Drenai Saga 01 - Legend (33 page)

“I’ll be watching you. Don’t die, do you hear me?”

“You watch yourself. I’ll pay you with Deathwalker’s horses.”

As the men climbed higher, more tribesmen filled the rope beneath him. Tsubodai glanced down.

“Hey, you!” he called. “Not a lice-ridden Green, are you?”

“From the smell you must be Wolfshead,” replied the climber, grinning.

Nakrash scaled the battlements, dragging his sword clear and then turning to pull Tsubodai alongside him. The attackers had forced a wedge through the Drenai line, and still neither Tsubodai nor Nakrash could join the action.

“Move away! Make room!” called the man behind them.

“You wait there goat breath,” said Tsubodai. “I’ll just ask the round eyes to help you over. Hey, Nakrash, stretch those long legs of yours and tell me where Deathwalker is.”

Nakrash pointed to the right. “I think you will soon get a chance at those horses. He looks closer than before.” Tsubodai leapt lightly to the ramparts, straining to see the old man in action.

“Those Greens are just stepping up and asking for his ax, the fools.” But no one heard him above the clamor.

The thick wedge of men ahead of them was thinning fast, and Nakrash leapt into a gap and slashed open the throat of a Drenai soldier who was trying desperately to free his sword from a Nadir belly. Tsubodai was soon beside him, hacking and cutting at the tall round-eyed southerners.

Battle lust swept over him, as it had during ten years of warfare under Ulric’s banner. He had been a youngster when the first battle had begun, tending his father’s goats on the granite steppes far to the north. Ulric had been a war leader for only a few years at that time. He had subdued the Long Monkey tribe and offered its men the chance to ride with his forces under their own banner. They had refused and died to a man. Tsubodai remembered that day: Ulric had personally tied their chieftain to two horses and ordered him torn apart. Eight hundred men had been beheaded, and their armor handed over to youngsters like Tsubodai.

On the next raid he had taken part in the first charge. Ulric’s brother, Gat-sun, had praised him highly and given him a shield of stretched cowhide edged with brass. He had lost it in a knucklebone game the same night, but he still remembered the gift with affection. Poor Gat-sun! Ulric had had him executed the following year for trying to lead a rebellion. Tsubodai had ridden against him and had been among the loudest to cheer as his head fell. Now, with seven wives and forty horses Tsubodai was, by any reckoning, a rich man. And still to see thirty.

Surely the gods loved him.

A spear grazed his shoulder. His sword snaked out, half severing the arm. Oh, how the gods loved him! He blocked a slashing cut with his shield.

Nakrash came to his rescue, disemboweling the attacker, who fell screaming to the ground to vanish beneath the feet of the warriors pushing from behind.

To his right the Nadir line gave way, and he was pushed back as Nakrash took a spear in the side. Tsubodai’s blade slashed the air, taking the lancer high in the neck; blood spurted, and the man fell back. Tsubodai glanced at Nakrash, lying at his feet writhing, his hands grasping the slippery lance shaft.

Leaning down, he pulled his friend clear of the action. There was nothing more he could do, for Nakrash was dying. It was a shame and put a pall on the day for the little tribesman. Nakrash had been a good companion for the last two years. Looking up, he saw a black-garbed figure with a white beard cleaving his way forward, a terrible ax of silver steel in his blood-splashed hands.

Tsubodai forgot about Nakrash in an instant. All he could see were Ulric’s horses. He pushed forward to meet the ax-man, watching his movements, his technique. He moved well for one so old, thought Tsubodai as the old man blocked a murderous cut and backhanded his ax across the face of a tribesman, who was hurled screaming over the battlements.

Tsubodai leapt forward, aiming a straight thrust for the old man’s belly. From then on it seemed to him that the scene was taking place under water. The white-bearded warrior turned his blue eyes on Tsubodai, and a chill of terror seeped into his blood. The ax seemed to float against his sword blade, sweeping the thrust aside, then the blade reversed and with an agonizing lack of speed cleaved Tsubodai’s chest.

His body slammed back into the ramparts and slid down to rest beside Nakrash. Looking down, he saw bright blood replaced by dark arterial gore. He pushed his hand into the gash, wincing as a broken rib twisted under his fist.

“Tsubodai?” said Nakrash softly. Somehow the sound carried to him.

