The Diamond Warriors Read online

His greatest lords, however, in consequence had taken upon themselves more and more of the royal prerogatives. Two of these – Duke Rezu of Rajak and Duke Gorador of Daksh – I had met on my first journey to Tria on the Great Quest. When I pointed my army across the high pastures of Daksh, with its small stands of trees and many herds of white sheep spread across rising green hills, both of these lords led the knights and warriors of their small domains out to join us. As Duke Rezu, a man with a face as sharp as flints, put it: ‘Who, in their right senses, would fear King Hadaru above Morjin?’

  Although the thousand men that these two dukes brought with them increased the size of our army only slightly, we could take good cheer that now three of the Nine Kingdoms would be represented in the coming battle.

  We had a hard time crossing the mountains. The ice-capped peaks of the great Shoshan range rose up like a fortress of white and blue before us. The road through these rocky heights had crumbled nearly to rubble, for few came this way anymore, and no one kept it in repair. An early snow caught half my army coming down the side of a jagged mountain in the Goshbrun Pass; nearly all of the Delians suffered from frostbitten toes, for they had no footwear suitable for such harsh weather. Master Juwain managed to heal all of them with the warm green flame of his varistei, and so no one spoke of gangrene and amputation. Even so, it was a harbinger of more bitter assaults to the flesh soon to come.

  At last, early in Ioj, my small army made the descent down to the vast steppe of the Wendrush. These sun-seared grasslands opened out to the west for what seemed an infinite distance. As before on our passage of the Mansurii’s lands, we trod here with great care. Although Sajagax’s Kurmak warriors would certainly greet us as allies, even if dangerous ones, the same could not be said of the Adirii, at least not some of this fierce tribe’s clans. I remembered too well, two years before, leading a force of knights through country not far from here. Warriors of the Adirii’s Akhand clan had crossed the Snake River to attack us, and had tried to steal the Lightstone. Sonjah, guiding us across the Wendrush’s rolling eastern hills, explained that the Akhand’s own chieftain had long since punished these treacherous Akhand; she assured us that all the Adirii had gathered to Sajagax’s banner and would welcome us as brothers in arms. I wanted to believe her. Still, it grieved me to march nearly blind into this open land, for I did not know how far south Morjin had moved his army. And worse, I did not know if he might have sent out the warriors of the Marituk tribe, or others, ahead of his main force to harry us and kill us from afar with arrows.

  And then the next day we came upon the Rune River, flowing here on a winding and westerly course. We marched to the north of this shallow brown water. It had not yet come time for my men to strap on their ankle bells, yet even so, the great noise of my army passing through the short yellow grass flushed many animals: antelope and ostrakats and huge herds of shaggy, bellowing sagosk. Lions we espied in their prides hunting these beasts; vultures circled in the sky high above the lions’ kills, though they would not come down to earth to fight over the lions’ leavings until we had passed by. How many more of these dreadful birds, I wondered, waited beyond the edge of the world to cover the field where my men must inevitably line up to face Morjin’s?

  Three days later, we came upon the Detheshaloon where the Rune turned south across the desiccated grasslands, even as Sonjah had said. This great mound, topped by a pile of rocks that looked something like a human skull, rose up some five miles to the north of the river and four hundred feet above the surrounding plain. Indeed, as no other feature of the earth here for many miles loomed more prominently, the Kurmak had named the nearby steppe after it. For ages the Kurmak warriors had come to this place to hunt. As far as Sonjah could tell us, though, the Sarni had never made battle within sight of these ominous-looking rocks.

  In looking upon them, Abrasax declared: ‘There is a great earth chakra here. I have seen few other places of such power’

  Sajagax had encamped his army down along the river. As we drew nearer, I looked in vain for the herds of animals and the rows of circular felt tents that made up much of the movable city in which Sajagax usually took up his residence. Sonjah informed us that Sajagax had left his tribe’s women, children and old men – and their dwellings – farther to the southwest, on the banks of the Snake a few miles from where it joined the Poru. Should Morjin defeat Sajagax, such a safeguard would not really protect his people, but at least it would give them time to flee across the Snake into the open steppe to the south.

