Guardians of the West

by David Eddings

  ‘Then it would be faster just to start marching when we get to the first shallows?’

  She nodded. ‘It’s likely to take several days for my generals to assemble their troops and get their supplies together,’ she added. ‘I’ll instruct them to follow us as quickly as they can. Once they join us, we can go on to Rheon and lay siege until Brendig and Hettar arrive.’

  ‘You know, you’re really very good at this, Porenn.’

  She smiled sadly. ‘Rhodar was a very good teacher.’

  ‘You loved him very much, didn’t you?’

  She sighed. ‘More than you can possibly imagine, Garion.’

  They reached Boktor the following afternoon, and Garion accompanied Queen Porenn and her slightly sullen son to the palace, with Silk tagging along behind. As soon as they arrived, Porenn sent a messenger to the headquarters of the Drasnian military forces.

  ‘Shall we take some tea while we’re waiting, gentlemen?’ the little blonde queen offered as the three of them sat comfortably in a large, airy chamber with red velvet drapes at the windows.

  ‘Only if you can’t find anything stronger,’ Silk replied with an impudent grin.

  ‘Isn’t it a trifle early in the day for that, Prince Kheldar?’ she asked him reprovingly.

  ‘I’m an Alorn, Auntie dear. It’s never too early in the day.’

  ‘Kheldar, please don’t call me that. It makes me feel positively antique.’

  ‘But you are, Porenn—my aunt, I mean, not antique, of course.’

  ‘Are you ever serious about anything?’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  She sighed and then laughed a warm tinkle of a laugh.

  Perhaps a quarter of an hour later, a stocky man with a red face and a somewhat gaudy orange uniform was shown into the room. ‘Your Majesty sent for me?’ he asked, bowing respectfully.

  ‘Ah, General Haldar,’ she replied. ‘Are you acquainted with his Majesty, King Belgarion?’

  ‘We met briefly, ma’am—at your late husband’s funeral.’ He bowed floridly to Garion. ‘Your Majesty.’

  ‘General.’

  ‘And of course you’ve met Prince Kheldar.’

  ‘Of course’ the general replied. ‘Your Highness.’

  ‘General.’ Silk looked at him closely. ‘Isn’t that a new decoration, Haldar?’ he asked.

  The red-faced general touched the cluster of medals on his chest somewhat deprecatingly. ‘That’s what generals do in peacetime, Prince Kheldar. We give each other medals.’

  ‘I’m afraid that the peacetime is at an end, General Haldar,’ Porenn said rather crisply. ‘You’ve heard what happened at Jarviksholm in Cherek, I presume.’

  ‘Yes, your Majesty,’ he replied. ‘It was a well-executed campaign.’

  ‘We are now going to proceed against Rheon. The Bear-cult has abducted King Belgarion’s son.’

  ‘Abducted?’ Haldar’s expression was incredulous.

  ‘I’m afraid so. I think the time has come to eliminate the cult entirely. That’s why we’re moving on Rheon. We have a fleet in the harbor loaded with Belgarion’s Rivans. Tomorrow, we’ll sail up to the shallows and disembark. We’ll march overland toward Rheon. I want you to muster the army and follow us as quickly a you possibly can.’

  Haldar was frowning as if something he had heard had distracted him. ‘Are you sure that the Rivan Prince was abducted, you Majesty?’ he asked. ‘He was not killed?’

  ‘No,’ Garion answered firmly. ‘It was clearly an abduction.’

  Haldar began to pace up and down agitatedly. ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ he muttered, almost to himself.

  ‘Do you understand your instructions, General?’ Porenn asked him.

  ‘What? Oh, yes, your Majesty. I’m to gather the army and catch up with King Belgarion’s Rivans before they reach Rheon.’

  ‘Precisely. We’ll besiege the town until the rest of our forces arrive. We’ll be joined at Rheon by Algars and elements of the Sendarian army.’

  ‘I’ll start at once, your Majesty,’ he assured her. His expression was still slightly abstracted, and his frown was worried.

  ‘Is there anything wrong, General?’ she asked him.

  ‘What? Oh, no, your Majesty. I’ll go to headquarters and issue the necessary orders immediately.’

  ‘Thank you, General Haldar. That will be all.’

