Grappling with two men, Druss heard a bloodcurdling scream. His attackers froze. Druss dragged an arm free and struck the first of the men a terrible blow to the neck. The second released his hold on the axeman and sprinted from the hollow. Druss's pale eyes scanned the area, seeking new opponents. But only Varsava was standing there, his huge hunting-knife dripping blood. Two corpses lay beside him. Three other men Druss had struck lay where they had fallen, and the warrior he had backhanded was still sitting by the tree. Druss walked to where he sat, then hauled him to his feet. 'Time to go, laddie!' said Druss.
'Don't kill me!' pleaded the man.
'Who said anything about killing? Be off with you!'
The man tottered away on boneless legs as Druss moved to the old man tied to the tree. Only one of his wounds was deep. Druss untied him and eased him to the ground. Swiftly he dragged the knife clear of the man's thigh as Varsava came alongside. That will need stitching,' he said. 'I'll get my pack.'
The old man forced a smile. 'I thank you, my friends. I fear they would have killed me. Where is Dulina?'
Druss glanced round, but the girl was nowhere in sight. 'She was not harmed,' he said. 'I think she ran when the fight started.' Druss applied a tourniquet to the thigh wound, then stood and moved back to check the bodies. The two men who had attacked Varsava were dead, as was one other, his neck broken. The remaining two were unconscious. Rolling them to their backs, Druss shook them awake and then pulled them upright. One of the men immediately sagged back to the ground.
'Who are you?' asked the warrior still standing.
'I am Druss.'
'Cajivak will kill you for this. Were I you, I would leave the mountains.'
'You are not me, laddie. I go where I please. Now pick up your comrade and take him home.'
Druss dragged the fallen warrior to his feet and watched as the two men left the hollow. When Varsava returned with his pack, a young girl was walking beside him. She was holding her ruined dress in place. 'Look what I found,' said Varsava. 'She was hiding under a bush.' Ignoring the girl, Druss grunted and moved to the stream where he knelt and drank.
Had Snaga been with him, the hollow would now be awash in blood and bodies. He sat back and stared at the rippling water.
When the axe was lost Druss had felt as if a burden had been lifted from his heart. The priest back in Capalis had been right: it was a demon blade. He had felt its power growing as the battles raged, had enjoyed the soaring, surging blood-lust that swept over him like a tidal wave. But after the battles came the sense of emptiness and disenchantment. Even the spiciest food was tasteless; summer days seemed grey and colourless.
Then came the day in the mountains when the Naashanites had come upon him alone. He had killed five, but more than fifty men had pursued him through the trees. He had tried to traverse the cliff, but holding to the axe made his movements slow and clumsy. Then the ledge had given way and he had fallen, twisting and turning through the air. Even as he fell he hurled the axe from him, and tried to turn the fall into a dive; but his timing was faulty and he had landed on his back, sending up a huge splash, the air exploding from his lungs. The river was in flood and the currents swept him on for more than two miles before he managed to grab a root jutting from the river-bank. Hauling himself clear he had sat, as now, staring at the water.
Snaga was gone.
And Druss felt free. "Thank you for helping my grandfather,' said a sweet voice and he turned and smiled.
'Did they hurt you?'
'Only a little,' said Dulina. 'They hit me in the face.'
'How old are you?'
'Twelve - almost thirteen.' She was a pretty child with large hazel eyes and light brown hair.
'Well, they've gone now. Are you from the village?'
'No. Grandfather is a tinker. We go from town to town; he sharpens knives and mends things. He's very clever.'
'Where are your parents?'
The girl shrugged. 'I never had any; only grandfather. You are very strong - but you are bleeding!'
Druss chuckled. 'I heal fast, little one.' Removing his jerkin, he examined the wound on his hip. The surface skin had been sliced, but the cut was not deep.
Varsava joined them. 'That should also be stitched, great hero,' he said, irritation in his voice.
