Diamond Warriors

splendor of the moon!'

Even as he spoke these words, his eyes filled with deep lights, and he gazed out at the disc of silver rising above the wooded hills in the eastern sky. I wondered if this same bright orb shone down upon a fleet of ships sailing at this moment straight toward us.

'Your way,' Bemossed said to him, 'is war, while mine must be of peace.'

'What peace, then?'

'The peace of the One. The stillness of the moon and stars that we must learn to bring to men, here on earth.' He turned toward me to meet my gaze. I had never seen a man who seemed so tired or old deep inside his soul — in some ways, older even than Kane. 'Valashu, is there no way to stop this battle?'

I thought of Morjin and how he had clawed his fingers into Atara's eyes; I thought of my mother and grandmother nailed to wooden planks, and of my brothers who had been speared and cleaved upon the Culhadosh Commons. Then I said to Bemossed, 'Only if my heart can be stopped from beating.'

'But what if you gain the advantage over the Galdans and the Karabukers, forcing them into a bad position as you did King Sandarkan? Could you not force them to surrender?'

'Our enemy's army,' I told him, 'is ten times the size of ours. With such numbers, they will never surrender.'

'You do not know that.'

'I do know,' I told him. 'If King Mansul surrendered to such a force of Valari, Morjin would crucify him.'

'But what if you could persuade the Karabukers and Galdans to change sides? And so add another 150,000 men to your army?'

'The Dragon's soldiers, changing sides!' I cried out. 'Impossible!'

Bemossed moved a step closer to me, and I could almost feel his soft breath falling over my face. Something vast and irresistible moved within him then, and the force of his words struck me like a whirlwind: 'Nothing is impossible. King Valamesh. There must be a way — how often have you, yourself, said this?'

There must be a way to end war, I told myself for the ten thousandth time. But how?

As I gazed at Bemossed, the tiredness seemed to leave him, and he smiled at me. His face seemed even brighter than the moon. In that moment, I wanted to believe that all things were possible. But then I chanced to lay my hand on the hilt of my sword, and I felt a terrible power coursing through it, and me. And I said to Bemossed, 'I am sorry, but we cannot avoid this battle. If I called for our enemy's surrender, we would give up our surprise. Our enemy would kill many of us, too many, perhaps even all, and our cause would be lost.'

As I told him this, the weariness came over him again. He slumped as if his sinews had been cut. He gazed at me, and I wondered if he regarded his dispute with me as yet another exhausting battle that must be fought, as he must ever contend with Morjin.

'King Valamesh, they call you now,' he said to me. 'King of Mesh. But what will it take, friend, for you to behold your true realm?'

Then he excused himself, and went off to his tent. For another hour, I stood talking with Kane about stratagems for war. I tried to sleep after that; perhaps I spent a short while in a land of dreams. Just before dawn, however, I was awakened by the hoofbeats and panting of a horse galloping up to my pavilion. I came out to greet Sar Siravay, a much-scarred warrior with ten battle ribbons tied to his long hair. And then he told me that he and Sar Torald had sighted the ghostly white sails of our enemy's ships far out upon the moonlit sea.

Chapter 15

At dawn, we marched east, straight toward the beach that my outriders had described. Our course took us through a valley and then through a cleft in the forested hills. Late that morning we came out into a long dell, where three low hills stood between us and the sea. From a woodcutter, one of my outriders had learned their names: Tirza, to our left, on the north, and Urza in the center. To our right rose the largest of these hills: a roundish mass sparsely covered with some oaks and bushes. Magda, the locals called it.

I dismounted and climbed to the top of this hill, along with Kane and my captains, as well as Prince Viromar and Sar Yarwan. At its top, we peered out from behind trees to study the beach below. My outriders had made an accurate report of it. To the north, perhaps a mile beyond the slopes of Tirza, two immense black monoliths rose up from the white beach sands. I guessed that they must be made of basalt or some other hard rock. I wondered if the Galdans long ago had really buried King Darrum between them. I wondered, too, if the Galdans would soon try to pass through these Pillars of Heaven, for as I saw, Master Matai's divination had proved true and now much of the Galdan army had already put ashore.

Across a distance of half a mile, I looked out upon a confusion of tens of thousands of men crowding the beach like ants. They gathered in groups of ten or twenty, and seemed without organization. Casks and crates of supplies had been strewn about the beach; I saw men breaking open the crates with hammers and emptying their contents into packs that they would bear on the march. Other men stood knee-deep in water at the shore's edge, coaxing whinnying horses down the gangplanks of rowboats. None of these beasts had been fitted with armor; indeed, only a few of the men had yet donned their suits of mail or steel-enforced leather, for our enemy clearly did not expect to do battle that day, and perhaps not even that week. Shields stood piled in heaps, and spears had been stuck down in the sand in rows. Many of the soldiers wore nothing more than tunics, with their swords nowhere near at hand. A good thousand of them stood naked in the shallows, bathing in the waters of the Terror Bay, where hundreds of ships lay anchored with their white sails gleaming in the sunlight, travel at sea, as I knew, could be a cramped, foul affair, and so who could blame these soldiers for trying to get clean?

The Karabukers, tall, black-skinned men who favored the spear above the sword, had disembarked on the beach to our left across from Tirza and the northern half of Urza. They were grouped in no better array. I could not make out a single, formed unit in all this manswarm and piles of weapons and gear. I looked for the standards of the Karabukers' lords and captains, but of course they were hard to distinguish. In all the Dragon Kingdoms save Sunguru, not even the most renowned knight or lord was permitted to bear his own arms. The common soldiers wore yellow garments showing clusters of small red dragons, while King Mansul himself would be draped in a golden surcoat emblazoned with a three-quarter sized dragon. I wondered if the enemy's king had led the way ashore, or still remained aboard his ship. Although such masses of men were difficult to count, I estimated that at least nine tenths of both the Karabukers and Galdans had made landfall.

Without a word, I motioned to my captains and the Kaashans to follow me down the back slopes of the hill. We met up with King Talanu about half a mile to the west, along the banks of a little stream. We held council on horseback, and I described to King Talanu what I had seen from the top of Magda. Then we quickly laid our plans for battle.

'Many of the Galdans on the other side of that hill,' I said to King Talanu, pointing up at Magda, 'invaded Mesh at Morjin's command two years ago. My warriors would do best fighting them. But are you willing to go against the Karabukers?'

'I am,' he told me, fingering the hilt of his kalama. 'But the Karabukers outnumber the Galdans, while my warriors are fewer in number than yours, King Valamesh. Will any of yours be willing to join me?'

I nodded my head at this. King Talanu's suggestion was the logical solution to the situation we faced, but I wanted him to come to it on his own and give voice to it, that it should not seem that I was commanding him.

'They would be honored,' I told him, 'to march with you.'

We arranged that Lord Sharad's cavalry and most of Lord Tomavar's battalions would form up with the Kaashans behind the gap between Tirza and Urza. The rest of the Meshian cavalry, which I would lead with Lord Avijan, and Lord Tanu's infantry along with two battalions of Lord Tomavar's, would take position between Urza and Magda. Then, upon a signal, the two halves of our army would debouch from the two gaps between the hills and fall upon our enemy.

'What you propose, Sire,' Lord Tanu said to me, 'will require precise coordination. Our two forces will have to charge from either gap at full speed in column, and then deploy into line obliquely over a distance of nearly a mile so as to meet up in front of the middle hill.'