*
Rowena was picking flowers in the small garden behind the house when the pain struck her, cutting beneath her ribs through to her back. Her legs collapsed beneath her and she toppled into the blooms. Pudri saw her from the meadow gate and ran to her side, shouting for help. Sieben’s wife, Niobe, came running from the meadow and between them they lifted the unconscious woman and carried her into the house. Pudri forced a little foxglove powder into her mouth, then poured water into a clay goblet. Holding it to her lips, he pinched her nostrils, forcing her to swallow.
But this time the pain did not pass, and Rowena was carried upstairs to her bed while Niobe rode to the village for the physician.
Pudri sat by Rowena’s bedside, his lined leathery face sunken and filled with concern, his large dark eyes moist with tears.
‘Please do not die, lady,’ he whispered. ‘Please.’
Rowena floated from her body and opened her spirit eyes, gazing down with pity at the matronly form in her bed. She saw the wrinkled face and greying hair, the dark rings below the eyes. Was this her? Was this tired, worn-out shell the Rowena that had been taken to Ventria years before?
And poor Pudri, so shrunken and old. Poor devoted Pudri.
Rowena felt the pull of the Source. She closed her eyes and thought of Druss.
On the wings of the wind, the Rowena of yesterday’s dreams soared above the farm, tasting the sweetness of the air, enjoying the freedom of those born to the sky. Lands swept below her, green and fertile, dappled with the gold of cornfields. Rivers became satin ribbons, seas rippling lakes, cities peopled with insects scurrying without purpose.
The world shrank until it became a plate studded with gems of blue and white, and then a stone, rounded as if by the sea, and finally a tiny jewel. She thought of Druss once more.
‘On, not yet!’ she begged. ‘Let me see him once. Just once.’
Colours swam before her eyes, and she fell, twisting and spinning through the clouds. The land below her was gold and green, the cornfields and meadows of the Sentran Plain, rich and verdant. To the east it seemed as if a giant’s cloak had been carelessly thrown on to the land, grey and lifeless, the mountains of Skeln merely folds in the cloth. Closer she flew until she hovered over the pass, gazing down on the embattled armies.
Druss was not hard to find.
He stood, as always, at the centre of the carnage, his murderous axe cutting and killing.
Sadness touched her then, a sorrow so deep it was like a pain in her soul.
‘Goodbye, my love,’ she said.
And turned her face to the heavens.
*
The Immortals hurled themselves on the Drenai line, and the clash of steel on steel sounded above the insistent drums. Druss hammered Snaga into a bearded face, then sidestepped a murderous thrust, disembowelling his assailant. A spear cut his face, a sword-blade ripped a shallow wound in his shoulder.
Forced back a pace, Druss dug his heel into the ground, his bloody axe slashing into the black and silver ranks before him.
Slowly the weight of the Immortals forced back the Drenai line.
A mighty blow to Druss’s shield split it down the middle. Hurling it from him, the axeman gripped Snaga with both hands, slashing a red swathe through the enemy. Anger turned to fury within him.
Druss’s eyes blazed, power flooding his tired, aching muscles.
The Drenai had been pushed back nearly twenty paces. Ten more and the pass widened. They would not be able to hold.
Druss’s mouth stretched in a death’s-head grin. The line was bending like a bow on either side of him, but the axeman himself was immovable. The Immortals pushed towards him, but were cut down with consummate ease. Strength flowed through him.
He began to laugh.
It was a terrible sound, and it filled the veins of the enemy with ice. Druss lashed Snaga into the face of a bearded Immortal. The man was catapulted into his fellows. The axeman leapt forward, cleaving Snaga into the chest of the next warrior. Then he hammered left and right. Men fell back from his path, opening a space in the ranks. Bellowing his rage to the sky, Druss charged into the mass. Certak and Diagoras followed.