‘People are sometimes vile creatures, Druss, selfish and self-regarding. But the real fault is not in them, but in us for expecting better. When Klay dies they’ll all remember what a fine man he was, and they’ll probably shed tears for him.’
‘He deserves better,’ grunted Druss.
‘Maybe he does,’ agreed Sieben, wiping sweat from his brow with a perfumed handkerchief. ‘But when did that ever matter? Do we get what we deserve? I do not believe so. We get what we can win – what we can take, whether it be employment, or money, or women, or land. Look at you! Raiders stole your wife; they had the power to take, and they took her. Sadly for them you had the power to hunt them down, and the sheer determination to pursue your love across the ocean. But you didn’t win her back by luck, or by the whim of a capricious deity. You did it by force of arms. You might have failed for a hundred reasons, illness, war – the flight of an arrow, the flash of a sword-blade – a sudden storm at sea. You didn’t get what you deserved, Druss, you got what you fought for. Klay was unlucky. He took a bolt that was meant for you. That was your good luck.’
‘I don’t argue with that,’ said Druss. ‘Yes, he was unlucky. But they tore down his statue, and his friends robbed and then deserted him – men he had supported, aided, protected. That’s what I find hard to swallow.’
Sieben nodded. ‘My father told me that a man is lucky if in his life he can count on at least two good friends. He always maintained that a man with many friends had to be either rich or stupid, and I think that is largely true. In all my life I have had only one friend, Druss, and that is you.’
‘Do you not count your women?’
Sieben shook his head. ‘Everything with them has always been transactional. They require something of me, I require something of them. We each supply the other. They give me the warmth of their bodies and their yielding flesh; I give them the incredible expertise of the perfect lover.’
‘How can you call yourself a lover when love is never present in your encounters?’
‘Don’t be a pedant, Druss. I am worth the title. Even accomplished whores have told me I’m the best lover they ever had.’
‘How surprising,’ said Druss, with a grin. ‘I’ll wager they don’t say that to many men.’
‘Mockery does not suit you, axeman. We all have our skills. Yours is with that appalling weapon, mine is in love-making.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Druss. ‘But it seems to me my weapon ends problems. Yours causes them.’
‘Oh, very droll. Just what I need as I walk through this barren wilderness, a lecture on morals!” Sieben stroked the neck of the steel-dust gelding then stepped into the saddle. Lifting his hand he shaded his eyes. ‘It is all so green. I’ve never seen a land that promised so much and gave so little. How do these plants survive?’
Druss did not answer. He was trying to hook his foot into the stirrup, but the mare began walking in circles. Sieben chuckled and rode alongside, taking the mare’s reins and holding her steady while the axeman mounted. ‘They are deep-rooted,’ said Druss. ‘It rains here for a full month every winter. The plants and bushes soak it in, then battle to survive for another year. It is a hard land. Harsh and savage.’
‘Like the people who dwell here,’ said Sieben.
‘Aye. The Nadir are a fierce people.’
‘Majon was telling me about a group called Chop-backs.’
‘Renegades,’ said Druss. ‘They call them Notas, no tribe. They are outcasts, robbers and killers. We’ll try to avoid them.’
‘And if we can’t?’
Druss laughed. ‘Then you can show me your skills with the pretty knives!’
Nosta Khan sat in the shade of an overhanging rock, his scrawny left hand dipped in the cool waters of the rock pool. The sun was high overhead now, the heat beyond the shade pitiless, relentless in its power. It caused Nosta Khan no distress. Neither heat nor cold, nor pain nor sorrow could touch him now. For he was a Master of the Way – a shaman.