Drenai Saga 01 - Legend (43 page)

Togi did not know his own age, only that as a youth he had joined the riders as a stable boy and later had won his black cloak in the Sathuli wars. He had had a wife years back, but she had left him, taking their son with her. He had no idea where they had gone and professed not to care much. He had no friends that he spoke of and cared little for authority. Gilad had asked him once what he thought of the legion officers.

“They fight as well as the rest of us,” he said. “But it is the only thing we will ever do together.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gilad.

“Nobility. You can fight or die for them, but you will never be one of them. To them we don’t exist as people.”

“Druss is accepted,” Gilad pointed out.

“Aye. By me also,” answered Togi, a fierce gleam in his dark eyes. “That’s a man, that one. But it alters nothing. Look at the silver men who fight under the albino—not one of them is from a lowly village. An earl’s son leads them; nobles all of them.”

“Then why do you fight for them if you hate them so much?”

“Hate them? I don’t hate them. It’s just the way life is. I don’t hate anybody, and they don’t hate me. We understand each other, that’s all. To me the officers are no different from the Nadir; they’re both different races. And I fight because that’s what I do—I’m a soldier.”

“Did you always want to be a soldier?”

“What else was there?”

Gilad spread his hands. “Anything you choose.”

“I’d like to have been a king.”

“What kind of king?”

“A bloody tyrant!” answered Togi. He winked but did not smile. He rarely smiled, and when he did, it was the merest flicker of movement around the eyes.

The day before, as the Earl of Bronze had made his dramatic entrance on to the walls, Gilad had nudged Togi and pointed.

“New armor—it suits him,” said the rider.

“It looks old,” said Gilad.

Togi merely shrugged. “So long as it does the job …”

That day Togi’s saber had snapped six inches above the hilt. He had hurled himself on the leading Nadir and rammed the broken blade into his neck, snatching the man’s short sword and laying about him ferociously. His speed of thought and quicksilver movements amazed Gilad. Later, during a lull between assaults, he had retrieved a second saber from a dead soldier.

“You fight well,” Gilad had said.

“I’m alive,” Togi had answered.

“Is that the same thing?”

“It is on these walls, though good men have fallen. But that is a matter of luck. The bad or the clumsy do not need bad luck to kill them, and even good luck wouldn’t save them for long.”

Now Togi stowed the whetstone in his pouch and wiped the curving blade with an oiled cloth. The steel shone blue-white in the gathering light.

Farther along the line Druss was chatting to the warriors, lifting their spirits with jests. He made his way toward them, and Gilad pushed himself to his feet, but Togi remained where he was. Druss, white beard ruffled by the breeze, stopped and spoke quietly to Gilad.

“I’m glad you stayed,” he said.

“I had nowhere to go,” answered Gilad.

“No. Not many men appreciate that,” said the old warrior. He glanced down at the crouching rider. “I see you there, Togi, you young pup. Still alive, then?”

“So far,” he said, looking up.

“Stay that way,” said Druss, and walked on along the line.

“That is a great man,” said Togi. “A man to die for.”

“You knew him before this?”

“Yes.” Togi would say no more, and Gilad was about to press him, when the blood-chilling sound of the Nadir war chant signaled the dawn of one more red day.

Below the walls, among the Nadir, was a giant called Nogusha. Ulric’s champion for ten years, he had been sent forward with the first wave, and with him as personal body-guards were twenty Wolfshead tribesmen. Their duty was to protect him until he could meet and kill Deathwalker. Strapped to his back was a three-foot sword, the blade six inches wide; by his side were two daggers in twin sheaths. An inch over six feet, Nogusha was the tallest warrior in the Nadir ranks and the most deadly, a veteran of three hundred hand-to-hand contests.

The horde reached the walls. Ropes swirled over the battlements, and ladders rattled on the gray stone. Nogusha barked commands to the men around him, and three tribesmen climbed above him, the others swarming alongside. The bodies of the first two above him plummeted down to the rocks below, but the third created a space for Nogusha before being hacked to death. As Nogusha gripped the battlements with one huge hand, his sword flashed into the air, while on either side of him the bodyguards closed in. The massive sword cleaved a passage as the group formed a wedge driving toward Druss some twenty paces distant. Although the Drenai closed in behind Nogusha’s band, blocking the wall, none could approach the giant tribesman. Men died beneath his flashing broadsword. On either side of him his bodyguards were faring less well: one by one they fell until at last only Nogusha still stood. By now he was only paces away from Druss, who turned and saw him, battling alone and soon to fall. Their eyes met, and understanding was there instantly. This was a man Druss would be hard put not to recognize: Nogusha the swordsman, Ulric’s executioner, a man whose deeds were the fabric of fresh Nadir legends, a living, younger counterpart to Druss himself.

The old man leapt lightly from the ramparts to the grass beyond, where he waited. He made no move to halt the attack on the Nadir warrior. Nogusha saw Druss waiting, slashed a path, and jumped clear. Several Drenai warriors made to follow him, but Druss waved them back.

“Well met, Nogusha,” said the old man.

“Well met, Deathwalker.”

“You will not live to collect Ulric’s reward,” said Druss. “There is no way back.”

“All men must die. And this moment for me is as close to paradise as I could wish for. All my life you have been there before me, making my deeds seem shadows.”

Druss nodded solemnly. “I, too, have thought of you.”

