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My heart took a long time between beats as I waited to hear what Bajorak would say to this. But he hesitated not a moment as he called back to Kashak: ‘We shall not leave them!’
‘But we have earned our gold, and our contract has been fulfilled.’
‘No – the spirit of it has not!’
‘I say it has.’
‘You say! But who is headman of the Tarun, you or I?’
Bajorak locked eyes with Kashak, and so fierce and fiery was his gaze that Kashak quickly looked away.
‘There is no time!’ Bajorak called out, to Pirraj and his other warriors. He began issuing orders as he rearrayed his men to cover us on our left flank along the line of our flight. Then he snapped his quirt near his horse’s ear and shouted, ‘Let us ride!’
Without a backward glance at Kashak, he urged his horse straight toward the two red rocks five miles away. Kashak paused only a moment to regard me with his bleak, blue eyes. Freely had this Sarni warrior chosen to ride with Bajorak, and freely he might choose to ride elsewhere. But he would not desert his headman and friends in the face of battle. He said to me, without rancor or resentment: ‘It always comes to this, does it not? I hope you’re good at fighting, Valari. Well, we shall see.’
And with that, he whipped his quirt against his horse’s side and galloped off to rejoin his kith and kin.
My friends and I took only a few moments longer to urge our mounts forward and gain speed across the uneven terrain. Karimah and her twelve Manslayers rode close behind us, like a shield of flaxen-haired women and bounding horseflesh. And behind them, scarcely a mile away, the Red Knights charged at us, and they seemed intent at last upon closing the distance between us. I heard them blowing their warhorns and felt the beating of their horses’ hooves upon grassy ground; I felt, too, the beating of the heart of the man who was their master. He pushed his men forward with all his spite and will, even as my blood pushed at me with a fierce, quick fire that I had learned to hate.
So began our wild flight toward the mountains. I rode beside Daj and close to Estrella, for I worried that she might be too tired to sustain such a chase. But she kept her horse moving quickly and showed no sign of slumping into exhaustion or falling off. Master Juwain and Liljana watched her, too; they were now experienced campaigners, if not warriors, and they rode nearly as well as the Danladi to our left and the Manslayers behind us. Maram, though, labored almost as heavily as his sweating horse. I felt the strain in his great body as a bone-crushing weariness in my own.
It did not surprise me that the Red Knights seemed to gain on us. But they did not gain much: perhaps a hundred yards with every mile that we covered. And we put these miles behind us quickly, with the wind whipping at our faces, to the drumming of hooves against the ground. A mile of grassy terrain vanished behind us, and then two and three. The rocks called the Ass’s Ears loomed larger and larger. This close to them, I could see more than just their edges. It seemed that Master Juwain’s Way Rhymes had told true, for the rocks were indeed like great, elongated triangles of stone rising up into the sky. Behind them, layers of the White Mountains built up into even greater heights toward the clouds. Between them flowed a stream. A rocky ridge ran along the Ear to the north nearest us. A smaller ridge across the stream seemed to protect the approach to the second and southern Ear. The ground between the great rocks, I saw, was broken and strewn with boulders: very bad terrain for any horse to negotiate at speed.
Bajorak, upon studying the lay of the land here, saw its obvious advantages for defense – though he came to a different conclusion than I as to what our strategy should be. With only a mile to cover before we reached this gateway into the mountains, he dropped back to me and shouted out above the pounding and snorting of our horses: ‘My warriors and I will dismount and set up behind that ridge!’
Here, with a lifetime of coordinating such motions to the beat and bound of his horse, he held out his finger pointing steadily toward the northern ridge.
‘Any who try to force their way between the Shields, we will kill with arrows!’ he shouted. ‘You will have time to escape into this Kul Kavaakurk Gorge – if there really is such a gorge!’
As Altaru charged forward with rhythmic surges of his great muscles, I gazed between the red rocks, at the rushing stream. If this narrow gap opened into a gorge, I could not tell, for great boulders and the curves of the mountains’ wooded slopes obscured it.
‘No!’ I called back to Bajorak. ‘You have chosen not to desert us, and so we will not desert you!’
‘Don’t be a fool!’ he said. ‘Think of the children! Think of the Shining One!’
