I bowed my head to him, and he returned this grace, inclining his head an inch lower than mine. And he said to me, ‘You have his look, you know.’
‘Whose look?’ I asked him.
‘King Elkamesh’s,’ he said. ‘When he was a young knight. I never saw the resemblance until today’
I smiled at him, and told him, ‘It is good to be home, Lord Harsha.’
‘It is good to have you home.’ His gaze took in Maram and my other companions, who had nudged their horses up to the wall and dismounted as well. And Lord Harsha pointed at Alphanderry and said, ‘I count eight of you, altogether, and eight it was who set out for Argattha. But here rides a stranger in Kane’s place. Don’t tell me such a great warrior has fallen!’
‘He has not fallen,’ I said, ‘as far as I know. But circumstances called him to Galda. And as for Argattha, we did not journey there after all.’
‘No – that is clear. If you had, we would not be gathered here having this discussion. But where then did you journey?’
I looked at Maram, who said, ‘Ah, that is a long story, sir. Might we perhaps discuss it over dinner? For more miles than I can tell you, I’ve been hoping to sit down to some of Behira’s roast beef and few glasses of your excellent beer.’
At the mention of his daughter’s name, I felt something inside Lord Harsha tighten, and he said to Maram, ‘It’s been a bad year, as you will find out, and so you will have to settle on some chops of lamb or perhaps a roasted chicken. But beer we still have in abundance – surely Behira will be glad to pour you all you can drink.’
He motioned for us to follow him, and we led our horses around his field toward his house. Although I still felt a dark presence watching my every movement, Lord Harsha seemed completely unaware of the Ahrim or that we had fought a battle for our lives scarcely an hour before. As we passed the barn and drew up closer to the house, he called out in his gruff voice: ‘Behira – come out and behold what the wind has blown our way!’
A few moments later, the thick wooden door of the house opened, and Lord Harsha’s only remaining child stepped out to greet us. Like Lord Harsha, Behira was sturdy of frame and wore a rough woolen tunic gathered in with a belt of black leather. With her ample breasts and wide hips that Maram so appreciated, my mother had once feared that Behira might run to fat. But time had treated this young woman well, for she had lost most of her plumpness while retaining all that made her pretty, and more. Her long hair gleamed a glossy black like a sable’s coat, and her large, lovely eyes regarded Maram boldly, and so with the rest of us. I might have expected that she would run out and fall into Maram’s arms, but time had changed her in other ways, too. The rather demure and good-natured girl, it seemed, had become a proud and strong-willed woman.
‘Lord Marshayk!’ she called out to Maram with an uncomfortable formality. ‘Lord Elahad! You’ve come back!’
So it went as she greeted all of us in turn, and then her gaze drew back to Maram. I sensed in her a churning sea of emotions: astonishment; shame; adoration; confusion. I felt hot blood burning up through her beautiful face as she said, ‘Oh, but we’ve much to talk about, and you will all want a good hot bath before we do. I’ll go and heat the water’
And with that she bowed to us, and went back into the house. The explanations for her strange behavior, I thought, would have to wait until we cleaned ourselves. After Behira had filled the cedarwood tub in the bathing room, we went inside the house and took turns immersing our bodies in steaming hot water: first Atara, Liljana and Estrella took a rare pleasure in washing away their cares, and then Master Juwain, Maram, Daj and I. While Master Juwain and Daj were pulling on fresh tunics, Lord Harsha came into the wood-paneled bathing room to inform us that dinner would soon be ready. He eyed the strange, round scars marring Maram’s great hairy body, but did not remark upon them. He seemed to be waiting for a more appropriate moment to tell of things that he was loath to tell and to hear of things that he might not want to hear.
At last, when we were all well-scrubbed and attired in clean clothing, Lord Harsha called us to dinner at his long table just off his great room. As we were about to take our seats, the clopping of a horse’s hooves against the dirt lane outside made me draw my sword and hurry over to the door. I said to Lord Harsha, ‘We have enemies we haven’t told you about, and we are not ready to make our presence known.’
