Diamond Warriors

the Shining One and what he will bring to the world. Such a warrior, I say, is imakla and dies not when he dies.'

As Tringax knelt by the fire considering Sajagax's paradoxical words, Bemossed rose up to his feet. Although slight of build and soft In his manner — and worn with exhaustion — within him blazed a fierceness that put to shame even the most warlike of the Sarni.

'Blood nourishes only when kept in one's veins,' he told everyone. 'I want men to live for me. That is, not for me. Only for that which passes through me and truly quenches parched soil.'

And with that, a brilliant light gathered in his eyes, and he looked at Tringax. The savage young warrior froze as if a hammer had struck his head. And in that moment I sensed, Tringax's heart finally opened, and he found himself wanting to die for this gentle man.

Seeing this, Bemossed's face fell heavy with an immense sadness. He turned to Sajagax to thank him for his hospitality. Then he excused himself and walked off into the night.

And Sajagax called out in his huge voice: 'Let us then live for the Shining One, even as he has said! And how better to accomplish that than by killing as many of our enemy as we can?'

He called for everyone's horn to be filled afresh with bubbling black beer. Then he raised up his horn and said, 'Death to Morjin, and all who bow to him! Victory to Valashu Elahad and all who follow him! Victory, and life!'

The Sarni warriors sitting on their sagosk skins clinked horns with each other — and with the Valari lords who accompanied me. They spilled much beer onto the ground and drank even more. The sound of their exultation echoed onto the steppe, as did their accolade: 'Live free and long, King Valamesh — Warlord of the Valari and the Sarni!'

The next day, the warriors of the Eastern Urtuk rode into our encampment, and the day following that, all the fighting men of the Central Urtuk tribe. And then on the 18th of Ioj, the Niuriu under Vishakan arrived from the southwest, swelling the numbers of the Sarni who would fight beneath Sajagax's standard to nearly thirty-five thousand. Vishakan had once aided me on my journey home to Mesh with the Lightstone, and he greeted me as he might one of his own sons. He told us to look for the Danladi, keeping pace across the steppe only a day's ride behind him. When the sun rose above the blazing grasslands the following morning, many cheered to see the five thousand warriors of the Danladi tribe making their way toward us just south of the river. And I cheered when the Danladi's new chieftain urged his horse between the long lines of campfires toward my pavilion, for I saw that it was Bajorak, my old friend.

Although rather short for a leader of the Sarni, Bajorak commanded his warriors' intense loyalty through his keen intelligence and fierce fighting spirit. Three scars marked his face, which

many would have called handsome. When he saw me waiting to greet him, he dismounted with great dignity and came up to me. He clasped my hand and said, 'Greetings, Valashu Elahad! When last we parted after killing the Zayak and Morjin's knights, you told me that we would meet again in a better time and place.'

'I always hoped we would,' I told him, squeezing his hand.

'I doubted it not.' He looked up at the rocks of the Detheshaloon and added, 'Though I must wonder if this is truly a better place.'

'Any place is good where two friends can stand together against the Red Dragon.'

He flashed me a bright smile, but due to the scars cut into his face, it seemed more of a scowl. And he said, 'Look at you! The hunted wanderer I knew has become a king!'

'And you,' I said, 'a chieftain.'

His scowl suddenly deepened. 'And there are many Danladi who did not want to see a headman of the Tarun clan lead them. But in the end, the warriors followed me.'

I remembered that after the great Artukan had died, his son, Garthax, had become chieftain of the Danladi. But many of the warriors hated Garthax for dealing with Morjin and pocketing the Red Dragon's gold; they even whispered that the Red Dragon had paid Garthax to assassinate Artukan, who had died in a terrible agony.

'It was finally proved!' Bajorak told me. 'Garthax got drunk one night and bragged to his third wife of what he had done. He poisoned his own father! They put a hot iron to Garthax's liver, and he finally confessed. Then they cut off his eyelids and his manhood, and staked him out in the sun. The yellowjackets ate at him all day. I was not there to hear it, but they say he died screaming louder than his father.'