Even though each moment of our dash across the steppe seemed to jolt any thoughts from my mind, I was thinking of both Daj and Estrella, as well as the need of our quest. I did not, however, have time to argue with Bajorak – or the heart to dispirit him. For I was sure that if my friends and I fled with the children into the mountains, Bajorak’s warriors would inevitably be overwhelmed, and then Morjin and his Red Knights would trap us in the gorge.
‘Here is what we’ll do!’ I called back to him. ‘As you have said, you will set up with your warriors behind the ridge – all except Kashak and his squadron!’
I quickly shouted out the rest of the battle plan that I had devised. It seemed that Bajorak might dispute with me over who would take command here. But after gazing into my eyes for a long moment, he looked away and nodded his head as he said, ‘All right.’
We continued our charge toward the Ass’s Ears, slowing to a trot and then a quick walk as the ground broke up and rose steeply. I turned to see that the Red Knights and the Zayak warriors had halted about half a mile behind us. Clearly, they saw that they could not overtake us before we established ourselves behind the rocky ridge. Clearly, too, they awaited the arrival of the new companies of Red Knights and Zayak that Ossop had told of.
When the ground grew too rotten for riding, we dismounted and led our horses along either side of the wooded stream. It was hard work over rocks and up shrub-covered slopes, but necessity drove us to move like demons of speed. Bajorak and twenty-three of his warriors turned up behind the rocky ridge and deployed at the wall-like crest along its length, as would archers behind a castle’s battlements. They hated fighting on foot, away from their horses tethered behind them, but there was no help for it. I led the rest of our force – Karimah’s Manslayers, Kashak’s seven warriors and my friends – behind the smaller ridge fronting the second Ass’s Ear to the south. The trees there and humps of ground obscured our movement from our enemy, or so I prayed.
While Kashak stood with his men behind some trees and Karimah waited with her Manslaying women nearby, I turned to speak with my companions and friends. I called Liljanja closer to me. I whispered to her: ‘Here is what we must do.’
I cupped my hands over her ears and she slowly nodded her head. Then she brought forth her blue gelstei, cast into a whale-shaped figurine. She held this powerful crystal up to the side of her head. With a gasp that tore through me like a spear puncturing my lungs, she suddenly grimaced and cried out in pain. Then she jerked her hand away from her head and opened it. The blue gelstei gleamed in the strong sun. As Liljana’s eyes cleared, she stared at me and said, ‘It is done.’
After that I called Master Juwain, Daj and Estrella over as well. I said to Master Juwain: ‘You and Liljana will take the children into the mountains. We will follow when we can. And if we can’t, it will be upon you to find the Brotherhood school – and the Maitreya.’
‘No!’ Daj cried out, laying his hand upon the little sword that he wore. ‘I want to stay here with you and fight!’
Estrella, too, did not like this new turn of things. She came up to my side and wrapped her arms around my waist, and would not let go.
‘Here, now,’ I said as I pulled away her hands as gently as I could. ‘You must go with Master Juwain – everything depends upon it.’
She shook the dark curls out of her eyes and looked up at me. The bright noon light glinted off her fine-boned cheeks and the slightly crooked nose that must have once been broken. She smiled at me, and I felt all her trust in me pouring through me like a river of light. I promised her that I would rejoin her and Daj in the mountains, and soon. Then I lifted her up to kiss her goodbye.
‘Karimah!’ I called out, motioning this sturdy woman over to us. Despite her bulk, she came at a run, gripping her strung bow. ‘Would you be willing to appoint two of your warriors to escort Master Juwain and the children into the mountains, a few miles perhaps, until they find a safe place?’
‘I will, Lord Valashu,’ she agreed. She pulled at her jowly chin as she looked at me. ‘But no more than two – we shall need the rest of my sisters here before long.’
She turned to choose two of her sister Manslayers for this task. I quickly said goodbye to Master Juwain, Liljana and Daj. And so did Maram, Atara and Kane. I watched as a young lioness of a woman named Surya led the way up the stream between the Ass’s Ears. My friends, walking their horses beside them, hurried after her and so did another of the Manslayers whose name I did not know.
A few moments later, they disappeared behind the curve of a great sandstone buttress and were lost to our view. Then I turned back toward the Wendrush to complete our preparations for battle.