  ‘He certainly heard something he didn’t like,’ Silk observed after the general had left.

  ‘We’ve all heard things lately that we haven’t liked,’ Garion said.

  ‘It wasn’t quite the same, though,’ Silk muttered. ‘Excuse me for a bit. I think I’m going to go ask a few questions.’ He rose from his chair and quietly left the room.

  Early the next morning, the fleet weighed anchor and began to move slowly upstream from Boktor. Though the day had dawned clear and sunny, by noon a heavy cloud cover had swept in off the Gulf of Cherek to turn the Drasnian countryside gray and depressing.

  ‘I hope it doesn’t rain,’ Barak growled from his place at the tiller. ‘I hate slogging through mud on my way to a fight.’

  The shallows of the Mrin proved to be a very wide stretch of river where the water rippled over gravel bars.

  ‘Have you ever considered dredging this?’ Garion asked the Queen of Drasnia.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘As a matter of policy I don’t want the Mrin navigable beyond this point. I’d rather not have Tolnedran merchantmen bypassing Boktor.’ She smiled sweetly at Ce’Nedra. ‘I’m not trying to be offensive, dear,’ she said, ‘but your countrymen always seem to want to avoid customs. As things now stand, I control the North Caravan Route and I need that customs revenue.’

  ‘I understand, Porenn,’ Ce’Nedra assured her. ‘I’d do it that way myself.’

  They beached the fleet on the northern bank of the river, and Garion’s forces began to disembark. ‘You’ll lead the ships back downriver and across to Darine, then?’ Barak said to the bearded Greldik.

  ‘Right,’ Greldik said. ‘I’ll have Brendig and his Sendars back here within a week.’

  ‘Good. Tell him to follow us to Rheon as quickly as he can. I’ve never been happy with the idea of long sieges.’

  ‘Are you going to send Seabird back with me?’

  Barak scratched at his beard thoughtfully. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I think I’ll leave her here.’

  ‘Believe me, I’m not going to get her sunk, Barak.’

  ‘I know, but I just feel better about the idea of having her here in case I need her. Will you come to Rheon with Brendig? There’s bound to be some good fighting.’

  Greldik’s face grew mournful. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Anheg ordered me to come back to Val Alorn when I finish freighting the Sendars here.’

  ‘Oh. That’s too bad.’

  Greldik grunted sourly. ‘Have fun at Rheon,’ he said, ‘and try not to get yourself killed.’

  ‘I’ll make a special point of it.’

  By the time the troops and supplies had all been unloaded, it was late afternoon. The clouds continued to roll in, though there was as yet no rain. ‘I think we may as well set up a camp here,’ Garion said to the others as they all stood on the gently sloping riverbank. ‘We wouldn’t get too far before dark anyway, and if we get a good night’s sleep, we can start early in the morning.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Silk agreed.

  ‘Did you find out anything about Haldar?’ Queen Porenn asked the rat-faced little man. ‘I know there was something about him that was bothering you.’

  ‘Nothing really very specific.’ Silk shrugged. ‘He’s been doing a lot of traveling lately, though.’

  ‘He’s a general, Kheldar, and my Chief of Staff. Generals do have to make inspection tours from time to time, you know.’

  ‘But usually not alone,’ Silk replied. ‘When he makes these trips, he doesn’t even take his aide along.’

  ‘I think you’re just being overly suspicious.’

  �
��It’s my nature to be suspicious, Auntie dear.’

  She stamped her foot. ‘Will you stop calling me that?’

  He looked at her mildly. ‘Does it really bother you, Porenn?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve told you that it bothers me.’

  ‘Maybe I ought to try to remember that, then.’

  ‘You’re absolutely impossible, do you know that?’

  ‘Of course I do, Auntie dear.’

  For the next two days the Rivan army marched steadily eastward across the desolate, gray-green moors, a wasteland of barren, sparsely vegetated hills interspersed with rank patches of thorn and bramble springing up around dark pools of stagnant water. The sky remained gray and threatening, but there was as yet no rain.

  Garion rode at the head of the column with a bleakly determined look on his face, speaking infrequently except to issue commands. His scouts reported at intervals, announcing that there was no sign of cult forces ahead and with equal certainty that there was as yet no evidence that the Drasnian pike men under General Haldar were coming up from the rear.

