‘The rest of the night promises to be moderately unpleasant,’ Silk observed, shaking one sodden foot.
‘At least you’ve got the river between you and Taur Urgas,’ Barak reminded him.
‘That does brighten things up a bit,’ Silk admitted.
They had not gone a half mile, however, before Mandorallen’s charger went down with a squeal of agony. The knight, with a great clatter, tumbled in the grass as he was pitched out of the saddle. His great horse floundered with threshing legs, trying futilely to rise.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ Barak demanded sharply.
Behind them, with another squeal, one of the pack-horses collapsed.
‘What is it?’ Garion asked Durnik, his voice shrill.
‘It’s the cold,’ Durnik answered, swinging down from his saddle. ‘We’ve ridden them to exhaustion, and then we made them wade across the river. The chill’s settled into their muscles.’
‘What do we do?’
‘We have to rub them down – all of them – with wool.’
‘We don’t have time for that,’ Silk objected.
‘It’s that or walk,’ Durnik declared, pulling off his stout wool cloak and beginning to rub vigorously at his horse’s legs with it.
‘Maybe we should build a fire,’ Garion suggested, also dismounting and beginning to rub down his horse’s shivering legs.
‘There isn’t anything around here to burn,’ Durnik told him. ‘This is all open grassland.’
‘And a fire would set up a beacon for every Murgo within ten miles,’ Barak added, massaging the legs of his grey horse.
They all worked as rapidly as possible, but the sky to the east had begun to pale with the first hints of dawn before Mandorallen’s horse was on his feet again and the rest of their mounts were able to move.
‘They won’t be able to run,’ Durnik declared somberly. ‘We shouldn’t even ride them.’
‘Durnik,’ Silk protested, ‘Taur Urgas is right behind us.’
‘They won’t last a league if we try to make them run,’ the smith said stubbornly. ‘There’s nothing left in them.’
They rode away from the river at a walk. Even at that pace, Garion could feel the trembling of his horse under him. They all looked back frequently, watching the dark-shrouded plain beyond the river as the sky grew gradually lighter. When they reached the top of the first low hills, the deep shadow which had obscured the grasslands behind them faded and they were able to see movement. Then, as the light grew stronger, they saw an army of Murgos swarming toward the river. In the midst of them were the flapping black banners of Taur Urgas himself.
The Murgos came on in waves until they reached the far bank of the river. Then their mounted scouts ranged out until they located the ford. The bulk of the army Taur Urgas had brought down to the plain was still on foot, but clusters of horses were being driven up from the rear as rapidly as they could be brought down the narrow cut leading from the top of the escarpment.
As the first units began splashing across the ford, Silk turned to Belgarath. ‘Now what?’ the little man asked in a worried voice.
‘We’d better get off the top of this hill,’ the old man replied. ‘I don’t think they’ve seen us yet, but it’s just a question of time, I’m afraid.’
They rode down into a little swale just beyond the hill. The overcast which had obscured the sky for the past week or more had begun to blow off, and broad patches of pale, icy blue had begun to appear, though the sun had not yet come up.
‘My guess is that he’s going to hold the bulk of his army on the far side,’ Belgarath told them after they had all dismounted. ‘He’ll bring them on across as their horses catch up. As soon as they get to this side, they’re going to spread out to look for us.’
‘That’s the way I’d do it,’ Barak agreed.
‘Somebody ought to keep an eye on them,’ Durnik suggested. He started back up the hill on foot. ‘I’ll let you know if they start doing anything unusual.’
Belgarath seemed lost in thought. He paced up and down, his hands clasped together behind his back and an angry look on his face. ‘This isn’t working out the way I’d expected,’ he said finally. ‘I hadn’t counted on the horses playing out on us.’
‘Is there any place we can hide?’ Barak asked.
Belgarath shook his head. ‘This is all grassland,’ he replied. ‘There aren’t any rocks or caves or trees, and it’s going to be impossible to cover our tracks.’ He kicked at the tall grass. ‘This isn’t turning out too well,’ he admitted glumly. ‘We’re all alone out here on exhausted horses.’ He chewed thoughtfully at his lower lip. ‘The nearest help is in the Vale. I think we’d better turn south and make for it. We’re fairly close.’