‘It’s all right,’ he said to me as he stood by the window and peered out into the twilight. ‘It’s only Joshu Kadar – in all the excitement, I forgot to tell you that we’ve invited him to dinner. Surely you can trust him’.
Surely, I thought, I could. Joshu had been Asaru’s squire, and he had stood by the horses that day when Salmelu had shot me with his poisoned arrow – and he had served my brother faithfully at the Culhadosh Commons as well.
‘All right,’ I said, sheathing my sword and leaning it against the side of the table. ‘But please let me know if you are expecting anyone else.’
Lord Harsha opened the door and invited Joshu inside. The youth I remembered from the days when Asaru and I had taught him fighting skills had grown into a powerful man nearly as tall as I. He wore a single battle ribbon in his long hair. With his square face and strong features, he had a sort of overbearing handsomeness that reminded me of my brother, Yarashan. But in his manner Joshu seemed rather modest, respectful and even sweet. The moment he saw me, he nearly dropped the bouquet of flowers that he was holding and called out happily: ‘Lord Valashu! Thank the stars you have returned! We all thought you were dead!’
He bowed his head to me, then greeted Master Juwain with the great affection that many of my people hold for the masters of the Brotherhood. With perfect politeness he likewise said hello to the rest of our company, but when he came to Maram, I felt the burn of embarrassment heating up his face, and he could hardly speak to him. He gave his flowers to Behira, who put them in a blue vase which she set on the table along with platters of food and pitchers of dark, frothy beer.
There came an awkward moment as Lord Harsha took his place at the head of the table and Joshu sat down in the chair to his right. I had the place of honor at the opposite end of the table, with Maram to my right and Atara at my left. It seemed a strange thing for Alphanderry to join us, for he didn’t so much sit upon his chair as occupy its space. He could of course eat no food nor imbibe no drink, and soon enough we would have to explain his strange existence as best we could. But as Behira seated herself across from Joshu, it came time for other explanations.
‘Well, here it is,’ Lord Harsha said, looking at Maram. Lord Harsha was not a man of subterfuge or nuance, and he had put off this unpleasant task longer than he had liked. ‘We did think you were dead, and too bad for that. And so I had to promise my daughter to another’
As Behira looked across the table at Joshu, and Joshu lowered his eyes toward the empty plate in front of him, Maram’s ruddy face flushed an even brighter red. And he called out, ‘But you said that you’d wait for our return!’
Lord Harsha sighed as he rubbed at his eye, and then said, ‘We did wait, for as long as seemed wise. Longer than a year it was. But you had told us that you were going to Argattha, and so what was there really to wait for?’
As Maram fought back his rising choler, he fell strangely silent. And so I spoke for him, saying, ‘We had indeed planned to go to Argattha, but in the end we set out on a different quest. My apologies if we misled you. It seemed the safest course, however, for then you could not betray our mission should any of our enemies come here and question you.’
Now Lord Harsha’s face filled with a choler of its own. He rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, which he too had leaned against the edge of the table. He said, ‘I have taken steel, wood and iron through my body in service of your father and grandfather, and have never betrayed anyone!’
I said to Lord Harsha: ‘My apologies, sir. But you know what the Red Dragon and the Prince of Ishka did to my mother and grandmother. Don’t be so s
ure you would be able to keep your silence if he did the same to your daughter.’
Lord Harsha removed his hand from his sword and made a fist. He looked at it a moment, before saying to me, ‘No, my apologies, Lord Valashu. These are hard, bad times. You did what you had to do, as we have done. And it’s good that we’re gathered here together, for this is a family matter, and you and your friends are like family to Sar Maram. And so you should advise him on what our course should be.’
‘What can our course be?’ Maram said. ‘Other than this: you promised Behira to me first! And promises must be kept!’
Lord Harsha pressed his hand against his eye patch as if he could still feel the piercing pain of the arrow that long ago had half-blinded him. And he said to Maram, ‘On the field of the Raaswash more than two years ago, you promised to wed my daughter, and I still see no ring upon her finger’
Now it was Behira’s turn to make a fist as she set her right hand over her left.
