Diamond Warriors

He made a sour face as he pointed at the tree-covered Urza rising above the stream.

'If any battle lord in the Morning Mountains,' I said to him, 'can lead such a maneuver, it is you. Lord Tanu.'

Then I turned to Lord Tomavar and added, 'And you.'

At this. Lord Tomavar's long face broke into a huge smile, so glad was he to be acclaimed. He seemed almost to have forgotten that he had nearly become King of Mesh instead of me.

'Sire,' he said to me, 'the strategy is a bold one, but our two forces must meet, and quickly. As soon as the first of us emerges from between the hills, our enemy will spot us and give the alarm. We cannot afford to let any part of their army form up and force a wedge between us.'

'No, we cannot,' I said, stating the obvious. 'What do you suggest?'

I knew that Lord Tomavar, famed as Mesh's finest and most daring tactician, would propose a solution to the problem at hand, and I had a fair idea of what that would be.

'Do not,' he said, 'deploy all our cavalry to guard our flanks. Instead, lead half of them at a charge at our enemy's center. Strike terror into their heart, and keep them from organizing. That will give Lord Tanu and me time to close up our lines and advance.'

I noticed King Talanu staring at me, along with Prince Viromar, Lord Sharad, Lord Avijan and many others. If I took Lord Tomavar's advice, I would find myself galloping straight toward the most dangerous part of the battlefield. I did not pause to wonder if Lord Tomavar harbored a wish that I might be killed; his plan, after all, was only what I had planned from nearly the moment when I had laid eyes upon our enemy. In any case, a king, a Valari king, must go first into the deadliest part of a battle, if that is where fate calls him to go.

'Very well,' I said to him. I turned to Lord Sharad. 'Then will you help guard the Kaashans' flank?'

'Yes, Sire,' he said, bowing his head to me.

'And you, Lord Avijan,' I said to the man who had championed my kingship. 'Will you guard our flank?'

'I will. Sire,' he told me with a quick smile.

Now I nudged my horse over to my uncle, King Talanu Solaru, who had perhaps survived more more battles than any warrior in all the Nine Kingdoms. I said to him, 'It falls to us then to lead the attack against our enemy's center. Let us meet by the sea and fight our enemy side by side.'

He nodded his head at this, and we clasped hands and looked into each other's eyes.

'At the signal, then, we shall charge,' he said to me. 'But King Valamesh — are you sure of this signal?'

Was I sure? I wondered. How could I ever be entirely sure of my best friend?

I glanced at Maram, bunched with the other knights of my vanguard against the base of Urza. He sat on his horse drinking from a waterskin. From the gleam of his eyes and the greed with which he sucked at this container, I knew that he had somehow filled it with brandy. In watching me watch him, I saw that he knew that I knew he had once again broken his vow. He seemed not to care. With battle only minutes away, he was doing all that he could to fortify himself so that he could carry out his duty.

'Sar Maram!' I called to him. 'King Talanu would like to know if you will be able to get a little fire out of that crystal of yours?'

As everyone turned to look at Maram, he put away his water-skin. He took out his long, red gelstei and shook it in the air. 'No, I will not get a little fire out of this. I will burn the very sky! Wait and see, King Talanu! Watch and marvel!'

It came time to move our forces into the gaps between the hills, and this my captains and King Talanu's did. The terrain and the trees gave us good cover. With Sar Galajay riding beside me, I led Lord Tanu's battalions and Lord Avijan's cavalry between Urza and Magda. Only with difficulty did these seven thousand men crowd into this rocky space. Indeed, a good part of my force had to queue up behind the vanguard in a line that stretched nearly back to our baggage train and encampment. There, the Seven would wait with Liljana and the children. There, Master Juwain and the other healers would prepare the healing pavilion to receive the wounded, laying out their gleaming steel knives, clamps, arrow pullers and saws.

Altaru, fitted with steel armor that protected his neck, throat, chest and hindquarters, carried me between the hills rising steeply to either side. Hundreds of other horses dopped their hooves against the stony ground as the knights of the vanguard moved into position through the trees. I feared that this thunderous sound would carry out to the unseen beach beyond. Lord Tanu s warriors marched behind the vanguard in good order. I had commanded them to leave their ankles free from their stiver bells — until just after Maram gave the signal to attack. If the noise of our approach did not give us away, I feared that the flash of our diamond armor would. And so, as the beach and our enemy came into view between the trees ahead of us, I called for a halt. It would be better to have to charge an extra hundred yards than to expose ourselves too soon,

I waited on horseback on a bare patch of ground listening to the distant crashing of the sea; near me gathered Maram, Kane, Lord Avijan and many others, including my Guardians: Lord Vikan, Sar Jonavay, Sar Shivalad, Siraj the Younger and Joshu Kadar. I knew that King Talanu must at this moment be forming up his knights in the gap between Urza and Tirza. I tried to give him all the time I could to make ready. I stared out at the dots of thousands of Galdan soldiers scattered and clumped across the beach. I listened to the wind whipping sand over sand, and I prayed that none of our enemy would look our way just yet and cry out that they were under attack.

'Maram!' I finally whispered, looking at the man with whom I had journeyed so many miles. 'Are you ready?'

Maram sat on top of his big horse, holding his red gelstei in place of a lance or sword. He wore a full suit of diamond armor, however, and bore a small triangular shield emblazoned with his new coat of arms: a golden bear against a blue field. His face had fallen all waxy and white as if he had lost his courage. He belched twice, and seemed in danger of losing his breakfast as well.

'Ah, am I ready?' ha said, as if addressing the sky. 'How can a man ever truly be ready for such work as lies ahead of us today?'

I could feel him swallowing back the acids that burned his throat. He looked at me then as if beholding a corpse, and his terrible fear became my own. I thought of Atara, standing over my grave and weeping. I prayed that I would live through the day so that she did not have to suffer the anguish of my death. Atara, Atara, I thought, where are you now? Kane, sitting on his horse by my side, gripped his long lance with a savage glee. He seemed to revel in the strange joy of suffering life's anguish again and again.

'All right,' I finally said to Maram. 'Give the signal!'

With yet another belch, Maram aimed his crystal at the sky above the beach. We all waited for fire to streak out of its pointed end.

'Nothing!' I heard Sar Shivalad murmur. 'The gelstei still sleeps!'

For a while, as the sun rose higher above us and sent arrows of fire streaking down through the air, Maram tried to get a flame out of his crystal. But nothing seemed to wake it up.

'Sire,' Lord Avijan said, upon riding over to me. 'Perhaps we should have the trumpeters give the call.'

To our left, the rocks and trees of Urza stretched for almost a mile to the gap between this fat hill and Tirza, where King Talanu's force gathered. I doubted if the blare of a hundred trumpets could carry so far up and around it.

'No,' I said to Lord Avijan, 'Sar Maram will not fail us — you will see!'

Again, Maram shook his red firestone at the sky. But still the crystal remained as cool as a ruby.

'Maram,' I whispered. 'Concentrate on what Abrasax and the Seven taught you about moving your own fires up through your chakras.'

'What do you think I was concentrating on?'

'Who can know?' I told him. 'But perhaps you were thinking how you might never see Behira again — or any other woman.'

'Well — what if I was?'

I smiled at this, even beneath the stares of the knights of the vanguard and the many warriors massed behind them and waiting to charge across the beach. And I said to Maram, 'Why don't you think of that woman,