“I think you might be making a mistake, officer,” said Sieben. But his words came too late, as the guard stepped forward straight into Druss’ right fist, which cannoned into his jaw. The officer pitched to his right, his head striking the wall, dislodging his white-plumed helm. The other two guards sprang forward. Druss felled the first with a left hook, the second with a right uppercut.
One man groaned, then all was still. Majon spoke, his voice trembling. “What have you done? You can’t attack Royal Guards!”
“I just did. Now, are you ready, poet?”
“Indeed I am. I shall fetch my bags, and then I think it best we quit this city with all due speed.”
Majon slumped to a padded chair. “What will I tell them when they … wake?”
“I suggest you give them your discourse on the merits of diplomacy over violence,” said Sieben. Gently he patted Majon’s shoulder, then ran to his apartments and gathered his gear.
The horses were stabled at the rear. Druss tied his saddlebags into place, then clumsily hauled himself into the saddle. The mare was sixteen hands and, though swaybacked, was a powerful beast. Sieben’s mount was of similar size, but as he had told Druss, the horse was a thoroughbred, steel-gray and sleek.
Sieben vaulted into the saddle and led the way out into the main street. “You must have hit that Shonan awfully hard, old horse.”
“Not hard enough to kill him,” said Druss, swaying in the saddle and grabbing the pommel.
“Grip with your thighs, not your calves,” advised Sieben.
“I never liked riding. I feel foolish perched up here.”
There were a number of riders making for the eastern gate, and Druss and Sieben found themselves in a long convoy threading through the narrow streets. At the gates soldiers were questioning each rider, and Sieben’s nervousness grew. “They can’t be looking for you already, surely.” Druss shrugged.
Slowly they approached the gates. A sentry walked forward. “Papers,” he said.
“We are Drenai,” Sieben told him. “Just out for a ride.”
“You need papers signed by the exit officer of the watch,” said the sentry, and Sieben saw Druss tense. Swiftly he reached into his pouch and produced a small silver coin; leaning over the saddle, he passed it to the soldier.
“One feels so cooped up in a city,” said Sieben with a bright smile. “An hour’s ride in open country frees the mind.”
The sentry pocketed the coin. “I like to ride myself,” he said. “Enjoy yourselves.” He waved them through, and the two riders kicked their mounts into a canter and set off for the eastern hills.
After two hours in the saddle, Sieben drank the last of his water and stared about him. With the exception of the distant mountains, the landscape was featureless and dry.
“No rivers or streams,” said the poet. “Where will we find water?” Druss pointed to a range of rocky hills some miles farther on. “How can you be sure?” asked the poet. “I don’t want to die of thirst out here.”
“You won’t.” He grinned at Sieben. “I have fought campaigns in deserts, and I know how to find water. But there’s one trick I learned that’s better than all the others.”
“And that is?”
“I bought a map of the water holes! Now let’s walk these horses for a while.”
Druss slid from the saddle and strode on. Sieben dismounted and joined him. For a time they walked on in silence.
“Why so morose, old horse?” asked Sieben as they neared the outcrop of rocks.
“I’ve been thinking of Klay. How can people just turn on him like that? After all he did for them.”
“People are sometimes vile creatures, Druss, selfish and self-regarding. But the real fault is not in them but in us for expecting better. When Klay dies, they’ll all remember what a fine man he was, and they’ll probably shed tears for him.”
“He deserves better,” grunted Druss.
“Maybe he does,” agreed Sieben, wiping sweat from his brow with a perfumed handkerchief. “But when did that ever matter? Do we get what we deserve? I do not believe so. We get what we can win—what we can take, whether it be employment, or money, or women, or land. Look at you! Raiders stole your wife; they had the power to take, and they took her. Sadly for them you had the power to hunt them down and the sheer determination to pursue your love across the ocean. But you didn’t win her back by luck or by the whim of a capricious deity. You did it by force of arms. You might have failed for a hundred reasons: illness, war—the flight of an arrow, the flash of a sword blade—a sudden storm at sea. You didn’t get what you deserved, Druss; you got what you fought for. Klay was unlucky. He took a bolt that was meant for you. That was your good luck.”
