‘Please, Vella, I’m talking business.’
‘This shabby old troll couldn’t buy a tankard of cheap ale, much less me.’ She turned to Beldin. ‘Have you even got two coins to rub together, you jackass?’ she demanded.
‘Now you’ve gone and spoiled the whole negotiation,’ Yarblek accused her plaintively.
Beldin, however gave the dark-haired woman a wicked, lopsided grin. ‘You interest me, girl,’ he told her, ‘and nobody’s done that for longer than I can remember. Try to work on your threats and curses a bit, though. The rhythm isn’t quite right.’ He turned to Polgara. ‘I think I’ll go back and see what those Drasnian pikemen are up to. Somehow I don’t believe that we want them creeping up behind us.’ Then he spread his arms, crouched, and became a hawk.
Vella stared incredulously after him as he soared away. ‘How did he do that?’ she gasped.
‘He’s very talented,’ Silk replied.
‘He is indeed.’ She turned on Yarblek with fire in her eyes. ‘Why did you let me talk to him like that?’ she demanded. ‘You know how important first impressions are. Now he’ll never make a decent offer for me.’
‘You can tell for yourself that he doesn’t have any money.’
‘There are other things than money, Yarblek.’
Yarblek shook his head and walked away muttering to himself.
Ce’Nedra’s eyes were as hard as green agates. ‘Garion,’ she said in a deceptively quiet voice, ‘one day very soon we’ll want to talk about these taverns you mentioned—and dancing girls—and a few other matters as well.’
‘It was a long time ago, dear,’ he said quickly.
‘Not nearly long enough.’
‘Does anybody have anything to eat?’ Vella demanded, looking around. ‘I’m as hungry as a bitch wolf with ten puppies.’
‘I can probably find something for you,’ Polgara replied.
Vella looked at her, and her eyes slowly widened. ‘Are you who I think you are?’ she asked in an awed voice.
‘That depends on who you think I am, dear.’
‘I understand that you dance,’ Ce’Nedra said in a chilly voice.
Vella shrugged. ‘All women dance. I’m just the best, that’s all.’
‘You seem very sure of yourself, Mistress Vella.’
‘I just recognize facts.’ Vella looked curiously at Ce’Nedra. ‘My, you’re a tiny one, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘Are you really full-grown?’
‘I am the Queen of Riva,’ Ce’Nedra replied, drawing herself up to her full height.
‘Good for you, girl,’ Vella said warmly, clapping her on the shoulder. ‘I always enjoy seeing a woman get ahead.’
It was midmorning of a gray, cloudy day when Garion crested a hill and looked across a shallow valley at the imposing bulk of Rheon. The town stood atop a steep hill, and its walls reared up sharply out of the rank gorse covering the slopes.
‘Well,’ Barak said quietly as he joined Garion, ‘there it is.’
‘I didn’t realize the walls were quite so high,’ Garion admitted.
‘They’ve been working on them,’ Barak said, pointing. ‘You can see that new stonework on the parapet.’
Flying defiantly above the city, the scarlet banner of the Bear-cult, a blood-red flag with the black outline of a shambling bear in the center, snapped in the chill breeze. For some reason that flag raised an almost irrational rage in Garion. ‘I want that thing down,’ he said from between clenched teeth.
‘That’s why we came,’ Barak told him.
Mandorallen, burnished in his armor, joined them.
‘This isn’t going to be easy, is it?’ Garion said to them.
‘It won’t be so bad,’ Barak replied, ‘Once Hettar gets here.’
Mandorallen had been assessing the town’s fortifications with a professional eye. ‘I foresee no insurmountable difficulties,’ he declared confidently. ‘Immediately upon the return of the several hundred men I dispatched to procure timbers from that forest lying some leagues to the north, I shall begin the construction of siege engines.’
‘Can you actually throw a rock big enough to knock a hole in walls that thick?’ Garion asked dubiously.
‘’Tis not the single stroke that reduces them, Garion,’ the knight replied. ‘’Tis the repetition of blow after blow. I will ring the town with engines and rain stones upon their walls. I doubt not that there will be a breach or two ’ere my Lord Hettar arrives.’
