‘Porenn,’ Polgara said, trying to look back down over her shoulder, ‘does it seem to you that I’ve been putting on a few extra pounds in the past months?’
Porenn smiled gently. ‘Of course not, Polgara,’ she said. ‘He was only teasing you.’
Polgara, however, still had a slightly worried look on her face as she removed her blue cloak. ‘I’ll go on ahead,’ she told Garion. ‘Keep your troops moving, but don’t run. I don’t want you to blunder into something before I have a chance to warn you.’ Then she blurred, and the great snowy owl drifted away on soft, noiseless wings.
Garion moved his forces carefully after that, deploying them into the best possible defensive posture as they marched. He doubled his scouts and rode personally to the top of every hill along the way to search the terrain ahead. The pace of their march slowed to no more than five leagues a day; though the delay fretted him, he felt that he had no real choice in the matter.
Polgara returned each morning to report that no apparent dangers lay ahead and then she flew away again on noiseless wings.
‘How does she manage that?’ Ce’Nedra asked. ‘I don’t think she’s sleeping at all.’
‘Pol can go for weeks without sleep,’ Durnik told her. ‘She’ll be all right—if it doesn’t go on for too long.’
‘Belgarion,’ Errand said in his light voice, pulling his chestnut stallion in beside Garion’s mount, ‘you did know that we’re being watched, didn’t you?’
‘What?’
‘There are men watching us.’
‘Where?’
‘Several places. They’re awfully well hidden. And there are other men galloping back and forth between that town we’re going to and the army back at the river.’
‘I don’t like that very much,’ Barak said. ‘It sounds as if they’re trying to co-ordinate something.’
Garion looked back over his shoulder at Queen Porenn, who rode beside Ce’Nedra. ‘Would the Drasnian army attack us if Haldar ordered them to?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said quite firmly. ‘The troops are absolutely loyal to me. They’d refuse that kind of order.’
‘What if they thought they were rescuing you?’ Errand asked.
‘Rescuing?’
‘That’s what Ulfgar is suggesting,’ the young man replied. ‘The general’s supposed to tell his troops that our army here is holding you prisoner.’
‘I think they would attack under those circumstances, your Majesty,’ Javelin said, ‘and if the cult and the army catch us between them, we could be in very deep trouble.’
‘What else can go wrong?’ Garion fumed.
‘At least it isn’t snowing,’ Lelldorin said. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
The army seemed almost to crawl across the barren landscape as the clouds continued to roll ponderously overhead. The world seemed locked in a chill, colorless gray, and each morning the scum of ice lying on the stagnant pools was thicker.
‘We’re never going to get there at this rate, Garion,’ Ce’Nedra said impatiently one gloomy midday as she rode beside him.
‘If we get ambushed, we might not get there at all, Ce’Nedra,’ he replied. ‘I don’t like this any more than you do, but I don’t think we’ve really got much choice.’
‘I want my baby.’
‘So do I.’
‘Well, do something then.’
‘I’m open to suggestions.’
‘Can’t you—?’ She made a vague sort of gesture with one hand.
He shook his head. ‘You know that there are limits to that sort of thing, Ce’Nedra.’
‘What good is it then?’ she demanded bitterly, pulling her gray Rivan cloak more tightly about her against the chill.
The great white owl awaited them just over the next rise. She sat on a broken limb of a dead-white snag, observing them with her unblinking golden eyes.
‘Lady Polgara,’ Ce’Nedra greeted her with a formal inclination of her head.
Gravely the white owl returned her a stiff little bow. Garion suddenly laughed.
The owl blurred, and the air around it wavered briefly. Then Polgara was there, seated sedately on the limb with her ankles crossed. ‘What’s so amusing, Garion?’ she asked him.
‘I’ve never seen a bird bow before,’ he replied. ‘It just struck me as funny, that’s all.’
‘Try not to let it overwhelm you, dear,’ she said primly. ‘Come over here and help me down.’
‘Yes, Aunt Pol.’
