The Diamond Warriors Read online

  ‘And we can’t cross Waas, if we are to surprise the Waashians,’ I overheard one warrior telling another that night around one of our many campfires. ‘I’d rather risk a battle with the Mansurii, who might never notice us, than call down the Waashians to face us on their own ground.’

  It pleased me that my captains had passed along my intentions to the warriors. I wanted each of them to understand our strategy so that they could march into battle like men, instead of ants, even as they fought like killer angels.

  That night, in my pavilion, I gathered with my captains and other lords around my map table. I traced my finger along the curve of the mountains, bending north and east up toward Waas, and then back south and around to form Kaash’s border with the Mansurii. If we marched straight for Kaash, we would have a journey of ninety miles across the open spaces of the Wendrush. If we kept within easy retreat of the mountains, however much safer that might be, we would add miles to our journey.

  ‘Will spending a few extra days really bring us to Kaash too late?’ Lord Tanu asked.

  ‘It might,’ Lord Zandru told him. His long, apelike arm swept out toward the map. ‘I have said that King Talanu can probably maneuver and delay things until the middle of Marud. But King Sandarkan might be able to bring him to battle sooner.’

  ‘Then time is of the essence,’ Lord Sharad said.

  ‘In any case,’ Lord Tomavar added, ‘cleaving the mountains near Waas might not prove so very safe: what if we are spotted?’

  As had become my habit, I let the lords of Mesh speak from their hearts. In the end, though, I had to speak from mine, as well as follow it – along with ten thousand men.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I told them, ‘we will send out riders to look for the Mansurii. Even if their warriors detect us, it will take them some time to assemble their clans and attack us. If we move quickly enough, we could reach Kaash before they call up their full strength.’

  ‘How quickly, then?’ Lord Harsha asked me, gazing at me with his single eye.

  ‘Three days,’ I told him. ‘Four, at the most.’

  ‘But, Sire, the wagons are still nearly full,’ he told me. ‘The oxen will have a hard time of things, and the men almost as bad. You’ll march their legs off.’

  Kane answered for me then. He caught up Lord Harsha in his fierce gaze and growled out, ‘March their legs off? Ha – that’s better than cutting them off when they rot from the filth that the Mansurii spread on their damn arrows!’

  We set out early the next morning across the trackless steppe, driving the oxen as hard as we dared. The wagons bumped and lurched over the grassy, uneven ground. The jangling of the warriors’ silver bells drove up flocks of birds and herds of gazelles bounding from our path. In the distance, lions roared, though none of us in the vanguard or farther back had the privilege of laying eyes on these noble beasts. But neither did we, or our outriders, espy any of the Mansurii, and we all gave thanks for that.

  Along our way, Estrella stopped to pick some white yarrow growing in sprays across the sun-seared grass. She bound them up and gave them to Bemossed. She could not explain, in words, the purpose of her gift. But those of us who knew her understood well enough: she tried in her own quiet way to inspirit him. For even as my warriors marched forth to distant battles, Bemossed continued fighting his nightly and hourly battle with Morjin. This great struggle seemed to wear away at him. No matter how much good food Liljana tried to urge into him, he had little appetite, and seemed to be growing thinner. His flesh hung dark and bruised beneath his eyes, and he rode along under the hot sun as if trying to bear its fiery weight upon his shoulders.

  Alphanderry, as well, tried to cheer him. Especially at nights, around a blazing campfire, he took out his mandolet and played stirring, ancient epics. He composed songs of his own, singing straight to Bemossed’s soul. This helped, a little. What nourishment Bemossed failed to find in salted beef or barley bread, he seemed to take in music. I remembered the songs that Ondin had taught me so many years before, and I added my voice to Alphanderry’s, and we sang out ancient harmonies that pleased the warriors and finally brought a gleam to Bemossed’s eyes. I remembered that the Ieldra, at the beginning of time, had sung the whole universe into being, and on those star-filled nights on the steppe with the lions roaring and ten thousand warriors singing along with us about the miracle of creation, all things seemed possible.

