Diamond Warriors

encampment.

'That is good!' Sajagax cried out. 'Anjori birch — the best, for arrows! We will give you much gold for this wood!'

'Keep your gold,' I told him. 'And give us instead an arrow storm that will drive back the Sarni who ride with Morjin.' 'We will give you a tempest!' Sajagax said, shaking his bow. While his captains passed around huge horns full of frothy beer, he and I discussed strategies for the coming battle. It turned out that we had each, on our own, come to the much the same conclusion about our enemy and how he must be fought.

'Morjin,' I said to him, 'will concentrate his forces on killing the Valari. Therefore he will have his Sarni allies make as many armor-piercing arrows as they can. But you must have your fletchers make as many long range arrows as they can — as Lord Harsha has asked of our own arrow makers.'

Sajagax nodded his head at this. When Morjin's army formed up to face mine, our lines of foot would clash in the center of the field, with cavalry riding against each other on either wing. To protect our extreme flanks, I planned to station Sarni warriors, riding their quick steppe horses and wielding bow and arrow. Our only hope of victory, as both Sajagax and I knew, would be for the Sarni whom he commanded to drive off Morjin's Sarni allies.

'The long range arrows will help with that,' he said, 'if we have enough — and if your Lord Harsha can help keep us resupplied.'

Lord Harsha turned his single, bright eye on Sajagax. 'I will keep you in good wood, if I must, though I would rather cross swords with the Red Knights who ravaged my home.'

Lord Tanu, who would fight on foot along with his warriors, remained very concerned with protecting our army's flanks. And so he asked Sajagax: 'How badly will the Sarni who ride with Morjin outnumber your warriors?'

Sajagax shrugged his shoulders at this. Again he said, 'I care not about numbers — of the Sarni. Morjin will have the Marituk, Zayak, Siofok, Janjii and Danyak, certainly. And almost as certainly, the Usark, Tukulak and Western Urtuk. And perhaps the Mansurii. And I shall have who I have. If all answer my call, then as many as forty thousand warriors will ride with me against Morjin's Sarni — probably no more than sixty thousand of them. Those are good odds, for we are Kurmak and Adirii and the Manslayers! I'd wager all the grass and the whole sky of Wendrush upon them. But Morjin's armies out of the Dragon Kingdoms are a different matter. If he truly has a half million men against Valashu Elahad's twenty thousand, then I must care about those numbers.'

He cast me a penetrating look, and I said to him, 'If all the Valari answer my call, we shall many more warriors than twenty thousand.'

'But will they, Valashu? Will they truly come?'

I let my hand rest upon my sword's swan-carved hilt, and I said, 'Yes, they will come — I know they will.'

'They must,' Sajagax said. 'I have sent out the call to all the Free Kings to gather here under your banner.'

Tringax obviously resented what Sajagax had just told me, for his fair, handsome face contorted in a scowl, and he said to his chieftain: 'As things stand now, you command more warriors than does the Elahad — with more Sarni to gather and follow you. And we fight on the Kurmak's land. And so you should be warlord of this army.'

'A man has one fate only, and that is not mine,' Sajagax called out. 'I know nothing of fighting on foot with spear and shield, as the kradaks do. But Valashu Elahad knows a great deal of fighting on the Wendrush. With the Manslayers' help, he defeated the Akhand clan not far from here.'

Xadharax, staring at Sajagax across the firepit, did not remark upon this. He just sat with his chin buried deep within his jowls. But he must have felt shame for what his rogue warriors had done and a desire to redeem the Adirii in choosing the right side in the coming war.

'And at the Battle of Shurkar's Notch, with my help,' Sajagax continued, 'Valashu Elahad defeated an Alonian duke and a greater force of knights. And lost no man, Kurmak or Valari, killed! And at the Battle Of the Asses' Ears, he led Manslayers and Danladi warriors under Bajorak against the Zayak and the Red Knights. And defeated them as well.'

'Three battles,' Tringax scoffed. 'You have led us to victory in thirty-three.'

'But never so great a one as the Seredun Sands. I have not the Elahad's brilliance in battle.'

'You do!' Tringax protested. 'It is wrong for you to elevate this Valari king at your expense and those of the warriors who — '

'Enough!' Sajagax roared out, slapping his hand against his great bow. 'I am Sajagax, chieftain of the Kurmak and victor of thirty-three battles, even as you say, and no one will call me a modest man! But the Elahad is to be warlord! I say. It was he who first dreamed of making an alliance against the Red Dragon.'

'And he who destroyed our main chance of it with his lie that he was the Maitreya!'

'He was only mistaken,' Sajagax said. 'Sometimes the world takes time to reveal a man's fate. And it is the Elahad's fate to be Guardian of the Lightstone and Protector of the Lord of Light. Is that not why we gather here, to fight for the Shining One?'

At this, Sajagax laid his hand on Bemossed's shoulder. And Bemossed stared into the fire's writhing flames.

'I, for one, fight because a warrior must fight!' Tringax shouted out. 'And to make Morjin's men bleed their guts out, and to see the Crucifier's eyes eaten by the ants!'

The Sarni I knew, revered the truth — and the speaking of it — even above their horses.

'I fight to make my children safe!' Yaggod called out. 'My sons will ride freely beneath the sky hunting lions if I have to kill a thousand of our enemy!'

'I fight for plunder!' Braggod said. 'How much gold will Morjin's army bring to the battle?'

'And I fight for glory,' old Urtukar told us. 'A man can never have enough of it, and it is good to go back to the earth with his sons honoring his name.'

Sajagax nodded his head at this as he stroked his bow. 'Those are all good reasons. But what good is gold in a world of the dead? How will our children ever be safe unless we make a new world? And how shall we ever accomplish that unless we bring the Law of the One to all lands?'

'My father,' Tringax said, staring at Sajagax, 'taught me the Law of the One: 'Be strong! Bear no shame! Seek glory! Live free or die!' '

For a while he went on reciting truths that he had learned as a child. When he had finished, Trahadak the Elder, the headman of the Zakut clan, rubbed his leathery old face, then declaimed as if speaking for Sajagax himself: 'There is a new Law now! Or rather, an old Law that we understand in a new light. And Sajagax was born to bring it to the Wendrush and to all peoples: 'Be strong and protect the weak! Bear no shame of any evil act! Seek the glory of the One!''

As he continued speaking, Tringax seemed to want to open himself to this new way that Sajagax strove to bring to his people. But as with a stone immersed in water, little of what Trahadak said really penetrated Tringax's heart or touched his savage sensibilities. Seeing this, a young warrior named Darrax shouted at Tringax: 'What is wrong with you? Can't you see that there is more to life than slaying your enemies and gathering gold and women to yourself? Is your glory more important than that of your tribe? Or the glory of the One?'

Parthalak, another young warrior, nodded his head at this as he said to Tringax: 'I will teach my children that a man is the greatest who controls himself and gives his life that his tribe might have greater life. And that the Light of the One should shine upon the world!'

'And I will teach that, too!' a warrior named Alphax called out. 'And I!' another shouted. 'He who brings the Law of the One to the world will bring alive the One's light in himself. How can such a light ever die? So Sajagax has taught us! So I believe!'

And so, I thought, did most of the fearsome warriors who would follow Sajagax into battle.

Then Sajagax looked across the fire and said to Tringax: 'I have only one fate, and no man will keep me from it. So it is with Valashu Elahad and what he was born to do. It is good for a warrior to fight, Tringax. And even better to slay our enemy. But it is best of all to shed our blood on thirsty soil and to die for