The Diamond Warriors Page 27

  Just after dawn, we came out into the pastureland along the Rajabash, below Harban but to the north of the battlefield. Now that we marched in the open, I commanded Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar to keep a tight formation and to be ready to deploy from columns into lines at a moment’s notice. We hurried across the rolling, grassy ground full of sheep and cattle. I sent outriders ahead of us. King Sandarkan’s scouts would probably spot them, as they surely would our thousands of warriors before we drew up close enough to fall upon the Waashians’ rear. But by then it would be too late.

  I led my army’s vanguard down along the Rajabash River, gleaming an icy blue off to our left. Our hundreds of horses churned up the dew-damp grass. Behind them marched Lord Tomavar’s and Lord Tanu’s warriors, now wearing their ankle bells again. The tinkling of silver spilled out into the cool morning air.

  At last, I urged Altaru up and over a hummock, and saw the battlefield spread out below us. About two miles away, King Talanu had drawn up his army into glittering lines that stretched from the Rajabash across the pasturage, where he had anchored them against a wooded hill. A half mile closer to us gathered the Waashians. Their diamond armor gleamed as brilliantly as did that of the Kaashans and my own warriors. But King Sandarkan had arrayed them in an unusual and desperate formation: as a huge, open square, fronted by perhaps three thousand foot and as many on each of the other three sides. He had posted cavalry on each point of the square, and the most forward of these knights faced the Kaashans while those in the rear had their lances pointed toward us.

  In short order, I saw to it that my army deployed as did the Kaashans, from the river in the east to the hills in the west. I rode with the vanguard to the right, pressed almost up against the hills; the rear guard took up its post to protect my army’s left flank along the river. Then we advanced. Our drummers beat their great war drums and added to the thunder that the Kaashans’ made; the jangle of thousands of silver bells spread out across the valley. Our warhorses, eager for battle, let out terrible whinnies. Yard by yard we moved down the meadow closer to the Waashians. In truth, we closed in upon them like a jaw of diamond and steel that would soon tear into them and grind them against the Kaashans’ lines.

  The battle, however, never took place. King Sandarkan now held an impossible position; his army’s square formation gave evidence that his outriders had indeed warned him of our approach – but too late for him to retreat. And now, when he beheld my men’s numbers, he must have realized that it would be hopeless to fight. As I had intended as far back as Mesh, he would have no choice but to surrender and ask for terms. If he did not, he and his entire army would be annihilated.

  It did not take long for him to send out a herald holding up a white banner of truce. I saw another such gallop out toward the Kaashans’ lines. I halted my men to receive the herald. We spoke for a few moments, and then I sent him back to his king – and sent one of my own to King Talanu, as he did to me. In this way, with heralds racing back and forth across the battlefield, we arranged a parley of the three kings and their captains down by the river.

  I asked Lords Avijan, Sharad, Tanu and Tomavar to come with me, as well as Kane and my other friends. I asked Bemossed and the Seven, too. And, of course, Lord Zandru. It would be an unusual company for such a meeting, but these were unusual times.

  King Talanu ordered a great canopy set up above the banks of the raging Rajabash and three chairs placed beneath it in the shade of the sun. I watched him ride out from his lines toward this meeting place. My uncle was now an old man – almost too old to hold a horse’s reins and wield a sword, let alone command an army. Despite the pains of his joints and old wounds, however, he held himself proud and straight as if he would let nothing in the world bend him. He was thick through the shoulders and chest, as my brother Karshur had been, and I had never known a man with such large, strong hands – except, perhaps, for Sajagax. Nineteen brightly-colored battle ribbons festooned his shining white hair, and I knew of no other warrior in the Morning Mountains who sported so many. Over his diamond armor, he wore a bright blue surcoat showing the white tiger of Kaash.

  ‘Greetings, Nephew!’ he called out as our horses drew closer to each other. ‘Welcome and bless you, honored King Valamesh!’

  I dismounted and would have helped him do the same if he hadn’t waved me off. I could feel a sharp stabbing pain in his shoulder, elbow and crippled right foot as he struggled down from his horse. Two men – Prince Viromar and Lord Yarwan – hovered near him, but he eschewed their attentions. With difficulty he walked over beneath the canopy and sat down in the middle chair. He beckoned for me to take the one to his right.

