'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.
Somehow we did all survive that bitterly cold night. In the morning, still freezing in the pouring rain, my men marched onward again with nothing more to put into their bellies than a little dried beef and cold battle biscuits. I led the way along the treacherous track. We had to go much slower, especially around the slopes of Mount Ihsan's great buttresses, for the track in many places became little more than slips of mud hiding stones that could turn a man's ankle or lame a horse's hoof. Lord Zandru did not have a good memory of this route, but he offered his anticipation that the track would dip down into more level country after only a couple more miles of snaking through some of the mountain's steepest terrain.
I placed much hope in this, for our delay had already put to the question our timely arrival on the battlefield south of Harban. And then, after I had ridden Altaru up and around another sparsely wooded saddle, I came out suddenly upon one of Mount Ihsan's steepest slopes. And my hope washed away. For I saw ahead me, for a stretch of about half a mile, that the entire side of the mountain had come down in a rockslide that had completely buried the track.
I dismounted and stood on a large shelf of earth gazing in despair ahead at me. Lord Zandru dismounted, too, and came up to me; so did Lord Avijan, Lord Noldashan, Kane, Liljana and my other friends.
'This is the end, then,' Lord Zandru sighed out. He was one of those men who are quick to see in any event the worst possible outcomes. 'We have taken a chance and lost.'
'No, there must be a way,' I said. 'There is always a way.'
The rain seemed suddenly to beat down even harder. It did not take much of an eye to see that even a mountain goat would not have dared the mud and rocks spread out above and below the track - or rather, where the track had once been.
'I can't see any other way,' Master Juwain said to me, scanning the steep and rugged side of the mountain. 'Unless you turn the army around and go back a few miles and try bushwhacking across the ground lower down. But that would take another day, at least, and the horses could not negotiate such terrain in any case.'
'No, we can't go back now,' I told him. I grasped the hilt of my sword to give strength to my trembling hand and stop the shivering ripping through me. And then a thought came to me. 'Perhaps we can clear a path.'
'Through that?' Lord Zandru said, pointing at the mass of sodden earth churned up ahead of us. 'It would take a thousand men working with picks and shovels for three days. And then who is to say another slide wouldn't bury your army as it marched past?'
My men, I thought, could build a good route along this slope, for my father had well-trained them to such work, as he had me. But Lord Zandru was right about one thing: we did not have enough time.
'Maram!' I called out. 'Could you clear a way? With your firestone?'
Maram, always eager for a chance at heroics that did not cost him too much effort or risk of his life, strode over to stand beside me. He took out his great red gelstei, nearly a foot long. Raindrops broke like a waterfall against the ruby crystal.
'I don't know,' he shouted through the rain. 'I haven't used it very much since Argattha - and never for so great a work as this.'
He glanced back at the dull diamond gleam of ten thousand men spread out in a line for three miles across the rocky buttresses of Mount Ihsan. Then he glanced up at the dark, closed-in sky.
'In any case,' he said, 'there is too little light. I'd be lucky to get a few sparks out of my stone, let alone the fire needed to melt through rock.'
'You could try,' I said to him. 'With a firestone no bigger than yours, Telemesh built the way between Mesh and Ishka.'
Maram must have clearly remembered the day that we had passed through the mile-long Telemesh Gate, melted out of the rock between Mounts Raaskel and Korukel, for he smiled hugely. Then he said, 'But it took Telemesh six days to cut his channel, or so it is said.'
'Telemesh,' I told him, 'boiled into the air a good part of a mountain. You have much less to do: merely to clear away a little mud and a few rocks.'
Again, he looked out at the collapsed slope ahead of us. Then he nodded his head and called out: 'Very well - I shall try! Stand back, now! Stand back as Maram Marshayk makes a new path!'
Maram stood at the edge of the shelf, perhaps four hundred yards from the place where the track disappeared into the mass of the rockslide. He gathered in all his concentration as he pointed his crystal at the collapsed slope. Then he let loose a stream of fire at it.
The flames that he summoned from his gelstei, however, while much more than a few sparks, were much less than was needed to melt anything larger than a pebble. After half an hour of such fruitless work, he threw up his hands in frustration.
'There is too little light,' he said again, looking up at the sky. 'This is hopeless.'
Master Storr, the Master Galastei, stepped up to Maram then. He had his sopping cloak pulled tightly around his old, freckled face. He told him, 'I have made a study of the firestones. Although I have not been so fortunate as to have one to work with, much is written about them in the old texts. You say it is too dark, that your crystal cannot drink in the sun's fires, and so give them back-But what of the fires of the earth?'
He spoke, of course, of the telluric currents that burned most heatedly beneath Ea's mountains - the very same earth fires that Morjin would use to free Angra Mainyu.
'I'm sure,' Master Storr told Maram, 'that you could learn to summon them, with our help.'
He explained to Maram that the 'feel' of the telluric currents would be more subtle than that of the sun's blazing rays. And so Maram would have to open himself to these deep flames and pass them up through his body into his firestone.
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