They were camped in a shallow depression under a rock face, not deep enough to be a cave but large enough to reflect heat from the fire and cut out the worst of the wind. Rek chewed his oatcake and watched the girl devour the rabbit. It was not an edifying sight. She hurled the remnants of the carcass into the trees. “Badgers should enjoy it,” she said. “That’s not a bad way to cook rabbit.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he said.
“You’re not much of a woodsman, are you?” she told him.
“I manage.”
“You couldn’t even gut the thing. You looked green when the entrails popped out.”
Rek hurled the rest of his oatcake in the direction of the hapless rabbit. “The badgers will probably appreciate dessert,” he said. Virae giggled happily.
“You’re wonderful, Rek. You’re unlike any man I’ve ever met.”
“I don’t think I’m going to like what’s coming next,” he said. “Why don’t we just go to sleep.”
“No. Listen to me. I’m serious. All my life I have dreamed of finding the right man: tall, kind, strong, understanding. Loving. I never thought he existed. Most of the men I’ve known have been soldiers—gruff, straight as spears, and as romantic as a bull in heat. And I’ve met poets, soft of speech and gentle. When I was with soldiers, I longed for poets, and when with poets, I longed for soldiers. I had begun to believe the man I wanted could not exist. Do you understand me?”
“All your life you’ve been looking for a man who couldn’t cook rabbits? Of course I understand you.”
“Do you really?” she asked softly.
“Yes. But explain it to me anyway.”
“You’re what I’ve always wanted,” she said, blushing. “You’re my coward-hero—my love.”
“I knew there would be something I wouldn’t like,” he said.
As she placed some logs on the blaze, he held out his hand. “Sit beside me,” he said. “You’ll be warmer.”
“You can share my blanket,” she told him, moving around the fire and into his arms, resting her head on his shoulder. “You don’t mind if I call you my coward-hero?”
“You can call me what you like,” he said, “so long as you’re always there to call me.”
“Always?”
The wind tilted the flames, and he shivered. “Always isn’t such a long time for us, is it? We only have as much time as Dros Delnoch holds. Anyway, you might get tired of me and send me away.”
“Never!” she said.
“ ‘Never’ and ‘always.’ I had not thought about those words much until now. Why didn’t I meet you ten years ago? The words might have meant something then.”
“I doubt it. I would only have been nine years old.”
“I didn’t mean it literally. Poetically.”
“My father has written to Druss,” she said. “That letter and this mission are all that keep him alive.”
“Druss? But even if he’s alive, he will be ancient by now; it will be obscene. Skeln was fifteen years ago, and he was old then—they will have to carry him into the Dros.”
“Perhaps. But my father sets great store by the man. He was awed by him. He feels he’s invincible. Immortal. He once described him to me as the greatest warrior of the age. He said that Skeln Pass was Druss’s victory and that he and the others just made up the numbers. He used to tell that story to me when I was young. We would sit by a fire like this and toast bread on the flames. Then he’d tell me about Skeln. Marvelous days.” She lapsed into silence, staring into the coals.
“Tell me the story,” he said, drawing her closer to him, his right hand pushing back the hair that had fallen across her face.
“You must know it. Everyone knows about Skeln.”
“True. But I’ve never heard the story from someone who was there. I’ve only seen the plays and listened to the saga poets.”
“Tell me what you heard and I will fill in the detail.”
“All right. There were a few hundred Drenai warriors holding Skeln Pass while the main Drenai army massed elsewhere. It was the Ventrian king, Gorben, they were worried about. They knew he was on the march but not where he would strike. He struck at Skeln. They were out-numbered fifty to one, and they held on until reinforcements arrived. That’s all.”
“Not quite,” said Virae. “Gorben had an inner army of ten thousand men called the Immortals. They had never been beaten, but Druss beat them.”
“Oh, come,” said Rek. “One man cannot beat an army. That’s saga-poet stuff.”
