David Gemmell - The King Beyond the Gate

'Perhaps. If you live up to your name.'

That night, as Rayvan lay in her broad bed staring out at the stars, she felt more at peace than at any time during the last few hectic months. She had not realised just how irksome leadership could be. Nor had she ever intended to be a leader. All she had done was to slay the man who killed her husband — but from then on it had been like sliding down an icy mountain.

Within weeks of the campaign Rayvan's slender forces controlled most of Skoda. Those were the heady days of cheering crowds and earneraderie. Then word began to filter into the mountains of an army being gathered, and swiftly the mood changed. Rayvan had felt besieged in the city even before the enemy had arrived.

Now she felt light of heart.

Tenaka Khan was no ordinary man. She smiled and closed her eyes, summoning his image to her mind. He moved like a dancer in perfect control and he wore confidence like a cloak. The warrior born!

Ananais was more enigmatic but, by all the gods, he had the look of eagles about him. Here was a man who had been over the mountain. He it was who had offered to train her fledgling fighters and Lake had taken him back into the hills where they camped. The two brothers Galand and Parsal had travelled with them — solid men, with no give in them.

The black she was unsure of. He looked like a damned Joining, she thought. But for all that, he was a handsome devil. And there was little doubt he could handle himself.

Rayvan turned over, punching a little comfort into the thick pillow.

Send in your Legion, Ceska. We shall stove in their damned teeth!

Down the long corridor, in a room facing east, Tenaka and Renya lay side by side, an uncomfortable silence between them.

Tenaka rolled on to his elbow and looked down at her, but Renya did not return his gaze.

'What is the matter?' he asked.

'Nothing.'

"That is palpably untrue. Please, Renya, speak to me.'

'It was the man you killed.'

'You knew him?'

'No, I didn't. But he was unarmed — there was no need.'

'I see,' he said, swinging his long legs from the bed. He walked to the window, and she lay there staring at his naked form silhouetted against the moonlight.

'Why did you do it?'

'It was necessary.'

'Explain it to me.'

'He led the mob and he was obviously Ceska's man. By killing him suddenly, it cowed them. You saw them — all armed, many with bows. They could have turned on us, but his death stunned them.'

'It certainly stunned me — it was butchery!'

He turned to face her. 'This is not a game, Renya. Many men will die, even before this week is out.'

'It still was not right.'

'Right? This isn't a poem, woman! I am not some gold-armoured hero righting wrongs. I reasoned that his death would allow us to remove a cancer from the city without loss to ourselves. And anyway, he deserved to die.'

'It doesn't touch you, does it? Taking life? You don't care that he might have had a family, children, a mother.'

'You are right; I don't care. There are only two people in the world that I love — you are one and Ananais is the other. That man had made his decision. He chose sides and he died for it. I don't regret it and probably I would have forgotten it within the month.'

'That is a terrible thing to say!'

'You would prefer it if I lied to you?'

'No. I just thought you were. . different.'

'Don't judge me. I am only a man doing my best. I know no other way to be.'

'Come back to bed.'

'Is the argument over?'

'If you want it to be,' she lied.

In the room above them Pagan grinned and moved away from the window.

Women were strange creatures. They fell in love with a man and then sought to change him. Mostly they succeed — to spend the rest of their lives won-dering how they could have married such boring conformists. It is the nature of the beast, Pagan told himself. He thought of his own wives, running their faces past his mind's eye, but he could picture only about thirty of them. You are getting old, he told himself.He often wondered how he had allowed the numbers to become so great. The palace was more crowded than a bazaar. Ego. That was it! There was no getting away from it. Just as there was no getting away from his forty-two children. He shuddered. Then he chuckled.

A faint shuffling noise disturbed his thoughts and he moved back to the window, peering out into the shadows.

A man was climbing the wall some twenty feet to the right — it was Scaler.

'What are you doing?' asked Pagan, keeping his voice low.

'I am planting corn,' hissed Scaler. 'What do you think I'm doing?'

Pagan glanced up to the darkened window above. 'Why didn't you just climb the stairs?'

'I was asked to arrive this way. It's a tryst.'

'Oh, I see. Well, goodnight!'

'And to you.'

Pagan ducked back his head through the window. Strange how much effort a man would make just to get himself into trouble.

'What's going on?' came the voice of Tenaka Khan.

'Will you keep your voice down?' snarled Scaler.

Pagan returned to the window, leaning out to see Tenaka staring upwards.

'He is on a tryst… or something,' said Pagan.

'If he falls he will break his neck.'

'He never falls,' said Belder, from a window to the left. 'He has a natural talent for not falling.'

'Will someone tell me why there is a man climbing the wall?' shouted Rayvan.

'He is on a tryst!' yelled Pagan.

'Why couldn't he climb the stairs?' she responded.

'We have been through all that. He was asked to come this way!'

'Oh. He must be seeing Ravenna then,' she said. Scaler clung to the wall, engaged in his own private conversation with the Senile Eternals.

Meanwhile in the darkened room above. Ravenna bit her pillow to stop the laughter. Without success.

For two days Ananais walked among-the Skoda fighters, organising them into fighting units of twenty and pushing them hard. There were five hundred and eighty-two men, most of them tough and wolf-lean. Men to match the mountains. But they were undisciplined and unused to organised warfare. Given time, Ananais could have produced a fighting to equal anything Ceska could send against them. But he did not have time.

On his first morning with the grey-eyed Lake, he mustered the men and checked their weapons. there were not one hundred swords among them. 'It's not a farmer's weapon,' said Lake. 'But we've plenty of axes and bows.' Ananais nodded and moved on. Sweat trickled under his mask, burning at the scars that would not heal, and his irritation grew.

'Find me twenty men who could make leaders,' he said, then walked swiftly back to the crofter's cottage he had made his quarters. Galand and Parsal followed him.

'What's wrong?' asked Galand as the three men sat down in the cool of the main room.

'Wrong? There are nearly six hundred men out there who will be dead in a few days. That is what's wrong.'

'A little defeatist, aren't you?' said Parsal evenly.

'Not yet. But I am close,' admitted Ananais. 'They are tough and they are willing. But you cannot send a mob against the Legion. We don't even have a bugle. And if we did, there is not one man out there to understand a single call.'

'Then we shall have to cut and run — hit them hard and move away,' proposed Galand.

'You were never an officer, were you?' said Ananais.

'No. I didn't come from the right background,' snapped Galand.

'Whatever the reason, the simple fact is that you were not trained to lead. We cannot hit and run because that would mean splitting our force. Then the Legion would come after us piecemeal and we would have no way of knowing what was happening to the rest of the army. Equally, it would allow the Legion to enter Skoda and embark on a killing campaign against the cities and villages.'