The Diamond Warriors Read online

  ‘I am not so afraid of Morjin as you might think. Perhaps it might avail us more to consider what I might do to him.’

  ‘But, Liljana, the Dragon still has the Lightstone, and you have only –’

  ‘I have what I have. We all must fight Morjin in our own way.’

  Her words disturbed all of us, and myself not the least. I remembered back in Mesh asking her to use her gift against Morjin in much the same way as she obviously had. I said to her, ‘But if you knew that Morjin would march on Sajagax before falling against the Nine Kingdoms, why didn’t you tell me?’

  Liljana shrugged her shoulders at this. ‘I would have, but we were moving west in any case. And then Sajagax sent Sonjah to find you, and made the matter moot.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said to her, ‘but you should have told me even so.’

  Her voice softened as she said, ‘I know I should have – I am sorry.’

  But this wasn’t good enough for Kane, who growled out, ‘She’ll give our plans away, damn it!’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ Liljana told him. ‘But what is there to give away, really? Morjin knows that we wait for him here to do battle.’

  ‘But he does not know our numbers, yet, or our order of battle!’

  ‘I don’t know that myself,’ Liljana said. ‘Neither, I think, does Val.’

  I rubbed my aching head. ‘Nor will I, until I receive report of Morjin’s numbers and how his army is composed. But when I do set the order of battle, Liljana, Morjin must not know.’

  Again Liljana shrugged her shoulders. ‘Of course he must not. And that is why, before the Seredun Sands, I did refuse to look into anyone’s mind, even as Master Juwain has said.’

  ‘And that be a good thing,’ Ymiru put in, ‘for a man’s mind be a private place and hroly.’

  He sighed, letting out a great breath like the wind. Then, looking at me, he added, ‘Still, I’d like to know what be in the minds of the Valari kings. Will they draw swords against Morjin? You once promised me they would, Val.’

  ‘And they will,’ I reassured him. ‘I know they will.’

  ‘Well they had better come soon,’ Ymiru murmured with a sad shake of his head. ‘Otherwise, I don’t think there be much hrope.’

  But the next day dawned and dusked without a hint of any Valari marching forth to join us. Then, on the day following that, one of Atara’s Manslayers rode into our encampment to report that Morjin’s army approached from the northwest. Although the Manslayers, she said, had still not made a good count of our enemy’s numbers, Atara estimated that Morjin’s army might fall upon our position here within ten days, if they moved quickly enough.

  ‘Ten days!’ Maram called out in dismay when he heard this. ‘Even if I could drink ten horns of beer each day, that would make only a hundred horns until the day, when there will be no more beer. A hundred horns – it seems too, too little to fill a man such as I.’

  For eight days, as Ioj ended and Valte took hold of the Wendrush with warm weather and clear blue skies, Maram drank a great quantity of beer, though no one kept track of the number of horns. And then, on the third of Valte, just after dawn, one of Sajagax’s outriders galloped into our encampment shouting out the news: ‘They come! The Valari – they come!’

  From thousands of tents strung out along the river, and from around thousands of campfires, men hurried forth in a great multitude to look out across the steppe. I stood with Sajagax, Vishakan, Bajorak, King Hanniban – and many, many others – gazing toward the red, rising sun. We waited perhaps half an hour, and then a great glitter brightened the sere grass of a rise some miles to the east. I watched in wonder as columns of men, some on horses and others on foot, came pouring over this hump of ground and drew closer. The slanting sun showed the standards of six armies: the blue horse of King Mohan’s line, which had ruled Athar for centuries; the white Tree of Life sacred to Lagash; King Sandarkan’s two crossed silver swords; the gold dragon worn by King Danashu of Anjo; King Waray’s white, winged horse; and most marvelous of all, the great white bear of Ishka, resplendent against a blood-red field. I did not have time to wonder if King Hadaru had finally died and Prince Issur had taken command of my countrymen’s most ancient enemy. For just then, Ymiru pointed his furry finger at the sparkle of lights in the east, and his vast voice boomed out across the steppe: ‘Look, it be the bright ones! The diamond warriors – they come!’

  A thousand others picked up his cry as they called out, too: ‘The Valari! The Valari! The diamond warriors are coming!’

