Guardians of the West

by David Eddings

  ‘Could you read any part of the Mallorean Gospels at all, father?’ Aunt Pol asked him.

  ‘Just one little fragment. It said something about a choice between the Light and the Dark.’

  Beldin snorted. ‘Now that would be something very unusual,’ he said. ‘The Seers at Kell haven’t made a choice about anything since the world was made. They’ve been sitting on the fence for millennia.’

  Late the following afternoon, the Sendarian army came into view on the snowy hilltops to the west. Garion felt a peculiar twinge of pride as the solid, steady men he had always thought of as his countrymen marched purposefully through the snow toward the now-doomed city of Rheon.

  ‘I might have gotten here sooner,’ General Brendig apologized as he rode up, ‘but we had to march around that quagmire where the Drasnian pikemen are bogged down.’

  ‘Are they all right?’ Queen Porenn asked him quickly.

  ‘Perfectly, your Majesty,’ the one-armed man replied. ‘They just can’t go anywhere, that’s all.’

  ‘How much rest will your troops need before they’ll be ready to join the assault, Brendig?’ Belgarath asked him.

  Brendig shrugged. ‘A day ought to do it, Ancient One.’

  ‘That will give us time enough to make our plans,’ the old man said. ‘Let’s get your men bivouaced and then Garion can brief you on the way things stand here.’

  In the strategy meeting in the garishly carpeted main tent that evening, they smoothed out the rough edges of their relatively simple plan of attack. Mandorallen’s siege engines would continue to pound the city throughout the next day and on into the following night. On the next morning, a feigned assault would be mounted against the south gate to draw as many cultists as possible away from the hastily erected fortification inside the city. Another force would march out of the secure enclave in the north quarter of Rheon to begin the house-by-house occupation of the buildings facing the perimeter. Yet another force, acting on an inspired notion of General Brendig’s, would use scaling ladders as bridges to go across the housetops and drop in behind the newly erected walls inside the city.

  ‘The most important thing is to take Ulfgar alive,’ Garion cautioned. ‘We have to get some answers from him. I need to know just what part he played in the abduction of my son and where Geran is, if he knows.’

  ‘And I want to know just how many of the officers in my army he’s subverted,’ Queen Porenn added.

  ‘It looks as if he’s going to be doing a lot of talking,’ Yarblek said with an evil grin. ‘In Gar og Nadrak we have a number of very entertaining ways of loosening people’s tongues.’

  ‘Pol will handle that,’ Belgarath told him firmly. ‘She can get the answers we need without resorting to that sort of thing.’

  ‘Are you getting soft, Belgarath?’ Barak asked.

  ‘Not likely,’ the old man replied, ‘but if Yarblek here gets carried away, it might go a little too far, and you can’t get answers out of a dead man.’

  ‘But afterward?’ Yarblek asked eagerly.

  ‘I don’t really care what you do with him afterward.’

  The next day, Garion was in a small, curtained-off area in the main tent going over his maps and his carefully organized lists, trying to determine if there was anything he had overlooked. He had begun of late to feel as if the entire army were resting directly on his shoulders.

  ‘Garion,’ Ce’Nedra said, entering his cubicle, ‘some friends have arrived.’

  He looked up.

  ‘Brand’s three sons,’ she told him, ‘and that glass blower Joran.’

  Garion frowned. ‘What are they doing here?’ he asked. ‘I told them all to stay at Riva.’

  ‘They say that they’ve got something important to tell.’

  He sighed. ‘You’d better have them come in, then.’

  Brand’s three gray-cloaked sons and the serious-faced Joran entered and bowed. Their clothes were mud-splattered, and their faces weary.

  ‘We are not deliberately disobeying your orders, Belgarion,’ Kail assured him quickly, ‘but we discovered something very important that you have to know.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘After you left Riva with the army, your Majesty,’ Kail’s older brother Verdan explained, ‘we decided to go over the west coast of the island inch by inch. We thought there might be some clues that we overlooked in our first search.’

  ‘Besides,’ Brin added, ‘we didn’t have anything else to do.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Verdan continued, ‘we finally found the ship those Chereks had used to come to the island.’