He fell silent for a moment, then added, 'And so the Danladi warriors now ride with me, and I ride with Sajagax — and so with you.'

Again we clasped hands, and I said, 'And I am glad for that. As will be my men.'

Bajorak's blue eyes sparkled at this. He turned to look farther down the river, where the rows of my army's tents stretched off to the east.

'But how many men are we speaking of?' he asked me. 'I do not see an army as large as Sajagax promised would gather here.'

'That is because the men of the Free Kingdoms have not yet arrived. And neither have the rest of the Valari.'

Bajorak must have heard something in my voice that troubled him, for he asked me, 'But will they come, Valashu? Do you truly think they will come?'

I nodded my head to him, and told him, 'Yes, they will come — I know they will.'

Bajorak's spirits brightened the next day when one of Sajagax's outriders galloped into our encampment with the news of an army marching toward us from the east. But this proved not to be the warriors of the Nine Kingdoms, but rather the combined forces of Nedu, Thalu and the Elyssu, who marched with more than ten thousand outcast knights from Alonia — under Belur Narmada, Baron Maruth of the Aquantir, and others — and a few hundred from Surrapam. As well came King Hanniban, who claimed to reign in exile. Upon the fall of Eanna, he had assembled a fleet to lead five thousand of his countrymen and the others of the Free Kingdoms on a great voyage around the Bull's Horn and through the dangerous Straights of Storm into the Alonian Sea. They had put to shore at Adra, in Taron, and then marched into Anjo and crossed over the mountains through the same Goshbrun Pass as had my warriors. And so found their way here.

King Hanniban, thick in his body and heavy with years, had once exercised all his ruthlessness to keep me from being acclaimed as leader of the Free Kingdoms. But now, having been chastened at losing his realm and nearly his life to the armies of the Red Dragon, he desired vengeance upon Morjin. I sensed, too, that he wanted to see the Lightstone reclaimed and placed in the hands of the Maitreya. As he said when he met with me in my tent: 'This is the time when the world must be reborn — or die for all time. It is said that men, too, will be reborn, if they stand beneath the radiance of the Cup of Heaven. But if they do not, if they take from the gold gelstei darkness instead of light, as Morjin does, then they will surely die — for all time. The Great Darkness is so close now, is it not, King Valamesh?'

King Aryaman of Thalu, a great warrior as tall and blond as even the largest of the Sarni, patted his huge axe as he put things more simply: 'If we cut the Lightstone from Morjin's hand, we shall win. If not, every one of us will die — and the whole world along with us.'

Altogether these two kings — along with King Theodor of the Elyssu and King Tal of Nedu — had added almost fifteen thousand more men to my army.

'But that is not enough,' Maram said to me later as he quaffed down a horn of Sarni beer when we were alone together. 'Not nearly enough.'

And then, on the 22nd of Ioj, we gained a great and unexpected ally — great in the spirit of battle, if not numbers. From out of the west came a band of warriors whom the Sarni at first mistook for animals walking on two legs. They had never seen, as few had, the extraordinary men called the Ymaniri. All of them stood more than eight feet tall and were thick as boulders in limb and body. Silky white fur covered them from head to unshod feet. I rode out to greet these five hundred giants, led by my old companion, Ymiru. A mesh of a metal too fine to be steel covered a leather armor encasing him. With his single hand (for a dragon had torn off his left arm in Argattha) he gripped a huge, iron-shod club called a borkor. His ice-blue eyes looked out above a broken nose, and they filled with great warmth as he saw me riding across the steppe toward him.

'Val!' he shouted at me in a voice like a volcano's rumble. 'We meet again!'

I dismounted and stepped over to him. I let my hand be engulfed within his huge fingers. Then I looked behind him at the shaggy men gripping their borkors and I said, 'Yes — to fight Morjin together, again.'

'It be my fondest hrope!' he told me. 'That, and seeing your furless face once more before I die.'