The Diamond Warriors Read online

  Altaru, fitted with steel armor that protected his neck, throat, chest and hindquarters, carried me between the hills rising steeply to either side. Hundreds of other horses clopped their hooves against the stony ground as the knights of the vanguard moved into position through the trees. I feared that this thunderous sound would carry out to the unseen beach beyond. Lord Tanu’s warriors marched behind the vanguard in good order. I had commanded them to leave their ankles free from their silver bells – until just after Maram gave the signal to attack. If the noise of our approach did not give us away, I feared that the flash of our diamond armor would. And so, as the beach and our enemy came into view between the trees ahead of us, I called for a halt. It would be better to have to charge an extra hundred yards than to expose ourselves too soon.

  I waited on horseback on a bare patch of ground listening to the distant crashing of the sea; near me gathered Maram, Kane, Lord Avijan and many others, including my Guardians: Lord Vikan, Sar Jonavay, Sar Shivalad, Siraj the Younger and Joshu Kadar. I knew that King Talanu must at this moment be forming up his knights in the gap between Urza and Tirza. I tried to give him all the time I could to make ready. I stared out at the dots of thousands of Galdan soldiers scattered and clumped across the beach. I listened to the wind whipping sand over sand, and I prayed that none of our enemy would look our way just yet and cry out that they were under attack.

  ‘Maram!’ I finally whispered, looking at the man with whom I had journeyed so many miles. ‘Are you ready?’

  Maram sat on top of his big horse, holding his red gelstei in place of a lance or sword. He wore a full suit of diamond armor, however, and bore a small triangular shield emblazoned with his new coat of arms: a golden bear against a blue field. His face had fallen all waxy and white as if he had lost his courage. He belched, twice, and seemed in danger of losing his breakfast as well.

  ‘Ah, am I ready?’ he said, as if addressing the sky. ‘How can a man ever truly be ready for such work as lies ahead of us today?’

  I could feel him swallowing back the acids that burned his throat. He looked at me then as if beholding a corpse, and his terrible fear became my own. I thought of Atara, standing over my grave and weeping. I prayed that I would live through the day so that she did not have to suffer the anguish of my death.

  Atara, Atara, I thought, where are you now?

  Kane, sitting on his horse by my side, gripped his long lance with a savage glee. He seemed to revel in the strange joy of suffering life’s anguish again and again.

  ‘All right,’ I finally said to Maram. ‘Give the signal!’

  With yet another belch, Maram aimed his crystal at the sky above the beach. We all waited for fire to streak out of its pointed end.

  ‘Nothing!’ I heard Sar Shivalad murmur. ‘The gelstei still sleeps!’

  For a while, as the sun rose higher above us and sent arrows of fire streaking down through the air, Maram tried to get a flame out of his crystal. But nothing seemed to wake it up.

  ‘Sire,’ Lord Avijan said, upon riding over to me. ‘Perhaps we should have the trumpeters give the call.’

  To our left, the rocks and trees of Urza stretched for almost a mile to the gap between this fat hill and Tirza, where King Talanu’s force gathered. I doubted if the blare of a hundred trumpets could carry so far up and around it.

  ‘No,’ I said to Lord Avijan, ‘Sar Maram will not fail us – you will see!’

  Again, Maram shook his red firestone at the sky. But still the crystal remained as cool as a ruby.

  ‘Maram,’ I whispered. ‘Concentrate on what Abrasax and the Seven taught you about moving your own fires up through your chakras.’

  ‘What do you think I was concentrating on?’

  ‘Who can know?’ I told him. ‘But perhaps you were thinking how you might never see Behira again – or any other woman.’

  ‘Well – what if I was?’

  I smiled at this, even beneath the stares of the knights of the vanguard and the many warriors massed behind them and waiting to charge across the beach. And I said to Maram, ‘Why don’t you think of that woman, then? The one your heart has always burned for?’

  It was not Maram’s heart that usually flared with his fierce desire for a woman. But now, with death so near, he closed his eyes to look for that glorious and fiery place within him. And then, a few moments later when he opened them to gaze at his red gelstei, a great gout of flame streaked out of it like lightning to fill up the sky.

  ‘The signal!’ so meone cried out. ‘Sar Maram gives the signal!’

