The Legend of the Deathwalker

by David Gemmell

  Talisman pushed himself to his feet. “I hope she finds him,” he said, and walked from the building, followed by Nosta Khan.

  “Their gratitude brings a tear to my old eyes,” said Sieben sourly.

  Druss shrugged. “It is done. That is what counts.”

  “So, tell me all.”

  “I don’t think so, poet. I want no songs about this.”

  “No songs; you have my word of honor,” lied the poet.

  Druss chuckled. “Maybe later. For now I need some food and a long, slow drink of cool water.”

  “Was she beautiful?”

  “Exceptionally. But she had a hard face,” said Druss, striding away. Sieben followed him out into the sunlight as Druss stood, gazing up at the rich blue of the sky. “The Void is an ugly place, devoid of color save for the red of flame and the gray of stone and ash and sky. It is a chilling thought that we must all walk it one day.”

  “Chilling. Absolutely,” agreed Sieben. “Now the story, Druss. Tell me the story.”

  Above them on the ramparts, with Gorkai and Nosta Khan beside him, Talisman gazed down at Druss and the poet. “He should have died there,” said Nosta Khan. “His life force was almost gone. But it surged back.”

  Talisman nodded. “I have never seen the like,” he admitted. “Watching Druss and Oshikai together, battling demons and monsters … it was awesome. From the moment they met, they were like sword brothers, and when they fought side by side, it seemed they had known each other for an eternity. I could not compete, shaman. I was like a child among men. And yet I felt no bitterness. I felt … privileged.”

  “Aye,” whispered Gorkai, “to have fought beside Oshikai Demon-bane is a privilege indeed.”

  “Yet we are no closer to the eyes,” snapped Nosta Khan. “A great warrior he may be, but he is a fool. Shaoshad would have told him had he but asked!”

  “We will find them or we won’t! I’ll lose no more sleep over it,” said Talisman. Leaving the shaman, he moved down the rampart steps and crossed the open ground to the lodging house.

  Zhusai was asleep in the bed, and Talisman sat beside her, stroking her hair. Her dark eyes opened, and she gave a sleepy smile. “I waited until Gorkai told me you were safe; then I slept.”

  “We are all safe,” he told her, “and Shul-sen will haunt you no more.” He fell silent.

  Sitting up, she took his hand and saw the sorrow in his eyes. “What is it, Talisman? Why so sad?”

  “Their love lasted an eternity,” he said, his voice low. “Yet for us there will be no joining. All my life I have longed to help the Uniter band our people together. I thought there was no greater cause. You fill my mind, Zhusai. I know now that when the Uniter takes you, I will not be able to follow him. I could not.”

  “Then let us defy the prediction,” she said, taking him in her arms. “Let us be together.”

  Gently but firmly he took hold of her arms, drawing away from her. “I cannot do that, either. My duty forbids it. I shall tell Nosta Khan to take you away from here. Tomorrow.”

  “No! I will not go.”

  “If you truly love me, you will, Zhusai. I need to clear my mind for the battle ahead.” Rising, he left her and returned to the compound. For the next hour he toured the fortifications, checking the repairs to the ramparts. Then he sent Quing-chin and three riders to scout for the enemy.

  “Do not engage them, my friend,” he told Quing-chin. “I’ll need you here when the battle begins.”

  “I will be here,” the warrior promised. And he rode from the fort.

  Gorkai approached Talisman. “You should take the woman,” he said softly.

  Talisman turned on him angrily. “You were listening?”

  “Yes. Every word,” Gorkai agreed amiably. “You should take her.”

  “And what of duty? What of the fate of the Nadir?”

  Gorkai smiled. “You are a great man, Talisman, but you are not thinking this through. We won’t survive here; we are all going to die. So if you wed her, she will be a widow in a few days, anyway. Nosta Khan says he can spirit her away. Good. Then the Uniter will wed your widow. So how will destiny be changed?”

  “What if we win?”

  “You mean what if the puppy dog devours the lion?” Gorkai shrugged. “My view on that is simple, Talisman. I follow you. If the Uniter wants my loyalty, then let him be here fighting with us! Last night you united Oshikai and Shul-sen. Look around you. There are men here of five tribes. You have united them; that’s enough of a Uniter for me.”

