David Gemmell - Legend

They remembered then that he had chosen to stand with them. And they knew why. This was the only place in all the world for the last of the old heroes: Druss the Legend, standing with the last hopes of the Drenai on the battlements of the greatest fortress ever built, waiting for the largest army in the world. Where else would he be?

Slowly the crowds gathered about him, as more men made their way to Eldibar. Before long Druss was threading his way through massed ranks on the battlements, while even more soldiers gathered on the open ground behind them. He climbed to the crenellated battlement wall and turned to face them. His voice-boomed out, silencing the chatter.

"Look about you!" he called, the sun glinting from the silver shoulder guards on his black leather jerkin, his white beard glistening. "Look about you now. The men you see are your comrades — your brothers. They will live with you and die for you. They will protect you and bleed for you. Never in your lives will you know such comradeship again. And if you live to be as old as I am, you will always remember this day and the days to follow. You will remember them with a clearness you would never have believed. Each day will be like crystal, shining in your minds.

"Yes, there will be blood and havoc, torture and pain, and you will remember that too. But above all will be the sweet taste of life. And there is nothing like it, my lads.

"You can believe this old man when he says it. You may think life is sweet now, but when death is a heartbeat away then life becomes unbearably desirable. And when you survive, everything you do will be enhanced and filled with greater joy: the sunlight, the breeze, a good wine, a woman's lips, a child's laughter.

"Life is nothing unless death has been faced down.

"In times to come, men will say "I wish I had been there with them." By then the cause won't matter.

"You are standing at a frozen moment in history. The world will be changed when this battle is over — either the Drenai will rise again, or a new empire will dawn.

"You are now men of history." Druss was sweating now, and strangely tired, but he knew he had to go on. He was desperate to remember Sieben's saga of the elder days and the stirring words of an elder general. But he could not. He breathed in deeply, tasting the sweet mountain air.

"Some of you are probably thinking that you may panic and run. You won't! Others are worried about dying. Some of you will. But all men die. No one ever gets out of this life alive.

"I fought at Skeln Pass when everyone said we were finished. They said the odds were too great but I said be damned to them! For I am Druss and I have never been beaten, not by Nadir, Sathuli, Ventrian, Vagrian or Drenai.

"By all the gods and demons of this world, I will tell you now — I do not intend to be beaten here either!" Druss was bellowing at the top of his voice as he dragged Snaga into the air. The axe blade caught the sun and the chant began.

"DRUSS THE LEGEND! DRUSS THE LEGEND!" The men on other battlements could not hear Druss's words, but they heard the chant and took it up. Dros Delnoch echoed to the sound, a vast cacophony of noise that crashed and reverberated through the peaks, scattering flocks of birds which took to the skies in fluttering panic. At last Druss raised his arms for silence and gradually the chant subsided, though more men were running from Wall Two to hear his words. By now almost five thousand men were gathered about him.

"We are the Knights of Dros Delnoch, the siege city. We will build a new legend here to dwarf Skeln Pass. And we will bring death to the Nadir in their thousands. Aye, in their hundreds of thousands. WHO ARE WE?"

"KNIGHTS OF DROSS DELNOCH!" thundered the men.

"And what do we bring?"

"DEATH TO THE NADIR!"

Druss was about to continue when he saw men's heads turn to face down into the valley. Columns of dust in the distance created clouds which rose to challenge the sky, like a gathering storm. Like the father of all storms. And then, through the dust could be seen the glinting spears of the Nadir, filling the valley from all sides, sweeping forward, a vast dark blanket of fighting men, with more following. Wave after wave of them came into sight. Vast siege towers pulled by hundreds of horses; giant catapults, leather-covered battering rams; thousands of carts and hundreds of thousands of horses; vast herds of cattle and more men than the mind could total.

Not one heart among the watchers failed to miss a beat at the sight. Despair was tangible and Druss cursed softly. He had nothing more to say. And he felt he had lost them. He turned to face the Nadir horsemen bearing the horse-hair banners of their tribes. By now their faces could be seen, grim and terrible. Druss raised Snaga into the air and stood, legs spread, a picture of defiance. Angry now, he stared at the Nadir outriders.

As they saw him they pulled up their horses and stared back. Suddenly the riders parted to allow a herald through. Galloping his steppe pony forward he rode towards the gates, swerving as he came beneath the wall where Druss stood. He dragged on the reins and the horse skidded to a stop, rearing and snorting.

