'Many of the Galdans on the other side of that hill,' I said to King Talanu, pointing up at Magda, 'invaded Mesh at Morjin's command two years ago. My warriors would do best fighting them. But are you willing to go against the Karabukers?'
'I am,' he told me, fingering the hilt of his kalama. 'But the Karabukers outnumber the Galdans, while my warriors are fewer in number than yours, King Valamesh. Will any of yours be willing to join me?'
I nodded my head at this. King Talanu's suggestion was the logical solution to the situation we faced, but I wanted him to come to it on his own and give voice to it, that it should not seem that I was commanding him.
'They would be honored,' I told him, 'to march with you.'
We arranged that Lord Sharad's cavalry and most of Lord Tomavar's battalions would form up with the Kaashans behind the gap between Tirza and Urza. The rest of the Meshian cavalry, which I would lead with Lord Avijan, and Lord Tanu's infantry along with two battalions of Lord Tomavar's, would take position between Urza and Magda. Then, upon a signal, the two halves of our army would debouch from the two gaps between the hills and fall upon our enemy.
'What you propose, Sire,' Lord Tanu said to me, 'will require precise coordination. Our two forces will have to charge from either gap at full speed in column, and then deploy into line obliquely over a distance of nearly a mile so as to meet up in front of the middle hill.'
He made a sour face as he pointed at the tree-covered Urza rising above the stream.
'If any battle lord in the Morning Mountains,' I said to him, 'can lead such a maneuver, it is you. Lord Tanu.'
Then I turned to Lord Tomavar and added, 'And you.'
At this. Lord Tomavar's long face broke into a huge smile, so glad was he to be acclaimed. He seemed almost to have forgotten that he had nearly become King of Mesh instead of me.
'Sire,' he said to me, 'the strategy is a bold one, but our two forces must meet, and quickly. As soon as the first of us emerges from between the hills, our enemy will spot us and give the alarm. We cannot afford to let any part of their army form up and force a wedge between us.'
'No, we cannot,' I said, stating the obvious. 'What do you suggest?'
I knew that Lord Tomavar, famed as Mesh's finest and most daring tactician, would propose a solution to the problem at hand, and I had a fair idea of what that would be.
'Do not,' he said, 'deploy all our cavalry to guard our flanks. Instead, lead half of them at a charge at our enemy's center. Strike terror into their heart, and keep them from organizing. That will give Lord Tanu and me time to close up our lines and advance.'
I noticed King Talanu staring at me, along with Prince Viromar, Lord Sharad, Lord Avijan and many others. If I took Lord Tomavar's advice, I would find myself galloping straight toward the most dangerous part of the battlefield. I did not pause to wonder if Lord Tomavar harbored a wish that I might be killed; his plan, after all, was only what I had planned from nearly the moment when I had laid eyes upon our enemy. In any case, a king, a Valari king, must go first into the deadliest part of a battle, if that is where fate calls him to go.
'Very well,' I said to him. I turned to Lord Sharad. 'Then will you help guard the Kaashans' flank?'
'Yes, Sire,' he said, bowing his head to me.
'And you, Lord Avijan,' I said to the man who had championed my kingship. 'Will you guard our flank?'
'I will. Sire,' he told me with a quick smile.
Now I nudged my horse over to my uncle, King Talanu Solaru, who had perhaps survived more more battles than any warrior in all the Nine Kingdoms. I said to him, 'It falls to us then to lead the attack against our enemy's center. Let us meet by the sea and fight our enemy side by side.'
He nodded his head at this, and we clasped hands and looked into each other's eyes.
'At the signal, then, we shall charge,' he said to me. 'But King Valamesh - are you sure of this signal?'
Was I sure? I wondered. How could I ever be entirely sure of my best friend?
I glanced at Maram, bunched with the other knights of my vanguard against the base of Urza. He sat on his horse drinking from a waterskin. From the gleam of his eyes and the greed with which he sucked at this container, I knew that he had somehow filled it with brandy. In watching me watch him, I saw that he knew that I knew he had once again broken his vow. He seemed not to care. With battle only minutes away, he was doing all that he could to fortify himself so that he could carry out his duty.
'Sar Maram!' I called to him. 'King Talanu would like to know if you will be able to get a little fire out of that crystal of yours?'