‘Won’t the people inside repair them as fast as you break them?’ Garion asked.
‘Not if you’ve got other catapults throwing burning pitch at them,’ Barak told him. ‘It’s very hard to concentrate on anything when you’re on fire.’
Garion winced. ‘I hate using fire on people,’ he said, briefly remembering Asharak the Murgo.
‘It’s the only way, Garion,’ Barak said soberly. ‘Otherwise you’re going to lose a lot of good men.’
Garion sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s get started then.’
Reinforced by Yarblek’s trappers, the Rivans drew up in a wide circle around the fortified town. Though their combined numbers were not yet sufficient to mount a successful assault on those high, grim walls, they were nonetheless enough to seal the town effectively. The construction of Mandorallen’s siege engines took but a few days; once they were completed and moved into position, the steady twang of tightly twisted ropes uncoiling with terrific force and the sharp crack of heavy rocks shattering against the walls of Rheon was almost continual.
Garion watched from a vantage point atop a nearby hill as rock after rock lofted high into the air to smash down on those seemingly impregnable walls.
‘It’s a sad thing to watch,’ Queen Porenn noted as she joined him. A stiff breeze tugged at her black gown and stirred her flaxen hair as she moodily watched Mandorallen’s engines pound relentlessly at the walls. ‘Rheon has stood here for almost three thousand years. It’s been like a rock guarding the frontier. It seems very strange to attack one of my own cities—particularly when you consider the fact that half of our forces are Nadraks, the very people Rheon was built to hold off in the first place.’
‘Wars are always a little absurd, Porenn,’ Garion agreed.
‘More than just a little. Oh, Polgara asked me to tell you that Beldin has come back. He has something to tell you.’
‘All right. Shall we go back down, then?’ He offered the Queen of Drasnia his arm.
Beldin was lounging on the grass near the tents, gnawing the shreds of meat off a soup bone and exchanging casual insults with Vella. ‘You’ve got a bit of a problem, Belgarion,’ he told Garion. ‘Those Drasnian pike men have broken camp and they’re marching this way.’
Garion frowned. ‘How far away is Hettar?’ he asked.
‘Far enough to turn it into a race,’ the little hunchback replied. ‘I expect that the whole outcome is going to depend on which army gets here first.’
‘The Drasnians wouldn’t really attack us, would they?’ Ce’Nedra asked.
‘It’s hard to say,’ Porenn replied. ‘If Haldar has convinced them that Garion is holding me prisoner, they might. Javelin took a horse and rode back to see if he could find out exactly what’s going on.’
Garion began to pace up and down, gnawing worriedly on one fingernail.
‘Don’t bite your nails, dear,’ Polgara told him.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied automatically, still lost in thought. ‘Is Hettar coming as fast as he can?’ he asked Beldin.
‘He’s pushing his horses about as hard as they can be pushed.’
‘If there was only some way to slow down the pikemen.’
‘I’ve got a couple of ideas,’ Beldin said. He looked at Polgara. ‘What do you say to a bit of flying, Pol?’ he asked her. ‘I might need some help with this.’
‘I don’t want you to hurt those men,’ Queen Porenn said firmly. ‘They’re my people—even if they are being misled.’
‘If what I’ve got in mi
nd works, nobody’s going to get hurt,’ Beldin assured her. He rose to his feet and dusted off the back of his filthy tunic. ‘I’ve enjoyed chatting with you, girl,’ he said to Vella.
She unleashed a string of expletives at him that turned Ce’Nedra’s face pale.
‘You’re getting better at that,’ he approved. ‘I think you’re starting to get the hang of it. Coming, Pol?’
Vella’s expression was indecipherable as she watched the blue-banded hawk and the snowy owl spiral upward.
Chapter Twenty-three
Later that day, Garion rode out to continue his observations of the ongoing siege of the town of Rheon and he found Barak, Mandorallen, and Durnik in the midst of a discussion. ‘It has to do with the way walls are built, Mandorallen,’ Durnik was trying to explain. ‘A city wall is put together to withstand exactly what you’re trying to do to that one.’
Mandorallen shrugged. ‘It becomes a test then, Goodman, a test to discover which is the stronger—their walls or mine engines.’