  Above the beach, the sky itself seemed to have caught fire, as its blueness burned away to an incandescent crimson. Tens of thousands of our enemy jerked their heads back to gaze up in wonderment and fear.

  ‘Bells on!’ I heard someone call out from the columns of warriors behind the cavalry. There came that eerie jangle of thousands of men fastening their silver bells about their ankles.

  Now Maram’s crystal finally fell quiet again. But King Talanu and his knights on the other side of the hill could not have failed to see its fire.

  ‘Attack!’ I shouted, pointing my long lance straight ahead of me. ‘For your brothers who fell at the Culhadosh Commons, for Mesh, for Ea – attack!’

  As I put my heels to Altaru’s flanks and urged my huge horse forward, I noticed that Bemossed had disobeyed my command to ensure his safety and had come up from our encampment. He stood up on the side of the hill, out of the army’s way. From this perch between two gnarled oak trees overlooking the beach, he would have sight of the entire battlefield.

  It took only moments for Altaru to pound across the rough terrain between the hills and come out of the trees upon a stretch of grassy ground that fronted the beach. The wind whipped through my helmet and vibrated the swan feathers forming its crest. I led my hundreds of knights veering left toward the center of the army stretched out ahead of us, even as Lord Avijan and his knights moved off in a flanking maneuver to our far right. From out of the woods between Urza and Tirza a mile away, I saw King Talanu burst forth in a gallop toward the beach. The white tiger emblazoned on his surcoat shone in the sun. He, too, led his knights on a charge toward our enemy’s center.

  The Galdans and Karabukers now began running in every direction, colliding with each other and cursing, shouting and grabbing for their armor and weapons. I could feel waves of terror washing across the beach.

  ‘Valari!’ I called out as loudly as I could. ‘Today the Valari fight as one!’

  Soon my knights and I came to the upper reaches of the beach. Our pace slowed as our horses’ hooves worked for purchase against the soft, shifting sands. Sar Galajay, riding near Joshu Kadar who held up my standard with its swan and stars, seemed discouraged at this – and surprised. This man of mountains might have looked upon the beach from afar, but he had never tried to run across one or make his horse do so. He must have realized, in a moment, that this beach would not be a perfect place after all to engage a battle.

  ‘The Valari!’ came the cry from across the beach. ‘Arm yourself! The Valari are upon us!’

  Arrows loosed by our enemy’s archers whined through the air; one of them clacked against the diamonds covering my chest and another pinged off my helm. And still another found a joint in Viku Aradam’s armor and stuck out of his shoulder. He bore the shock of it in silence. But these feathered shafts flew at us in sparse numbers, for most of the Galdan and Karabuk archers scrambled to find arrows at all and had time for only a couple of volleys before we pounded right up to them.

  ‘The Valari!’ I heard men shouting. ‘Form up against the Valari!’

  But we gave our enemy no time to form up; we galloped straight toward the disorganized mass of men frantically trying to bring spears or shields – or even hammers – to bear against my knights.

  ‘The Diamond Warriors!’ someone cried out. ‘They come! Look! Listen!’

  From behind me came the ringing of hundreds of thousands of silver bells. I turned
quickly about in my saddle to see the Kaashans and Lord Tomavar’s battalions deploy across the beach, exactly as we had planned. I smiled to see the black tower emblazoned on Lord Tomavar’s white shield. He led his warriors in a near-run to close ranks with Lord Tanu’s force spreading out from between Urza and Magda. And then my knights and I fell upon our enemy, and I had no time to look at anything except the spears, axes and swords sweeping toward me in a circle of death.

  I lost my lance almost immediately through the chest of a huge Galdan soldier, who stood naked except for one boot that he had managed to pull on. He screamed and cut at the lance with a short sword that he had found in the heaps of weapons around him. I screamed, too, silently, at his terrible, piercing anguish, and I nearly fell from my horse even as the soldier fell, ripping the lance from my hands. I drew Alkaladur then. Its flaring silustria cast a brilliant silver radiance across the beach. It made the Galdans gasp out in fear even as it gave me strength to endure the agony being wreaked upon men all around me.