After he had helped her to the ground, she looked at him soberly. ‘There’s a large cult force lying in wait two leagues ahead of you,’ she told him.
‘How large?’
‘Half again as large as yours.’
‘We’d better go tell the others,’ he said grimly, turning his horse.
‘Is there any way we could slip around them?’ Durnik asked after Polgara had told them all of the cultists lying in ambush ahead.
‘I don’t think so, Durnik,’ she replied. ‘They know we’re here, and I’m sure we’re being watched.’
‘We must needs attack them, then,’ Mandorallen asserted. ‘Our cause is just, and we must inevitably prevail.’
‘That’s an interesting superstition, Mandorallen,’ Barak told him, ‘but I’d prefer to have the numbers on my side.’ The big man turned to Polgara. ‘How are they deployed? What I mean is —’
‘I know what the word means, Barak.’ She scraped a patch of ground bare with her foot and picked up a stick. ‘This trail we’re following runs through a ravine that cuts through that low range of hills just ahead. At about the deepest part of the ravine, there are several gullies running up the sides. There are four separate groups of cultists, each one hiding in a different gully.’ She sketched out the terrain ahead with her stick. ‘They obviously plan to let us march right into the middle of them and then attack us from all sides at once.’
Durnik was frowning as he studied her sketch. ‘We could easily defeat any one of those groups,’ he suggested, rubbing thoughtfully at one cheek. ‘All we really need is some way to keep the other three groups out of the fight.’
‘That sort of sums it up,’ Barak said, ‘but I don’t think they’ll stay away just because they weren’t invited.’
‘No,’ the smith agreed, ‘so we’ll probably have to put up some kind of barrier to prevent their joining in.’
‘You’ve thought of something, haven’t you, Durnik?’ Queen Porenn observed.
‘What manner of barrier could possibly keep the villains from rushing to the aid of their comrades?’ Mandorallen asked.
Durnik shrugged. ‘Fire would probably work.’
Javelin shook his head and pointed at the low gorse bushes in the field beside them. ‘Everything in this area is still green,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’s going to burn very well.’
Durnik smiled. ‘It doesn’t have to be a real fire.’
‘Could you do that, Polgara?’ Barak asked, his eyes coming alight.
She considered it a moment. ‘Not in three places at once,’ she replied.
‘But there are three of us, Pol,’ the smith reminded her. ‘You could block one group with an illusion of fire; I could take the second; and Garion the third. We could pen all three groups in their separate gullies, and then, after we’ve finished with the first group, we could move on to the next.’ He frowned slightly. ‘The only problem with it is that I’m not sure exactly how to go about creating the illusion.’
‘It’s not too difficult, dear,’ Aunt Pol assured him. ‘It shouldn’t take long for you and Garion to get the knack of it.’
‘What do you think?’ Queen Porenn asked Javelin.
‘It’s dangerous,’ he told her, ‘very dangerous.’
‘Do we have any choice?’
‘Not that I can think offhand.’
‘That’s it, then,’ Garion said. ‘If the rest of you will tell the troops what we’re going to do, Durnik and I can start learning how to build imaginary bonfires.’
The plan worked surprisingly well. As the first group of cultists dashed from the concealment of their gully with their weapons aloft and shouts of triumph on their lips, Garion, Durnik, and Polgara instantly blocked the mouths of the other three gullies. The charging cult members faltered, their triumph changing to chagrin as they gaped at the sudden flames that prevented their comrades from joining the fray. Garion’s Rivans moved immediately to take advantage of that momentary hesitation. Step by step the first group of cultists were pushed back into the narrow confines of the gully that had concealed them.
Garion could pay only scant attention to the progress of the fight. He sat astride his horse with Lelldorin at his side, concentrating entirely upon projecting the images of flame and the sense of heat and the crackle of fire across the mouth of the gully opposite the one where the fight was in progress. Dimly through the leaping flames, he could see the members of the cult trying to shield their faces from an intense heat that was not really there. And then the one thing that had not occurred to any of them happened. The trapped cult-members in Garion’s gully began to throw bucketsful of water hastily dipped from a stagnant pond on the imaginary flames. There was, of course, no hiss of steam nor any other visible effect of that attempt to quench the illusion. After several moments a cult member, cringing and wincing, stepped through the fire. ‘It isn’t real!’ he shouted back over his shoulder. ‘The fire isn’t real!’
