Now he lived for those few seconds of light as the guard walked back to the outside world.
‘We caught the others,’ the jailer said one day, as he pushed the bread through the grille. But Druss did not believe him. Such was Cajivak’s cruelty that he would have dragged Druss out to see them slain.
He pictured Varsava pushing the child up into the chimney crack in the cave, urging her to climb, and remembered lifting Ruwaq up to where Varsava could haul the old man out of sight. Druss himself was about to climb when he heard the warriors approaching the cave. He had turned.
And charged them. . . .
But there were too many, and most bore clubs which finally smashed him from his feet. Boots and fists thundered into him and he awoke to find a rope around his neck, his hands bound. Forced to walk behind a horseman, he was many times dragged from his feet, the rope tearing the flesh of his neck.
Varsava had described Cajivak as a monster, which could not be more true. The man was close to seven feet tall, with an enormous breadth of shoulder and biceps as thick as most men’s thighs. His eyes were dark, almost black, and no hair grew on the right side of his head where the skin was white and scaly, covered in scar tissue that only a severe burn could create. Madness shone in his eyes, and Druss had glanced to the man’s left and the weapon that was placed there, resting against the high-backed throne.
Snaga!
Druss shook himself free of the memory now and stretched. His joints creaked and his hands trembled in the cold that seeped from the wet walls. Don’t think of it, he urged himself. Concentrate on something else. He tried to picture Rowena, but instead found himself remembering the day when the priest of Pashtar Sen had found him in a small village, four days east of Lania. Druss had been sitting in the garden of an inn, enjoying a meal of roast meat and onions and a jug of ale. The priest bowed and sat opposite the axeman. His bald head was pink and peeling, burned by the sun.
‘I am glad to find you in good health, Druss. I have searched for you for the last six months.’
‘You found me,’ said Druss.
‘It is about the axe.’
‘Do not concern yourself, Father. It is gone. You were right, it was an evil weapon. I am glad to be rid of it.’
The priest shook his head. ‘It is back,’ he said. ‘It is now in the possession of a robber named Cajivak. Always a killer, he succumbed far more swiftly than a strong man like yourself and now he is terrorising the lands around Lania, torturing, killing and maiming. With the war keeping our troops from the area, there is little that can be done to stop him.’
‘Why tell me?’
The priest said nothing for a moment, averting his eyes from Druss’s direct gaze. ‘I have watched you,’ he said at last. ‘Not just in the present, but through the past, from your birth through your childhood, to your marriage to Rowena and your quest to find her. You are a rare man, Druss. You have iron control over those areas of your soul which have a capacity for evil. And you have a dread of becoming like Bardan. Well, Cajivak is Bardan reborn. Who else can stop him?’
‘I don’t have time to waste, priest. My wife is somewhere in these lands.’
The priest reddened and hung his head. His voice was a whisper, and there was shame in the words. ‘Recover the axe and I will tell you where she is,’ he said.
Druss leaned back and stared long and hard at the slender man before him. ‘This is unworthy of you,’ he observed.
The priest looked up. ‘I know.’ He spread his hands. ‘I have no other . . . payment. . . to offer.’
‘I could take hold of your scrawny neck and wring the truth from you,’ Druss pointed out.
‘But you will not. I know you, Druss.’