  Kane, to my side, had already drawn his kalama. His face had fallen into a mask of fury. The Galdans, almost all on foot, tried to flee from him, but they had nowhere to run. He swung his sword, once, twice, thrice, and then again and again. More men screamed, and founts of blood reddened the air. A single Galdan knight, who had donned a helmet but no other piece of armor, rode at Kane across the powdery sand, and he tried to impale Kane with his lance. Kane easily parried his thrust, then almost casually cut off the knight’s arm. A good kalama, if wielded with skill, can cut through steel mail, and what it could do to unarmored flesh was terrible to behold.

  Some of the Galdans grabbed up pikes and tried to stab me or knock me off the back of my horse. Maram killed one of these with a vicious lance thrust through the eye. The Black Knight, Hadrik, riding behind him, killed another with his lance. Then Sar Shivalad, Sar Kanshar and a few other of my Guardians came up closer and worked a quick slaughter with their swords. Our enemy, hacked and hopelessly disorganized, fell in tens and twenties all around us.

  After a short while of such bloody, frenzied work, Joshu Kadar pointed toward the northern part of the beach and cried out an alarm, ‘Sire, the Karabukers! Beware!’

  I swung my sword and cut right through the shaft of a pike that one of the Galdans thrust at me; then I cut off his head, and I turned to look up the beach.

  ‘To the King!’ Joshu cried out. ‘Protect King Valamesh!’

  Thirty Karabuk knights, in tight formation, had appeared as if from nowhere, and were forcing their way through the mass of their own companions as they made their way straight toward me. They were long of form and both graceful and powerful in their movements; their hard black hands gripped lances even longer than the ones my knights wielded. They wore a heavy armor of mail and plate. It seemed a miracle that they had found the time to accouter themselves so completely; I guessed that they must be knights of King Mansul the Magnificent’s Black Guard, who stood always ready to guard King Mansul or cut down his enemies.

  Although I had hundreds of my own knights at my call, my charge across the beach had carried me too far into the Galdans’ ranks, and so too few of my knights could quickly come forward to meet this new threat. The Karabukers might have ridden down Maram and the half dozen Guardians nearby me, perhaps even Kane. But their greater weight of armor, both encasing their bodies and fastened to their mounts, slowed them and caused their horses to sink more deeply into the white sands. And even as Joshu Kadar cried out once again, ‘To the King! To the King!’ another king and his knights rode to my defense. I looked to the left through a fence of flashing weapons to see King Talanu and Zandru the Hammer – and fifteen other Kaashan knights – working their way forward. They intercepted the Karabukers moments before our enemy fell upon us.

  ‘We meet, King Valamesh!’ my uncle cried out to me through the tangle of men, horses and crates between us. ‘Now let us fight our enemies together!’

  So saying, he pushed his lance point straight through the face of the Karabuk knight nearest to him. I heard the point embed itself in bone and snap off. Old my uncle might be, and slow of movement, but he still possessed great prowess at arms and retained most of his old strength. He was cunning as an old wolf, too; he had not survived ten bloody battles solely by chance.

  ‘Careful, Sire!’ Lord Zandru called out to him. ‘Stay close to us!’

  Lord Yarwan, too, seemed concerned at his king’s wild attack of the Karabukers. But King Talanu was in no mood to be cautious. He cast down his broken lance and drew out his kalama. Then he pointed this long sword at the largest of the Karabuk knights, and cried out, ‘Forward, forward all, and fight! This is the day! This is the day! Do you not see?’

  The urgency in his voice caused me to look at his adversary more closely. This huge knight bearing down on him looked as if he must stand seven feet tall. Black ostrich feathers crested his shining helm; within this steel covering, his implacable black face and dark brown eyes seemed intent upon destroying King Talanu. In his huge hand, he bore a great lance, the longest I had ever seen a knight wield.

  ‘Sire!’ the sharp-eyed Joshu Kadar called out to me. ‘Look at his emblem! The dragon!’

  I stared across the corpse-strewn sands to gaze at this great knight’s shield, emblazoned with a three-quarter sized red dragon.

  ‘It is King Mansul!’ Joshu cried out again. ‘Let us slay him!’

  But neither he nor I nor any of my Guardians could get close enough to execute Joshu’s exhortation, for at that moment, many knights of King Mansul’s Black Guard fell upon us. I had all that I could do to keep their lances from tearing me open.