  The warriors of the Adirii tribe, under Xadharax, had likewise arrived unencumbered by most material or familial possessions. They made their campfires to the west of Sajagax’s warriors farther down along the river. Sajagax had apportioned to my army many acres of ground to the east of his army. We Valari and Delians immediately set to erecting our tents close – but not too close – to the Rune’s muddy banks. The Kurmak warriors, watching us work, let out little whistles of scorn that the famed Valari should be so soft as to take tents with them to war. But they, I thought, had not just marched five hundred miles on foot across two great mountain ranges, where the snowy heights would freeze a Sarni warrior huddled beneath a smelly old sagosk robe.

  That night, after Sajagax had returned from a lion hunt, he invited my captains and me, with my friends, to hold council. Though the Sarni at war might eschew the luxury of tents, they did not altogether refuse shelter. At the center of the Kurmak encampment many stiff hides had been erected as a windbreak around a huge firepit and several smaller ones. More hides overhung the top of this circular wall, providing some protection against rain while allowing a clear view of the sky. The sky, as I remembered, was one of the three things that the Sarni revered.

  Sajagax waited with other Sarni warriors in front of the blazing main fire to greet us. Of all the men I had known save one, he was the largest, not in size, for that distinction belonged to Aradhul of the Ymanir, but in his character and his vast, soaring sense of himself. It seemed that the entire steppe, stretching from the Morning Mountains to the Nagarshath range of the White Mountains, could not contain him. And as for his person, he was no small man. He stood taller than even myself and most Valari; bands of muscle bulged out from his bare, massive arms, encircled with gold. He had the neck of a bull and hands as strong as a bear’s paws. As he crushed me close to him in a ferocious embrace, I smelled lion: in the black fur that trimmed his gold-embroidered doublet and upon his breath. Earlier, as I learned, Sajagax had put an arrow into a huge, black-maned lion at the unbelievable distance of four hundred yards. To celebrate this feat, he had eaten the lion’s uncooked heart. Streaks of blood still stained the gray mustache that drooped down beneath his rocklike chin; his harsh face had split open with the widest of smiles. His eyes, as brilliantly blue as sapphires, seemed to take delight in all life’s zest and cruelty – and most of all that night, I thought, in me.

  ‘Valashu Elahad!’ he shouted in a voice that rolled out like a clap of thunder. ‘King Valamesh, now, Victor of the Battle of Shurkar’s Notch, Vanquisher of the Enemy at the Seredun Sands – and Warlord of the Valari!’

  For a while he stood calling out my other successes, mainly those won through force of arms against Morjin or his allies. Then he turned to greet those who accompanied me: ‘King Viromar! Duke Rezu! Duke Gorador! Prince Thubar! Lord Tomavar! Lord Tanu! Lord Avijan! …’

  And so it went, Sajagax stepping forward to clasp hands and welcome us. When I presented Abrasax and the rest of the Seven, he cocked his great head to one side as if looking for secrets that he thought they must conceal. And he said: ‘Master Juwain, we are well met again, wizard! If the others of your order have such prowess as you with the magic crystals, then they will surely work marvels against our enemy.’

  Then he came up to Bemossed. For nearly a minute he remained motionless as if caught by the deeper marvel of Bemossed’s soft brown eyes. He reached out a blunt finger to trace the lines of the black cross tattooed on Bemossed’s forehead. And h
e called out, ‘This is the one that we have been waiting for! The Shining One – I know it is he! With him riding with us, I care not if Morjin commands a million men!’

  Most of the Sarni warriors, gathered in close, looked upon Bemossed with awe lighting up their harsh faces; but others did not. Although the Sarni could be the most hospitable of people, several of Sajagax’s captains seemed not to approve of their chieftain’s open touching of men whom they scorned as outland kradaks – even if one of them happened to be the Maitreya. They stood back in their fierce pride as Sajagax remembered his duties and in turn presented them: ‘Urtukar! Baldarax! Yaggod! Braggod! Tringax!’

  Although none of these famed warriors could be said to have been made from quite the same mold as Sajagax, each seemed cut from the same cloth. They were big men bearing scars on their faces and the naked limbs of their thickly muscled bodies. They wore a great wealth of gold in the chains hanging down from their necks. To all, and especially each other, they glared out a challenge in their cold blue eyes and fearsome countenances.

  ‘Braggod, look!’ a giant named Yaggod called out as he pointed past Bemossed. ‘He returns, as I said he would! It is Five-Horned Maram!’