‘How close?’ Silk asked.
‘Ten leagues or so.’
‘That’s going to take all day, Belgarath. I don’t think we’ve got that long.’
‘We might have to tamper with the weather a bit,’ Belgarath conceded. ‘I don’t like doing that, but I might not have any choice.’
There was a distant low rumble somewhere off to the north. The little boy looked up and smiled at Aunt Pol. ‘Errand?’ he asked.
‘Yes, dear,’ she replied absently.
‘Can you pick up any traces of Algars in the vicinity, Pol?’ Belgarath asked her.
She shook her head. ‘I think I’m too close to the Orb, father. I keep getting an echo that blots things out more than a mile or so away.’
‘It always has been noisy,’ he grunted sourly.
‘Talk to it, father,’ she suggested. ‘Maybe it will listen to you.’
He gave her a long, hard look – a look she returned quite calmly. ‘I can do without that, miss,’ he told her finally in a crisp voice.
There was another low rumble, from the south this time.
‘Thunder?’ Silk said, looking a bit puzzled. ‘Isn’t this an odd time of year for it?’
‘This plain breeds peculiar weather,’ Belgarath said. ‘There isn’t anything between here and Drasnia but eight hundred leagues of grass.’
‘Do we try for the Vale then?’ Barak asked.
‘It looks as if we’ll have to,’ the old man replied.
Durnik came back down the hill. ‘They’re coming across the river,’ he reported, ‘but they aren’t spreading out yet. It looks as if they want to get more men across before they start looking for us.’
‘How hard can we push the horses without hurting them?’ Silk asked him.
‘Not very,’ Durnik replied. ‘It would be better to save them until we absolutely have to use up whatever they’ve got left. If we walk and lead them for an hour or so, we might be able to get a canter out of them – for short periods of time.’
‘Let’s go along the back side of the crest,’ Belgarath said, picking up the reins of his horse. ‘We’ll stay pretty much out of sight that way, but I want to keep an eye on Taur Urgas.’ He led them at an angle back up out of the swale.
The clouds had broken even more now, and the tatters raced in the endless winds that swept the vast grassland. To the east, the sky was turning a pale pink. Although the Algarian plain did not have that bitter, arid chill that had cut at them in the uplands of Cthol Murgos and Mishrak ac Thull, it was still very cold. Garion shivered, drew his cloak in tight about him, and kept walking, trailing his weary horse behind him.
There was another brief rumble, and the little boy, perched in the saddle of Aunt Pol’s horse laughed. ‘Errand,’ he announced.
‘I wish he’d stop that,’ Silk said irritably.
They glanced from time to time over the crest of the long hill as they walked. Below, in the broad valley of the Aldur River, the Murgos of Taur Urgas were fording in larger and larger groups. It appeared that fully half his army had reached the west bank by now, and the red and black standard of the king of the Murgos stood planted defiantly on Algarian soil.
‘If he brings too many more men down the escarpment, it’s going
to take something pretty significant to dislodge him,’ Barak rumbled, scowling down at the Murgos.
‘I know,’ Belgarath replied, ‘and that’s the one thing I’ve wanted to avoid. We aren’t ready for a war just yet.’
The sun, huge and red, ponderously moved up from behind the eastern escarpment, turning the sky around it rosy. In the still-shadowed valley below them, the Murgos continued to splash across the river in the steely morning light.
‘Methinks he will await the sun before he begins the search for us,’ Mandorallen observed.
‘And that’s not very far off,’ Barak agreed, glancing at the slowly moving band of sunlight just touching the hill along which they moved. ‘We’ve probably got half an hour at the most. I think it’s getting to the point where we’re going to have to gamble on the horses. Maybe if we switch mounts every mile or so, we can get some more distance out of them.’
The rumble that came then could not possibly have been thunder. The ground shook with it, and it rolled on and on endlessly from both the north and south.
And then, pouring over the crests of the hills surrounding the valley of the Aldur like some vast tide suddenly released by the bursting of a mighty dam, came the clans of the Algars. Down they plunged upon the startled Murgos thickly clustered along the banks of the river, and their great war cry shook the very heavens as they fell like wolves upon the divided army of Taur Urgas.
