Gorkai did not have long to wait. Talisman’s men were swept aside as a section of the battlements gave way, and Talisman himself took a spear thrust into the chest. Gorkai screamed a battle cry and led his men forward, hurtling up the rampart steps two at a time. Talisman gutted the spearman, dragged the broken spear from his chest and then fell. Gorkai leapt across his body as more Gothir soldiers made it to the ramparts.
Talisman’s vision was blurring, and he felt a great dizziness sweep over him. I cannot die, he thought. Not now! Struggling to his knees, he scrabbled for his sabre. Darkness loomed but he fought against it.
Gorkai and his men re-took the battlements, forcing the Gothir back. Blood was bubbling from Talisman’s chest, and he knew a lung was punctured. Two men took him by the arms, hauling him to his feet. ‘Get him to the surgeon!’ ordered Gorkai.
Talisman was half helped, half carried to the hospital building. He heard Zhusai cry out as he was brought in. Desperately trying to focus, he saw the face of Sieben above him . . . then he passed out.
The Gothir had given up their assault on the northern wall and Druss, his helm struck from his head, jumped the gap in the ramparts and rejoined the Fleet Ponies. Nuang Xuan, wounded again in the chest and arms, was sitting slumped by the wall.
The Gothir fell back.
Druss knelt down by the old Nadir leader. ‘How goes it?’ he asked.
‘More than a hundred,’ said Nuang. ‘I think I have killed all the Gothir there are, and what you see outside are merely ghosts.’
Druss rose and scanned the defences. The north wall had only eighteen defenders still standing. Around him on the western ramparts there were some twenty-five Sky Riders. Above the gates he counted thirty, including Talisman’s man, Gorkai. In the compound below Lin-tse had fewer than a dozen men. Druss tried to add the numbers together, but lost them in a sea of weariness. Taking a deep breath, he re-counted.
Fewer than a hundred defenders were visible to him, but the bodies of Nadir dead lay everywhere. He saw the Curved Horn leader Bartsai lying on the ground below the ramparts, three dead Gothir around his corpse.
‘You are bleeding, Deathwalker,’ said a Sky Rider.
‘It is nothing,’ replied Druss, recognizing the hawk-faced young man he had spoken to earlier.
‘Take off your jerkin,’ said the youngster.
Druss groaned as he eased the ripped and near ruined leather from his huge frame. He had been cut four times around the shoulders and upper arms, but there was a deeper wound under his right shoulder-blade. Blood had pooled around his belt.
‘You need stitches, hey,’ the Nadir told him. ‘Or you bleed to death.’
Druss leaned on the ramparts and stared down at the Gothir forces, who had moved back out of bowshot.
‘Take the old man with you,’ said the Nadir, grinning. ‘He fights so well he shames us all.’
Druss forced a grin and hauled Nuang Xuan to his feet. ‘Walk with me a while, old man.’ Turning to the Nadir warrior, he said, ‘I’ll be back before you know it.’
Talisman felt the pain of his wounds recede, and found himself lying on a bare hillside under a grey sky. His heart hammered in panic as he recognized the landscape of the Void. ‘You are not dead,’ came a calm voice from close by. Talisman sat up, and saw the little sorcerer Shaoshad sitting beside a flickering blaze. The tall figure of Shul-sen stood beside him, her silver cloak gleaming in the firelight.
‘Then why am I here ?’ he asked.
‘To learn,’ said Shul-sen. ‘When Oshikai and I came to the land of the steppes we were touched by its beauty, but more than this we were called by its magic. Every stone carried it, every plant grew with it. Elemental power radiated from the mountains, and flowed in the streams. The Gods of Stone and Water, we called them. You know what gives birth to this magic, Talisman?’
‘No.’
‘Life and death. The life forces of millions of men and animals, insects and plants. Each life comes from the land, then returns to the land. It is a circle of harmony.’