Diamond Warriors (33 page)

In the mountains, as my father had taught me, over rugged terrain that bent and twisted, rose and fell, a hundred miles' journey equaled twice or thrice that of a route taken across flatter country.

Lord Zandru had no numbers to offer to Maram. but he did try to encourage him, saying, 'There is a road that leads from the Lion's Gate through the Ice Mountains to the Rajabash River.'

'The Ice Mountains - oh, excellent!' Maram said. 'I suppose the peaks there did not acquire their name by accident? No? I thought not. Well, I hope it is a
good
road.'

'As good as any in Kaash,' Lord Zandru told him. He turned toward me. 'If the weather holds, you should have time to make the march and meet up with your uncle south of Harban. When the Waashians learn of this, they will either have to retreat back to Waas or face defeat.'

'Defeat,' I murmured. It had come that time in our meal when the plates of food were taken away and pitchers of beer set on the table. 'But can there be a defeat without
defeat?

'What do you mean, King Valamesh?' Lord Zandru asked, fixing me with a puzzled look.

'Is the road you spoke of the only one that leads to Harban?'

'Well no - there is a track around the backside of Mount Ihsan that gives out to the north of Harban. But you could never get a wagon over it, and even the horses would have a hard work of that route.'

'But it is passable, is it not?'

'It is - but why would you want to
pass
that way? It would add twenty miles to your journey.'

'Oh, no!' Maram said to me with sudden understanding. 'I hope you're not thinking what I
think
you're thinking.. . Sire, isn't it enough to defeat the Waashians? Or turn them back?'

'No, it is
not
enough,' I said. 'Not nearly enough.'

I turned to look at Kane, sitting to my right. His black eyes glistered with the same fire I felt blazing inside me.

'Tomorrow,' I said to Lord Zandru, 'I would ask you to lead us toward Harban and the track that you have told of. We must march like the very wind.'

We all drank to that; in short order Maram downed not only one large mug of beer, but three more as well. His voice had begun to thicken as he came up to me and said, 'All right, my daring friend, tomorrow we
will
march - the beginning of the last leg of the march we've been making toward that place that we're loath to speak of. You know where I mean. That very, inevasible, inevitable place. I can
see
it, can't you? Well, I've promised to follow you there, and I will.'

With that he drank another mug of the golden-brown Kaashan beer, and then another. The Kaashan and Meshian knights regarded his capacity for holding his drink with great respect, and Maram took an obvious pride in this. But they would respect him even more, he must have known, if he stopped himself from drinking himself into a stupor that would slow him down the next day of impair his ability to fight. And so, finally, knowing himself as well as he did, he pushed his froth-stained mug away from him. And in his loud, beery voice, he announced: 'I've drunk to our commit-ment to reaching the end of the road, and that is the end . . . for me. For Maram Marshayk. the end of brandy and beer. This promise I make, upon my honor, in respect of yours: Sar Maram will take no more drink until Morjin is defeated!'

Lord Noldashan and Joshu Kadar - and many others - cheered Maram's sacrifice, and not a few made similar pledges of their own. But I had already marched with Maram for too many miles to take too much encouragement from his new vow. I caught Master Juwain looking at me as if to ask: 'Can a fish give up swimming in water?'

The next morning, Lord Yulsun sent a messenger galloping ahead of us to inform King Talanu to expect us on the battlefield near the ides of Marud. Then I commanded my captains to form up the warriors, and I led them out of the Lion's Gate and up the road toward Harban.

For the next nine days we marched at a brutal pace. The road, while not quite as sound as those that my father had maintained, was built of good stone and well-drained against the frequent summer rains that came up and drenched the forest spread over most of Kaash. The road led around the curves of high mountains, through green, grassy valleys and up and over the sides of tree-covered hills. The Kaashans made a hard living from the farms carved out of this rugged country, and had little food to spare a foreign and hungry army. But what little they had, they gave to us in order that we might preserve our stores for our march and the coming battle. In village after village, they welcomed us with open hearts and cheered us on; in a little town called Yarun, they urged upon us leaves of the khakun bush. The bitter green leaves, when chewed, would impart great stamina and strength to a man, or so they said.