  Maram pressed his hand against his head, which must have throbbed from many days of drinking beer. In a voice still thick with sleep, he muttered to me, ‘Ah, well, six more armies of your Valari. With Mesh and Kaash that makes eight, only eight, too bad.’

  He stood with everyone else watching these thousands of warriors covered in bright diamond armor march closer. Then he said to me, ‘Your Nine Kingdoms are strangely named, for there are only eight of them, or I have forgotten how to count. One of them must have been annihilated in some ancient war and lost to history.’

  I looked on as the vanguard of the Ishkan army drew within a hundred yards of our encampment. I could now see plainly that King Hadaru himself, and not Prince Issur, sat on a large white warhorse leading the Ishkans – and the other armies. I smiled at Maram and told him: ‘No, the ninth kingdom was not lost. It is here, on this field today.’

  Maram rubbed his bleary eyes then cast me a puzzled look. ‘I don’t understand.’

  My hand swept out toward the warriors approaching us, and then I pointed at the crowded lanes between the tents of the Kaashans and Meshians. And I said, ‘We are the ninth kingdom. Eight kingdoms there are, truly, as you have counted – as there have always been. But as it was at the Sarburn, when the Valari come together there is only one kingdom, and we call that the ninth one. For once, the Nine Kingdoms defeated Morjin, and we might do so again.’

  ‘The diamond warriors,’ Maram muttered, looking out to the east. ‘The damned diamond warriors.’

  I smiled again, this time more deeply. I touched the two diamonds of the ring that sparkled around Maram’s finger, and I told him: ‘Do not forget that you are Valari, now, too.’

  That evening, after the six arriving armies made camp along the river on ground that Sajagax had reserved for them, I called a meeting of the Valari kings. We gathered with our captains in my tent, and for the first time since the disastrous conclave in Tria, we sat at table to discuss how we might fight Morjin. And so we finally had the miracle that Maram had prayed for.

  It took some time of arguing matters of war before I learned how this had come to pass. It turned out the King of Athar had been the first of the six Valari sovereigns to have a change of heart. Soon after I had left King Mohan and his army arrayed along the Nar Road, he had ridden without escort up into Lagash. Alone, he had climbed Mount Ayu, where he found King Kurshan sitting in meditation, and he told King Kurshan of his intention to lead the Atharian army out to the Detheshaloon – and so leave Athar defenseless against Lagash. He then asked King Kurshan to suspend the formalities of Sharshan and join with him in waging a much more serious kind of war, against the Valari’s true enemy. King Kurshan had then surprised King Mohan in calling for a peace between Lagash and Athar. As the singular King Kurshan had said to King Mohan: ‘I would have spent my army in making war against Athar only because Athar made war against Lagash. But it is my navy that must be the glory of my realm. Someday, when we have defeated the Red Dragon, my ships will sail through the waters of the Northern Passage to the stars, where there is no war.’

  King Mohan’s act, I thought, took more courage than any deed that this fearsome warrior had ever done on the field of battle. With both the Atharians and Lagashuns ready for war, the two kings had immediately led their armies up the Nar Road and into Taron. When King Waray rode down from his palace and saw yet more columns of Valari marching west, his heart finally opened. Across his realm – and those of the other Valari
kingdoms – warriors in their thousands called for their kings to honor Kaash’s and Mesh’s victory at the Seredun Sands by fighting for a more lasting triumph against Morjin’s main force. King Waray, still in awe of how Bemossed had healed his daughter, finally gave in to this call.

  And so had King Sandarkan. After King Talanu and I had outmaneuvered the Waashians by the Rajabash River, King Sandarkan had been consumed by shame – and it grieved him the most sorely that he had failed to join with the Kaashans and Meshians in annihilating Morjin’s armies on the coast of Delu. As he told us over dinner in my tent: ‘One time only a man might turn away from doing what is right and be forgiven, but not twice.’ And so, at King Waray’s invitation, he had led the Waashians into Taron, where they gathered with the armies of Taron, Athar and Lagash. And then the combined forces of these four kingdoms had crossed into Anjo, toward the Wendrush.

