A Sathuli within the Drenai fortress?
‘What do you do here?’ yelled Ogasi.
‘Merely helping a friend,’ replied the man. ‘Go back! I shall not let you pass.’
Ogasi grinned. So the man was a lunatic. Lifting his sword, he ordered the tribesmen forward. The white-robed figure advanced on them.
‘Sathuli!’ he yelled.
From the buildings came a mighty answering roar as three thousand Sathuli warriors, their white robes ghostly in the gathering darkness, streamed to the attack.
The Nadir were stunned and Ogasi could not believe his eyes. The Sathuli and the Drenai were lifelong enemies. He knew it was happening, but his brain would not drink it in. Like a white tide on a dark beach, the Sathuli front line crashed into Nadir.
Joachim sought Ogasi, but the stocky tribesman was lost amid the chaos.
The savage twist to events, from certain victory to certain death, dismayed the tribesmen. Panic set in and a slow withdrawal became a rout. Trampling their comrades, the Nadir turned and ran with the white army at their backs, harrying them on with screams as bestial as any heard on the Nadir steppes.
On the walls above, Rek was bleeding from wounds in his upper arms and Hogun had suffered a sword cut to his scalp, blood running from the gash and skin flapping as he lashed out at his attackers.
Now Sathuli warriors appeared on the battlements and once more the Nadir fled their terrible tulwars, backing to the walls and seeking escape down the ropes.
Within minutes it was over. Elsewhere on the open ground small pockets of Nadir warriors were surrounded and despatched.
Joachim Sathuli, his white robes stained with crimson, slowly mounted the rampart steps, followed by his seven lieutenants. He approached Rek and bowed. Turning, he handed his bloody tulwars to a dark-bearded warrior. Another man passed him a scented towel. Slowly, elaborately he wiped his face and then his hands. Finally he spoke:
‘A warm welcome,’ he said, his face unsmiling but his eyes full of humour.
‘Indeed,’ said Rek. ‘It is lucky the other guests had to leave, otherwise there would not have been any room.’
‘Are you so surprised to see me?’
‘No, not surprised. Astonished sounds more accurate.’
Joachim laughed. ‘Is your memory so short, Delnoch? You said we should part as friends and I agreed. Where else should I be in a friend’s hour of need?’
‘You must have had the devil’s own task convincing your warriors to follow you.’
‘Not at all,’ answered Joachim, an impish gleam in his eyes. ‘Most of their lives they have longed to fight inside these walls.’
*
The tall Sathuli warrior stood on the high walls of Geddon, gazing down at the Nadir camp beyond the deserted battlements of Valteri. Rek was asleep now and the bearded prince strode the walls alone. Around him were sentries and soldiers of both races, but Joachim remained solitary.
For weeks Sathuli scouts atop the Delnoch range had watched the battle raging below. Often Joachim himself had scaled the peaks to view the fighting. Then a Nadir raiding party had struck at a Sathuli village and Joachim had persuaded his men to follow him to Delnoch. Added to this, he knew of the traitor who dealt with the Nadir, for he had witnessed a meeting in a high, narrow pass between the traitor and the Nadir captain, Ogasi.
Two days later the Nadir had tried to send a force over the mountains and the Sathuli had repulsed them.
Joachim heard the news of Rek’s loss with sadness. Fatalistic himself, he could still share the feelings of a man whose woman had died. His own had died in childbirth two years before and the wound was still fresh.
Joachim shook his head. War was a savage mistress, but a woman of power nonetheless. She could wreak more havoc in a man’s soul than time.
The Sathuli arrival had been timely and not without cost. Four hundred of his men were dead – a loss scarcely bearable to a mountain people who numbered a mere thirty thousand, many of these being children and ancients.
But a debt was a debt.
The man Hogun hated him, Joachim knew. But this was understandable, for Hogun was of the Legion and the Sathuli had spilt Legion blood for years. They reserved their finest tortures for captured Riders. This was an honour, but Joachim knew the Drenai could never understand. When a man died he was tested – the harder the death, the greater the rewards in Paradise. Torture advanced a man’s soul and the Sathuli could offer no greater reward to a captured enemy.