Diamond Warriors (56 page)

Be ye songs of glory,

Be ye songs of glory.

That the light of the One

Will shine upon the world.

My savage friend stood there listening to Alphanderry's singing. He gazed at me in a silent desperation. He saw me, I sensed, as I saw myself: like a still lake that might gleam as brightly as a silver mirror, but mist-enshrouded. Where, I wondered, was the sun to burn away the mist?

I looked down the length of my shining sword at this anguished man who had slain so many. It would be easy to hate him, as I did killing and war. But I could not hate him - not even the darkest and most terrible parts of him. It was just the opposite.

'Kalkin,' I called out for the third time. 'Will Kalkin take the field against our enemies?'

I felt something bright and warm burst open within me - and within the man who stood by me at the top of the hill. His black eyes shimmered in the starlight; so, I thought, did mine. Then he saw himself in me. And I saw
him
come alive with a blazing purpose. He seemed like a great silver bird released from a cage and soaring into the sky. His gaze opened like a window to the deeps of his being, and there gathered suns and moons and whole universes on fire. His face shone with a terrible beauty. In the way he suddenly held out his hand to me, with such strength and grace and a wild joy, it seemed that all the immense suffering of the past and the infinite promise of the future were as one.

'Val,' he called out in a strange, deep voice, 'is a great warrior who would never desert
me.
But will Valamesh, the King of Swords, ride beside me tomorrow and do whatever he must to defeat the enemy? Will he? I
know
what he fears.'

This question, too, hung in the air. For a long time I stood listening to the whispering of the wind and my heart's wild beats. Then, in answer to what he had asked of me, I moved forward to clasp his hand.

A great smile broke from his face like lightning from the sky. And then there, at the top of the hill, in the sight of tens of thousands of campfires and millions of stars, we went to work practicing swords with each other one last time. As the night deepened toward morning, our blades clashed together in a ringing of steel and bright silustria. And all the while Alphanderry continued singing for all the earth and heavens to hear:

Be ye songs of glory,

Be ye songs of glory,

That the light of the One

Will shine upon the world.

I
walked alone back through the lines of the campfires toward my pavilion. The great noise of our army had quieted as men finished their dinners and lay down to try to sleep, most of them outside their tents beneath the stars. As I made my way along, I greeted those warriors who had remained awake, calling out their names: 'Yuravay; Sharam; Durrivar of Ki; Naviru Elad . . . ' There seemed almost no end to my homeland's ten thousand warriors whom I had led here, nor to the hours of the night. I came upon one man, Sunjay of Godhra, who sat trying to tie a battle ribbon to his long black hair. It was only his second ribbon, for he had fought at the Seredun Sands but had been too young to take up arms at the Culhadosh Commons the year before. Usually, ribbons were awarded only
after
a battle, but because I feared that none of my warriors might survive the coming day, I wanted them to be honored for their valor in merely showing up on this field to fight. All knew what a desperate fight it would be. And so young Sunjay's fingers trembled as he tried to work his red-colored ribbon into a knot.

'Sunjay, son of Torshan!' I called out to him. He was a rather gangly youth whose smooth, comely face still bore a look of innocence. 'Here, let me help you.'

I stepped over to him, moving around the sleeping forms of his companions. He bowed his head to me, and I quickly knotted the ribbon in his hair. And he told me, 'Thank you, Sire.'

'Thank
you,'
I said to him, 'for marching with me down such a long road. But tomorrow, we'll come to the end of it.'

'Yes, tomorrow,' he said, bowing his head again.

I sensed the emptiness of his churning belly, and said to him, 'Have you not had anything to eat?'

'We were given given antelope livers and steaks for dinner,' he told me, 'but I had no stomach for meat, if you know what I mean. Before I sleep, I shall try to eat a few battle biscuits.'

I asked him if he might have more of an appetite for pie, and his eyes brightened. I promised him that I would send out some of the strawberry pie that Liljana had been saving for me. And then I told him, 'Don't worry, lad, you will do well tomorrow. When the time comes, don't be afraid of yourself.'