Blood was still flowing freely from the wound. Druss stretched out and lay still while Varsava, with little gentleness, drew the flaps of skin together and pierced them with a curved needle. When he had finished the bladesman stood. 'I suggest we leave this place and head back for Lania. I think our friends will return before too long.'
Druss donned his jerkin. 'What about the city and your thousand gold pieces?'
Varsava shook his head in disbelief. "This . . . escapade . . . of yours has put paid to any plan of mine. I shall return to Lania and claim my hundred gold pieces for locating the boy. As to you, well, you can go where you like.'
'You give up very easily, bladesman. So we cracked a few heads! What difference does that make? Cajivak has hundreds of men; he won't interest himself in every brawl.'
'It is not Cajivak who concerns me, Druss. It is you. I am not here to rescue maidens or kill dragons, or whatever else it is that makes heroes of myth. What happens when we walk into the city and you see some. . . some hapless victim? Can you walk by? Can you hold fast to a plan of action that will see us succeed in our mission?'
Druss thought for a moment. 'No,' he said at last. 'No, I will never walk by.'
'I thought not, damn you! What are you trying to prove, Druss? You want more songs about you? Or do you just want to die young?'
'No, I have nothing to prove, Varsava. And I may die young, but I'll never look in a mirror and be ashamed because I let an old man suffer or a child be raped. Nor will I ever be haunted by a peacemaker who died unjustly. Go where you will, Varsava. Take these people back to Lania. I shall go to the city.'
'They'll kill you there.'
Druss shrugged. 'All men die. I am not immortal.'
'No, just stupid,' snapped Varsava and spinning on his heel, the bladesman strode away.
*
Michanek laid his bloody sword on the battlements and untied the chin-straps of his bronze helm, lifting it clear and enjoying the sudden rush of cool air to his sweat-drenched head. The Ventrian army was falling back in some disarray, having discarded the huge battering-ram which lay outside the gate, surrounded by corpses. Michanek walked to the rear of the ramparts and yelled orders to a squad of men below.
'Open the gate and drag that damned ram inside,' he shouted. Pulling a rag from his belt, he wiped his sword clean of blood and sheathed it.
The fourth attack of the day had been repulsed; there would be no further righting today. However, few of the men seemed anxious to leave the wall. Back in the city the plague was decimating the civilian population. No, he thought, it is worse than decimation. Far more than one in ten were now suffering the effects.
Gorben had not dammed the river. Instead he had filled it with every kind of corruption - dead animals, bloated and maggot-ridden, rotting food, and the human waste from an army of eleven thousand men. Small wonder that sickness had ripped into the population.
Water was now being supplied by artesian wells, but no one knew how deep they were or how long the fresh water would last. Michanek gazed up at the clear blue sky: not a cloud in sight, and rain had not fallen for almost a month.
A young officer approached him. 'Two hundred with superficial wounds, sixty dead, and another thirty-three who will not fight again,' he said.
Michanek nodded, his mind elsewhere. 'What news from the inner city, brother?' he asked.
'The plague is abating. Only seventy dead yesterday, most of them either children or old people.'
Michanek stood and smiled at the young man. 'Your section fought well today,' he said, clapping his hand on his brother's shoulder. 'I shall see that a report is placed before the Emperor when we return to Naashan.' The man said nothing and th
eir eyes met, the unspoken thought passing between them: if we return to Naashan. 'Get some rest, Narin. You look exhausted.'
'So do you, Michi. And I was only here for the last two attacks - you've been here since before dawn.'
'Yes, I am tired. Pahtai will revive me; she always does.'
Narin chuckled. 'I never expected love to last so long for you. Why don't you marry the girl? You'll never find a better wife. She's revered in the city. Yesterday she toured the poorest quarter, healing the sick. It's amazing; she has more skill than any of the doctors. It seems that all she needs to do is lay her hands upon the dying and their sores disappear.'
'You sound as if you're in love with her yourself,' said Michanek.
