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.
Drenai 6 - The First Chronicles of Druss The Legend
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.
Fierce winds buffeted the trees and Druss saw a herd of deer running from the woods, their movements seeming disjointed and ungainly against the flaring lightning bolts. A tree was struck and seemed to explode from within, splitting into two halves. Fire blazed briefly from the ruined trunk, but died within seconds in the sheeting rain.
Dulina crept alongside him, pushing herself against him. He felt the stitches in his side pull as she snuggled in, but he lifted his arm around her shoulders. “Is is only a storm, child,” he said. “It cannot harm us.” She said nothing and he drew her to his lap, holding her close. She was warm, almost feverish, he thought.
Sighing, Druss felt again the weight of loss, and wondered where Rowena was on this dark and ferocious night. Was there a storm where she lay? Or was the night calm? Did she feel the loss, or was Druss just a dim memory of another life in the mountains? He glanced down to see that the child was asleep, her head in the crook of his arm.
Holding her firmly but gently, Druss rose and carried her back to the fireside, laying her down on her blanket and adding the last of the fuel to the fire.
“You are a good man,” came a soft voice. Druss looked up and saw that the old tinker was awake.
“How is the leg?”
“It hurts, but it will heal. You are sad, my friend.”
Druss shrugged. “These are sad times.”
“I heard your talk with your friend. I am sorry that in helping me you have lost the chance to help others.” He smiled. “Not that I would change anything, you understand?”
Druss chuckled. “Nor I.”
“I am Ruwaq the Tinker,” said the old man, extending a bony hand.
Druss shook it and sat beside him. “Where are you from?”
“Originally? The lands of Matapesh, far to the east of Naashan and north of the Opal Jungles. But I have always been a man who needed to see new mountains. People think they are all the same, but it is not so. Some are lush and green, others crowned with shining ice and snow. Some are sharp, like sword-blades, others old and rounded, comfortable within eternity. I love mountains.”
“What happened to your children?”
“Children? Oh, I never had children. Never married.”
“I thought the child was your grand-daughter?”
“No, I found her outside Resha. She had been abandoned and was starving to death. She is a good girl. I love her dearly. I can never repay the debt to you for saving her.”
“There is no debt,” said Druss.
The old man lifted his hand and wagged his finger. “I don’t accept that, my friend. You gave her - and me - the gift of life. I do not like storms, but I was viewing this one with the greatest pleasure. Because until you entered the hollow I was a dead man, and Dulina would have been raped and probably murdered. Now the storm is a vision of beauty. No one ever gave me a greater gift.” The old man had tears in his eyes and Druss’s discomfort grew. Instead of feeling elated by his gratitude he experienced a sense of shame. A true hero, he believed, would have gone to the man’s aid from a sense of justice, of compassion. Druss knew that was not why he had helped them.
Not even close. The right deed… for the wrong reason. He patted the old man’s shoulder and returned to the cave-mouth where he saw that the storm was moving on towards the east, the rain lessening. Druss’s spirits sank. He wished Sieben were with him. Irritating as the poet could be, he still had a talent for lifting the axeman’s mood.
But Sieben had refused to accompany him, preferring the pleasures of city life to an arduous journey across the mountains to Resha. No, thought Druss, not the journey; that was just an excuse.
“I’ll make a bargain with you though, old horse,” said Sieben on that last day. “Leave the axe and I’ll change my mind. Bury it. Throw it in the sea. I don’t care which.”
“Don’t tell me you believe that nonsense?”
“I saw it, Druss. Truly. It will be the death of you - or at least the death of the man I know.”
Now he had no axe, no friend, and no Rowena. Unused to despair Druss felt lost, his strength useless.
Dawn brightened the sky, the land glistening and fresh from the rain as Dulina came alongside him. “I had a wonderful dream,” she said brightly. “There was a great knight on a white horse. And he rode up to where grandfather and I were waiting, and he leaned from his saddle and lifted me to sit beside him. Then he took off his golden helmet and he said, “I am your father.” And he took me to live in a castle. I never had a dream like it. Do you think it will come true?”
