Lord of Lies (80 page)

'And if they don't?'

'Even so, there is no more time. Morjin will probably march tomorrow or the day after. Likewise the Galdans.'

So, I thought, that was that. Mesh would battle alone against two armies, and the Sarni clans, with a combined strength of nearly seventy thousand men.

'Later today,' my father said to me, 'your brothers will ride down with me and join the army. You will remain here and take charge of the castle's defenses.'

'No!' I cried out. 'My place is with them, and with you!'

'Your place,' my father told me, 'is here, guarding the Lightstone. You are Lord Guardian, and it is upon you to command the knights who have sworn to protect it.'

'But Sunjay Naviru could command them equally well! Besides, we all know that there will be no assault upon the castle. You'll need my sword, when it comes to battle.'

So saying, I stood up and drew Alkaladur. Its long blade filled the library with a fierce brightness.

'Sit down,' my father said to me.

'But Morjin will take the battlefield!' I called out to him. 'What he did to Atara, what he did to me ... you cannot know! He and I - it must be this way, don't you see?'

'Enough!' he shouted at me. His black eyes burned into mine. Then he looked down the table at Atara, and his voice grew more gentle. 'I am not just your father but your king, and so it is upon me to see to Mesh's needs and not your own. There is more to be protected here than just a little golden cup: the wives of Mesh's greatest lords, as well as the children of simple warriors. Your own mother and grandmother. And you have had experience, at Khaisham, in repelling a siege.'

He turned to regard Maram, Atara and Kane. 'All of you - you fought off the Dragon's army under Count Ulanu, and so that is why you will remain here to guard the castle.'

'No, I won't,' Kane growled out, grasping the hilt of his kalama.

'What?' my father said to him.

'I won't remain behind these walls while Morjin finally comes out of that dungheap of a city of his and exposes himself to my sword.'

'As long as you are in my service, you'll do as you're ordered!

'But I am not in your service, King Shamesh. Freely I've ridden here, and freely I'll ride into battle.'

'Under whose command?'

'Under my own. Where the fighting is thickest, where Morjin stands, there I shall be.'

'And if my knights keep you from this revenge?'

'Then you shall lose both my sword
and
your knights.' My father and Kane stared at each other with equal savagery. Finally my father said, 'And what if Morjin has a firestone? It's told that you possess one of the black gelstei. With it you could keep Morjin from burning the castle's walls.'

Kane took out his dark crystal, which looked like a teardrop of obsidian. He squeezed it in his fist and said, 'Morjin does not have a firestone. But even if he did, it would take him a day to burn through the castle's walls. First he would turn its flame upon your army, that none would be left to stop him. And so you would do better to let me take the field, with my gelstei as well as my sword.'

My father nodded his head to Kane, bowing to his logic, no less his fierce will. Then Atara unwrapped her two red arrows and said to my father, 'I, too, shall ride to the battle with Kane.'

'Very well,' my father sighed out. Then he turned to Maram. 'You, at least, are under my command. And so you'll remain here, with Val.'

It surprised no one at the table when Maram fought off a smile of relief and gladly assented to what my father had said: 'You wish me to stay by Val's side? I shall! I shall! We'll keep the castle safe!'

After that my father dismissed everyone except me. He rose from his chair and laid his hand on my shoulder, saying, 'Let's take a walk outside the walls, shall we?'

I followed him out of the keep and then through the throngs of people in the west ward as he made his way to the castle's gates. The great iron doors were still open, and we went outside and stood upon the band of ground between the castle and the drawbridge spanning the Kurash River. In the event of an assault the bridge's entire end section could be pulled up to cover the castle's gates and break the bridge in two.

'Have you seen that the chains have been oiled?' he said, pointing at the black links of iron that worked the bridge.

'You asked me to, didn't you?'

'Good,' he told me.

He took me by the arm and led me along the narrow ground above the river. We had to step carefully lest we stumble into its churning waters. We rounded the great gate tower and came out on the castles southern side. A steep, rocky slope led down toward the houses of Silvassu below. It would be impossible, I knew, for any siege tower to be rolled up it to assault the wails - and difficult unto the death for warriors to bring up ladders or grappling hooks. I set my hand upon the warm granite of the wall, looking up at the overhanging parapets high above. I could almost feel burning oil raining down upon me and sizzling into my flesh. Not even a monkey, I thought, could find a handhold in the wall's smooth stone.

