Diamond Warriors

Chapter 22

Just as we reached that place where I had to part with Ymiru — he, to return to the center of our lines and I to our wing — I paused to tell him what he and the Ymaniri must now do. Then I rode back with Kane and Maram to rejoin our cavalry, while Sajagax and Atara continued on to take their places leading their Sarni warriors,

'King Mohan!' I cried out as we drew up to the massed knights on our right flank. Our enemy's drums had begun beating out the challenge to war once again. 'Lord Avijan! Lord Sharad — to me!'

Those I had called for, with Lord Manthanu, Lord Noldashan and others, galloped over to me to hold council. And I gasped out to them: 'We must change our order of battle! King Mohan, you will take command here of our cavalry.'

This fierce man, resplendent in his diamond armor, nodded his head to me. Although obviously pleased — and honored — he waited for me to say more, for he did not understand my decision.

'Lord Avijan, Lord Sharad!' I called out, turning to my cavalry lords. 'We will lead the Meshian knights back behind our lines to our center.'

Both of these great warriors seemed puzzled. According to all the Valari knew of making war, heavy horse had no place at the center of the battlefield hemmed in by masses of spear and shield men.

'We must break through,' I said. 'We must lead a charge up the Owl's Hill, and rescue Bemossed.'

'Sire,' Lord Sharad called back, looking at me deeply, 'you are not yourself!'

Now King Mohan cast me a penetrating look as if to wonder if what had transpired with Morjin had driven me mad. With the robe of fire searing my soul I wondered that as well. I had no time to explain that the fate of much more than Ea might depend upon keeping Bemossed alive. All I could say to my warriors was: 'The Maitreya cannot die!'

'But, Sire,' Lord Avijan said to me, glancing up at the lone cross

towering over the battlefield 'surely Bemossed is as one already dead.'

'No!' I shouted. 'There is still much life in him — I can feel it!'

'But even supposing we break through, when the Red Dragon perceives our objective, surely he will give the command to slay him.'

'No!' I shouted again. 'Anything might happen in battle. We might throw the enemy into confusion. Morjin himself might be killed, or wounded, and the command never given.'

Maram wiped the sweat from his face, and said to me: 'But can't you see it's a trap? That is just what Morjin will want you to think, and do!'

'It can't be helped, Maram.'

'Can it not? Morjin uses Bemossed just to get to you! And if we lose you, we lose everything. Don't let him kill you! If you must attempt this madness, choose another to lead the charge!'

'No,' I said to him, shaking my head, 'it must be me.'

At my obduracy, Maram looked at me in anger and frustration as tears filled his eyes. Kane, staring up at Bemossed, said to me more tersely: 'So — it is a trap. A terrible chance.'

'It is our only chance!' I said to him. 'Will you ride with me?'

At this, Kane grimly nodded his head. So did Lord Sharad, Lord Avijan and Lord Noldashan — and others. And then, finally, so did Maram.

'Into the Dragon's jaws,' he muttered to himself. 'Well, my friend, I suppose I always knew this would be a day for fire.'

After sending messengers galloping to speak with Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar, I gave the command for my army to renew its advance. Now, up and down our lines, our war drums began booming out their dreadful thunder. On our far right, out across the steppe's wind-rippled grasses, I saw that Sajagax had already begun the battle. Companies of Kurmak and Adirii warriors, with the Manslayers, rode upon the Janjii, Mansurii Zayak and Marituk tribes loosing a hail of arrows. It was no easy work of logistics to cut out my Meshians from our other cavalry massed too near the enemy Sarni. It took some precious minutes of horses whinnying and stamping, and men shouting in confusion, to reform them behind our lines. And then, even as our thousands of foot marched upon our enemy and the tinkling of millions of tiny silver bells rang out into the air, I led my eight hundred knights back behind the advancing Atharian and Waashian infantry toward the center of the field.

Our enemy, however, remained unmoving. Phalanxes of pike men packed twenty ranks deep and locked together shield to shield do not easily advance in good order over uneven ground across a front of five miles. Why should the Dragon army move forward when they had only to wait for my warriors to impale themselves on the acres of steel-tipped pikes sticking out from a long wall of shining shields?

