'I am not a rapist, woman. Nor have I ever been.'
'The name is Danyal.' She withdrew the knife and turned her back to him.
He sat up and scratched his beard. 'You do not think highly of me, Danyal. Why?'
'Go to sleep, Durmast.'
'Answer me.'
'What a question! You led those people to slaughter and then fled without a backward glance. You are an animal – your own men stayed behind and died, but you just ran.'
'We just ran,' he pointed out.
'Yes – and don't think I don't hate myself for it.'
'What did you expect me to do, Danyal? Had I stayed I would have killed maybe six or seven Nadir, and then I would have died with the rest. There was no point.'
'You betrayed them all.'
'Yes, but then I was betrayed – I had an arrangement with the Nadir chieftan, Butaso.'
'You amaze me. The traveller paid you and had a right to expect loyalty – instead you sold them to the Nadir.'
'You have to pay a bounty to cross Nadir lands in safety.'
'Tell that to the dead.'
'The dead don't hear so well.'
She sat up and moved away from him, taking the blanket and wrapping it round her shoulders.
'They don't touch you, do they? The deaths?'
'Why should they? I lost no friends. All things die and their time had come.'
'They were people, families. They had put their lives in your hands.'
'What are you, my conscience?'
'You have one?'
'Your tongue is as sharp as your dagger. They paid me to guide them – am I responsible because some Nadir dog-eater breaks his word?'
'Why did you bother to rescue me?'
'Because I wanted to sleep with you. Is that a crime also?'
'No, it's just not a very attractive compliment.'
'Gods, woman, Waylander is welcome to you! No wonder he's changed – you're like acid on the soul. Now, can we share the blanket?'
The following day they had travelled in silence until they reached the last line of hills before the river. Halting the horses, Durmast had pointed to the distant blue mountains of the north-west.
'The tallest peak is Raboas, the Sacred Giant, and the river runs from that range and continues to the sea a hundred miles north of Purdol. It is called the Rostrias, the River of the Dead.'
'What are you planning?'
'There is a town yonder. There I shall book passage on a boat and head for Raboas.'
'What about Waylander?'
'If he is alive, we will see him there.'
'Why not wait in the town for him?'
'He won't come here – he'll strike north-west. We've moved north-east to avoid pursuit. Butaso is a Spear, a western tribe; this is Wolfshead land.'
'I thought you were travelling only as far as Gulgothir.'
'I've changed my mind.'
'Why?'
'Because I am a Drenai. Why should I not want to help Waylander regain the Armour of Bronze?'
'Because there's no profit in it for you.'
'Let's go,' he snapped, spurring his horse forward into the trees.
Hiding the horses in a hollow, Durmast crept to the crest of the hills overlooking the town. There were some twenty houses and seven warehouses built alongside a thick wooden jetty. Behind the warehouses was a long flat building with a shaded porch.
'That's the inn,' said Durmast, 'but it doubles as the main supply store. There don't seem to be any Nadir riders around.'
'Aren't those people Nadir?' asked Danyal, pointing to a group of men sitting beside the jetty.
'No. They are Notas – no tribe. Outcasts originally, now they farm and ply the river for trade and the Nadir come to them for iron tools and weapons, blankets and the like.'
'Are you known here?'
'I am known in most places, Danyal.'
Together they rode into the town, where they tied their horses to a hitching rail outside the inn. The inside was dimly lit and smelled of sweat, stale beer and food swimming in grease. Danyal moved to a table by a shuttered window; lifting the bar, she pushed the shutters open, rapping them firmly into the back of a man standing outside.
'You clumsy cow!' he shouted. Danyal turned away from him and sat down, but when he stormed into the inn, still shouting, she stood and drew her sword. The man stopped in his tracks as she advanced on him. He was stocky and dressed in a fur jacket with a thick black belt from which hung two long knives.
'Go away or I'll kill you,' snarled Danyal.
Durmast appeared behind the man and, grabbing his belt from the back, lifted him from his feet and carried him past Danyal.
