‘It’s a wall, Rayvan, with a picture on it. Now let me go!’
‘That’s not just a picture, you lump of dung! That’s Druss! That’s the man who stood against the hordes of Ulric. And he didn’t bother to count them. You make me sick!’
Leaving him, she walked back to the dais and turned on the gathering. ‘I could listen to Vorak. I could take my six hundred and vanish back into the mountains. But I know what would happen – you would all be killed. You have no choice but to fight.’
‘We have families, Rayvan,’ protested another man.
‘Yes, and they will die too.’
‘So you say,’ said the man, ‘but we are certain to be killed if we resist the Legion.’
‘Do what you want, then,’ she snapped. ‘But get out of my sight – all of you! There used to be men in this land. Get out!’
Petar turned at the door, the last to leave. ‘Don’t judge us too harshly, Rayvan,’ he called.
‘Get outl’ she bellowed. She wandered to the window and looked out at the city, white under the spring sun. Beautiful, but indefensible. There was no wall. Rayvan put together a string of oaths that rolled from her tongue with rare power. She felt better then . . . but not much.
Beyond the window in the winding streets and open squares people thronged, and although Rayvan could not hear their words she knew the subject of every conversation.
Surrender. The possibility of life. And beyond the words, the driving emotion – fear!
What was the matter with them? Had Ceska’s terror eroded the strength of the people? She swung round and stared at the fading mosaic. Druss the Legend, squat and powerful with axe in hand, the mountains of Skoda behind him seeming to echo the qualities of the man – white-topped and indestructible.
Rayvan looked at her hands: short, stubby and still ingrained with the soil of her farms. Years of work, cripplingly hard work, had robbed them of beauty. She was glad there was no mirror. Once she had been the ‘maid of the mountains’, slim of waist and garlanded. But the years – such good years – had been less than kind. Her dark hair was now shot with silver and her face was hard as Skoda granite. Few men now looked on her with lust, which was just as well. After twenty years of marriage and nine children, she had somewhat lost interest in the beast with two backs.
Returning to the window, she looked out beyond the city to the ring of mountains. Whence would the enemy come? And how would she meet them? Her men were confident enough. Had they not defeated several hundred soldiers, losing only forty men in the process? Indeed they had – but the soldiers had been taken by surprise and they were a gutless bunch. This time would be different.
Rayvan thought long and hard about the coming battle.
Different?
They will cut us to pieces. She swore, picturing again the moment when the soldiers had swept into her lands and butchered her husband and two of their sons. The watching crowd had been subdued until Rayvan, armed with a curved meat cleaver, had run forward and hammered it into the officer’s side.
Then it was pandemonium.
But now . . . Now was the time to pay for the dance.
She walked across the hall to stand with hands on hips below the mosaic.
‘I have always boasted that I came from your line, Druss,’ she said. ‘It’s not true – as far as I know. But I wish I had. My father used to talk of you. He was a soldier at Delnoch and he spent months studying the chronicles of the Earl of Bronze. He knew more about you than any man living. I wish you could come back . . . Step down from that wall! Joinings wouldn’t stop you, would they? You would march to Drenan and rip the crown from Ceska’s head. I cannot do it, Druss. I don’t know the first thing about war. And, damn it, there is no time to learn.’