Once seated, Bowman cleared his throat and told them the size of the Nadir horde gathered at Gulgothir.
“How do you come by this intelligence?” asked Orrin.
“Three days ago we … met … some travelers in Skultik. They were journeying from Dros Purdol to Segril and had come across the northern desert. They were waylaid near Gulgothir and taken into the city, where they stayed for four days. Because they were Vagrian merchants, they were treated civilly but questioned by a Nadir officer called Surip. One of them is a former Vagrian officer, and he made the estimate of their strength.”
“But half a million?” said Orrin. “I thought the figure was exaggerated.”
“Underplayed if anything,” said Bowman. “Outlying tribes were still coming in when he left. I’d say you will have quite a battle on your hands.”
“I don’t wish to be pedantic,” said Hogun, “but do you not mean we have a battle on our hands?”
Bowman glanced at Druss. “Have you not told them, old horse? No? Ah, what a deliciously embarrassing moment, to be sure.”
“Told us what?” asked Orrin.
“That they are mercenaries,” said Druss uneasily. “They stay only until the fall of Wall Three. It has been agreed.”
“And for this … this pitiful aid they expect pardons!” shouted Orrin, rising to his feet. “I will see them swing first.”
“After Wall Three we will have less need of archers,” said Hogun calmly. “There is no killing ground.”
“We need archers, Orrin,” said Druss. “We need them badly. And this man has six hundred of the finest. We know walls will fall, and we will need every shaft. The postern gates will be sealed by then. I don’t like this situation, either, but needs must … Better to have cover for the first three walls than to have none at all. Do you agree?”
“And if I don’t?” said the gan, still angry.
“Then I shall send them away,” said Druss. Hogun began an angry outburst but was silenced by a wave of Druss’s hand. “You are the gan, Orrin. It is your decision.”
Orrin sat down, breathing deeply. He had made many mistakes before Druss arrived; he knew that now. This situation angered him deeply, but he had no choice but to back the axman, and Druss knew it, too. The two men exchanged glances and smiled.
“They shall stay,” said Orrin.
“A wise decision,” said Bowman. “How soon will the Nadir arrive, do you think?”
“Too damned soon,” muttered Druss. “Sometime within the next three weeks, according to our scouts. Ulric lost a son, which has given us a few more days. But it’s still not enough.”
For some time the men discussed the many problems facing the defenders. Finally Bowman spoke, this time hesitantly.
“Look here, Druss, there is something I feel I should mention, but I don’t want to be thought … strange. I’ve been toying with the idea of not mentioning it, but …”
“Speak on, laddie. You’re among friends … mostly.”
“I had a strange dream last night, and you appeared in it. I would have dismissed it, but seeing you today made me think again. I dreamed I was woken from a deep sleep by a warrior in silver armor. I could see right through him, as if he were a ghost. He told me that he had been trying to contact you, but without success. When he spoke, it was like a voice in my mind. He said that his name was Serbitar and that he was traveling with his friends and a woman called Virae.
“He said it was important for me to tell you to collect inflammables and containers, since Ulric has built great siege towers. He also suggested fire gullies across the spaces between walls. In my mind he showed me a vision of you being attacked. He told me a name: Musar.
“Does any of it make any sense?”
For a moment no one spoke, although Druss seemed hugely relieved.
“Indeed it does, laddie. Indeed it does!”
Hogun poured a fresh glass of Lentrian and passed it to Bowman.
“What did this warrior look like?” he asked.
“Tall, slender. I think his hair was white, though he was young.”
“It is Serbitar,” said Hogun. “The vision is a true one.”
“You know him?” asked Druss.
“Of him only. He is the son of Earl Drada of Dros Segril. It is said that the boy was fey and had a demon; he could read men’s thoughts. He is an albino, and as you know, the Vagrians consider this an ill omen. He was sent to the temple of the Thirty, south of Drenan, when he was about thirteen. It is also said that his father tried to smother him when he was a babe but that the child sensed him coming and hid outside his bedroom window. These, of course, are but stories.”