Soon our army came within range of our enemy's archers. Clouds of black arrows, with an unnerving whining, streaked up from behind our enemy's lines and fell upon my advancing warriors. At this distance, most broke upon or glanced off their armor with a clatter of steel against diamond that was dreadful to hear. A few shafts split the diamond seams and penetrated through the underlying leather to skin and flesh beneath. Men cried out and fell; others hurried forward to take their places. Our archers, keeping pace behind our lines, paused every half minute to stand and loose volleys of their own. A great number of their arrows found their marks, punching through the poorer strip armor worn by the soldiers of Sunguru and the Eannan's thin mail. The screams of wounded and dying men merged with the cacophony of trumpets, drums, shrieking elephants and jangling bells into a single, terrible sound. I rode quickly along, at the head of my companies of knights, whose heavily-amored mounts beat at the ground and churned up the earth. I looked to my right, at the glittering ranks of the Kaashans closing the distance to the great Dragon army. Through the gaps between my men, marching in loose formation, 1 could now see the faces of the front rank of our enemy. Thousands of pairs of eyes stared out in dismay at the approaching Valari warriors. I felt their fear like a wave of sick heat emanating from them. Although they badly outnumbered us, they must have heard the stories told of the Valari's long, steel kalamas and the pitiless men who wielded them. My warriors' spirits held true and strong, though I felt how keenly Bemossed's torture grieved them. Spirit, in battle, was always such a delicate thing. A man's urge to risk his life for those of his companions could become a dread of death; the natural fear that caused one's heart to send streams of blood shooting like an elixir through mind and limb could easily explode into a full panic.

'The Valari!' I heard someone from within the Sakayan phalanxes cry out. 'The Valari come!'

Just as our army drew within javelin distance of our enemy, another of the Sakayans called to him in answer: The Dragon will burn them! Let the Dragon burn all the Valari!'

More arrows streaked down from the sky. One of them clacked off the armor covering Altaru's neck; another broke against my shoulder's steel reinforcement. At last, my knights and I had come up behind Lord Tanu's battalions. Meshian javelin men darted forward between our lines, hurling their spears at our enemy, javelins in hundreds struck deep into wooden shields with a great thucking sound. As our lines drew even closer to the massed phalanxes, warriors in our front ranks loosed spears of their own; almost all found their marks in the long shields that covered the Sakayans' bodies.

'Death to the Valari! Let the Dragon burn the Valari!'

Then, from Lord Tomavar's fourth battalion, one of my warriors let loose a cry of alarm. He stood some thirty yards ahead of me, and although I could see only the side of his stricken face, I felt sure his name was Garadan of Lashku. Sar Garadan thrust his spear into the air in the direction of Morjin's army, and he cried out, 'A dragon! A dragon has come to earth!'

I turned to gaze up toward the great, looming rocks of the Detheshaloon. So did ten thousand of my men. A black spot above the massif blotted out a tiny bit of blue in the sky. In only moments, however, it grew larger as it flew straight toward us like a flock of crows. But the thing that loosed a terrible cry into the air like a crack of thunder could be no bird nor bat, nor any other of the world's flying creatures, for it was not of the earth. 'A dragon!' hundreds of my warriors cried out. 'A dragon is come!'

Now I knew what dread thing Atara had warned me of. 'Oh, Lord!' Maram muttered, pointing out and up. Just before my army closed with our enemy, the dragon — for such it truly was — bellowed out again. I could now see it clearly as it streaked closer, beating the air in quick whumphs with its leathery

wings. It must be nearly forty feet, i thouht, from its iron-like snout to the knotted tip of its tail. Red-black scales covered every inch of its massive body; its great, golden eyes gazed out with what seemed a desire to burn and rend. A long, sinuous neck turned its huge head right and then left as if the dragon was searching for something.

'Yormungand!' Maram suddenly cried out from beside me. 'The dragon's name is Yormungand!'

His distress caused me to call for a halt. I stared at Maram in amazement. So did Kane, Lord Avijan, Lord Sharad, Joshu Kadar and the other Guardians closest to us.

'But how do you know?' I asked Maram.

'Because I can feel his mind burning my mind!' Maram told me. He shoved his long lance down into its holster, and with his free hand, he grabbed his head. 'The dragon is looking for me!'

'So,' Kane growled out, staring up into the sky.

In Argattha, Kane had destroyed the six dragon eggs that we had found in Morjin's chambers. But Daj, I remembered, had warned us that Morjin kept seven eggs as an assurance that the dragon who had laid them would do as he commanded.

'Morjin must have hatched Angraboda's seventh egg,' Maram said, sweating. And raised Yormungand, he added, on human flesh and an inhuman hate of Morjin's enemies.

'Yormungand wants revenge for his mother's death,' he told me. He glanced down at my sword, which I had struck through one of Angraboda's weakened scales into her heart. 'Yormungand is looking for you, too, Val.'