“No, listen to me. My father said that on the last day, when the Immortals were finally sent in, the Drenai line had begun to fold. My father has been a warrior all his life. He understands battles and the shift and flow between courage and panic. The Drenai were ready to crack. But then, just as the line was beginning to give, Druss bellowed a battle cry and advanced, cutting and slashing with his ax. The Ventrians fell back before him. And then suddenly those nearest to him turned to run. The panic spread like brushfire, and the entire Ventrian line crumbled. Druss had turned the tide. My father says he was like a giant that day. Inhuman. Like a god of war.”
“That was then,” said Rek. “I can’t see a toothless old man being of much use. No man can resist age.”
“I agree. But can you see what a boost to morale it will be just to have Druss there? Men will flock to the banner. To fight a battle alongside Druss the Legend—there’s an immortality in it.”
“Have you ever met the old man?” asked Rek.
“No. My father would never tell me, but there was something between them. Druss would never come to Dros Delnoch. It was something to do with my mother, I think.”
“She didn’t like him?”
“No. Something to do with a friend of Druss’s. Sieben, I think he was called.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was killed at Skeln. He was Druss’s oldest friend. That’s all I know about it.” Rek knew she was lying but let it rest. It was all ancient history, anyway.
Like Druss the Legend …
The old man crumpled the letter and let it fall.
It was not age that depressed Druss. He enjoyed the wisdom of his sixty years, the knowledge accrued, and the respect it earned. But the physical ravages of time were another thing altogether. His shoulders were still mighty above a barrel chest, but the muscles had taken on a stretched look—wiry lines that crisscrossed his upper back. His waist, too, had thickened perceptibly over the last winter. And almost overnight, he realized, his black beard streaked with gray had become a gray beard streaked with black. But the piercing eyes that gazed at their reflection in the silver mirror had not dimmed. Their stare had dismayed armies; caused heroic opponents to take a backward step, blushing and shamed; caught the imagination of a people who had needed heroes.
He was Druss the Legend. Invincible Druss, Captain of the Ax. The legends of his life were told to children everywhere, and most of them were legends, Druss reflected. Druss the hero, immortal, godlike.
His past victories could have ensured him a palace of riches, concubines by the score. Fifteen years before Abalayn himself had showered him with jewels following his exploits at the Skeln Pass.
By the following morning, however, Druss had gone back to the Skoda mountains, high into the lonely country bordering the clouds. Among the pine and the snow leopards the grizzled old warrior had returned to his lair to taste again of solitude. His wife of thirty years lay buried there. He had a mind to die there, though there would be no one to bury him, he knew.
During the past fifteen years Druss had not been inactive. He had wandered various lands, leading battle companies for minor princelings. Last winter he had retired to his high mountain retreat, there to think and die. He had long known he would die in his sixtieth year, even before the seer’s prediction all those decades ago. He had been able to picture himself at sixty—but never beyond. Whenever he tried to consider the prospect of being sixty-one, he would experience only
darkness.
His gnarled hands curled around a wooden goblet and raised it to his gray-bearded lips. The wine was strong, brewed himself five years before; it had aged well—better than he. But it was gone, and he remained … for a little while.
The heat within his sparse furnished cabin was growing oppressive as the new spring sun warmed the wooden roof. Slowly he removed the sheepskin jacket he had worn all winter and the undervest of horsehair. His massive body, crisscrossed with scars, told of his age. He studied the scars, remembering clearly the men whose blades had caused them: men who would never grow old as he had, men who had died in their prime beneath his singing ax. His blue eyes flicked to the wall by the small wooden door. There it hung, Snaga, which in the old tongue meant “the Sender.” Slim haft of black steel, interwoven with eldritch runes in silver thread, and a double-edged blade so shaped that it sang as it slew.
Even now he could hear its sweet song. One last time, brother of my soul, it called to him. One last bloody day before the sun sets. His mind returned to Delnar’s letter. It was written to the memory and not the man.
