“How many?”
“Forty or so. They attacked our village, killed all the men, the old women, the children. They took the younger women prisoner. I was in the woods, felling timber. Some killers came to the woods and I dealt with them. Then I met Shadak, who was also following them; they raided a town and killed his son. We freed the women. Shadak was captured. I stampeded their horses and attacked the camp. That’s it.”
Sieben shook his head and smiled. “I think you could tell the entire history of the Drenai in less time than it takes to boil an egg. A story-teller you are not, my friend - which is just as well, since that is my main source of income and I loathe competition.”
Druss rubbed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, resting his head on the high padded leather cushion. The heat from the fire was soothing and his body was weary beyond anything he had known before. The days of the chase had taken their toll. He felt himself drifting on a warm sea. The poet was speaking to him, but his words failed to penetrate.
He awoke with the dawn to find the fire was burned down to a few glowing coals and the house empty. Druss yawned and stretched, then walked to the kitchen, helping himself to stale bread and a hunk of cheese. He drank some more water, then heard the main door creak open. Wandering out, he saw Sieben and a young, blonde woman. The poet was carrying his axe and his gauntlets.
“Someone to see you, old horse,” said Sieben, laying the axe in the doorway and tossing the gauntlets to a chair. The poet smiled and walked back out into the sunlight.
The blonde woman approached Druss, smiling shyly. “I didn’t know where you were. I kept your axe for you.”
“Thank you. You are from the inn.” She was dressed now in a woollen dress of poor quality, that once had been blue but was now a pale grey. Her figure was shapely, her face gentle and pretty, her eyes warm and brown.
“Yes. We spoke yesterday,” she said, moving to a chair and sitting down with her hands on her knees. “You seemed… very sad.”
“I am… myself now,” he told her gently.
“Sieben told me your wife was taken by slavers.”
“I will find her.”
“When I was sixteen raiders attacked our village. They killed my father and wounded my husband. I was taken, with seven other girls, and we were sold in Mashrapur. I was there two years. I escaped one night, with another girl, and we fled into the wilderness. She died there, killed by a bear, but I was found by a company of pilgrims on their way to Lentria. I was almost dead from starvation. They helped me, and I made my way home.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” asked Druss softly, seeing the sadness in her eyes.
“My husband had married someone else. And my brother, Loric, who had lost an arm in the raid, told me I was no longer welcome. He said I was a fallen woman, and if I had any pride I would have taken my own life. So I left.”
Druss reached out and took her hand. “Your husband was a worthless piece of dung, and your brother likewise. But I ask again, why are you telling me this?”
“When Sieben told me you were hunting for your wife… it made me remember. I used to dream Karsk was coming for me. But a slave has no rights, you know, in Mashrapur. Anything the Lord wishes, he can have. You cannot refuse. When you find your… lady… she may well have been roughly used.” She fell silent and sat staring at her hands. “I don’t know how to say what I mean…When I was a slave I was beaten, I was humiliated. I was raped and abused. But nothing was as bad as the look on my husband’s face when he saw me, or the disgust in my brother’s voice when he cast me out.”
Still holding to her hand, Druss leaned in towards her. “What is your name?”
“Sashan.”
“If I had been your husband, Sashan, I would have followed you. I would have found you. And when I did I would have taken you in my arms and brought you home. As I will bring Rowena home.”
“You will not judge her?”
He smiled. “No more than I judge you, save to say that you are a brave woman and any man - any true man - would be proud to have you walk beside him.”
She reddened and rose. “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,” she said, then turned away and walked to the doorway. She looked back once, but said nothing; then she stepped from the house.
Sieben entered. “That was well said, old horse. Very well said. You know, despite your awful manners and your lack of conversation, I think I like you. Let’s go to Mashrapur and find your lady.”
Druss looked hard at the slim young man. He was perhaps an inch taller than the axeman and his clothes were of fine cloth, his long hair barber-trimmed, not hacked by a knife nor cut with shears using a basin for a guide. Druss glanced down at the man’s hands; the skin was soft, like that of a child. Only the baldric and the knives gave any evidence Sieben was a fighter.
“Well? Do I pass inspection, old horse?”
“My father once said that fortune makes for strange bedfellows,” said Druss.
“You should see the problem from where I’m standing,” answered Sieben. “You will travel with a man versed in literature and poetry, a story-teller without equal. While I, on the other hand, get to ride beside a peasant in a vomit-flecked jerkin.”
Amazingly Druss found no rising anger, no surging desire to strike out. Instead he laughed, tension flowing from him.
“I like you, little man,” he said.
Within the first day they had left the mountains behind them, and rode now through valleys and vales, and sweeping grassland dotted with hills and ribbon streams. There were many hamlets and villages beside the road, the buildings of whitewashed stone with roofs of timber or slate.