  ‘Their ship?’ Garion asked, suddenly sitting up. ‘I thought that whoever it was who abducted my son used it to get off the island.’

  Verdan shook his head. ‘The ship had been deliberately sunk, your Majesty. They filled it with rocks and then chopped holes in the bottom. We sailed right over it five times until a calm day when there wasn’t any surf. It was lying on the bottom in about thirty feet of water.’

  ‘How did the abductor get off the island, then?’

  ‘We had that same thought, Belgarion,’ Joran said. ‘It occurred to us that, in spite of everything, the abductor might still be on the Isle of the Winds. We started searching. That’s when we found the shepherd.’

  ‘Shepherd?’

  ‘He’d been alone with his flock up in the meadows on the western side of the Isle,’ Kail explained. ‘He was completely unaware of what had happened in the city. Anyway, we asked him if he had seen anything unusual at about the time Prince Geran was taken from the Citadel, and he said that he had seen a ship sail into a cove on the west coast at about that time and that somebody carrying something wrapped in a blanket got on board. Then the ship put out to sea, leaving the others behind. Belgarion, it was the same cove where the trail the Orb was following ended.’

  ‘Which way did the ship go?’

  ‘South.’

  ‘There’s one other thing, Belgarion,’ Joran added. ‘The shepherd was positive that the ship was Nyissan.’

  ‘Nyissan?’

  ‘He was absolutely certain. He even described the snake banner she was flying.’

  Garion got quickly to his feet. ‘Wait here,’ he told them. Then he went to the flap in the partition. ‘Grandfather, Aunt Pol, could you step in here for a moment?’

  ‘What is it, dear?’ Polgara asked as she and the old sorcerer came into Garion’s makeshift office, with Silk trailing curiously behind.

  ‘Tell them,’ Garion said to Kail.

  Quickly, Brand’s second son repeated what they had just told Garion.

  ‘Salmissra?’ Polgara suggested to her father.

  ‘Not necessarily, Pol. Nyissa is full of intrigue, and the Queen isn’t behind it all—particularly after what you did to her.’ He frowned. ‘Why would a Cherek abandon one of his own boats to ride aboard a Nyissan scow? That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘That’s another question we’ll have to ask Ulfgar, once we get our hands on him,’ Silk said.

  At dawn the next morning, a large body of troops comprised of elements from all the forces gathered for the siege began to march across the valley to the south of the city toward the steep hill and Rheon. They carried scaling ladders and battering rams in plain sight to make the defenders believe that this was a major assault.

  In the quarter of the city occupied by Garion’s troops, however, Silk led a sizeable detachment of men through the dawn murk across the roof tops to clear away the cult archers and the smeared men with their boiling pitch pots occupying those houses on either side of the hastily built walls erected to bar entrance into the rest of the city.

  Garion, flanked by Barak and Mandorallen, waited in a snowy street near the perimeter of the occupied quarter. ‘This is the part I hate,’ he said tensely. ‘The waiting.’

  ‘I must confess to thee that I myself find this lull just before a battle unpleasant,’ Mandorallen replied.

  ‘I thought Arends loved a battle.�
�� Barak grinned at his friend.

  ‘It is our favorite pastime,’ the great knight admitted, checking one of the buckles under his armor. ‘This interim just ’ere we join with the enemy, however, is irksome. Sober, even melancholy, thoughts distract the mind from the main purpose at hand.’

  ‘Mandorallen,’ Barak laughed, ‘I’ve missed you.’

  The shadowy form of Yarblek came up the street to join them. He had put aside his felt overcoat and now wore a heavy steel breast-plate and carried a wicked-looking axe. ‘Everything’s ready,’ he told them quietly. ‘We can start just as soon as the little thief gives us the signal.’

  ‘Are you sure your men can pull down those walls?’ Barak asked him.

  Yarblek nodded. ‘Those people didn’t have time enough to set the stones in mortar,’ he said. ‘Our grappling hooks can jerk down the walls in a few minutes.’

  ‘You seem very fond of that particular tool,’ Barak observed.

  Yarblek shrugged. ‘I’ve always found that the best way to get through a wall is to yank it down.’

  ‘In Arendia, our preference is for the battering rams,’ Mandorallen said.

