'What happened?'
'She married someone else.'
'Did she not love you?'
'She said she did.'
'You were better off without her.'
Sarvaj chuckled. 'Does this look like better off?'
'At least you are among friends,' said Jonat, extending his hand. Sarvaj took it.
'I always wanted to die among friends.'
'Well, that is one ambition you'll achieve.
Danyal had been riding for four days across rough open country. In that time she had seen no one but now, as she rode through thick forest, she knew she was not alone. In the undergrowth to her right she had seen a dark shadow, moving from the thick cover and darting between the trees.
She had spurred her horse away, the pack pony following.
But still the shadower stayed in touch. She rarely caught more than a glimpse of him, but he moved with great speed and supernatural silence.
The light was fading and Danyal's fears grew. Her mouth was dry, but her hands were slick with sweat. She wished Waylander were here – or even Durmast.
Momentarily her fear eased as her last conversation with Durmast rose in her mind.
When they had travelled for some five miles, they had come across the party of warriors in black armour. Durmast had cursed and reached for his battleaxe, but they had ridden by with scarcely a glance at the two travellers.
Durmast's anger had been a sight to behold.
'They ignored me,' he had said.
'I'm glad,' she had told him. 'Did you want to fight them?'
'They were Brotherhood warriors seeking the Armour. They can read minds and they know we have it.'
'Then why did they not take it?'
He had dismounted and walked to a nearby rock where he sat and stared at the now distant mountain of Raboas.
Danyal joined him. 'We cannot stay here. Waylander is risking his life to give us time.'
'They knew,' said Durmast.
'Knew what?'
'They knew my thoughts.'
'I do not understand you.'
'You know what I am, Danyal … what I have been. There is no real strength in me except what I have in the muscles of this over-large body. I am a wretch, always have been. Take the Armour and go-'
'And what will you do?'
'I'll travel east – maybe go to Ventria. They say it is a rare experience to view the Opal Mountains in winter.'
'I cannot get through alone.'
'You don't understand, do you? I'll betray you, Danyal, and steal the Armour. It's worth a fortune.'
'You gave your word.'
'My word isn't worth pig-droppings.'
'You are going back to help Waylander.'
Durmast laughed. 'Do I look stupid? That would be the act of a madman. Go on. Ride! Go before I change my mind.'
As the days passed Danyal had hoped to see Waylander riding the back trail. She would not accept that he might be dead – could not accept it. He was strong. Invincible. No one could bring him down. She remembered the day when he had stood against the warriors in the forest. One man standing strong in the fading light, the red glow all around him. And he had won. He always won – he could not be dead.
She jerked back to the present as tears blurred her vision, blinking hard. The path was narrow and the darkness was gathering; she was loth to camp, but the horses were tired. Glancing to her right, she peered into the undergrowth, but there was no sign of the other traveller. Perhaps it had been a bear hunting for food. Perhaps her imagination had fuelled her fear.
Danyal rode on until she heard the sound of running water and then made camp by a shallow stream, determined to stay awake through the night, sword in hand.
She awoke with the dawn and stretched. Swiftly she washed in the icy stream, the water stinging the sleep from her. Then she tightened the saddle cinch of her mare and mounted. Durmast had told her to steer south-east until she reached the river. There was a ferry – cross that and head due south to Delnoch Pass.
The forest was silent as she rode and the day warm and close.
Four Nadir riders came into sight and Danyal jerked on the reins, her heart pounding as they came closer. One of them had a dead antelope roped across his saddle and the others carried bows. The lead rider halted before her.
'You are blocking the path,' he said.
Danyal steered the mare to the left and the men rode on.
That night she lit a small fire and fell asleep within seconds.
She awoke just after midnight to see a towering figure sitting by the fire, feeding branches to the flames. As silently as she could, she drew her dagger and pushed back the blanket. His back was to her, his naked skin shining in the moonlight – he was big, and would dwarf even Durmast. She moved to her feet. He turned …
And she found herself staring into a single dreadful eye about a slitted nose and a fang-rimmed slash of a mouth.