4
To the sound of battle horns blaring out on the grasslands that we could not quite see, I called everyone closer to me. Karimah and Atara crowded in close, with Kashak and two Danladi warriors, between Maram and Kane. And I said to them, ‘The Zayak are fifty in number, and Morjin will appoint at least three dozen of them to ride against Bajorak’s men along the ridge, keeping them pinned with arrows. The rest of the Zayak, with his forty Red Knights, he will send up along this stream.’
Here I pointed at the water cutting between Bajorak’s ridge and the one that we hid behind. ‘He will try to flank Bajorak and come up behind him. But we shall meet him here with arrows and swords.’
So saying I drew Alkaladur; Kashak’s men and many of the Manslayers gasped to behold its brilliance, for they had never seen a sword like it.
Kashak, fingering his taut bowstring, asked me: ‘How do you know that is what Morjin will do?’
Now I pointed behind us, where the Ass’s Ears rose up above what I presumed was the way to the Kul Kavaakurk. And I said to Kashak, ‘Morjin cannot go into the mountains until he clears Bajorak from the ridge.’
‘Then he might decide not to go into the mountains. Or to besiege our position.’
‘No, he will be afraid that I and my companions will escape him,’ I said. ‘And so, despite the cost, he will attack – and soon.’
Kashak’s bushy brows knitted together as he shot me a suspicious look. ‘You seem to know a great deal about this filthy Crucifier.’
‘More than I would ever want to know,’ I said, watching the slow smolder of flames build within my sword.
He looked at the rocky, sloping ground over which Morjin’s men would charge, if they came this way, and he said, ‘Why did you ask Bajorak for me and my squadron to stand with you, when I spoke in favor of abandoning you?’
‘Because,’ I said, smiling at him, ‘you did speak of this. And having decided to remain even so, you will fight like a lion to prove your valor.’
Kashak’s eyes widened in awe, and he made a warding sign with his finger. He stared at me as if he feared that I could look into his mind.
‘I will fight like a pride of lions!’ he called out, raising up his bow.
I smiled at him again, and we clasped hands like brothers. One either believes in men or not.
A horn sounded, but the swells of earth separating us from the steppe beyond muffled the sound of it. The two forces of our enemy, I thought, would be meeting up on the grassy slope below the ridges and preparing to attack us.
‘We should see how they deploy,’ Kashak said to me. He pointed toward the ridge above us. ‘We could steal up to those rocks and see if you are right.’
I nodded my head at this. And so leaving Kashak’s men behind with Kane, Atara, Maram and the Manslayers, Kashak and I picked our way up the ridge running in front of the second of the Ass’s Ears. As we neared the crest, we dropped down upon our bellies and crept along the ground for the final few yards like snakes. With the taste of dirt in my mouth, I peered around the edge of a rock, and so did Kashak. And this is what we saw:
Out on the steppe, a quarter mile away, some forty of the Zayak warriors were arrayed in a long line below the ridge to the left of us where Bajorak had set up with his Danladi. They gripped their thick, double-curved bows in preparation for a charge and an arrow duel. The ten remaining Zayak, dismounted, gathered along the stream with the two score Red Knights, who would also fight on foot. I looked for the leader of these knights, encased in their armor of carmine-tinged mail and steel plate, but I could not make him out.
‘It is as you said!’ Kashak whispered to me. ‘It is as if you can look into Morjin’s mind!’
No, I thought, I had no such gift. But Liljana did. At my request, she had used her blue gelstei one last time, seemingly to seek out the secrets of Morjin’s mind – and his intentions for the coming battle. And she had, in this invisible duel of thoughts and diamond-hard will, with great cunning, let him see our intentions: our company’s flight into the mountains with the Manslayers as an escort. That Kane, Maram, Atara and I remained behind, lying in wait with Kashak’s men and the rest of the Manslayers, she had not let Morjin see, or so I hoped. It was a ruse that might work one time – but one time only.
Then one of the Red Knights below us raised up his arm, and another horn rang out its bone-chilling blare. The forty Zayak on their horses began their charge toward Bajorak and his warriors. And the Red Knights – bearing drawn maces or swords – began moving at the double-pace up between the two ridges.
‘They come!’ Kashak whispered to me.
I remained frozen to the ground, gripping a rock with one hand and my sword in the other. The entire world narrowed until I could see neither mountain nor sky nor rocks running along the edge of the gray-green grasslands. I had eyes for only one man: he who led the Red Knights up along the stream cutting between the two ridges. His yellow surcoat blazed with a great red dragon. I felt the fury of the sun heating up my sword and a wild fire inside me, and I knew that this man was Morjin.