  ‘Those are good, too,’ Yarblek agreed, ‘but the trouble with a ram is that you’re right under the wall when it falls. I’ve never particularly enjoyed having building stones bouncing off the top of my head.’

  They waited.

  ‘Has anybody seen Lelldorin?’ Garion asked.

  ‘He went with Silk,’ Barak replied. ‘He seemed to think that he could find more targets from up on a roof.’

  ‘He was ever an enthusiast.’ Mandorallen smiled. ‘I must confess, however, that I have never seen his equal with the longbow.’

  ‘There it is,’ Barak said, pointing at a flaming arrow arching high above the rooftops. ‘That’s the signal.’

  Garion drew in a deep breath and squared his shoulders. ‘All right. Sound your horn, Mandorallen, and let’s get started.’

  The brazen note of Mandorallen’s horn shattered the stillness. From every street and alleyway, Garion’s army poured out to begin the final assault on Rheon. Rivans, Algars, Nadraks, and the solid men of Sendaria crunched through the snow toward the perimeter with their weapons in their hands. Three score of Yarblek’s leatherclad mercenaries ran on ahead, their grappling hooks swinging from their hands.

  With Barak at his side, Garion clambered over the treacherous, sliding rubble of the houses that had been pulled down to form the perimeter and over the half-frozen bodies of arrow-stitched cultists who had fallen earlier. A few—though not many—cultists had escaped the hasty floor-by-floor search of Silk’s men in the houses facing the perimeter and they desperately showered the advancing troops with arrows. At Brendig’s sharp command, detachments of Sendars veered and broke into each house to neutralize those remaining defenders efficiently.

  The scene beyond the perimeter was one of enormous confusion. Advancing behind a wall of shields, Garion’s army swept the streets clear of the now-desperate cultists. The air was thick with arrows and curses, and several houses were already shooting flames out through their roofs.

  True to Yarblek’s prediction, the loosely stacked walls blocking the streets some way into the city fell easily to the dozens of grappling hooks that sailed up over their tops to bite into the other sides.

  The grim advance continued, and the air rang with the steely clang of sword against sword. Somehow in all the confusion, Garion became separated from Barak and found himself fighting shoulder to shoulder beside Durnik in a narrow alleyway. The smith carried no sword or axe, but fought instead with a large, heavy club. ‘I just don’t like chopping into people,’ he apologized, felling a burly opponent with one solid blow. ‘If you hit somebody with a club, there’s a fair chance that he won’t die, and there isn’t all that blood.’

  They pushed deeper into the city, driving the demoralized inhabitants before them. The sounds of heavy fighting at the southern end of town gave notice that Silk and his men had reached the south wall and opened the gates to admit the massed troops whose feigned attack had fatally divided the cult forces.

  And then Garion and Durnik burst out of the narrow alleyway into the broad, snowy central square of Rheon. Fighting raged all over the square; but on the east side, a thick knot of cultists was tightly packed about a high-wheeled cart. Atop the cart stood a black-bearded man in a rust-colored brocade doublet.

  A lean Nadrak with a slender spear in his hand arched back, took aim, and hurled his weapon directly at the man on the cart. The black-bearded man raised one hand in a peculiar gesture, and the Nadrak spear suddenly sheered off to the right to clatter harmlessly on the snow-slick cobblestones. Garion clearly heard and felt the rushing surge that could only mean one thing. ‘Durnik!’ he shouted. ‘That man on the cart. That’s Ulfgar!’

  Durnik’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let’s take him, Garion,’ he said.

  Garion’s anger at this stranger who was the cause of all this warfare and carnage and destruction suddenly swelled intolerably, and his rage communicated itself to the Orb on the pommel of his sword. The Orb flared, and Iron-grip’s burning sword suddenly flamed out in searing blue fire.

  ‘There! It’s the Rivan King!’ the black-bearded man on the cart screamed. ‘Kill him!’

  Momentarily Garion’s eyes locked on the eyes of the man on the cart. There was hate there and, at the same time, an awe and a desperate fear. But, blindly obedient to their leader’s command, a dozen cultists ran through the slush toward Garion with their swords aloft. Suddenly they began to tumble into twitching heaps in the sodden snow in the square as arrow after arrow laced into their ranks.