A lone horseman veered out of the great charge of the clans and came pounding up the hillside toward Garion and his friends. As the warrior drew closer, Garion could see his long scalp lock flowing behind him and his drawn sabre catching the first rays of the morning sun. It was Hettar. A vast surge of relief swept over Garion. They were safe.
‘Where have you been?’ Barak demanded in a great voice as the hawk-faced Algar rode closer.
‘Watching,’ Hettar replied calmly as he reined in. ‘We wanted to let the Murgos get out a ways from the escarpment so we could cut them off. My father sent me to see how you all are.’
‘How considerate,’ Silk observed sardonically. ‘Did it ever occur to you to let us know you were out there?’
Hettar shrugged. ‘We could see that you were all right.’ He looked critically at their exhausted mounts. ‘You didn’t take very good care of them,’ he said accusingly.
‘We were a bit pressed,’ Durnik apologized.
‘Did you get the Orb?’ the tall man asked Belgarath, glancing hungrily down toward the river where a vast battle had been joined.
‘It took a bit, but we got it,’ the old sorcerer replied.
‘Good.’ Hettar turned his horse, and his lean face had a fierce look on it. ‘I’ll tell Cho-Hag. Will you excuse me?’ Then he stopped as if remembering something. ‘Oh,’ he said to Barak, ‘congratulations, by the way.’
‘For what?’ the big man asked, looking puzzled.
‘The birth of your son.’
‘What?’ Barak sounded stunned. ‘How?’
‘In the usual way, I’d imagine,’ Hettar replied.
‘I mean how did you find out?’
‘Anheg sent word to us.’
‘When was he born?’
‘A couple months ago.’ Hettar looked nervously down at the battle which was raging on both sides of the river and in the middle of the ford as well. ‘I really have to go,’ he said. ‘If I don’t hurry, there won’t be any Murgos left.’ And he drove his heels into his horse’s flanks and plunged down the hill.
‘He hasn’t changed a bit,’ Silk noted.
Barak was standing with a somewhat foolish grin on his big, red-bearded face.
‘Congratulations, my Lord,’ Mandorallen said to him, clasping his hand.
Barak’s grin grew broader.
It quickly became obvious that the situation of the encircled Murgos below was hopeless. With his army cut in two by the river, Taur Urgas was unable to mount even an orderly retreat. The forces he had brought across the river were quickly swarmed under by King Cho-Hag’s superior numbers, and the few survivors of that short, ugly mêlée plunged back into the river, protectively drawn up around the red and black banner of the Murgo king. Even in the ford, however, the Algar warriors pressed him. Some distance upriver Garion could see horsemen plunging into the icy water to be carried down by the current to the shallows of the ford in an effort to cut off escape. Much of the fight in the river was obscured by the sheets of spray kicked up by struggling horses, but the bodies floating downstream testified to the savagery of the clash.
Briefly, for no more than a moment, the red and black banner of Taur Urgas was confronted by the burgundy-and-white horse-banner of King Cho-Hag, and then the two were swept apart.
‘That could have been an interesting meeting,’ Silk noted. ‘Cho-Hag and Taur Urgas have hated each other for years.’
Once the king of the Murgos regained the east bank, he rallied what forces he could, turned, and fled back across the open grassland toward the escarpment with Algar clansmen hotly pursuing him. For the bulk of his army, however, there was no escape. Since their horses had not yet descended the narrow ravine from the top of the escarpment, they were forced to fight on foot. The Algars swept down upon them in waves, sabres flashing in the morning sun. Faintly, Garion could hear the screams. Sickened finally, he turned away, unable to watch the slaughter any longer.
The little boy, who was standing close beside Aunt Pol with his hand in hers, looked at Garion gravely. ‘Errand,’ he said with a sad conviction.
By midmorning the battle was over. The last of the Murgos on the far bank of the river had been destroyed, and Taur Urgas had fled with the tattered remnants of his army back up the ravine. ‘Good fight,’ Barak observed professionally, looking down at the bodies littering both banks of the river and bobbing limply in the shallows downstream from the ford.
