grown and harvested, the Ishkans had succeeded in calling out the battle that they had long sought 'Has a date been appointed?' I asked.
'Yes, the sixteenth.'
'And today is the twelfth, is that right?'
Lord Manthanu's eyes widened as he asked, 'Where have you been that you are in doubt of the date?'
'We have been,' I told him, 'in a dark place, the darkest of places.' It seemed that while all the Sarni tribes from Galda to the Long Wall knew of our adventure in Argattha, word of this had not yet penetrated beyond the wall of the Morning Mountains. I decided that this was no time to tell of our journey – and certainly not to show the golden cup that we had brought out of the bowels of Skartaru.
I bowed my head then and said, 'Lord Manthanu, as you can see, we haven't much time. Will you supply us with food and drink that we might ride on as soon as possible?'
Maram was now quite alarmed by what he heard in my voice. He looked at me and said, 'But Val, you can't be thinking of riding to this battle?'
I was thinking exactly that, and he knew it. I told him, 'The King has called all free knights and warriors to the Raaswash. And the King himself gave me this ring.'
I made a fist to show Maram my knight's ring with its two sparkling diamonds. The fifty warriors lined up by the gate looked on approvingly. And so did Lord Manthanu.
'It's our duty to remain here and miss the greatest battle in years, and more's the pity,' he said. 'But, Sar Valashu, it seems that fortune has favored you. You've arrived home just in time seek honor and show brave.'
So I had, I thought. But I feared that fate had brought me back to Mesh so that I must witness the death or wounding of my brothers beneath the Ishkans' swords.
Maram, who hadn't yet reconciled himself to another battle, looked at me and said,
'It's a good hundred miles from here to the Raaswash – and mountain miles at that.
How can we hope to cover this distance in only four days?'
'By riding fast,' I told him. 'Very fast.'
'Oh, oh,' he said, rubbing his hindquarters. Despite Master Juwain's ministrations, he still complained of hurts taken from the two arrows shot into him in the battle for Khaisham. 'My poor body!'
While five of Lord Manthanu's men went to take charge of filling our saddlebags with oats, salt pork and other supplies, I turned to Maram and said, 'This isn't your battle. No one will think worse of you if you remain here and rest or go straight on to the Brotherhood's sanctuary with Master Juwain.'
'No, I suppose they wouldn't,' he said. 'But I would think worse of myself. Do you think I've ridden by your side across half of Ea to leave you to the Ishkans at the last moment?'
We clasped hands then, and he gripped mine so hard that his fingers squeezed like a vise against my knight's ring.
'I'm afraid I won't be leaving either,' Master Juwain said. He rubbed the back of his bald head and sighed. 'If a battle must be fought, if it really is, then there will be much healing to be done.'
After Lord Manthanu had seen to our provisioning, we thanked him and bade him farewell. Then we rode forth out of the gate and found our way to the Kel Road leading along the border of Ishka. As always, my father's men had kept it in good repair. We urged the horses to a greater effort and so cantered at a fast pace toward the northeast corner of my father's kingdom.
All that day the weather held fair, and we made good time. It was one of the most beautiful seasons of the year with the foliage of the trees just past the most brilliant colors. The maples lining the road waved their bright red leaves in the sun while on the higher slopes, the yellows of the aspens were a yellow blaze against the deep blue sky. We passed by pastures whitened with flocks of sheep and by fields golden with the chaff of freshly cut barley. That night we took shelter in the house of a woman named Fayora. She fed us mutton and black barley bread, and asked us to look for her husband, Sar Laisu, if we should see him on the field of the Raaswash.
The next day – the thirteenth of Valte – found us struggling across and around some of the Shoshan's highest peaks. We pounded across a bridge spanning one of the tributaries of the Diamond, then came to two more kel keeps before crossing over this icy blue river's headwaters where they wound down from the south toward Ishka. We had hoped to make it as far as Mount Raaskel by evening; but for the horses sake, to say nothing of Maram's poor hindquarters, we felt compelled to spend the night at the kel keep only a few miles from the bridge.