Just then the dragon reached a space in the air above our lines. He opened his jaws to reveal rows of great pointed teeth, nearly a foot long. Then he coughed out a stream of a reddish liquid called relb. This thick, sticky substance burst into fire as it touched the air, and rained down upon the men of Lord Tomavar's third battalion. Most got their shields up quickly, and so protected themselves from the worst of the dragon fire. But at least ten of them screamed out as if they had been drenched in boiling oil.

'Yormungand,' Kane said to me, 'is looking for much more than revenge, Val. Dragons like to kill.'

Then Yormungand suddenly dove down toward the ground with a thunderous beating of its wings. It fell on top of Lord Tomavar's third battalion with a crash that crushed men screaming to the earth. Other men tried to put their spears or swords into Yormungand, but their weapons broke against the dragon's rock-hard scales. Then Yormungand savaged about, up and down the lines, snapping his jaws and crushing men's heads between his teeth, pulping their faces with the knotted tip of his tail, stamping them and tearing at them with his claws — and breathing out a fire hot enough to melt steel.

'Maram!' I cried out. 'You will not fight men with fire — but you must fight fire with fire!'

Maram had already taken out his great red gelstei. But with the Guardians and other knights packed so closely about us, he had no clear line along which he might direct its flame at the dragon without also burning up our knights.

'There!' I cried out again. I pointed behind us at the little hill upon which Kane and I had stood talking the night before. 'You must go up there! You must stand and fight!'

'But the dragon will see me!' Maram cried out.

'He will see you in any case, once you loose your stone's fire.'

'Then maybe I shouldn't! I never want to burn anything, ever again!'

At that moment, Yormungand sprang off the ground and left a refuse of crushed and bloody bodies. He took to the air, even as hundreds of arrows loosed by our archers broke against his scales. With a great roar, he flew straight toward my knights and me. His golden eyes seemed to sear open the air. Then he dipped down his head and spat out a stream of flame that fell upon Sar Elkaru Barshan. Sar Elkaru cried out in agony as the burning relb spilled over his small shield and melted his face. I was not the only knight in my army to sport white plumes upon my helm. I noted that the white crane of the Barshans might look very much like the Elahads' silver swan, especially to a young dragon not familiar with the insignia of the Valari.

Then the dragon flew along my column of knights, closer to Maram and me.

'Go!' I said again, pointing at the hill. 'It is your time, Maram.'

Maram, sitting on his horse next to me, hesitated as he gazed up at the rapidly approaching dragon. He cried out, 'Why? Why must I always do precisely what I don't want to do?'

He gripped his firestone in his sweating hands with such force that I feared he might bruise his own flesh. Then, with a great sigh, he raised up the gelstei. The crystal caught the rays of the sun; it flared to a deep and angry red, and a bolt of crimson fire streaked out of its point. This flame shot up through the air and scored the dragon's bulging underbelly. It must have burned the dragon, if not pierced his scales altogether, for Yormungand let loose a great and hideous roar. I waited to see if Yormungand would now try to fall against Maram — and me. But Yormungand suddenly dipped down his wing, and veered off toward the right, back toward Morjm's army and the rocks of the Detheshaloon.

'He will return!' Kane called out to Maram. 'You've wounded him, I think, but like his mother, he will return.'

Maram sighed again as he looked at me. I felt his essential fear give way to an immensely greater love of life. He couldn't keep the tears from flowing his eyes, and neither could I.

'Farewell, Val,' he said to me. He tucked his firestone beneath his left arm as he held out his right hand to clasp mine. 'As long as I remain near you, I'll draw that damn dragon, won't I?' Likewise, he bade Kane goodbye and clasped his hand, too.

'Whatever happens,' Maram told him, 'stay by Val's side.' He swallowed, twice, hard, and adjusted his helmet. He sat up straight on his horse, looking out at Lord Avijan and Sar Shivalad and all the Guardians watching him. And then he drew in a huge breath of air and bellowed out: 'All right! I'll go! And let that dragon beware! King Valamesh is right: in all the world, there is only one Maram Marshayk!'

So saying, he wheeled his horse about and galloped off toward the little hill above the river. Soon — and ever after — it would be known as the Hill of Fire.

