Diamond Warriors

thousands of warriors pointing their long spears at us.

King Mohan sat on top of a white stallion, waiting along with his captains at the road's center. He, too, wore full battle armor, which included a great helm bearing a single black ostrakat plume. His golden surcoat gleamed with a great blue horse; a banner held by one of his knights displayed this emblem as well.

I rode forward alone to meet with him, as he did me. We stopped with our two horses facing each other across a couple of yards. King Mohan's small, compact body fairly trembled with a barely contained passion for strife. He was a hard man and sharp in his purpose, like a piece of flint chipped into the shape of an arrowhead. A terrible pride deformed his fine and noble features as he stared at me.

'King Valamesh,' his whiplike voice cracked out without pause for greetings or niceties, 'you have entered my realm without my leave, and that is an act of war.'

Some men take their measure of other men by the forcefulness with which their foes are willing to oppose even the most casual aggression. King Mohan, I thought, gave his grudging affections only to those who were willing to risk everything by standing up to him.

'It is an act of war!' I called back to him. I heard his captains behind him and his warriors lined up nearby draw in deep breaths in surprise at my words. 'As you know, we march to war against the Red Dragon and all who follow him. We cannot turn back! We cannot let anyone, not even the Valari's most fearless king, turn us back. And so it would have been dishonest to ask for your leave if we were not willing to accept your refusal. Your blessings, however, we do ask for. And even more, your warriors and their swords.'

King Mohan gripped his horse's reins in his hard, little hands as he stared at me for a long time. He finally looked away from me, at the thousands of warriors lined up for miles behind me. It would, of course, be just as disastrous for him to provoke a battle here as it would be for me.

'Any man,' he told me, 'who would go up against the Red Dragon has my blessings, for Morjin is a false king and a crucifier who should be punished for his crimes. I see that now. And so I will let you pass through Athar unhindered. I will give you grain for your army. The swords of my army, though, you may not have, for they are needed elsewhere.'

'No need in all the world, at this time, can be so urgent as defeating Morjin.'

'That has always been your will.'

'Not mine alone: it is the will of the world.'

'So you say. So you have always said, as you have always spoken of the world's fate as if it is your privilege to interpret it for others.'

'Morjin,' I half-shouted, 'has burned Tria! At this moment he marches down the Nar Road toward the Nine Kingdoms! What is your sword for, and those of your warriors, if not to fight him?'

'My sword,' he said, laying his hand on the hilt of the kalama strapped to his side, 'is for fighting my enemies. I have many.'

'No enemy is an enemy like Morjin.'

'Is Morjin my enemy? Or only yours?'

'A king might ask that question if he has been given diamonds and gold to deny the truth concerning such an enemy!'

At this, King Mohan's blood rose, and he drew his sword half an inch from its scabbard. His face knotted in fury as he shouted at me, 'Are you saying that I have taken the Crucifier's bribes?'

'Have you?'

'No! And a true king, if he be Valari, would not ask another king such a question!'

King Mohan trembled on the brink of drawing free his sword. I knew that my anger had driven me to wrong him. And so I told him, 'My apologies, King Mohan. I never thought that you, of all Valari, would accept such a tainted treasure.'

'You should not think that of any Valari. Not even King Waray would sully himself so. We know, now, who and what Morjin really is.'

'If you know this, then why not join with us?'

'You mean, join with you. Your purpose has not changed, has it, King Valamesh? You would still be warlord of the Valari.'

'I would have us make an alliance, yes. Can you not see that is our only hope?'

'I can see well enough,' he told me. He looked past me toward the knights and my friends in my army's vanguard; I turned to watch him meet eyes with Bemossed. 'Once, you put yourself forth as the Maitreya. And now, another.'

'I did not know who the Maitreya was,' I said. 'I did not know what he is. I did not know… myself.'

King Mohan looked back at me. I felt his scorn battle with deeper emotions within him. 'Again, you hint at your fate. What title, if you vanquished the Red Dragon, would you take for yourself? King Valamesh, Lord of the Valari and Emperor of Ea?'

'I would take nothing except the lightstone so that I might guard it with my life, all the days of my life, for the Maitreya!' Once more, King Mohan's eyes flicked toward Bemossed and then back at me. His voice softened as he said, 'I think you speak the truth. Still, it is one thing to purpose to vanquish Morjin and another thing to do it.'

'We can vanquish him!' I called out. 'If the Valari unite, and go out on the Wendrush to meet Morjin as he marches — '

'If we did unite,' he snapped out, cutting me off, 'we should remain behind our mountains and force Morjin to battle on bad ground for his armies. We can kill half his men coming through the passes!'

'No,' I told him, 'we must answer Sajagax's call, and meet at the Detheshaloon.'

'Unite with the Sarni savages? Why?'

'Because that is where we must face Morjin. That is where the battle must be.'

That is where it will be, I thought. That is where our children's children will say it has always been.

King Mohan, who was more perceptive than people suspected, looked at me strangely. 'Again, as always, you follow your fate, don't you? Instead of the basic principles of warfare that your father must have taught you?'

'I remember everything that my father taught me,' I told him. 'And this above all: that in the end, a king must follow his own heart.'

King Mohan tried to hold my gaze, and I felt his black eyes burning. He turned his head to look at his warriors lined up in silence at the side of the road. They looked back at him with a great weight of devotion and expectation. I knew that they must have heard of the slaughter of the Galdan and Karabuk armies at the Seredun Sands.

'It must be said,' King Mohan finally told me, 'that your father taught you well. And that no one will ever doubt the heart of King Valamesh.'

I bowed my head to him, and said, 'Join us, then! No one ever doubted King Mohan's heart or those of his men — or their swords!'

King Mohan pointed at King Viromar, wearing the white tiger of the Solaru line and sitting on his horse ten yards behind me. He said, 'Kaash, as always, joins with Mesh.'

King Mohan, of course, had no love of his neighbor to the south. It had been only eight years since King Talanu had fought King Mohan and the Atharians to a draw at the Battle of Sky Lake. And long ago, in the year 841 of the Age of Swords, Athar had met its greatest defeat when King Sarjalad led an alliance of Kaash, Mesh and Waas to crush the invading Atharians under King Saruth at the Battle of Blue Mountain.

'And now Delians,' King Mohan said, pointing at Prince Thubar, 'march with Valari.'

I did not remind him that Athar, in its bid for glory and empire during the reign of King Saruth, had conscripted Delian levies into its- army. Who knew better than an Atharian Athar's long and bloody history?

'Why must things always be so complicated?' King Mohan spat out.

And I answered him, 'What is so complicated about free men joining freely to defeat a great evil?'

'But who is really free?'

'You are,' I told him. I pointed west, back along the road behind him. 'You have only to give the command, and your warriors will gladly follow you to where they must go.'

'But my warriors,' he said, pointing toward the north, 'must go that way.'

I turned to look along the line of his finger. To the right of the Nar Road, half a mile behind him, stood a small