“Is it not just a word?”
“No, it is far more. Egel, who built this fortress, had names carved on every wall. ‘Eldibar’ means ‘exultation.’ It is there that the enemy is first met. It is there he is seen to be a man. Power flows in the veins of the defenders. The enemy falls back against the weight of our swords and the strength of our arms. We feel, as heroes should, the thrill of battle and the call of our heritage. We are exultant! Egel knew the hearts of men. I wonder, Did he know the future?”
“What do the other names mean?”
Antaheim shrugged. “That is for another day. It is not good luck to talk of Musif while we shelter under the protection of Eldibar.” Antaheim leaned back into the wall and closed his eyes, listening to the rain and the howling wind.
Musif. The wall of despair! Where strength has not been great enough to hold Eldibar, how can Musif be held? If we could not hold Eldibar, we cannot hold Musif. Fear will gnaw at our vitals. Many of our friends will have died at Eldibar, and once more we will see in our minds the laughing faces. We will not want to join them. Musif is the test.
And we will not hold. We will fall back to Kania, the wall of renewed hope. We did not die on Musif, and Kania is a narrower fighting place. And anyway, are there not three more walls? The Nadir can no longer use their ballistae here, so that is something, is it not? In any case, did we not always know we would lose a few walls?
Sumitos, the wall of desperation, will follow. We are tired, mortally weary. We fight now by instinct, mechanically and well. Only the very best will be left to stem the savage tide.
Valteri, Wall Five, is the wall of serenity. Now we have come to terms with mortality. We accept the inevitability of our deaths and find in ourselves depths of courage we would not have believed possible. The humor will begin again, and each will be a brother to each other man. We will have stood together against the common enemy, shield to shield, and we will have made him suffer. Time will pass on this wall more slowly. We will savor our senses as if we have discovered them anew. The stars will become jewels of beauty we never saw before, and friendship will have a sweetness never previously tasted.
And finally Geddon, the wall of death …
I shall not see Geddon, thought Antaheim.
And he slept.
“Tests! All we keep hearing about is that the real test will come tomorrow. How many damn tests are there?” stormed Elicas. Rek raised a hand as the young warrior interrupted Serbitar.
“Calm down!” he said. “Let him finish. We have only a few moments before the city elders arrive.”
Elicas glared at Rek but was silent after looking at Hogun for support and seeing his almost imperceptible shake of the head. Druss rubbed his eyes and accepted a goblet of wine from Orrin.
“I am sorry,” said Serbitar gently. “I know how irksome such talk is. For eight days now we have held the Nadir back, and it is true I continue to speak of fresh tests. But you see, Ulric is a master strategist. Look at his army—it is twenty thousand tribesmen. This first week has seen them bloodied on our walls. They are not his finest troops. Even as we have trained our recruits, so does he. He is in no hurry; he has spent these days culling the weak from his ranks, for he knows there are more battles to come when, and if, he takes the Dros. We have done well, exceedingly well. But we have paid dearly. Fourteen hundred men have died, and four hundred more will not fight again.
“I tell you this: Tomorrow his veterans will come.”
“And where do you gain this intelligence?” snapped Elicas.
“Enough, boy!” roared Druss. “It is sufficient that he has been right till now. When he is wrong, you may have your say.”
“What do you suggest, Serbitar?” asked Rek.
“Give them the wall,” answered the albino.
“What?” said Virae. “After all the fighting and dying? That is madness.”
“Not so, my lady,” said Bowman, speaking for the first time. All eyes turned to the young archer, who had forsaken his usual uniform of green tunic and hose. Now he wore a splendid buckskin topcoat, heavy with fringed thongs, sporting an eagle crafted from small beads across the back. His long blond hair was held in place by a buckskin headband, and by his side hung a silver dagger with an ebony haft shaped like a falcon whose spread wings made up the knuckle guard.