Druss did not answer. He was staring down at the woods at the armed men making their way towards the cave.
The world had shrunk now to a place of agony and darkness. All Druss could feel was pain as he lay in the windowless dungeon, listening to the skittering of unseen rats which clambered over him. There was no light, save when at the end of the day the jailer strode down the dungeon corridor and a tiny, flickering beam momentarily lit the narrow grille of the door-stone. Only in those seconds could Druss see his surroundings. The ceiling was a mere four feet from the floor, the airless room six feet square. Water dripped from the walls, and it was cold.
Druss brushed a rat from his leg, the movement causing him a fresh wave of pain from his wounds. He could hardly move his neck, and his right shoulder was swollen and hot to the touch. Wondering if the bones were broken, he began to shiver.
How many days? He had counted to sixty-three, but then lost track for a while. Guessing at seventy, he had begun to count again. But his mind wandered. Sometimes he dreamt of the mountains of home, under a blue sky, with a fresh northerly wind cooling his brow. At other times he tried to remember events in his life.
“I will break you, and then I will watch you beg for death,” said Cajivak on the day they had hauled Druss into the castle Hall.
“In your dreams, you ugly whoreson.”
Cajivak had beaten him then, pounding his face and body with brutal blows. His hands tied behind him, a tight rope around his neck, Druss could do nothing but accept the hammering.
For the first two weeks he was kept in a larger cell. Every time he slept men would appear alongside his narrow bed to beat him with clubs and sticks. At first he had fought them, grabbing one man by the throat and cracking his skull against the cell wall. But deprived of food and water for days on end, his strength had given out and he could only curl himself into a tight ball against the merciless beatings.
Then they had thrown him into this tiny dungeon, and he had watched with horror as they slid the door-stone into place. Once every two days a guard would push stale bread and a cup of water through the narrow grille. Twice he caught rats and ate them raw, cutting his lips on the tiny bones.
Now he lived for those few seconds of light as the guard walked back to the outside world.
“We caught the others,” the jailer said one day, as he pushed the bread through the grille. But Druss did not believe him. Such was Cajivak’s cruelty that he would have dragged Druss out to see them slain.
He pictured Varsava pushing the child up into the chimney crack in the cave, urging her to climb, and remembered lifting Ruwaq up to where Varsava could haul the old man out of sight. Druss himself was about to climb when he heard the warriors approaching the cave. He had turned.
And charged them….
But there were too many, and
most bore clubs which finally smashed him from his feet. Boots and fists thundered into him and he awoke to find a rope around his neck, his hands bound. Forced to walk behind a horseman, he was many times dragged from his feet, the rope tearing the flesh of his neck.
Varsava had described Cajivak as a monster, which could not be more true. The man was close to seven feet tall, with an enormous breadth of shoulder and biceps as thick as most men’s thighs. His eyes were dark, almost black, and no hair grew on the right side of his head where the skin was white and scaly, covered in scar tissue that only a severe burn could create. Madness shone in his eyes, and Druss had glanced to the man’s left and the weapon that was placed there, resting against the high-backed throne.
Snaga!
Druss shook himself free of the memory now and stretched. His joints creaked and his hands trembled in the cold that seeped from the wet walls. Don’t think of it, he urged himself. Concentrate on something else. He tried to picture Rowena, but instead found himself remembering the day when the priest of Pashtar Sen had found him in a small village, four days east of Lania. Druss had been sitting in the garden of an inn, enjoying a meal of roast meat and onions and a jug of ale. The priest bowed and sat opposite the axeman. His bald head was pink and peeling, burned by the sun.
“I am glad to find you in good health, Druss. I have searched for you for the last six months.”
“You found me,” said Druss.
“It is about the axe.”
“Do not concern yourself, Father. It is gone. You were right, it was an evil weapon. I am glad to be rid of it.”
The priest shook his head. “It is back,” he said. “It is now in the possession of a robber named Cajivak. Always a killer, he succumbed far more swiftly than a strong man like yourself and now he is terrorising the lands around Lania, torturing, killing and maiming. With the war keeping our troops from the area, there is little that can be done to stop him.”
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