His soft eyes found mine through the thin light as his thick, sensuous lips broke into a smile. Upon taking in the whole of his form - the dense, curly beard which covered his heavy face, no less his massive chest, arms and legs - I decided that it would be a bad idea to try to outride the Red Knights. No weight of their armor, be it made of steel plate, could match the mass of muscle and fat that padded the frame of Maram Marshayk.
'If we flee,' Kane said to him, poking his finger into Maram's belly, 'are you willing to be left behind when your horse dies of exhaustion?'
It was too dark to see Maram's florid face blanch, but I felt the blood drain from it, even so. He looked out toward our enemy's campfires, and said, 'Would you really leave me behind?'
'So, I would,' Kane growled out. His dark eyes drilled into Maram. 'At need, I'd sacrifice any and all of us to fulfill this quest.'
Maram took a long pull of brandy as he turned to regard Kane. 'Ah, a sacrifice is it, then? Well, I won't have
that
on your conscience. If a sacrifice truly needs to be made, I'll turn to cross lances with the Red Knights by myself.'
I looked back and forth between Maram and Kane as they glared at each other. I did not think that either of them was quite telling the truth. I rested my hand on Maram's shoulder as I caught Kane's gaze. And I said, 'No one is going to be left behind. And we
will
fulfill this quest, as we did the first.'
Just then Master Juwain, sitting with our other friends by the fire, finished writing something in one of his journals and came over to us. He was as small as Maram was large and as ugly as Kane was well-made. His head somewhat resembled a walnut, and a misshapen one at that: all lumpy and bald with a knurled nose and ears that stuck out too far. But I had never know a man whose eyes were so intelligent and clear. Like the rest of us, he wore a gray traveling cloak, though he refused to bind his limbs in steel rings of carry any weapon more deadly than the little knife he used to sharpen his quills.
'Come,' he said as he grasped Maram's wrist. 'If we're to hold council, let us all sit together. Liljana is nearly finished making dinner.'
I looked over toward the fire where a plump, matronly woman bent over a pot of bubbling stew. A girl about ten years old sat next to her making cakes on a griddle while a boy slightly older poked the fire with a long, charred stick.
'Excellent,' Maram agreed, 'we'll eat and then we'll talk.'
'You would talk more cogently,' Master Juwain told him, 'if you would take your drink
after
you eat. Or forbear it altogether.'
With fierce determination, Master Juwain suddenly clamped his knotted fingers around Maram's mug. His small hands were surprisingly strong, from a lifetime of disciplines and hard work, and he managed to pry free the mug from Maram's thick palm.
Maram eyed the mug as might a child a candy that has been taken from him. He said, 'I have
forborne
my brandy these last three days, waiting for the Red Knights to attack us, too bad. As for talk, cogent as it is clever, please don't forget that I'm now called Five-Horned Maram.'
Once, a lifetime ago it seemed, Maram had been an adept of the Great White Brotherhood under the tutelage of Master Juwain, and everyone had called him 'Brother Maram.' But he had long since abjured his vows to forsake wine, women and war. Now he wore steel armor beneath his cloak and bore a sword that was nearly as long and keen as my own. Less than a year before, in the tent of Sajagax, the Sarni's mightiest chieftain, he had become the only man in memory to down five great horns of the Sarni's potent beer - and to remain standing to tell everyone of his great feat.
Kane continued glaring at Maram, and again he poked his steely finger into his belly. He said, 'You'd do well to forbear brandy
and
bread, at least for a while. Are you trying to kill yourself, as well as your horse?'
In truth, ever since the Battle of Culhadosh Commons and the sack of my father's castle, Maram had been eating enough for two men and drinking more than enough for five.
'Forbear, you say?' he muttered to Kane. 'I might as well forbear life itself.'
'But you're growing as fat
as
a bear.'
Maram patted his belly and smiled. 'Well, what I am? Haven't you seen a bear eat when winter is coming?'
'But it's Ashte - another month, summer will be upon us!'
'No, my friend, there you're wrong,' Maram told him, with a shake of his head and another belch. 'Wherever we journey it will be winter - and deep winter at that, for we'll be deep into this damn new quest. Do you remember the last time we went tramping all across Ea? I nearly starved to death. And so is it not the soul of prudence that I should fortify myself against the deprivations that are sure to come?'
Kane had no answer against this logic. And so he snapped at Maram: 'Fortify yourself then, if you will. But at least forbear your brandy until there's a better time and place to drink it.'
So saying, he took the mug from Master Juwain and moved to empty its contents onto the grass.
