Diamond Warriors

fight?'

Prince Adamad said nothing to this, either. Then he bowed to me and told me, 'My lord and all of Delu wish you well on your journey. King Santoval will send provisions to speed you upon it. The Savior of the Realm will always have Delu's blessings.'

He bowed once again, then mounted his horse and rode off with the others of his embassy. I stood watching them disappear down the road to the east. I gripped the golden wand of victory that King Santoval had sent to me. Then I turned in the opposite direction and said to King Viromar: 'It seems that those who should have been our allies have abandoned us. Will Kaash still march with Mesh?'

Prince Viromar. whose face seemed harsher than that of an eagle, smiled and told me: 'To the end of the earth, if that ts our fate. It will be as that fat prince said: we Valari will march together.'

I, too, smiled grimly. Then I cast the golden wand down to the dirt at my feet and clasped King Viromar's hand.

It was our fate, however, that the Delians did not completely desert us in our time of need. Just before nightfall from the north, a renowned Deilan warrior known as Prince Thubar led five hundred mounted knights and three thousand foot soldiers into our encampment. Prince Thubar, a great bull of a man and yet another of Maram's innumerable cousins, met with King Viromar and my captains and me outside my pavilion, where the wand of triumph still lay on the ground. Prince Thubar looked down at it, and said, 'I had heard that King Santoval ordered a victory baton made. And that he has betrayed you, King Valamesh. But you might, even so, wish to keep the baton in recognition of your men's sacrifice for Delu and your great victory. My countrymen, across our land, know of what you did, and we do honor you. Those who would not be made cowards by their king have come here with me in proof of this honor, that we might pledge our swords to your cause.'

So saying, he drew out his single-edged sword, only slightly less long than a kalama. I bowed my head to him, and pressed my hand to the flat of his blade. I picked up the golden wand. Then I walked with Prince Thubar out to the edge of the encampment where he had ordered the Deilan cavalry and infantry to draw up in neat ranks and columns. The Deiian knights wore a good mail armor reinforced with steel plate; the infantry, though, had only thin sheets of bronze sewn to padded leather to protect them. I wondered at the fighting quality of these men. But I could not doubt their spirits, for they stood here not only in defiance of Morjin but of their own king.

'You must know where we march,' I told him, 'and how desperate is our hope of victory.'

Prince Thubar only smiled at this as if I had suggested to him a particularly challenging game. His hand swept out toward his small army, and he said, 'We are all desperate men — as are all who know what the Red Dragon will do to Delu if you fail.'

'We must not fail,' I told him. 'But even if we defeat our enemy, will you not find it dangerous to march back down this road again? Will not King Santoval regard your pledge to me as treachery and rebellion?'

'It is no treachery,' he told me, 'to serve one's lord by fighting that lord's enemy, even if he has foolishly forbidden it. And as for rebellion, if ever my men and I do return home, King Santoval would incite open revolt in trying to punish those who risked their lives for Delu.'

I nodded my head at this, then smiled. 'All right then — you shall march with the Valari, and let no one say that the Delians are afraid of Morjin!'

We clasped hands at this, and then invited Prince Thubar to take dinner with my captains and me in my tent. As we made our way back toward the center of our encampment, with its many cooking fires sending up smoke plumes into the sky, Kane took me aside. And he said to me, 'Three thousand foot and half a thousand knights this Delian prince brings us — some will count us fortunate for adding to our army, eh? But how many of them have made secret vows to the Order of the Dragon?'

'None, we must hope,' I told him. 'I trust Prince Thubar — and his judgment of his men.'

'Would you stake everything on such trust? If an assassin fell upon you or Bemossed, then. .'

He lapsed into silence. His black eyes seemed to gather up the darkness of the falling night.

'Once,' I said to him, clapping my hand against his shoulder, 'you told me that you were an assassin of assassins. With you by my side, I will have no cause to fear any of Prince Thubar's men. Nor even Morjin's.'

