‘Well, well,’ said Togrin, with a wide grin. ‘Now there are two charge-hands. I think that’s one too many.’
‘I agree,’ Druss told him. Stepping in swiftly, he delivered a thundering blow to the man’s belly. The air left Togrin’s lungs with a great whoosh and he doubled up, his head dropping. Druss’s left fist chopped down the man’s jaw and Togrin hit the ground face first. The charge-hand twitched, then lay still.
Druss sucked in a great gulp of air. He felt unsteady and white lights danced before his eyes as he looked around at the waiting men. ‘Now we are going to make some changes,’ he said.
*
Day by day Druss’s strength grew, the muscles of his arms and shoulders swelling with each sweeping blow of the axe, each shovelful of hard clay, each wrenching lift that tore a stubborn tree root clear of the earth. For the first five days Druss slept at the site in a small canvas tent supplied by the Overseer. He had not the energy to walk the three miles back to the rented house. And each lonely night two faces hovered in his mind as he drifted to sleep: Rowena, whom he loved more than life, and Borcha, the fist-fighter he knew he had to face.
In the quiet of the tent his thoughts were many. He saw his father differently now and wished he had known him better. It took courage to live down a father like Bardan the Slayer, and to raise a child and build a life on the frontier. He remembered the day when the wandering mercenary had stopped at the village. Druss had been impressed by the man’s weapons, knife, short sword and hand-axe, and by his, battered breastplate and helm. ‘He lives a life of real courage,’ he had observed to his father, putting emphasis on the word real. Bress had merely nodded. Several days later, as they were walking across the high meadow, Bress had pointed towards the house of Egan the farmer. ‘You want to see courage, boy,’ he said. ‘Look at him working in that field. Ten years ago he had a farm on the Sentran Plain, but Sathuli raiders came in the night, burning him out. Then he moved to the Ventrian border, where locusts destroyed his crops for three years. He had borrowed money to finance his farm and he lost everything. Now he is back on the land, working from first light to last. That’s real courage. It doesn’t take much for a man to abandon a life of toil for a sword. The real heroes are those who battle on.’
The boy had known better. You couldn’t be a hero and a farmer.
‘If he was so brave, why didn’t he fight off the Sathuli?’
‘He had a wife and three children to protect.’
‘So he ran away?’
‘He ran away,’ agreed Bress.
‘I’ll never run from a fight,’ said Druss.
‘Then you’ll die young,’ Bress told him.
Druss sat up and thought back to the raid. What would he have done if the choice had been to fight the slavers – or run with Rowena?
His sleep that night was troubled.
On the sixth night as he walked from the site a tall, burly figure stepped into his path. It was Togrin, the former charge-hand. Druss had not seen him since the fight. The young axeman scanned the darkness, seeking other assailants, but there were none.
‘Can we talk?’ asked Togrin.
‘Why not?’ countered Druss.
The man took a deep breath. ‘I need work,’ he said. ‘My wife’s sick. The children have not eaten in two days.’
Druss looked hard into the man’s face, seeing the hurt pride and instantly sensing what it had cost him to ask for help. ‘Be on site at dawn,’ he said, and strolled on. He felt uncomfortable as he made his way home, telling himself he would never have allowed his own dignity to be lost in such a way. But even as he thought the words, a seed of doubt came to him. Mashrapur was a harsh, unforgiving city. A man was valued only so long as he contributed to the general well-being of the community. And how dreadful it must be, he thought, to watch your children starve.