David Gemmell. Ironhand’s Daughter

Only one more now, she thought. The captain.

But where would he be?

Are you insane, woman! came a voice inside her mind. Leave now!

‘No!’ she said aloud. ‘I’il find him.’

‘Leave and he ‘II find you. I promise you! Stay and you will die and he will live. I promise you that too!’

‘Who are you? Where are you?’ she asked, spinning round and scanning the shadows.

I am with you, girl, and I want your trust. Leave now. Believe me, you won’t like being dead. I know, I’ve tried it. Now go!’

Confused, Sigarni obeyed, cutting down through an alley towards the North Gate.

The bastards have unhinged my mind, she thought. Now I am hearing ghost voices.

From the citadel keep came the sound of clanging alarm bells.

I’ll never get out now, she thought.

‘Yes, you will’ said the voice. ‘Your people need you.’

Baron Ranulph Gottasson groaned. The pain had moved beyond pleasure to a burning point of agony that bordered on the exquisite.

Narcotics flowed in his blood, and his waking dreams were vivid. He saw again the fall of the Kushite cities, refugees running panic-stricken from their burning homes, heard again the wailing of the soon-to-die, the piercing screams of city dwellers staring into the brutal faces of the conquering soldiers, feeling the cold bite of their blades into soft, yielding flesh.

Days of blood and glory, marching his men across inhospitable deserts, iron mountains and lush foreign plains.

And then it was over. No one left to conquer.