LEGEND by David A. Gemmell

‘He said it was important for me to tell you to collect inflammables and containers, since Ulric has built great siege towers. He also suggested fire gullies across the spaces between walls. In my mind he showed me a vision of you being attacked. He told me a name: Musar.

‘Does any of it make any sense?’

For a moment no one spoke, although Druss seemed hugely relieved.

‘Indeed it does, laddie. Indeed it does!’

Hogun poured a fresh glass of Lentrian and passed it to Bowman.

‘What did this warrior look like?’ he asked.

‘Tall, slender. I think his hair was white, though he was young.’

‘It is Serbitar,’ said Hogun. ‘The vision is a true one.’

‘You know him?’ asked Druss.

‘Of him only. He is the son of Earl Drada of Dros Segril. It is said that the boy was fey and had a demon; he could read men’s thoughts. He is an albino, and as you know the Vagrians consider this an ill omen. He was sent to the Temple of The Thirty, south of Drenan, when he was about thir­teen. It is also said that his father tried to smother him when he was a babe, but that the child sensed him coming and hid outside his bedroom window. These, of course, are but stories.’

‘Well, his talents have grown, it seems,’ said Druss, ‘But I don’t give a damn. He’ll be useful here -especially if he can read Ulric’s mind.’

15

For ten days work progressed. Fire gullies ten yards wide were dug four feet deep across the open ground between Walls One and Two, and again between Walls Three and Four. These were filled with brush­wood and small timber, while vats were placed along each gully ready to pour oils to the dry wood.

Bowman’s archers hammered white stakes in the open ground at various points between walls, and also out on the plain before the fortress. Each line of stakes represented sixty paces, and his men practised for several hours each day, black clouds of shafts slicing the air above each row as the com­mands were shouted.

Target dummies were set up on the plain, only to be splintered by scores of arrows, even at 120 paces. The skills of the Skultik archers were formidable.

Hogun rehearsed withdrawals, timing the men by drumbeats as they dashed from the battlements, across the plank bridges of the fire gullies to scale the ropes to the next wall. Each day they became more swift.

Minor points began to occupy more time as the overall fitness and readiness of the troops increased.

‘When do we add the oil?’ Hogun asked Druss, as the men took an afternoon break.

‘Between Walls One and Two, it will have to be filled on the day of the first attack. Until the first day we will have no real idea of how well the men will stand up to the assault.’

‘There remains the problem,’ added Orrin, ‘of who lights the gullies and when. For example, if the wall is breached we could have Nadir tribesmen racing side by side with our own men. No easy deci­sion to throw in a lighted torch.’

‘And if we give men the duty,’ said Hogun, ‘what happens if they are killed on the wall?’

‘We will have to have a torch duty,’ said Druss. ‘And the decision will be relayed by a bugler from Wall Two. An officer of cool nerve will be needed to judge the issue. When the bugle sounds the gully goes up – no matter who is left behind.’

Matters such as these occupied Druss more and more, until his head swam with plans, ideas, stratagems and ploys. Several times during such discus­sions the old man’s temper flared and his huge fists hammered the table, or else he strode around the room like a caged bear.

‘I’m a soldier – not a damned planner,’ he would announce, and the meeting would be adjourned for an hour.

Combustibles were carted in from outlying vil­lages, a seemingly endless number of despatches arrived from Drenan and Abalayn’s panicked government, and a multitude of small problems -concerning delayed mail, new recruits, personal worries and squabbles between groups – threatened to overwhelm the three men.