He hunched his body over his friend, resting his head on his chest.

“I hear you, Nakrash.”

“You almost had the horses. Very close.”

“Damn good, that old man, hey?” said Tsubodai.

The noise of the battle receded. Tsubodai realized it had been replaced by a roaring in his ears, like the sea gathering shingle.

He remembered the gift Gat-sun had given him and the way he had spit in Ulric’s eye on the day of his execution.

Tsubodai grinned. He had liked Gat-sun.

He wished he had not cheered so loudly.

He wished …

Druss hacked at a rope and turned to face a Nadir warrior who was scrambling over the wall. Batting aside a sword thrust, he split the man’s skull, then stepped over the body and tackled a second warrior, gutting him with a backhand slash. Age vanished from him now. He was where he was always meant to be—at the heart of a savage battle. Behind him Rek and Serbitar fought as a pair, the slim albino’s slender rapier and Rek’s heavy longsword cutting and slashing.

Druss was joined now by several Drenai warriors, and they cleared their section of the wall. Along the wall on both sides similar moves were being repeated as the five thousand warriors held. The Nadir could feel it, too, as slowly the Drenai inched them back. The tribesmen fought with renewed determination, cutting and killing with savage skill. They had only to hold on until the siege tower ledges touched the walls, then thousands more of their comrades could swarm in to reinforce them. And they were but a few yards away.

Druss glanced behind. Bowman and his archers were fifty paces back, sheltering behind small fires that had been hastily lit. Druss raised his arm and waved at Hogun, who ordered a trumpet sounded.

Along the wall several hundred men pulled back from the fighting to gather up wax-sealed clay pots and hurl them at the advancing towers. Pottery smashed against wooden frames, splashing dark liquid to stain the wood.

Gilad, with sword in one hand and clay pot in the other, parried a thrust from a swarthy axman, crashed his sword into the other’s face, and threw his globe. He just had time to see it shatter in the open doorway at the top of the tower, where Nadir warriors massed, before two more invaders pressed forward to tackle him. The first he gutted with a stabbing thrust, only to find his sword trapped in the depths of the dying man’s belly. The second attacker screamed and slashed at Gilad, who released his grip on his sword hilt and leapt backward. Instantly another Drenai warrior intercepted the Nadir, blocked his attack, and all but beheaded him with a reverse stroke. Gilad tore his sword free of the Nadir corpse and smiled his thanks to Bregan.

“Not bad for a farmer!” yelled Gilad, forcing his way back into the battle and slicing through the guard of a bearded warrior carrying an iron-pitted club.

“Now, Bowman!” shouted Druss.

The outlaws notched arrows whose tips were partially covered by oil-soaked cloth and held them over the flames of the fires. Once the arrows were burning, they fired them over the battlements to thud into the siege tower walls. Flames sprang up instantly, and black smoke, dense and suffocating, was whipped upward by the morning breeze. One flaming arrow flashed through the open doorway of the tower where Gilad’s globe of oil had struck to pierce the leg of a Nadir warrior whose clothes were oil-drenched. Within seconds the man was a writhing, screaming human torch, blundering into his comrades and setting them ablaze.

More clay pots sailed through the air to feed the flames on the twenty towers, and the terrible stench of burning flesh was swept over the walls by the breeze.

With the smoke burning his eyes, Serbitar moved among the Nadir, his sword weaving an eldritch spell. Effortlessly he slew, a killing machine of deadly, awesome power. A tribesman reared up behind him, knife raised, but Serbitar twisted and opened the man’s throat in one smooth motion.

“Thank you, Brother,” he pulsed to Arbedark on Wall Two.

Rek, while lacking Serbitar’s grace and lethal speed, used his sword to no less effect, gripping it two-handed to bludgeon his way to victory beside Druss. A hurled knife glanced from his breastplate, slicing the skin over his bicep. He cursed and ignored the pain as he ignored other minor injuries received that day: the gashed thigh and the ribs bruised by a Nadir javelin that had been turned aside by his breastplate and mail shirt.