Kane smiled, showing his long, white teeth. 'Still, it is a chance.'

'It is,' I agreed. 'But too much caution, now, will be worse than too much audacity.'

Kane, I sensed, must have agreed with this, for he turned to stare at Prince Thubar's soldiers as if defying any of them to move against me.

In the morning, we began the march across the eastern range of the Morning Mountains. The white peaks pushing into the sky ahead of us did not rise so high as those of the White or even the Crescent Mountains. Even so, they were steep and rugged, blanketed in thick forests, and the passage through them might have proved arduous if not for the ancients who had built the Nar Road. This band of brick and stone wound through valleys and around the sides of mountains at an easy grade for most of its miles; it spanned gorges and rivers in great, arched bridge, that still stood in good repair after many centuries. It made me wonder at the glories of the past ages; what would it be like, I asked the wind blowing off the glaciers above me, if all roads on Ea could be made as well as this one, and connect every realm to every other in a free passage of people, goods and knowledge?

For ten days, the men of Mesh, Kaash and Delu and our thousands of horses pounded up the road while our wagons' iron-rimmed wheels ground on and on. Little of Soal's heat found its way into these heights. It rained often, and twice great storms seemed to come out of nowhere and shake the very mountains in lightning flashes and earsplitting cracks of thunder.

My warriors' spirits held good and true. At night over blazing campfires, Meshians mingled with the Kaashans without quarrel and both armies of Valari welcomed Prince Thubar's Delian soldiers with politeness if not a quick and easy warmth. Too many times in the past, when Delu had been strong, we Valari had had to throw back the invading forces of one ambitious Deilan king or another. Memories could no more easily be expunged than ink set into white paper. Still I thought, new memories could be written. Toward this end, I invited Prince Thubar to sit at my table during our councils, and for my Valari warriors to share food and song with the Delians. I marveled at the capacity of these strangers for feasting and drinking, laughing at crude jokes and weeping at sentimental stories — and then being able to rouse themselves from their beds after staying up half the night throwing dice. Master Juwain reminded me that different peoples practice different ways, and I thought that two peoples could hardly be as different from each other as the Delians and the Valari. The ways of these effusive, sensual men were completely at odds with those of the Morning Mountains, but we would march together with a single purpose — and fight side by side when the time came for battle.

Just before we reached the frontier to Athar, smallest of the Nine Kingdoms in size if not in deeds, two envoys sent from afar intercepted my army. Many of my men shook their heads in wonder at them, for they were Sarni warriors and women at that: Sonjah and Aieela of the Manslayer society. I had met them once in Mesh nearly two years previously: just before Morjin's armies ravaged my homeland. Now, as then, they had been sent bearing tidings.

I dismounted and walked with them away from the vanguard through a pasture at the side of the road. Kane came with me, and King Viromar and Prince Thubar — and others. Sonjah, dressed in steel-studded leather and wearing gold bangles about her heavy, naked limbs, seemed as barbaric as any Sarni man. So did Aieela, who was younger and slighter of build, though more fearsome in her aspect, for she glowered at men from out of a scarred face and would not deign to speak to them. Both she and Sonjah wore quivers full of arrows and gripped double- curved bows in their hands. They seemed awkward on foot, away from their horses.

Sonjah, tall and serious, stood before me and looked me straight in the eye without bowing. As with Liljana, she seemed to have been robbed of the ability to smile.

'Valashu Elahad,' she said to me. 'King Valamesh, as they call you now — greetings once again. We have ridden a long way to find you.'

'Greetings,' I told her. 'But how did you find me here? You must have set out on your journey before we turned north and west on ours.'

Sonjah's blue eyes danced with lights even if her mouth remained as stiff as an old piece of leather. Then she said to me. 'Atara, the imakla one, told that you would be coming up this road on this day. We Manslayers have chosen her Chiefess, She asked us to inform you of this.'