‘No, laddie. He no longer needs to test himself against anyone. He
Diagoras felt a flicker of irritation, but suppressed it. Druss always spoke the truth as he saw it, no matter what the consequences. He looked at the older man, and grinned as his natural good humour returned. ‘You never mix honey with the medicine, do you, Druss?’
‘No.’
‘Not even velvet lies?’
‘I don’t know what they are.’
‘A woman asks you what you think of her new dress. You look at her and think: 'It makes you look fat and dowdy.' Do you say it? Or do you find a velvet lie, like… 'What a fine colour it is' or 'You look wonderful'?’
‘I will not lie. I would say I did not like the dress. Not that any woman has ever asked me about how she looks.’
‘There’s a surprise. I see now why you are not known as Druss the Lover.
Very well, let me ask another question. Do you agree that in war it is necessary to deceive one’s enemy? For example, to make him think you are weaker than you are, in order to lure him into a foolhardy assault?’
‘Of course,’ said Druss.
‘Then it is fine to lie to an enemy?’
‘Ah, laddie, you remind me of Sieben. He loved these debates, and would twist words and ideas round and round until everything I believed in sounded like the grandest nonsense. He should have been a politician. I would say that evil should always be countered. He would say: 'Ah, but what is evil for one man may be good for another.' I remember once we watched the execution of a murderer. He maintained that in killing the man we were committing an evil as great as his. He said that perhaps the killer might have one day sired a child, who would be great and good, and change the world for the better. In killing him we might have robbed the world of a saviour.’
‘Perhaps he was right,’ said Diagoras.
‘Perhaps he was. But if we followed that philosophy completely we would never punish anyone, for any crime. You could argue that to lock the killer away, rather than hanging him, might prevent him meeting the woman who would have given birth to that child. So what do we do? Free him? No. A man who wilfully takes the life of another forfeits his own life.
Anything less makes a mockery of justice. I always enjoyed listening to Sieben ranting and railing against the ways of the world. He could make you think black was white, night was day, sweet was sour. It was good entertainment. But that is all it was. Would I deceive an enemy? Yes.
Would I deceive a friend? No. How do I justify this? I don’t.’
‘I think I understand,’ said Diagoras. ‘If a friend in an ugly dress asks your opinion, you’ll give it honestly and break her heart. But if an enemy in an ugly dress comes before you, you’ll tell her she looks like a queen.’
Druss chuckled, then burst into laughter. ‘Ah, laddie,’ he said, ‘I am beginning to look forward to this trip.’
‘I’m glad one of us is,’ muttered Diagoras.
Servaj Das was a careful man, painstaking in all that he did. He had found that attention to detail was the most important factor in the success of any undertaking. Originally a builder by trade, he had learned that without adequate foundations even the most beautifully constructed building would crumble. In the army he had soon discovered that this principle could be applied to soldiering. The uninitiated believed that swords and arrows were the most vital tools to a soldier. Servaj Das knew that without good boots and a full food pack no army could prevail.
He sat now in a high room at the Naashanite embassy, staring out over the harbour, and considering the mission orders he had received by carrier pigeon. He was to locate and kill a man swiftly.
How could one pay attention to detail when the orders specified speed?
Speed almost always led to problems. In normal circumstances Servaj would have followed the man for some days, establishing his routines, getting to know and understand the way the man’s mind worked. In doing this he would better be able to judge the manner of the man’s death.
Poison, or the knife, or the garrotting wire. Servaj preferred poison.
Sometimes when he followed a man, and observed his habits, he found himself liking the victim. He had never forgotten the merchant who always stopped to pet an old dog at the street corner. It seemed to Servaj that a man who took pity on a mangy, unwanted hound must have a kind heart.
Often the man would feed the creature small titbits he had taken along for the purpose. Servaj sighed. He had been forced to garrotte him when the poison failed. Not a pleasant memory. Servaj filled a goblet with watered wine. Sipping it, he rose from his chair and stretched his lean frame. His back gave a satisfying crack. Placing the goblet on the table he interlaced his fingers, and cracked his knuckles. No, poison was better. Then one was not forced to observe the death.
Picking up the small piece of parchment he scanned again the message.
‘Kill him. Swiftest. Recover Swords.’
He was not happy.
This was not some offending politician, soft, fat and weak. Nor a merchant unused to violence. This was the Damned.
Servaj had been in the army during the time of the Insurrection. One of the moments he would never forget was when Skilgannon had fought the swordmaster, Agasarsis. As a common soldier Servaj had no intimate knowledge of the reasons for the duel, but gossip among the men claimed that Skilgannon’s closeness to the Queen had enraged the Prince Baliel.
This jealousy came to the fore when Skilgannon was almost killed at the Battle of the Ford. BaliePs forces had mysteriously drawn back, leaving Skilgannon and his company of horse exposed to an enemy counter attack.
Baliel, it was said, maintained he had misinterpreted his battle orders.
The Queen replaced him as the Marshal of the Right Flank. Enraged and embittered, Baliel made it known that he believed Skilgannon had engineered the debacle to discredit him. The bitterness grew during the next few weeks, until finally the famous swordsman, Agasarsis — a sworn servant of Baliel — found an excuse to challenge Skilgannon.
He was not the first. During the two years of the Insurrection seven others had crossed swords with the Damned. Only one had lived, and he had lost his right arm. But Agasarsis was different. The man had fought sixty duels in his thirty-one years. His skills were legendary and there was much excitement in the camp as the day dawned. There was also unrest.
The Queen’s army at this time numbered thirty thousand men, and not all could witness the epic confrontation. In the end lots were drawn. Servaj had been offered twenty silver pieces for his pass to the contest, and had refused. Duels like this one were rare indeed, and he had no wish to miss it.
There was rain in the morning, and the ground was soggy and treacherous, but the sun shone brightly by midday. The one thousand men privileged to witness the fight had formed a large circle some two hundred feet in diameter. Skilgannon was the first of the combatants to arrive.
Striding through the ranks of the waiting men he stripped off his battle jerkin and moved effortlessly through a series of exercises to loosen his muscles.
Even then Servaj was a keen student of human behaviour. He looked for signs of nervousness in the general, but could detect none. Agasarsis arrived. He was more powerfully built than Skilgannon, and when he stripped off his shirt he looked awesome. Both men sported the crested plume of hair that signified their swordmaster status, but Agasarsis also had a neatly fashioned trident beard, which gave him a more menacing appearance.
He approached Skilgannon and bowed, and then both men continued their exercises, their movements fluid and synchronized, like two dancers, each mirroring the other. A sudden blaring of trumpets announced the arrival of the Queen. She wore thigh-length silver chain mail, and knee-length cavalry boots, edged with silver rings. Two men carried a high-backed chair into the circle and she sat upon it, her raven hair gleaming in the sunshine.
Servaj was close enough to hear her words to the fighters.
‘Are you determined upon this folly, Agasarsis?’