'You heard the lady,' said Durmast. 'Go away!' Twisting, he hurled the man through the open window, watching in satisfaction as he crashed into the dust several feet beyond the wooden walkway. Then he turned to Danyal with a broad grin on his wide face.
'I see you are maintaining your reputation for sweetness.'
'I didn't need your help.'
'I am aware of that. I was doing him a favour. If he was lucky you would merely have stabbed him, but you might have lost your temper and used your acid tongue and he would never have recovered from that.'
'That's not very funny.'
'It depends on your standpoint. I have booked us passage on a sailing-boat which leaves tomorrow at mid-morning. I have also booked us a room … with two beds,' he added pointedly.
16
Butaso sat within his tent, gazing sullenly at the ancient shaman squatting before him. The old man spread out a section of tanned goatskin on the earth and casually tossed a dozen knuckle bones on to it. The bones had been shaped into rough cubes and strange symbols had been etched on each side. For a while the shaman stared at the bones – then he looked up, his dark slanted eyes burning with malicious humour.
'Your treachery has killed you, Butaso,' he said.
'Speak plainly.'
'Is that not plain enough? You are doomed. Even now a dark shadow hovers over your soul.'
'I am as strong as ever,' said Butaso, lurching to his feet. 'Nothing can harm me.'
'Why did you break your word to Ice-eyes?'
'I had a vision. I have many visions. The Chaos Spirit is with me – he guides me.'
'The Spirit of Dark Deeds is his Nadir name, Butaso. Why do you not use it? He is a deceiver.'
'So you say, old man. But he has brought me power and wealth, and many wives.'
'He has brought you death. What did he require of you?'
'To destroy the wagons of Ice-eyes.'
'Yet Ice-eyes lives. As does his friend, the Soul Stealer.'
'What is that to me?'
'Think you that I have no powers? Foolish mortal! Since the Soul Stealer filled your heart with fear that day, giving you your life, you have burned with the desire for vengeance. Now you have killed his friends and he hunts you. Do you not understand?'
'I understand that I have a hundred men scouring the Steppes for him. They will bring me his head by dawn.'
'This man is the prince of killers. He will evade your hunters.'
'That would please you, would it not, Kesa Khan? You have always hated me.'
'Your ego is bloated, Butaso. I do not hate you, I despise you – but that is neither here nor there. This man must be stopped.'
'You would help me?'
'He is a danger to future Nadir generations. He seeks the Armour of Bronze, the Nadir Bane; he must not live to fulfil his quest.'
'Use the Shapeshifters then – hunt him down.'
'They are a last resort,' snapped Kesa Khan, rising to his feet. 'I must think.' Replacing the knuckle bones in a goatskin sack, he moved outside the tent and stared up at the stars. Around him there was little movement, except among the sentries guarding Butaso; eight men ringed his tent with swords in hand, facing outwards silently, occasionally stamping their feet against the cold.
Kesa Khan walked to his own tent, where the slave girl Voltis
had prepared a brazier of burning coals to warm the air. She had also poured a bowl of Lyrrd and placed three warmed rocks in his bed. He smiled at her and drank the Lyrrd in a single swallow, feeling the alcohol pouring fire into his veins.
'You are a fine girl, Voltis. I do not deserve you.'
'You have been kind,' she said, bowing.
'Would you like to return home?'
'No, Lord. I wish to serve you.' He was touched by her sincerity and leaning forward he lifted her chin … then froze.
Eight.
The guard on Butaso's tent was normally seven!
Butaso turned as the guard entered. 'What do you want?'
'The return of my gift,' said Waylander. Butaso spun on his heel, a scream beginning in his throat –a scream cut off by six inches of shimmering steel hammering into his neck. His fingers scrambled for the blade, and his eyes widened in agony; then he fell to his knees, his gaze fixed on the tall figure standing impassively before him.
The last thing he heard as his eyes closed was the clash of steel as his guards rushed into the tent.
