It was suicidal, yet the Drenai formed a wedge, Druss at the head, and sheared into the Ventrians.
The giant axeman was unstoppable. Warriors threw themselves at him from every side, but his axe flashed like quicksilver. A young soldier called Eericetes, only accepted into the Immortals a month before, saw Druss bearing down on him. Fear rose like bile in his throat. Dropping his sword he turned, pushing at the man behind him.
‘Back,’ he shouted. ‘Get back!’
The men made way for him, and the cry was taken up by others, thinking it was an order from the officers.
‘Back! Back to the stream!’ The cry swept through the ranks and the Immortals turned, streaming towards the Ventrian camp.
From his throne Gorben watched in horror as his men waded the shallow stream, disorganised and bewildered.
His eyes flicked up to the pass, where the axeman stood waving Snaga in the air.
Druss’s voice floated down to him, echoing from the crags.
‘Where is your legend now, you eastern sons of bitches?’
Abadai, blood streaming from a shallow cut in his forehead, approached the Emperor, dropping to his knees, head bowed.
‘How did it happen?’ demanded Gorben.
‘I don’t know, sire. One moment we were pushing them back, and then the axeman went mad, charging our line. We had them. We really had them. But somehow the cry went up to fall back, and then all was chaos.’
In the pass Druss swiftly honed the dulled blades of his axe.
‘We beat the Immortals,’ said Diagoras, slapping Druss on the shoulder. ‘By all the gods in Missael, we beat the damned Immortals.’
‘They’ll be back, lad. And very soon. You’d better pray the army is moving at speed.’
With Snaga razor-edged once more, Druss looked to his wounds. The cut on his face stung like the devil, but the flow of blood had ceased. His shoulder was more of a problem, but he strapped it as best he could. If they survived the day, he would stitch it that night. There were several smaller cuts to his legs and arms but these had congealed and sealed themselves.
A shadow fell across him. He looked up. Sieben stood there, wearing breastplate and helm.
‘How do I look?’ asked the poet.
‘Ridiculous. What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I’m getting into the thick of it, Druss old horse. And don’t think you can stop me.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘You’re not going to tell me I’m stupid?’
Druss stood and grabbed his friend’s shoulders. ‘These have been good years, poet. The best I could have wished for. There are few treasures in a man’s life. One of them comes with the knowledge that a man has a friend to stand beside him when the hour grows dark. And let’s be honest, Sieben . . . It couldn’t get much darker, could it?’
‘Now you come to mention it, Druss my dear, it does seem a tiny bit hopeless.’
‘Well, everybody has to die sometime,’ said Druss. ‘When death comes for you, spit in his eye, poet.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘You always did.’
The drums sounded again and the Immortals massed. Fury was in their eyes now, and they glared balefully at the defenders. They would not be turned back. Not by Druss. Not by the pitiful two hundred facing them.
From the first clash the Drenai line was forced back. Even Druss, needing room to swing his axe, could find space only by retreating a pace. Then another. Then another. He battled on, a tireless machine, bloody and bloodied, Snaga rising in a crimson spray and falling with pitiless efficiency.
Time and again he rallied the Drenai. But ever on came the Immortals, striding across the bodies of their dead, their eyes grim, their mood resolute.
Suddenly the Drenai line broke, and the battle degenerated in moments to a series of skirmishes, small circles of warriors forming shield rings amid the black and silver sea filling the pass.
The Sentran Plain lay open to the conqueror.
The battle was lost.
But the Immortals were desperate to erase the memory of defeat. They blocked the pathway to the west, determined to kill the last of the defenders.