“I don’t argue with that,” said Druss. “Yes, he was unlucky. But they tore down his statue, and his friends robbed and then deserted him—men he had supported, aided, protected. That’s what I find hard to swallow.”
Sieben nodded. “My father told me that a man is lucky if in his life he can count on at least two good friends. He always maintained that a man with many friends had to be either rich or stupid, and I think that is largely true. In all my life I have had only one friend, Druss, and that is you.”
“Do you not count your women?”
Sieben shook his head. “Everything with them has always been transactional. They require something of me; I require something of them. We each supply the other. They give me the warmth of their bodies and their yielding flesh; I give them the incredible expertise of the perfect lover.”
“How can you call yourself a lover when love is never present in your encounters?”
“Don’t be a pedant, Druss. I am worth the title. Even accomplished whores have told me I’m the best lover they ever had.”
“How surprising,” Druss said, with a grin. “I’ll wager they don’t say that to many men.”
“Mockery does not suit you, axman. We all have our skills. Yours is with that appalling weapon; mine is in lovemaking.”
“Aye,” agreed Druss. “But it seems to me my weapon ends problems. Yours causes them.”
“Oh, very droll. Just what I need as I walk through this barren wilderness, a lecture on morals!” Sieben stroked the neck of the steel-dust gelding, then stepped into the saddle. Lifting his hand, he shaded his eyes. “It is all so green. I’ve never seen a land that promised so much and gave so little. How do these plants survive?”
Druss did not answer. He was trying to hook his foot into the stirrup, but the mare began walking in circles. Sieben chuckled and rode alongside, taking the mare’s reins and holding her steady while the axman mounted. “They are deep-rooted,” said Druss. “It rains here for a full month every winter. The plants and bushes soak it in, then battle to survive for another year. It is a hard land. Harsh and savage.”
“Like the people who dwell here,” said Sieben.
“Aye. The Nadir are a fierce people.”
“Majon was telling me about a group called Chop-backs.”
“Renegades,” said Druss. “They call them Notas, no tribe. They are outcasts, robbers and killers. We’ll try to avoid them.”
“And if we can’t?”
Druss laughed. “Then you can show me your skills with the pretty knives!”
Nosta Khan sat in the shade of an overhanging rock, his scrawny left hand dipped in the cool water of the rock pool. The sun was high overhead, the heat beyond the shade pitiless, relentless in its power. It caused Nosta Khan no distress. Neither heat nor cold, pain nor sorrow could touch him now. For he was a master of the way, a shaman.
He had not desired this mystic path. No, as a young man he had dreamed the dreams of all Nadir warriors: many ponies, many women, many children. A short life filled with the savage joy of battle and the grunting, slippery warmth of sex.
It was not to be. His talent had denied him his dreams. No wives for Nosta Khan, no children at play at his feet. Instead he had been taken as a boy to the cave of Asta Khan, and there had
learned the way.
Lifting his hand from the water, he touched it to his brow, closing his eyes as several drops of cold water fell to the wrinkled skin of his face.
He had been seven years old when Asta had taken him and six other boys to the crest of Stone Hawk Peak to sit in the blazing sunshine, dressed only in breechclouts and moccasins. The old shaman had covered their heads and faces with wet clay and told them to sit until the clay baked hard and fell clear. Each child had two reed straws through which to breathe. There was no sense of time within the clay, no sound and no light. The skin of his shoulders had burned and blistered, but Nosta had not moved. For three blazing days and three frozen nights he had sat thus within that tomb of drying clay.
It did not fall clear, and he had longed to lift his hands and rip it away. Yet he did not even when the terror gripped him. What if the wolves came? What if an enemy was close? What if Asta had left him there to die because he, Nosta, was not worthy? Still he sat unmoving, the ground beneath him soiled with his urine and excrement, ants and flies crawling over him. He felt their tiny legs on his skin and shivered. What if they were not flies but scorpions?
Still the child did not move. On the morning of the fourth day, as the sun brought warmth and pain to his chilled yet raw flesh, a section of the clay broke clear, allowing him to move the muscles of his jaw. Tilting his head, he forced open his mouth. The two reed straws dropped away, then a large chunk of baked clay split above his nose. A hand touched his head, and he flinched. Asta Khan peeled away the last of the clay.