'Hold!' Maram cried out. 'It would be a crime to waste such good brandy!'
'So,' Kane said, eyeing the dark liquor inside the mug. 'So.'
He smiled his savage smile, as if the great mystery of life's unfairness pleased him almost as much as it pained him. Then, with a single, quick motion, he put the mug to his lips and threw down the brandy in three huge gulps.
'Forbear yourself, damn you!' Maram called out to him.
'Damn
me? You should thank me, eh?'
'Thank you
why?
For saving me from drunkenness?'
'No - for taking a little pleasure from this fine brandy of yours.'
Kane handed the mug back to Maram, who stood looking into its hollows.
'Ah, well, I suppose
one
of us should have savored it,' he said to Kane. 'It pleases me that it pleased you so deeply, my friend. Perhaps someday I can return the favor - and save
you
from becoming a drunk.'
Kane smiled at this as Maram began laughing at the little joke he had made, and so did Master Juwain and I. One mug of brandy had as much effect on the quenchless Kane as a like amount of water would on all the sea of grasses of the Wendrush.
I looked at Kane as I tapped my finger against Maram's cup. I said, 'Perhaps we should all forbear brandy for a while.'
'Ha!' Kane said. 'There's no need that I should.'
'The need is to encourage Maram to remain sober,' I said. I couldn't help smiling as I added, 'Besides, we all must make sacri-fices.'
Kane looked at Maram for an uncomfortably long moment, and then announced, 'All right then, if Maram will vow to forbear, so shall I.'
'And so shall I,' I said.
Maram blinked at the new moisture in his eyes; I couldn't quite tell if our little sacrifice had moved him or if the prospect of giving up his beloved brandy made him weep. And then he clapped me on the arm as he nodded at Kane and said, 'You would do
that
for
me?'
'We would,' Kane and I said with one breath.
'Ah, well
that
pleases me more than I could ever tell you, even if I had a whole barrel full of brandy to loosen my tongue/ Maram paused to dip his fat finger down into the mug, moistening it with the last few drops of brandy that clung to its insides. Then he licked his finger and smiled. 'But I must say that I would wish no such deprivation upon my friends. Just because I suffer doesn't mean that the rest of the world must, too.'
I glanced at the campfires of our enemies, then I turned back to look at Maram. 'In these circumstances, we'll gladly suffer with you.'
'Very well,' Maram said. Then he nodded at Master Juwain. 'Sir, will you be a witness to our vows?'
'Even as I was once before,' Master Juwain said dryly.
'Excellent,' Maram said. 'Then unless it be needed for, ah, medicinal purposes, I vow to forbear brandy until we find the one we seek.'
'Ha!' Kane cried out. 'Rather let us say that unless Master Juwain
prescribes
brandy for medicinal purposes, we shall all forbear it.'
'Excellent excellent,' Maram agreed, nodding his head. He held up his mug and smiled. 'Then why don't we all return to the fire and drink one last toast to our resolve?'
'Maram!' I half-shouted at him.
'All right, all right!' he called back. The breath huffed out of him, and for a moment he seemed like a bellows emptied of air. 'I was just, ah, testing
your
resolve, my friend. Now, why don't we all go have a taste of Liljana's fine stew.
That,
at least, is still permitted, isn't it?'
We all walked back to the fire and sat down on our sleeping furs set out around it. I smiled at Daj, the dark-souled little boy that we had rescued out of Argattha along with the Lightstone. He smiled back, and I noticed that he was not quite so desperate inside nor small outside as when we had found him a starving slave in Morjin's hellhole of a city. It was a good thing, smiling, I thought. It lifted up the spirit and gave courage to others. I silently thanked Maram for making me laugh, and I resolved to sustain my gladness of life as long as I could. This was the vow I had made, high on a sacred mountain above the castle where my mother and grandmother had been crucified. Daj, sitting next to me, jabbed the glowing end of his fire-stick toward me and called out, 'At ready! Let's practice swords until it's time to eat!'
He moved to put down his stick and draw the small sword I had given him when we had set out on our new quest. His enthusiasm for this weapon both impressed and saddened me. I would rather have seen him playing chess or the flute, or even playing
at
swords with other boys his age. But this savage boy. I reminded myself, had never really been a boy. I remembered how in Argattha he had fought a dragon by my side and had stuck a spear into the bodies of our wounded enemies.
'It
is
nearly time to eat,' Liljana called out to us- Her heavy breasts moved against her thick, strong body as she stirred the succulent-smelling stew. 'Why don't you practice after dinner?'