  During the days and nights of our march to Kaash, I reflected often on the words etched into my sword: Vas Sama Yeos Valarda. What would it mean truly to see my enemy as myself? What would I do if I could? I wondered, with every mile of grass that my great stallion trampled beneath his hooves, at the powers of my sword – and even more at the deepest impulses of my soul.

  Three days and a morning it took us to cross the pocket of grassland pressed up against the curve of the Morning Mountains between Mesh and Kaash. Our luck held good. Our outriders sighted not a single Mansurii warrior, nor did I lose any of my warriors to sunstroke, exhaustion, the flux, or any of a hundred other maladies that strike down men on the march. Three oxen, only, dropped beneath the great weights they pulled. Lord Harsha had them butchered and roasted, and my tradition-loving Meshian warriors put tooth to this fresh meat with much greater gusto than they had exhibited toward the antelope and gazelles that the hunters had brought in.

  Lord Zandru the Hammer, riding a large white gelding, steered us straight toward the opening in the southwest curve of the mountains known as the Lion’s Gate. Tall, white-capped peaks rose up to either side of this narrow and rocky gap. The Kaashans had built a great fortress on a hill overlooking the Lion’s Gate. Lord Zandru, with Lord Avijan, Lord Noldashan and other knights, rode up to this heap of stones to inform the fortress’ commander that the Meshians had come to answer Kaash’s call. The commander – a Lord Yulsun – seemed both surprised and delighted to learn this news. He opened the Lion’s Gate to our army, in a manner of speaking, and we encamped that night on pasturage along a river to the north of the fortress.

  Lord Yulsun, according to protocol, invited my captains and me to take meat in his fortress. But because I did not want to leave my men, I invited into our encampment Lord Yulsun and as many of his warriors as could leave their duties. I had my council table set up on the grass outside between four blazing fires, and there I sat at dinner with Lord Yulsun, Lord Zandru and my captains and the other greatest lords of Mesh.

  Lord Yulsun, a spare, old warrior who had lost one eye and part of his cheek bone from a Mansurii arrow, wasted no time in niceties. He was hard, blunt man used to speaking his mind.

  ‘King Valamesh,’ he said, addressing me with a grave formality, ‘no one in Kaash expected you to gain your father’s throne. And for you to march to our aid at a moment’s notice, when we failed to march to yours – this is a very great thing. Who would have thought it possible?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said, thinking of my father, ‘it seems that everything is possible.’

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ he told me, ‘for the one who gained the Lightstone out of Argattha and tried to bring our people together in alliance. But then King Shamesh was a great man, and so why should we not expect even greater things of his son?’

  I bowed my head to acknowledge his kind words. And I looked around the table at my captains, and I told Lord Yulsun: ‘We cannot let Waas defeat you. Our two kingdoms have been allies for ages, and we cannot let your misfortune of two years ago break that bond.’

  ‘I wish King Talanu were present to hear you say that! Your uncle would be proud of you, Valashu Elahad, if you don’t mind my saying that. And pleased to see you leading ten thousand men. With our six thousand, we will surely outnumber the Waashians. If you can move quickly enough, we have a great chance to defeat them once and for all.’

  He told us that King Sandarkan’s Waashians were marching down from Charoth, and that King Talanu had called up nearly every available warrior to throw them back. Their armies were to meet in battle along the west bank of th
e Rajabash River just south of a village called Harban.

  ‘I scouted that place two years ago,’ Lord Zandru said to Lord Yulsun. ‘It is a good battleground, with a pasturage of ten miles along the river, and almost two miles wide, rising up to the forest beneath Mount Ihsan.’

  In Kaash, most mountainous of the Nine Kingdoms, clear and level ground on which a battle could be decently fought was almost as rare as water in the middle of the Red Desert.

  ‘Has a date been set for the battle yet?’ Lord Zandru asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Lord Yulsun told him, nodding his head. ‘The sixteenth of Marud.’

  Lord Zandru turned to me. ‘King Valamesh – it is a hundred miles from here northeast to Harban. Tomorrow will be the fifth, will it not? And so that gives us eleven days to cover a hundred miles’

  Lord Zandru, in his zeal to lead reinforcements to his king, neglected to mention the obvious, which Maram now pointed out: ‘Ah, but you’re speaking of mountain miles, aren’t you? It might be a hundred miles for a bird to fly from here to Harban, but how far is it really?’