Waylander turned, his sword blocking a wild cut. Twisting his wrist, he sent his opponent's blade flying through the air. The guard wrenched a knife from its scabbard, but died as Waylander's sword lanced his ribs. More guards pushed forward, forcing the assassin back to the centre of the tent.
'Put down your sword,' hissed Kesa Khan from the entrance. Waylander gazed coolly at the ring of steel closing in on him.
'Come and take it,' he said.
As the Nadir surged forward, Waylander's sword flickered out and a man fell screaming. Then a blade crashed side on against his head and he fell. He struggled to rise, but pounding fists pushed him down and a sea of darkness washed over him …
Pain woke him – deep throbbing, insistent pain. His fingers were swollen and the sun beat mercilessly down on his naked body. He was hanging by his wrists from a pole at the centre of the Nadir camp; they had stripped him of his Nadir clothes and strung him in the sun, and already he could feel the burning of his marble-white skin. His face and arms were in no danger, burnt as they were to the colour of leather, but his body had never been exposed to harsh sunlight and already his chest and shoulders felt as if on fire. He tried to open his eyes, but only the left would function; the right was swollen shut. His mouth was dry, his tongue a stick.
His hands were throbbing and almost purple. Getting his feet under him he pushed himself upright, taking pressure from his swollen wrists. Immediately a fist lashed into his stomach and he winced and bit his swollen lip so hard that blood flowed to his chin.
'We have fine things in store for you, you round-eyed son of a slut,' said a voice. Waylander tilted his head to see before him a young man of middle height – his greasy black hair tied in a pony tail, his features obscured by the ash of mourning.
Waylander looked away and the man struck him again.
'Leave him!' ordered Kesa Khan.
'He is mine.'
'Obey me, Gorkai,' ordered the old man.
'He must die hard, and then serve my father in the Void.'
The young man walked away and Waylander looked at the old man.
'You did well, Soul Stealer, you took the life of a fool who would have led us to ruin.'
Waylander said nothing. His mouth was full of blood which moistened his dry tongue and eased his throat.
Kesa Khan smiled.
'Blood will not sustain you. Today we take you to the desert, where we will watch your soul drawn out by the burning sand.'
The long day wore on and the pain grew. Waylander closed his mind against the burning of his flesh and fought to stay calm, breathing slowly and deeply, conserving what energy he could against the moment when the nadir released him. If they were to take him to the desert, then they must first cut him loose from the pole – at that moment he would attack and force them to kill him.
His mind drifted, flowing back over the years. He saw again the young, idealistic Dakeyras: the child who yearned to be a soldier, to serve in the army of Orien, the Warrior King of Bronze. He recalled the day when Orien had led his victorious force through the streets of Drenan, how the crowds had cheered and thrown flowers. The King had seemed like a giant to the ten-year-old Dakeyras as his armour blazed in the noon sun. Orien had carried his three-year-old son before him and the child, dismayed by the noise of the crowd, had burst into tears. Then the King had lifted him high and kissed him gently. Dakeyras had enjoyed that moment of warmth.
His mind tore his memory from the scene, and pictured once more the moment King Niallad fell with Waylander's bolt jutting from his back. The sight dragged him back to the present and the agony returned. How had the noble young child become the soulless slayer? His wrists ached and he realised that his legs had given way once more; he forced himself upright and opened his good eye. A group of Nadir children squatted before him and one of them lashed at his leg with a stick.
A Nadir warrior stepped forward and sent the boy sprawling with a well-aimed kick.
Waylander drifted once more, his eyes closed. His heart sank as the vision returned of the child held high by the adoring father. With the kiss the boy had been comforted and had started to laugh, copying the King as he waved to the crowd. Tiny Niallad, the hope for tomorrow. One day, thought Dakeyras then, I will serve him as my father serves Orien.
'Waylander,' called a voice and he opened his eye. There was no one close, but the voice came again, deep in his mind. 'Close your eyes and relax.' Waylander did as he was bid, and his pain vanished as he sank into a deep sleep. He found himself standing on a bleak hillside under alien stars, bright and close and perfectly round. Two moons hung in the sky – one silver, one shot with blue and green like stained marble. On the hillside sat Orien, younger now and more like the king of Waylander's memory.