‘Lord Valashu, they come!’ Kashak whispered more urgently.
He pulled at my cloak, and I nodded my head. We scuttled crablike down the slope a dozen yards before rising to a crouch and then running back down to join our companions.
There were too few trees here to provide cover for all the Sarni. Kashak’s warriors grumbled at being ordered to hide behind them, while Karimah’s Manslayers almost rebelled at being asked to lie down behind some raspberry bushes. I stood with Kane, Maram and Atara behind a rock the size of a wagon. We waited for our enemy to appear in the notch down and around the curve of the stream.
‘Oh, Lord, my Lord!’ Maram sighed out to me. He fingered the edge of his drawn sword: a Valari kalama like the one that Kane held to his lips as he whispered fell words and then kissed its brilliant steel. ‘That Kashak was right, wasn’t he? It seems always to come to this.’
I looked up to my left past the stream, at the ridge where Bajorak waited with his warriors. The curve of the ground obscured the sight of most of his small force, but I knew they were ready because I could see three of the Danladi nearest us. They pulled back their bowstrings as they sighted their arrows on the Zayak who would be riding uphill against them.
‘Why, Val, why?’ Maram murmured to me. ‘I should be sitting by a stream in the Morning Mountains, preparing to eat a picnic lunch that my beloved has made for me. Look at this lovely day! Ah, why, why, why did I ever consent to leave Mesh?’
‘Shhh!’ Kane whispered fiercely to him. ‘You’ll give us away!’
I smiled sadly, for Maram was right about one thing: it was a beautiful day. In the hills behind us, birds were singing. The sun rained down a bright light upon the reddish rocks and the silvery green leaves of the cottonwood trees. Below us, along either bank of the stream and up the rocky slopes, millions of small white flowers grew. Atara called them Maiden’s Breath. A soft breeze rippled their delicate petals, which shimmered in the sunlight. It occurred to me that I should be picking a bouquet for Atara, rather than gripping a long sword in which gathered reddish-orange flowers of flame.
We heard our enemy before we saw them, for as they advanced up the stream, they made a great noise: of boots kicking at rocks; of grunts and hard breath puffing out into the warm air; of interlocking rings of mail jangling and grinding against the sheets of steel plate that covered their shoulders, forearms and chests. And of twanging bowstrings, as well, as Bajorak’s warriors upon the ridge rained down arrows upon them. Steel points broke against steel armor and shields with a clanging terrible to hear. A few of these must have broken through to the flesh beneath for the air below the towering Ass’s Ears rang with the even more terrible screams of men struck down or dying. I wondered if Bajorak’s men were concentrating on the Red Knights or the more vulnerable Zayak warriors in their flimsy leather armor. And then our enemy rounded the curve of the stream and charged up the flower-covered slopes straight toward us.
They did not see us until it was too late. I waited until they came close enough to smell their acrid sweat, and then I shouted out: ‘Attack!’
Kashak’s men stepped out from behind the trees at the same moment that Karimah’s Manslayers lifted their bows over the tops of the raspberry bushes. With Atara, these archers were twenty in number, and they loosed their arrows almost as one. The first volley, fired at such short range, killed a dozen of the Red Knights and the Zayak. A few arrows glanced off red armor, but many found their marks through the Zayaks’ throats or chests, or straight through the Red Knights’ vulnerable faces. I shouted at Kashak’s men to keep to the cover of the trees, but in this one matter they did not heed me. They were Sarni warriors, used to battle on the open steppe, and they thought it shameful to hide behind trees. The second volley found our enemy better prepared; the knights covered their faces with their shields, while the Zayak warriors loosed arrows of their own at us. I grunted in pain as a long, feathered shaft slammed into my shoulder but failed to penetrate my tough Godhran armor. There was no third volley. With our two small forces so close to each other, our enemy’s leader shouted out for his men to close the distance and charge into us where the fighting would be hand to hand.