As everyone turned to look at Maram, he put away his water-skin. He took out his long, red gelstei and shook it in the air. 'No, I will not get a little fire out of this. I will burn the very sky! Wait and see, King Talanu! Watch and marvel!'
It came time to move our forces into the gaps between the hills, and this my captains and King Talanu's did. The terrain and the trees gave us good cover. With Sar Galajay riding beside me, I led Lord Tanu's battalions and Lord Avijan's cavalry between Urza and Magda. Only with difficulty did these seven thousand men crowd into this rocky space. Indeed, a good part of my force had to queue up behind the vanguard in a line that stretched nearly back to our baggage train and encampment. There, the Seven would wait with Liljana and the children. There, Master Juwain and the other healers would prepare the healing pavilion to receive the wounded, laying out their gleaming steel knives, clamps, arrow pullers and saws.
Altaru, fitted with steel armor that protected his neck, throat, chest and hindquarters, carried me between the hills rising steeply to either side. Hundreds of other horses dopped their hooves against the stony ground as the knights of the vanguard moved into position through the trees. I feared that this thunderous sound would carry out to the unseen beach beyond. Lord Tanu s warriors marched behind the vanguard in good order. I had commanded them to leave their ankles free from their stiver bells - until just after Maram gave the signal to attack. If the noise of our approach did not give us away, I feared that the flash of our diamond armor would. And so, as the beach and our enemy came into view between the trees ahead of us, I called for a halt. It would be better to have to charge an extra hundred yards than to expose ourselves too soon,
I waited on horseback on a bare patch of ground listening to the distant crashing of the sea; near me gathered Maram, Kane, Lord Avijan and many others, including my Guardians: Lord Vikan, Sar Jonavay, Sar Shivalad, Siraj the Younger and Joshu Kadar. I knew that King Talanu must at this moment be forming up his knights in the gap between Urza and Tirza. I tried to give him all the time I could to make ready. I stared out at the dots of thousands of Galdan soldiers scattered and clumped across the beach. I listened to the wind whipping sand over sand, and I prayed that none of our enemy would look our way just yet and cry out that they were under attack.
'Maram!' I finally whispered, looking at the man with whom I had journeyed so many miles. 'Are you ready?'
Maram sat on top of his big horse, holding his red gelstei in place of a lance or sword. He wore a full suit of diamond armor, however, and bore a small triangular shield emblazoned with his new coat of arms: a golden bear against a blue field. His face had fallen all waxy and white as if he had lost his courage. He belched twice, and seemed in danger of losing his breakfast as well.
'Ah, am I ready?' ha said, as if addressing the sky. 'How can a man ever truly be ready for such work as lies ahead of us today?'
I could feel him swallowing back the acids that burned his throat. He looked at me then as if beholding a corpse, and his terrible fear became my own. I thought of Atara, standing over my grave and weeping. I prayed that I would live through the day so that she did not have to suffer the anguish of my death. Atara, Atara, I thought, where are you now? Kane, sitting on his horse by my side, gripped his long lance with a savage glee. He seemed to revel in the strange joy of suffering life's anguish again and again.
'All right,' I finally said to
Maram. 'Give the signal!'
With yet another belch, Maram aimed his crystal at the sky above the beach. We all waited for fire to streak out of its pointed end.
'Nothing!' I heard Sar Shivalad murmur. 'The gelstei still sleeps!'
For a while, as the sun rose higher above us and sent arrows of fire streaking down through the air, Maram tried to get a flame out of his crystal. But nothing seemed to wake it up.
'Sire,' Lord Avijan said, upon riding over to me. 'Perhaps we should have the trumpeters give the call.'
To our left, the rocks and trees of Urza stretched for almost a mile to the gap between this fat hill and Tirza, where King Talanu's force gathered. I doubted if the blare of a hundred trumpets could carry so far up and around it.
'No,' I said to Lord Avijan, 'Sar Maram will not fail us - you will see!'
Again, Maram shook his red firestone at the sky. But still the crystal remained as cool as a ruby.
'Maram,' I whispered. 'Concentrate on what Abrasax and the Seven taught you about moving your own fires up through your chakras.'
'What do you think I was concentrating on?'
