David Gemmell - The Legend of the Deathwalker

'I just did. Now, are you ready, poet?'

'Indeed I am. I shall fetch my bags and then I think it best we quit this city with all due speed.'

Majon slumped to a padded chair. 'What will I tell them when they. . wake?'

'I suggest you give them your discourse on the merits of diplomacy over violence,' said Sieben. Gently he patted Majon's shoulder, then ran to his apartments and gathered his gear.

The horses were stabled at the rear. Druss tied his saddle-bags into place, then clumsily hauled himself into the saddle. The mare was sixteen hands and, though sway-backed, was a powerful beast. Sieben's mount was of similar size but, as he had told Druss, the horse was a thoroughbred, steel-grey and sleek.

Sieben vaulted to the saddle and led the way out into the main street. 'You must have hit that Shonan awfully hard, old horse.'

'Not hard enough to kill him,' said Druss, swaying in the saddle and grabbing the pommel.

'Grip with your thighs, not your calves,' advised Sieben.

'I never liked riding. I feel foolish perched up here.'

There were a number of riders making for the Eastern Gate, and Druss and Sieben found themselves in a long convoy threading through the narrow streets. At the gates soldiers were questioning each rider and Sieben's nervousness grew. 'They can't be looking for you already, surely?' Druss shrugged.

Slowly they approached the gates. A sentry walked forward. 'Papers,' he said.

'We are Drenai,' Sieben told him. 'Just out for a ride.'

'You need papers signed by the Exit Officer of the Watch,' said the sentry, and Sieben saw Druss tense. Swiftly he reached into his pouch and produced a small silver coin; leaning over the saddle, he passed it to the soldier.

'One feels so cooped up in a city,' said Sieben, with a bright smile. 'An hour's ride in open country frees the mind.'

The sentry pocketed the coin. 'I like to ride myself,' he said. 'Enjoy yourselves.' He waved them through and the two riders kicked their mounts into a canter and set off for the eastern hills.

After two hours in the saddle Sieben drank the last of his water and stared about him. With the exception of the distant mountains, the landscape was featureless and dry.

'No rivers or streams,' said the poet. 'Where will we find water?' Druss pointed to a range of rocky hills some miles further on. 'How can you be sure?' asked the poet. 'I don't want to die of thirst out here.'

'You won't.' He grinned at Sieben. 'I have fought campaigns in deserts and I know how to find water. But there's one trick I learned that's better than all the others.'

'And that is?'

'I bought a map of the water-holes! Now let's walk these horses for a while.'

Druss slid from the saddle and strode on. Sieben dismounted and joined him. For a time they walked on in silence.

'Why so morose, old horse?' asked Sieben, as they neared the outcrop of rocks.

'I've been thinking of Klay. How can people just turn on him like that? After all he did for them.'

'People are sometimes vile creatures, Druss, selfish and self-regarding. But the real fault is not in them, but in us for expecting better. When Klay dies they'll all remember what a fine man he was, and they'll probably shed tears for him.'

'He deserves better,' grunted Druss.

'Maybe he does,' agreed Sieben, wiping sweat from his brow with a perfumed handkerchief. 'But when did that ever matter? Do we get what we deserve? I do not believe so. We get what we can win — what we can take, whether it be employment, or money, or women, or land. Look at you! Raiders stole your wife; they had the power to take, and they took her. Sadly for them you had the power to hunt them down, and the sheer determination to pursue your love across the ocean. But you didn't win her back by luck, or by the whim of a capricious deity. You did it by force of arms. You might have failed for a hundred reasons, illness, war — the flight of an arrow, the flash of a sword-blade — a sudden storm at sea. You didn't get what you deserved, Druss, you got what you fought for. Klay was unlucky. He took a bolt that was meant for you. That was your good luck.'

'I don't argue with that,' said Druss. 'Yes, he was unlucky. But they tore down his statue, and his friends robbed and then deserted him — men he had supported, aided, protected. That's what I find hard to swallow.'

Sieben nodded. 'My father told me that a man is lucky if in his life he can count on at least two good friends. He always maintained that a man with many friends had to be either rich or stupid, and I think that is largely true. In all my life I have had only one friend, Druss, and that is you.'

'Do you not count your women?'

Sieben shook his head. 'Everything with them has always been transactional. They require something of me, I require something of them. We each supply the other. They give me the warmth of their bodies and their yielding flesh; I give them the incredible expertise of the perfect lover.'

'How can you call yourself a lover when love is never present in your encounters?'

'Don't be a pedant, Druss. I am worth the title. Even accomplished whores have told me I'm the best lover they ever had.'

'How surprising,' said Druss, with a grin. 'I'll wager they don't say that to many men.'

'Mockery does not suit you, axeman. We all have our skills. Yours is with that appalling weapon, mine is in love-making.'

'Aye,' agreed Druss. 'But it seems to me my weapon ends problems. Yours causes them.'

'Oh, very droll. Just what I need as I walk through this barren wilderness, a lecture on morals!" Sieben stroked the neck of the steel-dust gelding then stepped into the saddle. Lifting his hand he shaded his eyes. 'It is all so green. I've never seen a land that promised so much and gave so little. How do these plants survive?'

Druss did not answer. He was trying to hook his foot into the stirrup, but the mare began walking in circles. Sieben chuckled and rode alongside, taking the mare's reins and holding her steady while the axeman mounted. 'They are deep-rooted,' said Druss. 'It rains here for a full month every winter. The plants and bushes soak it in, then battle to survive for another year. It is a hard land. Harsh and savage.'

'Like the people who dwell here,' said Sieben.

'Aye. The Nadir are a fierce people.'

'Majon was telling me about a group called Chop-backs.'

'Renegades,' said Druss. 'They call them Notas, no tribe. They are outcasts, robbers and killers. We'll try to avoid them.'

'And if we can't?'

Druss laughed. 'Then you can show me your skills with the pretty knives!'

Nosta Khan sat in the shade of an overhanging rock, his scrawny left hand dipped in the cool waters of the rock pool. The sun was high overhead now, the heat beyond the shade pitiless, relentless in its power. It caused Nosta Khan no distress. Neither heat nor cold, nor pain nor sorrow could touch him now. For he was a Master of the Way — a shaman.

He had not desired this mystic path. No, as a young man he had dreamed the dreams of all Nadir warriors: many ponies, many women, many children. A short life filled with the savage joy of battle and the grunting, slippery warmth of sex.

It was not to be. His Talent had denied him his dreams. No wives for Nosta Khan, no children to play at his feet. Instead he had been taken as a boy to the Cave of Asta Khan, and there had learned the Way.

Lifting his hand from the water he touched it to his brow, closing his eyes as several drops of cold water fell to the wrinkled skin of his face.

He was seven years old when Asta took him and six other boys to the crest of Stone Hawk Peak, to sit in the blazing sunshine dressed only in breech-clouts and moccasins. The old shaman had covered their heads and faces with wet clay and told them to sit until the clay baked hard and fell clear. Each child had two reed straws through which to breathe. There was no sense of time within the clay, no sound and no light. The skin of his shoulders had burned and blistered, but Nosta had not moved. For three blazing days and three frozen nights he sat thus within that tomb of drying clay.