David Gemmell: Waylander

'Vrend,' grunted Kai, tapping chest. 'Vrend.'

Danyal's legs felt weak, but she took a deep breath and advanced with the knife outstretched. 'Go away,' she said.

Kai pushed out a taloned finger and began scratching at the earth. He was not looking at her. Tensing herself to spring and plunge the knife into him, she suddenly saw what he was doing: in the hard-baked clay, he had sketched a stick-figured man holding a small crossbow.

'Waylander,' said Danyal. 'You know Waylander?'

'Vrend,' said Kai, nodding. He pointed at her. 'Anyal.'

'Danyal. Yes, yes. I am Danyal. Is Waylander alive?'

'Vrend.' Kai curled his hand into a fist as if it held a dagger. Then he stabbed his shoulder and hip.

'He has been badly hurt? Is that what you are saying?'

The monster merely looked at her.

'The Brotherhood warriors. Did they find him? Tall men in black armour.'

'Dead,' said Kai, mimicking the actions of a sword or axe. Danyal sheathed her knife and sat beside Kai, reaching out and touching his arm. 'Listen to me. The man who killed them – is he alive?'

'Dead,' said Kai.

Danyal sat back and closed her eyes.

A few months ago she had been performing a dance in front of a king. Weeks later she had fallen in love with that king's assassin. Now she sat in a lonely forest with a monster who could not speak. She began to laugh at the lunacy of it all.

Kai listened to the laughter, heard it change and become weeping and watched the tears flow on her pretty cheeks. So pretty, he thought. Like the Nadir girl he had watched. So small, fragile and bird-boned.

Way back, Kai had wanted one of these soft beings as a friend. And he had seized a girl as she washed clothes by a stream, carrying her into the mountains where he had gathered fruit and pretty stones. But when they had arrived Kai had found her broken and lifeless, her ribs in shards where his arm had encircled her. Not all his healing power could help her.

He didn't touch them any more …

Six hundred men hauled the ballista into place some fifty paces from the gate. Then six carts came into view, pulled by teams of oxen, the Drenai watched as men milled around the carts, unyoking the beasts. Then a winch was set up behind the ballista.

Karnak called Dundas, Jonat and several other nearby officers to him.

'Get the majority of the men back into the Keep. Leave only a token force on the walls,' he instructed.

Within minutes the men had streamed back through the Keep gates, taking up positions on the battlements.

Karnak opened a leather pouch at his side and removed a hard cake of rolled oats and sugar. Tearing off a chunk, he chewed it thoughtfully as the preparations continued.

Several soldiers had manoeuvred a massive boulder to the rear of the cart and were tying ropes around it. At a signal, four soldiers winched it into place on the ballista. An officer raised an arm, a lever was swiftly pulled and the ballista arm shot forward.

Karnak watched the boulder soar through the air, seeming to grow as it approached. With a thundering crash it struck the wall beside the gate tower. Rocks exploded and an entire section of battlements crumbled under the impact.

The general finished his cake and walked to the rampart edge, stepping up on to the crenellated wall.

'Up here, you whoresons!' he bellowed. Then he stepped back and walked slowly down the stairwell to the main battlements.

'Get off the wall, you men,' he shouted. 'Back to the Keep!'

As a second section of wall exploded some thirty feet from the general, rocks and stones shrieked past his head. Two men were hurled from the battlements to smash against the cobbled courtyard.

Karnak cursed and ran down the steps to them. Both were dead.

A boulder struck the gate tower, sheering off to crash into the field hospital roof. Timbers cracked, but the boulder did not penetrate. Twice more the gate tower endured against the missiles, but on the third strike the entire structure shifted and sagged. With a creaking groan, the stone blocks gave way and the tower slid to the right to crash behind the gates.

In the hospital, Evris was completing the stitching of a stomach wound in a young soldier. The boy had been lucky; no vital organs had been sliced by the thrusting sword and now all he had to fear was gangrene.

The wall came apart and Evris' last sight was of an immense black cloud engulfing the room. The slight surgeon was crushed against the far wall beside the body of his patient. Four more boulders struck the hospital and a fallen lantern spread fire through a linen basket. The flames licked out through a door frame, and up between the walls of the hospital. Soon the blaze grew into an inferno. Many of the wards had no windows and smoke killed hundreds of wounded men. Orderlies struggled at first to control the fire, and then to carry their patients to safety; they succeeded only in trapping themselves.

The gates splintered as a huge rock punched through the oak beams. A second missile finished the work and the massive bronze hinges buckled; the left-hand gate sagged and fell.

Karnak spat and cursed loudly. Then he walked to the Keep gates.

'It's all over, general,' said a soldier as the general entered.

'It's not looking too hopeful,' agreed Karnak. 'Shut the gates.'

'Someone may get out of the hospital,' protested the man.

'No one will live through that inferno. Shut the gates.'

Karnak made his way to the great hall where Dardalion and the surviving twelve priests of the The Thirty were deep in prayer.

'Dardalion!'

The priest opened his eyes. 'Yes, general?'

'Tell me that Egel is on his way.'

'I cannot, the Brotherhood are everywhere and we cannot break out.'

'Without Egel, we are doomed. Finished. It will all have been for nothing.'

'We will have done our best, general. No one can ask for more.'

'I damn well can. Trying is for losers – all that counts is winning.'

'Waylander is dead,' said Dardalion suddenly, 'but the Armour is on its way to Egel.'

'The Armour is too late for us now, it was to have been a rallying point. If Egel has not yet raised an army, it will matter not at all.'

'Not to us, general. But Egel could link with Ironlatch.'

Karnak said nothing. The logic was irresistible and perhaps that had been Egel's plan all along. He must have known Karnak was a potential enemy in the long term – what better way to handle him than to allow the Vagrians to end his ambitions? And a link with Ironlatch would drive a wedge through the Vagrian forces, freeing the capital.

Purdol would wait.

Egel would have it all: the Armour, the army and the nation.

'He will come if he can, general,' said Dardalion.

'Why should he?'

'Egel is a man of honour.'

'What does that mean?' snapped Karnak.

'I hope that it means Egel will do exactly what you would if you were in his place.'

Karnak laughed, his good humour restored. 'I do hope not, Dardalion. I am rather counting on him getting here!'

As she slept, Danyal became aware of a voice piercing her dreams, blending with her sleeping thoughts. The awareness grew and she recognised Dardalion; he seemed thinner now and older, bowed down by enormous pressures.

'Danyal, can you hear me?'

'Yes,' she said and smiled wearily.

'Are you well?

'I am unhurt, no more than that.'

'Do you have the Armour still?'

'Yes.'

'Where are you?'

'Less than a day from the river and the ferry. There is someone with me – a monster creature. He saw Waylander die.'

'Open your eyes and show me,' he said and Danyal sat up. Kai still sat by the fire, his great eye closed, his huge mouth hanging open.

'There is no evil in him,' said Dardalion. 'Now listen to me, Danyal – I am going to try to reach Egel and urge him to send a troop to escort you home. Wait at the ferry until you hear from me.'