‘Damn good, hey?’ said the warrior. ‘Better than that red vinegar from the south.’
Bowman nodded and pulled a flask from his hip pouch, offering it to the man. Suspicion was evident in the hesitant way the Nadir accepted the flask, but his friends were watching.
Slowly he removed the top, then took a tentative sip, followed by a full-blown swallow.
‘This is damn good too,’ said the man. ‘What is it?’
‘They call it Lentrian Fire. Once tasted, never forgotten!’
The man nodded, then moved aside to make a place for Bowman.
‘Join us, Longbow. Tonight no war. We talk, yes?’
‘Decent of you, old horse. I think I will.’
Seated on the throne, Rek lifted Druss’s goblet of Lentrian Red and raised it towards the pyre. Ulric also raised his goblet and both men silently toasted the fallen axeman.
‘He was a great man,’ said Ulric. ‘My father told me tales of him and his lady. Rowena, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, he loved her greatly.’
‘It is fitting,’ said Ulric, ‘that such a man should know great love. I am sorry he is gone. It would be a fine thing if war could be conducted as a game where no lives were lost. At the end of a battle combatants could meet – even as we are doing – and drink and talk.’
‘Druss would not have had it so,’ said the Earl. ‘Were this a game where the odds mattered, Dros Delnoch would already be yours. But Druss was a man who could change the odds and make nonsense of logic.’
‘Up to a point – for he is dead. But what of you? What manner of man are you, Earl Regnak?’
‘Just a man, Lord Ulric – even as you.’
Ulric leaned closer, his chin resting on his hand. ‘But then I am not an ordinary man. I have never lost a battle.’
‘Nor yet have I.’
‘You intrigue me. You appear from nowhere, with no past, married to the dying Earl’s daughter. No one has ever heard of you and no man can tell me of your deeds. Yet men die for you, as they would for a beloved king. Who are you?’
‘I am the Earl of Bronze.’
‘No. That I will not accept.’
‘Then what would you have me say?’
‘Very well, you are the Earl of Bronze. It matters not. Tomorrow you may return to your grave – you and all those who follow you. You began this battle with ten thousand men; you now boast perhaps seven hundred. You pin your faith on Magnus Woundweaver, but he cannot reach you in time -and even if he did, it would matter not. Look about you. This army is bred on victory. And it grows. I have four armies like this – can I be stopped?’
‘Stopping you is not important,’ said the Earl. ‘It never was.’
‘Then what are you doing?’
‘We are trying to stop you.’
‘Is this a riddle which I should understand?’
‘Your understanding is not important. It may be that destiny intends you to succeed. It may be that a Nadir empire will prove vastly beneficial to the world. But ask yourself this: were there no army here when you arrived, save Druss alone, would he have opened the gate to you?’
‘No. He would have fought and died,’ said Ulric.
‘But he would not have expected to win. So why would he do it?’
‘Now I understand your riddle, Earl. But it saddens me that so many men must die when it is futile to resist. Nevertheless I respect you. I will see that your pyre is as high as that of Druss.’
‘Thank you, no. If you do kill me, lay my body in a garden beyond the Keep. There is already a grave there, surrounded by flowers, within which lies my wife. Put my body beside it.’
Ulric fell silent for several minutes, taking time to refill the goblets.
‘It shall be as you wish, Earl of Bronze,’ he said at last. ‘Join me in my tent now. We shall eat a little meat, drink a little wine and be friends. I shall tell you of my life and my dreams, and you may talk of the past and your joys.’