‘The tactics of thy Algar cousins were masterly,’ Mandorallen agreed. ‘Taur Urgas will take some time to recover from this morning’s chastisement.’
‘I’d give a great deal to see the look on his face just now.’ Silk laughed. ‘He’s probably frothing at the mouth.’
King Cho-Hag, dressed in steel-plated black leather and with his horse-banner streaming triumphantly in the bright morning sun, came galloping up the hill toward them, closely surrounded by the members of his personal guard. ‘Interesting morning,’ he said with typical Algar understatement as he reined in. ‘Thanks for bringing us so many Murgos.’
‘He’s as bad as Hettar,’ Silk observed to Barak.
The king of the Algars grinned openly as he slowly dismounted. His weak legs seemed almost to buckle as he carefully put his weight on them, and he held onto his saddle for support. ‘How did things go in Rak Cthol?’ he asked.
‘It wound up being rather noisy,’ Belgarath replied.
‘Did you find Ctuchik in good health?’
‘Moderately. We corrected that, however. The whole affair set off an earthquake. Most of Rak Cthol slid off its mountaintop, I’m afraid.’
Cho-Hag grinned again. ‘What a shame.’
‘Where’s Hettar?’ Barak asked.
‘Chasing Murgos, I imagine,’ Cho-Hag replied. ‘Their rear guard got cut off, and they’re out there trying to find someplace to hide.’
‘There aren’t very many hiding places on this plain, are there?’ Barak asked.
‘Almost none at all,’ the Algar king agreed pleasantly.
A dozen or so Algar wagons crested a nearby hill, rolling toward them through the tall, brown grass. They were squareboxed conveyances, looking not unlike houses on wheels. They had roofs, narrow windows, and steps at the rear leading up to the doorway on the back of each wagon. It looked, Garion thought, almost like a moving city as they approached.
‘I imagine Hettar’s going to be a while,’ Cho-Hag noted. ‘Why don’t we have a bit of lunch? I’d like to get word to Anheg and Rhodar about what’s happened here as soon as possible, but I’m sure you’ll want to pass a few things along as well. We can
talk while we eat.’
Several of the wagons were drawn up close together and their sides were let down and joined to form a spacious, low-ceilinged dining hall. Braziers provided warmth, and candles illuminated the interior of the quickly assembled hall, supplementing the bright winter sunlight streaming in through the windows.
They dined on roasted meat and mellow ale. Garion soon found that he was wearing far too many clothes. It seemed that he had not been warm in months, and the glowing braziers shimmered out a welcome heat. Although he was tired and very dirty, he felt warm and safe, and he soon found himself nodding over his plate, almost drowsing as Belgarath recounted the story of their escape to the Algar king.
Gradually, however, as the old man spoke, something alerted Garion. There was, it seemed, a trace too much vivacity in his grandfather’s voice, and Belgarath’s words sometimes seemed almost to tumble over each other. His blue eyes were very bright, but seemed occasionally a bit unfocused.
‘So Zedar got away,’ Cho-Hag was saying. ‘That’s the only thing that mars the whole affair.’
‘Zedar’s no problem,’ Belgarath replied, smiling in a slightly dazed way.
His voice seemed strange, uncertain, and King Cho-Hag looked at the old man curiously. ‘You’ve had a busy year, Belgarath,’ he said.
‘A good one, though.’ The sorcerer smiled again and lifted his ale cup. His hand was trembling violently, and he stared at it in astonishment.
‘Aunt Pol!’ Garion called urgently.
‘Are you all right, father?’
‘Fine, Pol, perfectly fine.’ He smiled vaguely at her, his unfocused eyes blinking owlishly. He rose suddenly to his feet and began to move toward her, but his steps were lurching, almost staggering. And then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the floor like a pole-axed cow.
‘Father!’ Aunt Pol exclaimed, leaping to his side.
Garion, moving almost as fast as his Aunt, knelt on the other side of the unconscious old man. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ he demanded.
But Aunt Pol did not answer. Her hands were at Belgarath’s wrist and brow, feeling for his pulse. She peeled back one of his eyelids and stared intently into his blank, unseeing eyes. ‘Durnik!’ she snapped. ‘Get my herb-bag – quickly!’
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