither expected to meet the other again.
Eldracher supported Hildreth's breakout in every way possible. Count Cuneo managed to escape with two thousand men. Ten times as many did not win free. Eldracher salvaged those he could with his hoisting ropes.
Eldracher's group consisted entirely of Blue Brothers. None of the other Orders were represented.
That night a Red Brother visited Nevenka Nieroda.
The siege lasted four days. The first three involved exchanges of messengers. Eldracher feigned an interest in negotiating in order to buy time for Count Cuneo.
Nieroda lost patience. She attacked. Her thrust lacked intensity. It puzzled Eldracher.
The mystery cleared during the night.
Something wakened Eldracher from a deep sleep. He sat up, looked around, saw nothing but darkness.
Then a man-shape rose over the foot of his bed.
He rolled, grabbed at his dagger.
The assassin struck with a sword that, hours before, had been carried by a Toal. The sorceries upon it devoured those protecting Eldracher's life.
It was a long, slow death.
In the flash of conflicting wizardries Eldracher saw the face of his murderer. The assassin was one of his own Brothers, a man he had sometimes suspected of being a tool of Gerdes Mulenex.
Eldracher could not open his mouth to call for his guards. He expired with a moan so soft they never heard a sound. The assassin went out the window he had entered.
An hour later the Toal tramped through a gate won from within. The fighting was vicious. Neither the Blues nor Gudermuthers willingly surrendered.
Gerdes Mulenex stood at a window in his mansion in Sartain. He smiled gently. A document had arrived from the east. He held it to the light again.
"Stano," he said to a trusted servant, "tell our man in the Raftery that it's time. Tell our people round Elgar to be ready.''
"At last, Lord?"
"At last." A great rumbling laugh shook Mulenex's heavy belly. "At last."
His plans were about to bear fruit. They were not taking the exact shape he had anticipated when he had insinuated his agents into the enemy camp. But close enough. Close enough.
• He laughed long and hard after his man departed. It was a good joke, at the expense of Honsa Eldracher and the Fray Magister. He pictured their faces. The humor left him.
Well, they were out of the way at last.
"It's barely a shadow of its former might," the Min-dak said of the Western army. It lay drawn up in order of battle near Kacalief, where the whole thing had begun for Gathrid. The Mindak, Gathrid, Rogala, and several Ventimiglian staffers were studying Nieroda's dispositions from a rise on the Grevening side of the border.
Nieroda had been taking losses. Even with her western turncoats, she now had but a third of the Western army's original strength. What combat had not accomplished, desertion had. Morale had declined. Her troops had had little chance to enjoy the fruits of victory.
"The odds are in our favor," Ahlert observed. "Our men outnumber hers. Her wizards are almost all gone. Only seven Toal remain corporeal. It was a happy day when I decided not to teach her the binding spells."
"Yet she's offering battle," Rogala replied. He had healed with astonishing rapidity. He was the only man in the Mindak's army ever to have survived the kiss of a Toal blade. Now his fierce gaze darted over the Savard, seeking traps.
"All her people are here," Ahlert said. "Belfiglio can't detect any other force nearer than Hildreth's, in Bilgoraj. She means to win."
"Then she's confident of her sorcery. Or she's a step ahead of us again, and the outcome here doesn't matter."
One of the Mindak's generals said Nieroda's confidence had convinced him the encounter was a trap.
He favored eschewing battle till later.
"We have the Sword," Ahlert replied. He glanced at Gathrid. Of late the youth had grown reticent.
He was more interested in Loida Huthsing than in the coming battle.
She was supposed to have returned to Ventimiglia with the camp followers. Gathrid had refused to let her go. No one had called him to account.
Ahlert's gaze swept across his army. His brigades were in line of battle. They had recovered during their lazy march westward. Their morale had improved.
Still, they were not the engine of war he had hoped. Nieroda had made of them a sword with a dulled edge.
She might defeat him if she remained sufficiently stubborn. That devil Doubt dogged him still.
"Down there," Gathrid told Loida. "That's where we caught the ducks that time." He indicated the marshy region beyond Nieroda's left flank. Her, right she had anchored on the hill where Kacalief lay in ruin. Beyond Kacalief, to the north, lay the skeletal, winter-naked forests of the Savard Hills.