‘That’s the kind of test that could take months,’ Durnik pointed out. ‘But if instead of throwing rocks at the outside of the wall, you lobbed them all the way over to hit the inside of the wall on the far side, you’d stand a pretty fair chance of toppling them outward.’
Mandorallen frowned, mulling it over in his mind.
‘He could be right, Mandorallen,’ Barak said. ‘City walls are usually buttressed from the inside. They’re built to keep people out, not in. If you bang your rocks against the inside of the walls, you won’t have the strength of the buttresses to contend with. Not only that—if the walls fall outward, they’ll provide us with natural ramps into the city. That way we won’t need scaling ladders.’
Yarblek sauntered over to join the discussion, his fur cap at a jaunty angle. After Durnik had explained his idea, the rangy-looking Nadrak’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘He’s got a point, Arend,’ he said to Mandorallen. ‘And after you’ve pounded the walls from the inside for a while, we can throw a few grappling hooks over the tops of them. If the walls have already been weakened, we should be able to pull them down.’
‘I must admit the feasibility of these most unorthodox approaches to the art of the siege,’ Mandorallen said. ‘Though they both do fly in the face of long-established tradition, they show promise of shortening the tedious procedure of reducing the walls.’ He looked curiously at Yarblek. ‘I had not previously considered this notion of using grappling hooks so,’ he admitted.
Yarblek laughed coarsely. ‘That’s probably because you’re not a Nadrak. We’re an impatient people, so we don’t build very good walls. I’ve pulled down some pretty stout-looking houses in my time—for one reason or another.’
‘I think, though, that we don’t want to yank down the walls too soon,’ Barak cautioned. ‘The people inside outnumber us just now, and we don’t want to give them any reason to come swarming out of that place—and if you pull a man’s walls down, it usually makes him very grouchy.’
The siege of Rheon continued for two more days before Javelin returned astride an exhausted horse. ‘Haldar’s put his own people in most of the positions of authority in the army,’ he reported, once they had all gathered in the large, dun-colored tent that served as the headquarters of the besieging army. ‘They’re all going around making speeches about Belgarion taking Queen Porenn prisoner. They’ve about halfway persuaded the troops that they’re coming to her rescue.’
‘Was there any sign of Brendig and the Sendars yet?’ Garion asked him.
‘I didn’t see them personally, but Haldar has his troops moving at a forced march, and he’s got a lot of scouts out behind him. I think he believes that Brendig’s right on his heels. On the way back, I ran into Lady Polgara and the sorcerer Beldin. They seem to be planning something, but I didn’t have time to get any details.’ He slumped in his chair with a look of exhaustion on his face.
‘You’re tired, Khendon,’ Queen Porenn said. ‘Why don’t you get a few hours’ sleep, and we’ll gather here again this evening.’
‘I’m all right, your Majesty,’ he said quickly.
‘Go to bed, Javelin,’ she said firmly. ‘Your contributions to our discussions won’t be very coherent if you keep falling asleep in your chair.’
‘You might as well do as she says, Javelin,’ Silk advised. ‘She’s going to mother you whether you like it or not.’
‘That will do, Silk,’ Poreen said.
‘But you will, Auntie. You’re known far and wide as the little mother of Drasnia.’
‘I said, that will do.’
‘Yes, mother.’
‘I think you’re walking on very thin ice, Silk,’ Yarblek said.
‘I always walk on thin ice. It gives my life a certain zest.’
The gloomy day was slowly settling into an even gloomier evening as Garion and his friends gathered once more in the large tent near the center of the encampment. Yarblek had brought a number of rolled-up rugs with him and several iron braziers, and these contributions to their headquarters added certain garish, even barbaric, touches to the interior of the tent.
‘Where’s Silk?’ Garion asked, looking around as they all seated themselves around the glowing braziers.
‘I think he’s out snooping,’ Barak replied.
Garion made a face. ‘I wish that just once he’d be where he’s supposed to be.’
Javelin looked much more alert after his few hours’ sleep. His expression, however, was grave. ‘We’re starting to run out of time,’ he told them. ‘We’ve got three armies converging on this place. Lord Hettar is coming up from the south, and General Brendig is coming in from the west. Unfortunately, the Drasnian pikemen are very likely to get here first.’