The sunlight was brutally bright, and tears fell from the boy’s eyes. The old shaman nodded. “You have done well,” he said. They were the only words of praise he ever heard from Asta Khan.
When at last he could see, Nosta looked around. He and the old man were alone on Stone Hawk Peak. “Where are the other boys?”
“Gone. They will return to their villages. You have won the great prize.”
“Then why do I feel only sadness?” he asked, his voice a dry croak.
Asta Khan did not answer at first. He passed a water skin to the boy and sat silently as he drank his fill. “Each man,” he said at last, “gives something of himself to the future. At the very least the gift is in the form of a child to carry his seed onward. But a shaman is denied that pleasure.” Taking the boy by the hand, he led him to the edge of the precipice. From there they gazed down over the plains and the distant steppes. “See there,” said Asta Khan, “the goats of our tribe. They worry about little save to eat, sleep, and rut. But look at the goat herder. He must watch for wolves and lions, for the flesh-eating worms of the blowfly, and he must find pastures that are safe and rich with grass. Your sadness is born of the knowledge that you cannot be a goat. Your destiny calls for more than that.”
Nosta Khan sighed and once more splashed his face with water. Asta was long dead now, and he remembered him with little affection.
A golden lioness and three cubs came into sight on the trail. Nosta took a deep breath and focused his concentration.
The rearing rocks are part of the body of the gods of stone and water, and I am one with the rocks.
The lioness moved warily forward, her great head sniffing the air. Satisfied that her family was safe, she edged to the pool, the cubs gamboling behind her. The last of the cubs leapt on the back of one of the others and commenced a play fight. The lioness ignored them and drank deeply. She was thin, her pelt patchy. When she had drunk her fill, she moved into the shade and lay beside Nosta Khan. The cubs followed her, nuzzling her teats. One scrambled over Nosta Khan’s bare legs, then settled down in the old man’s lap with its head resting on his thigh.
Reaching out, he laid his hand on the lioness’s broad head. She did not flinch. Nosta Khan allowed his mind to float free. High above the hills he floated, scanning the folds and gullies. Less than a mile to the east he found a small family group of ochpi, wild mountain goats with short curved horns. There were a male, three females, and several young. Returning to his body, Nosta touched the lioness with his spirit. Her head came up, nostrils flaring. There was no way she could pick up the scent from this distance, with the wind against her, but Nosta Khan filled her mind with the vision of the ochpi. The lioness rose, scattering the cubs, then loped away. At first the cubs remained where they were, but she gave a low growl, and they ran after her.
With luck she would feed.
Nosta sat back and waited. The riders would be there within the hour. He pictured the axman, his broad, flat face and deep, cold eyes. Would that all these southerners could be so easily manipulated, he thought, remembering his spirit meeting in the tavern. Once outside, it had been so easy to mesmerize the cross-bowman and command him to shoot down the Gothir fighter. Nosta recalled with pleasure the flight of the bolt, the sickening impact, and the intense shock of the crossbowman when he realized what he had done.
The threads were drawing together well now, but there was so much still to weave. Nosta rested his body and his mind, floating in half sleep in the warmth.
Two riders came into view. The shaman took a deep breath and focused, as he had when the lioness had come to the pool. He was a rock, eternal, unchanging, except to the slow eroding winds of time. The lead rider, a tall, slim young man with fair hair, dressed in garish silks, dismounted smoothly, holding firm to the reins, preventing the steel-dust gelding from reaching the cool water. “Not yet, my lovely,” he said softly. “First we must cool you down.” The second rider, the black-bearded axman, lifted his leg over the saddle pommel and jumped down. His mount was old and more than tired. Laying his ax to the ground, Druss unbuckled the saddle, hauling it clear of the mare’s back. She was lathered in sweat and breathing heavily; he wiped her down with a cloth and tethered her next to the tall gelding in the partial shade of the east side of the pool. The fair one moved to the pool and stripped off his clothing, shaking off the dust and folding it neatly. His body was as pale as ivory, smooth and soft. No warrior this, thought Nosta Khan as the young man dived into the water. Druss gathered his ax and moved to the shade, where Nosta Khan sat. Squatting down, he cupped his hands and drank, then splashed water to his thick dark hair and beard.
