David Gemmell - The King Beyond the Gate

Decado chuckled. 'I grew tomatoes inside potatoes,' he said. 'I placed the seedlings in a potato, and while the tomatoes grew upwards the potatoes grew down. I was quite pleased with the results.'

'Do you miss your garden?' asked Acuas.

'No, I do not. And that makes me sad.'

'Did you enjoy your life as a priest?' said Katan.

Decado looked at the slender young man with the gentle face. 'Do you enjoy life as a warrior?' he countered.

'No. Not in the least.'

'In some ways I enjoyed my life. It was good to hide for a while.'

'From what were you hiding?' asked Balan.

'I think you know the answer to that. I deal in death, my friend — I always have. Some men can paint, others create beauty in stone or in words. I kill. But pride and shame do not match well and I found the disharmony daunting. In the moment of the kill there was bliss, but afterwards. .'

'What happened afterwards?' asked Acuas.

'No man alive could match me with the blades, therefore all my enemies became defenceless. I was no longer a warrior, but a murderer. The thrill lessened, the doubts grew. When the Dragon was disbanded I travelled the world seeking opponents, but found none. Then I realised there was only one man who could test me, and I decided to challenge him. On the way to his home in Ventria I was trapped in a sandstorm for three days. It gave me time to think about what I was doing. You see, the man was my friend and yet, had it not been for the storm, I would have killed him. It was then that I returned home to the Drenai and tried to change my life.'

'And what became of your friend?' asked Katan.

Decado smiled. 'He became a Torchbearer.'

The council chamber had seen better days; now woodworm pockmarked the inlaid elm around the walls and the painted mosaic showing the white-bearded Druss the Legend had peeled away in ugly patches, exposing the grey of mould growing on the plaster.

Some thirty men and about a dozen women and children were seated on wooden benches, listening to the words of the woman sitting at the Senate chair. She was large, big-boned and broad of shoulder. Her dark hair swept out from her head like a lion's mane and her green eyes blazed with anger.

'Just listen to yourselves!' she roared, pushing herself to her feet and smoothing the folds in her heavy green skirt. 'Talk, talk, talk! And what does it all mean? Throw yourselves on Ceska's mercy? What in hell's name does that mean? Surrender, that's what! You, Petar — stand up!'

A man snuffled to his feet, head bowed and blushing furiously.

'Lift your arm!' bellowed the woman and he did so. The hand was missing and the stump showed evidence still of the tar that had closed the wound.

'That is Ceska's mercy! By all the gods, you cheered loud enough when my men of the mountains swept the soldiers from our lands. You couldn't do enough for us then, could you? But now they are coming back, you want to squeal and hide. Well, there is nowhere to hide. The Vagrians won't let us cross their borders, and for damn sure Ceska won't forgive and forget.'

A middle-aged man rose to his feet alongside the helpless Petar. 'It's no use shouting, Rayvan. What choices do we have? We cannot beat them. We shall all die.'

'Everybody dies, Vorak,' stormed the woman. 'Or had you not heard? I have six hundred fighting men who say we can defeat the Legion. And there are five hundred more who are waiting to join us when we can lay our hands on more weapons.'

'Suppose we do turn back the Legion,' said Vorak, 'what happens when Ceska sends in his Joinings? What use will your fighting men be then?'

'When the time comes, we shall see,' she promised.

'We shall see nothing. Go back where you came from and leave us to make peace with Ceska. We don't want you here!' shouted Vorak.

'Oh, speaking for everyone now, are we, Vorak?' Rayvan stepped from the dais and marched towards the man. He swallowed hard as she loomed over him, then her hand gripped his collar and propelled him towards the wall. 'Look up there and tell me what you see,' she commanded.

'It's a wall, Rayvan, with a picture on it. Now let me go!'

'That's not just a picture, you lump of dung! That's Druss! That's the man who stood against the hordes of Ulric. And he didn't bother to count them. You make me sick!'

Leaving him, she walked back to the dais and turned on the gathering. 'I could listen to Vorak. I could take my six hundred and vanish back into the mountains. But I know what would happen — you would all be killed. You have no choice but to fight.'

'We have families, Rayvan,' protested another man.

'Yes, and they will die too.'

'So you say,' said the man, 'but we are certain to be killed if we resist the Legion.'

'Do what you want, then,' she snapped. 'But get out of my sight — all of you! There used to be men in this land. Get out!'

Petar turned at the door, the last to leave. 'Don't judge us too harshly, Rayvan,' he called.

'Get outl' she bellowed. She wandered to the window and looked out at the city, white under the spring sun. Beautiful, but indefensible. There was no wall. Rayvan put together a string of oaths that rolled from her tongue with rare power. She felt better then. . but not much.

Beyond the window in the winding streets and open squares people thronged, and although Rayvan could not hear their words she knew the subject of every conversation.

Surrender. The possibility of life. And beyond the words, the driving emotion — fear!

What was the matter with them? Had Ceska's terror eroded the strength of the people? She swung round and stared at the fading mosaic. Druss the Legend, squat and powerful with axe in hand, the mountains of Skoda behind him seeming to echo the qualities of the man — white-topped and indestructible.

Rayvan looked at her hands: short, stubby and still ingrained with the soil of her farms. Years of work, cripplingly hard work, had robbed them of beauty. She was glad there was no mirror. Once she had been the 'maid of the mountains', slim of waist and garlanded. But the years — such good years — had been less than kind. Her dark hair was now shot with silver and her face was hard as Skoda granite. Few men now looked on her with lust, which was just as well. After twenty years of marriage and nine children, she had somewhat lost interest in the beast with two backs.

Returning to the window, she looked out beyond the city to the ring of mountains. Whence would the enemy come? And how would she meet them? Her men were confident enough. Had they not defeated several hundred soldiers, losing only forty men in the process? Indeed they had — but the soldiers had been taken by surprise and they were a gutless bunch. This time would be different.

Rayvan thought long and hard about the coming battle.

Different?

They will cut us to pieces. She swore, picturing again the moment when the soldiers had swept into her lands and butchered her husband and two of their sons. The watching crowd had been subdued until Rayvan, armed with a curved meat cleaver, had run forward and hammered it into the officer's side.

Then it was pandemonium.

But now. . Now was the time to pay for the dance.

She walked across the hall to stand with hands on hips below the mosaic.

'I have always boasted that I came from your line, Druss,' she said. 'It's not true — as far as I know. But I wish I had. My father used to talk of you. He was a soldier at Delnoch and he spent months studying the chronicles of the Earl of Bronze. He knew more about you than any man living. I wish you could come back. . Step down from that wall! Joinings wouldn't stop you, would they? You would march to Drenan and rip the crown from Ceska's head. I cannot do it, Druss. I don't know the first thing about war. And, damn it, there is no time to learn.'