  Braggod, a red-faced man with a thick yellow mustache hanging down to his chest, nodded his head to Maram with a quick snap of his neck and a sullen stare. He did not need Yaggod – or anyone – to remind him how Maram once had downed five great horns of beer to defeat him in a drinking contest

  ‘It is Five-Horned Maram!’ Tringax said. ‘Though who would recognize him, so thin and wearing a suit of Valari diamonds?’

  ‘Thin or not,’ Yaggod said, ‘I’d bet that he could still hold enough beer for any three men.’

  Tringax, a handsome young man with a saber cut marking his chin, smiled coolly at Braggod and said, ‘Perhaps three such as Braggod.’

  Braggod glowered at Tringax as if he contemplated stringing his great, double-curved bow to put an arrow through Tringax’s mouth. Then he cast Maram a haughty look and said, ‘It was luck that the kradak remained standing when I tripped. Fortune will favor me the next time we hold horns together.’

  ‘I would bet against that,’ Yaggod said.

  ‘Would you?’ Braggod shot back. ‘What would you bet, then? Your second wife? Now Tala is a stout enough woman, and she breeds well, as I’ll admit, but I have wives enough and –’

  ‘I would bet my horse,’ Yaggod broke in.

  ‘Your sorrel?’

  ‘Are you mad? Jaalii is worth any ten of your horses, and like my own brother. But I would bet my white, Basir, whom I won in battle with the Marituk. Against my pick of your horses’

  While Braggod stood considering Yaggod’s wager, he looked doubtfully at Maram. My best friend waited just to my left to see how this mostly amicable testing would play out. He licked his lips in anticipation of another deep taste of the potent Sarni beer – or so I thought.

  ‘I say,’ Sajagax called out, stepping up to Maram, ‘that the Champion of the Five Horns could drink down any man – maybe even myself! But I also say that this is no night for duels. Such things can wait until we defeat the Red Dragon!’

  ‘Does that mean,’ Maram asked him, ‘that we are to sit with you and there is to be no beer?’

  ‘No beer?’ Sajagax cried out. ‘Does the sky have no sun? Of course we shall have beer tonight! And meat, and the best of company – and we shall talk of the Shining One’s coming among us and how to put our arrows and swords through the Red Dragon’s filthy heart!’

  And so it was. I sat in close with Sajagax to his right around the main fire, as did Bemossed, whom Sajagax insisted take the place next to him on his left. King Viromar and a few of my captains joined us there, too, along with Sajagax’s captains and the Seven. A fat old warrior with saber scars splitting his gray mustache and cheeks positioned himself straight across the fire from Sajagax. Sajagax presented him as Xadharax: the chieftain of the Adirii tribe. Xadharax, as I saw, had gained his great girth from his love of beer, buttered bread and huge portions of fatty meat which he downed with quick stabs of his knife and great gusto.

  Sajagax, true to his word, provided us with much meat: roasted antelope and hams of wild pig; sagosk steaks and ostrakat wings and the much-prized livers of the red gazelle. And yellow rushk cakes, too, and salted milk curds, and as much beer as a man could reasonably want to drink – even such as Maram and Braggod. I listened as Yaggod made a wager with Tringax as to which of their new wives would bear children first, and to other bits of conversation. And then, when we had finished our feast, it came time to discuss more important things.

  ‘Morjin has certainly marched south after burning Tria,’ Sajagax told me in his great, rumbling voice. ‘We’ve had reports out of Alonia. The Dragon army moves along the Poru, and not the Nar Road, and so his first objective must be to attack us here before falling against the Nine Kingdoms.’

  I nodded my head at this. ‘But how far south has he come, then?’

  ‘That, only the eagles know. But I have sent Atara and the Manslayers up the Poru to watch for his army.’

  At the concern that gathered in my chest like a great, knotted fist, Sajagax slapped my shoulder and said, ‘Do not worry about my granddaughter. She is a Manslayer, and none can move across the Wendrush with such stealth. Or, if discovered, flee with such speed.’

  ‘Morjin,’ I said, smiling grimly as I remembered his invasion of Mesh, ‘can strike quickly, if pressed.’

  ‘Perhaps. But the Dragon might have been slowed by a rebellion in the Aquantir. We had a rumor of this, too.’

  ‘With half a million men behind him,’ Tringax put in, ‘the Dragon’s army will move as slowly as a sagosk herd.’