"I bring this command from the Lord Ulric, he shouted. "Let the gates be opened and he will spare all within, save the white-bearded one who insulted him."

"Oh, it's you again, lard-belly," said Druss. "Did you give him my message as I said it?"

"I gave it, Deathwalker. As you said it."

"And he laughed, did he not?"

"He laughed. And swore to have your head. And my Lord Ulric is a man who always fulfils his desires."

"Then we are two of a kind. And it is my desire that he should dance a jig on the end of a chain, like a performing bear. And I will have it so, even if I have to walk into your camp and chain him myself."

"Your words are like ice on the fire, old man — noisy and without worth," said the herald. "We know your strength. You have maybe 11,000 men. Mostly farmers. We know all there is to know. Look at the Nadir army! How can you hold? What is the point? Surrender yourself. Throw yourself on the mercy of my Lord."

"Laddie, I have seen the size of your army and it does not impress me. I have a mind to send half my men back to their farms. What are you? A bunch of pot-bellied, bow-legged northerners. I hear what you say. But don't tell me what you can do. Show me! And that's enough of talk. From now on this will talk for me." He shook Snaga before him, sunlight flashing from the blade.

Along the line of defenders Gilad nudged Bregan. "Druss the Legend!" he chanted and Bregan joined him with a dozen others. Once more the sound began to swell as the herald wheeled his mount and raced away. The noise thundered after him:

"DRUSS THE LEGEND! DRUSS THE LEGEND!"

Druss watched silently as the massive siege engines inched towards the wall, vast wooden towers sixty feet high and twenty feet wide; ballistae by the hundred, ungainly catapults on huge wooden wheels. Countless numbers of men heaved and strained at thousands of ropes, dragging into place the machines that had conquered Gulgothir.

The old warrior studied the scene below, seeking out the legendary warmaster Khitan. It did not take long to find him. He was the still centre of the whirlpool of activity below, the calm amid the storm. Where he moved, work ceased as his instructions were given, then began again with renewed intensity.

Khitan glanced up at the towering battlements. He could not see Deathwalker, but felt his presence and grinned.

"You cannot stop my work with one axe," he whispered.

Idly he scratched the scarred stump at the end of his arm. Strange how, after all these years, he could still feel his fingers. The gods had been kind that day when the Gulgothir tax-gatherers sacked his village. He had been barely twelve years old and they had slain his family. In an effort to protect his mother, he had run forward with his father's dagger. A slashing sword sent his hand flying through the air to land beside the body of his brother. The same sword had lanced into his chest.

To this day he could not explain why he had not died along with the other villagers, nor indeed why Ulric had spent so long trying to save him. Ulric's raiders had surprised the killers and routed them, taking two prisoners. Then a warrior checking the bodies had found Khitan, barely alive. They had taken him into the steppes, laying him in Ulric's tent. There they had sealed the weeping stump with boiling tar and dressed the wound in his side with tree moss. For almost a month he remained semiconscious, delirious with fever. He had one memory of that terrible time: a memory he would carry to the day he died.

His eyes had opened to see above him a face, strong and compelling. The eyes were violet and he felt their power.

"You will not die, little one. Hear me?" The voice was gentle, but as he sank once more into the nightmares and delirium he knew that the words were not a promise. They were a command.

And Ulric's commands were to be obeyed.

Since that day Khitan had spent every conscious moment serving the Nadir lord. Useless in combat, he had learned to use his mind, creating the means by which his lord could build an empire.

Twenty years of warfare and plunder. Twenty years of savage joy.

With his small entourage of assistants, Khitan threaded his way through the milling warriors and entered the first of the twenty siege towers. They were his special pride. In concept they had been startlingly simple. Create a wooden box, three-sided and twelve feet high. Place wooden steps inside against the walls leading to the roof. Now take a second box and place it atop the first. Secure it with iron pins. Add a third and you have a tower. It was relatively easy to assemble and dismantle and the component parts could be stacked on wagons and carried wherever the general needed them.

But if the concept was simple, the practicalities had been plagued by complexities. Ceilings collapsed under the weight of armed men, walls gave way, wheels splintered and worst of all, once over thirty feet high the structure was unstable and prone to tip.