'Come, sit with me.'
'Have I died?'
'Not yet, though it is close.'
'I failed you.'
'You tried – a man can ask for no more.'
'They killed the woman I loved.'
'And you took your revenge. Was it sweet?'
'No, I felt nothing.'
'That is a truth you should have realised many years ago when you hunted down the men who slew your family. You are a weak man, Waylander, to be so manipulated by events. But you are not evil.'
'I killed your son. For money.'
'Yes. I had not forgotten.'
'It seems so futile to say that I am sorry, yet I am.'
'It is never futile. Evil is not like a rock, static and immobile – it is a cancer that builds on itself. Ask any soldier who has been to war. You never forget the first man you kill, but not all the gold in the world could get you to remember the tenth.'
'I can remember the tenth,' said Waylander. 'He was a raider named Kityan, a half-breed Nadir. I followed him to a small town east of Skein …'
'And you killed him with your hands after putting out his eyes with your thumbs.'
'Yes. He was one of those who slew my wife and children.'
'Tell me, why did you not search for Danyal among the dead?'
Waylander turned away and swallowed hard. 'I have seen one woman I loved after the killers left her. I could not witness another such scene.'
'Had you found the strength to search, you would not now be tied to a Nadir pole. She lives, for Durmast rescued her.'
'No?'
'Would I lie, Waylander?'
'Can you help me escape?'
'No.'
'Then I will die.'
'Yes,' said Orien sadly, 'You are dying. But it is happening painlessly.'
Waylander nodded, then his head jerked round. 'You mean now?'
'Of course.'
'Return me, damn you!'
'You wish to return to agony and death?'
'It is my life, Orien. Mine ! I have known pain and I can stand it, but until the moment of death I will not surrender. Not to you, not to the Nadir, not to anyone. Return m
e!'
'Close your eyes, Waylander, and prepare yourself for pain.'
Waylander groaned as the agony touched him, the sound tearing his dry, swollen throat. He heard a man laugh and opened his eyes to find a crowd had formed about him.
The young man, Gorkai, was grinning widely. 'I told you he was alive. Good! Give him a drink – I want him to feel every cut.' A squat warrior forced Waylander's head back, pouring water from a stone jug to his cracked lips. He could not swallow at first, but allowed the liquid to trickle into his dry throat.
'That's enough!' said Gorkai. 'Know this, assassin: we are going to cut your body very lightly and then smear you with honey. After that we bury you beside an ant's nest. You understand?' Waylander said nothing. His mouth was full of water and every few seconds he allowed a small amount to ease his throat.
Gorkai drew a curved knife and was moving forward when the sound of galloping hooves stopped him, causing him to turn. The crowd parted as a rider thundered into the camp and Waylander looked up, but the sun was directly behind the horseman.
The Nadir scattered as the rider approached and Gorkai, shading his eyes against the sun, screamed, 'Kill him!' The Nadir ran for their weapons; Gorkai gripped his knife tightly and turned on Waylander.
The blade rose … But a crossbow shaft punched through his temple and he pitched to the earth. The horseman dragged on the reins beside the pole and a sword slashed through the ropes above Waylander's wrists. He slumped forward, recovered and staggered for the horse as two Nadir ran forward with blades in hand. Dropping his crossbow, the horseman hauled Waylander across his saddle; then he lashed out with his sword and the Nadir leapt back. Arrows flashed by the rider and he kicked his mount into a canter.
The pommel of the saddle cut into Waylander's side and he almost fell as the horse galloped towards the hills. He watched the tents flash by and twice saw Nadir archers bend their bows. The animal was breathing hard as they reached the trees. Behind them Waylander could hear the thunder of hooves and the furious screams of the pursuers. The rider dragged his mount to a stop in a hollow, then threw Waylander to the ground. He landed hard, then came to his knees; his hands were still tied.
Waylander ds-3 Page 19
