Kai watched him for some seconds, then lifted his hand and tapped his enormous chest.
‘Vrend,’ he said.
‘Friends,’ agreed Waylander.
After a while Waylander moved to his pack, sharing out some jerked meat and dried fruit. The food disappeared swiftly, then Kai belched and tapped his chest once more.
‘Kai,’ he said, his head tilting with the effort of speech.
‘Waylander.’
Kai nodded, then stretched himself out with head on arm and closed his great eye.
A noise in the undergrowth startled the assassin and he started to rise.
‘Orsh,’ said Kai, without moving.
Waylander’s horse moved into the clearing. He patted its neck and fed it the last of the grain, before tethering it to a stout branch.
Taking his blanket, he lay down beside the man-monster and slept until dawn. When he awoke, he was alone. The bodies of the wolf-beasts had gone and so had Kai.
Waylander finished the last of his food, then saddled his horse. Moving from the clearing, he gazed up at the rearing bulk of Raboas.
The Sacred Giant.
A strange yet perfect sense of calm settled over Waylander as he guided his horse up the slopes of Raboas. The sun was shining through a latticework of cloud which gave incredible depth to the beauty of the sky, while overhead gulls swooped and dived like tiny living shrews of cloud. Waylander pulled on the reins and scanned the land about him. There was a beauty here he had never seen before: a savage elemental magnificence which spoke of the arrogance of eternity.
To his right a stream whispered across white rocks, gushing from a crack in the mountain. He dismounted and stripped his clothing; then he washed and shaved and combed his hair, tying it at the nape of the neck. The water was cold on his skin and he dressed again swiftly after shaking the dust of travel from his clothes. From his pack he took a shawl of black silk which he looped over his shoulders and head in the style of the Sathuli burnoose. Then he placed his mail-ringed shoulder-guard in place. From his pack he took two wrist-guards of silver which he buckled over his forearms, then a baldric carrying six sheathed throwing-knives. He sharpened his knives and his sword-blade and stood, facing the mountain.
Today he would die.
Today he would find peace.
In the distance he saw a dust-cloud heading towards Raboas. Many riders were galloping towards the mountain, but Waylander did not care.
This was his day. This glorious hour of beauty was his hour.
He stepped into the saddle and located the narrow path between the rocks, urging the horse onward.
All his life he had been heading for this path, he knew. Every experience of his existence had conspired to bring him here at this time.
From the moment he killed Niallad he had felt as if he had reached the peak of a mountain from which there was no return. All the paths had been closed to him, his only choice to step from the peak and fly!
Suddenly it did not matter whether he found the Armour, or indeed whether the Drenai won or died.
This was Waylander’s hour.
For the first time in two decades he saw without anguish his beloved Tanya standing in the doorway of the farm and waving him home. He saw his son and his two daughters playing by the flower garden. He had loved them so much.
But to the raiders they had been no more than playthings. His wife they had raped and murdered; his children they had killed without thought or remorse. Their gain had been an hour of sated lust, several bags of grain and a handful of silver coin.
Their punishment had been death, hideous and vengeful – not one of them had died in less than an hour. For Dakeyras the farmer had died with his family. The raiders had created Waylander the Slayer.
But now the hatred was gone … vanished like smoke in the breeze. Waylander smiled as he remembered his first conversation with Dardalion.
‘Once I was a lamb playing in a green field. Then the wolves came. Now I am an eagle and I fly in a different universe.’