  ‘This is a great day,’ he said to me. ‘Perhaps the greatest in Kaashan history since Kaash and Mesh threw back the invasion from Delu a thousand years ago.’

  At the time he spoke of, Delu had been nearly the strongest Kingdom on Ea instead of one of the weakest. In fact, it had been one of Maram’s own ancestors, King Kasturn, who had led Delu to her age of ascendence. Maram seemed to take an uneasy pride in this, for he hung back behind me with my captains and other friends, and he gazed at King Talanu with conflicting emotions lighting up his face.

  ‘I have things to tell you before King Sandarkan arrives,’ King Talanu said in his straightforward way. ‘First, I regret with all my heart not marching to Mesh when your father called for us to come. I did not think we could arrive in time – and we couldn’t have, as events proved. But more, King Sandarkan made maneuvers against Kaash, and I felt that I couldn’t let him ravage my kingdom. I was wrong. No Valari, not even King Sandarkan, would commit the atrocities that Morjin did against Mesh. It took the torture of my own sister and too many of your countrymen for me to see that Morjin is our true enemy. Even though I knew it, in my heart, I was afraid to fight him.’

  Here he placed his great, scarred hand across his chest and looked at me. And his captains, standing behind him nearer the river, looked at him with the poignant reverence they held for their old king.

  ‘Anyone who knows the Red Dragon,’ I said to my uncle, ‘is afraid to fight him. But what other choice do we have?’

  ‘What choice, indeed? At least we won’t have to fight the Waashians, though I must tell you that many of my knights looked forward to washing their swords in our enemy’s blood.’

  Behind me I could almost feel my other uncle, Prince Viromar, directing his rancor toward the Waashians in their diamond block out in the middle of the field, and so it was with my cousin, Lord Yarwan, a bold-looking man with a great hawk’s nose and a bloody eye for vengeance. And with several other of the Kaashan lords standing there, too. All of us, I thought, waited to see how long it would take King Sandarkan to force himself to ride out and face his defeat.

  ‘But it is best to avoid bloodshed, as I have always said,’ King Talanu told me. He shifted about in his chair the better to look into my eyes. ‘When Lord Yulsun’s messenger arrived to tell us that you were coming, we all rejoiced, for victory seemed at hand. But I must tell you that when your Lord Harsha confirmed that you had taken the route around the mountain, many despaired.’

  Lord Harsha, standing off to my right as he conferred with Lord Tanu, bowed his head to me as if to inform me that our baggage train had arrived safely behind the Kaashans’ lines.

  ‘We nearly despaired as well,’ I said to him. Then I told him something of our journey and Maram’s great feat in cutting a way across Mount Ihsan’s slope.

  ‘A great feat, indeed,’ King Talanu said. ‘And I mean the whole of your march: it will go down as one of history’s great ones. As will this victory today. What you have done is both brilliant and bold.’

  I bowed my head to him, and looked at Maram, Master Juwain, Master Storr and Abrasax. ‘I have had great help from great companions.’

  Then I turned to gaze off down by the river, where Kane stood talking to one of the men who had ridden out with King Talanu from the Kaashans’ lines. This stranger wore a stained traveling cloak ins
tead of diamond armor, and was too short and thick to be a Valari. Although I could not get a good look at his face, he seemed familiar to me.

  ‘Ah, at last!’ Maram’s voice boomed out as he pointed toward the Waashians’ army. ‘He comes!’

  From between the warriors forming one wall of the Waashians’ square, a short column of knights rode out across the field. A herald flying the white banner of truce kept pace with another holding up King Sandarkan’s standard: two crossed silver swords against a black field. King Sandarkan, a tall, reedy man, wore a black surcoat emblazoned with the same charge. Three of his captains – Lords Telsar, Rayadan and Araj – followed behind him. King Sandarkan led them straight up to our canopy, where he dismounted and sat down on the chair to King Talanu’s left.

  My uncle spent only the barest moments dispensing with the formal politenesses. He greeted King Sandarkan, as did I, and he asked after the health of King Sandarkan’s family. Then he barked out at him in his gruff, old voice: ‘Are we agreed that you have come to surrender?’