  “I am not the man prophesied.”

  “I do not care. You are the man who’s here. I am older than you, boy, and I have made many mistakes. You are making one now regarding Zhusai. True love is rare. Take it where you find it. That is all I have to say.”

  Druss sat quietly on the ramparts, gazing around at the defenders as they continued their work on the walls, carrying rocks to hurl down on advancing infantrymen. There were now just under two hundred fighting men, the bulk of them refugees from the Curved Horn. Nuang Xuan had sent his people to the east, but several women remained behind, Niobe among them. The old man waved at Druss, then climbed the broken steps to the ramparts. He was breathing heavily when he reached the top. “A fine day, axman,” he said, drawing in a deep breath.

  “Aye,” agreed Druss.

  “It is a good fort now, yes?”

  “A good fort with old gates,” said Druss. “That’s the weak spot.”

  “That is my position,” said Nuang, his face devoid of expression. “Talisman has told me to stand among the defenders at that point. If the gate is breached, we are to fill it with bodies.” He forced a smile. “A long time since I have known such fear, but it is a good feeling.”

  Druss nodded. “If the gate is breached, old man, you will find me beside you.”

  “Ha! Then there will be plenty of killing.” Nuang’s expression softened. “You will be fighting your own people again. How does this sit with you?”

  Druss shrugged. “They are not my people, and I do not go hunting them. They are coming for me. Their deaths are on their own heads.”

  “You are a hard man, Druss. Nadir blood, maybe.”

  “Maybe.” Nuang saw his nephew Meng below and called out to him. Without a word of farewell the old man strolled back down the steps.

  Druss transferred his gaze to the west and the line of hills. The enemy would be there soon. He thought of Rowena, back at the farm, and the days of work among the herds, the quiet of the nights in their spacious cabin. Why is it, he wondered, that when I am away from her I long for her company, and when I am with her I yearn for the call to arms? His thoughts ranged back to his childhood, traveling with his father, trying to escape the infamy of Bardan the Slayer. Druss glanced down at Snaga, resting against the battlement wall. The dread ax had belonged to his grandfather, Bardan. It had been demon-possessed then and had turned Bardan into a raging killer, a butcher. Druss, too, had been touched by it. Is that why I am what I am? he thought. Even though the demon had long since been exorcised, still its malice had worked on him through the long years when he had searched for Rowena.

  Not normally introspective, Druss found his mood darkening. He had not come to the lands of the Gothir for war but to take part in the games. Now, through no fault of his own, he was waiting for a powerful army and was desperate to find two healing jewels that would bring Klay back to health.

  “You look angry, old horse,” said Sieben, moving alongside him. Druss looked at his friend. The poet was wearing a pale blue shirt with buttons of polished bone. His baldric was freshly polished, the knife handles gleaming in their sheaths. His blond hair was newly combed and held in place by a headband at the center of which an opal was set.

  “How do you do it?” asked Druss. “Here we are in a dust-blown wilderness, and you look as if you’ve just stepped from a bathhouse.”

  “Standards must always be maintained,” Sieben said, with a broad grin. “These savages need to see ho
w civilized men behave.”

  Druss chuckled. “You lift my spirits, poet. You always have.”

  “Why so gloomy? War and death are but a few days away. I would have thought you would have been dancing for joy.”

  “I was thinking of Klay. The jewels aren’t here, and I can’t keep my promise to him.”

  “Oh, don’t be too sure of that, old horse. I have a theory, but we’ll say no more of it until the time is right.”

  “You think you can find them?”

  “As I said, I have a theory. But now is not the time. Nosta Khan wanted you to die, you know, and you almost did. We cannot trust him, Druss. Or Talisman. The jewels are too important to them.”

  “You are right there,” grunted Druss. “The shaman is a loathsome wretch.”

  “What’s that?” exclaimed Sieben, pointing to the line of hills. “Oh, sweet heaven, they are here!”