‘But I had duties!’ Maram said to Lord Harsha. ‘There were quests to be undertaken, journeys to be made, to Tria, across the Wendrush – and beyond. And the battles we fought were –’
‘Excuses,’ Lord Harsha snapped out. ‘For three years, you’ve been making excuses and putting my daughter off. Well, now it’s too late.’
‘But I love Behira!’ Maram half-shouted.
At this, Behira lifted up her head and turned to gaze down the table at Maram. Her face brightened with hope and longing. It was the first time, I thought, that either she or any of us had heard Maram announce his affection for her so openly.
‘Love,’ Lord Harsha said to Maram, ‘is the fire that lights the stars, and we should all surrender up our deepest love to the One that created them. And a father loves his daughter, which is why I promised Behira to you in the first place, for every hour I had to bear my daughter’s talk of loving you. But everyone knows that such love matches often end unhappily. That kind of love is only for the stars, not for men and women, for it quickly burns out.’
At this, I reached over and took hold of Atara’s hand. The warmth of her fingers squeezing mine reminded me of that bright and beautiful star to which our souls would always return. I did not believe that it could ever die.
‘Are you saying,’ Maram asked Lord Harsha, ‘that a man should not love his wife?’
On the wall above the table hung a bright tapestry that Lord Harsha’s dead wife had once woven. He gazed at it with an obvious fondness, and he said, ‘Of course a man should come to love his wife. But it is best if marriage comes first, and so then a man does not let love sweep away his reason so that he loses sight of the more important things.’
‘But what could be more important than love?’ Maram asked.
And Lord Harsha told him, ‘Honor, above all else.’
‘But I had to honor my duty to Val, didn’t I?’
Lord Harsha nodded his head. ‘Certainly you did. But before you went off with him, you might have married my daughter and given her your name.’
‘But I –’
‘Too, you might have given her your estates, such as they are, and most important of all, a child.’
As the look of longing lighting up Behira’s face grew even brighter, Maram closed his mouth, for he seemed to have run out of objections. And then he said, ‘But our journeys were dangerous! You can’t imagine! I didn’t want to leave behind a fatherless child.’
Lord Harsha sighed at this, then said, ‘In our land, since the Great Battle, there are many fatherless children. And too few men to be husbands to all the widows and maidens.’
All my life, I had heard of the ancient Battle of the Sarburn referred to in this way, but it seemed strange for Lord Harsha to give the recent Battle of the Culhadosh Commons that name as well.
‘Sar Joshu himself,’ Lord Harsha continued, ‘lost his father and both his brothers there.’
Joshu looked straight at me then, and I felt in him the pain of a loss that was scarcely less than my own. I remembered that his mother had died giving him birth, while his two older sisters had been married off. Joshu had inherited his family’s rich farm lands only a few miles from here, and who could blame Lord Harsha for wanting to join estates and take this orphan into his own family?
‘Sar Joshu,’ I said, looking down the table. I studied the two diamonds set into the silver ring that encircled his finger. ‘Before the battle, my brother gave you your warrior’s ring. And now you wear that of a knight?’
Sar Joshu bowed his head at this, but seemed too modest to say anything. And so Lord Harsha told us of his deeds: ‘You came late, Lord Valashu, to the fight with the Ikurians, and so you did not witness Sar Joshu’s slaying of two knights in defense of Lord Asaru. Nor the lance wound through his lung that unhorsed him and nearly killed him. In reward for his valor, Lord Sharad, Lord Avijan and myself agreed that he should be knighted.’
Now I could only bow my head to Joshu. ‘Then Mesh has another fine knight to help make up for those who have fallen.’
‘Nothing,’ Joshu said, ‘can ever replace those who fell at the Great Battle.’
I thought of my father and my six brothers, and I said, ‘No, of course not. But as I have had to learn, life still must go on.’
‘And that,’ Lord Harsha said, ‘is exactly the point I have been trying to make. Morjin’s cursed armies cut down a whole forest of warriors and knights. It’s time new seeds were planted and new trees were grown.’