‘This is, though,’ Lelldorin muttered grimly, sinking an arrow into the man’s chest. The cultist threw up his arms and toppled over backward into the fire—which had no effect on his limp body. That, of course, gave the whole thing away. First a few and then a score or more cult-members ran directly through Garion’s illusion. Lelldorin’s hands blurred as he shot arrow after arrow into the milling ranks at the mouth of the gully. ‘There’re too many of them, Garion,’ he shouted. ‘I can’t hold them. We’ll have to fall back.’
‘Aunt Pol!’ Garion yelled. ‘They’re breaking through!’
‘Push them back,’ she called to him. ‘Use your will.’
He concentrated even more and pushed a solid barrier of his will at the men emerging from the gully. At first it seemed that it might even work, but the effort he was exerting was enormous, and he soon began to tire. The edges of his hastily erected barrier began to fray and tatter and the men he was trying so desperately to hold back began to find those weak spots.
Dimly, even as he bent all of his concentration on maintaining the barrier, he heard a sullen rumble, almost like distant thunder.
‘Garion!’ Lelldorin cried. ‘Horsemen—hundreds of them!’
In dismay, Garion looked quickly up the ravine and saw a sudden horde of riders coming down the steep cut from the east. ‘Aunt Pol!’ he shouted, even as he reached back over his shoulder to draw Iron-grip’s great sword.
The wave of riders, however, veered sharply just as they reached him and crashed directly into the front ranks of the cultists who were on the verge of breaking through his barrier. This new force was composed of lean, leather-tough men in black, and their eyes had a peculiar angularity to them.
‘Nadraks! By the Gods, they’re Nadraks!’ Garion heard Barak shout from somewhere across the ravine.
‘What are they doing here?’ Garion muttered, half to himself.
‘Garion!’ Lelldorin exclaimed. ‘That man in the middle of the riders—isn’t that Prince Kheldar?’
The new troops charging into the furious mêlée quickly turned the tide of battle. They charged directly into the faces of the startled cultists who were emerging from the mouths of the gullies, inflicting dreadful casualties.
Once he had committed his horsemen, Silk dropped back to join Garion and Lelldorin in the center of the ravine. ‘Good day, gentlemen,’ he greeted them with aplomb. ‘I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.’
‘Where did you get all the Nadraks?’ Garion demanded, trembling with sudden relief.
‘In Gar og Nadrak, of course.’
‘Why would they want to help us?’
‘Because I paid them.’ Silk shrugged. ‘You owe me a great deal of money, Garion.’
‘How did you find so many so fast?’ Lelldorin asked.
‘Yarblek and I have a fur-trading station just across the border. The trappers who brought in their furs last spring were just lying around, drinking and gambling, so I hired them.’
‘You got here just in time,’ Garion said.
‘I noticed that. Those fires of yours were a nice touch.’
‘Up until the point where they started throwing water on them. That’s when things started to get tense.’
A few hundred of the trapped cultists managed to escape the general destruction by scrambling up the steep sides of the gullies and fleeing out onto the barren moors; but for most of their fellows, there was no escape.
Barak rode out of the gully where the Rivan troops were mopping up the few survivors of the initial charge. ‘Do you want to give them the chance to surrender?’ he asked Garion.
Garion remembered the conversation he and Polgara had had several days previously. ‘I suppose we should,’ he said after a moment’s thought.
‘You don’t have to, you know,’ Barak told him. ‘Under the circumstances, no one would blame you if you wiped them out to the very last man.’
‘No,’ Garion said, ‘I don’t think I really want to do that. Tell the ones that are left that we’ll spare their lives if they throw down their weapons.’
Barak shrugged. ‘It’s up to you.’