  King Sandarkan’s thin face tightened with such tension that it seemed his skin collapsed around his bones. And then he gritted his teeth and forced out, ‘I am here to offer my army’s surrender’

  ‘Good. Then let us agree upon the terms.’

  ‘Let us agree,’ King Sandarkan said, in his dry, raspy voice, ‘but I can tell you that I will never ask my warriors to surrender their swords or their armor’

  ‘That has not been asked, and may not be. But you must know that you are in no position to insist on the point.’

  ‘My army,’ King Sandarkan said, pointing out into the field, ‘still holds position. And we will fight to the death before giving up our swords.’

  ‘We are met here so that we might avoid needless deaths. But since you have made your surrender, you must know that you must give up something.’

  ‘What is it you want, then?’

  ‘First,’ King Talanu said, holding up a blunt finger, ‘that Waas pay Kaash a weight of diamonds to compensate for the expense of my kingdom being threatened and having to prepare for battle these last two years.’

  ‘How great a weight?’

  ‘A bushel of bluestars. Or three hundred bushels of armor-grade whites.’

  ‘Very well, then.’

  King Talanu pulled at one of the ribbons tied to his long white hair as he studied King Sandarkan. He said, ‘Second: You will agree to make common cause with Kaash if there should be war between Kaash and Athar. Eight thousand warriors you will agree to lead to Kaash’s defense.’

  ‘Very well – Athar is Waas’s enemy, too.’

  ‘Third,’ King Talanu said, ‘you will recognize Kaash’s reclaiming of the Arjan Land. You will sign a paper stating that the Arjan Land is to belong to Kaash until the end of the world – or until the Star People return to earth.’

  Now King Sandarkan hesitated. His long, predatory face fairly trembled with old grievances and desires. He shouted out: ‘But the Arjan Land is ours! My own ancestors shed their blood so that –’

  ‘This term,’ King Talanu said, cutting him off, ‘is not subject to dispute. Every warrior you have led onto the field today will shed his blood if Waas’s king does not agree to it.’

  King Sandarkan closed his eyes as he breathed in deeply in a meditation exercise. Then he finally looked at King Talanu, and he croaked out, ‘Very well – the Arjan Land is yours.’

  I sensed my uncle wanting to smile in triumph. But he would not allow himself such petty gloating. Instead, he bowed his head to acknowledge King Sandarkan’s great sacrifice in giving up at long last the Arjan Land. Then he delivered his fourth term: ‘During the course of your reign and for so long as you live, you shall forswear waging war upon Mesh.’

  Now King Sandarkan turned to gaze at me with black, burning eyes full of jealously and resentment. And he called out to King Talanu: ‘No other Valari king has been asked to accept such terms!’

  And King Talanu looked at me as he told him: ‘No other Valari king has so underestimated his enemy and let himself be trapped to face total defeat’

  I could feel King Sandarkan’s face burning. His long limbs bent like those of a praying mantis as he pointed at me and said, ‘Very well – so long as I live, Waas will not make war against Mesh.’

  He drew in five deep breaths and asked King Talanu: ‘Are those all your terms?’

  ‘They are,’ King Talanu said.

  King Sandarkan bent forward as if readying himself to stand up and flee from this place of shame. And then King Talanu held out his palm toward King Sandarkan. ‘But we are not finished here.’

  ‘How not, then?’

  King Talanu looked at me, and then back at King Sandarkan. He said, ‘King Valamesh has marched here at great sacrifice and risk, and it is he whom Kaash must thank for victory. Therefore he has the right to demand of you his own terms.’

  In response to King Talanu’s logic, King Sandarkan stared at me with a smoldering resentment.

  ‘Very well,’ King Sandarkan said. ‘What does Mesh’s new king demand of Waas?’

  While I sat there deep in thought, studying King Sandarkan’s craggy, troubled face, Kane came up to me. He had no compunction in interrupting a conclave of kings.

  ‘I must speak to you,’ he told me. The fire in his dark eyes put an urgent heat into my own. ‘This cannot wait.’

  ‘We cannot wait,’ King Sandarkan said, glaring at him, ‘while this rogue knight whom the Elahad calls his friend delays matters here.’

  ‘Please excuse me, King Sandarkan,’ I said with all the politeness that I could find. ‘Kane is not given to alarms, and I must hear him out.’

