Black Jade (9 page)

Out on the steppe, a lion roared and a meadowlark chirped angrily - perhaps the same bird whose nest Altaru had destroyed. And I said to Bajorak, 'Our enemy is one and the same, and so they should be no quarrel between us.'

'No quarrel, perhaps. But the enemy of our enemy is not always our friend. Were it so, we would make cause with the Marituk, who hate the Zayak as much as we do.'

'It is hard,' I said to him, 'for a Valari and a Sarni to be friends.' 'And yet you and the Manslayer call each other "friend", if nothing more.'

I saw him searching for something in my eyes as he gazed at me. And I searched for something in him. I found it beneath his gold-studded armor in the sudden surge of his blood. It was the promise of life, the very pulse of the world and breath of the stars. When I opened my heart to him, I felt it beating strong, wild and true.

'Freinds,' he told me, 'do not keep secrets from each other.'

'No, they do not,' I said.

It came to me then that I had a sort of Scales of my own, for I gave great weight to what my heart told me was true. One either had faith in men, or not. As Bajorak looked at me so openly, without entreaty or guile, I knew that I trusted him and that he would never betray me.

'The name of the gorge we seek,' I told him, 'is the Kul Kavaakurk.'

I went on to explain the nature of our quest. Only the Maitreya, I said to him, could contend with Morjin for mastery of the Lightstone. We had no idea where on Ea to search for this great-souled being, but the Grandmaster of the Great White Brotherhood in their ancient school in the mountains above us might know.

'It is a small hope,' I said to him. 'But unless the Maitreya is found, it won't matter if the Danladi or Kurmak or Valari refuse to make peace with Morjin. For Morjin and all his allies will make war against us and destroy us one by one.'

'No, that will not be,' he said. 'Morjin may indeed destroy us. But
not
one by one.'

And with that, he leaned out away from his horse and extended his calloused hand toward me. I grasped it in mine, and we sat there for a few moments testing each other's resolve. With a gladness that he could not contain, he looked at me and smiled as he said, 'Friend.'

I smiled, too, and nodded my head. 'Friend.'

Each telling of the truth, I suddenly knew, was like a whisper that might grow into a whirlwind.

'It is a strange thing you do,' he said to me, 'seeking this Maitreya instead of gold, women or war. And you, a great warrior, or so it's said.'

'I've seen enough war to last to the end of my days if I lived another ten thousand years.'

And Bajorak surprised me once more, saying, 'So have I.' I took in the paint on his face, the saber thrust through his braided gold belt and the great horn bow strapped to his back. I said to him, 'I have never heard a Sarni warrior speak so.'

Again he smiled, an expression made difficult by the scars cutting his cheeks. And he said, 'I have wives and daughters, and I would not see them violated by any man. I have a son. I would hear him make music.'

My eyes filled with amazement as I smiled at him. 'Promise me, Valashu Elahad, that you will not tell anyone what I have told you here. For me to speak of love is one thing. But if my warriors heard me speak of ending war, they would think me mad.'

'All right,' I said, clasping hands with him again, 'I promise.' He nodded his head to me, once, fiercely, and then turned his horse about and rode back to his warriors. And I returned to my friends, who were gathered in a circle on top of their horses between the Bajorak's Danladi and our Manslayer rear guard.

'Well?' Maram called out to me as I came up to them. 'What was all
that
about?'

Kane, however, needed no account of my meeting with Bajorak to know what had transpired. His black eyes were like two disks of heated iron as he said to me, 'So, you told him.' 'Yes,' I said. 'I had to.'

'You
had
to?' The muscles beneath his wind-burnt jaws popped out as if he were working at a piece of meat. I knew that he was furious with me. 'Ha! - we will see what comes of this. Your fate is your fate, eh? Some men wait for theirs, but you have to go rushing in, like a child into a dragon's den.'

After that we continued our journey toward the place that Bajorak had told of. Five miles we put behind us in less than an hour before pausing to water the horses at a little stream trickling through the grass. I kept a watch on our enemy, and wondered yet again why they took such pains to keep their distance from us.

'It must be,' I said to Atara as she sipped from her water horn, 'that Morjin does not wish me to catch sight of his face.'

'Perhaps,' she told me. Maram, liljana and Kane stood next to her along the stream listening to what she had to say. 'But consider this as well: If it really
is
Morjin, he must know, or guess, our mission. It would be hard for him, I think, so terribly, terribly hard to decide between letting us lead him to the Maitreya and killing us while he had the chance.'

'He has little chance,' I said. 'And if he comes too close, it is we who shall kill him.'

But fate was to prove me wrong on both these counts Just as we bent low to refill our horns in the ice-cold water, I saw Bajorak farther down the stream, suddenly put away his horn and throw his hand to his forehead like a visor. He looked out toward the east, where a grassy rise blocked sight of the flatter country there. A few moments later, a dappled horse and a Sarni warrior charged up over the rise and galloped straight toward us. I recognized the man as Ossop, one of the outriders that Bajorak had sent to keep watch on our flank.

We mounted quickly, and Kane, Atara and I rode over to learn why Ossop returned in such haste. Karimah and one of her Manslayers met there in front of Bajorak as well, just as Ossop called out: 'They come, out of the east, and five miles behind me!'

He pulled up and gasped out that another company of Red Knights, fifteen strong, and twenty-five more Zayak warriors were quickly bearing down upon us.

I turned to look for them, but could see little more than the windswept rise running parallel to the eastern horizon. To the northwest, the Red Knights who had trailed us so far were remounting their horses. And so were the twenty-five Zayak warriors who rode with them.

'Now we've no choice!' I said, looking at our enemy. 'It's too late to attack them, and so we must flee!'

I pointed at two long strips of red rock marking the front range of the White Mountains five miles away. If these were truly the edges the Ass's Ears - or the Red Shields - Bajorak was right that they appeared very different from this point of view.

'Hold!' Kashak called out to Bajorak. Although this huge man had a savage look about him, with his ferocious blue eyes and bushy blond, overhanging brows, I sensed in him little that was actually cruel. But he was quite capable of dealing with life's cruelties in a businesslike and almost casual way. 'Hold, I say! We agreed to escort the kradaks to the mountains, and so we have done. If we remain here, trapped between two forces and these cursed rocks, we'll be slaughtered along with them. Let us therefore leave them to what must befall.'

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 horseflesl. 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 gam 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 boulder 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 fo 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 hank- 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 - 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 a hard work over rocks and up shrub-covered slopes, but neces sity 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 Liljana closer to me. I whispered to her. 'Here is what we must do.'