“Well, his talents have grown, it seems,” said Druss. “But I don’t give a damn. He’ll be useful here, especially if he can read Ulric’s mind.”
15
For ten days work progressed. Fire gullies ten yards wide were dug four feet deep across the open ground between Walls One and Two and again between Walls Three and Four. These were filled with brushwood and small timber, while vats were placed along each gully, ready to pour oil onto the dry wood.
Bowman’s archers hammered white stakes in the open ground at various points between walls and also out on the plain before the fortress. Each line of stakes represented sixty paces, and his men practiced for several hours each day, black clouds of shafts slicing the air above each row as the commands were shouted.
Target dummies were set up on the plain, only to be splintered by scores of arrows, even at 120 paces. The skills of the Skultik archers were formidable.
Hogun rehearsed withdrawals, timing the men by drumbeats as they dashed from the battlements, across the plank bridges of the fire gullies to scale the ropes to the next wall. Each day they became more swift.
Minor points began to occupy more time as the overall fitness and readiness of the troops increased.
“When do we add the oil?” Hogun asked Druss as the men took an afternoon break.
“Between Walls One and Two, it will have to be filled on the day of the first attack. Until the first day we will have no real idea of how well the men will stand up to the assault.”
“There remains the problem,” added Orrin, “of who lights the gullies and when. For example, if the wall is breached, we could have Nadir tribesmen racing side by side with our own men. No easy decision to throw in a lighted torch.”
“And if we give men the duty,” said Hogun, “what happens if they are killed on the wall?”
“We will have to have a torch duty,” said Druss. “And the decision will be relayed by a bugler from Wall Two. An officer of cool nerve will be needed to judge the issue. When the bugle sounds, the gully goes up no matter who is left behind.”
Matters such as these occupied Druss more and more, until his head swam with plans, ideas, stratagems, and ploys. Several times during such discussions the old man’s temper flared and his huge fists hammered the table, or else he strode around the room like a caged bear.
“I’m a soldier, not a damned planner,” he would announce, and the meeting would be adjourned for an hour.
Combustibles were carted in from outlying villages, a seemingly endless number of dispatches arrived from Drenan and Abalayn’s panicked government, and a multitude of small problems—concerning delayed mail, new recruits, personal worries, and squabbles between groups—threatened to overwhelm the three men.
One officer complained that the latrine area of Wall One was in danger of causing a health hazard, since it was not of regulation depth and lacked an adequate cesspit.
Druss set a working party to enlarge the area.
Abalayn himself demanded a complete strategic appraisal of all Dros Delnoch’s defenses, which Druss refused since the information could be leaked to Nadir sympathizers. This in turn brought a swift rebuke from Drenan and a firm request for an apology. Orrin penned this, claiming it would keep the politicians off their backs.
Then Woundweaver sent a requisition for the legion’s mount
s, claiming that since the order was to hold to the last man, the horses would be of little use at Delnoch. He allowed that twenty should be retained for dispatch purposes. This so enraged Hogun that he was unapproachable for days.
Added to this, the burghers had begun to complain about the rowdy behavior of the troops in civilian areas. All in all Druss was beginning to feel at the end of his tether and had begun to voice openly his desire that the Nadir would arrive and the devil with the consequences!
Three days later his wish was partly answered.
A Nadir troop, under a flag of truce, galloped in from the north. Word spread like wildfire, and by the time it reached Druss in the main hall of the keep, an air of panic was abroad in the town.
The Nadir dismounted in the shadow of the great gates and waited. They did not speak. From their pack saddles they took dried meat and water sacks and sat together, eating and waiting.
By the time Druss arrived with Orrin and Hogun, they had completed their meal. Druss bellowed down from the battlements.
“What is your message?”
“Open the gates!” called back the Nadir officer, a short barrel-chested man, bowlegged and powerful.
“Are you the Deathwalker?” called the man.