Five Nadir burst through the defenses and raced on toward the defenseless stretcher-bearers. Bowman skewered the first from forty paces, and Caessa the second, then Bar Britan raced to intercept them with two of his men. The battle was brief and fierce, the blood from Nadir corpses staining the earth.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, a change was coming over the battle. Fewer tribesmen were gaining the walls, for their comrades had been forced back to the battlements and there was little room to gain purchase. The Nadir now fought not to conquer but to survive. The tide of war—fickle at best—had turned, and they had become the defenders.

But the Nadir were grim men and brave. For they neither cried out nor sought to surrender but stood their ground and died fighting.

One by one they fell, until the last of the warriors was swept from the battlements to lie broken on the rocks below.

Silently now the Nadir army retired from the field, stopping out of bowshot range to slump to the ground and stare back at the Dros with dull, unremitting hatred. Black plumes of smoke rose from the smoldering towers, and the stink of death filled their nostrils.

Rek leaned on the battlements and rubbed his face with a bloodied hand. Druss walked forward, wiping Snaga clean with a piece of torn cloth. Blood flecked the iron gray of the old man’s beard, and he smiled at the new earl.

“You took my advice then, laddie?”

“Only just,” said Rek. “Still, we didn’t do too badly today.”

“This was just a sortie. The real test will come tomorrow.”

Druss was wrong. Three times more the Nadir attacked that day before dusk sent them back to their campfires, dejected and temporarily defeated. On the battlements weary men slumped to the bloody ground, tossing aside helmets and shields. Stretcher-bearers carried wounded men from the scene, while the corpses were left to lie for the time being, their needs no longer being urgent. Three teams were detailed to check the bodies of Nadir warriors. The dead were hurled from the battlements, and the living were dispatched with speed, their bodies pitched to the plain below.

Druss rubbed his tired eyes. His shoulder burned with fatigue, his knee was swollen, and his limbs felt leaden. But he had come through the day better than he had hoped. He glanced around. Some men lay sprawled asleep on the stone. Others merely sat with their backs to the walls, eyes glazed and minds wandering. There was little conversation. Farther along the wall the young earl was talking to the albino. They had both fought well, and the albino seemed fresh; only the blood that spattered his white cloak and breastplate gave evidence of his day’s work. Regnak, though, seemed tired enough for both. His face, gray with exhaustion, looked older, the lines more deeply carved. Dust, blood, and sweat merged together on his features, and a rough bandage on his forearm was beginning to drip blood to the stones.

“You’ll do, laddie,” said Druss softly.

“Druss, old horse, how are you feeling?” Bowman asked.

“I have had better days,” snarled the old man, lurching upright and gritting his teeth against the pain from his knee. The young archer almost made the mistake of offering Druss an arm to lean on but checked himself in time. “Come and see Caessa,” he said.

“About the last thing I need now is a woman. I’ll get some sleep,” answered Druss. “Just here will be fine.” With his back to the wall, he slid gently to the ground, keeping his injured knee straight. Bowman turned and walked back to the mess hall, where he found Caessa and explained the problem. After a short argument she gathered some linen while Bowman sought a jug of water, and in the gathering twilight they walked back to the battlements. Druss was asleep, but he awoke as they approached him.

The girl was a beauty, no doubt about that. Her hair was auburn but gold-tinted in the moonlight, matching the tawny flecks in her eyes. She stirred his blood as few women had the power to do now. But there was something else about her, something unattainable. She crouched down by him, her slender fingers probing gently at the swollen knee. Druss grunted as she dug more deeply. Then she removed his boot and rolled up the trouser leg. The knee was discolored and puffy, the veins in the calf below swollen and tender.

“Lie back,” she told him. Moving alongside him, left hand curled around his thigh, she lifted the leg and held his ankle in her right hand. Slowly she flexed the joint.

“There is water on the knee,” she said as she set down his leg and began to massage the joint. Druss closed his eyes. The sharpness of the pain receded to a dull ache. The minutes passed, and he dozed. She woke him with a light slap on the calf, and he found his knee was tightly bandaged.

“What other problems do you have?” she asked coolly.

“None,” he said.

“Don’t lie to me, old man. Your life depends on it.”

“My shoulder burns,” he admitted.

“You can walk now. Come with me to the hospital, and I will ease the pain.” She gestured to Bowman, who leaned forward and helped the axman to his feet. The knee felt good, better than it had in weeks.

“You have real skill, woman,” he said. “Real skill.”

“I know. Walk slowly—it will feel a little sore by the time we get there.”