‘It wasn’t said as a compliment. And I can control my temper, but Alarin is a loud-mouthed braggart – and he received exactly what he deserved.’
‘I hope you’ll take note of what I’ve said, son.’ Bress stood and stretched his back. ‘I know you have little respect for me. But I hope you’ll think of how Rowena would fare if you were both declared outcast.’
Druss gazed up at him and swallowed back his disappointment. Bress was a physical giant, stronger than any man Druss had ever known, but he wore defeat like a cloak. The younger man rose alongside his father.
‘I’ll take heed,’ he said.
Bress smiled wearily. ‘I have to get back to the wall. It should be finished in another three days; we’ll all sleep sounder then.’
‘You’ll have the timber,’ Druss promised.
‘You’re a good man with an axe, I’ll say that.’ Bress walked away for several paces, then turned. ‘If they did cast you out, son, you wouldn’t be alone. I’d walk with you.’
Druss nodded. ‘It won’t come to that. I’ve already promised Rowena I’ll mend my ways.’
‘I’ll wager she was angry,’ said Bress, with a grin.
‘Worse. She was disappointed in me.’ Druss chuckled. ‘Sharper than a serpent’s tooth is the disappointment of a new wife.’
‘You should laugh more often, my boy. It suits you.’
But as Bress walked away the smile faded from the young man’s face as he gazed down at his bruised knuckles and remembered the emotions that had surged within him as he struck Alarin. There had been anger, and a savage need for combat. But when his fist landed and Alarin toppled there had been only one sensation, brief and indescribably powerful.
Joy. Pure pleasure, of a kind and a power he had not experienced before. He closed his eyes, forcing the scene from his mind.
‘I am not my grandfather,’ he told himself. ‘I am not insane.’ That night he repeated the words to Rowena as they lay in the broad bed Bress had fashioned for a wedding gift.
Rolling to her stomach she leaned on his chest, her long hair feeling like silk upon his massive shoulder. ‘Of course you are not insane, my love,’ she assured him. ‘You are one of the gentlest men I’ve known.’
That’s not how they see me,’ he told her, reaching up and stroking her hair.
‘I know. It was wrong of you to break Alarin’s jaw. They were just words – and it matters not a whit if he meant them unpleasantly. They were just noises, blowing into the air.’
Easing her from him, Druss sat up. ‘It is not that easy, Rowena. The man had been goading me for weeks. He wanted that fight – because he wanted to humble me. But he did not. No man ever will.’ She shivered beside him. ‘Are you cold?’ he asked, drawing her into his embrace.
‘Deathwalker,’ she whispered.
‘What? What did you say?’
Her eyelids fluttered. She smiled and kissed his cheek. ‘It doesn’t matter. Let us forget Alarin, and enjoy each other’s company.’
‘I’ll always enjoy your company,’ he said. ‘I love you.’
*
Rowena’s dreams were dark and brooding and the following day, at the riverside, she could not force the images from her mind. Druss, dressed in black and silver and bearing a mighty axe, stood upon a hillside. From the axe-blades came a great host of souls, flowing like smoke around their grim killer. Death-walker! The vision had been powerful. Squeezing the last of the water from the shirt she was washing, she laid it over a flat rock alongside the drying blankets and the scrubbed woollen dress. Stretching her back, she rose from the water’s edge and walked to the tree line where she sat, her right hand closing on the brooch Druss had fashioned for her in his father’s workshop – soft copper strands entwined around a moonstone, misty and translucent. As her fingers touched the stone her eyes closed and her mind cleared. She saw Druss sitting alone by the high stream.
‘I am with you,’ she whispered. But he could not hear her and she sighed.
No one in the village knew of her Talent, for her father, Voren, had impressed upon her the need for secrecy. Only last year four women in Drenan had been convicted of sorcery and burnt alive by the priests of Missael. Voren was a careful man. He had brought Rowena to this remote village, far from Drenan, because, as he told her, ‘Secrets cannot live quietly among a multitude. Cities are full of prying eyes and attentive ears, vengeful minds and malevolent thoughts. You will be safer in the mountains.’