  ‘But he cannot have a half million men!’ Yaggod said. ‘He cannot feed so many!’

  ‘He can if he slays every sagosk and antelope between the Long Wall and the Detheshaloon!’

  ‘No – that’s impossible,’ Braggod countered. ‘I’d wager that his army will starve coming across the Wendrush.’

  ‘Will you? What will you wager, then? Your third wife?’

  Sajagax allowed his captains to argue on in like manner for a while. Then he raised up his great bow, so thick with wrapped sinew and stiff that almost no one except himself could bend it. And he called out, ‘I care not about our enemy’s numbers, so long as we have arrows enough for each of them!’

  At this, I nodded at Lord Harsha, sitting farther around the edge of the firepit. And Lord Harsha said, ‘We had hoped to help with the matter of arrows.’

  Then he told Sajagax of the wagon loads of birch and arrows that we had brought with us to his encampment.

  ‘That is good!’ Sajagax cried out. ‘Anjori birch – the best, for arrows! We will give you much gold for this wood!’

  ‘Keep your gold,’ I told him. ‘And give us instead an arrow storm that will drive back the Sarni who ride with Morjin.’

  ‘We will give you a tempest!’ Sajagax said, shaking his bow.

  While his captains passed around huge horns full of frothy beer, he and I discussed strategies for the coming battle. It turned out that we had each, on our own, come to the much the same conclusion about our enemy and how he must be fought.

  ‘Morjin,’ I said to him, ‘will concentrate his forces on killing the Valari. Therefore he will have his Sarni allies make as many armor-piercing arrows as they can. But you must have your fletchers make as many long range arrows as they can – as Lord Harsha has asked of our own arrow makers.’

  Sajagax nodded his head at this. When Morjin’s army formed up to face mine, our lines of foot would clash in the center of the field, with cavalry riding against each other on either wing. To protect our extreme flanks, I planned to station Sarni warriors, riding their quick steppe horses and wielding bow and arrow. Our only hope of victory, as both Sajagax and I knew, would be for the Sarni whom he commanded to drive off Morjin’s Sarni allies.

  ‘The long range arrows will help with that,’ h
e said, ‘if we have enough – and if your Lord Harsha can help keep us resupplied.’

  Lord Harsha turned his single, bright eye on Sajagax. ‘I will keep you in good wood, if I must, though I would rather cross swords with the Red Knights who ravaged my home.’

  Lord Tanu, who would fight on foot along with his warriors, remained very concerned with protecting our army’s flanks. And so he asked Sajagax: ‘How badly will the Sarni who ride with Morjin outnumber your warriors?’

  Sajagax shrugged his shoulders at this. Again he said, ‘I care not about numbers – of the Sarni. Morjin will have the Marituk, Zayak, Siofok, Janjii and Danyak, certainly. And almost as certainly, the Usark, Tukulak and Western Urtuk. And perhaps the Mansurii. And I shall have who I have. If all answer my call, then as many as forty thousand warriors will ride with me against Morjin’s Sarni – probably no more than sixty thousand of them. Those are good odds, for we are Kurmak and Adirii and the Manslayers! I’d wager all the grass and the whole sky of Wendrush upon them. But Morjin’s armies out of the Dragon Kingdoms are a different matter. If he truly has a half million men against Valashu Elahad’s twenty thousand, then I must care about those numbers.’

  He cast me a penetrating look, and I said to him, ‘If all the Valari answer my call, we shall many more warriors than twenty thousand.’

  ‘But will they, Valashu? Will they truly come?’

  I let my hand rest upon my sword’s swan-carved hilt, and I said, ‘Yes, they will come – I know they will.’

  ‘They must’ Sajagax said. ‘I have sent out the call to all the Free Kings to gather here under your banner.’

  Tringax obviously resented what Sajagax had just told me, for his fair, handsome face contorted in a scowl, and he said to his chieftain: ‘As things stand now, you command more warriors than does the Elahad – with more Sarni to gather and follow you. And we fight on the Kurmak’s land. And so you should be warlord of this army.’

  ‘A man has one fate only, and that is not mine,’ Sajagax called out. ‘I know nothing of fighting on foot with spear and shield, as the kradaks do. But Valashu Elahad knows a great deal of fighting on the Wendrush. With the Manslayers’ help, he defeated the Akhand clan not far from here.’