A great clashing of spears against shields and men screaming alerted me that the lines of my army had finally come up against our enemy. There would be much more to this battle than fighting one dragon, no matter how deadly or terrible. At first, up and down the field for miles, my warriors engaged Morjin's men carefully, and almost delicately, for it is no simple thing to go up against a phalanx. My javelin men kept corning forward through the loose Valari formations with fresh spears, and hurling them at our enemy. The javelins' long, soft, iron heads embedded themselves in wood, and since they would bend before breaking, they could not easily be ripped free. Soon the shields of the soldiers in our enemy's front ranks grew so heavy and cumbersome with javelins sticking out of them that they had to be cast down. Then the warriors in the front rank of Lord Tomavar's and Lord Tanu's battalions — and those of Kaash, Waas and Athar farther down the lines — went to work with their tharams and long spears, probing with great precision, stabbing them into our enemy's faces or the weak points in their armor. It was a long, brutal business, for even as we Valari struck down one rank of our enemy, another moved forward to take its place; With men packed twenty ranks deep, I feared it would take hours to tear open our enemy's phalanxes. Only then would my warriors rush into the great holes in the wall of metal before them with their kalamas. But once these long swords began flashing in the sun, the Red Dragon's soldiers would fall like hacked barley stalks and begin fleeing in panic — so it had always been, and so I hoped it would now be.

There were so many thousands, however, to cut down. And my men were too few, and I could feel them tiring beneath their weight of diamond and steel with every stab of their spears and chop of their tharams. I wondered how things went on our flanks, for the fog of battle had now closed in, and I could not see the Sarni warriors far out on the steppe to the east and west. How fared King Mohan in his charge against the Ikurians? Did he and his knights hold their own against the fierce horsemen of Sakai and keep Morjin from extending his lines so as to flank us? Did King Hadaru and his knights succeed in this task, on our west wing? It was hell, I thought, not knowing. And worse dreading the dragon's return and having to imagine what other nightmares Morjin might unleash upon us. And worst of all, being compelled to ride forward into the center of the field to rescue Bemossed before all was lost.

I led my knights to that place where Lord Tomavar's first battalion faced the joint in the Sakayan and Hesperuk lines. Just to the west of Lord Tomavar's warriors, Ymiru's five hundred Ymaniri had gone to work trying to batter down the Hesperuk phalanx. I could not tell who fought more fiercely: the eight-foot tall Frost Giants, with their marvelous keshet armor and their fearsome borkors dripping blood and brains, or my own Meshians, now forcing cracks in the Hesperuk and Sakayan lines with all the fury of their slashing kalamas.

'They will break!' I called to Lord Avijan. 'Our enemy must soon break!'

'Let us hope that we don't break first!' he called back to me. To the west, I saw, the Hesperuk phalanx had now moved forward, pressing back the lines of Eannans, Alonians and Thalunes. Farther in that direction across the corpse-strewn steppe. King Waray's Taroners fought desperately against the end third of the Hesperuk Phalanx — and their elephants. These strange, savage beasts nearly struck a panic into my men. Valari warriors — and those of Alonia and Eanna — up and down the field, struggled to effect Kane's counsel on how to contend with this new terror. Closer to us, in the lines of our enemy ahead of my massed knights, the Hesperuks fought to bear five more mountains of gray, raging flesh against Lord Tomavar's men. Lord Tomavar sent forward archers shooting arrows at the elephants' drivers, even as his javelin men hurled volleys of spears at the elephants' vulnerable bellies and eyes. A few brave warriors rushed in close to the elephants to slash through the trunks with their kalamas. But the maddened elephants had stratagems of their own. They raged about the field, trumpeting ferociously, grabbing up men with their trunks and then dashing them to the ground, knocking them over and stamping them to a bloody mess. One elephant — a great bull — rammed his sharpened tusk straight through Sar Nolwan's neck, and so died Makarshan of Ki as well.

Duty demanded that I wait and watch these massacres. That, too, was hell. Bemossed remained nailed to his cross on top of the hill just behind the Hesperuk and Sakayan phalanxes, and it seemed that every moment he grew weaker, even as the agonies of all the wounded and dying men and beasts across the battlefield flooded into me like waves of burning pitch. Kane counseled me to keep a grip on my sword and let all this incredible suffering pass through me and into it. But that was something like telling a man cast adrift at sea that he should drink the ocean to keep from drowning.

'Be ready!' Kane called out to me. He clasped hold of my arm and shook it, as if to pull me out of the cloud of pain nearly choking me. 'It won't be long!'

After the elephants had been killed, the Ymaniri and the warriors of Lord Tomavar's first battalion fell upon our enemy with renewed fervor. They drove like a wedge deep into the Hesperuk phalanx. One face of the wedge consisted of the great, white-furred Ymaniri swinging their borkors with wild abandon, splintering shields, caving in helms and pulverizing bone. On the other face, my Meshians' kalamas whipped through the air in a brilliance of steel and blood. Their razor-sharp blades slashed through the Hesperuks' bronze armor. I gritted my teeth against the sight of the hacked limbs and cleaved men falling to the reddened earth.