'Who can know?' I told him. 'But perhaps you were thinking how you might never see Behira again - or any other woman.'
'Well -what if I was?'
I smiled at this, even beneath the stares of the knights of the vanguard and the many warriors massed behind them and waiting to charge across the beach. And I said to Maram, 'Why don't you think of that woman, then? The one your heart has always burned for?'
It was not Maram's heart that usually flared with his fierce desire for a woman. But. now, with death so near, he closed his eyes to look for that glorious and fiery place Within him. And then, a few moments later when he opened them to gaze at his red gelstei, a great gout of flame streaked out of it like lightning to fill up the sky.
'The signal!' someone cried out. 'Sar Maram gives the signal!'
Above the beach, the sky itself seemed to have caught fire, as its blueness burned away to an incandescent crimson. Tens of thousands of our enemy jerked their heads back to gaze up in wonderment and fear.
'Bells on!' I heard someone call out from the columns of warriors behind the cavalry. There came that eerie jangle of thousands of men fastening their silver bells about their ankles.
Now Maram's crystal finally fell quiet again. But King Talanu and his knights on the other side of the hill could not have failed to see its fire.
'Attack!' I shouted, pointing my long lance straight ahead of me. 'For your brothers who fell at the Culhadosh Commons, for Mesh, for Ea - attack!'
As I put my heels to Altaru's flanks and urged my huge horse forward, I noticed that Bemossed had disobeyed my command to ensure his safety and had come up from our encampment. He stood up on the side of the hill, out of the army's way. From this perch between two gnarled oak trees overlooking the beach, he would have sight of the entire battlefield.
It took only moments for Altaru to pound across the rough terrain between the hills and come out of the trees upon a stretch of grassy ground that fronted the beach. The wind whipped through my helmet and vibrated the swan feathers forming its crest. I led my hundreds of knights veering left toward the center of the army stretched out ahead of us, even as Lord Avijan and his knights moved off in a flanking maneuver to our far right. From out of the woods between Urza and Tirza a mile away, I saw King Talanu burst forth in a gallop toward the beach. The white tiger emblazoned on his surcoat shone in the sun. He, too, led his knights on a charge toward our enemy's center.
The Galdans and Karabukers now began running in every direction, colliding with each other and cursing, shouting and grabbing for their armor and weapons. I could feel waves of terror washing across the beach.
'Valari!' I called out as loudly as I could. 'Today the Valari fight as one!'
Soon my knights and I came to the upper reaches of the beach. Our pace slowed as our horses' hooves worked for purchase against the soft, shifting sands. Sar Galajay, riding near Joshu Kadar who held up my standard with its swan and stars, seemed discouraged at this - and surprised. This man of mountains might have looked upon the beach from afar, but he had never tried to run across one or make his horse do so. He must have realized, in a moment, that this beach would not be a perfect place after all to engage a battle.
'The Valari!' came the cry from across the beach. 'Arm yourself! The Valari are upon us!'
Arrows loosed by our enemy's archers whined through the air; one of them clacked against the diamonds covering my chest and another pinged off my helm. And still another found a Joint in Viku Aradam's armor and stuck out of his shoulder. He bore the shock of it in silence. But these feathered shafts flew at us in sparse numbers, for most of the Galdan and Karabuk archers scrambled to find arrows at all and had time for only a couple of volleys before we pounded right up to them.
'The Valari!' I heard men shouting. 'Form up against the Valari!'
But we gave our enemy no time to form up; we galloped straight toward the disorganized mass of men frantically trying to bring spears or shields - or even hammers - to bear against my knights.
'The Diamond Warriors!' someone cried out. 'They come! Look! listen!'
From behind me came the ringing of hundreds of thousands of silver bells. I turned quickly about in my saddle to see the Kaashans and Lord Tomavar's battalions deploy across the beach, exactly as we had planned. I smiled to see the black tower emblazoned on Lord Tomavar's white shield. He led his warriors in a near-run to close ranks with Lord Tanu's force spreading out from between Urza and Magda. And then my knights and I fell upon our enemy, and I had no time to look at anything except the spears, axes and swords sweeping toward me in a circle of death.