  And so I did not witness most of King Talanu’s combat with King Mansul. I learned later that both the Kaashan knights and the Karabukers held back to allow the two kings to fight to the death, one on one. Just after I ducked beneath a lance thrust and buried my silver sword inside the chest of a particularly strong Karabuk knight, I chanced to look over at King Talanu. Somehow, he had gained position on King Mansul. For a moment, King Mansul sat on top of his huge warhorse unbalanced, with his lance thrust too far forward into empty air. My uncle worked inside his reach then. For a blessed moment, he gained the speed of a much younger man, and he whipped his sword at King Mansul’s neck. The edge of King Talanu’s kalama bit through the steel bevor hanging down from King Mansul’s helm, and then through skin, muscle, blood vessels and bone. King Mansul’s head went flying though the air and smacked down onto the beach. Then the hoof of a nearby horse chanced to crunch down upon it and so bury it in the soft sand.

  ‘The King is dead!’ one of his Black Guard cried out. ‘King Mansul is dead!’

  Upon this shocking sight, most his knights lost heart. Then my knights, those Guardians closest to me and others such as Lord Noldashan, Sar Omaru and Jessu the Lion-Heart, closed in upon them, and we used our lances and long swords to slaughter them down to the last man.

  ‘King Talanu has slain Mansul the Magnificent!’ Lord Zandru shouted out. ‘Long live King Talanu!’

  Lord Yarwan and other Kaashans picked up this cry, roaring out, ‘Long live King Talanu! Long live King Talanu Solaru!’

  And then, in our time of triumph, as our knights rampaged through the center of the Karabuk and Galdan armies to dispirit our enemy and keep them in disarray, a Galdan archer managed to sneak up close to King Talanu. He loosed his arrow at nearly zero range, right through King Talanu’s neck. Lord Yarwan almost immediately cut down this man. He looked on in horror – as did we all – at the bright red blood that spurted from around the arrow lodged in my uncle’s flesh.

  ‘I am killed!’ King Talanu choked out to Lord Yarwan. His hand closed about the arrow that had cut his neck artery. Somehow, he kept seated on his horse. ‘Prince Viromar is to be king after me. Bury me on the beach, facing the sea. I always wanted to look upon the sea.’

  He gazed out beyond the ships at the ocean’s gleaming waters. For a moment, his eyes grew as bright as the sun’s g
olden shimmer. Then he gasped out to Lord Yarwan: ‘This is a good death!’

  As his eyes closed and he slumped in his saddle, Lord Yarwan and several other Kaashan knights hurried forward to take up the weight of his body. They eased my uncle’s still form over the back of Lord Yarwan’s mount so that Lord Yarwan could lock his hand on this brave king and keep him from falling off onto the beach.

  With our enemy trying to flee from my knights, I had a moment to survey the battlefield. I turned to look for the Kaashan infantry and Lord Tomavar’s men – and those of Lord Tanu. The closer sound of steel swords clanging against steel merged with the rhythmic ringing of thousands of warriors’ silver bells on the beach behind me. Upon covering most of the distance to the water’s edge, the two halves of our army now joined in a single, glittering diamond line nearly two miles long. The line advanced, spears pointing forward, at a quick pace across the sand.

  ‘Back!’ I shouted to my knights. I did not want my men to be caught here by the water in what was about to occur. ‘Back, through our lines!’

  A few of our enemy, who must have thought that we had lost heart, cheered to see my knights and me turn our mounts and gallop back toward the wall of warriors rushing toward them. A dozen archers fired arrows at us, but no one stood in our way to try to stop us. It took only moments for our horses to pound back up the beach. Our lines opened to allow our columns of knights to pass. Lord Yarwan gave King Talanu’s body into the keeping of two of his knights. We turned to watch our warriors knit up their lines and come almost within striking distance of the Karabukers and Galdans.

  ‘Shall we remain in reserve in case our enemy makes a breakthrough?’ Lord Yarwan asked me.

  ‘No one is going to break through our lines today’ I told him. I pointed at the center of our advancing infantry. At its front, Lord Tomavar and Lord Tanu marched with their men, and I heard my two grizzled captains barking out commands. I said to Lord Yarwan, ‘Let us instead reinforce our cavalry.’