Then, from the very point of the wedge, where Ymiru had met up with Lord Tomavar, I heard Ymiru's great voice bellow out above the din of battle: 'A hrole! For King Valamesh, let us make a hrole!' I could almost feel, however, the exhaustion burning into Ymiru's great arm and body — and those of his men and Lord Tomavar's. Lord Tomavar himself fought like a fury, cutting through one soldier's chest, stabbing his kalama through the throat of another, and then ripping free his sword with a quick stroke to decapitate a Hesperuk lord. I sensed in him not only a fierce will toward victory but a desire to redeem himself for his wrongful pride in challenging me as king. But I did not know how much longer he or his men behind him could go on fighting this ways.

Then Kane looked back behind us toward the river, and so did I. There, the Seven had come up from our encampment. Abrasax's snowy hair and beard gleamed in the bright sunlight, and so did Master Juwain's bald head. The Masters of the Brotherhood stood gathered in a circle on the grass, with their hands held out toward each other. I knew that each held one of the great gelstei. Arrows fell around them. How they maintained their almost tangible calm in the midst of the great noise and death all around them I did not know.

But I soon saw the fruition of their efforts, or thought I did: the ground, from the river to the rocks of the Detheshaloon, suddenly seemed to grow transparent, as if dirt had been cleansed from a window pane. Deep within the darkness of the earth, a great wheel of light spun with a varicolored radiance. Somehow, the Seven called upon the great earth chakra's flames to feed the life fires of the men doing battle on the field above. They could not direct this force with any kind of precision, favoring the men of my army over our enemy's soldiers. But the flames found their way into those most open to them; they especially enlivened the blood and beings of the Valari warriors, who had sat each morning and evening for many years practicing the Brotherhood's meditations.

'A hole!' I heard Lord Tomavar call back to Yrniru. 'If we must slay a thousand men, we'll make a hole big enough to march an army through!'

I blinked then, and the vision of the earth opening to a deep splendor vanished before my eyes. I felt, however, a terrible new strength flowing into me. Its fire drove back the burning of the kirax and the agony of men dying near me. I sensed this same onstreaming force in Kane, and in Lord Avijan and Joshu Kadar, and in all the Guardians drawn up close behind me. It seemed that the earth was pouring into us her very life.

'Look!' Sar Shivalad cried out as he pointed with his lance ahead of us. 'They have broken the line!'

To the dreadful sound of iron-shod clubs crunching in armor and kalamas chopping through bronze and bone, the wedge of warriors ahead of us worked if the hole they had ripped into the Hesperuk Phalanx. Yrniru and his men fell against one end of the ragged Hesperuk line, while Lord Tomavar directed our Meshians against the other. In the course of two minutes, as our enemy fell in tens and twenties screaming to the ground, the wedge widened to a

funnel into which I might lead my fight hundred knights.

'Now!' I cried out to the men behind me. 'Let us ride!'

And ride we did. Altaru's great muscles hurled us forward almost without my prompting him. It was dreadful working through the hole in the Hesperuk lines for Altaru's hooves crunched against the bodies of the dying and the dead. Too many of my men, I saw, had been compelled to sacrifice themselves, and they lay on the bruised grass like lumpy carpets of diamond or white fur. When I came to the point where the funnel of my still savagely fighting warriors opened out behind the Hesperuk lines. Ymiru pointed with his bloody borkor, and cried out, 'This is hrorrible, Val! I didn't know it would be so hrorrible!'

When Altaru and I burst into the space beyond the killing zone, fewer corpses littered the ground. Few men, for the moment, opposed us, but those who did fought for their lives. A hundred skirmishers came running at us and casting their javelins. And three score of the Hesperuk infantry who had panicked and broken, suddenly ceased their wild flight across the grass to turn and make a desperate stand. One of these — a giant with blood and brains dripping from his bronze fish scales — planted the butt end of a long pike in the grass in hope of impaling either Altaru or me. I cast one of my throwing lances straight through his eye, and I screamed as he died. Sar Shivalad and the Guardians close to me fell upon other Hesperuks, running them through with their long lances or using their kalamas to cut them down.

Archers, gathered nearby, loosed their bolts at us. Many broke against my knights' armor. But many, at this range, ripped through the diamond seams and found out the places where our mounts had no covering. Men gasped at arrows sticking out of their faces or embedded in their chests; horses screamed and stumbled, crushing their riders under. Then my men fell into a rage. They charged the masses of archers, and soon killed all of them, for the archers had but leather tunics to protect them against our terrible swords.