Khitan recalled how for more than a year he had worked harder than his slaves, sleeping less than three hours a night. He had strengthened the ceilings, but this had merely made the entire structure more heavy and less stable. In despair he had reported to Ulric. The Nadir warlord had sent him to Ventria, to study at the University of Tertullus. He felt that he had been disgraced, humiliated. Nevertheless he obeyed; he would suffer anything to please Ulric.

But he had been wrong and the year he had spent studying under Rebow, the Ventrian lecturer, proved to be the most glorious time of his life.

He learned of mass centres, parallel vectors and the need for equilibrium between external and internal forces. His appetite for knowledge was voracious and Rebow found himself warming to the ugly Nadir tribesman. Before long the slender Ventrian invited Khitan to share his home, where studies could be carried on long into the night. The Nadir was tireless. Often Rebow would fall asleep in his chair, only to wake several hours later and find the small, one-armed Khitan still studying the exercises he had set him. Rebow was delighted. Rarely had a student showed such aptitude, and never had he found a man with such a capacity for work.

Every force, learnt Khitan, has an equal and opposite reaction, so that, for example, a jib exerting a push at its top end must also exert an equal and opposite push at the foot of its supporting post. This was his introduction to the world of creating stability through understanding the nature of stress.

For him the University of Tertullus was a kind of paradise.

On the day he had left for home the little tribesman wept as he embraced the stricken Ventrian. Rebow had begged him to reconsider; to take a post at the university, but Khitan had not the heart to tell him he was not in the least tempted. He owed his life to one man, and dreamed of nothing but serving him.

At home once more, he set to work. Under construction the towers would be tiered, creating an artificial base five times the size of the structure. While being moved into position, only the first two levels would be manned, creating a mass weight low to the ground. Once positioned by a wall, ropes would be hurled from the centre of the tower and iron pins hammered into the ground, creating stability. The wheels would be iron-spoked and rimmed, and there would be eight to a tower, to distribute the weight.

Using his new knowledge, he designed catapults and ballistae. Ulric was well pleased and Khitan ecstatic.

Now, bringing his mind back to the present, Khitan climbed to the top of the tower, ordering the men to lower the hinged platform at the front. He gazed at the walls three hundred paces distant and saw the black-garbed Deathwalker leaning on the battlements.

The walls were higher than at Gulgothir and Khitan had added a section to each tower. Ordering the platform to be raised once more, he tested the tension in the support ropes and climbed down through the five levels, stopping here and there to check struts or ties.

Tonight his four hundred slaves would go to work beneath the walls, chipping away at the rocky floor of the Pass and placing the giant pulleys every forty paces. The pulleys, six feet high and cast around greased bearings, had taken months to design and years to construct to his satisfaction, finally being completed at the ironworks of Lentria's capital a thousand miles to the south. They had cost a fortune and even Ulric had blanched when the final figure was estimated. But they had proved their worth over the years.

Thousands of men would pull a tower to within sixty feet of a wall. Thereafter the line would shrink as the gap closed; the three-inch diameter ropes could be curled round the pulleys, passed under the towers and hauled from behind.

The slaves who dug and toiled to create the pulley beds were protected from archers by movable screens of stretched oxhide. But many were slain by rocks hurled from the walls above. This was of no concern to Khitan. What did concern him was possible damage to the pulleys, and these were not protected by iron casing.

With one last lingering look at the walls, he made his way back to his quarters in order to brief the engineers. Druss watched him until he entered the city of tents which now filled the valley for over two miles.

So many tents. So many warriors. Druss ordered the defenders to stand down and relax while they could, seeing in their faces the pinched edge of fear, the wide eyes of barely controlled panic. The sheer scale of the enemy had cut into morale. He cursed softly, stripped off his black leather jerkin, stepped back from the battlements and lowered his huge frame to the welcoming grass beyond. Within moments he was asleep. Men nudged one another and pointed; those closest to him chuckled as the snoring began. They were not to know that was his first sleep for two days, nor that he lay there for fear that his legs would not carry him back to his quarters. They knew only he was Druss: the Captain of the Axe.

And that he held the Nadir in contempt.

Bowman, Hogun, Orrin and Caessa also left the walls for the shade of the mess hall, the green-clad archer pointing at the sleeping giant.