  Druss narrowed his eyes. A line of lancers in bright armor was riding single file down the hillside. A cry went up on the walls, and warriors ran from the compound to take their places, bows in hand.

  “They are riding ponies,” muttered Druss. “What in hell’s name …?”

  Talisman and Nosta Khan came alongside Druss. The riders beyond broke into a gallop and thundered across the plain with their lances held high. On each lance was a spitted head.

  “It is Lin-tse!” shouted Talisman. The Nadir defenders began to cheer and shout as the thirty riders slowed to a canter and rode along the line of the wall, lifting their lances and showing their grisly trophies. One by one they thrust the lances into the ground, then rode through the newly opened gates. Lin-tse jumped from his pony and removed the Gothir helm. Warriors streamed from the walls to surround him and his Sky Riders.

  Lin-tse began to chant in the Nadir tongue. He leapt and danced to wild cheering from the warriors. On the battlements above Sieben watched in fascination but could understand none of the words. He turned to Nosta Khan. “What is he saying?”

  “He is telling of the slaughter of the enemy and how his men rode the sky to defeat them.”

  “Rode the sky? What does that mean?”

  “It means the first victory is ours,” snapped the shaman. “Now be silent so I can listen.”

  “Irritating man,” muttered Sieben, sitting back alongside Druss.

  Lin-tse’s story took almost a quarter of an hour to complete, and at the close the warriors swept in around him, lifting him shoulder-high. Talisman sat quietly until the noise died down. When Lin-tse was lowered to the ground, he walked to Talisman and gave a short bow. “Your orders were obeyed,” he said. “Many lancers are dead, and I have their armor.”

  “You did well, my brother.”

  Talisman strode to the rampart steps and climbed them, swinging back to stare down at the gathered men. “They can be beaten,” he said, still speaking Nadir. “They are not invincible. We have tasted their blood, and we will taste more. When they come to despoil the shrine, we will stop them. For we are Nadir, and our day is dawning. This is but the beginning. What we do here will become part of our legends. The story of your heroism will spread on the wings of fire to every Nadir tribe, every camp and village. It will bring the Day of the Uniter closer. And one day we will stand before the walls of Gulgothir, and the city itself will tremble before us.” Slowly he raised his right arm, with his fist clenched. “Nadir we!” he shouted. The warriors followed him, and the chant was taken up:

  “Nadir we,

  youth born,

  bloodletters,

  ax wielders,

  victors still.”

  “Chills the blood, rather,” observed Sieben.

  Druss nodded. “He’s a clever man. He knows there are disasters to come, and he’s filling them with pride at the outset. They’ll fight like devils for him now.”

  “I didn’t know you could understand Nadir.”

  “I can’t … but you don’t need to be a linguist to understand what’s happening here. He sent out Lin-tse to bloody the enemy, to give them a victory, to bond them together. He’s probably just told them that they are all heroes and that together they can withstand any force. Something like that.”

  “And can they?”

  “No way to judge, poet. Not until the first deaths. A fighting force is like a sword blade. You can’t test it until it has passed through fire.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Sieben irritably, “but apart from the warlike analogies, what is your feeling? You know men. I trust your judgment.”

  “I don’t know these men. Oh, they are ferocious, right enough. But they are not disciplined, and they are superstitious. They have no history of success to fall back on, to lift them in the dark hours. They have never defeated the Gothir. Everything depends on the first day of battle. Ask me again if we survive that.”

  “Damn, but you are gloomy today, my friend,” said Sieben. “What is it?”

  “This is not my war, poet. I have no feeling for it, you know? I fought alongside Oshikai. I know that it doesn’t matter a damn to him what happens to his bones. This is a battle over nothing, and nothing will be achieved by it, win or lose.”

  “I think you may be wrong there, old horse. All this talk of a Uniter is important to these people. You say they have no history of success to fall back on; well, perhaps this will be the first for them.” Sieben hoisted himself to the wall and sat looking at his friend. “But you know all this. There’s something more, isn’t there, Druss? Something deeper.”

