The Swordbearer - By Glen Cook Page 0,16

the strength. All my body wants to do is sleep." As he said it, his underbrain whimpered, cringing away from the inevitable nightmares.

"You've only been up . . . Oh, all right. We have to wait till they're settled for the night anyway."

Gathrid collapsed. The last thing he saw was Rogala sitting on his heels, a toadlike silhouette against the glow of distant fires. A flare-up in the smouldering village set illusive fireflies playing through his tangled beard. He seemed more interested in the comet than in the camp.

Did the dwarf never tire? Gathrid had not seen him sleep since the wakening of the Great Sword. He drifted off wondering if Rogala suffered any of the weaknesses of mere mortals.

The nightmare returned, this time while Gathrid was in that stage of semiawareness preceding wakening. It was a time when he was accustomed to manipulating his dreams. Since earliest childhood he had a facility for backtracking, revising and redirecting.

The nightmare would not respond. The dark pursuer remained, closing in, reaching out . . . . A haunting, seductive, yet somehow pathetic and hungry longing kept touching Gathrid's mind.

There was a familiar flavor to it . . . . He recognized it. It was the thing that had possessed the Dead Captain. It still lived. And it was determined to have him as its new host.

"Theis!" He jerked upright, grabbing for the dwarf.

Rogala had disappeared. Gathrid jumped up. He began blundering through the brush.

Rogala ghosted out of the darkness. "Be quiet!" he hissed. "And get down."

"It's after me!" Gathrid babbled. "It's getting closer. It almost got me this time." He was getting loud, but could not stop himself.

Rogala ended his hysteria with a slap. Startled, Gathrid plopped down and rubbed his cheek. There had been a remarkable strength behind the blow.

"Now explain. Quietly."

Gathrid did so, softly but urgently.

"You should've told me before."

"You could've stopped it?"

"No. But I would've had time to think before it got dangerous. I'll worry about it after we finish tonight's work."

"Eh?"

"Our horses. I've been scouting. There're twenty-three men down there. None with Power. All second-line soldiers led by a lazy sergeant. There were three sentries. I've cared for them already."

"Then we'll have no trouble stealing horses and . . . "

"The horses come afterward."

"But . . . . "

"Daubendiek is weak. It's starving after meeting that thing. It has to be fed."

"Theis, no. I couldn't."

"What?"

"Kill men while they're sleeping."

"Best time. They don't fight back. You remember who they are? They could be the men who tortured your mother. Aren't you hungry? They have more than horses. Boy your age usually eats a ton of fodder a day."

Gathrid needed no reminder. His navel was grinding against his backbone. But to kill men over something to eat . . . . He was not that hungry. Not yet.

The horror of the Ventimiglian invasion had not purged youth's pacifism and idealism. He still saw the world through the lens of should-be. That distorting lens was chipped now. It had a big crack across its middle. It would shatter before long.

"Ideals are a handicap," Rogala insisted. "If you're not flexible about them."

"But . . . . "

"You're going to get your head lopped off, boy. You fight fire with fire in this world. You don't see these Ventimiglians counting scruples, do you?"

"If we sink to their level, we're no better than they are."

"What gives you the idea you are? Human is human, boy. There are two kinds of people. Wolves and sheep. Is the sheep better than the wolf because he bravely lets himself be gobbled? Hardly. These Ventimiglians are pragmatists. I don't yet see their logic, admitted. I don't know their goals. They do have the determination to achieve them." He launched a rambling discourse about great pragmatists he had known.

Gathrid shut him out. He could not stomach the dwarf's primitive philosophizing.

As he talked, Rogala edged nearer the enemy camp. He spoke in an ever softer voice.

Gathrid felt the presence of his haunt. He crowded Rogala.

The cynical old dwarf knew how to motivate him. He talked about Anyeck. Gathrid immediately conjured visions of his sister suffering. The dwarf kept poking that sore spot. Though short-spoken, he could wax colorful when he wanted.

The boy's anger kindled. Rogala fanned it. Hatred conceived in the ruins of Kacalief fed it.

Even so, Gathrid tried to go directly to the horse picket.

Fate intervened.

A sleepy Ventimiglian, leaving his tent on some nocturnal mission, stumbled into the youth. The sleepiness left him. His eyes grew improbably wide. His