'I think I am - a little,' admitted Narin, reddening. 'Is she still having those dreams?'
'No,' lied Michanek. 'I'll see you this evening.' He moved down the battlement steps and strode through the streets towards his home. Every other house, it seemed, boasted the white chalked cross denoting plague. The market was deserted, the stalls standing empty. Everything was rationed now, the food - four ounces of flour, and a pound of dried fruit - doled out daily from storehouses in the west and east.
Why don't you marry her!
For two reasons he could never share. One: she was already wed to another, though she did not know it. And secondly, it would be like signing his death warrant. Rowena had predicted that he would die here, with Narin beside him, one year to the day after he was wed.
She no longer remembered this prediction either, for the sorcerers had done their work well. Her Talent was lost to her, and all the memories of her youth in the lands of the Drenai. Michanek felt no guilt over this. Her Talent had been tearing her apart and now, at least, she smiled and was happy. Only Pudri knew the whole truth, and he was wise enough to stay silent.
Michanek turned up the Avenue of Laurels and pushed open the gates of his house. There were no gardeners now, and the flower-beds were choked with weeds. The fountain was no longer in operation, the fish-pool dry and cracked. As he strode to the house, Pudri came running out to him.
'Master, come quickly, it is the Pahtair'
'What has happened?' cried Michanek, grabbing the little man by his tunic.
'The plague, master,' he whispered, tears in his dark eyes. 'It is the plague.'
*
Varsava found a cave nestling against the rock-face to the north; it was deep and narrow, and curled like a figure six. He built a small fire near the back wall, below a split in the rock that created a natural chimney. The old man, whom Druss had carried to the cave, had fallen into a deep, healing sleep with the child, Dulina, alongside him. Having walked from the cave to check whether the glare of the fire could be seen from outside, Varsava was now sitting in the cave-mouth staring out over the night-dark woods.
Druss joined him. 'Why so angry, bladesman?' he asked. 'Do you not feel some satisfaction at having rescued them?'
'None at all,' replied Varsava. 'But then no one ever made a song about me. I look after myself.'
'That does not explain your anger.'
'Nor could I explain it in any way that would be understood by your simple mind. Borza's Blood!' He rounded on Druss. 'The world is such a mind-numbingly uncomplicated place for you, Druss. There is good, and there is evil. Does it ever occur to you that there may be a vast area in between that is neither pure nor malevolent? Of course it doesn't! Take today as an example. The old man could have been a vicious sorcerer who drank the blood of innocent babes; the men punishing him could have been the fathers of those babes. You didn't know, you just roared in and downed them.' Varsava shook his head and took a deep breath.
'You are wrong,' said Druss softly. 'I have heard the arguments before, from Sieben and Bodasen - and others. I will agree that I am a simple man. I can scarcely read more than my name, and I do not understand complicated arguments. But I am not blind. The man tied to the tree wore homespun clothes, old clothes; the child was dressed in like manner. These were not rich, as a sorcerer would be. And did you listen to the laughter of the knife-throwers? It was harsh, cruel. These were not farmers; their clothes were bought, their boots and shoes of good leather. They were scoundrels.'
'Maybe they were,' agreed Varsava, 'but what business was it of yours? Will you criss-cross the world seeking to right wrongs and protect the innocent? Is this your ambition in life?'
'No,' said Druss, 'though it would not be a bad ambition.' He fell silent for several minutes, lost in thought. Shadak had given him a code, and impressed upon him that without such an iron discipline he would soon become as evil as any other reaver. Added to this there was Bress, his father, who had lived his whole life bearing the terrible burden of being the son of Bardan. And lastly there was Bardan himself, driven by a demon to become one of the most hated and vilified villains in history. The lives, the words and deeds of these three men had created the warrior who now sat beside Varsava. But Druss had no words to explain, and it surprised him that he desired them; he had never felt the need to explain to Sieben or Bodasen. 'I had no choice,' he said at last.