  Druss gave a wry smile, then rubbed his huge hand over his black beard. “Aye, there is. I don’t like them, poet. It is that simple. I have no affinity with these tribesmen. I don’t know how they think or what they feel. One thing is for damned sure: they don’t think like us.”

  “You like Nuang and Talisman. They are both Nadir,” Sieben pointed out.

  “Yes, I know. I can’t make sense of it.”

  Sieben chuckled. “It’s not hard, Druss. You are Drenai, born and raised—the greatest race on earth. That’s what they told us. Civilized men in a world of savages. You had no trouble fighting alongside the Ventrians, but then, they are like us, round-eyed and tall. We share a common mythology. But the Nadir are descended from the Chiatze, and with them we share nothing that is obvious. Dogs and cats, Druss. Or wolves and lions, if you prefer. But I think you are wrong to believe they don’t think like us or feel like us. They just show things differently, that’s all. A different culture base.”

  “I am not a bigot,” Druss said defensively.

  Sieben laughed. “Of course you are; it is bred into you. But you are a good man, Druss, and it won’t make a damn bit of difference to the way you behave. Drenai teachings may have lodged in your head, but you have a fine heart. And that will always carry you through.”

  Druss relaxed and felt the tension flow from him. “I hope you are right,” he said. “My grandfather was a butchering killer; his atrocities haunt me still. I never want to be guilty of that kind of evil. I never want to be fighting on the wrong side. The Ventrian War was just; I believed that, and it meant something. The people now have Gorben as a leader, and he is as great a man as I ever met.”

  “Perhaps,” Sieben said doubtfully. “History will judge him better than you or I. But if you are concerned about this current … vileness, put your mind at rest. This is a shrine, and here lie the bones of the greatest hero the Nadir have ever known. This place means something to all their people. The men who are coming serve a mad emperor, and they seek to despoil this place for no other purpose than their desire to humiliate the tribes, to keep them in their place. The Source knows how I hate violence, but we are not on the wrong side in this, Druss. By heaven, we’re not!”

  Druss clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re beginning to sound like a warrior,” he said with a wide grin.

  “Well, that’s because the enemy hasn’t arrived yet. When they do, you’ll find me hiding in an empty flour barrel.”

  “I don’t believe that for a m
oment,” Druss told him.

  In a small room alongside the makeshift hospital Zhusai sat quietly as Talisman and Lin-tse discussed the raid. The two men were physically very different; Lin-tse was tall, his solemn face showing his mixed-blood ancestry, the eyes only barely slanted, the cheeks and jawbones heavy. His hair was not the jet-black of the Nadir but was tinged with auburn streaks. Talisman, his hair drawn back into a tight ponytail, looked every inch the Nadir warrior, his skin pale gold, his face flat, the dark eyes expressionless. And yet, thought Zhusai, there was a similarity that was not born of the physical, an aura almost that spoke of brotherhood. Was it, she wondered, the shared experience in the Bodacas Academy or the desire to see the Nadir free and proud once more? Perhaps both, she thought.

  “They will be here tomorrow afternoon. No later,” said Lin-tse.

  “There is nothing more we can do. The warriors are as ready now as they will ever be.”

  “But will they hold, Talisman? I have never heard much that is good of the Curved Horn. And as for the Lone Wolves … well, they seem nervous without their leader. And I see the groups do not mix at all.”

  “They will hold,” Talisman told him. “And as for what you have heard of the Curved Horn, I wonder what they have heard of the Sky Riders. It is not our custom to think well of tribal enemies. Though I note you have not mentioned the Fleet Ponies. Could that be because our friend Quing-chin leads them?”

  Lin-tse gave a tight smile. “I take your point. The axman looks like a fighting man.”

  “He is. I have walked the Void with him, my friend, and believe me, he is awesome to behold.”

  “Even so I feel uncomfortable with a gajin within the walls. Is he a friend?”

  “To the Nadir? No. To me? Perhaps. I am glad that he is here. He has an indomitable feel about him.” Talisman stood. “You should go and rest, Lin-tse. You have earned it. I wish I could have seen you and your men leap the chasm. Truly you were Sky Riders in that moment. Men will sing of it in the years to come.”

  “Only if we survive, General.”