“Why was it allowed to lie here?”
“No one could open the door,” answered the albino.
“It was not locked,” said Rek.
“Not to you.”
“What does that mean?”
“The meaning is clear: You and no other were meant to open the door.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Shall I fetch you the sword?” asked Serbitar.
“If you wish.”
Serbitar walked to the crystal cube, drew his sword, and hammered at the block. Nothing happened. His blade clanged back into the air, leaving no mark upon the crystal.
“You try,” said Serbitar.
“May I borrow your sword?”
“Just reach for the hilt.”
Rek moved forward and lowered his hand to the crystal, waiting for the cold touch of glass, which never came. His hand sank into the block, his fingers curling around the hilt. Effortlessly he drew the blade forth.
“Is it a trick?” he asked.
“Probably. But it is none of mine. Look!” The albino put his hands on the now-empty crystal and heaved himself up upon it. “Pass your hands below me,” he said.
Rek obeyed; for him the crystal did not exist.
“What does it mean?”
“I do not know, my friend. Truly I do not.”
“Then how did you know it was here?”
“That is even more difficult to explain. Do you remember that day in the grove when I could not be awakened?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I traveled far across the planet and even beyond, but in my travels I breasted the currents of time and I visited Delnoch. It was night, and I saw myself leading you through the hall and down to this room. I saw you take the sword, and I heard you ask the question you have just asked. And then I heard my answer.”
“So, at this moment you are hovering above us listening?”
“Yes.”
“I know you well enough to believe you, but answer me this: That may explain how you are here now with me, but how did the first Serbitar know the armor was here?”
“I genuinely cannot explain it, Rek. It is like looking into the reflection of a mirror and watching it go on and on into infinity. But I have found in my studies that often there is more to this life than we reckon with.”
“Meaning?”
“There is the power of the Source.”
“I am in no mood for religion.”
“Then let us instead say that all those centuries ago Egel looked into the future and saw this invasion, so he left his armor here, guarded by magic which only you—as the earl—could break.”
“Is your spirit image still observing us?”
“Yes.”
“Does it know of my loss?”
“Yes.”
“Then you knew she would die?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“It would have been a waste of joy.”
“What does that mean?” said Rek, anger building inside him and pushing away the grief.
“It means that were you a farmer anticipating a long life, I might have warned you, to prepare you. But you are not; you are fighting a savage horde, and your life is at risk every day. As was Virae’s. You knew that she might die. Had I told you this was certain, not only would it have gained you nothing, it also would have robbed you of the joy you had.”
“I could have saved her.”
“No, you could not.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Why would I lie? Why would I wish her dead?”
Rek did not answer. The word “dead” entered his heart and crushed his soul. Tears welled in him again, and he fought them back, concentrating on the armor.
“I will wear that tomorrow,” he said through gritted teeth. “I will wear it and die.”
“Perhaps,” answered the albino.
26
The dawn was clear, the air fresh and sweet as two thousand Drenai warriors prepared for the assault on Kania. Below them the Nadir shamans were moving through the ranks of tribesmen, sprinkling the blood of chickens and sheep on the bared blades that the warriors held before them.
Then the Nadir massed, and a great swelling chant came from thousands of throats as the horde moved forward, bearing ladders, knotted ropes, and grappling irons. Rek watched from the center of the line. He lifted the bronze helm and placed it over his head, buckling the chin strap. To his left was Serbitar, to his right Menahem. Others of the Thirty were spread along the wall.
And the carnage began.
Three assaults were turned back before the Nadir gained a foothold on the battlements. And that was short-lived. Some two score tribesmen breached the defense, only to find themselves faced with a madman in bronze and two silver ghosts who strode among them dealing death. There was no defense against these men, and the bronze devil’s sword could cut through any shield or armor; men died under that terrible blade screaming as if their souls were ablaze. That night the Nadir captains carried their reports to the tent of Ulric, and the talk was all of the new force upon the battlements. Even the legendary Druss seemed more human—laughing as he did in the face of Nadir swords—than this golden machine of destruction.
