‘I’ll send Tailia,’ Druss told him, and began to run back through the trees.
Reaching the crest of the hill he gazed down on the village. He could see scattered bodies, but no sign of raiders. For a moment he thought the villagers had beaten them back . . . but there was no movement at all.
‘Rowena!’ he yelled. ‘Rowena!’
*
Druss ran down the slope. He fell and rolled, losing his grip on the felling-axe, but scrambling to his feet he pounded on – down into the meadow, across the flat, through the half-finished gates. Bodies lay everywhere. Rowena’s father, the former book-keeper Voren, had been stabbed through the throat, and blood was staining the earth beneath him. Breathing hard, Druss stopped, and stared around the settlement square.
Old women, young children and all the men were dead. As he stumbled on he saw the golden-haired child, Kins, beloved of all the villagers, lying sprawled in death alongside her rag doll. The body of an infant lay against one building, a bloodstain on the wall above showing how it had been slain.
He found his father lying in the open with four dead raiders around him. Patica was beside him, a hammer in her hand, her plain brown woollen dress drenched in blood. Druss fell to his knees by his father’s body. There were terrible wounds to the chest and belly, and his left arm was almost severed at the wrist. Bress groaned and opened his eyes. ‘Druss. . . .’
‘I am here, Father.’
‘They took the young women. . . . Rowena . . . was among them.’
‘I’ll find her.’
The dying man glanced to his right at the dead woman beside him. ‘She was a brave lass; she tried to help me. I should have . . . loved her better.’ Bress sighed, then choked as blood flowed into his throat. He spat it clear. ‘There is . . . a weapon. In the house . . . far wall, beneath the boards. It has a terrible history. But. . . but you will need it.’
Druss stared down at the dying man and their eyes met. Bress lifted his right hand. Druss took it. ‘I did my best, boy,’ said his father.
‘I know.’ Bress was fading fast, and Druss was not a man of words. Instead he lifted his father into his arms and kissed his brow, hugging him close until the last breath of life rasped from the broken body.
Then he pushed himself to his feet and entered his father’s home. It had been ransacked – cupboards hauled open, drawers pulled from the dressers, rugs ripped from the walls. But by the far wall the hidden compartment was undiscovered and Druss prised open the boards and hauled out the chest that lay in the dust below the floor. It was locked. Moving through into his father’s workshop, he returned with a large hammer and a chisel which he used to pry off the hinges. Then he took hold of the lid and wrenched it clear, the brass lock twisting and tearing free. Inside, wrapped in oilskin, was an axe. And such an axe! Druss unwrapped it reverently. The black metal haft was as long as a man’s arm, the double heads shaped like the wings of a butterfly. He tested the edges with his thumb; the weapon was as sharp as his father’s shaving-knife. Silver runes were inscribed on the haft, and though Druss could not read them he knew the words etched there. For this was the awful axe of Bardan, the weapon that had slain men, women, and even children during the reign of terror. The words were part of the dark folklore of the Drenai.
Snaga, the Sender, the blades of no return
He lifted the axe clear, surprised by its lightness and its perfect balance in his hand.
Beneath it in the chest was a black leather jerkin, the shoulders reinforced by strips of silver steel; two black leather gauntlets, also protected by shaped metal knuckle-guards; and a pair of black, knee-length boots. Beneath the clothes was a small pouch, and within it Druss found eighteen silver pieces.