Diamond Warriors

who had taken his young lady love away from him. 'You won't drive us away!'

'I will remain, too!' Sar Shivalad called out. Estrella, locked on to me, gazed at Lord Tanu with no less defiance.

'What is this?' Lord Tanu cried out. 'Must we ride over all of you?'

In the warmth of Estrella's face pressed against my chest I felt her will to stand and die wherever I stood. So it was with my other companions and the knights who followed me, even Maram, who pressed up behind me and clasped his hand around my arm. Their hearts seemed to beat in unison like a single, great drum. In the immense silence that sounded out along the road above the lake, I gazed at Lord Tanu. And my heart filled with a wild and anguished love of life.

'Ride, if you must,' I said to him.

For a long time, he sat on top of his great warhorse staring down at me. He appeared at once sad, fearful and weighed down with a bittersweet longing. My companions drew in closer to me. I felt their elan passing into me and gathering in my eyes with a painful brightness. Lord Tanu stared and stared at me, and at last, a door inside him opened. Then his eyes grew ail moist and glassy, like the waters of the lake.

'I might have been wrong about you,' he forced out in a harsh, thick voice. 'I had thought you were vainglorious, like Lord Tomavar.'

He looked from Maram to Atara, and then at Lord Harsha, Lord Avijan and Joshu Kadar. still holding up my banner with the swan and stars. Then he said to me, 'Too many adventurers are careless of their own lives, and those of others. But it might foe that you are more like your father and grandfather. They would gladly have given their lives for the men who followed them — and did.'

I bowed my head at this, then so did Lord Tanu and everyone else. After a few moments. Lord Tanu turned to Lord Eldru and said, 'Let us not ride any farther up this road today.'

He nodded at Lord Ramjay and Sar Shagarth, who nodded back at him. Then Lord Tanu said to Lord Avijan, standing a few paces from me: 'We will take your word that your castle is well defended. But you should prepare your warriors to march forth from it wiihin the week.'

'And why is that?' Lord Avijan asked him.

'Because,' Lord Tanu said, looking at me, 'we shall call for a gathering of all the warriors in Mesh — even Lord Tomavar's. Let it be as Valashu Elahad has said: all who have made pledges should be released from them. Let the warriors decide who shall be king!'

At this, Sar Vikan let loose a great cheer, which Jessu the Lion-Heart and Sar Shivalad and the other knights near me picked up and amplified, calling out: 'Let the warriors decide!'

The knights who had pressed up close behind Lord Tanu must have sympathized with this sentiment, for they too repeated this cry. And then, like a command passed across a battlefield, the warriors drawn up in columns along the road shouted out that they should be allowed to stand for a new king. Their thousands of voices boomed out across the lake like a stroke of thunder.

'Very well, then,' Lord Tanu said, bowing his head to me. 'Until the gathering, Lord Elahad.'

'Until then. Lord Tanu,' I said, bowing back to him.

It was no great work for Lord Tanu to call for his captains to turn his army about and begin marching back down the road, with the vanguard following those who marched on foot. We watched them go as they had come,a great mass of men and horses pounding at the road's stone. When they had disappeared from our sight around the curve of the mountain, I looked down at Estrella, still clinging to me, and I said to her, 'It was you who led the way out of the castle, wasn't it?'

At this, she happily nodded her head as if she thought her action should have pleased me. Then Daj spoke for her, saying, 'We couldn't let you face Lord Tanu alone. He might have killed you!'

I tried to smile at him as I swallowed against the lump in my throat. Then Maram gazed down into the pass and muttered to me, 'Do you see how it goes, then? We survive another urgent situation, only to be to be forced into yet another. A gathering of the warriors, indeed! Three armies will be at this gathering — and Lord Tomavar, I think, will be quicker to have his warriors draw swords than to release them from their pledges.'

At this, Sar Vikan stepped up to Maram, and clapped him on the shoulder. 'If that is the way of things, then I shall have the pleasure of fighting by your side again. Which of Lord Tomavar's knights can stand against Sar Maram Marshayk?'

As Maram rolled his eyes at this and let out a soft groan, Lord Avijan came over to me. 'Which of Mesh's knights will fail to stand for Valashu Elahad as king?'

For a while we remained there above the deep, blue lake feeling very glad for our lives — and not a little amazed that our small force had been able to turn back Lord Tanu's army without a single sword flying from its scabbard. I thought about Lord Avijan s words to me. Of all the questions in my life, at that moment, it was the one I most wanted to be answered.

Chapter 6

It took more than a week for Lord Tanu's emissaries to ride across Mesh and arrange with Lord Tomavar a time and place for the gathering of the warriors: On the 21st of Soldru we were to converge on a great open meadow to the west of Hardu along the Arashar River. This field, where the Lake Country gave way to the Gorgeland at the very heart of the realm, was almost exactly equidistant from Mount Eluru, Godhra and Lord Tomavar's stronghold in Pushku. Other claimants to the throne — Lord Ramanu, Lord Bahrain and Lord Kharashan — would have to make longer journeys. As they had no hope of becoming king, however, few worried that they might take insult in not being given equal consideration. It had proved hard enough to persuade Lord Tomavar to attend the gathering. In the end, however, his innate character drove him straight toward this historic confrontation. Perhaps he suspected that Lord Tanu and I would join forces against him, and he wanted to forestall such a combination. More likely he simply assumed that he could go among Mesh's warriors and win them to his banner with his bravura, a few quick smiles and a great show of strength. As the spring deepened toward summer, warriors who had pledged to Lord Avijan continued riding up to his castle. By the ides of Soldru, almost all of these had arrived. Of course, there would always be a few who would miss the call to gather. As had happened with Sar Jonavar a year before, they might be away on hunting trips or meditation retreats deep in the mountains. These two or three dozen men, though, would not significantly diminish our forces, which Lord Avijan counted at more than twenty-three hundred. In combination with Lord Tanu's army, I thought, we would slightly outnumber the six thousand warriors said to be pledged to Lord Tomavar.

At dawn on the 18th we finally marched out of the castle and down to the pass. I led forth with Joshu Kadar flying my banner beside me. A hundred and fifty knights on horses came next, followed by more than two thousand warriors stepping along at a good pace. At the rising of the sun, their full diamond armor glittered with a fiery brilliance. My companions had leave to ride where they would, and most of them remained within the vanguard near me, though from time to time, Atara would drop back behind the marching columns to check on the wagons of the baggage train and to look for enemies in that direction. Or perhaps, I thought, she just wanted to gain a few moments of solitude riding behind the whole of our army. Although we had no reason to fear attack, a lifetime of discipline drove me'to keep everyone moving in good order. My army, almost ten times the size of the greatest force that I had ever led, needed no extraordinary urging to negotiate the excellent roads leading down to Hardu. My father had always said that half the skill of commanding an army was just to keep men moving from one point to another and then seeing them lined up in good array for battle — but only half, and much the lesser half at that.

Our first day's march took us down the North Road a good part of the way to Hardu. On the second day we passed through this little city of waterwheels, mills and breweries, and we crossed over the Victory Bridge spanning the fast-flowing Arashar River. There we turned onto a smaller road paralleling it. It led north and west, behind the tree-covered slopes of Mount Vayu, and through some rolling green pastures toward the Gorgeland farther to the north. In the trough between two low hills, we came across acres of grass ablaze with blue and red starflowers. I knew of no other place on earth where these glorious things grew. A few miles farther on, however, where the road