'The masonry looks sound,' he said, craning his neck as he looked up.

'It is,' I said. 'Every inch of it.'

'Good. Our ancestors built it well. And we've kept it well.' He rapped his knuckles against the white granite and smiled. 'Even with all our guests, we've food enough to last two years. And the wells will never run dry. Our castle will never be taken.'

'No,' I promised him, 'it won't be.'

'So many Elahads have lived here,' he said to me. 'Going back to the first Shavashar, and Elkasar, for whom your grandfather was named.'

My father must have forgotten that he had told me this before, more than once. His thoughts seemed to be far away, dwelling with the dead.

'A great battle we'll fight soon,' he said to me. 'The greatest ever fought in Mesh.'

As he gazed off at Silvassu and the Valley of the Swans below, glowing a deep green in the late sun, he shifted his weight suddenly and had to fight to keep from plunging down the slope. I clasped onto his arm to steady him.

'Are you all right, sir?'

'I nearly fell,' he said, gripping my hand. And then his eyes darkened as with storm clouds as he told me, 'If I should fall in battle, Asaru will make a fine king. You must help him, Val. You, of all your brothers, he trusts the most.'

'You
won't
fall, sir. This battle can be won - you said so yourself.'

But he seemed not to be listening to me. His eyes grew bright and clear as he gazed out upon Mount Eluru shining white with snow across the valley.

'All of my sons,' he said, 'would make good kings. Even Yarashan.'

'You think so?' I said to him.

'Yes, even he. He is full of vainglory. But in the end, he would overcome it and find his greatness in his love of his people instead of himself. After you won the championship, do you know what he said to me?'

'No, what?'

He said: "Better Val than me."'

'Yarashan
said that?'

'Truly, he did. He loves you, you know.'

'Yes,' I told him,' Iknow.'

'And Karshur. My second son is so strong, if not possessing the quickest of minds. But he is wise enough to call upon the counsel of others - if he were king, he would need to call upon you.' 'Do not speak so,' I said, gripping his hand. But he didn't listen to me. He smiled to himself as he affirmed the various virtues of my brothers. Jonathay, he said, seemed too full of whimsy to be a king, and yet he had a way of bringing his dreams down to earth and inspiriting people. Mandru was as fierce as a wolverine, and difficult - and in this very irritation at others, he often found the will to be gentle toward them and protect them. As he had protected me from Yarashan's bullying when I was a boy.

'All of my sons,' he said again, 'it's our weaknesses that make us strong - the way we overcome them. The way we overcome ourselves.' He turned toward me then, and eyes were like two stars shining with a deep light.

'But you have no weaknesses!' I said to him. 'You think not?' he said, smiling at me.

'Not as a king. No king has ever given more of himself to his people. You cannot know how they love you. All your warriors - they would die for you.'

'And I would die for them,' he said. 'And I love them as I love the mountains and rivers of my home. And yet...'

'Yes?'

He gripped my hand so hard that it hurt, and I could hardly bear the way that he looked at me.

'And yet, ' he told me, resting his other hand against the castle's great walls, 'if my whole army were lost, it would not be as dear to me as what I know will remain safe inside here.'

'But my brothers,' I said, swallowing back the pain in my throat, 'if they were lost too, then ...'

My rather gazed at me for what seemed a thousand years as my heart pounded inside me. And he said to me, 'As long as one of us lives, Valashu, we all live.'

We went back inside the castle after that. An hour later, my father called for his warhorse, Karkhad, to be brought into the west ward. The crowds of women and children there moved aside to make way for this great, snorting beast. Karkhad's face, neck and chest, as well as his hindquarters, had been fitted with curving sweeps of steel plate. And so it was with the mounts of my brothers, for they gathered there, too. They wore their diamond battle armor and black surcoats emblazoned with the silver swan and the stars of the Elahads. Their shields showed identical charges, except that each one bore a distinguishing mark of cadence on its point. Ravar's was a sunburst, and he was the first of my brothers to embrace me and bid me farewell. Then Jonathay laughed as he embraced me to assure me that we would meet again, and soon. Next 1 said goodbye to Mandru, and then Karshur, who nearly squeezed me in half with his thick, hard arms. Yarashan, resplendent in all his polished diamonds and steel, stepped up to me and said, 'It would have been a great contest, wouldn't it, to see who could slay more of the enemy? Well, perhaps in another battle.' Asaru took his leave of me in silence. The hope in his eyes, no less his concern for me, was so strong and bright it made me weep.