‘Silk, you lying little thief!’ a tall Nadrak in a felt coat and an outrageous fur hat exclaimed. He was roughly searching the body of a slain cultist. ‘You said that they all had money on them and that they were loaded down with gold chains and bracelets. All this one has on him is fleas.’
‘Perhaps I exaggerated just a trifle, Yarblek,’ Silk said urbanely to his partner.
‘I ought to gut you, do you know that?’
‘Why, Yarblek,’ Silk replied with feigned astonishment, ‘is that any way to talk to your brother?’
‘Brother!’ the Nadrak snorted, rising and planting a solid kick in the side of the body that had so sorely disappointed him.
‘That’s what we agreed when we went into partnership—that we were going to treat each other like brothers.’
‘Don’t twist words on me, you little weasel. Besides, I stuck a knife in my brother twenty years ago—for lying to me.’
As the last of the trapped and outnumbered cultists threw down their arms in surrender, Polgara, Ce’Nedra, and Errand came cautiously up the ravine, accompanied by the filthy, hunchbacked Beldin.
‘Your Algar reinforcements are still several days away,’ the ugly little sorcerer told Garion. ‘I tried to hurry them along, but they’re very tenderhearted with their horses. Where did you get all the Nadraks?’
‘Silk hired them.’
Beldin nodded approvingly. ‘Mercenaries always make the best soldiers,’ he said.
The coarse-faced Yarblek had been looking at Polgara, his eyes alight with recognition. ‘You’re still as handsome as ever, girl,’ he said to her. ‘Have you changed your mind about letting me buy you?’
‘No, Yarblek,’ she replied. ‘Not yet, anyway. You arrived at an excellent time.’
‘Only because some lying little thief told me there was loot to be had.’ He glared at Silk and then nudged the body he was standing over with his foot. ‘Frankly, I’d make more money plucking dead chickens.’
Beldin looked at Garion. ‘If you intend to see your
son again before he has a full beard, you’d better get moving,’ he said.
‘I’ve got to make some arrangements about the prisoners,’ Garion replied.
‘What’s to arrange?’ Yarblek shrugged. ‘Line them up and chop off their heads.’
‘Absolutely not!’
‘What’s the point of fighting if you can’t butcher the prisoners when it’s over?’
‘Someday when we have some time, I’ll explain it to you,’ Silk told him.
‘Alorns!’ Yarblek sighed, casting his eyes toward the murky sky.
‘Yarblek, you mangy son of a dog!’ It was a raven-haired woman in leather breeches and a tight-fitting leather vest. There was at once a vast anger and an overwhelming physical presence about her. ‘I thought you said we could make a profit by picking over the dead. These vermin don’t have a thing on them.’
‘We were misled, Vella,’ he replied somberly, giving Silk a flinty look.
‘I told you not to trust that rat-faced little sneak. You’re not only ugly, Yarblek, you’re stupid as well.’
Garion had been looking curiously at the angry woman. ‘Isn’t that the girl who danced in the tavern that time in Gar og Nadrak?’ he asked Silk, remembering the girl’s overwhelming sensuality that had stirred the blood of every man in that wayside drinking establishment.
The little man nodded. ‘She married that trapper—Tekk—but he came out second best in an argument with a bear a few years back, and his brother sold her to Yarblek.’
‘Worst mistake I ever made,’ Yarblek said mournfully. ‘She’s almost as fast with her knives as she is with her tongue.’ He pulled back one sleeve and showed them an angry red scar. ‘And all I was trying to do was to be friendly.’
She laughed. ‘Ha! You know the rules, Yarblek. If you want to keep your guts on the inside, you keep your hands to yourself.’
Beldin’s eyes had a peculiar expression in them as he looked at her. ‘Spirited wench, isn’t she?’ he murmured to Yarblek. ‘I admire a woman with a quick wit and a ready tongue.’
A wild hope suddenly flared in Yarblek’s eyes. ‘Do you like her?’ he asked eagerly. ‘I’ll sell her to you, if you want.’
‘Have you lost your mind entirely, Yarblek?’ Vella demanded indignantly.
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