“You’re not going to tell me I’m stupid?”
Druss stood and grabbed his friend’s shoulders. “These have been good years, poet. The best I could have wished for. There are few treasures in a man’s life. One of them comes with the knowledge that a man has a friend to stand beside him when the hour grows dark. And let’s be honest, Sieben… It couldn’t get much darker, could it?”
“Now you come to mention it, Druss my dear, it does seem a tiny bit hopeless.”
“Well, everybody has to die sometime,” said Druss. “When death comes for you, spit in his eye, poet.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“You always did.”
The drums sounded again and the Immortals massed. Fury was in their eyes now, and they glared balefully at the defenders. They would not be turned back. Not by Druss. Not by the pitiful two hundred facing them.
From the first clash the Drenai line was forced back. Even Druss, needing room to swing his axe, could find space only by retreating a pace. Then another. Then another. He battled on, a tireless machine, bloody and bloodied, Snaga rising in a crimson spray and falling with pitiless efficiency.
Time and again he rallied the Drenai. But ever on came the Immortals, striding across the bodies of their dead, their eyes grim, their mood resolute.
Suddenly the Drenai line broke, and the battle degenerated in moments to a series of skirmishes, small circles of warriors forming shield rings amid the black and silver sea filling the pass.
The Sentran Plain lay open to the conqueror.
The battle was lost.
But the Immortals were desperate to erase the memory of defeat. They blocked the pathway to the west, determined to kill the last of the defenders.
From his vantage point on the eastern hill Gorben threw down his sceptre in fury, turning on Abadai.
“They have won. Why are they not pushing on? Their bloodlust leaves them blocking the pass!”
Abadai could not believe his eyes. With time a desperate enemy waiting to betray them, the Immortals were unknowingly continuing the work of the defenders. The narrow pass was now gorged with warriors as the rest of Gorben’s army jostled behind them, waiting to sweep through to the plain beyond.
Druss, Delnar, Diagoras and a score of others had formed a ring of steel by a cluster of jutting boulders. Fifty paces to the right Sieben, Certak and thirty men were surrounded and fighting furiously. The poet’s face was grey and terrible pain grew in his chest. Dropping his sword he scrambled atop a grey boulder, pulling his throwing knife from its wrist sheath.
Certak parried one thrust, but a spear punched through his breastplate, ripping into his lungs. Blood welled in his throat and he fell. A tall Ventrian leapt to the boulder. Sieben hurled his blade. It took the man through the right eye.
A spear flashed through the air, lancing Sieben’s chest. Strangely, far from causing him pain, it released the agony from his cramped heart. He toppled from the rock, to be swallowed by the black and silver horde.
Druss saw him fall - and went berserk.
Breaking from the shield ring, he launched his giant frame into the massed ranks of the warriors before him, cutting them aside like wheat before a scythe. Delnar closed the ring behind him, disembowelling a Ventrian lancer and locking shields with Diagoras.
Surrounded now by Immortals, Druss hammered his way forward. A spear took him high in the back. He swung round, braining the lancer. A sword bounced from his helm, gashing his cheek. A second spear pierced his side, and a clubbing blow from the flat of a sword thundered into his temple. Grabbing one assailant, he hauled him forward, butting him viciously. The man sagged in his grip. More enemies closed in around the axeman. Using the unconscious Ventrian as a shield, Druss dropped to the ground. Swords and spears slashed at him.
Then came the sound of bugles.
Druss struggled to rise, but a booted foot lashed into his temple and he fell into darkness.
He awoke and cried out. His face was swathed in bandages, his body racked with pain. He tried to sit, but a hand pushed gently on his shoulder.
“Rest, axeman. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Delnar?”
“Yes. We won, Druss. The army arrived just in time. Now rest.”
The last moments of battle surged back into Druss’s mind. “Sieben!”
“He is alive. Barely.”
“Take me to him.”
“Don’t be a fool. By rights you should be dead. Your body was pierced a score of times. If you move, the stitches will open and you’ll bleed to death.”
“Take me to him, damn you!”
Delnar cursed and helped the axeman to his feet. Calling an orderly who took the weight on the left side, he half-carried the wounded giant to the back of the tent and the still, sleeping form of Sieben the Sagamaster.
Lowering Druss into a seat by the bedside, Delnar and the orderly withdrew. Druss leaned forward, gazing at the bandages around Sieben’s chest, and the slowly spreading red stain at the centre..
“Poet!” he called softly.
