‘Not as you, Lord. She is like a daughter to me. She is sweet, without a feather’s weight of malice in her whole body. But such Talent as she has should not have been used so carelessly. She was not ready, not prepared.’ He stood. ‘May I sit with her, Lord?’
‘Of course.’
The eunuch hurried from the room and Michanek rose and opened the doors to the gardens, stepping through into the sunlight. Flowering trees lined the paths and the air was full of the scent of jasmine, lavender and rose. Three gardeners were working, watering the earth and clearing the flower-beds of weeds. As he appeared they stopped their work and fell to their knees, their foreheads pressed into the earth. ‘Carry on,’ he said, walking past them and entering the maze, moving swiftly through it to the marble bench at the centre where the statue of the Goddess was set in the circular pool. Of white marble, it showed a beautiful young woman, naked, her arms held aloft, her head tilted back to stare at the sky. In her hands was an eagle with wings spread, about to fly.
Michanek sat and stretched out his long legs. Soon the story would spread all over the city. The Emperor’s champion had paid two thousand silver pieces for a dying seeress. Such folly! Yet, since the day he had first seen her, he had not been able to push her from his mind. Even on the campaign, while fighting against Gorben’s troops, she had been with him. He had known more beautiful women, but at twenty-five had found none with whom he wished to share his life.
Until now. At the thought that she might be dying, he found himself trembling. Recalling the first meeting, he remembered her prophecy that he would die in this city, in a last stand against black-cloaked troops.
Gorben’s Immortals. The Ventrian Emperor had re-formed the famous regiment, manning it with the finest of his fighters. Seven cities had been retaken by them, two of them after single combat between Gorben’s new champion, a Drenai axeman they called Deathwalker, and two Naashanite warriors, both known to Michanek. Good men, strong and brave, skilful beyond the dreams of most soldiers. Yet they had died.
Michanek had asked for the right to join the army and challenge this axeman. But his Emperor had refused. ‘I value you too highly,’ said the Emperor.
‘But, Lord, is this not my role? Am I not your champion?’
‘My seers tell me that the man cannot be slain by you, Michanek. They say his axe is demon-blessed. There will be no more single-combat settlements; we will crush Gorben by the might of our armies.’
But the man was not being crushed. The last battle had been no more than a bloody draw, with thousands slain on both sides. Michanek had led the charge which almost turned the tide, but Gorben had withdrawn into the mountains, two of his general officers having been slain by Michanek.
Nebuchad and Jasua. The first had little skill; he had charged his white horse at the Naashanite champion, and had died with Michanek’s lance in his throat. The second was a canny fighter, fast and fearless – but not fast enough, and too fearless to accept that he had met a better swordsman. He had died with a curse on his lips.
‘The war is not being won,’ Michanek told the marble goddess. ‘It is being lost – slowly, day by day.’ Three of the renegade Ventrian Satraps had been slain by Gorben; Shabag at Capalis; Berish, the fat and greedy sycophant, hanged at Ectanis; and Ashac, Satrap of the south-west, impaled after the defeat at Gurunur. Only Darishan, the silver-haired fox of the north, survived. Michanek liked the man. The others he had treated with barely concealed contempt, but Darishan was a warrior born. Unprincipled, amoral, but gifted with courage.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a man moving through the maze. ‘Where in Hades are you, lad?’ came a deep voice.
‘I thought you were a mystic, Shalatar,’ he called. The response was both an obscenity and an instruction. ‘If I could do that,’ replied Michanek, chuckling, ‘I could make a fortune with public performances.’