For a while, the six of them stood there on the hardpacked dirt saying farewell to my mother and grandmother. Lansar Raasharu and a company of knights assembled behind them, back near the Adami Tower. So did Kane and Atara. Then my father pulled on his helm, crested by a white swan plume, and it was time to go. They all mounted their horses. And my father led them pounding through the gateway and they rode out to war.

M
orjin's army invaded Mesh on the sixth of Ioj. The Galdans, under the Saroch, Radomil Makan, as the high priests of the Kallimun were called, moved a day later, on the seventh. Messengers brought us word of this desecration of our sacred soil. My father saw no point in wasting warriors at the passes, and so he had ordered the garrisons there to remain within the kel keeps, behind their walls. This presented Morjin with a difficult choice: he could lose part of his army besieging the keep, which might take a month, or simply march around it. But if he did that, then his line of supplies would likely be cut, and his army would be forced to live off whatever they could take from Mesh's countryside. And more, in the event of his defeat, his retreat from Mesh might be hindered. So it was with Radomil and the Galdans. It encouraged no one when Morjin decided to march straight down the road to Lashku and across the Lake County. He paused only to ravage the abandoned farms there, and he bypassed Lashku altogether, leaving that walled city inviolate behind him. He clearly desired a showdown with our army as quickly as possible. It seemed that he did not fear defeat.

The Galdans, however, gave sign that they were at least as interested in plundering Mesh's mineral wealth as they were in giving battle. Reports came that the Galdans laid siege to Godhra for half a day before they broke off and resumed their march north. Morjin must have commanded them to leave its despoliation until their return, after our army was destroyed. As it was, the Galdans raided several armories outside Godhra's walls, and made off with many bushels of diamonds. And worse, they slew half a dozen swordmakers and their families, and others.

Most of my people, however, at least for the time, found safety behind thick stone walls or in the fastnesses deep within mountains. They made sure that there was little to feed these two great armies, taking with them as many cattle, sheep and sacks of grain as they could. In revenge, Morjin ordered the burning of their fields. A line of flaming wheat and barley followed the line of his march like the track of a fire-breathing dragon.

On Ioj the twelfth, the Sakayans and Galdans met up outside Hardu and my father finally marched south. There followed a series of threats and maneuvers as my father strove to destroy or at least decimate Morjin's combined forces as they crossed the Arashar River. A small battle was fought at Kinshan Bridge, and the Meshians had much the better of the day, killing some three hundred Caldans and even more of Morjin's mercenaries. But Morjin was a skilled and hardened warlord, and he seemed not to mind spending the lives of his men to achieve his objectives. He used this sacrifice at the bridge to move the main body of his army across the river lower down, toward Lake Waskaw where it was shallow enough in this dry season for his baggage train to cross without being swept away.

My father was forced then to order a retreat back north, for he would not give battle in the mostly flat and open country between Lake Waskaw and Silvassu. There it would be too easy for the Sarni to harry his warriors or even ride around, them and attack his army from the rear. And in a pitched battle, it would be too easy for Morjin's men, with their much greater numbers, to swarm like ants around our army's flanks and push their spears into our backs.

It wasn't hard for my father to outmaneuver this unruly and motley mass of men. Three armies Morjin had to co-ordinate, counting the Sarni, and his problem in this regard was even worse than it seemed, for the Sakayan force was itself composed of disparate elements: nine thousand heavy infantry out of Argattha; three thousand Blues from the mountains of western Sakai; seventeen thousand mercenaries from Hesperu, Karabuk and other realms of Ea; a thousand Ikurian horse and five thousand of Morjin's famed Dragon Guard, decked out in steel armor that had been tinctured bright red. The Galdans, though all of the same realm, did not all appear to be of the same quality. Twenty thousand heavy infantry formed their core, supported by as many light infantry and eight hundred light cavalry. These, it was thought, could not hold up to the deadly strokes of Valari kalamas. The two hundred Galdan heavy horse were too few to withstand the charge of our knights, and the Galdans were weak in archers, as well. No doubt Morjin counted on the Sarin's arrows to rain down death upon us from afar.