Great strength we all needed. While I tried to take care with my men's feet, to say nothing of their legs, we had to keep driving forward, even if a hundred or more warriors dropped by the way. But so tough and well-trained were the men I led that only a few could not bear up under the constant pounding of boots against stone. And Master Juwain, inside his creaking wagon that a team of oxen pulled along, using his green gelstei freely, was able to heal them and restore them to their battalions. He, himself, drove himself nearly to exhaustion. When the power of his varistei faded and then failed him, he relied on needles to lance the blood blisters afflicting my men's raw feet and the herbs and ointments that he employed to great effect. Abrasax, I thought, and the other Masters of the Brotherhood took note of his devotions, and they must have seen in him the same rare skill for healing that had perished with Master Okuth when he had sacrificed his life tor Bemossed.

Maram, true to his word, touched no spirits in all those long days. But finally, on the evening of the 13th when we came to a village called Anan beneath the slopes of Mount Ihsan, he had great trouble resisting the brandy that the villagers broke out and poured for us. He took up a cup of his favorite drink and held It for a long few moments beneath his nose. Then he made a great show of passing it along as he called out 'Morjin is certainly not yet defeated, and neither are the Waashians, And so I suppose the fragrance of this blessed liquor will have to sustain me until they are.'

The road through Anan, I saw, curved off east through a forest of elms, beeches and oaks as it made its way up around the white, rocky hugeness of Mount Ihsan at the heart of the great peaks of the Ice Mountains. We might yet follow it, and so meet up in good time with King Talanu's forces by the Rajabash River. Or we might take the track that Lord Zandru pointed out to my captains and me at the edge of Anan. It led higher up around the western and northern buttresses of Mount Ihsan. through stands of aspen and spruce, and carved into bare earth, or so Lord Zandru told us.

'But one horse only and no more than two men at a time can make their way up this,' he said to us. 'You will be half a day even getting your army moving forward. King Valamesh.'

'Thank you,' I said, pointing off to the left, 'but that is the way we must go.'

'It will be a long two-day march to the battlefield - if the weather is good. And weather or no, the men will have to sleep in the woods off the side of the track, where they can.'

'Very well - then tonight we shall pitch our tents here on the best ground that we can find and take as much rest as we can.'

'But what will you do tomorrow, King Valamesh? With your baggage train?'

I summoned Lord Harsha and said to him, 'Will you see to it that the wagons are taken up the road that they might be waiting for us by the Rajabash?'

His single eye burned with discontent. 'I will if I must, Sire. But that will bring us out behind the Kaashan lines, and I will have to ride with them on the day of the battle, and not with my countrymen.'

'On that day,' I told him, bowing my head to Lord Zandru, 'the Kaashans will
be
as our countrymen.'

Then I issued orders that my warriors each take only enough food for the two-day march around Mount Ihsan. And their weapons and armor, of course. Everything else - the tents, extra clothing and food - would have to make the journey with Lord Harsha and the baggage train.

Marud's fourteenth day gave us a morning of crystal-clear air and the scents of the evergreen trees and flowers wafting down from Mount Ihsan's slopes. To the sounds of ten thousand men strapping shields and swords over their backs, horses stamping and snorting, and water poured on campfires sending up a hissing steam, I mounted Altaru. To the protests of Lord Avijan, Sar Shivalad and Joshu Kadar, and other knights in my vanguard, I insisted on leading forward at the very head of the long column of our army. I rode straight through Anan and onto the track that pushed through the dense woods to the northeast. Four hundred mounted knights kept close behind me, followed by Lord Tomavar's and Lord Tanu's nine thousand foot, and then the three hundred knights of Lord Sharad's rear guard. Although it did not take half the morning to get everyone moving up the track, as Lord Zandru had feared, it took long enough, and I soon found my army spread out for more than three miles along it behind me.

