The Swordbearer - By Glen Cook Page 0,72

slain no fewer than a dozen men that night, without qualm or question, and without being controlled. He could not deny responsibility . . . . The Swordbearer'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 excitement 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 Fiefenbruch. "This country is smaller than Gudermuth," Gathrid observed. "West of it lies the March of Armoneit, 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 Faulstich'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, King-making, 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