“Yes.”
“You are old and fat. It pleases me.”
“Good! Remember that when next we meet, for I have marked you, loudmouth, and my ax knows the name of your spirit. Now, what is your message?”
“The Lord Ulric, Prince of the North, bids me to tell you that he will be riding to Drenan to discuss an alliance with Abalayn, Lord of the Drenai. He wishes it known that he expects the gates of Dros Delnoch to be open to him; that being so, he guarantees there will be no harm to any man, woman, or child, soldier or otherwise, within the city. It is the Lord Ulric’s wish that the Drenai and the Nadir become as one nation. He offers the gift of friendship.”
“Tell the Lord Ulric,” said Druss, “that he is welcome to ride to Drenan at any time. We will even allow an escort of a hundred warriors, as befits a prince of the north.”
“The Lord Ulric allows no conditions,” said the officer.
“These are my conditions—they shall not change,” said Druss.
“Then I have a second message. Should the walls be contested and the gates closed, the Lord Ulric wishes it known that every second defender taken alive will be slain, that all the women will be sold into slavery, and that one in three of all citizens will lose his right hand.”
“Before that can happen, laddie, the Lord Ulric has to take the Dros. Now you give him this message from Druss the Deathwalker: In the north the mountains may tremble as he breaks wind, but this is Drenai land, and as far as I am concerned he is a potbellied savage who couldn’t pick his own nose without a Drenai map.
“Do you think you can remember that, laddie. Or shall I carve it on your ass in large letters?”
“Inspiring as your words were, Druss,” said Orrin, “I must tell you that my stomach turned over as you spoke them. Ulric will be furious.”
“Would that he were,” said Druss bitterly as the Nadir troop galloped back to the north. “If that were the case, he would truly be just a potbellied savage. No! He will laugh … loud and long.”
“Why should he?” asked Hogun.
“Because he has no choice. He has been insulted and should lose face. When he laughs, the men will laugh with him.”
“It was a pretty offer he made,” said Orrin as the three men made the long walk back to the keep. “Word will spread. Talks with Abalayn … One empire of Drenai and Nadir … Clever!”
“Clever and true,” said Hogun. “We know from his record that he means it. If we surrender, he will march through and harm no one. Threats of death can be taken and resisted; offers of life are horses of a different color. I wonder how long it will be before the burghers demand another audience.”
“Before dusk,” predicted Druss.
Back on the walls Gilad and Bregan watched the dust from the Nadir horsemen dwindle into the distance.
“What did he mean, Gil, about riding to Drenan for discussions with Abalayn?”
“He meant he wants us to let his army through.”
“Oh. They didn’t look terribly fierce, did they? I mean, they seem quite ordinary, really, save that they wear furs.”
“Yes, they are ordinary,” said Gilad, removing his helm and combing his hair with his fingers, allowing the cool breeze to get to his head. “Very ordinary. Except that they live for war. Fighting comes as naturally to them as farming does to you. Or me,” he added as an afterthought, knowing this to be untrue.
“I wonder why,” said Bregan. “It has never made much sense to me. I mean, I understand why some men become soldiers: to protect the nation and all that. But a whole race of people living to be soldiers seems … unhealthy. Does that sound right?”
Gilad laughed. “Indeed it sounds right. But the northern steppes make poor farmland. Mainly they breed goats and ponies. Any luxuries they desire, they must steal. Now to the Nadir, so Dun Pinar told me at the banquet, the word for ‘stranger’ is the same as the word for ‘enemy.’ Anyone not of the tribe is simply there to be killed and stripped of goods. It is a way of life. Smaller tribes are wiped out by larger tribes. Ulric changed the pattern; by amalgamating beaten tribes into his own, he grew more and more powerful. He controls all the northern kingdoms now and many to the east. Two years ago he took Manea, the sea kingdom.”
“I heard about that,” said Bregan. “But I thought he had withdrawn after making a treaty with the king.”