He smiled at me as if astonished that I could sense his deepest fear. I set my hand on his shoulder, on the steel plate reinforcing his diamond armor, and I felt our regard for each other passing back and forth like a torch. Then I bid him goodnight, and moved off toward my pavilion as I spoke the names of other countrymen: 'Darshur the Bold; Telamar, son of Zandru; Suladad Yuval; Shanidar of Silvassu. . .'

Too many of my men, I thought, were barely men who had yet to see their twentieth year. How cruel, I thought, that they should be cut down in the finest flush of life before they had the chance to marry and sire their own children. I must have greeted two hundred of them before I realized with a shock that I, too, was a young man with hopes and dreams.

When I finally reached my pavilion and lay down, I could not sleep, and so I spent the few remaining hours meditating instead. Just before dawn, Abrasax came inside my pavilion to lay his hand on my arm and shake me into a painful consciousness.

'Valashu,' he said in a low, grave voice, 'I must tell you something.'

I sat up from my sleeping furs to see Abrasax's great, white-haired head limned in the glow of the candles.

'What is it, Grandfather?' I said to him.

'It is Bemossed - he is gone, and no one can find him.'

He went on to explain that an hour before, Bemossed had left the tent that he shared with Abrasax and the Seven. Bemossed, too, as Abrasax related, had been unable to sleep, and so he had gone outside to look upon the last of the night's stars.

'When he did not return,' Abrasax informed me, 'Master Virang and the others helped me to search for him - helped in vain.'

'But he must be somewhere!' I said. 'He cannot have left the encampment!'

But neither could Abrasax and the Seven, as Abrasax admitted, search the entire grounds where the warriors of sixteen kingdoms and six Sarni tribes gathered for battle. But I, as their warlord, could. At least I could pass the word to the kings who followed me to order their captains and company commanders to make a search. Such was the virtue of an army.

The sun was rising over the steppe in the east as their reports came to me: no one seemed able to locate Bemossed, not my Meshians near the center of our encampment, nor anyone else from the Ishkans in the west to the Atharians in the east. And then, even as our enemy's great war drums began booming out the challenge for battle. Lord Tanu came into my pavilion with five sentries: Gorvan of Lashku; Sorashan; Vikadar, son of Ramadar; Barshar of Ki; and Karathar Eldru. It seemed that they had been stationed ten paces from each other along a picket line to the north of our encampment. Lord Tanu's sour face grew bitter as he informed me: 'All of these men were found sleeping at their posts! They tell that Bemossed gave them coffee to help them stay awake - and that the coffee must have been poisoned with a sleeping potion! They remember speaking for a while with the Maitreya, and then nothing more!'

Kane, who stood listening to this report along with my other friends and the Seven, ground his jaws together and then growled out, 'Bemossed employed the same stratagem in Hesperu to make
me
sleep and so escape into the wilderness.'

'Well, then,' Lord Tanu said, 'it seems that it is no fault of my men that he has escaped his duty on the eve of battle.'

And Bemossed's duty, according to Lord Tanu, was to inspirit the warriors to face what would soon come. Although he did not quite call Bemossed a coward, the word seemed to hang upon his tongue like a curse.

'But where did he
escape to?'
Maram asked. 'If he wished to flee, why did he
poison
the sentries to the
north
of our encampment? why not flee across the river to the south, or east, away from our enemy?'

'Perhaps,' Lord Tanu said, 'he has gone over
to
the enemy -though I would not have wanted to believe that of him. But then the Lord of Lies has a way of turning men
,
doesn't he?'

I too, feared that Bemossed had crossed the broad strip of grass separating our encampment from Morjin's. But I found myself hoping with a blood-pounding desperation that he had, in fact, gone off into the steppe because he could not bear to face the horror of another battle.

'I have asked Sajagax,' I told everyone, 'to send out riders to search for Bemossed. If he
did
flee, he cannot have gone far.'

As the sun rose even higher, however, and my warriors finished their breakfasts and gave a last polish to their armor, Sajagax's outriders returned one by one to report that they had been unable to find any sign of Bemossed. It seemed that he might really
have
gone over to the enemy - either that or simply vanished into the grass.