'No choice?' echoed Varsava. 'Why?'
'Because I was there. There wasn't anyone else.'
Feeling Varsava's eyes upon him, and seeing the look of blank incomprehension, Druss turned away and stared at the night sky. It made no sense, he knew that, but he also knew that he felt good for having rescued the girl and the old man. It might make no sense, but it was right.
Varsava rose and moved back to the rear of the cave, leaving Druss alone. A cold wind whispered across the mountainside, and Druss could smell the coming of rain. He remembered another cold night, many years before, when he and Bress had been camped in the mountains of Lentria. Druss was very young, seven or eight, and he was unhappy. Some men had shouted at his father, and gathered outside the workshop that Bress had set up in a small village. He had expected his father to rush out and thrash them but instead, as night fell, he had gathered a few belongings and led the boy out into the mountains.
'Why are we running away?' he had asked Bress.
'Because they will talk a lot, and then come back to burn us out.'
'You should have killed them,' said the boy.
'That would have been no answer,' snapped Bress. 'Mostly they are good men, but they are frightened. We will find somewhere where no one knows of Bardan.'
'I won't run away, not ever,' declared the boy and Bress had sighed. Just then a man approached the camp-fire. He was old and bald, his clothes ragged, but his eyes were bright and shrewd.
'May I share your fire?' he asked and mess had welcomed him, offering some dried meat and a herb tisane' which the man accepted gratefully. Druss had fallen asleep as the two men talked, but had woken several hours later. Bress was asleep, but the old man was sitting by the fire feeding the flames with twigs. Druss rose from his blankets and walked to sit alongside him.
'Frightened of the dark, boy?'
'I am frightened of nothing,' Druss told him.
'That's good,' said the old man, 'but I am. Frightened of the dark, frightened of starvation, frightened of dying. All my life I've been frightened of something or other.'
'Why?' asked the boy, intrigued.
The old man laughed. 'Now there's a question! Wish I could answer it.' As he picked up a handful of twigs and reached out, dropping them to the dying flames, Druss saw his right arm was criss-crossed with scars.
'How did you get them?' asked the boy.
'Been a soldier most of my life, son. Fought against the Nadir, the Vagrians, the Sathuli, corsairs, brigands. You name the enemy, and I've crossed swords with them.'
'But you said you were a coward.'
'I said no such thing, lad. I said I was frightened. There's a difference. A coward is a man who knows what's right, but is afraid to do it; there're plenty of them around. But the worst of them are easy to spot: they talk loud, they brag big, and given a chance they're as cruel as sin.'
'My father is a
coward,' said the boy sadly.
The old man shrugged. 'If he is, boy, then he's the first in a long, long while to fool me. And if you are talking about him running away from the village, there's times when to run away is the bravest thing a man can do. I knew a soldier once. He drank like a fish, rutted like an alley-cat and would fight anything that walked, crawled or swam. But he got religion; he became a Source priest. When a man he once knew, and had beaten in a fist-fight, saw him walking down the street in Drenan, he walked up and punched the priest full in the face, knocking him flat. I was there. The priest surged to his feet and stopped. He wanted to fight - everything in him wanted to fight. But then he remembered what he was, and he held back. Such was the turmoil within him that he burst into tears. And he walked away. By the gods, boy, that took some courage.'
'I don't think that was courage,' said Druss.
'Neither did anyone else who was watching. But then that's something you'll learn, I hope. If a million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.'
Druss's mind jerked back to the present. He didn't know why he had remembered that meeting, but the recollection left him feeling sad and low in spirit.
Chapter Two
A storm broke over the mountains, great rolls of thunder that made the walls of the cave vibrate, and Druss moved back as the rain lashed into the cave-mouth. The land below was lit by jagged spears of lightning which seemed to change the very nature of the valley - the gentle woods of pine and elm becoming shadow-haunted lairs, the friendly homes looking like tombstones across the vault of Hell.