'Vrend,' grunted Kai, tapping chest. 'Vrend.'
Danyal's legs felt weak, but she took a deep breath and advanced with the knife outstretched. 'Go away,' she said.
Kai pushed out a taloned finger and began scratching at the earth. He was not looking at her. Tensing herself to spring and plunge the knife into him, she suddenly saw what he was doing: in the hard-baked clay, he had sketched a stick-figured man holding a small crossbow.
'Waylander,' said Danyal. 'You know Waylander?'
'Vrend,' said Kai, nodding. He pointed at her. 'Anyal.'
'Danyal. Yes, yes. I am Danyal. Is Waylander alive?'
'Vrend.' Kai curled his hand into a fist as if it held a dagger. Then he stabbed his shoulder and hip.
'He has been badly hurt? Is that what you are saying?'
The monster merely looked at her.
'The Brotherhood warriors. Did they find him? Tall men in black armour.'
'Dead,' said Kai, mimicking the actions of a sword or axe. Danyal sheathed her knife and sat beside Kai, reaching out and touching his arm. 'Listen to me. The man who killed them – is he alive?'
'Dead,' said Kai.
Danyal sat back and closed her eyes.
A few months ago she had been performing a dance in front of a king. Weeks later she had fallen in love with that king's assassin. Now she sat in a lonely forest with a monster who could not speak. She began to laugh at the lunacy of it all.
Kai listened to the laughter, heard it change and become weeping and watched the tears flow on her pretty cheeks. So pretty, he thought. Like the Nadir girl he had watched. So small, fragile and bird-boned.
Way back, Kai had wanted one of these soft beings as a friend. And he had seized a girl as she washed clothes by a stream, carrying her into the mountains where he had gathered fruit and pretty stones. But when they had arrived Kai had found her broken and lifeless, her ribs in shards where his arm had encircled her. Not all his healing power could help her.
He didn't touch them any more …
Six hundred men hauled the ballista into place some fifty paces from the gate. Then six carts came into view, pulled by teams of oxen, the Drenai watched as men milled around the carts, unyoking the beasts. Then a winch was set up behind the ballista.
Karnak called Dundas, Jonat and several other nearby officers to him.
'Get the majority of the men back into the Keep. Leave only a token force on the walls,' he instructed.
Within minutes the men had streamed back through the Keep gates, taking up positions on the battlements.
Karnak opened a leather pouch at his side and removed a hard cake of rolled oats and sugar. Tearing off a chunk, he chewed it thoughtfully as the preparations continued.
Several soldiers had manoeuvred a massive boulder to the rear of the cart and were tying ropes around it. At a signal, four soldiers winched it into place on the ballista. An officer raised an arm, a lever was swiftly pulled and the ballista arm shot forward.
Karnak watched the boulder soar through the air, seeming to grow as it approached. With a thu
ndering crash it struck the wall beside the gate tower. Rocks exploded and an entire section of battlements crumbled under the impact.
The general finished his cake and walked to the rampart edge, stepping up on to the crenellated wall.
'Up here, you whoresons!' he bellowed. Then he stepped back and walked slowly down the stairwell to the main battlements.
'Get off the wall, you men,' he shouted. 'Back to the Keep!'
As a second section of wall exploded some thirty feet from the general, rocks and stones shrieked past his head. Two men were hurled from the battlements to smash against the cobbled courtyard.
Karnak cursed and ran down the steps to them. Both were dead.
A boulder struck the gate tower, sheering off to crash into the field hospital roof. Timbers cracked, but the boulder did not penetrate. Twice more the gate tower endured against the missiles, but on the third strike the entire structure shifted and sagged. With a creaking groan, the stone blocks gave way and the tower slid to the right to crash behind the gates.
In the hospital, Evris was completing the stitching of a stomach wound in a young soldier. The boy had been lucky; no vital organs had been sliced by the thrusting sword and now all he had to fear was gangrene.