He stood. “It is sound good sense. We knew that walls would fall. Eldibar is the longest and therefore the most difficult to hold. We are stretched there. On Musif we would need fewer men and therefore would lose fewer. And we have the killing ground between the walls. My archers could create an unholy massacre among Ulric’s veterans before even a blow is struck.”
“There is another point,” said Rek, “and one equally important. Sooner or later we will be pushed back from the wall, and despite the fire gullies, our losses will be enormous. If we retire during the night, we will save lives.”
“And let us not forget morale,” Hogun pointed out. “The loss of the wall will hit the Dros badly. If we give it up as a strategic withdrawal, however, we will turn the situation to our advantage.”
“What of you, Orrin? How do you feel about this?” asked Rek.
“We have about five hours. Let’s get it started,” answered the gan.
Rek turned to Druss. “And you?”
The old man shrugged. “Sounds good,” he said.
“It’s settled, then,” said Rek. “I leave you to begin the withdrawal. Now I must meet the council.”
Throughout the long night the silent retreat continued. Wounded men were carried on stretchers, medical supplies loaded on to handcarts, and personal belongings packed hastily into kit bags. The more seriously injured had long since been removed to the Musif field hospital, and Eldibar barracks had been little used since the siege had begun.
By dawn’s first ghostly light the last of the men entered the postern gates at Musif and climbed the long winding stairways to the battlements. Then began the work of rolling boulders and rubble onto the stairs to block the entrances. Men heaved and toiled as the light grew stronger. Finally, sacks of mortar powder were poured onto the rubble and then packed solid into the gaps. Other men with buckets of water doused the mixtures.
“Given a day,” said Maric the builder, “that mass will be almost immovable.”
“Nothing is immovable,” said his companion. “But it will take them weeks to make it passable, and even then the stairways were designed to be defensible.”
“One way or the other, I shall not see it,” said Maric. “I leave today.”
“You are early, surely,” said his friend. “Marrissa and I also plan to leave. But not until the fourth wall falls.”
“First wall, fourth wall, what is the difference? All the more time to put distance between myself and this war. Ventria has need of builders. And their army is strong enough to hold the Nadir for years.”
“Perhaps. But I will wait.”
“Don’t wait too long, my friend,” said Maric.
Back at the keep Rek lay staring at the ornate ceiling. The bed was comfortable, and Virae’s naked form nestled into him, her head resting on his shoulder. The meeting had finished two hours since, and he could not sleep. His mind was alive with plans, counterplans, and all the myriad problems of a city under siege. The debate had been acrimonious, and pinning down any of those politicians was like threading a needle under water. The consensus opinion was that Delnoch should surrender.
Only the red-faced Lentrian, Malphar, had backed Rek. That oily serpent, Shinell, had offered to lead a delegation to Ulric personally. And what of Beric, who felt himself tricked by fate in that his bloodline had included rulers of Delnoch for centuries, yet he had lost out by being a second son? Bitterness was deep within him. The lawyer, Backda, had said little, but his words were acid when they came.
“You seek to stop the sea with a leaking bucket.”
Rek had struggled to hold his temper. He had not seen any of them standing on the battlements with sword in h
and. Nor would they. Horeb had a saying that matched these men:
“In any broth, the scum always rises to the top.”
He had thanked them for their counsel and agreed to meet in five days time to answer their proposals.
Virae stirred beside him. Her arm moved the coverlet, exposing a rounded breast. Rek smiled and for the first time in days thought about something other than war.
Bowman and a thousand archers stood on the ramparts of Eldibar, watching the Nadir mass for the charge. Arrows were loosely notched to the string, and hats were tilted at a jaunty angle to keep the right eye in shadow against the rising sun.
The horde screamed its hatred and surged forward.
Bowman waited. He licked his dry lips.
“Now!” he yelled, smoothly drawing back the string to touch his right cheek. The arrow leapt free with a thousand others, to be lost within the surging mass below. Again and again they fired until their quivers were empty. Finally Caessa leapt to the battlements and fired her last arrow straight down at a man pushing a ladder against the wall. The shaft entered at the top of the shoulder and sheared through his leather jerkin, lancing through his lung and lodging in his belly. He dropped without a sound.