  In the mountains, as my father had taught me, over rugged terrain that bent and twisted, rose and fell, a hundred miles’ journey equaled twice or thrice that of a route taken across flatter country.

  Lord Zandru had no numbers to offer to Maram, but he did try to encourage him, saying, ‘There is a road that leads from the Lion’s Gate through the Ice Mountains to the Rajabash River’

  ‘The Ice Mountains – oh, excellent!’ Maram said. ‘I suppose the peaks there did not acquire their name by accident? No? I thought not. Well, I hope it is a good road.’

  ‘As good as any in Kaash,’ Lord Zandru told him. He turned toward me. ‘If the weather holds, you should have time to make the march and meet up with your uncle south of Harban. When the Waashians learn of this, they will either have to retreat back to Waas or face defeat’

  ‘Defeat,’ I murmured. It had come that time in our meal when the plates of food were taken away and pitchers of beer set on the table. ‘But can there be a defeat without defeat?’

  ‘What do you mean, King Valamesh?’ Lord Zandru asked, fixing me with a puzzled look.

  ‘Is the road you spoke of the only one that leads to Harban?’

  ‘Well, no – there is a track around the backside of Mount Ihsan that gives out to the north of Harban. But you could never get a wagon over it, and even the horses would have a hard work of that route.’

  ‘But it is passable, is it not?’

  ‘It is – but why would you want to pass that way? It would add twenty miles to your journey’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Maram said to me with sudden understanding. ‘I hope you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking … Sire. Isn’t it enough to defeat the Waashians? Or turn them back?’

  ‘No, it is not enough’ I said. ‘Not nearly enough.’

  I turned to look at Kane, sitting to my right. His black eyes glistered with the same fire I felt blazing inside me.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said to Lord Zandru, ‘I would ask you to lead us toward Harban and the track that you have told of. We must march like the very wind.’

  We all drank to that; in short order Maram downed not only one large mug of beer, but three more as well. His voice had begun to thicken as he came up to me and said, ‘All right, my daring friend, tomorrow we will march – the beginning of the last leg of the march we’ve been making toward that place that we’re loath to speak of. You know where I mean. That very, inevasible, inevitable place. I can see it, can’t you? Well, I’ve promised to follow you there, and I will.’

  With that he drank another mug of the golden-brown Kaashan beer, and then another. The Kaashan and Meshian knights regarded his capacity for holding his drink with great respect, and Maram took an obvious pride in this. But they would respect him even more, he must have known, if he stopped himself from drinking himself into a stupor that would slow him down the next day or impair his ability to fight. And so, finally, knowing himself as well as he did, he pushed his froth-stained mug away from him. And in his loud, beery voice, he announced: ‘I’ve drunk to our commitment to reaching the end of the road, and that is the end … for me. For Maram Marshayk, the end of brandy and beer. This promise I make, upon my honor, in respect of yours: Sar Maram will take no more drink until Morjin is defeated!’

  Lord Noldashan and Joshu Kadar – and many others – cheered Maram’s sacrifice, and not a few made similar pledges of their own. But I had already marched with Maram for too many miles to take too much encouragement from his new vow. I caught Master Juwain looking at me as if to ask: ‘Can a fish give up swimming in water?’

  The next morning, Lord Yulsun sent a messenger galloping ahead of us to inform King Talanu to expect us on the battlefield near the ides of Marud. Then I commanded my captains to form up the warriors, and I led them out of the Lion’s Gate and up the road toward Harban.

  For the next nine days we marched at a brutal pace. The road, while not quite as sound as those that my father had maintained, was built of good stone and well-drained against the frequent summer rains that came up and drenched the forest spread over most of Kaash. The road led around the curves of high mountains, through green, grassy valleys and up and over the sides of tree-covered hills. The Kaashans made a hard living from the farms carved out of this rugged country, and had little food to spare a foreign and hungry army. But what little they had, they gave to us in order that we might preserve our stores for our march and the coming battle. In village after village, they welcomed us with open hearts and cheered us on; in a little town called Yarun, they urged upon us leaves of the khakun bush. The bitter green leaves, when chewed, would impart great stamina and strength to a man, or so they said.