With a chill that shot down my spine, I recognized this voice as belonging to Morjin. It was a strong voice, almost musical in its tone, and it vibrated with sureness and command. And with malevolence, vanity and a hunger for cruelty that made my belly twist with hot acids and pain. His face was Morjin’s, too: not, however, the aged, haunted countenance with the blood-red eyes and grayish, decaying flesh that I knew to be his true face, but rather that of his youth. He was fine and fair to look upon. His eyes were all clear and golden, and sparkled like freshly minted coins. His thick hair, the color of Atara’s, spilled out from beneath his carmine helm. Although not quite a large man, he moved with a power that I felt pulsing out across three dozen yards of ground. In truth, he fairly quivered with all the fell vitality of a dragon.
Was it possible, I wondered, that he had somehow regained the power to deceive me with the same illusions that he cast over other men? Or had he found in the Lightstone a way to renew himself? There was something strange about him, in the way he moved and scanned the flower-covered slopes before him. He seemed to apprehend the rocks and trees and the men standing beside them both from close-up and from far away, like an ever-watchful angel of death. His gaze found mine and seared me with his hate. The flames of his being writhed in flares of madder, puce and incarnadine – and with other colors that I could not quite behold. The burning sickness inside me told me that this must be Morjin.
Without warning, Atara loosed an arrow at him. But he moved his head at the same moment that her bowstring cracked, and the arrow whined harmlessly past him. He pointed his finger at her then. Atara gave a gasp, and slumped back against our rock. I could feel her second sight leave her. She shook her bow at Morjin in her helplessness and rage at being made once more truly blind.
‘Kill that witch!’ he shouted to his men. Now he pointed at me. ‘Kill the Valari!’
‘Morjin!’ I shouted back at him. ‘Damn you, Morjin!’
I rushed at him then even as he charged at me. But his Red Knights close by, those still standing, would not let him take straight-on the fury of my sword. A few of them crowded ahead of him as a vanguard. I cut down the foremost with a slash through his neck. Blood sprayed my face, and I cried out in the agony of the man I had killed. I was only dimly aware of other combats raging around me as Kashak’s warriors and the Manslayers ran down the slopes with flashing sabers to meet the advance of the Red Knights and the Zayak. Some part of me saw steel biting into flesh and bright red showers raining down upon the snowy white blossoms at our feet. I heard arrows whining out upon the ridge above us, and curses and screams, and I knew that Bajorak’s men were fighting a fierce battle with the mounted Zayak. But I had eyes only for Morjin. I fought my way closer to him, shivering the shield of a knight with a savage thrust. I felt Maram on my left and Kane on my right, stabbing their swords into the Red Knights who swarmed forward to protect their lord. The world dissolved into a glowing red haze. And then I killed another of his vanguard, and Morjin suddenly stood unprotected in front of me.
‘Mother!’ I cried out. ‘Father! Asaru!’
I raised high my bright silver blade, dripping with blood. And then one of Kashak’s warriors – or perhaps it was a Manslayer – nearly robbed me of my vengeance. A bow cracked, and an arrow streaked forth. But as before with Atara, Morjin moved out of the way at the instant the bolt was loosed at him. He must, I knew, possess some sort of uncanny sense of when others were intending to deal him a death blow. As I did, too. We were brothers in our blood, I thought, bound to each other in the quick burn of the kirax poison no less than in our souls’ bitter hate.
‘Morjin!’
‘Elahad!’
I swung my sword at him. He parried it with a shocking strength. Steel rang against silustria, and I felt a terrible power run down my blade into my arms and chest, and nearly shiver my bones. Once, twice, thrice we clashed, pushed against each other and then sprang apart. Maram knocked against my left side as he grunted and gasped and tried to kill the knight in front of him. On my right, Kane’s sword struck out with a rare passion to rend and destroy. He wanted as badly as I to kill Morjin. But fate was fate, and it was I who rushed in to slay the dragon.
MORJINNN!
I stabbed Alkaladur’s brilliant point at his neck, but he parried that thrust as well and then nearly cut off my head. He sliced his sword at me, again and again, with a prowess I had encountered in no other man except Kane. The flashing of our blades nearly blinded me; the ringing of steel rattled my skull. This was not the same Morjin that I had fought in Argattha. In his cuts and savage thrusts there was a recklessness, as if he willed himself to lay me open but had little care for his own flesh. This made him vastly more formidable. Twice he missed running me through by an inch. As his sword burned past my head yet again, his contempt blazed out at me. There was something strange, I sensed, in his hate. It was not immediate, like the blast of an open furnace, like mine for him, but rather like the sun’s flares as viewed through a dark glass. It had enough fire, though, to kill me if I let it.