“Dun Pinar says the king agreed to be Ulric’s vassal and Ulric holds the king’s son hostage. The nation is his.”
“He must be a pretty clever man,” said Bregan. “But what would he do if he ever conquered the whole world? I mean, what good is it? I would like a bigger farm and a house with several floors. That I can understand. But what would I do with ten farms? Or a hundred?”
“You would be rich and powerful. Then you could tell your tenant farmers what to do, and they would all bow as you rode past in your fine carriage.”
“That doesn’t appeal to me, not at all,” said Bregan.
“Well, it does to me,” said Gilad. “I’ve always hated it when I had to tug the forelock for some passing nobleman on a tall horse. The way they look at you, despising you because you work a smallholding; paying more money for their handmade boots than I can earn in a year of slaving. No, I wouldn’t mind being rich, so pig-awful rich that no man could ever look down on me again.”
Gilad turned his face away to stare out over the plains, his anger fierce, almost tangible.
“Would you look down on people, then, Gil? Would you despise me because I wanted to remain a farmer?”
“Of course not. A man should be free to do what he wants to do as long as it doesn’t hurt others.”
“Maybe that’s why Ulric wants to control everything. Maybe he is sick of everyone looking down on the Nadir.”
Gilad turned back to Bregan, and his anger died within him.
“Do you know, Breg, that’s just what Pinar said when I asked him if he hated Ulric for wanting to smash the Drenai. He said, ‘Ulric isn’t trying to smash the Drenai but to raise the Nadir.’ I think Pinar admires him.”
“The man I admire is Orrin,” said Bregan. “It must have taken great courage to come out and train with the men as he has done. Especially being as unpopular as he was. I was so pleased when he won back the swords.”
“Only because you won five silver pieces on him,” Gilad pointed out.
“That’s not fair, Gil! I backed him because he was Karnak; I backed you, too.”
“You backed me for a quarter copper and him for a half silver, according to Drebus, who took your bet.”
Bregan tapped his nose, smiling. “Ah, but then you don’t pay the same price for a goat as for a horse. But the thought was there. After all, I knew you couldn’t win.”
“I damn near had
that Bar Britan. It was a judge’s decision at the last.”
“True,” said Bregan. “But you would never have beaten Pinar or that fellow with the earring from the legion. But what’s even more to the point, you never could have beaten Orrin. I’ve seen you both fence.”
“Such judgment!” said Gilad. “It’s small wonder to me that you didn’t enter yourself, so great is your knowledge.”
“I don’t have to fly in order to know that the sky is blue,” said Bregan. “Anyway, who did you back?”
“Gan Hogun.”
“Who else? Drebus said you had placed two bets,” said Bregan innocently.
“You know very well. Drebus would have told you.”
“I didn’t think to ask.”
“Liar! Well, I don’t care. I backed myself to reach the last fifty.”
“And you were so close,” said Bregan. “Only one strike in it.”
“One lucky blow and I could have won a month’s wages.”
“Such is life,” said Bregan. “Maybe next year you can come back and have another try.”
“And maybe corn will grow on the backs of camels!” said Gilad.
Back at the keep Druss was struggling to keep his temper as the city elders argued back and forth about the Nadir offer. Word had spread to them with bewildering speed, and Druss had barely managed to eat a chunk of bread and cheese before a messenger from Orrin informed him that the elders had called a meeting.
It was a Drenai rule, long established, that except in time of battle the elders had a democratic right to see the city lord and debate matters of importance. Neither Orrin nor Druss could refuse. No one could argue that Ulric’s ultimatum was unimportant.
Six men constituted the city elders, an elected body that effectively ruled all trade within the city. The master burgher and chief elder was Bricklyn, who had entertained Druss so royally on the night of the assassination attempt. Malphar, Backda, Shinell, and Alphus were all merchants, while Beric was a nobleman, a distant cousin of Earl Delnar and highly placed in city life. Only lack of a real fortune kept him at Delnoch and away from Drenan, which he loved.