'You'll have some hard travel tomorrow,' Master Tadru the keep's commander, told us. 'From here to the North Road, the way is very steep.'
And so it was. In the hard frost of the next morning, before the sun had risen, the horses' breath steamed out into the air as they drove forward up the Kel Road. Here, its ice-slicked stones turned away from Mount Raaskel, rising up like a white horn to the north of us. The road led south for a few miles, before turning back north and east again. We passed up a hot meal offered us at the keep where the Kel Road intersected the North Road On our journey into Ishka, we had stopped here to greet the keep's commander, Lord Avijan. But the keep's new commander, Master Sivar, informed us that we would be hard-pressed to join Lord Avijan in-time for the meeting with the Ishkans two days hence.
'The battle is to begin in the morning,' he admonished us, 'and it won't wait upon one late knight, even if he is King Shamesh's son.'
We paused at the keep only long enough to give the horses oats and water – and to gaze up the North Road where it led through the Telemesh Gate into Ishka. There, on the snowfield between Raaskel and Korukel, with its twin peaks and ogre-like humps, the white bear sent by Morjin had attacked us and nearly put an end to our quest at its very beginning. It gave us grim satisfaction to know that the Lord of Illusions would not he making ghuls of animals or men for quite some time to come.
That afternoon we passed through Ki; as on our journey into Ishka, we found that we didn't have time for a hot bath at one of its inns, nor for the beer that 1 had promised Maram. We left its little chalets and shops quickly behind us. Only one kel keep graced the long stretch of road between Ki and the Raaswash, and I wanted to reach it before nightfall.
We found this cold, spare fortress to be nearly emptied of supplies, which had been sent off in wagons toward the battlefield to the east. Our rest there that night was brief and troubled. For the first time since Argattha, I had bad dreams, none of which had been sent by Morjin. 1 was only too happy to arise in the darkness before dawn and saddle Altaru for another long day's ride.
It was a good thirty miles from the keep to the Lower Raaswash, and then perhaps another seven to the appointed battlefield. I didn't know how we would be able to cover this distance in a single day. It was a cold morning with wisps of clouds high in the sky and a shifting of the wind that presaged a storm. Although the forest beyond the keep's battlements smelled sweetly of woodsmoke and dry leaves, there hung in the crisp autumn air a certain bitterness: both our remembrance of what we had lost on our long journey and a presentiment of what the following day's battle might still take from us.
I didn't need spurs or the silver-handled quirt that the Niuriu's chieftain, Vishakan, had given me to hurry Altaru onward. As always, he sensed my urgency to cover ground quickly, and he led the other horses in moving down the road with all the speed their driving hooves could purchase against the worn paving stones. My fierce warhorse smelled battle ahead of us – and not a battle where he must hide behind walls while the Blues and other warriors came howling over battlements, but a great gathering of warriors in long, shining lines and companies of cavalry thundering over grass toward each other. He was a fearless animal, I thought and I envied him his trust that the future would somehow take care of itself and come ouf? all right.
It grew colder all that day as we rode along; by early afternoon, the sky was growing heavy with clouds. The first snowflakes of the season's first snow began falling a few hours later. Maram, pulling his cloak around himself, offered his opinion that the hand of fate had fallen against us and now we had no hope of reaching the battlefield by the morrow. 'Perhaps they'll call the battle off,' he said as our horses clopped along the road. 'It's no fun fighting through snow.'
I looked at him past the fluffy white crystals sifting slowly down from the sky. I said to him, 'They won't call off the battle, Maram. And so we must ride, even faster, if we can.'
'Ride through the snow, then?'
'Yes,' I said. 'And we'll ride through the night, if we have to.' Although we had suffered much worse cold in the Nagarshath, we had been hoping by this day for the warmth of our home fires and our journey's end. If the storm had proved a heavy one, it might have gone badly for us. As it was, however, it snowed for only a couple of