I considered this as I studied the way that Joshu looked at Behira. I sensed in him a burning passion – but not for her.
‘Sar Joshu,’ I asked, ‘have you ever been in love?’
He looked down at his hands, and he said simply, ‘Yes, Lord Valashu.’
As Behira took charge of finally passing around the roasted chickens, blueberry muffins, mashed potatoes and asparagus that she had prepared for dinner, it came out that Joshu had indeed known the kind of all-consuming love that makes the very stars weep – and he still did. It seemed that he had been smitten by a young woman named Sarai Garvar, of the Lake Country Garvars. But a great lord had married her instead.
‘My father was to have spoken with her father, Lord Garvar, after the battle,’ Joshu told us. Although he shrugged his shoulders, I felt his throat tighten with a great sadness. ‘But my father died, my brothers, too, and so it nearly was with me. And so I lost her to another. Everyone knows how bitter Lord Tanu was when the enemy killed his wife during the sack of the Elahad castle. So who can blame him for wanting to take a new wife? And who can blame Lord Garvar for wanting to make a match with one of Mesh’s greatest lords?’
Lord Tanu, of course, had been not only my father’s second-in-command but held large estates around Godhra, and his family owned many of the smithies there. As Joshu had said, who could blame any father for wanting to join fortunes with such a man?
‘But Lord Tanu is old!’ Behira suddenly called out as she banged a spoonful of potatoes against her plate. She seemed outraged less for Joshu’s sake than for Lord Tanu’s new wife. ‘And Sarai is only my age!’
‘Here, now!’ Lord Harsha said, laying his hand upon her arm. ‘Mind the crockery, will you? Your mother made it herself out of good clay before you were born!’
Behira looked down at the disk of plain earthenware before her, and she fell into a silence. And I said to Joshu, ‘Then if any man should appreciate Maram’s feelings in this matter, it is you.’
‘I do,’ he agreed, nodding his head sadly to Maram. ‘But Lord Harsha is right: how can any man’s feelings count at a time such as this?’
Although I sensed his sympathy for Maram, there was steel in him too, and great stubbornness. I knew that, having lost one prospective bride, he would not easily surrender what Lord Harsha had rightly deemed as a good match.
For a while we busied ourselves eating the hearty food that Behira had prepared us. For dessert, she brought out a cherry pie and cheese, and made us chicory tea as well. But Maram wanted something stro
nger than this – stronger even than the black beer that he had been swilling all through dinner. And so he announced that he had to retrieve a gift from the barn; he nudged my knee beneath the table to indicate that I should follow him.
We stepped out into a warm spring night full of chirping crickets and twinkling stars. We lit the lantern that Lord Harsha had given us, then went into the barn, with its smells of cattle and chicken droppings. We rummaged around in the saddlebags that we had placed on the straw near our horses’ stalls. And Maram said to me, ‘This is not the homecoming I had imagined.’
I nodded my head at this, then asked him: ‘But can you really blame Lord Harsha for wanting what is best for Behira?’
‘I am best for her!’ Maram half-bellowed. Then his voice softened as he said, ‘I love her – this time, I’m really sure that I do.’
I tried not to smile at this, and I said, ‘But you have put off the wedding, again and again. Some might take this as a sign that you don’t really want to marry her’
‘That doesn’t mean I’m ready to let that little squire take her!’
‘Sar Joshu,’ I told him, ‘is a full knight now, and a good man.’
‘I don’t care if he’s a damn angel! He doesn’t love Behira as I do, and she doesn’t love him! Will you help with this, Val?’
I thought about this for a while then said, ‘You’re my best friend, but what I won’t do is to help you make Behira into an old maid.’
‘But I will marry her, if I can, as soon as our business here is done – I swear I will!’
‘Will you?’
He found his sword resting upon a bale of hay, and drew it out of its scabbard. He laid his hand on the flat of the blade and said, ‘I swear by all that I honor that I will marry Behira!’
The Diamond Warriors Page 4