“We felt like dogs being beaten from his path with a stick,” muttered one man. “Or weaponless children being thrust aside by an elder.”
Ulric was troubled, and though he lifted their spirits at last by pointing out again and again that it was merely a man in bronze armor, after the captains had left, he summoned the ancient shaman, Nosta Khan, to his tent. Squatting before a blazing brazier of coals, the old man listened to his warlord, nodding the while. At last he bowed and closed his eyes.
Rek was asleep, exhausted by battle and sorrow. The nightmare came slowly, enveloping him like black smoke. His dream eyes opened, and before him was a cave mouth, black and terrible. Fear emanated from it like a tangible force. Behind him was a pit, stretching down into the fiery bowels of the earth, from which came strange sounds, whimpers, and screams. In his hand was no sword, upon his body no armor. A slithering sound came from the pit, and Rek turned to see oozing up from it a gigantic worm, slime-covered and putrescent. The stench made him reel back. The mouth of the worm was huge and could swallow a man with ease; around it were triple rows of pointed fangs, and lodged between one set was the arm of a man, bloody and broken. Rek backed toward the cave mouth, but a hissing made him spin around. From the blackness of the cave came a spider, its giant maw dripping poison. Within its mouth was a face, green and shimmering, and from the mouth of the face flowed words of power. As each word sounded, Rek grew weaker, until he could hardly stand.
“Are you just going to stand there all day?” said a voice.
Rek turned to see Virae by his side, dressed in a flowing gown of white. She smiled at him.
“You’re back!” he said, reaching out for her.
“No time for that, you fool! Here! Take your sword.” Her arms reached toward him, and the bronze sword of Egel appeared in her hands. A shadow fell across them as Rek snatched the sword, spinning around to face the worm that was towering above them. The blade swept through three feet of the creature’s neck as the mouth descended, and green gore spouted from the wound. Rek struck again and again until the creature, almost cut in two, flopped backward into the pit.
“The spider!” yelled Virae, and he spun once more. The beast was upon him, its huge mouth mere paces away. Rek hurled his sword into the gaping maw, and it flew like an arrow to split the green face within like a melon. The spider reared into the air and toppled backward. A breeze blew up, and the beast became black smoke that drifted into the air and then was gone.
“I suppose you would have gone on standing there if I hadn’t come along,” said Virae.
“I think so,” answered Rek.
“You fool,” she said, smiling, and he moved forward tentatively, holding out his arms.
“Can I touch you??
?? he asked.
“An odd request for a husband to make.”
“You won’t disappear?”
Her smile faded. “Not yet, my love.”
His arms crushed her to him, tears spilling from his eyes. “I thought you were gone forever. I thought I would never see you again.”
For a while they said nothing but merely stood together embracing.
Finally she gently pushed him away. “You must go back,” she said.
“Back?”
“To Delnoch. You are needed there.”
“I need you more than I need Delnoch. Can we not stay here? Together?”
“No. There is no ‘here.’ It doesn’t exist. Only you and I are real. Now you must return.”
“I will see you again, won’t I?”
“I love you, Rek. I will always love you.”
He awoke with a start, eyes focusing on the stars outside his window. Her face could still be seen, fading against the midnight sky.
“Virae!” he shouted. “Virae!” The door opened, and Serbitar ran to the bedside.
“Rek, you’re dreaming. Wake up!”
“I am awake. I saw her. She came to me in a dream and rescued me.”
“All right, but she’s gone now. Look at me.”
Rek gazed into Serbitar’s green eyes. He saw concern there, but this soon faded and the albino smiled.
“You are all right,” said Serbitar. “Tell me of the dream.”
Afterward Serbitar questioned him about the face. He wanted every detail that could be remembered. Finally he smiled.
“I think you were the victim of Nosta Khan,” he said. “But you held him off—a rare feat, Rek.”