  ‘Ho, Garion!’ Lelldorin shouted gleefully from a nearby housetop, his hands blurring as he loosed his arrows at the charging cultists.

  ‘Ho, Lelldorin!’ Garion called his reply, even as he ran in amongst the fur-clad men, flailing about him with his burning sword. The attention of the group around the cart was riveted entirely on the horrifying spectacle of the enraged King of Riva and his fabled sword. They did not, therefore, see Durnik the smith moving in a catlike crouch along the wall of a nearby house.

  The man on the cart raised one hand aloft, seized a ball of pure fire, and hurled it desperately at Garion. Garion flicked the fireball aside with his flaming blade and continued his grim advance, swinging dreadful strokes at the desperate men garbed in bearskins in front of him without ever taking his eyes off of the pasty-faced man in the black beard. His expression growing panicky, Ulfgar raised his hand again, but suddenly seemed almost to lunge forward off the cart into the brown slush as Durnik’s cudgel cracked sharply across the back of his head.

  There was a great cry of chagrin as the cult-leader fell. Several of his men tried desperately to lift his inert body, but Durnik’s club, whistling and thudding solidly, felled them in their tracks. Others tried to form a wall with their bodies in an effort to keep Garion from reaching the body lying face-down in the snow, but Lelldorin’s steady rain of arrows melted the center of that fur-clad wall. Garion, feeling strangely remote and unaffected by the slaughter, marched into the very midst of the disorganized survivors, swinging his huge sword in great, sweeping arcs. He barely felt the sickening shear as his sword cut through bone and flesh. After he had cut down a half dozen or so, the rest broke and ran.

  ‘Is he still alive?’ Garion panted at the smith.

  Durnik rolled the inert Ulfgar over and professionally peeled back one of his eyelids to have a look. ‘He’s still with us,’ he said. ‘I hit him rather carefully.’

  ‘Good,’ Garion said. ‘Let’s tie him up—and blindfold him.’

  ‘Why blindfold?’

  ‘We both saw him use sorcery, so we’ve answered that particular question, but I think it might be a little hard to do that sort of thing if you can’t see what you’re aiming at.’

  Durnik thought about it for a moment as he tied the unconscious man’s hands. ‘You know, I believe you’re right. It would be difficult, wo
uldn’t it?’

  Chapter Twenty-five

  With the fall of Ulfgar, the cult’s will to resist broke. Though a few of the more rabid continued to fight, most threw down their weapons in surrender. Grimly, Garion’s army rounded them up and herded them through the snowy, blood-stained streets into the town’s central square.

  Silk and Javelin briefly questioned a sullen captive with a bloody bandage wrapped around his head, then joined Garion and Durnik, who stood watch over their still-unconscious prisoner. ‘Is that him?’ Silk asked curiously, absently polishing one of his rings on the front of his gray doublet.

  Garion nodded.

  ‘He doesn’t look all that impressive, does he?’

  ‘The large stone house over there is his,’ Javelin said, pointing at a square building with red tiles on its roof.

  ‘Not any more,’ Garion replied. ‘It’s mine now.’

  Javelin smiled briefly. ‘We’ll want to search it rather thoroughly,’ he said. ‘People sometimes forget to destroy important things.’

  ‘We might as well take Ulfgar in there, too,’ Garion said. ‘We need to question him, and that house is as good as any.’

  ‘I’ll go get the others,’ Durnik offered, pulling off his pot-shaped helmet. ‘Do you think it’s safe enough to bring Pol and the other ladies into the city yet?’

  ‘It should be,’ Javelin replied. ‘What little resistance there is left is in the southeast quarter of the city.’

  Durnik nodded and went on across the square, his mail shirt jingling.

  Garion, Silk and Javelin picked up the limp form of the black-bearded man and carried him toward the stately house with the banner of a bear flying from a staff in front of it. As they started up the stairs, Garion glanced at a Rivan soldier standing guard over some demoralized prisoners huddled miserably in the slush. ‘Would you do me a favor?’ he asked the gray-cloaked man.

  ‘Of course, your Majesty,’ the soldier said, saluting.

  ‘Chop that thing down.’ Garion indicated the flagstaff with a thrust of his jaw.