Grappling irons clattered to the ramparts.
“Back!” yelled Bowman, and began to run across the open ground, across the fire-gully bridges and the trench of oil-soaked brush. Ropes were lowered, and the archers swiftly scaled them. Back at Eldibar the first of the Nadir had gained the wall. For long moments they milled in confusion before they spotted the archers clambering to safety. Within minutes the tribesmen had gathered several thousand strong. They hauled their ladders over Eldibar and advanced on Musif. Then arrows of fire arced over the open ground to vanish within the oil-soaked brush. Instantly thick smoke welled from the gully, closely followed by roaring flames twice the height of a man.
The Nadir fell back. The Drenai cheered.
The brush blazed for over an hour, and the four thousand warriors manning Musif stood down. Some lay in groups on the grass; others wandered to the three mess halls for a second breakfast. Many sat in the shade of the rampart towers.
Druss strolled among the men, swapping jests here and there, accepting a chunk of black bread from one man, an orange from another. He saw Rek and Virae sitting alone near the eastern cliff and wandered across to join them.
“So far, so good!” he said, easing his huge frame to the grass. “They’re not sure what to do now. Their orders were to take the wall, and they’ve accomplished that.”
“What next, do you think?” asked Rek.
“The old boy himself,” answered Druss. “He will come. And he’ll want to talk.”
“Should I go down?” asked Rek.
“Better if I do. The Nadir know me. Deathwalker. I’m part of their legends. They think I’m an ancient god of death stalking the world.”
“Are they wrong? I wonder,” said Rek, smiling.
“Maybe not. I never wanted it, you know. All I wanted was to get my wife back. Had slavers not taken her, I would have been a farmer. Of that I am sure, though Rowena doubted it. There are times when I do not much like what I am.”
“I’m sorry, Druss. It was a jest,” said Rek. “I do not see you as a death god. You are a man and a warrior. But most of all a man.”
“It’s not you, boy; your words only echo what I already feel. I shall die soon … Here at this Dros. And what will I have achieved in my life? I have no sons or daughters. No living kin … few friends. They will say, ‘Here lies Druss. He killed many and birthed none.’ ”
“They will say more than that,” said Virae, suddenly. “They’ll say, ‘Here lies Druss the Legend, who was never mean, petty, or needlessly cruel. Here was a man who never gave in, never compromised his ideals, never betrayed a friend, never despoiled a woman, and never used his strength against the weak.’ They’ll say, ‘He had no sons, but many a woman asleep with her babes slept more soundly for knowing Druss stood with the Drenai.’ They’ll say many, things, whitebeard. Through many generations they will say them, and men with no strength will find strength when they hear them.”
“That would be pleasant,” said the old man, smiling.
The morning drifted by, and the Dros shone in the warm sunlight. One of the soldiers produced a flute and began to play a lilting springtime melody that echoed down the valley, a song of joy in a time of death.
At midday Rek and Druss were summoned to the ramparts. The Nadir had fallen back to Eldibar, but at the center of the killing ground was a man seated on a huge purple rug. He was eating a meal of dates and cheese and sipping wine from a golden goblet. Thrust into the ground behind him was a standard sporting a wolf’s head.
“He’s certainly got style,” said Rek, admiring the man instantly.
“I ought to go down before he finishes the food,” said Druss. “We lose face as we wait.”
“Be careful!” urged Rek.
“There are only a couple of thousand of them,” answered Druss with a broad wink.
Hand over hand, he lowered himself to the Eldibar ground below and strolled toward the diner.
“I am a stranger in your camp,” he said.
The man looked up. His face was broad and clean-cut, the jaw firm. The eyes were violet and slanted beneath dark brows; they were eyes of power.
“Welcome, stranger, and eat,” said the man. Druss sat cross-legged opposite him. Slowly the man unbuckled his lacquered black breastplate and removed it, laying it carefully at his side. Then he removed his black greaves and forearm straps. Druss noted the powerful muscles of the man’s arms and the smooth, catlike movements. A warrior born, thought the old man.