Although her words came out of her firm mouth as a question, sweetly posed, there was no question that we must put off our swordwork until later. Beneath her bound, iron-gray hair, her pleasant face betrayed an iron will. She liked to bring the cheer and good order of a home into our encampments by directing cooking, eating and cleaning, even talking, and many other details of our lives. I might be the leader of our company on our quest across Ea's burning steppes and icy mountains, but she sought by her nature to try to lead me from within. Through countless kindnesses and her relentless devotion, she had dug up the secrets of my soul. It seemed that there was no sacrifice that she wouldn't make for me - even as she never tired, in her words and deeds, of letting me know how much she loved me. At her best, however, she called me to
my
best, as warrior, dreamer and man. Now that the insides of my father's castle had been burnt to ashes, she was the only mother I still had.
'There will be no swordwork tonight,' I said, to Liljana and Daj, 'unless the Red Knights attack us. We need to hold council.'
'Very well then, but I hope you're not still considering attacking
them.'
Liljana looked through the steam wafting up from the stew, straight at Kane. She shook her head, then called out, 'Estrella, are those cakes ready yet?'
Estrella, a dark, slender girl of quicksilver expressions and bright smiles, dapped her hands to indicate that the yellow rushk cakes - piled high on a grass mat by her griddle - were indeed ready to eat. She could not speak, for she, too, had been Morjin's slave, and he had used his black arts to steal the words from her tongue. But she had the hearing of a cat; in truth, there was something feline about her, in her wild, triangular face and in the way she moved, instinctually and gracefully, as if all the features of the world must be sensed and savored. With her black curls gathered about her neck, her lustrous skin and especially her large, luminous eyes, she possessed a primeval beauty. I had never known anyone, not even Kane, who seemed so alive.
Almost without thought, she plucked one of the freshest cakes from the top of the piles and placed it in my hand. It was still quite hot, though not enough to burn me. As I took a bite out of it, her smile was like the rising sun.
'Estrella, you shouldn't serve until we're all seated,' Liljana instructed her.
Estrella smiled at Liljana, too, though she did not move to do as she was told. Instead, seeing that I had finished my cake, she gave me another one. She delighted in bringing me such little joys as the eating of a hot, nutty rushk cake. It had always been that way between us, ever since I had found her clinging to a cold, castle wall and saved her from falling to her death. And countless times since that dark night, in her lovely eyes and her deep covenant with life, she had kept me from falling into much worse.
'The girl never minds me,' Liljana complained. 'She always does just as she pleases.'
I smiled because what she said was true. I watched as Estrella tried to urge one of the cakes into Liljana's hand. She seemed not to resent Liljana's stern looks or scolding; indeed, Liljana's oppressive care for her and her desire to teach her good manners obviously pleased her, as did almost everything about the people she loved. Her will to be happy, I thought, was even greater than Liljana's urge to remake the world as the paradise it had been in the Age of the Mother. It must have vexed Liljana that our quest depended utterly upon this wild, magical child.
'She was a slave of the Red Priests,' Kane said to Liljana. 'So who can blame her for not wanting to be your slave, too?'
As Liljana paused in stirring the stew to glare at Kane, more wounded by his cruel words than angry. Master Juwain cleared his throat and said, 'The closer we've come to Argattha, it seems, the more she has relished her freedom.'
We were, I tought, much too close to Morjin's dark city, carved out of the dark heart of the black mountain called Skartaru. Our course across the Wendrush had inevitably brought us this way. And it seemed that it had inevitably brought the knights of Morjin's Dragon Guard upon our heels. As Estrella began passing out rushk cakes to everyone, Liljana called for Atara to sit down, and she began ladling the stew into wooden bowls. From out of the darkness at the edge of our encampment where our horses were hobbled, a tall woman appeared and walked straight toward us. And that, I thought, was a miracle, because a white cloth encircled her head, covering the hollows which had once held the loveliest and most sparkling pair of sapphire-blue eyes. Atara Ars Narmada, daughter of the murdered King Kiritan and Sajagax's beloved granddaughter, moved with all the prowess of the princess and the warrior-woman that she was. In consideration of our quest, she had cast off the lionskin cloak that she usually wore in favor of plain gray woolens. Gone were the golden hoops that had once encircled her lithe arms and the lapis beads bound to her long, golden hair. Few, outside of the Wendrush, would recognize her as one of the Sarni. But in her hand she gripped the great, double-curved bow of the Sarni archers, and the Sarni knew her as the great
imakla
warrior of the Manslayer Society. I knew her as a scryer who had great powers of sight, in space and time, and most of all, as the only woman I could ever love.