Finally, Sajagax himself, accoutered for battle and clutching his great bow, strode into my pavilion and announced to me, 'We cannot find him! And the word of his desertion spreads among the men like a plague. What are we to do, Valashu?'

'What
can
we do?' I said. The distant tattoo of our enemy's drums seemed to boom out with even greater force. I thought I heard the sound of trumpets blaring along the wind. 'Let us form up for battle.'

I clasped Sajagax's huge arm, and told him that after he had driven off or defeated the Sarni tribes arrayed against him, I would meet him upon the center of the field over Morjin's corpse. Then he struck his huge fist against my shoulder and stormed out to gather up his warriors.

All along the river, our trumpeters began sounding the call to assemble. The Valari - along with the warriors from Thalu, Nedu and the other Free Kingdoms - began crowding between the rows of tents in thousands as they took their places in their companies and battalions. Just before we marched out away from our encampment, I lingered inside my pavilion to say farewell to the Seven, and to Liljana, Daj and Estrella.

'Promise me,' I said to Abrasax, 'that if the battle goes ill, you will flee with the children before it is too late.'

I repeated my request to him that the Seven should try to take refuge in one of Ea's Vilds, where Daj and Estrella might possibly live out a good part of their lives even if Morjin destroyed the rest of the world. Although Abrasax would make no promises, he at least nodded his head in acknowledgment of my concern.

Just before I donned my great helm, with its crest of white swan plumes, I bent down to embrace Estrella. Her warm, dark eyes seemed to reach out to hold onto me. I knew that she would choose to remain here and die by my side if we were defeated. This lovely child who had journeyed so far with me through so many dangers seemed suddenly not so much of a child at all. I felt within her a great movement, as with a mass of charged air before a storm. I had always marveled at her deep and - mysterious accord with life. Could she now foresee, I wondered, her own death? Or mine? It had been prophesied that she would show the Maitreya, and I wished that she might now point the way to where Bemossed had gone and tell me that he was safe from harm.

'Take care of the children,' I said to Liljana. I kissed Estrella's forehead, then clasped Daj's hand. 'Do not let them out of your sight.'

I embraced Liljana, and kissed her, too. And then it was time to go.

I led the way up from the river at the head of a column of the Meshian knights. Our horses' hooves beat against the earth, and the morning sun set our diamond armor on fire. Kane kept pace by my right side, with Maram at my left, followed by Lord Avijan, Lord Sharad and hundreds of others. We rode east, just past the hill where I had crossed swords with Kane only hours before. Slightly to the north of this little hump of ground, we met up with the mounted knights of Athar, Kaash and Waas, led by King Mohan, King Viromar and King Sandarkan. We massed together in long lines of stamping horses bearing warriors with long lances and gleaming shields. The rest of our army formed up with us as their anchor point: to our left and west, stretching out across the golden grasslands, the foot warriors of Athar took their places in glittering ranks five deep, followed by those of Waas, Kaash and Mesh. The white-haired giants called Ymaniri, led by Ymiru, framed the Alonians and Eannans at our center with the Thalunes farther to the west. Then came the Valari of Taron, Lagash, Anjo and Ishka. At the end of our lines, King Hadaru gathered with the combined cavalry of those same four kingdoms to anchor our army in the west. The distance from the swan and stars that my banner-bearer held aloft to the flapping red cloth showing the white bear of Ishka, as I estimated, must be nearly, five miles. Behind our lines, in two groups, stood our archers; between them waited the scant reserves from Nedu, Surrapam, Delu and the Elyssu. Beyond the lines of foot and cavalry - spread out over the steppe even farther to the west - the warriors of the Niurui, Urtuk and Danladi tribes assembled in one of the much looser and more flexible formations favored by these horse archers. So it was with the Kurmak, Adirii and the Manslayers just to the east of my cavalry. I saw Sajagax on top of his stallion a few hundred yards away waiting at the head of eight thousand warriors; Atara, her white blindfold flashing in the sun, led more than three and a half thousand women of her Sisterhood.

'It will be a hot day,' Maram said from beside me as he looked up at the sun, 'if we have to wait too much longer to engage. This is the part of battle that I hate most of ail the waiting.'