Druss raised himself from the wooden chair, cursing as his joints creaked. “The sun has set,” whispered the old warrior, addressing the ax. “Now only death waits, and he’s a patient bastard.” He walked from the cabin, gazing out over the distant mountains. His massive frame and gray-black hair mirrored in miniature the mountains he surveyed. Proud, strong, ageless, and snow-topped, they defied the spring sun as it strove to deny them their winter peaks of virgin snow.
Druss soaked in their savage splendor, sucking in the cool breeze and tasting life as if for the last time.
“Where are you, death?” he called. “Where do you hide on this fine day?” The echoes boomed around the valleys … DEATH, DEATH, Death, Death … DAY, DAY, Day, Day …
“I am Druss! And I defy you!”
A shadow fell across Druss’s eyes, the sun died in the heavens, and the mountains receded into mist. Pain clamped Druss’s mighty chest, soul deep, and he almost fell.
“Proud mortal!” hissed a sibilant voice through the veils of agony. “I never sought you. You have hunted me through these long, lonely years. Stay on this mountain and I guarantee you two score more years. Your muscles will atrophy; your brain will sink into dotage. You will bloat, old man, and I will only come when you beg it.
“Or will the huntsman have one more hunt?
“Seek me if you will, old warrior. I stand on the walls of Dros Delnoch.”
The pain lifted from the old man’s heart. He staggered once, drew soothing mountain air into his burning lungs, and gazed about him. Birds still sang in the pine, no clouds obscured the sun, and the mountains stood, tall and proud, as they always had.
Druss returned to the cabin and went to a chest of oak, padlocked at the onset of winter. The key lay deep in the valley below. He placed his giant hands about the lock and began to exert pressure. Muscles writhed on his arms, veins bulged on his neck and shoulders, and the metal groaned, changed shape, and—split! Druss threw the padlock aside and opened the chest. Within lay a jerkin of black leather, the shoulders covered in a skin of shining steel, and a black leather skull cap relieved only by a silver ax flanked by silver skulls. Long black leather gauntlets came into view, silver-skinned to the knuckles. Swiftly he dressed, coming finally to the long leather boots, a present from Abalayn himself so many years before.
Lastly he reached for Snaga, which seemed to leap from the wall to his waiting hand.
“One last time, brother,” he told it. “Before the sun sets.”
6
With Vintar standing beside him, Serbitar watched from a high balcony as the two riders approached the monastery, cantering their horses toward the northern gate. Grass showed in patches on the snow-covered fields as a warm spring wind eased in from the west.
“Not a time for lovers,” said Serbitar aloud.
“It is always a time for lovers, my son. In war most of all,” said Vintar. “Have you probed the man’s mind?”
“Yes. He is a strange one. A cynic by experience, a romantic by inclination, and now a hero by necessity.”
“How will Menahem test the messenger?” asked Vintar.
“With fear,” answered the albino.
Rek was feeling well. The air he breathed was crisp and clean, and a warm westerly breeze promised an end to the harshest winter in years. The woman he loved was beside him, and the sky was blue and clear.
“What a great day to be alive!” he said.
“What’s so special about today?” asked Virae.
“It’s beautiful. Can’t you taste it? The sky, the breeze, the melting snow?”
“Someone is coming to meet us. He looks like a warrior,” she said.
The rider approached them and dismounted. His face was covered by a black and silver helm crowned with a horse-hair plume. Rek and Virae dismounted and approached him.
“Good morning,” said Rek. The man ignored him; his dark eyes, seen through the slits in the helm, focused on Virae.
“You are the messenger?” he asked her.
“I am. I wish to see Abbot Vintar.”
“First you must pass me,” he said, stepping back and drawing a longsword of silver steel.
“Wait a moment,” said Rek. “What is this? One does not normally have to fight one’s way into a monastery.” Once again the man ignored him, and Virae drew her rapier. “Stop it!” ordered Rek. “This is insane.”
“Stay out of this, Rek,” said Virae. “I will slice this silver beetle into tiny pieces.”