There came a moment when no enemy stood nearby to threaten us. My knights milled about, sticking their lances through the bodies of our wounded enemy, and I did not stop these executions. I looked off to the left; it seemed that King Hadaru's cavalry and the battalions of Ishka and Anjo might have pushed back the Uskadans, but it was hard to see, for clouds of dust obscured much of the battlefield. Likewise, I could not tell what was happening on our right flank. But at the field's center, the Hesperuk phalanx had pushed deep into the Alonian and Eanna lines, just beyond that place where Lord Tomavar's and Ymiru's men still fought savagely to keep open the hole they had made, and widen it, if they could.

Then I looked up to the right at the Owl's Hill ahead. Bemossed hung upon his cross like a carcass drained of blood. Breath still stirred within him, however, for somehow he managed to lift up his head and gaze out toward me. I sensed within him, even deeper than his pain, an immense disappointment. And a fear for me. I thought I saw his throat working and his lips moving as if to tell me: 'Go back, Val! It is a trap!'

A pack of Blues, thirty strong, stood at the top of the hill around the cross as if waiting for me. Their broad-bladed axes gleamed in the sunlight.

Where is Morjin? I wanted to shout. Where is the filthy Crucifier?

Just then, to our left, from behind the ridges of rocky ground close to the Detheshaloon, men in great numbers began to pour forth. They bore bright, steel-jacketed shields, long spears and good armor, of mail and plate. Two thousand more Blues marched out with them, and light and heavy cavalry in the hundreds. I recognized the hawk and bear standards of men that my companions and I had fought at Khaisham. I did not want to wait as the forty or fifty battalions of Yarkona formed up. I knew that Morjin would throw most of them against the hole that my warriors had torn in his lines, and so block our retreat.

Where is the Dragon Guard? I asked the wind. Where are Morjin's best men?

As if in answer to my question, more cavalry burst forth from around behind the Owl's Hill. The famed Red Knights bore a heavy burden of thick, crimson-tinted armor that weighed down their huge horses. Although they could not move very quickly, Zahur Tey and their other captains at the front of their column were closer to Bemossed than my knights and I. I remembered Atara putting the count of the Red Knights at three thousand.

'We must reach the Maitreya before they do!' I cried out to my men, pointing ahead of us. 'Charge!'

Altaru, in a surge of mighty muscles, leaped forth almost to a full gallop in a single bound. Wind whistled through my helm, and my eight hundred knights and their mounts thundered across the ground behind me. Our course took us nearly straight up the gende slopes of the Owl's Hill. The Red Knights had to work up and around the curving sweeps of grass to our left.

Even so, the foremost of them cut across our line of assault. They should have been able to intercept us and throw us back. But a rare spirit blazed through our hearts. Perhaps the earth fires that the Seven unleashed with their gelstei filled us with a terrible joy for killing perhaps we all knew that only the most desperate hope remained of saving Bemossed — and the world. In the first seconds of this battle,

I hurled five throwing lances at our enemy, and five of the Red Knights fell dead or dying with wooden shafts sticking out of their eyes, mouths or necks. So it was with Kane, loosing his lances with a terrifying aim, as with the hand of an angel — and with Lord Avijan, Lord Noldashan. Sar Jonavar, Sar Shivalad and my other Guardians who came forward to try to protect me. But it was the Red Knights, at that moment who needed protection from us.

I drew Alkaladur, and our enemy before us on the slopes of the hill seemed to shudder at the sight of this brilliant blade. I cut down a huge Red Knight, then thrust Alkaladur's point through another's chest. I wrenched my blade free, and crimson blood spurted from the hole in his crimson armor. A thrown lance slammed into my side, but did not pierce me. Then three more men rode at me, and I killed them with three lightning slashes, and I gritted my teeth against the sounds of silustria tearing through steel and men shrieking in agony. Kane, to my right, with a single sweep of his sword, struck off the head of a captain of the Dragon Guard, then sliced through the arm of a Red Knight trying to push a lance through my side. And then, unbelievably, as if Kane could sense the movement of every man on the field with an impossible precision, he whipped about to thrust his sword's point straight through a third knight's eye.

Close around us, my Guardians fought with scarcely less fury. Their diamond-tipped long-lances drove through the plate armor of our enemy; their kalamas flashed forth, and keen steel edges cut through steel and bone. Founts of blood filled the air, and rivers of pain. Men screamed and died in hundreds as metal clanged against metal and horses collided and whinnied horribly.

Where is Morjin?