“Virae came to me. It was not a dream?”
“I think not. The Source released her for a time.”
“I would like to believe that, I truly would.”
“I think you should. Have you looked for your sword?”
Rek swung out of the bed and padded over to the table where his armor lay. The sword was gone.
“How?” whispered Rek. Serbitar shrugged.
“It will return. Never fear!”
Serbitar lit the candles and stoked the fire to life in the hearth. As he finished, a gentle tapping came at the door.
“Come in,” called Rek.
A young officer entered, bearing the sword of Egel.
“I am sorry to disturb you, sir, but I saw the light. One of the sentries found your sword upon the Kania battlements, so I brought it here. I wiped the blood from it first, sir.”
“Blood?”
“Yes, sir. It was covered in blood. Strange how wet it still was.”
“Thank you again.” Rek turned to Serbitar. “I don’t understand.”
In the tent of Ulric the candles flickered. The warlord sat transfixed, staring at the headless body on the floor before him. The sight was one that would haunt him for the rest of his days. One moment the shaman had been sitting in trance before the coals, the next a red line had been drawn across his neck and his head had toppled into the fire.
Finally Ulric called his guards to remove the corpse, having first wiped his own sword blade across the bloody neck.
“He angered me,” he told the guards.
The Nadir chieftain left his tent and walked out under the stars. First the legendary axman, then the warriors in silver. Now a bronze devil whose magic was greater than Nosta Khan’s. Why did he feel this chill in his soul? Dros Delnoch was just another fortress. Had he not conquered a hundred such? Once he passed the gates of Delnoch, the Drenai empire was his. How could they hold against him? The answer was simple: They could not! One man—or devil—in bronze could not stem the Nadir tribes.
But what new surprises does this Dros hold? he asked himself.
He glanced up at the towering walls of Kania.
“You will fall!” he shouted. His voice echoed through the valley. “I shall bring you down!”
In the ghostly light of the predawn Gilad made his way from the mess canteen with a bowl of hot broth and a chunk of crusty black bread. Slowly he threaded his way through the ranks of men lining the walls until he came to his own position above the blocked postern tunnel. Togi was already there, sitting hunched and round-shouldered with his back to the wall. He nodded as Gilad squatted beside him, then spit on the whetstone in his callused hand and continued to sharpen his long cavalry saber.
“Feels like rain,” said Gilad.
“Aye. It’ll slow their climbing.”
Togi never initiated a conversation yet always found a point others would miss. Theirs was a strange friendship: Togi, a taciturn black rider of fifteen years’ standing, and Gilad, a volunteer farmer from the Sentran Plain. Gilad could not remember quite how they had come into contact, for Togi’s face was scarcely memorable. He had just grown aware of the man. Men of the legion had now been spread along the wall, joining other groups. No one had said why, but it was obvious to Gilad: These were the warrior elite, and they added steel to the defense wherever they were placed. Togi was a vicious warrior who fought silently. No screams or war cries, merely a ruthless economy of movement and rare skill that left Nadir warriors dead or dismembered.
Togi did not know his own age, only that as a youth he had joined the riders as a stable boy and later had won his black cloak in the Sathuli wars. He had had a wife years back, but she had left him, taking their son with her. He had no idea where they had gone and professed not to care much. He had no friends that he spoke of and cared little for authority. Gilad had asked him once what he thought of the legion officers.
“They fight as well as the rest of us,” he said. “But it is the only thing we will ever do together.”
“What do you mean?” asked Gilad.
“Nobility. You can fight or die for them, but you will never be one of them. To them we don’t exist as people.”
“Druss is accepted,” Gilad pointed out.
“Aye. By me also,” answered Togi, a fierce gleam in his dark eyes. “That’s a man, that one. But it alters nothing. Look at the silver men who fight under the albino—not one of them is from a lowly village. An earl’s son leads them; nobles all of them.”
