The Swordbearer Read Online Free PDF

was to live.
    His insistence on fighting now seemed like a childhood dream that had held no cognition of the horror of reality.
    He could see the vineyards through the hole. Maybe he could risk the dash... .
    Ventimiglian armor clanked nearby. He froze. Dark greaves appeared beyond fallen, fire-blackened timbers. He tried to crush himself deeper into ashes and broken stone.
    The Toal moved stiffly, jerkily. The Twelve had done so even in battle. Yet each had been a killing machine no mortal had been able to match. And Nieroda had been worse.
    They said even the Mindak feared Nevenka Nieroda.
    This one was hunting survivors. They never gave up.
    The thing that wore the corpse of a man stopped a dozen paces away. It turned. Gathrid held his breath. The dead eyes probed his hiding place. A black gauntlet rose to point... .
    Gathrid sprang up. He hurled a fist-sized chunk of masonry, broke for the gap in the wall. The chunk hit the outstretched hand, wrenched the aiming finger's point aside. The remnants of a stable shed coughed, collapsed.
    Gathrid had just time enough to reach the hole.
    His mixed luck held. He skidded on slippery puddled stone and fell. The Toal's second spell-bolt chuckled in the wall. New-made gravel stung Gathrid's face.
    He ran blindly till burning lung and leaden legs slowed his pace and quickened his thinking. He slowed to a dogged trot, turned toward the nearby finger of the Sa-vard Hills. He and his brothers had played and hunted those wild slopes and valleys often enough. He should be able to disappear there.
    He glanced back once.
    A dark thing on a dark horse cantered from the ruins.
    Gathrid increased his pace. It was a mile to the nearest cover.
    He slipped into dense scrub a hundred yards ahead of his pursuer. On hands and knees he scooted through brambles like a rabbit. His heart pounded as hard as it had the moment he had met the Toal's gaze.
    Was the Dead Captain playing with him? It could have caught him... . Maybe the Toal wanted the amusement of a boy-hunt. Or thought he might lead them to the Sword.
    Their search for the fabled Sword was baffling. But the Mindak and his wizard generals had shaken other fell and forgotten things out of the earth in their mad drive to revive the ancient sorceries. Among them were Nieroda and the Twelve Demon Kings from ages so eld even they had forgotten them. There were rings of power and amulets of protection the like of which had not been since the Golden Age of Anderle. They had recovered bows that could speed soul-devouring shafts the length of a kingdom. And swords against which little could stand. But none of those were Daubendiek, the Great Sword.
    The pressure eased once Gathrid entered the tortuous and steep ravines of the Savards. The dark rider came on, but the advantage had shifted to the man afoot. Gathrid gained ground.
    Late that afternoon, almost too exhausted to care anymore, he found a low cave mouth. It exuded no animal fetor. Too tired to worry about becoming cornered, he slithered inside and fell asleep.
    He dreamed terrible dreams, of warfare and vengeance, of hatred and treachery in olden times, before the Fall, when Anderle's reach had encompassed two thirds of the continent and the Immortal Twins had ruled over a Golden Age. He dreamed of the winged tempter, Grellner, who had trafficked in whispers of unshared power.
    He dreamed of mad, mysterious Theis Rogala, he of the quicksilver loyalties and golden, slippery tongue; he who had been esquire, servant and companion of the Swordbearer. He and Aarant had been more hated than the Tempter himself.
    The Rogala of legend had claimed that Daubendiek chose its own master and cause. The question of treason was irrelevant. He was faithful to the blade.
    Gathrid had never been so miserable. Even during the polio epidemic he had felt less distress. His muscles were coals of pain. His stomach was a nest of vipers. His bad leg throbbed. His mind ...
    He feared he was no longer sane. Shock still