  Great strength we all needed. While I tried to take care with my men’s feet, to say nothing of their legs, we had to keep driving forward, even if a hundred or more warriors dropped by the way. But so tough and well-trained were the men I led that only a few could not bear up under the constant pounding of boots against stone. And Master Juwain, inside his creaking wagon that a team of oxen pulled along, using his green gelstei freely, was able to heal them and restore them to their battalions. He, himself, drove himself nearly to exhaustion. When the power of his varistei faded and then failed him, he relied on needles to lance the blood blisters afflicting my men’s raw feet and the herbs and ointments that he employed to great effect. Abrasax, I thought, and the other Masters of the Brotherhood took note of his devotions, and they must have seen in him the same rare skill for healing that had perished with Master Okuth when he had sacrificed his life for Bemossed.

  Maram, true to his word, touched no spirits in all those long days. But finally, on the evening of the 13th when we came to a village called Anan beneath the slopes of Mount Ihsan, he had great trouble resisting the brandy that the villagers broke out and poured for us. He took up a cup of his favorite drink and held it for a long few moments beneath his nose. Then he made a great show of passing it along as he called out, ‘Morjin is certainly not yet defeated, and neither are the Waashians. And so I suppose the fragrance of this blessed liquor will have to sustain me until they are.’

  The road through Anan, I saw, curved off east through a forest of elms, beeches and oaks as it made its way up around the white, rocky hugeness of Mount Ihsan at the heart of the great peaks of the Ice Mountains. We might yet follow it, and so meet up in good time with King Talanu’s forces by the Rajabash River. Or we might take the track that Lord Zandru pointed out to my captains and me at the edge of Anan. It led higher up around the western and northern buttresses of Mount Ihsan, through stands of aspen and spruce, and carved into bare earth, or so Lord Zandru told us.

  ‘But one horse only and no more than two men at a time can make their way up this,’ he said to us. ‘You will be half a day even getting your army moving forward, King Valamesh.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, pointing off to the left, ‘but that is the way we must go.’

>   ‘It will be a long two-day march to the battlefield – if the weather is good. And weather or no, the men will have to sleep in the woods off the side of the track, where they can.’

  ‘Very well – then tonight we shall pitch our tents here on the best ground that we can find and take as much rest as we can.’

  ‘But what will you do tomorrow, King Valamesh? With your baggage train?’

  I summoned Lord Harsha and said to him, ‘Will you see to it that the wagons are taken up the road that they might be waiting for us by the Rajabash?’

  His single eye burned with discontent. ‘I will if I must, Sire. But that will bring us out behind the Kaashan lines, and I will have to ride with them on the day of the battle, and not with my countrymen.’

  ‘On that day,’ I told him, bowing my head to Lord Zandru, ‘the Kaashans will be as our countrymen.’

  Then I issued orders that my warriors each take only enough food for the two-day march around Mount Ihsan. And their weapons and armor, of course. Everything else – the tents, extra clothing and food – would have to make the journey with Lord Harsha and the baggage train.

  Marud’s fourteenth day gave us a morning of crystal-clear air and the scents of the evergreen trees and flowers wafting down from Mount Ihsan’s slopes. To the sounds of ten thousand men strapping shields and swords over their backs, horses stamping and snorting, and water poured on campfires sending up a hissing steam, I mounted Altaru. To the protests of Lord Avijan, Sar Shivalad and Joshu Kadar, and other knights in my vanguard, I insisted on leading forward at the very head of the long column of our army. I rode straight through Anan and onto the track that pushed through the dense woods to the northeast. Four hundred mounted knights kept close behind me, followed by Lord Tomavar’s and Lord Tanu’s nine thousand foot, and then the three hundred knights of Lord Sharad’s rear guard. Although it did not take half the morning to get everyone moving up the track, as Lord Zandru had feared, it took long enough, and I soon found my army spread out for more than three miles along it behind me.