“You were correct in what you said. I wouldn’t have wanted Rowena left in the mountains alone. I spoke in… anger.”
Shadak nodded. “A man is only as strong as that which makes him angry. Remember that, laddie.”
Shadak could not sleep. He sat in the wide leather chair beside the hearth, his long legs stretched out before him, his head resting on a cushion,.his body relaxed. But his mind was in turmoil - images, memories flashing into thoughts.
He saw again the Sathuli cemetery, Jonacin stripped to the waist, a broad-bladed tulwar in his hands and a small iron buckler strapped to his left forearm.
“Do you feel fear, Drenai?” asked Jonacin. Shadak did not answer. Slowly he unstrapped his baldric, then lifted clear his heavy woollen shirt. The sun was warm on his back, the mountain air fresh in his lungs. You are going to die today, said the voice of his soul.
And then the duel began. Jonacin drew first blood, a narrow cut appearing on Shadak’s chest. More than a thousand Sathuli onlookers, standing around the perimeter of the cemetery, cheered as the blood began to flow. Shadak leapt back.
“Not going to try for the ear?” he asked conversationally. Jonacin gave an angry growl, and launched a new attack. Shadak blocked a thrust, then thundered a punch to the Sathuli’s face. It glanced from his cheekbone, but the man staggered. Shadak followed up with a disembowelling thrust and the Sathuli swayed to his right, the blade slashing the skin of his waist. Now it was Jonacin’s turn to jump backwards. Blood gushed from the shallow wound in his side; he touched the cut with his fingers, staring down amazed. “Yes,” said Shadak, “you bleed too. Come to me. Bleed some more.”
Jonacin screamed and rushed forward but Shadak side-stepped and clove his sabre through the Sathuli’s neck. As the dying man fell to the ground Shadak felt a tremendous sense of relief, and a surging realisation. He was alive!
But his career was ruined. The treaty talks came to nothing, and his commission was revoked upon his return to Drenan.
Then Shadak had found his true vocation: Shadak the Hunter. Shadak the Tracker. Outlaws, killers, renegades - he hunted them all, following like a wolf on the trail.
In all the years since the fight with Jonacin he had never again known such fear. Until today, when the young axeman had stepped into the sunlight.
He is young and untrained. I would have killed him, he told himself.
But then he pictured again the ice-blue eyes and the shining axe.
Druss sat under the stars. He was tired, but he could not sleep. A fox moved out into the open, edging towards a corpse. Druss threw a stone at it and the creature slunk away… but not far.
By tomorrow the crows would be feasting here, and the other carrion beasts would tear at the dead flesh. Only hours ago this had been a living community, full of people enjoying their own hopes and dreams. Druss stood and walked along the main street of the settlement, past the home of the baker, whose body was stretched out in the doorway with his wife beside him. The smithy was open, the fires still glowing faintly. There were three bodies here. Tetrin the Smith had managed to kill two of the raiders, clubbing them down with his forge hammer. Tetrin himself lay beside the long anvil, his throat cut.
Druss swung away from the scene.
What was it for? Slaves and gold. The raiders cared nothing for the dreams of other men. “I will make you pay,” said Druss. He glanced at the body of the smith. “I will avenge you. And your sons. I will avenge you all,” he promised.
And he thought of Rowena and his throat went dry, his heartbeat increasing. Forcing back his fears, he gazed around at the settlement.
In the moonlight the village still seemed strangely alive, its buildings untouched. Druss wondered at this. Why did the raiders not put the settlement to the torch? In all the stories he had heard of such attacks, the plunderers usually fired the buildings. Then he remembered the troop of Drenai cavalry patrolling the wilderness. A column of smoke would alert them, were they close.
Druss knew then what he had to do. Moving to the body of Tetrin he hauled it across the street to the meeting hall, kicking open the door and dragging the corpse inside, laying it at the centre of the hall. Then he returned to the street and began to gather one by one, all the dead of the community. He was tired when he began, and bone- weary by the finish. Forty-four bodies he placed in the long hall, making sure that husbands were beside wives and their children close. He did not know why he did this, but it seemed right.
Lastly he carried the body of Bress into the building, and laid it beside Patica. Then he knelt by the woman and, taking the dead hand in his own, he bowed his head. “I thank you,” he said quietly, “for your years of care, and for the love you gave my father. You deserved better than this, Patica.” With all the bodies accounted for, he began to fetch wood from the winter store, piling it against the walls and across the bodies. At last he carried a large barrel of lantern oil from the main storehouse and poured it over the wood, splashing it to the dry walls.
As dawn streaked the eastern sky, he struck a flame to the pyre and blew it into life. The morning breeze licked at the flames in the doorway, caught at the tinder beyond, then hungrily roared up the first wall.
Druss stepped back into the street. At first the blaze made little smoke, but as the fire grew into an inferno a black column of oily smoke billowed into the morning sky, hanging in the light wind, flattening and spreading like an earth-born storm cloud. “You have been working hard,” said Shadak, moving silently alongside the young axeman.
Druss nodded. “There was no time to bury them,” he said. “Now maybe the smoke will be seen.”
“Perhaps,” agreed the hunter, “but you should have rested. Tonight you will need your strength.” As Shadak moved away, Druss watched him; the man’s movements were sure and smooth, confident and strong.
Druss admired that - as he admired the way that Shadak had comforted Tailia in the doorway. Like a father or a brother might. Druss had known that she needed such consolation, but had been unable to provide it. He had never possessed the easy touch of a Pilan or a Yorath, and had always been uncomfortable in the company of women or girls.
But not Rowena. He remembered the day when she and her father had come to the village, a spring day three