  So saying, I stood up and walked with him down to the river. He presented the man he had been speaking with, and I suddenly realized where I had last seen him: in Mesh, after the Battle of the Culhadosh Commons. He wore a suit of steel mail beneath his cloak; his broad, heavily bearded face seemed to bear only hardness and threat. Kane gave his name as Hadrik. He did not have to say outright that Hadrik was a Master of the Black Brotherhood, which Kane employed to oppose Morjin and achieve his deepest purpose.

  ‘Hadrik has come up out of Galda,’ he said to me. ‘He thought to find me in Mesh, and followed the track of your army here.’

  Hadrik bowed his head to verify this. Then, in a voice as raw and rageful as any that I had ever heard, he told me what he had told Kane: ‘Morjin left Galda late in Ashte to return to Argattha – I have spent the lives of my last ten men proving this. He moves, the Dragon does! The hour of our doom has finally come.’

  As if he could not bear another word of speech, he shook his head as he turned and stalked off down to the very edge of the roaring water twenty yards farther down. He was a strange man, I thought, and one of the deadliest-looking I had ever seen.

  ‘He is the last of his kind,’ Kane said, nodding at him. ‘All the others perished in Galda’s torture chambers or nailed to crosses.’

  He hung his head as if staring down through the earth and the turbid sediments of time. Then he looked up at me with his black, blazing eyes. ‘So. So, Valashu. This is the hour. On the third of Ashte, Morjin called up the Uskadans to Argattha. On the day that you became king, he ordered the armies of Uskudar and Sakai to march north, toward Alonia. He leads them in the open, as of old! The Zayak and Marituk tribes ride with him, the Janjii, too. He has broken the Long Wall. Perhaps with fire, perhaps by opening up the earth – I do not know. As we speak, he marches up the Poru toward Tria.’

  My heart drummed at the triple-time against my chest bones. And I gasped out, ‘To Tria! But why he would spend his forces against the Alonians when they would do his work for him fighting among themselves? Unless he cannot wait’

  ‘So – he cannot’

  ‘Then he will have sent his fleet from Eanna, with the armies of Hesperu, Sunguru and Yarkona embarked upon his ships. Morjin will take Tria, then, and make it safe for them to land.’

  ‘So – he
will.’

  ‘Five armies Morjin will then command – and how many men? Four hundred thousand? Five?’

  ‘So,’ Kane murmured, gazing at me.

  ‘Then it will be as you said,’ I told him. ‘Morjin will attack down the Nar Road and invade the Nine Kingdoms’

  ‘So, just so. And I have worse news to give you. He will try to split the Nine Kingdoms in two, as we discussed in Mesh.’

  He told me then the rest of the tidings that Hadrik had ridden so far to tell him: that upon the news of my coronation, Morjin had ordered a great fleet bearing the armies of Galda and Karabuk to prepare to set sail across the Terror Bay and land in Delu. The Dragon Lords would easily defeat Delu’s army in battle – or more likely cow King Santoval into surrendering without a fight. And then, after forcing King Santoval to swear allegiance to Morjin, they would incorporate Delu’s army into theirs and attack the Nine Kingdoms from the east.

  ‘Your people’s lands,’ Kane said to me, ‘will be caught between a hammer and an anvil. Even if by some miracle you do lead the Valari to make alliance.’

  ‘Who leads the enemy’s force?’ I asked Kane.

  ‘Karabuk’s own king, Mansul the Magnificent.’

  ‘And how many men does he have?’

  ‘With the Galdans, perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand. If he can defeat Delu, he will have eighty thousand more.’

  I stood by the gushing river considering this. Then Kane said to me, ‘You have been thinking of mounting a raid into Galda and slaying Morjin, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told him, staring at the river’s spray. And then, ‘Can we be sure of Hadrik, that Morjin has truly left Galda?’

  ‘We can be sure. Morjin marches on Tria. And then soon, surely by summer’s end, he will turn east and south toward the Nine Kingdoms.’

  ‘With his army of half a million men?’

  ‘So, Val.’

  ‘And if I united the Valari and marched against Morjin, then King Mansul’s force would attack unopposed across the Nine Kingdoms and take us from the rear’