Diamond Warriors

Chapter 18

The next morning, with the wind blowing in rain clouds from the west, I called for the warriors of Mesh, Kaash and Delu to assemble on the grassy fields of the Tournament Grounds. Twenty thousand men stood in their gleaming armor to hear what I had to say. I told them that we could count on no allies among the Valari; I said that I still intended, however, to answer Sajagax's call and join with the Kurmak tribe in drawing swords against the Red Dragon. Anyone, I said, who did not want to make this fight was welcome to return to his home, without penalty or shame. It touched my heart that not a single man declined to march with me.

Two hundred miles lay between Nar and the appointed meeting place on the Wendrush. I led my army up the Nar Road for sixty of these miles at a bone-bruising pace. Summer rains found us passing through pastures, and soaked us to the skin. A few score of my men, suffering from chafing boots and bleeding feet, had to drop out of their columns and ride in the wagons. But then, after we crossed over the Culhadosh River into King Danashu's realm of Anjo, I had to order that every spare inch of space in the wagons be cleared. Indeed, I asked Lord Harsha to use the last of the gold that we had brought with us, jangling in little chests, to purchase more wagons — and great quantities of aged birch. I set our arrow makers to fashioning as many thousands of killing shafts as they could, sitting in their workshops inside jostling wagons. The wood of the white birch, especially from the upland forests of Anjo, was

famed across Ea for making the straightest and truest arrows.

King Danashu declined to meet with me, although our route took us down through Onkar and the barley fields of Jathay, where King Danashu held court at Sauvo. He sent an envoy to inform me that he could not possibly consider leading any of his warriors against Morjin at this time. This did not surprise me. After King Danashu had conspired to take sides with King Waray against Ishka, King Hadaru had forced him to yield to Ishka the duchy of Adar and the barony of Natesh. Everyone knew that King Danashu feared that King Hadaru would soon send his entire army against Anjo, though King Danashu's envoy did not speak of this. For a long time, many had ridiculed King Danashu as a king in name only; now, with two great pieces of his realm broken off and the rest of it under dire threat from Ishka, he seemed less a king than ever.

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 Kunnak 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 he 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 Bemosscd 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 chief-lain's open touching of men whom they scorned as outiand 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 Ire, 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 rebel-lion 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,' he 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.'

Xadharax, staring at Sajagax across the firepit, did not remark upon this. He just sat with his chin buried deep within his jowls. But he must have felt shame for what his rogue warriors had done and a desire to redeem the Adirii in choosing the right side in the coming war.

'And at the Battle of Shurkar's Notch, with my help,' Sajagax continued, 'Valashu Elahad defeated an Alonian duke and a greater force of knights. And lost no man, Kurmak or Valari, killed! And at the Battle Of the Asses' Ears, he led Manslayers and Danladi warriors under Bajorak against the Zayak and the Red Knights. And defeated them as well.'

'Three battles,' Tringax scoffed. 'You have led us to victory in thirty-three.'

'But never so great a one as the Seredun Sands. I have not the Elahad's brilliance in battle.'

'You do!' Tringax protested. 'It is wrong for you to elevate this Valari king at your expense and those of the warriors who — '

'Enough!' Sajagax roared out, slapping his hand against his great bow. 'I am Sajagax, chieftain of the Kurmak and victor of thirty-three battles, even as you say, and no one will call me a modest man! But the Elahad is to be warlord! I say. It was he who first dreamed of making an alliance against the Red Dragon.'

'And he who destroyed our main chance of it with his lie that he was the Maitreya!'

'He was only mistaken,' Sajagax said. 'Sometimes the world takes time to reveal a man's fate. And it is the Elahad's fate to be Guardian of the Lightstone and Protector of the Lord of Light. Is that not why we gather here, to fight for the Shining One?'

At this, Sajagax laid his hand on Bemossed's shoulder. And Bemossed stared into the fire's writhing flames.

'I, for one, fight because a warrior must fight!' Tringax shouted out. 'And to make Morjin's men bleed their guts out, and to see the Crucifier's eyes eaten by the ants!'

The Sarni I knew, revered the truth — and the speaking of it — even above their horses.

'I fight to make my children safe!' Yaggod called out. 'My sons will ride freely beneath the sky hunting lions if I have to kill a thousand of our enemy!'

'I fight for plunder!' Braggod said. 'How much gold will Morjin's army bring to the battle?'

'And I fight for glory,' old Urtukar told us. 'A man can never have enough of it, and it is good to go back to the earth with his sons honoring his name.'