“Then why do you fight for them if you hate them so much?”
“Hate them? I don’t hate them. It’s just the way life is. I don’t hate anybody, and they don’t hate me. We understand each other, that’s all. To me the officers are no different from the Nadir; they’re both different races. And I fight because that’s what I do—I’m a soldier.”
“Did you always want to be a soldier?”
“What else was there?”
Gilad spread his hands. “Anything you choose.”
“I’d like to have been a king.”
“What kind of king?”
“A bloody tyrant!” answered Togi. He winked but did not smile. He rarely smiled, and when he did, it was the merest flicker of movement around the eyes.
The day before, as the Earl of Bronze had made his dramatic entrance on to the walls, Gilad had nudged Togi and pointed.
“New armor—it suits him,” said the rider.
“It looks old,” said Gilad.
Togi merely shrugged. “So long as it does the job …”
That day Togi’s saber had snapped six inches above the hilt. He had hurled himself on the leading Nadir and rammed the broken blade into his neck, snatching the man’s short sword and laying about him ferociously. His speed of thought and quicksilver movements amazed Gilad. Later, during a lull between assaults, he had retrieved a second saber from a dead soldier.
“You fight well,” Gilad had said.
“I’m alive,” Togi had answered.
“Is that the same thing?”
“It is on these walls, though good men have fallen. But that is a matter of luck. The bad or the clumsy do not need bad luck to kill them, and even good luck wouldn’t save them for long.”
Now Togi stowed the whetstone in his pouch and wiped the curving blade
with an oiled cloth. The steel shone blue-white in the gathering light.
Farther along the line Druss was chatting to the warriors, lifting their spirits with jests. He made his way toward them, and Gilad pushed himself to his feet, but Togi remained where he was. Druss, white beard ruffled by the breeze, stopped and spoke quietly to Gilad.
“I’m glad you stayed,” he said.
“I had nowhere to go,” answered Gilad.
“No. Not many men appreciate that,” said the old warrior. He glanced down at the crouching rider. “I see you there, Togi, you young pup. Still alive, then?”
“So far,” he said, looking up.
“Stay that way,” said Druss, and walked on along the line.
“That is a great man,” said Togi. “A man to die for.”
“You knew him before this?”
“Yes.” Togi would say no more, and Gilad was about to press him, when the blood-chilling sound of the Nadir war chant signaled the dawn of one more red day.
Below the walls, among the Nadir, was a giant called Nogusha. Ulric’s champion for ten years, he had been sent forward with the first wave, and with him as personal body-guards were twenty Wolfshead tribesmen. Their duty was to protect him until he could meet and kill Deathwalker. Strapped to his back was a three-foot sword, the blade six inches wide; by his side were two daggers in twin sheaths. An inch over six feet, Nogusha was the tallest warrior in the Nadir ranks and the most deadly, a veteran of three hundred hand-to-hand contests.
The horde reached the walls. Ropes swirled over the battlements, and ladders rattled on the gray stone. Nogusha barked commands to the men around him, and three tribesmen climbed above him, the others swarming alongside. The bodies of the first two above him plummeted down to the rocks below, but the third created a space for Nogusha before being hacked to death. As Nogusha gripped the battlements with one huge hand, his sword flashed into the air, while on either side of him the bodyguards closed in. The massive sword cleaved a passage as the group formed a wedge driving toward Druss some twenty paces distant. Although the Drenai closed in behind Nogusha’s band, blocking the wall, none could approach the giant tribesman. Men died beneath his flashing broadsword. On either side of him his bodyguards were faring less well: one by one they fell until at last only Nogusha still stood. By now he was only paces away from Druss, who turned and saw him, battling alone and soon to fall. Their eyes met, and understanding was there instantly. This was a man Druss would be hard put not to recognize: Nogusha the swordsman, Ulric’s executioner, a man whose deeds were the fabric of fresh Nadir legends, a living, younger counterpart to Druss himself.