Guardians of the West

  Garion grunted his agreement as he sent the probing fingers of his will out toward the fissure.

  When they reached the last of their subterranean wellsprings, Silk came out of the dark behind them, his nimble feet making no sound as he moved through the slush.

  ‘What kept you?’ Durnik whispered to the little man. ‘You only had about a hundred yards to go.’

  ‘I was checking the slope,’ Silk replied. ‘The whole thing is starting to ooze through the snow like cold gravy. Then I went up and pushed my foot against one of the foundation stones of the wall. It wobbled like a loose tooth.’

  ‘Well,’ Durnik said in a tone of self-satisfaction, ‘it worked after all.’

  There was a pause in the snowy darkness. ‘You mean you weren’t actually sure?’ Silk asked in a strangled voice.

  ‘The theory was sound,’ the smith answered in an offhand sort of way. ‘But you can never be actually positive about a theory until you try it.’

  ‘Durnik, I’m getting too old for this.’

  Another grappling hook sailed overhead.

  ‘We’ve got one more to open,’ Garion murmured. ‘Barak’s moving the troops into place. Do you want to go back and tell Yarblek to send up the signal to Mandorallen?’

  ‘With pleasure,’ Silk replied. ‘I want to get out of there before we’re all hip-deep in mud anyway.’ He turned and went off into the dark.

  Perhaps ten minutes later, when the last fissure had been opened and the entire north slope of the hill had turned into a slithering mass of oozing mud and freely running water, an orange ball of blazing pitch arched high in the air over the city. In response to that prearranged signal, Mandorallen’s engines emplaced to the south began a continuous barrage, lofting their heavy stones high over the roof tops of Rheon to slam against the inside of the north wall. At the same time, the lines on Yarblek’s grappling hooks tautened as the Nadrak mercenaries began to move their teams of horses away from the wall. There was an ominous creaking and grinding along the top of the hill as the weakened wall began to sway.

  ‘How much longer do you think it’s going to stand?’ Barak asked as he came out of the darkess with Lelldorin at his side to join them.

  ‘Not very,’ Durnik replied. ‘The ground’s starting to give way under it.’

  The groaning creak above them grew louder, punctuated by the continual sharp crashes along the inside as Mandorallen’s catapults stepped up the pace of their deadly rain. Then, with a sound like an avalanche, a section of the wall collapsed with a peculiarly sinuous motion as the upper portion toppled outward and the lower sank into the sodden earth. There was a great, splashing rumble as the heavy stones cascaded into the slush and mud of the hillside.

  ‘A man should never try to put up stonework resting only on dirt,’ Durnik observed critically.

  ‘Under the circumstances, I’m glad they did,’ Barak told him.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Durnik admitted, ‘but there are right ways to do things.’

  The big Cherek chuckled. ‘Durnik, you’re an absolute treasure, do you know that?’

  Another section of the wall toppled outward to splash onto the slope. Shouts of alarm and the clanging of bells began to echo through the streets of the fortified town.

  ‘You want me to move the men out?’ Barak asked Garion, his voice tense with excitement.

  ‘Let’s wait until the whole wall comes down,’ Garion replied. ‘I don’t want them charging up the hill with all those building stones falling on top of them.’

  ‘There it goes.’ Lelldorin laughed gleefully, pointing toward the last, toppling section of the wall.

  ‘Start the men,’ Garion said tersely, reaching over his shoulder for the great sword strapped to his back.

  Barak drew in a deep breath. ‘Charge!’ he roared in a vast voice.

  With a concerted shout, the Rivans and their Nadrak allies plunged up through the slush and mud and began clambering over the fallen ruins of the north wall and on into the city.

  ‘Let’s go!’ Barak shouted. ‘We’ll miss all the fighting if we don’t hurry!’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The fight was short and in many cases very ugly. Each element of Garion’s army had been thoroughly briefed by Javelin and his niece, and they had all been given specific assignments. Unerringly, they moved through the snowy, firelit streets to occupy designated houses. Other elements, angling in from the edges of the breach in the north wall, circled the defensive perimeter Javelin had drawn on Liselle’s map to pull down the houses and fill the streets with obstructing rubble.

  The first counterattack came just before dawn. Howling Bear-cultists clad in shaggy furs swarmed out of the narrow streets beyond the perimeter to swarm up over the rubble of the collapsed houses, only to run directly into a withering rain of arrows from the rooftops and upper windows. After dreadful losses, they fell back.

