David Zindell - The Diamond Warriors

We made our way down to the expanse of meadow east of the square, scarcely four hundred yards from the roaring Arashar River. There we set up our camp, with neat lanes at regular intervals running down the lines of our tents. I had inherited my father’s campaign pavilion: a great, billowing expanse of black silk embroidered with the silver swan and stars of our ancestors. My companions would sleep within tents next to mine, as would Lord Avijan, Lord Harsha and my other counselors. I did not like being so close to the river. Although we would not have to haul water so far as Lord Tanu’s or Lord Tomavar’s men, everything I knew about strategy warned me against taking a position with a river or lake at my back. If the worst befell and a battle did break out, we would have little room to maneuver against what might prove a much greater force.

‘But I will not let it come to that,’ I promised Maram that evening as we gathered around one of our campfires to eat some roasted lamb. ‘And neither Lord Tanu or Lord Tomavar will break the truce.’

‘No, of course they won’t,’ Maram said between bites of bloody meat. ‘If it becomes obvious that the warriors want you as king, Lord Tomavar will march off beyond the bounds of the truce – and then turn and attack you farther down the river.’

For a while, after dinner, I stood at the edge of our encampment staring out across the square. Lord Tomavar stood with his knights in his encampment, staring back at me. Although the distance was too great to make out the features of his face with any clarity, I could see the black tower of the Tomavars emblazoned on his white surcoat. I sensed his black eyes seeking out my own and warning me not to oppose him.

As we had also agreed, we spent the night in our own encampment, with the warriors ordered to remain near their campfires, and so it was with Lord Tomavar and Lord Tanu and their men. Although most of us had friends or kin in the other encampments, we had foes, too, and it wouldn’t do to let a little casual mingling lead to arguments that might very well end in swords drawn and warriors lying dead in pools of blood.

Despite Maram’s gloom, which he assuaged with cups of both beer and brandy, the night passed peacefully, and the next day dawned with clear blue skies and abundant sunshine. Lord Tomavar sent his emissaries across the square to the various encampments to call for an immediate conclave. But Lord Tanu would not be moved from his original plan: tomorrow would be the 21st of Soldru, and we must allow time for the last of the free warriors to arrive. The conclave, he said, must not begin before then.

Already, though, as Liljana pointed out, a sort of informal conclave had gotten underway. The news of the gathering had gone out to every corner of Mesh, and beyond. According to a long tradition, women and boys from Hardu arrived bearing food and drink for the warriors of our armies, and blacksmiths came up from Godhra to shoe horses and repair weapons or armor. Others, from Mir or the Diamond River clear across the realm, merely wished to be present at the choosing of a new king. They joined the throngs who set up little tents or made cookfires on the outskirts, around the warriors’ encampments. By late morning, it seemed a city of Meshians had sprung up overnight from the pasture’s thick grass.

A handful of outlanders also attended the gathering. On a trip down to the river, I saw five merchants from Delu and a dozen evacuees, from Galda and faraway Surrapam, who sought refuge in our land. From the Elyssu came a herbalist searching for rare botanicals, and this adventurous man inevitably found his way to consult with Master Juwain. A traveling troupe from Alonia, Nedu and points farther west decided to seek its fortune in entertaining the waiting warriors. They misjudged, however, the mood prevailing among those who had journeyed to this place: tense, wary and deadly serious. Few, it seemed, wanted to watch a juggler toss colored balls into the air or an acrobat walk across a tightrope – at least not yet.

Late in the afternoon, five warriors of the Manslayer Society arrived asking for the great imakla granddaughter of Sajagax. They rode their steppe ponies from Lord Tanu’s encampment down the rows of tents into ours. Their leader, a stout, ebullient woman named Karimah, I knew from two campaigns across the Wendrush. She could be quick with a drawn knife or a bow and arrow – and even quicker to smile and bandy words, with friend or foe. When Atara came forth to greet them, Karimah laughed out with great gladness and urged her horse forward so that she could kiss Atara’s hands and face. She leaned her head down close to Atara’s and spoke words that I could not hear. Then Atara went to saddle Fire. After leading this beautiful mare up to where I stood with Karimah and the others, she told me, ‘We must hold a conclave of our own. We shall try to be back by dinner.’ Without any further explanation, she rode off with her sister Manslayers. A burning disquiet worked at my throat as I watched them make their way through the many people ringing our encampment. Then they crested the hill to the north above the river, and disappeared.

And so Atara did not witness the miraculous event that stirred warriors in every encampment to break off their sword practice and rush to the edges of the square. From out of the south, along the crowded central lane running through Lord Tanu’s array of tents, a single rider appeared and made his way into the square. His close-cropped white hair gleamed in the sun almost as brightly as a steel helm. The lines of his sun-browned face – at once savage and beautiful and burning with a strange grace – had been set like cracks running through stone. His large, powerful body flowed with the movements of his nearly spent horse. He wore no armor, but only trousers and a torn, tainted shirt. A red arrow stuck out of his back. Whether this color came from the dyes that the Red Knights use to stain their arrows or from the man’s own blood was hard to tell. He seemed to give this deadly shaft of wood no thought, however, but only rode on toward our encampment with a rare ease and unquenchable will. His contempt for pain and what could only be a mortal wound amazed the tough Meshian warriors who looked upon him. Sar Vikan, straining to see at the edge of the square, suddenly cried out, ‘Look! It is Kane! Sar Kane has returned!’

‘Sar Kane!’ someone else shouted. And then half a hundred voices picked up the cry: ‘Sar Kane has returned! Bring a litter for Sar Kane!’

But my old friend would not be carried so long as he had the strength to command his own motions. And strength he still possessed, in an overflowing abundance that stunned those who watched him ride up to me. He sat tall and straight in his saddle, as if some vastly greater hand had sculpted him from a burning rock. Dressed in rags, dirty, bleeding, the air hissing out of the hole torn into his lung, Kane managed to look more regal than either Lord Tanu or Lord Tomavar – or, I imagined, myself.

‘So, Valashu,’ Kane said as he stopped his horse before me. ‘I did not come back too late.’

He dismounted, and I rushed forward to embrace him as best I could without disturbing the broken arrow embedded in him. His large, hard hands, however, thumped against my back without restraint. At last he stood away from me. His bright, black eyes drank in the delight in my eyes. And with a savage smile, he growled out, ‘Ha – but it is good to be back! Let us go somewhere we can talk.’

Just then Master Juwain, followed by Liljana, Maram, Estrella and Daj, pushed through the throngs of knights surrounding us. Master Juwain hurried up to Kane and looked at him gravely. ‘First, I should draw that arrow.’

‘No – the arrow remains where it has been for four hundred miles, and will still be there when you need to go to work on me. But right now, I’ve tidings that must be told.’