As he entered, attacking in a whirlwind of steel, he realized that he had made a tactical blunder.
The house was dark. He could not see his foes. They could see him silhouetted in the doorway.
His weapon knew where they were. In seconds it was over. Three lives had been devoured. Gathrid pushed on to a lighted room from which panic sounds came.
He found another three men. One was Suftko, another was a bodyguard. The third was a renegade Brother. Gathrid slew the bodyguard and was closing with Suftko when the magnitude of his peril struck Aarant. "Behind you!"
Once again he dodged the aim of a golden rod. A beam sliced furniture and scarred walls. Gathrid ducked and dove forward.
The sorcerer was nimble. His weapon was one the younger sword could not negate. It took all the youth's borrowed skill to survive the next minute.
The sorcerer died.
"A Blue!" Gathrid said. "And owned by Mulenex. ..." But no more. He had fled, had enlisted with Suftko. A man in Suftko's business could find a thousand uses for a competent sorcerer.
The man was overdue for death, Gathrid reflected. He had murdered Honsa Eldracher and betrayed Katich. No punishment was adequate... .
Suftko had been hiding him from both Yedon Hildreth and Mulenex, each of whom wanted him desperately.
"Watch the other one," Aarant whispered.
Gathrid whirled. Suftko was opening the door as he had been fighting. "Stop right there! Or you'll die."
The gangster turned, raised his hands. He was a small, hard man. Gathrid guessed him to be as shrewd and pragmatic as Hildreth or Ahlert. No doubt he was aware of the dead wizard's entire history.
"There'll be hell to pay tomorrow. Unless somebody does one good cleanup job."
Suftko said nothing.
"You've got one chance to buy your life." Gathrid told the man the true story behind his hiring.
"I want the trail covered. For both our sakes."
"All right. I don't have much choice, do I?"
"Not much. I'll be back if you don't deliver."
The hard little man nodded.
"Good luck, then." Gathrid went away admiring the gangster. The man had shown no fear.
He returned to the inn before dawn more than tainted the eastern sky. The scullery help were about, but did not notice him slipping into the cellar. The body in the alley was absent. The fish in the Blackstun would feed well today.
Rogala still snored. So did Gacioch. The corpses in their room had not been disturbed. Gathrid left them lie. He placed his weapon near Daubendiek and slipped into bed. The Sword moaned softly, evilly, jealously.
"Be careful," Aarant whispered.
"I plan to."
He was adrift on the twilight edge of sleep when he suddenly realized that he had been away from Daubendiek for hours, and by miles. Well might the Sword be jealous. His hand stole toward the new blade. He yanked it back. Suppose? ...
There were always levels to Nieroda's schemes. This might be one to seduce him away from the blade he hated, then leave him powerless. He lay back. "Tureck, mull that one over."
"I am already."
Gathrid bolted up again, horrified.
He had slain no fewer than a dozen men that night, without qualm or question, and without being controlled.
He could not deny responsibility... . The Swordbear-er's fate was closing in. He was becoming a man without remorse.
Sleep was a long time coming. He could not stop poking a stick into the hornet's nest of his conscience.
Chapter Fifteen
Sartain Gathrid and Rogala hit the road again after just the one night in Torun. Kimach's disappearance had stirred too much excjtement and speculation. None of it was pleasant.
The dwarf had less than usual to say. Gathrid tried to enjoy the passing countryside. He failed.
He felt Rogala's veiled, curious eyes too strongly.
The youth had said nothing about his night's work except to admit that he had forestalled the assassins. The dwarf, though, had seen the innkeeper's terror that morning. He had heard the news, rumors, and speculations in the streets. He had done his sums.
And he was well aware that Daubendiek had done no slaying. He and the Great Sword were tools of Suchara. They knew one another well.
West of Torun Bilgoraj consisted of populous farm country inhabited by curious, reticent peasants.
They had scores of questions for travelers, but few answers.
The farms eventually gave way to timber land. The Blackstun River, which had meandered north from the capital, now swung back to parallel the high road. It joined the Ondr where Bilgoraj butted against tiny Fief-enbruch. "This country is smaller than Gudermuth," Gathrid observed. "West of it lies the March of Armo-neit, the easternmost of the principalities still liege to Anderle."
The dwarf grunted noncommittally. He was more interested in changes time had wrought since last he had passed this way.
It was in the March, in the hills overlooking the ferry town of Avenevoli, that Yedon Hildreth had won his celebrated victory. The enemies of then were allies now. The father of the King of Fiefenbruch and Kimach Faul-stich's elder brother both had fallen on the Avenevoli slopes.
The Ondr, swollen by a hundred tributaries, eventually debouched in the long reach of the Secrease Sound. Sartain stood on a vast island, causeway-connected with the mainland, that countless generations had expanded into a canal-riddled, almost self-supporting city-state. The island nearly blocked the wide, shallow Sound, and stretched dozens of miles toward the sea. The original dromedary-backed island had become lost in the expansion. One of its two humps boasted the Raftery, the other the Imperial Palace.
"It's doubled in size," Rogala said. They were studying the sprawl from a promontory where once a mansion had stood. The dwarf had chased some memory to the scene and found it one with all his recollections of the former age. "Chrismer lived on Galen. That's the eastern peak. Karkainen lived on Faron, where the Imperium now crouches like a whipped cur. The harbor isn't what it used to be. Hundreds of ships came up from the sea every day, bearing treasures and emissaries from the world's ends. Those proud hulls seem to have been replaced by drab fishing trawlers."
Gathrid glanced at Rogala, puzzled. Once again his companion had revealed an unexpected facet. He had never seemed the nostalgic sort.
"Let's go see what the barbarians have done with the Queen of the World. Raped her, belike."
Not so, they discovered. Not only Elgar, but the long parade of his predecessors, had been obsessed with preserving the shadow of the glory that had been. The carefully nurtured wealth of the diminuated Imperium had for centuries maintained and improved the Queen City.
It began on the mainland shore. There, sturdy, intimidating fortilices, brooding amidst grain fields, shielded the approaches to the Causeway. There were a score of them all told. Each was manned by Guards Oldani, veteran soldiers proud in their service. They were not the pampered, Kingmaking, fight-avoiding praetorians one might expect squirming like maggots in the corpse of a decadent Empire. For them Anderle remained real.
The roads were paved, and scrupulously clean, as were the people upon them. But ghosts of worry occasionally slid across their scrubbed native faces. The grain fields flanking the roads were garden-perfect. The peasants working them were cheerful and friendly. The highborn did not scorn to answer their greetings, nor to pause to chat amiably.
"Pride," said Rogala. "That's what you see. Pride not only in what Anderle was, but in what she is and might be again. Every man has his contribution to make.''
And a little later, Rogala observed, "The germ is here. If fate stays its hand. If a genius appears among the merely competent Emperors who keep the dream alive, they might achieve their goal. They might see their new Imperium, their new Golden Age." He sounded wistful.