The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend (4 page)

“Ah, the joys of married life!” said Pilan.

Druss laughed. “You should have tried harder to woo her. Too late to be jealous now.”

“She wouldn’t have me, Druss. She said she was waiting for a man whose face would curdle milk and that if she married me she would spend the rest of her life wondering which of her pretty friends would steal me from her. It seems her dream was to find the world’s ugliest man.”

His smile faded as he saw the expression on the woodsman’s face, and the cold gleam that appeared in his pale eyes. “Only jesting,” said Pilan swiftly, the color ebbing from his face.

Druss took a deep breath and, remembering his father’s warning, fought down his anger. “I am not … good with jests,” he said, the words tasting like bile in his mouth.

“No harm done,” said Pilan’s brother, moving to sit alongside the giant. “But if you don’t mind my saying so, Druss, you need to develop a sense of humor. We all make jests at the expense of our … friends. It means nothing.”

Druss merely nodded and turned his attention to the pie. Yorath was right. Rowena had said exactly the same words, but from her it was easy to take criticism. With her he felt calm and the world had color and joy. He finished the food and stood. “The girls should have been here by now,” he said.

“I can hear horses,” said Pilan, rising.

“They’re coming fast,” Yorath added.

Tailia and Berys came running into the clearing, their faces showing fear, their heads turning toward the unseen horsemen. Druss snatched his axe from the stump and ran toward them as Tailia, looking back, stumbled and fell.

Six horsemen rode into sight, armor gleaming in the sunlight. Druss saw raven-winged helms, lances, and swords. The horses were lathered and, on seeing the three youths, the warriors shouted battle cries and spurred their mounts toward them.

Pilan and Yorath sprinted away toward the right. Three riders swung their horses to give chase, but the remaining three came on toward Druss.

The young man stood calmly, the axe held loosely across his naked chest. Directly in front of him was a felled tree. The first of the riders, a lancer, leaned forward in the saddle as his gelding jumped over the fallen beech. At that moment Druss moved, sprinting forward and swinging his axe in a murderous arc. As the horse landed, the axe-blade hissed over its head, plunging into the chest of the lancer to splinter his breastplate and smash his ribs to shards. The blow hammered the man from the saddle. Druss tried to wrench the axe clear, but the blade was caught by the fractured armor. A sword slashed down at the youth’s head and Druss dived and rolled. As a horseman moved in close, he hurled himself from the ground, grabbing the stallion’s right foreleg. With one awesome heave he toppled horse and rider. Hurdling the fallen tree, he ran to where the other two youths had left their hatchets. Scooping up the first, he turned as a raider galloped toward him. Druss’s arm came back, then snapped forward.
The hatchet sliced through the air, the iron head crunching into the man’s teeth. He swayed in the saddle. Druss ran forward to drag him from the horse. The raider, having dropped his lance, tried to draw a dagger. Druss slapped it from his hand, delivered a bone-breaking punch to the warrior’s chin, and then, snatching up the dagger, rammed it into the man’s unprotected throat.

“Look out, Druss!” yelled Tailia. Druss spun, just as a sword flashed for his belly. Parrying the blade with his forearm, he thundered a right cross which took the attacker full on the jaw, spinning him from his feet. Druss leapt on the man, one huge hand grabbing his chin, the other his brow. With one savage twist, Druss heard the swordsman’s neck snap like a dry stick.

Moving swiftly to the first man he had killed, Druss tore the felling axe clear of the breastplate as Tailia ran from her hiding place in the bushes. “They are attacking the village,” she said, tears in her eyes.

Pilan came running into the clearing, a lancer behind him. “Swerve!” bellowed Druss. But Pilan was too terrified to obey and he ran straight on—until the lance pierced his back, exiting in a bloody spray from his chest. The youth cried out, then slumped to the ground. Druss roared in anger and raced forward. The lancer desperately tried to wrench his weapon clear of the dying boy. Druss swung wildly with the axe, which glanced from the rider’s shoulder and plunged into the horse’s back. The animal whinnied in pain and reared before falling to the earth, its legs flailing. The rider scrambled clear, blood gushing from his shoulder, and tried to run, but Druss’s next blow almost decapitated him.

Hearing a scream, Druss began to run toward the sound and found Yorath struggling with one raider; the second was kneeling on the ground, blood streaming from a wound in his head. The body of Berys was beside him, a blood-smeared stone in her hand. The swordsman grappling with Yorath suddenly headbutted the youth, sending Yorath back several paces. The sword came up.

Druss shouted, trying to distract the warrior. But to no avail. The weapon lanced into Yorath’s side. The swordsman dragged the blade clear and turned toward Druss.

“Now your time to die, farm boy!” he said.

“In your dreams!” snarled the woodsman. Swinging the axe over his head, Druss charged. The swordsman sidestepped to his
right—but Druss had been waiting for the move, and with all the power of his mighty shoulders he wrenched the axe, changing its course. It clove through the man’s collarbone, smashing the shoulder blade and ripping into his lungs. Tearing the axe loose, Druss turned from the body to see the first wounded warrior struggling to rise; jumping forward, he struck him a murderous blow to the neck.

“Help me!” called Yorath.

“I’ll send Tailia,” Druss told him, and began to run back through the trees.

Reaching the crest of the hill, he gazed down on the village. He could see scattered bodies, but no sign of raiders. For a moment he thought the villagers had beaten them back … but there was no movement at all.