For most of the rest of the day, our march through the summer woods might have seemed a pleasant hike, if not for the gradual rising of the track and our urgency. Birds in great numbers called out to each other from branch to branch, and deer and elk had the good sense to go bounding off through the trees so as to avoid our hunters' arrows. The sound of thousands of boots grinding against stones swelled outward through the forest and echoed off walls of bare rock around those steep parts of the mountain where few trees would grow. I did not fear my men giving the alarm. Almost no one lived in these wilds of Kaash, and those who did would never betray us to the Waashians. Even so, I commanded my men to remove the bells from around their ankles. Although I thought it unlikely that King Sandarkan would send any scouts down this path from the north, I did not want the tinkling of silver to alert them from afar and give them more time to escape from Kane and other knights whom I would have to send after them.

We camped that night off the side of the track, on semi-level ground beneath great trees or perched precariously on rocky slopes, even as Lord Zandru had said. Our luck had held good. The evening began warmly enough, or rather, with as much warmth as ever found its way to Kaash's high mountains. Our small campfires gave us good comfort, and we scarcely needed to wrap ourselves in our cloaks except for the hardness of the stony earth beneath us- But then, a couple of hours after midnight, a storm blew in. Dark clouds devoured the moon and stars, and a cold rain fell upon us like waves of the icy sea. Then, we desperately needed our cloaks, and more. The rain doused our fires and left us in nearly total blackness. Many of my men had to endure this misery in whatever spot they had laid down that night, for movement along the slopes above or below the track might prove fatal. I, however, had the good fortune of encamping with my friends on a saddle of earth almost perfectly flat. The few trees above us gave us little protection against the slanting rain. But at least we didn't have to worry about an icy torrent sweeping us down the side of the mountain.

'Ah,' Maram said to me as we sat huddled together for warmth, 'I'm tired, wet and cold. So
damn
cold - I've never been this cold before.'

He spoke in low tones so that Sar Shivalad, Joshu Kadar, Siraj the Younger and my other Guardians huddled nearby could not hear him. But Kane, Liljana, Master Juwain, Daj, Estrella and Alphanderry, pressed up close, must have made out his every word, despite the great noise of the rain. I heard Alphanderry chuckling with amusement, and sensed Kane smiling through the dark even as I did.

And then Liljana's voice cracked out into the nearly-drowned air: 'You were as cold as a man could stand when we crossed the Crescent Mountains into Eanna, and then in the Nagarshath, too. And last year, coming down from the White Mountains into Acadu.'

'Yes, yes, I was,' Maram's voice spilled out into the rain. 'But this is worse.'

'Why is it that each hardship you endure is worse than the last?'

'Why indeed? I suppose that is the nature and perversity of suffering: the more we endure, the more we are
able
to endure, if you know what I mean. And so the more we must suffer, and do. In the end, we become nothing more than a single, raw nerve utterly exposed to all the world's outrages. Even if a
strong
nerve, it is true. And so it is the very strongest among us who must live through the worst of hells.'

I thought about this as I listened to Kane's deep, disturbed breathing beside me. Had I ever known a man so strong or who had endured such incredible torments? Then I looked through the dark for Bemossed, who was trying to sleep with the Brotherhood's Masters only twenty yards from us, but I could not see him.

'And that is why,' Maram added, 'a man needs a bit of brandy at such times to numb his nerves. Ah, one might even say that the strongest of men need the strongest of brandy.'

'Drink if you must, then,' I told him. 'I'm sure you must have a bottle stowed in your saddlebags.'

'Must
I? Well I suppose I have. But I have also made a vow.'

'Which you have broken before, at lesser need.'

'So what if I have? A vow should be like a signpost that keeps a man pointed on the right path, and not a dungeon's cell imprisoning him. That being said, I
won't
drink so long as there are men spread out in this damn rain with nothing to warm them. I
won't
ease my own suffering only to watch as others freeze to death.'

I smiled at this and told him: 'The warriors you speak of are men of the mountains. They won't die tonight.'

'No? Well, perhaps they won't
quite
die. But they'll wish they did. And then, the day after tomorrow, supposing that we can get down off this damn mountain, we'll have to face the Waashians. And then . . .'

He did not finish his sentence. His words died into the pounding of the torrential rain.