There came another moment when all the enemy knights closest to Kane and me either lay dead on the grass or hung back in fear. A brightening of my sword caused me to look uphill again at Bemossed. And there, just beneath the cross where the pack of Blues gathered, I saw Morjin standing and looking down at me. I knew him as I did the smell of death itself. My sword flared even more brightly, and the kirax burned up my blood. Morjin held the Lightstone shimmering like the sun in one hand and a lance in the other. His golden eyes fixed on me, in challenge and in hate.

'Why does he let the Mitreya live?' Joshu Kadar called out. He sat on top of his panting horse, which bore my standard of the silver swan and seven stars. 'Why does he give us this chance?'

Even a child, though, I thought, could see that we had almost no hope of continuing our charge uphill and taking Bemossed down from his cross. The Blues stood in a tight formation and shook their axes at us; more hundreds of Red Knights streamed out from behind the hill to ride up and put themselves between Bemossed and my companions and me. Farther away, toward the Detheshaloon cavalry led by Count Ulanu galloped out to join them, even as his infantry marched forth at double pace to reinforce the Dragon Army's broken line and fall against Ymiru's and Lord Tomavar's men.

'A chance!' I cried out. 'A single chance — if we ride now!'

But even as we made ready to renew our charge, or at least fight our way uphill I felt Bemossed's strength failing him. And Morjin's power grow. Suddenly, high in the air over the Detheshaloon, a black spot appeared. At first I thought it might be the Ahrim coming for me one last time. Then the spot began to widen and deepen, like a whirl of dusty wind eating up sky. I thought I could see little lights twinkling from its inky center.

'So, it is the true Skadarak,' Kane said, pointing up with his bloody sword. 'The stars reach their moment. Morjin opens the way to Damoom!'

From behind us, one of my knights cried out: Sorcery!'

'Illusion!' another said, looking up toward the cross where Morjin stood holding up the Lightstone. 'Morjin is the Lord of Illusions!'

As we attacked the Red Knights and our swords began their terrible work once more, a new enemy rose up before us. With a horrible ripping sound, our kalamas cut through flesh and bone, even steel, but they could not touch the dreadful things that Morjin sent to destroy us. I heard my men scream out that demons had joined our enemy. Sar Kanshar loosed a throwing lance against a monster, half horse and half man, that galloped toward him shooting arrows — or so he said. Siraj the Younger was trying to cut down a Red Knight whose face and limbs were made of sand. I looked on in a helpless rage as Siraj's sword passed right through this phantasmagory even as a very real Red Knight thrust a lance through Siraj's neck. I felt a terror seize hold of my men, not just upon the Owl's Hill, but for five miles all along our desperately struggling lines, from King Hadaru's cavalry in the west to King Mohan and Sajagax's Sarni in the east. I could almost see what my warriors cried out in panic at what they desperately did not want to see: twelve huge dragons appearing from behind the rocks of the Detheshaloon and soaring toward us as they roared out their disdain and spit fire into the air; winged tigers and apes in hundreds that flew after them; a pack of Blues whose faces were those of wolves;

elephants with scales and serpent trunks; and a great beast, bigger than ten elephants, which was spotted like a leopard and had the feet of a bear. Out of each of its seven, lionlike heads there grew ten horns, each of which bore an iron crown set with seven fire-stones casting out black flames. These burned my men, their minds if not their bodies, but not so badly as the worst of the illusions Morjin sent to madden us. It infuriated me to see great warriors such as Lord Jessu the lion-Heart hesitate to strike at our enemy because they perceived the Red Knights as having the faces of their fathers or mothers — or even as Bemossed or me. How long could they go on fighting, I wondered, if they couldn't tell what was real from what was not?

'Don't lose heart!' I cried out.

Beside me, Kane's sword split the helm of a Red Knight who had tried to brain me with a mace. Then he drove his horse into the mount of another man, nearly knocking him from his saddle. With the man unsettled, Kane reached out to grab hold of the joint in the armor covering his shoulder and threw him down from his horse. Immediately, the hooves of Lord Avijan's horse trampled him, and so with Lord Manthanu's mount and many others.

'Let us do our work,' I called to my warriors, 'and the Seven will do theirs!'

Then, as before, the ground beneath us seemed to grow transparent. The wheel of light turning deep within the earth grew brighter. I could almost feel it drawing down the rays of the sun and the much stronger radiance of the Golden Band as the stars and planets approached their moment of alignment. I could almost behold the splendor that spread out across the steppe and drove Morjin's illusions away.

"They are gone!' Sar Vikan shouted with a shake of his head. He suddenly leaned forward to thrust his lance through the face of a Red Knight who had slain Sar Yulmar, who had been Sar Vikan's best friend.