‘Unless Pol and Beldin can slow them down,’ Durnik added.
‘I have every confidence in Lady Polgara and Master Beldin,’ Javelin said, ‘but I think we should decide what we’re going to do in the event that they aren’t successful. It’s always best to prepare for the worst.’
‘Wisely spoken, my Lord,’ Mandorallen murmured.
‘Now,’ the Chief of Drasnian Intelligence continued, ‘we don’t truly want to fight the pikemen. First of all, they aren’t really our enemies; secondly, a battle with them is going to weaken our forces to the point that a sortie in force from the city could conceivably defeat us.’
‘What are you leading up to, Javelin?’ Porenn asked him.
‘I think that we’re going to have to get into the city.’
‘We haven’t got enough men,’ Barak said flatly.
‘And ’twill take several more days to reduce the walls,’ Mandorallen added.
Javelin held up one hand. ‘If we concentrate the siege engines on one section of wall, we should be able to bring it down within one day,’ he declared.
‘But that just announces which quarter we’ll attack from,’ Lelldorin protested. ‘The forces in the city will be concentrated there to repell us.’
‘Not if the rest of their city’s on fire,’ Javelin replied.
‘Absolutely out of the question,’ Garion said flatly. ‘My son could be in that town, and I’m not going to risk his life by setting the whole place on fire.’
‘I still say that we haven’t got enough men to take the city,’ Barak maintained.
‘We don’t have to take the whole city, my Lord of Trellheim,’ Javelin said. ‘All we need to do is get our men inside. If we take one quarter of the town and fortify it, we can hold off the cult from the inside and Haldar from the outside. Then we simply sit tight and wait for Lord Hettar and General Brendig.’
‘It’s got some possibilities,’ Yarblek said. ‘The way things stand right now, we’re caught in a nutcracker. If those pikemen get here first, about all your friends are going to be able to do when they arrive is to pick up the pieces.’
‘No fire,’ Garion declared adamantly.
‘I do fear me that however we proceed, we may not gain entry into the city ’ere the
walls are breached,’ Mandorallen observed.
‘The walls aren’t really any problem,’ Durnik said quietly. ‘No wall is any better than its foundation.’
‘It is quite impossible, Goodman,’ Mandorallen told him. ‘A wall’s foundation hath the entire weight resting upon it. No engine in the world can move such a mass.’
‘I wasn’t talking about an engine,’ Durnik said.
‘What have you got in mind, Durnik?’ Garion asked him.
‘It’s not really going to be that hard, Garion,’ Durnik said. ‘I did a bit of looking around. The walls aren’t resting on rock. They’re resting on packed dirt. All we have to do is soften that dirt a bit. There’s plenty of underground water in this region. If we put our heads together, you and I ought to be able to bring it up under one section of wall without anybody inside the city knowing what we’ve done. Once the ground is soft enough, a few dozen of Yarblek’s grappling hooks ought to be enough to topple it.’
‘Can it be done, Garion?’ Lelldorin asked doubtfully.
Garion thought it through. ‘It’s possible,’ he conceded. ‘It’s very possible.’
‘And if we did it at night, we could be in position to rush into the city just as soon as the wall falls,’ Barak said. ‘We could get inside without losing a single man.’
‘It’s a novel solution,’ Silk observed from the doorway of the tent. ‘A little unethical, perhaps, but novel all the same.’
‘Where have you been, you little sneak?’ Yarblek demanded.
‘In Rheon, actually,’ Silk replied.
‘You were inside the city?’ Barak asked in surprise.
Silk shrugged. ‘Of course. I thought it might be appropriate to get a friend of ours out of there before we took the place apart.’ He stepped aside with a mocking little bow to admit the honey-blonde Margravine Liselle.
‘Now that is a splendid-looking young woman,’ Yarblek breathed in admiration.
Liselle smiled at him, the dimples dancing in her cheeks.
‘How did you get inside?’ Garion asked the rat-faced little man.
‘You really wouldn’t want to know, Garion,’ Silk told him. ‘There’s always a way in or out of a city, if you’re really serious about it.’