The Legend Of Deathwalker By David Gemmell
The Legend Of Deathwalker By David Gemmell
The Drenai books
Legend
The King Beyond the Gate
Waylander
Quest for Lost Heroes
Waylander 2: In the Realm of the Wolf
The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend
The Legend of Deathwalker
Winter Warriors
Hero in the Shadows
The Jon Shannow books
Wolf in Shadow
The Last Guardian
Bloodstone
The Stones of Power books
Ghost King
Last Sword of Power
Lion of Macedon
Dark Prince
The Hawk Queen books
Ironhand’s Daughter
The Hawk Eternal
The Rigante books
Sword in the Storm
Midnight Falcon
Ravenheart
Individual titles
Knights of Dark Renown
Drenai Tales
Morning Star
Dark Moon
Echoes of the Great Song
THE LEGEND OF DEATHWALKER
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Dros Delnoch
Prologue
The moon hung like a sickle blade over Dros Delnoch and Pellin stood quietly staring down at the Nadir camp in the lunar light below. Thousands of warriors were gathered there, and tomorrow they would come screaming across the narrow strip of blood-stained ground, hauling their ladders, carrying their grappling irons. They would be baying for battle and death, and just like today the sound would terrify him, seeming to penetrate his skin like needles of ice. Pellin was more frightened than he had ever been in his young life, and he longed to run, to hide, to throw away his ill-fitting armour, and race south to his home. The Nadir kept coming, wave after wave, their raucous battle cries sending their hatred ahead of them. The shallow wound in his upper left arm was both throbbing and itching. Gilad had assured him this meant that it was healing well. But it had been a taste of pain, a bitter promise of worse pain to come. He had watched comrades writhing and screaming, their bellies opened by serrated swords . . . Pellin fought to push the memories away. A cold wind began to blow from the north, bunching dark rain-clouds before it. He shivered, and remembered his warm farmhouse with its thatched roof and large stone-built fireplace. On cold nights like this one he and Kara would lie in bed, her head resting on his shoulder, her left leg warm on his thighs. They would lie together in the soft red glow of the fading fire, and listen to the wind howling mournfully outside. Pellin sighed. ‘Please don’t let me die here,’ he prayed.
Of the twenty-three men who had volunteered from his village, only nine were left. He gazed back at the rows of sleeping defenders, lying on the open ground between Walls Three and Four. Could these few hold the greatest army ever assembled ? Pellin knew they could not.
Returning his gaze to the Nadir camp, he scanned the area close to the mountains. The Drenai dead, stripped of armour and weapons, had been thrown there, and burnt. Oily black smoke had drifted over the Dros for hours afterwards, bringing with it the sickly and nauseating smell of roasting flesh. ‘It could have been me,’ thought Pellin, remembering the slaughter as Wall Two fell.
He shivered. Dros Delnoch, the mightiest fortress in all the world: six walls of rearing stone, and a broad keep. Never had she been conquered by an enemy. But then never had she faced an army of such numbers. It seemed to Pellin that there were more Nadir than there were stars in the sky. The defenders had fallen back from Wall One after bitter righting, for it was the longest and therefore the hardest to hold. They had crept back in the night, surrendering the wall without further losses. But Wall Two had been taken at great cost, the enemy breaching the defences and sweeping forward to encircle the defenders. Pellin had barely made it back to Wall Three, and remembered the acid taste of fear in his throat, and the terrible shaking of his limbs as he hauled himself over the battlements and sank to the ramparts.
And what was it all for, he wondered ? What difference would it make if the Drenai enjoyed self-rule, or government by the Warlord, Ulric? Would the farm yield any less corn? Would his cattle sicken and die?