'All gone!'

'No — one of the dragons remains!' Jurald Evarshouted back to him. 'Look! It comes!'

No power of the Seven could cast back the thing of crimson and fire that flew out from the Detheshaloon roaring in malice, for?ormungand was made of flesh and blood, even as were my men. The dragon beat the air with a thunder of wings, and streaked straight toward Maram where he now stood on top of the Hill of Fire.

'So,' Kane growled out with a savage thrust of his sword He had less care for the man he had just killed than for the blackness growing in the sky. 'The Dark One comes, too!'

The Seven likewise could do nothing to stop Morjin from tearing open a great hole in space that Kane had called the Skadarak — certainly not so long as Morjin commanded the Lightstone.

'Let us at least finally kill him!' Kane said to me as he glowered up the hill at Morjin.

Now Kane and I made circles of death around us with our swords. None could stand against Kane's kalama, for in his hands, it became almost a thing of light: spinning outward to cut through a Red Knight's neck; streaking like a ray of the sun straight into another's eye; flashing through flesh and steel as if no man or material thing could withstand it, I wielded Alkaladur with no less terror, for the Sword of Flame burned past my enemy's defenses and cut through good plate armor to strike home death. As the battle drew on and the sun climbed higher in the sky, Alkaladur flared ever hotter and brighter until it shone a hellish fire-white. Men screamed to feel it cutting them open or even just to behold it. In my wrath to slash and slay, the Red Knights began to hesitate and hang back from me, muttering beneath their breaths that I was a demon. So it went with Lord Avijan and Lord Vikan, who battled near me, and with Sar Kanshar and Sar Shivalad and Joshu Kadar and many others. They fought that day, if not like demons, then as lolling angels whom nothing could hold back.

And yet I did not think that we could cut our way through our enemy to reach Morjin. In the thirty yards between us and the hill's top, hundreds of Red Knights now massed and pointed their lances down at us. Those highest up near Morjin had begun dismounting and standing together, shoulder to shield, to form a wall protecting him. Behind them awaited the howling, murderous Blues with their axes. And soon the hundreds of Red Knights still riding out from the Detheshaloon would fall against my warriors' flank and begin working up behind us.

'Damn you, Morjin!' Kane suddenly cried out. 'Damn you and the one you call master!'

Morjin, however, must have feared that we might reach him — or at least fight our way to free Bemossed as Morjin led a retreat down the backside of the hill. And so, smiling at me in utter triumph, he raised up his lance and plunged its gleaming point into Bemossed's side. He twisted it, causing Bemossed to writhe on his mount of wood and to cry out in agony. Blood flowed from the mortal wound torn into his naked flesh. Morjin caught the red stream with the Lightstone, then pressed the golden cup to his lips.

'Every abomination!' Kane thundered up at him. 'Everything that fouls the human spirit!'

Then he wept to see Bemossed so helpless against the anguish tearing through him.

'Come!' Morjin suddenly called to Kane and me, with lips stained carmine like his armor. At the sound of his voice, the Red Knights nearby hung back in their assault on us, waiting. 'Come to him now — if you can!'

Bemossed, looking down from his cross, pulled like a madman at the spikes nailing his hands to the crossbeam. More blood ran in rivulets from his palms and down his arms. He stared at the Lightstone in utter desperation, and I felt him burning to take hold of it for just one moment.

'Valashu!' he cried out to me. 'I am sorry! I thought I was so …'

His words died into the spasm of writhing that tore through his naked body. What had he wanted to tell me? That he had thought himself untouchable? And blessed and beloved, of the angels and men?

'I thought I was … beautiful!' he finally gasped out. 'I thought Morjin could see me … and so himself. But I was wrong. I am nothing.'

Another spasm seized hold of him as more blood ran out of the hole in his side. Then, with the last of his strength, he raised up his head like a king so that he could gaze out above the masses of men and horses gathered on the hilltop to meet eyes with me. 'It is all for nothing, Valashu. It is all nothing … so dark.' Those were the last words he spoke to me. I watched the light go out of his eyes. Then, as if an axe had cut the muscles at the back of his neck, his head dropped down toward his chest. So died Bemossed, the man I had called the Shining One and Lord of Light who was no blood of mine, but in spirit was truly my brother. 'NO!' I cried out as my heart broke open. Flame and lightning flashed to the south, from the Hill of Fire. High above us, the spinning black thing blighted the blueness of the sky. It grew vaster and even darker, like a funnel cloud's whirl-. wind about to descend and sweep everything away. A freezing cold fell down upon the earth.