The Swordbearer - By Glen Cook Page 0,62

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 Mindak 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.

"And over there would be the vineyard where you and Anyeck tried to shave your brother's dog?"

"No. But that's close. Back there where Nieroda's camp is."

Ahlert listened with half an ear. He felt a certain compassion for the boy. To have been caught up in this so thoroughly, so young . . . . Should he pass along the latest from Magnolo, about events in Sartain? The news might keep the Sword with him after Nieroda's defeat.

Yet the boy could