The wall came apart and Evris' last sight was of an immense black cloud engulfing the room. The slight surgeon was crushed against the far wall beside the body of his patient. Four more boulders struck the hospital and a fallen lantern spread fire through a linen basket. The flames licked out through a door frame, and up between the walls of the hospital. Soon the blaze grew into an inferno. Many of the wards had no windows and smoke killed hundreds of wounded men. Orderlies struggled at first to control the fire, and then to carry their patients to safety; they succeeded only in trapping themselves.
The gates splintered as a huge rock punched through the oak beams. A second missile finished the work and the massive bronze hinges buckled; the left-hand gate sagged and fell.
Karnak spat and cursed loudly. Then he walked to the Keep gates.
'It's all over, general,' said a soldier as the general entered.
'It's not looking too hopeful,' agreed Karnak. 'Shut the gates.'
'Someone may get out of the hospital,' protested the man.
'No one will live through that inferno. Shut the gates.'
Karnak made his way to the great hall where Dardalion and the surviving twelve priests of the The Thirty were deep in prayer.
'Dardalion!'
The priest opened his eyes. 'Yes, general?'
'Tell me that Egel is on his way.'
'I cannot, the Brotherhood are everywhere and we cannot break out.'
'Without Egel, we are doomed. Finished. It will all have been for nothing.'
'We will have done our best, general. No one can ask for more.'
'I damn well can. Trying is for losers – all that counts is winning.'
'Waylander is dead,' said Dardalion suddenly, 'but the Armour is on its way to Egel.'
'The Armour is too late for us now, it was to have been a rallying point. If Egel has not yet raised an army, it will matter not at all.'
'Not to us, general. But Egel could link with Ironlatch.'
Karnak said nothing. The logic was irresistible and perhaps that had been Egel's plan all along. He must have known Karnak was a potential enemy in the long term – what better way to handle him than to allow the Vagrians to end his ambitions? And a link with Ironlatch would drive a wedge through the Vagrian forces, freeing the capital.
Purdol would wait.
Egel would have it all: the Armour, the army and the nation.
'He will come if he can, general,' said Dardalion.
'Why should he?'
'Egel is a man of honour.'
'What does that mean?' snapped Karnak.
'I hope that it means Egel will do exactly what you would if you were in his place.'
Karnak laughed, his good humour restored. 'I do hope not, Dardalion. I am rather counting on him getting here!'
As she slept, Danyal became aware of a voice piercing her dreams, blending with her sleeping thoughts. The awareness grew and she recognised Dardalion; he seemed thinner now and older, bowed down by enormous pressures.
'Danyal, can you hear me?'
'Yes,' she said and smiled wearily.
'Are you well?
'I am unhurt, no more than that.'
'Do you have the Armour still?'
'Yes.'
'Where are you?'
'Less than a day from the river and the ferry. There is someone with me – a monster creature. He saw Waylander die.'
'Open your eyes and show me,' he said and Danyal sat up. Kai still sat by the fire, his great eye closed, his huge mouth hanging open.
'There is no evil in him,' said Dardalion. 'Now listen to me, Danyal – I am going to try to reach Egel and urge him to send a troop to escort you home. Wait at the ferry until you hear from me.'
'Where are you?'
'I am at Dros Purdol, but the situation here is desperate and we are mere days from destruction. There are fewer than six hundred men to hold the fortress and we have barricaded ourselves within the Keep. The food is almost gone and the water is stale.'
'What can I do?
'Wait at the ferry. May the Source bless you, Danyal.'
'And you, priest.'
'Priest no longer. The war has come to me and I have killed.'
'We are all sullied, Dardalion.'
'Yes. But the end is very near – then I shall know.'
'What will you know?'
'Whether I was right. I must go now. Wait at the ferry!'
Danyal and Kai found the crossing at dusk the following day. There was no sign of life and the ferry itself was moored on the far side of the river. Danyal unsaddled her horse and Kai carried the bulging pack containing the Armour into a small hut. She prepared a fire and some food, averting her eyes as Kai ate, spooning the oats into his mouth with his fingers.