“Rowena!” he yelled. “Rowena!”

Druss ran down the slope. He fell and rolled, losing his grip on the felling-axe, but scrambling to his feet he pounded on—down into the meadow, across the flat, through the half-finished gates. Bodies lay everywhere. Rowena’s father, the former bookkeeper Voren, had been stabbed through the throat, and blood was staining the earth beneath him. Breathing hard, Druss stopped, and stared around the settlement square.

Old women, young children, and all the men were dead. As he stumbled on, he saw the golden-haired child, Kiris, beloved of all the villagers, lying sprawled in death alongside her rag doll. The body of an infant lay against one building, a bloodstain on the wall above showing how it had been slain.

He found his father lying in the open with four dead raiders around him. Patica was beside him, a hammer in her hand, her plain brown woolen dress drenched in blood. Druss fell to his knees by his father’s body. There were terrible wounds to the chest and belly, and his left hand was almost severed at the wrist. Bress groaned and opened his eyes.

“Druss.…”

“I am here, Father.”

“They took the young women.… Rowena … was among them.”

“I’ll find her.”

The dying man glanced to his right at the dead woman beside him. “She was a brave lass; she tried to help me. I should
have … loved her better.” Bress sighed, then choked as blood flowed into his throat. He spat it clear. “There is … a weapon. In the house … far wall, beneath the boards. It has a terrible history. But … but you will need it.”

Druss stared down at the dying man and their eyes met. Bress lifted his right hand. Druss took it. “I did my best, boy,” said his father.

“I know.” Bress was fading fast, and Druss was not a man of words. Instead he lifted his father into his arms and kissed his brow, hugging him close until the last breath of life rasped from the broken body.

Then he pushed himself to his feet and entered his father’s home. It had been ransacked—cupboards hauled open, drawers pulled from the dressers, rugs ripped from the walls. But by the far wall the hidden compartment was undiscovered, and Druss prized open the boards and hauled out the chest that lay in the dust below the floor. It was locked. Moving through into his father’s workshop, he returned with a large hammer and a chisel which he used to pry off the hinges. Then he took hold of the lid and wrenched it clear, the brass lock twisting and tearing free.

Inside, wrapped in oilskin, was an axe. And such an axe! Druss unwrapped it reverently. The black metal haft was as long as a man’s arm, the double heads shaped like the wings of a butterfly. He tested the edges with his thumb; the weapon was as sharp as his father’s shaving-knife. Silver runes were inscribed on the haft, and though Druss could not read them, he knew the words etched there. For this was the awful axe of Bardan, the weapon that had slain men, women, and even children during the reign of terror. The words were part of the dark folklore of the Drenai.

Snaga, the Sender, the blades of no return

He lifted the axe clear, surprised by its lightness and its perfect balance in his hand.

Beneath it in the chest was a black leather jerkin, the shoulders reinforced by strips of silver steel; two black leather gauntlets, also protected by shaped metal knuckle-guards; and a pair of black, knee-length boots. Beneath the clothes was a small pouch, and within it Druss found eighteen silver pieces.

Kicking off his soft leather shoes, Druss pulled on the boots
and donned the jerkin. At the bottom of the chest was a helm of black metal, edged with silver; upon the brow was a small silver axe flanked by silver skulls. Druss settled the helm into place, then lifted the axe once more. Gazing down at his reflection in the shining blades, he saw a pair of cold, cold blue eyes, empty, devoid of feeling.

Snaga, forged in the Elder days, crafted by a master. The blade had never been sharpened, for it had never dulled despite the many battles and skirmishes that filled the life of Bardan. And even before that the blade had been in use. Bardan had acquired the battle-axe during the Second Vagrian War, looting it from an old barrow in which lay the bones of an ancient battle king, a monster of Legend, Caras the Axeman.

“It is an evil weapon,” Bress had once told his son. “All the men who ever bore it were killers with no souls.”

“Why do you keep it then?” asked his thirteen-year-old son.

“It cannot kill where I keep it,” was all Bress had answered.

Druss stared at the blade. “Now you can kill,” he whispered.

Then he heard the sound of a walking horse. Slowly he rose.

2

S
HADAK’S HORSES WERE
skittish, the smell of death unnerving the beasts. He had bought his own three-year-old from a farmer south of Corialis and the gelding had not been trained for war. The four mounts he had taken from the raiders were less nervous, but still their ears were back and their nostrils flaring. He spoke soothingly to them and rode on.

Shadak had been a soldier for most of his adult life. He had seen death—and he thanked the gods that it still had the power to stir his emotions. Sorrow and anger vied in his heart as he gazed upon the still corpses, the children and the old women.

None of the houses had been put to the torch—the smoke would be seen for miles, and could have brought a troop of lancers. He gently tugged on the reins. A golden-haired child lay against the wall of a building, a doll beside it. Slavers had no time for children, for they had no market in Mashrapur. Young Drenai women between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five were still popular in the eastern kingdoms of Ventria, Sherak, Dospilis, and Naashan.

Shadak touched heels to the gelding. There was no point in remaining in this place; the trail led south.

A young warrior stepped from one of the buildings, startling his horse, which reared and whinnied. Shadak calmed it and gazed upon the man. Although of average height, he was powerfully built, his huge shoulders and mighty arms giving the impression of a giant. He wore a black leather jerkin and helm and carried a fearful axe. Shadak glanced swiftly around the corpse-strewn settlement. But there was no sign of a horse.