Sajagax nodded his head at this as he stroked his bow. 'Those are all good reasons. But what good is gold in a world of the dead? How will our children ever be safe unless we make a new world? And how shall we ever accomplish that unless we bring the Law of the One to all lands?'

'My father,' Tringax said, staring at Sajagax, 'taught me the Law of the One: "Be strong! Bear no shame! Seek glory! Live free or die!" '

For a while he went on reciting truths that he had learned as a child. When he had finished, Trahadak the Elder, the headman of the Zakut clan, rubbed his leathery old face, then declaimed as if speaking for Sajagax himself: 'There is a new Law now! Or rather, an old Law that we understand in a new light. And Sajagax was born to bring it to the Wendrush and to all peoples: "Be strong and protect the weak! Bear no shame of any evil act! Seek the glory of the One!"'

As he continued speaking, Tringax seemed to want to open himself to this new way that Sajagax strove to bring to his people. But as with a stone immersed in water, little of what Trahadak said really penetrated Tringax's heart or touched his savage sensibilities. Seeing this, a young warrior named Darrax shouted at Tringax: 'What is wrong with you? Can't you see that there is more to life than slaying your enemies and gathering gold and women to yourself? Is your glory more important than that of your tribe? Or the glory of the One?'

Parthalak, another young warrior, nodded his head at this as he said to Tringax: 'I will teach my children that a man is the greatest who controls himself and gives his life that his tribe might have greater life. And that the Light of the One should shine upon the world!'

'And I will teach that, too!' a warrior named Alphax called out. 'And I!' another shouted. 'He who brings the Law of the One to the world will bring alive the One's light in himself. How can such a light ever die? So Sajagax has taught us! So I believe!'

And so, I thought, did most of the fearsome warriors who would follow Sajagax into battle.

Then Sajagax looked across the fire and said to Tringax: 'I have only one fate, and no man will keep me from it. So it is with Valashu Elahad and what he was born to do. It is good for a warrior to fight, Tringax. And even better to slay our enemy. But it is best of all to shed our blood on thirsty soil and to die for the Shining One and what he will bring to the world. Such a warrior, I say, is imakla and dies not when he dies.'

As Tringax knelt by the fire considering Sajagax's paradoxical words, Bemossed rose up to his feet. Although slight of build and soft In his manner — and worn with exhaustion — within him blazed a fierceness that put to shame even the most warlike of the Sarni.

'Blood nourishes only when kept in one's veins,' he told everyone. 'I want men to live for me. That is, not for me. Only for that which passes through me and truly quenches parched soil.'

And with that, a brilliant light gathered in his eyes, and he looked at Tringax. The savage young warrior froze as if a hammer had struck his head. And in that moment I sensed, Tringax's heart finally opened, and he found himself wanting to die for this gentle man.

Seeing this, Bemossed's face fell heavy with an immense sadness. He turned to Sajagax to thank him for his hospitality. Then he excused himself and walked off into the night.

And Sajagax called out in his huge voice: 'Let us then live for the Shining One, even as he has said! And how better to accomplish that than by killing as many of our enemy as we can?'

He called for everyone's horn to be filled afresh with bubbling black beer. Then he raised up his horn and said, 'Death to Morjin, and all who bow to him! Victory to Valashu Elahad and all who follow him! Victory, and life!'

The Sarni warriors sitting on their sagosk skins clinked horns with each other — and with the Valari lords who accompanied me. They spilled much beer onto the ground and drank even more. The sound of their exultation echoed onto the steppe, as did their accolade: 'Live free and long, King Valamesh — Warlord of the Valari and the Sarni!'

The next day, the warriors of the Eastern Urtuk rode into our encampment, and the day following that, all the fighting men of the Central Urtuk tribe. And then on the 18th of Ioj, the Niuriu under Vishakan arrived from the southwest, swelling the numbers of the Sarni who would fight beneath Sajagax's standard to nearly thirty-five thousand. Vishakan had once aided me on my journey home to Mesh with the Lightstone, and he greeted me as he might one of his own sons. He told us to look for the Danladi, keeping pace across the steppe only a day's ride behind him. When the sun rose above the blazing grasslands the following morning, many cheered to see the five thousand warriors of the Danladi tribe making their way toward us just south of the river. And I cheered when the Danladi's new chieftain urged his horse between the long lines of campfires toward my pavilion, for I saw that it was Bajorak, my old friend.

Although rather short for a leader of the Sarni, Bajorak commanded his warriors' intense loyalty through his keen intelligence and fierce fighting spirit. Three scars marked his face, which

many would have called handsome. When he saw me waiting to greet him, he dismounted with great dignity and came up to me. He clasped my hand and said, 'Greetings, Valashu Elahad! When last we parted after killing the Zayak and Morjin's knights, you told me that we would meet again in a better time and place.'

