The Swordbearer - By Glen Cook Page 0,58

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 Swordbearers 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 Covingont," 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