She slept in a narrow bed while the monster sat, cross-legged before the fire.
Just after dawn she awoke to find herself alone.
After a breakfast of dried fruit she wandered to the river and washed, removing her tunic and wading naked into the waist-deep water by the bank. The current was swift and she had difficulty in keeping her feet. After several minutes she returned to the shore and washed the tunic as best she could, beating it against a rock to dislodge the grit of travel.
Two men rose from the bushes to her left. Rolling to the right she scooped her sword into her hand, hurling aside the scabbard.
'She's feisty,' said the first man, a short stout warrior wearing a brown leather jerkin and carrying a curved dagger. As he grinned at her, she saw he had lost his front two teeth; he was unshaven and dirty, as was his companion – a thickset man with a drooping moustache.
'Will you look at her!' said the first man. 'The body of an angel.'
'I'm looking,' said the second, grinning.
'You geldings never seen a woman before?' asked Danyal.
'Geldings? We'll show you who's a gelding,' snarled the gap-toothed warrior.
'You gutless dung-eater! You'll show me nothing but your entrails.'
Her sword came up and the men backed away.
'Take her, Gael!' ordered Gap-tooth. 'Take the sword away.'
'You take it.'
'You frightened?'
'No more than you.'
As they argued the immense figure of Kai rose behind them, his hands reaching out. His palms slammed their heads together with a sickening crack and both men slid to the ground. Kai leaned over to grab Gap-tooth's belt and with a casual flick of his arm he hurled the unconscious man far out into the river. His companion followed and both sank from sight.
Kai ambled forward. 'Bad.' he said, shaking his head.
'Not any more,' said Danyal, 'but I could have handled it.'
That night as Danyal was carrying wood into the hut, her foot crashed throu
gh a rotted floorboard and the flesh of her leg was deeply gashed. Limping into the hut she began to bathe the wound, but Kai knelt by her and covered the place with his hand. Pain lanced her leg and she struggled to pull clear of his grasp. But the pain passed, and when he released her the wound had vanished.
'Gone!' he said, his head tilting to one side. Carefully she probed the leg; the skin was unbroken.
'How did you do that?'
He lifted his hand and pointed to the palm.
'Vrend,' he said. Then he tapped his shoulder and hip. 'Aynander.'
But she could not understand him.
A troop of Legion riders reached the opposite bank at noon the next day, and Danyal watched as they hauled the ferry across the river. She turned to Kai.
'You must go,' she said. 'They will not understand you.'
He reached out and lightly touched her arm. 'Urbye Anyal.'
'Goodbye, Kai. Thank you.'
He walked to the edge of the trees and turned as the ferry was docking, pointing north. 'Aynander,' he called and she waved and turned to the officer approaching her.
'You are Danyal?' he asked.
'Yes. The Armour is in the hut.'
'Who was the big man with the mask?'
'A friend, a good friend.'
'I wouldn't like anyone that big for an enemy.' He was a handsome young man with an easy smile and she followed him to the ferry. With the Armour aboard she sat back, relaxing for the first time in days. Then a sudden thought struck her and she ran to the rear of the ferry.
'Kai!' she shouted. 'Kai!'
But the forest was silent, the giant gone.
Aynander! Waylander.
The giant had cured him. That's what he had been trying to tell her.
Waylander was alive!
The Keep held the enemy at bay for five days before the bronze-headed battering ram finally cracked the timbers of the gates. Soldiers swarmed forward, tearing at the wood with axe and hook, ripping wide a gaping entrance to the Keep itself.
Beyond the gates, in the portcullis archway, Sarvaj waited with fifty swordsmen and a score of archers. The last of the arrows lay before the kneeling bowmen, and these they loosed as the gates opened and the Vagrians filled the breach. The enemy front line fell as the shafts sliced home, but more warriors pushed forward with shields held high. The bowmen retired and Sarvaj led his swordsmen in a wild charge, blades flashing in the light streaming from the ruined gates.
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