'I always hoped we would,' I told him, squeezing his hand.

'I doubted it not.' He looked up at the rocks of the Detheshaloon and added, 'Though I must wonder if this is truly a better place.'

'Any place is good where two friends can stand together against the Red Dragon.'

He flashed me a bright smile, but due to the scars cut into his face, it seemed more of a scowl. And he said, 'Look at you! The hunted wanderer I knew has become a king!'

'And you,' I said, 'a chieftain.'

His scowl suddenly deepened. 'And there are many Danladi who did not want to see a headman of the Tarun clan lead them. But in the end, the warriors followed me.'

I remembered that after the great Artukan had died, his son, Garthax, had become chieftain of the Danladi. But many of the warriors hated Garthax for dealing with Morjin and pocketing the Red Dragon's gold; they even whispered that the Red Dragon had paid Garthax to assassinate Artukan, who had died in a terrible agony.

'It was finally proved!' Bajorak told me. 'Garthax got drunk one night and bragged to his third wife of what he had done. He poisoned his own father! They put a hot iron to Garthax's liver, and he finally confessed. Then they cut off his eyelids and his manhood, and staked him out in the sun. The yellowjackets ate at him all day. I was not there to hear it, but they say he died screaming louder than his father.'

He fell silent for a moment, then added, 'And so the Danladi warriors now ride with me, and I ride with Sajagax — and so with you.'

Again we clasped hands, and I said, 'And I am glad for that. As will be my men.'

Bajorak's blue eyes sparkled at this. He turned to look farther down the river, where the rows of my army's tents stretched off to the east.

'But how many men are we speaking of?' he asked me. 'I do not see an army as large as Sajagax promised would gather here.'

'That is because the men of the Free Kingdoms have not yet arrived. And neither have the rest of the Valari.'

Bajorak must have heard something in my voice that troubled him, for he asked me, 'But will they come, Valashu? Do you truly think they will come?'

I nodded my head to him, and told him, 'Yes, they will come — I know they will.'

Bajorak's spirits brightened the next day when one of Sajagax's outriders galloped into our encampment with the news of an army marching toward us from the east. But this proved not to be the warriors of the Nine Kingdoms, but rather the combined forces of Nedu, Thalu and the Elyssu, who marched with more than ten thousand outcast knights from Alonia — under Belur Narmada, Baron Maruth of the Aquantir, and others — and a few hundred from Surrapam. As well came King Hanniban, who claimed to reign in exile. Upon the fall of Eanna, he had assembled a fleet to lead five thousand of his countrymen and the others of the Free Kingdoms on a great voyage around the Bull's Horn and through the dangerous Straights of Storm into the Alonian Sea. They had put to shore at Adra, in Taron, and then marched into Anjo and crossed over the mountains through the same Goshbrun Pass as had my warriors. And so found their way here.

King Hanniban, thick in his body and heavy with years, had once exercised all his ruthlessness to keep me from being acclaimed as leader of the Free Kingdoms. But now, having been chastened at losing his realm and nearly his life to the armies of the Red Dragon, he desired vengeance upon Morjin. I sensed, too, that he wanted to see the Lightstone reclaimed and placed in the hands of the Maitreya. As he said when he met with me in my tent: 'This is the time when the world must be reborn — or die for all time. It is said that men, too, will be reborn, if they stand beneath the radiance of the Cup of Heaven. But if they do not, if they take from the gold gelstei darkness instead of light, as Morjin does, then they will surely die — for all time. The Great Darkness is so close now, is it not, King Valamesh?'

King Aryaman of Thalu, a great warrior as tall and blond as even the largest of the Sarni, patted his huge axe as he put things more simply: 'If we cut the Lightstone from Morjin's hand, we shall win. If not, every one of us will die — and the whole world along with us.'

Altogether these two kings — along with King Theodor of the Elyssu and King Tal of Nedu — had added almost fifteen thousand more men to my army.

'But that is not enough,' Maram said to me later as he quaffed down a horn of Sarni beer when we were alone together. 'Not nearly enough.'

And then, on the 22nd of Ioj, we gained a great and unexpected ally — great in the spirit of battle, if not numbers. From out of the west came a band of warriors whom the Sarni at first mistook for animals walking on two legs. They had never seen, as few had, the extraordinary men called the Ymaniri. All of them stood more than eight feet tall and were thick as boulders in limb and body. Silky white fur covered them from head to unshod feet. I rode out to greet these five hundred giants, led by my old companion, Ymiru. A mesh of a metal too fine to be steel covered a leather armor encasing him. With his single hand (for a dragon had torn off his left arm in Argattha) he gripped a huge, iron-shod club called a borkor. His ice-blue eyes looked out above a broken nose, and they filled with great warmth as he saw me riding across the steppe toward him.