  When they stopped for a hasty midday meal on that second day, Polgara approached him gravely. Her blue cloak seemed to whisper through the tall grass as she came, and her familiar fragrance came to him on the vagrant breeze. ‘Let’s walk a bit, Garion,’ she said quietly. ‘There’s something we need to discuss.’

  ‘All right.’ His reply was short, even curt.

  She did something then that she had rarely done in the past several years. With a kind of solemn affection, she linked her arm in his, and together they walked away from the army and the rest of their friends, moving up a grassy knoll.

  ‘You’ve grown very grim in the past few weeks, dear,’ she said as they stopped at the crest of the knoll.

  ‘I think I’ve got reason enough, Aunt Pol.’

  ‘I know that you’ve been hurt very deeply by all of this, Garion, and that you’re filled with a great rage; but don’t let it turn you into a savage.’

  ‘Aunt Pol, I didn’t start this,’ he reminded her. ‘They tried to kill my wife. Then they murdered one of my closest friends and tried to start a war between me and Anheg. And now they’ve stolen my son. Don’t you think that a little punishment might be in order?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she replied, looking directly into his face, ‘but you must not allow your sense of outrage to run away with you and make you decide to start wading in blood. You have tremendous power, Garion, and you could very easily use it to do unspeakable things to your enemies. If you do that, the power will turn you into something as vile as Torak was. You’ll begin to take pleasure in the horrors you inflict. In time, that pleasure will come to own you.’

  He stared at her, startled by the intensity in her voice and by the way the single white lock at her brow seemed to blaze up suddenly.

  ‘It’s a very real danger, Garion. In a peculiar way, you’re in more peril right now than you were when you faced Torak.’

  ‘I’m not going to let them get away with what they’ve done,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I’m not just going to let them go.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting that, dear. We’ll be at Rheon soon, and there’ll be fighting. You’re an Alorn, and I’m sure that you’ll be very enthusiastic about the fighting. I want you to promise me that you won’t let that enthusiasm and your sense of outrage push you over the line into wanton slaughter.’

  ‘Not if they surrender,’ he replied stiffly.

  ‘And what then? What will you do with your prisoners?’

  He frowned. He hadn’t really considered that.

  ‘For the most part, the Bear-cult is composed of the ignorant and the misguided. They’re so obsessed with a single idea that they can’t even comprehend the enormity of what they’ve done. Will you butcher them for stupidity? Stupidty is unfortunate, but it hardly deserves that kind of punishment.’

  ‘What about Ulfgar?’ he demanded.

  She smiled a bleak little smile. ‘Now that,’ she said, ‘is another matter.’

  A large, blue-banded hawk spiraled down out of the murky sky. ‘Are we having a little family get-together?’ Beldin asked harshly, even as he shimmered into his own form.

  ‘Where have you been, uncle?’ Aunt Pol asked him quite calmly. ‘I left word with the twins for you to catch up with us.’

  ‘I just got back from Mallorea,’ he grunted, scratching at his stomach. ‘Where’s Belgarath?’

  ‘At Val Alorn,’ she replied, ‘and then he’s going on to Mar Terrin. He’s trying to follow the trail that’s supposed to be hidden in the mysteries. You’ve heard about what’s happened?’

  ‘Most of it, I think. The twins showed me the passage that was hidden in the Mrin Codex, and I heard about the Rivan Warder and Belgarion’s son. You’re moving against Rheon, right?’

  ‘Naturally,’ she answered. ‘That’s the source of the infection.’

  The hunchback looked speculatively at Garion. ‘I’m sure you’re an expert tactician, Belgarion,’ he said, ‘but your reasoning escapes me this time.’

  Garion looked at him blankly.

  ‘You’re moving to attack a superior force in a fortified city, right?’

  ‘I suppose you could put it that way.’

  ‘Then why is more than half your army camped at the shallows of the Mrin, two days behind you? Don’t you think you might need them?’

  ‘What are you talking about, uncle?’ Aunt Pol asked sharply.

  ‘I thought I was speaking quite plainly. The Drasnian army’s camped at the shallows. They don’t show signs of planning to move at any time in the near future. They’re even fortifying their positions.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  He shrugged. ‘Fly back and have a look for yourself.’