Nogusha attacked with stunning speed. Druss hammered the sword aside, stepped in, and struck a blow of awesome power with his left fist. Nogusha staggered but recovered swiftly, blocking the downward sweep of Druss’s ax. The battle that followed was brief and viciously fought. No matter how high the skill, a contest between an axman and a swordsman could never last long. Nogusha feinted to the left, then swept his sword up under Druss’s guard. With no time for thought, Druss hurled himself under the arcing blade, slamming his shoulder into Nogusha’s midriff. As the tribesman was hurled backward, the sword’s blade sliced the back of Druss’s jerkin, gashing the skin and flesh of his upper back. The old man ignored the sudden pain and threw himself across the body of the fallen swordsman. His left hand clamped over the right wrist of his opponent, and Nogusha did likewise.

The struggle was now titanic as each man strained to break the other’s grip. Their strength was nearly identical, and while Druss had the advantage of being above the fallen warrior and thus in a position to use his weight to bear down, Nogusha was younger and Druss had been cut deeply. Blood welled down his back, pooling above the thick leather belt around his jerkin.

“You … cannot hold … against me,” hissed Nogusha through clenched teeth.

Druss, face purple with effort, did not answer. The man was right; he could feel his strength ebbing. Nogusha’s right arm began to lift, the sword blade glinting in the morning sun. Druss’s left arm was beginning to shake with the effort and would give out at any moment. Suddenly the old man lifted his head and rammed his forehead down onto Nogusha’s helpless face. The man’s nose splintered as the edge of his adversary’s silver-rimmed helm crashed upon it. Thrice more Druss butted the tribesman, and Nogusha began to panic. Already his nose and one cheek-bone were smashed. He twisted, released Druss’s arm, and exploded a mighty punch to his chin, but Druss rode it and hammered Snaga into the man’s neck. Blood burst from the wound, and Nogusha ceased to struggle. His eyes met the old man’s, but no word was said: Druss had no breath, and Nogusha had no vocal chords. The tribesman transferred his gaze to the sky and died. Druss slowly pulled himself upright; then, taking Nogusha by the feet, he dragged him up the short steps to the battlements. Meanwhile the Nadir had fallen back, ready for another charge. Druss called two men and ordered them to pass up Nogusha’s body, then he climbed onto the ramparts.

“Hold on to my legs but do not let yourselves be seen,” Druss whispered to the soldiers behind him. In full view of the Nadir massed below, he pulled the body of Nogusha upright in a tight bear hug, took hold of his neck and groin, and with a mighty effort raised the huge body above his head. With a heave and a scream he hurled the body out over the walls. But for the men holding him, he would have fallen. They helped him down, their faces anxious.

“Get me to the hospital before I bleed to death,” he whispered.

27

C
aessa sat beside
the bed, silent but watchful, her eyes never leaving the sleeping Druss. Thirty stitches laced the wound on the axman’s broad back, the line curving alongside the shoulder blade and over the shoulder itself, where the cut was deepest. The old man was asleep, drugged with poppy wine. The blood loss from the wound had been prodigious, and he had collapsed on the way to the hospital. Caessa had stood by Calvar Syn as the stitches were inserted. She had said nothing. Now she merely sat.

She could not understand her fascination for the warrior. Certainly she did not desire him—men had never raised desire in her. Love? Was it love? She had no way of knowing, no terms of reference to gauge her feelings by. Her parents had died horribly when she was seven. Her father, a peaceful placid farmer, had tried to stop raiders from robbing his barn, and they had cut him down without a moment’s thought. Caessa’s mother had seized her by the hand and raced for the woods above the cliff. But they had been seen, and the chase was short. The woman could not carry the child, for she was pregnant. And she would not abandon her. She had fought like a wildcat but had been overpowered, abused, and slain. All the while the child had sat beneath an oak tree, frozen with terror, unable even to scream. A bearded man with foul breath had finally come to her, lifted her brutally by the hair, carried her to the cliff edge, and hurled her out over the sea.

She had missed the rocks, though her head was gashed in the fall and her right leg was broken. A fisherman saw her plunge and pulled her clear. From that day on she changed.

The laughing child laughed no more, or danced, or sang. Sullen she was, and vicious she became. Other children would not play with her, and as she grew older, she found herself more and more alone. At the age of fifteen she killed her first man, a traveler who had chattered to her by a river’s edge, asking directions. She crept into his camp and cut his throat while he slept, sitting beside him to watch him die.

He was the first of many.

The death of men made her cry. In her tears she became alive. For Caessa, to live was the most important single objective of her life. And so men died.

In later years, after her twentieth birthday, Caessa devised a new method of selecting victims: those who were attracted to her. They would be allowed to sleep with her, but later, as they dreamed—perhaps of the pleasures they had enjoyed—she would draw a sharpened blade gently across their throats. She had killed no one since joining Bowman some six months before, for Skultik had become her last refuge.

Yet now she sat beside the bed of an injured man and wished for him to live. Why?

She drew her dagger and pictured its blade drawing across the old man’s throat. Usually this death fantasy made her warm with desire, but now it created a sense of panic. In her mind’s eye she saw Druss sitting beside her in a darkened room, a log fire burning in the hearth. His arm was over her shoulder, and she was nestling into his chest. She had pictured the scene many times, but now she saw it afresh, for Druss was so large, a giant in her fantasy. And she knew why.

She was seeing him through the eyes of a seven-year-old.