  Upon beholding these columns of diamond-clad men flowing through his realm like sparkling rivers, King Danashu had felt a great stirring of his blood, and he had wanted to join them. But the King of Anjo never made a move without first looking to the King of Ishka. At last, King Hadaru, giving in to fate, had called up the entire Ishkan army – the largest in the Nine Kingdoms – and had marched out of Lovisii up the North Road into Anjo. There the Ishkans had joined with the five other Valari armies, and King Hadaru had insisted on leading them over the mountains and down across the steppe to the Detheshaloon.

  ‘I was wrong,’ he told the other kings and me as we sat at my council table, ‘not to have come to Mesh’s aid when the Red Dragon invaded two years ago. We all were wrong. We might have stopped the Red Dragon then and there. Instead of having to fight a much more desperate battle – and a much stronger enemy – here.’

  He sat very straight in his chair, with his great, bearlike head turned toward me. A mane of white hair, tied with many battle ribbons, fell down to his massive shoulders. His jet-black eyes sparkled with little lights like the those of his ring’s five diamonds. I had seen few men as powerful in body and spirit as he. If the wound that he had gained in battle with the Taroners truly festered, he gave no sign of distress, and he appeared utterly unready to die.

  ‘It is a strange thing,’ he said to me, ‘for an Ishkan king to take the field as Mesh’s ally and not its enemy. I remember too well the day that your father killed my brother’

  ‘As we remember,’ Lord Harsha said, ‘the day that you and yours killed King Elkamesh at the Diamond River!’

  In that very same battle, Lord Harsha had lost an eye futilely defending the life of my grandfather.

  ‘There have been many grievances between our two kingdoms,’ King Hadaru admitted. ‘But the blood of the coming battle shall wash things clean. Finally, we Valari will fight, as one – even as King Elkamesh dreamed. And as his grandson, Valashu Elahad, has dreamed.’

  He paused to rub at his weary old face, then continued, ‘There are those who have said that I should lead this alliance. I have said that, myself. But I have also said that if it is to be the Elahad who is to lead us instead, he must prove himself in battle. That he has now done, no Valari king more so. And so I am willing to surrender precedence and accept him as our warlord.’

  In the way that he looked at me then, I felt his pride give way to a deep and overflowing strength, and his bitterness evaporate beneath a bright purpose. Somehow, I thought, his greed had become a hunger for something more than diamonds or land or glory in battle.

  ‘I, too, accept King Valamesh as our warlord,’ King Danashu called out.

  This burly, long-armed man had proven himself as one of the greatest Valari warriors – and the weakest of kings. Although it might have been thought that he only followed King Hadaru’s will, I sensed in him a fierce desire to regain the respect of his peers by distinguishing himself, and Anjo, in battle against our enemy.

  ‘King Valamesh will lead us!’ King Mohan said as he squeezed the hilt of his sword. ‘Let no one speak against this!’

  ‘I speak for it,’ King Waray said, looking at me. ‘Our fate is our fate.’

  ‘I speak for the Elahad, too,’ King Sandarkan said.

  ‘And I,’ King Viromar Solaru agreed. ‘King Valamesh, as the Valari’s warlord!’

  King Kurshan, long of limb and gray of hair, had a face so cut with scars that many found him difficult to look at. I found him, at heart, to be the most faithful of men. With a nod of his head, he smiled at me and called out: ‘Then with the Elahad in command, let us vanquish our enemy! And when that is accomplished, we shall ask him to lead the Valari back to the stars!’

  The other kings looked at him strangely, though none gainsaid his wild dream. And then King Hadaru, sitting across the table from me, told me: ‘Your father and I disputed many things, but he was a worthy enemy, and I was sorry that the Crucifier’s men cut him down in his prime. If he looks on, from the stars, he would surely say that he has a worthy son to succeed him.’

  These words, coming from the great Ishkan bear, made me swallow against the knot of memory tightening in my throat.

  ‘When I was a boy’ I said to King Hadaru and the others, ‘I never wanted to become king, much less warlord. Any of my brothers, I thought, would have been more worthy than I. Even after the Culhadosh Commons, where each of my brothers …’

  I could not go on, and I listened as my voice choked off into a whisper of pain. I made a fist, and pushed it against the table. I could not look at King Hadaru just then, with his bright, black eyes laying me open, for somehow this hard, hard man seemed to suffer my hurt as his own.