I lost my lance almost immediately through the chest of a huge Galdan soldier, who stood naked except for one boot that he had managed to pull on. He screamed and cut at the lance with a short sword that he had found in the heaps of weapons around him. I screamed, too, silently, at his terrible, piercing anguish, and I nearly fell from my horse even as the soldier fell ripping the lance from my hands. I drew Alkaladur then. Its flaring silustria cast a bril-liant silver radiance across the beach. It made the Galdans gasp out in fear even as it gave me strength to endure the agony being wreaked upon men all around me.
Kane, to my side, had already drawn his kalama. His face had fallen into a mask of fury. The Galdans, almost all on foot, tried to flee from him, but they had nowhere to run. He swung his sword, once, twice, thrice, and then again and again. More men screamed, and founts of blood reddened the air. A single Galdan knight, who had donned a helmet but no other piece of armor, rode at Kane across the powdery sand, and he tried to impale Kane with his lance. Kane easily parried his thrust, then almost casu-ally cut off the knight's arm. A good kalama, if wielded with skill, can cut through steel mail, and what it could do to unarmored flesh was terrible to behold.
Some of the Galdans grabbed up pikes and tried to stab me or knock me off the back of my horse. Maram killed one of these with a vicious lance thrust through the eye. The Black Knight, Hadrik, riding behind him, killed another with his lance. Then Sar Shivalad, Sar Kanshar and a few other of my Guardians came up closer and worked a quick slaughter with their swords. Our enemy, hacked and hopelessly disorganized, fell in tens and twenties all around us.
After a short while of such bloody, frenzied work, Joshu Kadar pointed toward the northern part of the beach and cried out an alarm, 'Sire, the Karabukers! Beware!'
I swung my sword and cut right through the shaft of a pike that one of the Galdans thrust at me; then I cut off his head, and I turned to look up the beach.
'To the King!' Joshu cried out. 'Protect King Valamesh!'
Thirty Karabuk knights, in tight formation, had appeared as if from nowhere, and were forcing their way through the mass of their own companions as they made their way straight toward me. They were long of form and both graceful and powerful in their movements; their hard black hands gripped l
ances even longer than the ones my knights wielded. They wore a heavy armor of mail and plate. It seemed a miracle that they had found the time to accouter themselves so completely; I guessed that they must be knights of King Mansul the Magnificent's Black Guard, who stood always ready to guard King Mansul or cut down his enemies.
Although I had hundreds of my own knights at my call, my charge across the beach had carried me too far into the Galdan's ranks, and so too few of my knights could quickly come forward to meet this new threat. The Karabukers might have ridden down Maram and the half dozen Guardians nearby me, perhaps even Kane. But their greater weight of armor, both encasing their bodies and fastened to their mounts, slowed them and caused their horses to sink more deeply into the white sands. And even as Joshu Kadar cried out once again, 'To the King! To the King!' another king and his knights rode to my defense. I looked to the left through a fence of flashing weapons to see King Talanu and Zandru the Hammer - and fifteen other Kaashan knights - working their way forward. They intercepted the Karabukers moments before our enemy fell upon us.
'We meet, King Valamesh!' my uncle cried out to me through the tangle of men, horses and crates between us. 'Now let us fight our enemies together!'
So saying, he pushed his lance point straight through the face of the Karabuk knight nearest to him. I heard the point embed itself in bone and snap off. Old my uncle might be, and slow of movement, but he still possessed great prowess at arms and retained most of his old strength. He was cunning as an old wolf, too; he had not survived ten bloody battles solely by chance.
'Careful, Sire!' Lord Zandra called out to him. 'Stay close to us!' Lord Yarwan, too, seemed concerned at his king's wild attack of the Karabukers. But King Talanu was in no mood to be cautious. He cast down his broken lance and drew out his kalama. Then he pointed this long sword at the largest of the Karabuk knights, and cried out, 'Forward, forward all, and fight! This is the day! This is the day! Do you not see?'
The urgency in his voice caused me to look at his adversary more closely. This huge knight bearing down on him looked as if he must stand seven feet tall. Black ostrich feathers crested his shining helm; within this steel covering, his implacable black face and dark brown eyes seemed intent upon destroying King Talanu. In his huge hand, he bore a great lance, the longest I had ever seen a knight wield.
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