“I am Ulric of the Wolfshead.”
“I am Druss of the Ax.”
“Well met! Eat.”
Druss took a handful of dates from the silver platter before him and ate slowly. He followed this with goat’s milk cheese and washed it down with a mouthful of red wine. His eyebrows rose.
“Lentrian red,” said Ulric. “Without poison.”
Druss grinned. “I’m a hard man to kill. It’s a talent.”
“You did well. I am glad for you.”
“I was grieved to hear of your son. I have no sons, but I know how hard it is for a man to lose a loved one.”
“It was a cruel blow,” said Ulric. “He was a good boy. But then, all life is cruel, is it not? A man must rise above grief.”
Druss was silent, helping himself to more dates.
“You are a great man, Druss. I am sorry you are to die here.”
“Yes. It would be nice to live forever. On the other hand, I am beginning to slow down. Some of your men have been getting damn close to marking me—it’s an embarrassment.”
“There is a prize for the man who kills you. One hundred horses, picked from my own stable.”
“How does the man prove to you that he slew me?”
“He brings me your head and two witnesses to the blow.”
“Don’t allow that information to reach my men. They will do it for fifty horses.”
“I think not! You have done well. How is the new earl settling in?”
“He would have preferred a less noisy welcome, but I think he is enjoying himself. He fights well.”
“As do you all. It will not be enough, however.”
“We shall see,” said Druss. “These dates are very good.”
“Do you believe you can stop me? Tell me truly, Deathwalker.”
“I would like to have served under you,” said Druss. “I have admired you for years. I have served many kings. Some were weak, others willful. Many were fine men, but you … you have the mark of greatness. I think you will get what you want eventually. But not while I live.”
“You will not live long, Druss,” said Ulric gently. “We have a shaman who knows these things. He told me that he saw you standing at the gates of Wall Four—Sumitos, I believe it is called—and the grinning skull of death floated above
your shoulders.”
Druss laughed aloud. “Death always floats where I stand, Ulric! I am he who walks with death. Does your shaman not know your own legends? I may choose to die at Sumitos. I may choose to die at Musif. But wherever I choose to die, know this: As I walk into the Valley of Shadows, I will take with me more than a few Nadir for company on the road.”
“They will be proud to walk with you. Go in peace.”
23
Bloody day followed bloody day, an endless succession of hacking, slaying, and dying, skirmishes carrying groups of Nadir warriors out onto the killing ground before Musif and threatening to trap the Drenai army on the walls. But always they were beaten back and the line held. Slowly, as Serbitar had predicted, the strong were separated from the weak. It was easy to tell the difference. By the sixth week only the strong survived. Three thousand Drenai warriors either were dead or had been removed from the battle with horrifying injuries.
Druss strode like a giant along the ramparts day after day, defying all advice to rest, daring his weary body to betray him, drawing on hidden reserves of strength from his warrior’s soul. Rek also was building a name, though he cared not. Twice his baresark attacks had dismayed the Nadir and shattered their line. Orrin still fought with the remnants of Karnak, now only eighteen strong. Gilad fought beside him on the right, and on his left was Bregan, still using the captured ax. Hogun had gathered fifty of the legion about him and stood back from the rampart line, ready to fill in any gap that developed.
The days were full of agony and the screams of the dying. And the list in the hall of the dead grew longer at every sunrise. Dun Pinar fell, his throat torn apart by a jagged dagger. Bar Britan was found under a mound of Nadir bodies, a broken lance jutting from his chest. Tall Antaheim of the Thirty was struck by a javelin in the back. Elicas of the legion was trapped by the rampart towers as he hurled himself at the Nadir, screaming defiance, and fell beneath a score of blades. Jorak, the huge outlaw, had his brains dashed out by a club and, dying, grabbed two Nadir warriors and threw himself from the battlements, dragging them screaming to their deaths on the rocks below.