  ‘We’d better go tell the others, Garion,’ Aunt Pol said gravely. ‘Something has gone terribly wrong somewhere.’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  ‘What is that man thinking of?’ Queen Porenn burst out in a sudden uncharacteristic fury. ‘I specifically ordered him to catch up with us.’

  Silk’s face was bleak. ‘I think we should have checked the inestimable General Haldar’s feet for that telltale brand,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not serious!’ Porenn exclaimed.

  ‘He’s deliberately disobeying your orders, Porenn, and he’s doing it in such a way as to endanger you and all the rest of us.’

  ‘Believe me, I’ll get to the bottom of this as soon as I get back to Boktor.’

  ‘Unfortunately, we’re not going in that direction just now.’

  ‘Then I’ll go back to the shallows alone,’ she declared. ‘If necessary, I’ll relieve him of his command.’

  ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘you won’t.’

  She stared at him incredulously. ‘Kheldar, do you realize to whom you’re speaking?’

  ‘Perfectly, Porenn, but it’s too dangerous.’

  ‘It’s my duty.’

  ‘No,’ he corrected. ‘Actually, your duty is to stay alive long enough to raise Kheva to be King of Drasnia.’

  She bit her lip. ‘That’s unfair, Kheldar.’

  ‘Life is hard, Porenn.’

  ‘He’s right, your Majesty,’ Javelin said. ‘General Haldar has already committed treason by disobeying you. I don’t think he’d hesitate to add your murder to that crime.’

  ‘We’re going to need some men,’ Barak rumbled, ‘a few, anyway. Otherwise we’re going to have to stop and wait for Brendig.’

  Silk shook his head. ‘Haldar’s camped at the shallows. If what we suspect is true, he can keep Brendig from ever disembarking his troops.’

  ‘Well,’ Ce’Nedra demanded angrily, ‘what do we do now?’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve got much choice,’ Barak said. ‘We’ll have to turn around and go back to the shallows and arrest Haldar for treason. Then we turn around and come back with the pikemen.’

  ‘That could take almost a week,’ she protested.

  ‘What other
alternatives do we have? We have to have those pikemen.’

  ‘I think you’re overlooking something, Barak,’ Silk said. ‘Have you noticed a slight chill in the air the last two days?’

  ‘A little—in the mornings.’

  ‘We’re in northeastern Drasnia. Winter comes very early up here.’

  ‘Winter? But it’s only early autumn.’

  ‘We’re a long way north, my friend. We could get the first snowfall at any time now.’

  Barak started to swear.

  Silk motioned Javelin aside, and the two of them spoke together briefly.

  ‘It’s all falling apart, isn’t it, Garion?’ Ce’Nedra said, her lower lip trembling.

  ‘We’ll fix it, Ce’Nedra,’ he said, taking her in his arms.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘I haven’t quite worked that out yet.’

  ‘We’re vulnerable, Garion,’ Barak said seriously. ‘We’re marching directly into cult territory-with a vastly inferior force. We’re wide open to ambush.’

  ‘You’ll need somebody to scout on ahead,’ Beldin said, looking up from the piece of cold meat he had been tearing with his teeth. He stuffed the rest of the chunk in his mouth and wiped his fingers on the front of his filthy tunic. ‘I can be fairly unobtrusive if I want to be.’

  ‘I’ll take care of that, uncle,’ Polgara told him. ‘Hettar’s coming north with the Algar clans. Could you go to him and tell him what’s happened? We need him as quickly as he can get here.’

  He gave her an appraising look, still chewing on the chunk of meat. ‘Not a bad idea, Pol,’ he admitted. ‘I thought that married life might have made your wits soft, but it looks as if it’s only your behind that’s getting flabby.’

  ‘Do you mind, uncle?’ she asked acidly.

  ‘I’d better get started,’ he said. He crouched, spread his arms, and shimmered into the form of a hawk.

  ‘I’ll be away for a few days,’ Silk said, coming back to join them. ‘We might be able to salvage this yet.’ Then he turned on his heel and went directly to his horse.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ Garion asked Javelin.

  ‘We need men,’ Javelin replied. ‘He’s going after some.’