“No, you won’t,” he said, gripping her arm. “That rapier is no good against an armored man. In any case, the whole thing is senseless. You are not here to fight anybody. You simply have a message to deliver, that’s all. There must be a mistake here somewhere. Wait a moment.”
Rek walked toward the warrior, his mind racing, his eyes checking for weak points in the armored defenses. The man wore a molded breastplate over a mail shirt of silver steel. Protecting his neck was a silver torque. His legs were covered to the thigh in leather trews, cased with silver rings, and upon his shins were leather greaves. Only the man’s knees, hands, and chin were open to attack.
“Will you tell me what is happening?” Rek asked him. “I think you may have the wrong messenger. We are here to see the abbot.”
“Are you ready, woman?” asked Menahem.
“Yes,” said Virae, her rapier cutting a figure eight in the morning air as she loosened her wrist.
Rek’s blade flashed into his hand. “Defend yourself,” he cried.
“No, Rek, he’s mine,” shouted Virae. “I don’t need you to fight for me. Step aside!”
“You can have him next,” said Rek. He turned his attention back to Menahem. “Come on, then. Let’s see if you fight as prettily as you look.”
Menahem turned his dark eyes on the tall figure before him. Instantly Rek’s stomach turned over: this was death! Cold, final worm-in-the-eye-sockets death. There was no hope in this contest. Panic welled in Rek’s breast, and his limbs began to tremble. He was a child again, locked in a darkened room, knowing the demons were hiding in the black shadows. Fear in the shape of bile rose in his throat as nausea shook him. He wanted to run … he needed to run.
Instead Rek screamed and launched an attack, his blade whistling toward the black and silver helm. Startled, Menahem hastily parried and a second blow almost got through. The warrior stepped backward, desperately trying to regain the initiative, but Rek’s furious assault had caught him off balance. Menahem parried and moved, trying to circle.
Virae watched in stunned silence as Rek’s blistering assault continued. The two men’s swords glittered in the morning sunlight, a dazzling web of white light, a stunning display of skill. Virae felt a surge of pride. She wanted to cheer Rek on but resisted the urge, knowing the slightest distraction could sway the contest.
“Help me,” pulsed Menahem to Serbitar, “or I may have to kill him.�
� He parried a blow, catching it only inches from his throat. “If I can,” he added.
“How can we stop it?” Serbitar asked Vintar. “The man is a baresark. I cannot get through to him. He will kill Menahem before much longer.”
“The girl!” said Vintar. “Join with me.”
Virae shivered as she watched Rek growing in strength. Baresark! Her father had told her of such men, but never would she have placed Rek in their company. They were mad killers who lost all sense of reason and fear in combat, becoming the most deadly of opponents. All swordsmen gravitated between defense and attack, for despite a desire to win there was an equal desire not to lose. But the baresark lost all fear; his was an all-out attack, and invariably he took his opponent with him even if he fell. A thought struck her powerfully, and suddenly she knew that the warrior was not trying to kill Rek—the contest was but a test.
“Put up your swords,” she screamed. “Stop it!”
The two men battled on.
“Rek, listen to me!” she shouted. “It’s only a test. He’s not trying to kill you.”
Her voice came to Rek as from a great distance, piercing the red mist before his eyes. Stepping back, he felt rather than saw the relief in the other man; then he took a deep breath and relaxed, his legs shaky, his hands trembling.
“You entered my mind,” he accused the warrior, fixing the man’s dark eyes in a cold gaze. “I don’t know how. But if you ever do it again, I will kill you. Do you understand me?”
“I understand,” Menahem told him softly, his voice muffled within his helm. Rek sheathed his blade at the second attempt and turned to Virae, who was looking at him strangely.
“It wasn’t really me,” he said. “Don’t look at me like that, Virae.”
“Oh, Rek, I’m sorry,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I’m truly sorry.”
A new kind of fear hit him as she turned her face away. “Don’t leave me,” he said. “It rarely happens, and I would never turn on you. Never! Believe me.” She turned to face him, throwing her arms about his neck.
Drenai Saga 01 - Legend Page 6
