‘Is he dead?’ asked Druss.
‘No. Soon,’ answered Calvar Syn.
Druss moved to the bedside, sitting beside the frail figure. The Earl’s eyes opened and blinked twice.
‘Druss?’ he called, his voice weak. ‘Are you there?’
‘I am here.’
‘He’s coming. I see him. He is hooded and black.’
‘Spit in his eye for me,’ said Druss, his huge hand stroking the Earl’s fevered brow,
‘I thought . . . after Skeln . . . I would live for ever.’
‘Be at peace, my friend. One thing I have learned about Death is that his bark’s worse than his bite.’
‘I can see them, Druss. The Immortals. They’re sending in the Immortals!’ The dying man grabbed Druss’s arm, and tried to haul himself upright. ‘Here they come! Gods, will you look at them, Druss!’
‘They’re just men. We will see them off.’
‘Sit by the fire, child, and I’ll tell you of it. But don’t tell your mother I told you – You know how she hates the bloodthirsty tales. Ah, Virae, my little love! You will never understand what it has meant to me just being your father . . .’ Druss bowed his head as the old Earl rambled on, his voice thin and wavering. Hogun gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, Calvar Syn sat slumped in an armchair and Orrin stood by the door, remembering his own father’s death so many years before.
‘We were at the pass for many days, holding out against everything they could throw at us. Tribesmen, chariots, infantry, cavalry. But always the threat of the Immortals hung over us. Never beaten! Old Druss stood at the centre of our first line, and as the Immortals marched towards us we froze. You could feel panic in the air. I wanted to run and I could see the same feeling reflected on the faces around me. Then old Druss lifted his axe in the air and bellowed at the advancing line. It was wonderful. Magical almost. The spell broke. The fear passed. He raised his axe for them to see, then he shouted. I can hear him now: “Come on, you fat bellied whore-sons! I am Druss, and this is Death!”
‘Virae? Virae? I waited for you . . . just one more time. See you. So much . . . So much wanted . . .’ The frail body trembled, then lay still. Druss closed the dead man’s eyes and wiped a hand across his own.
‘He should never have sent her away,’ said Calvar Syn. ‘He loved that girl, she was all he lived for.’
‘Maybe that’s why he sent her,’ said Hogun.
Druss pulled the silk sheet up and over the Earl’s face, and walked to the window. Now he was alone -the last survivor of Skeln. He leaned on the window sill and sucked in the night air.
Outside the moon bathed the Dros hi eldritch light, grey and ghostly, and the old man gazed towards the north. Overhead a fluttering pigeon flew in and circled a loft beneath the Keep. It had come out of the north.
He turned from the window.
‘Bury him quietly tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We will not interrupt training for a full funeral.’
‘But Druss, this is Earl Delnar!’ said Hogun, eyes blazing.
‘That,’ said Druss, pointing at the bed, ‘is a cancer-ridden corpse. It isn’t anyone. Just do as I say.’
‘You cold-hearted bastard,’ said Dun Mendar.
Druss turned his icy gaze on the officer.
‘And just you remember that, laddie, the day you – or any of you – go against me.’
12
Rek leaned on the starboard rail with one arm about Virae’s shoulders and stared at the sea. Strange, he thought, how night changed the mood of the ocean. A vast, semi-solid mirror reflecting the stars, while the moon’s twin floated, fragmented and ethereal, a mile or so away. Always a mile or so away. A gentle breeze billowed the triangular sail as the Wastrel cut a white path through the waves, gently dipping and rising with the swell. Aft stood the mate at the spoked wheel, his silver eye-patch glinting in the moonlight. Forward a young seaman cast his lead into the waves, calling out the changes in depth as they passed over the hidden reef.