Nosta Khan closed his eyes and reached out to touch Druss’ arm and read his thoughts. An iron grip closed around his wrist, and his eyes flared open. Druss was looking directly at him.
“I have been waiting for you,” said Nosta, fighting for calm.
“I do not like men creeping up on me,” said the axman, his voice cold. Nosta glanced down at the pool, and the tension eased from him. The spell of concealment had not failed him; Druss had merely seen the reflection of his hand on the water. Druss released his grip and drank once more.
“You are seeking the healing jewels, eh? That is good. A man should stand by his friends in their darkest moments.”
“Exactly where are they?” asked Druss. “I do not have much time. Klay is dying.”
“I cannot tell you exactly. They were stolen several hundred years ago by a renegade shaman. He was hunted and stopped to rest at the Shrine of Oshikai; after that he was found and killed. Despite the most severe torture he refused to reveal the hiding place. I now believe they are hidden at the shrine.”
“Then why have you not searched for them?”
“I think he placed them within the tomb of Oshikai Demonbane. No Nadir may defile that sacred object. Only a … foreigner … would desecrate it.”
“How much more are you concealing from me, little man?”
“A great deal,” admitted Nosta. “But then, there is much that you do not need to know. The only truth that is of value to you is this: the jewels will save the life of your friend and return him to full health.”
Sieben emerged from the water and padded across the hot stones to the shade. “Ah, made a friend, I see,” he said as he sat beside the shaman. “I take it this is the old man who spoke to you in the tavern.” Druss nodded, and Sieben extended his hand. “My name is Sieben. I am the poe
t. You may have heard of me.”
“I have not heard of you,” said Nosta, ignoring the outstretched hand.
“What a blow to one’s vanity,” said Sieben with an easy smile. “Do you have poets among the Nadir?”
“For what purpose?” asked the old man.
“Art, joy, entertainment …” Sieben hesitated as he saw the blank look of incomprehension on the old man’s face. “History!” he said suddenly. “How is your history retained among the tribe?”
“Each man is taught the history of his tribe by his mother and the history of his family by his father. And the tribe’s shaman knows all their histories and the deeds of every Nadir hero.”
“You have no art, no sculptors, actors, painters?”
Nosta Khan’s coal-dark eyes glittered. “Three in five Nadir babies die in infancy. The average age of death among Nadir men is twenty-six. We live in a state of constant war, one with another, and in the meanwhile being hunted for sport by Gothir noblemen. Plague, pestilence, the constant threat of drought or famine—these are matters that concern the Nadir. We have no time for art.” Nosta Khan spit out the last word as if the taste on his tongue were offensive.
“How excruciatingly dull,” said Sieben. “I never felt sorry for your people until now. Excuse me while I water the horses.”
Sieben rose and dressed. Nosta Khan swallowed his irritation and returned his gaze to Druss. “Are there many like him in the southlands?”
Druss smiled. “There are not many like him anywhere.” Reaching into his pack, he produced a round of cheese wrapped in muslin and some dried beef. He offered a portion to Nosta Khan, who refused. Druss ate in silence. Sieben returned and joined him. When they had completed the meal, Druss yawned and stretched out in the shade; within moments he was asleep.
“Why do you travel with him?” Nosta Khan asked Sieben.
“For the adventure, old horse. Wherever Druss goes, one is sure to find adventure. And I like the idea of magical jewels. I’m sure there’ll be a song or a story in it.”
“On that we will agree,” said Nosta Khan. “Even now two thousand Gothir warriors are being marshaled. Led by Gargan, Lord of Larness, they will march to the Shrine of Oshikai Demon-bane and lay siege to it with the intention of killing everyone there and taking the jewels as a gift to the madman who sits on the throne. You are riding into the eye of the hurricane, poet. Yes, I am sure there will be a song in it for you.”
The Legend of the Deathwalker Page 13