  He stood up suddenly, and walked around the table to stand at my side. Then he laid his hand on top of mine, and told me: ‘I am your brother’

  ‘So am I,’ King Danashu said, reaching his long arm across the table to cover King Hadaru’s hand.

  ‘And I,’ King Waray said, also extending his hand.

  ‘And I am your brother,’ King Kurshan affirmed.

  The wildness of his eyes touched something deep within my own.

  ‘And I,’ King Sandarkan said, coming over to us.

  ‘And I,’ King Viromar told me.

  ‘And I,’ King Mohan said to me with a fierce smile, ‘am your brother, too.’

  Their hands pressed down upon mine with a weight like that of tens of thousands. Finally, I withdrew my hand and clasped it to each of theirs in turn. I fought back tears as I said to them: ‘I am your brother – and I will die rather than let the Red Dragon spill your blood upon this field.’

  The kings of the Valari, who feared death no more than any man, smiled at me with great purpose lighting up their faces. The crackling campfires of our army cast an incandescence into my tent. From somewhere nearby, Alphanderry’s strong voice carried one of his songs out to the world. I sensed then that each of these warrior kings carried a bright sword, and not a kalama. It was a moment of great, shining hope.

  After that we spent the rest of the evening discussing strategy and tactics. We strove to devise an order of battle that would result in few Valari being cut down to the earth, while spilling whole rivers of our enemy’s blood.

  And then, the next morning, Atara led the whole Manslayer Society into our encampment and provided a good count of our enemy’s numbers: true to the worst of rumors, Morjin led an army at least half a million strong. And they poured across the grasses of the Wendrush, in rivers of horses, oxen and wagons – and whole oceans of steel and bloodthirsty men.

  19

  For three days, the Red Dragon’s army marched toward the Rune River. Sajagax led his Sarni warriors on a long maneuver to circle behind the columns of our enemy and harry them from their rear. But the Sarni under Morjin – led by the Marituk and the Zayak – parried each of Sajagax’s attacks and covered the Dragon’s advance. In truth, they nearly fell into full battle with Sajagax’s warriors. This did not discourage Sajagax. As he told me on a bright Valte day, with the sun baking the grasslands: ‘It is as we hoped: our enemy seems short of lon
g-range arrows. And their warriors seem badly led, for I think that each of the tribes’ chieftains honors none as a great chieftain, but looks only to Morjin to tell them what to do. And what does Morjin, surrounded by his Dragon Guard and his wagons, know of the contingencies of battle far out on the steppe and how we Sarni really fight? And so I care not that his Sarni outnumber mine.’

  Still, as even Sajagax admitted, the true test of things would come only when our two armies faced each other in full strength on the field. We could not stop the Red Dragon’s men from drawing nearer and setting up their tents in a vast encampment opposite ours four miles to the north of the river. In back of our enemy’s line of campfires, the stark rocks of the Detheshaloon loomed like a vast, cracked skull. A much smaller prominence rose up two miles to the south of it and nearer to our encampment. Sajagax’s warriors called this mound of earth the Owl’s Hill, for one night they had heard a great horned owl hooing from its heights. When battle finally came, I thought, Morjin’s armies would advance upon the river and form lines just beneath this little hill. Perhaps Morjin would ride up its gentle, grassy slopes and survey the field from its rounded top. If my warriors prevailed in driving back our enemy, they would have to attack uphill, at least on this one small sector of the field. I accepted this slight hindrance. For we held a much greater advantage in being able to draw up our lines with the river to our backs. In the heat of the day, with the sun beating down upon us like a fire iron, my men would have access to fresh water while Morjin’s men would not.

  At dusk on the seventh of Valte, with the Dragon army’s campfires filling the northern horizon with a hellish orange glow, I took a moment to stand outside my tent with Altaru so that I might comb down my huge horse. Joshu Kadar and a few of my Guardians waited in front of one of our campfires nearby – but not too close. They knew that even a king sometimes needed a space of privacy.

  ‘Old friend,’ I said to my mount as I drew the brush across his shiny black coat, ‘have you had enough grass to eat? Enough oats? Tomorrow will be a hard day.’