Lord of Lies

everyone else up, too. The brother's wife was like a she-wolf: she could have been a Manslayer. She came at me with a knife, and I had to cut her down, too.'

Now the old rage that had tormented him for so long turned inward and began eating at his insides like a ravening lion. I sensed that he wanted to tell me more, so I said, 'And then?'

'And then I killed the brother's children, too. The oldest boy couldn't have been more than five; the youngest was a baby, a girl with milk on her mouth. I told myself that it was a mercy, that they couldn't have survived the jackals and wolves with their elders dead, thirty miles from any other Marituk encampment. But I know not, Valashu, I know not.'

Sajagax bowed his head as he stared at the grass. It was a terrible thing that he had told me. He sat beneath the hot sun sweating and blinking his eyes. Then he looked at me. In a deep, angry voice, he forced out, 'I didn't make the world! Battles all true men must fight. We try to work our will on the world, but it may be that the world works its will on us. Who can see the end of it all?'

Again, I looked off toward Atara, who now rode a couple of hundred yards ahead of us. Seeing this, Sajagax's fierce, old face suddenly softened. 'If battle should find us here, I want you to stay by my granddaughter's side. She's a warrior, the greatest of the Manslayers, but she is still the woman you love, and you must protect her.'

He clasped hands with me yet again as if to seal an agreement. Then he dug his heels into his horse and galloped back to where his warriors made their way across the steppe. I rejoined my company, riding side by side with Atara. Thus we proceeded for perhaps an hour before one of Sajagax's scouts came pounding over a rise behind us. He galloped straight past our columns and cried out, 'The Alonians! They have betrayed us!'

At this news, Sajagax turned his warriors and waited for us to catch up to him. Then he rode forward, with Thadrak and Orox. I joined them there, on a grass-covered knoll, accompanied by Atara, Lord Raasharu, Lord Harsha, Baltasar, Maram and Master Juwain. Then the scout, nearly breathless from his dash across the steppe, gasped out: 'Duke Malatam leads a great many knights — I saw his standard with the rose flowers!'

'How far behind us?' Sajagax asked.

'Five miles.'

'How many knights?'

'Nearly five hundred. And thrice as many remounts.'

At these numbers, Maram's face paled as if a demon had drained him of blood. And Lord Raasharu said, 'Duke Malatam could not have assembled such a force this quickly, not since breakfast.'

'No,' I agreed. 'The call must have gone out when he first had word that we had passed through the Long Wall.'

'Then he did try to delay us outside of Tiamar,' Baltasar said. My hot-blooded friend's face filled with all the color that Maram's lacked. 'He would have waylaid us there — like a filthy brigand!'

'He'll waylay us here if we don't ride!' Maram called out.

Atara, who had remained silent, faced back toward the line of our march, to the southeast. We all faced that way, too. The sun was bright above the wavering, golden grasses, and hurt all our eyes. We had to squint to make out the plume of dust rising from the earth into the sky.

'Let's ride,' I said. 'We have a good lead. Perhaps we can outdistance them.'

I turned my black warhorse toward the cloudless sky in the northwest. I looked at Atara sitting so peacefully on hers. Despite my hopeful words, I feared that battle would find us here, and that soon I would have to slay many man to protect her, as she would me.

Chapter 23

Sajagax and I led our warriors in a race across this vast, open country. The Sarni set a pace that would soon exhaust our horses, and our remounts, too, which pounded and panted behind us.

After while, as the sun rose higher and poured down its orange fire upon us, we saw that no matter how fast we rode, Duke Malatam's knights drew closer and the dust plume behind us grew larger above the horizon. We stopped by a small stream for a little water. As quickly as we could, we unbuckled our saddles from our sweating horses and slapped them onto the backs of our remounts. Altaru hated me riding another horse, but seemed to sense that he had to preserve his strength for greater exertions still to come. The Kurmak warriors who joined us by the stream likewise exchanged horses. Sajagax chose a gray stallion and rode up to me as I mounted my new horse.

'You Valari ride well,' he said to me, 'but you ride slowly.'

'Yes,' I told him as I sweated inside my casing of diamond armor. It seemed as hot and heavy as molten lead, 'Slower, at least, than your Kurmak warriors. Why don't you escape, while you still can?'

'You mean, forsake you?'

'This is not your affair,' I said to him. 'You haven't taken vows to protect the Lightstone.'

'No, we haven't,' he said to me. Then his heavy face split wide with a grin as he looked at Baltasar, Sar Jarlath and others of my knights. 'But you have told me that we should protect the weak.'

I smiled back at him, and clapped him on his bare shoulder. Then we resumed our flight across the wide, rolling plains of Tarlan. It grew even hotter. Our horses snorted and panted and coughed. They beat their hooves into the sun-baked turf and sent up dust devils of their own. The dry air sucked the moisture from our sweating bodies, parching us and cracking our lips and tongues. I worried that my knights who had been wounded in the battle with the Adirii would not be able to keep up this killing pace — much less Estrella and Behira. But Behira, schooled by her father, rode determinedly and well. And Estrella surrendered to the torment of this long chase. Her slight body seemed to merge with her charging horse; as we sped along mile after mile, she rode near me, and her dark, wild eyes showed distress but no complaint.

And still the small army pursuing us gained on us, by inches, it seemed. I turned in my saddle many times to look behind us; I scanned the endless grasslands ahead of us, trying to calculate distances and time. Maram, panting almost as loudly as his horse as he rode beside me, suggested that we might last out ail the day and flee into the cover of darkness. But unless some clouds came up, it seemed that the rising moon would give Duke Malatam enough light to keep after us — especially once he and his men gained a clear line of sight as to our long lances and sparkling armor. And I did not want to be caught in the open at night.

'Atara!' I called out as she sat beside me urging on her horse. The pounding of hundreds of hooves was nearly deafening. 'Do you know what lies ahead of us?'

She shook her head back and forth. The cloth wrapped around it was powdered brown with dust?. She said, 'I've never been this way before.'

'Of course — but what can you see?'

She fell silent for a couple of hundred yards as we continued our jarring journey across the steppe. And then she said, 'What would you want me to see?'

'Is there any broken country about?'

'Yes,' she gasped out, coughing against the dust.

'Can you describe it?'

'Yes. Seven miles ahead of us — or eight — there is a line of hummocks, exposed rock and. .'

Her voice died into the hot wind whipping at our faces.

'That might be perfect,' I told her. 'Tell me more of what you see.'

She patted the neck of her lunging horse and shook her head. 'It would be better if you saw for yourself.'

With all the skill of the Sarni warrior that she was, she gripped her bow in one hand while unbuckling her saddlebag with the other. She brought out her scryer's sphere and held it sparkling in the sun.

I called for a halt then. As Atara gave the kristei to me, the Guardians sat on their horses behind me, fighting to breathe against the cloud of dust enveloping us. Sajagax and his Kurmak warriors halted, too. He led them back to us as I peered into the clear crystal.

'What witchery is this?' he shouted out to me.