'Val!' he shouted at me in a voice like a volcano's rumble. 'We meet again!'

I dismounted and stepped over to him. I let my hand be engulfed within his huge fingers. Then I looked behind him at the shaggy men gripping their borkors and I said, 'Yes — to fight Morjin together, again.'

'It be my fondest hrope!' he told me. 'That, and seeing your furless face once more before I die.'

I smiled at this, then said, 'I never expected to see you here. It must be four hundred miles from the mountains across the open steppe — and through the country of the Zayak and Janjii at that.'

'And bad country it be. Nothing but grass and more grass, without a single mountain to hold the eye or point the way back hrome. And no place to hide when the little yellow-haired men attacked us.'

Some of my knights and a handful of Kurmak warriors, including Tringax and Braggod, had ridden out with me to behold the strange sight of the Ymaniri marching into our encampment. At Ymiru's characterizing of the Sarni as 'little,' Braggod's face flushed an angry red. He said nothing, however, as Ymiru stood nearly at the same height as Braggod sat on top his horse.

'I think they were Zayak,' Ymiru added. 'They loosed arrows at us as if they were hunting sagosk. But the arrows broke against this.'

So saying he ran his finger across the tiny links of his armor, which he called keshet. It seemed that the Ymanir had made this marvelous material — which proved to be nearly as soft as woven silk and bright as silver — with the aid of a purple gelstei.

'And then we charged them,' he went on. 'The yellowhairs didn't know that we Ymaniri can run as fast as sagosk, for a short way. They were too late turning around their hrorses. And so we went to work with these.'

He seemed deeply sad as he raised up his borkor, as did many of the men behind him. Then he said, 'But can we not go somewhere we can hrold council? There be much we need to discuss.'

We went back to my tent, where we met with our companions of old, along with Estrella. This magical girl proved to be even more of a wonder to Ymiru than he was to her. When we told of her talent for finding concealed things and summoning rain from a cloudless sky, he laid his huge hand on top of her head and said,]It be too bad that she can't sumon an earthquake to swallow up Morjin's army in a fiery hrole. And so I suppose we'll have to fight.'

A sudden enthusiasm blew through him like a wind. He patted his borkor and added, 'But that, I suppose, be why we came here, yes?'

'But how did you come here?' Maram asked him. He gave Ymiru a great beer-filled horn, which Ymiru drank down like a cup of milk. 'How could you possibly have known to come to this forsaken place?'

Ymiru smiled at Liljana, and I caught a flash of his big white teeth. 'It was the Materix of the Maitriche Telu who called us here. Through Audhumla.'

I remembered well this seven-foot-tall woman who sat with the other elders of Urdahir who ruled the Ymanir. It had been Audhumla, through the virtue of her blue truth stone, who had verified the story of my companions' and my quest to find the Lightstone — and so saved us from being put to death as unwelcome strangers to the Ymanir's land.

'The truth stone be a powerful galastei,' Yrniru told us, 'though not so deep as Liljana's blue crystal. Audhumla can use it to hear the truths or lies that people speak, though not to eavesdrop their thoughts. Not usually. But Audhumla has been open to Liljana's thoughts, spoken across the world through the virtue of her galastei. It was Liljana — late in Ashte this was — who called the Ymanir to war against the Red Dragon.'

At this, Maram and my other friends stared at Liljana in amazement. And Master Juwain said to her, 'But that was before we set out for Kaash and Delu! How could you have known to call the Ymanir to war when we didn't know yet that there would be a war — at least, not when and where the war's great battle would be fought?'

'She knew,' Kane growled out as if Liljana were a thief caught with a stolen jewel, 'because she has looked into Morjin's mind! Is that not so?'

Liljana met Kane's furious gaze with the softness of her round, pretty face, as with the moon throwing back the sun's fire. And she said to him, 'I only looked into his mind for a moment. And not the Red Dragon's mind — only that of his High Priest, Arch Yadom. Morjin has entrusted him with a blue gelstei.'

Kane stared at her as if the heat of his gaze might burn away her words to reveal the truth or a lie.

And Master Juwain said to her, 'But you shouldn't look into anyone's mind. Even those of your sisters. Morjin might be waiting for just such a move. And so it is a peril to your mind. And even more, to your soul.'

'And even more perilous not to look!' Liljana shot back.

'But think of what he took from you in Argattha! And what he might take still!'

'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 out-maneuvered 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 bees 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 alter 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 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.