  As dawn broke pale and gray along the snowy eastern horizon, the last few pockets of resistance inside the perimeter crumbled, and the north quarter of Rheon was secure. Garion stood somberly at a broken upper window of a house overlooking the cleared area that marked the outer limits of that part of the town that was under his control. The bodies of the cultists who had mounted the counterattack lay sprawled in twisted, grotesque heaps, already lightly dusted with snow.

  ‘Not a bad little fight,’ Barak declared, coming into the room with his blood-stained sword still in his hand. He dropped his dented shield in a corner and came over to the window.

  ‘I didn’t care much for it,’ Garion replied, pointing at the wind-rows of the dead lying below. ‘Killing people is a very poor way of changing their minds.’

  ‘They started this war, Garion. You didn’t.’

  ‘No,’ Garion corrected. ‘Ulfgar started it. He’s the one I actually want.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to go get him for you,’ Barak said, carefully wiping his sword with a bit of tattered cloth.

  During the course of the day, there were several more furious counterattacks from inside the city, but the results were much the same as had been the case with the first. Garion’s positions were too secure and too well covered by archers to fall to these sporadic sorties.

  ‘They don’t actually fight well in groups, do they?’ Durnik said from the vantage point of the upper storey of that half-ruined house.

  ‘They don’t have that kind of discipline,’ Silk replied. The little man was sprawled on a broken couch in one corner of the room, carefully peeling an apple with a small, sharp knife. ‘Individually, they’re as brave as lions, but the concept of unified action hasn’t quite seeped into their heads yet.’

  ‘That was an awfully good shot,’ Barak congratulated Lelldorin, who had just loosed an arrow through the shattered window.

  Lelldorin shrugged. ‘Child’s play. Now, that fellow creeping along the roof-line of the house several streets back—that’s a bit more challenging.’ He nocked another arrow, drew, and released all in one smooth motion.

  ‘You got him,’ Barak said.

  ‘Naturally.’

  As evening approached, Polgara and Beldin returned to the camp outside the city. ‘Well,’ the gnarled sorcerer said with a certain satisfaction, ‘you won’t have to worry about the pikemen for a while.’ He held out his twisted hands to one of Yarblek’s glowing braziers.

  ‘You didn’t hurt them, did you?’ Porenn asked quickly.

  ‘No,’ he grinned. ‘We just bogged them down. They were going through a marshy valley, and we diverted a river into it. The whole place is a quagmire now. They’re perched on hummocks and in the branches of trees waiting for the water to subside.’

  ‘Won’t that stall Brendig as well?’ Garion asked.

  ‘Brendig’s marching around that valley,’ Polgara assured him, sitting near one of the braziers with a cup of tea. ‘He should be here in a few days.’ She looked at Vella. ‘This tea is really excellent,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Lady Polgara,’ the dark-haire
d dancer replied. Her eyes were fixed on Ce’Nedra’s copper curls, radiant in the golden candlelight. She sighed enviously. ‘If I had hair like that, Yarblek could sell me for double the price.’

  ‘I’d settle for half,’ Yarblek muttered. ‘Just to avoid all those incidental knifings.’

  ‘Don’t be such a baby, Yarblek,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t really hurt you all that much.’

  ‘You weren’t the one who was doing the bleeding.’

  ‘Have you been practicing your curses, Vella?’ Beldin asked.

  She demonstrated—at some length.

  ‘You’re getting better,’ he congratulated her.

  For the next two days, Garion’s forces worked to heap obstructions along the rubble-choked perimeter of the north quarter of Rheon to prevent a counterattack in force from crossing that intervening space. Garion and his friends observed the process from a large window high up in the house which they had converted into a headquarters.

  ‘Whoever’s in charge over there doesn’t seem to have a very good grasp of basic strategy,’ Yarblek noted. ‘He’s not making any effort to block off his side of that open space to keep us out of the rest of his city.’

  Barak frowned. ‘You know, Yarblek, you’re right. That should have been his first move after we secured this part of town.’

  ‘Maybe he’s too arrogant to believe that we can take more of his houses,’ Lelldorin suggested.

  ‘Either that or he’s laying traps for us back out of sight,’ Durnik added.

  ‘That’s possible, too,’ Barak agreed. ‘More than possible. Maybe we ought to do a little planning before we start any more attacks.’

  ‘Before we can plan anything, we have to know exactly what kind of traps Ulfgar has waiting for us,’ Javelin said.

  Silk sighed and made a wry face. ‘All right. After dark I’ll go have a look.’

  ‘I wasn’t really suggesting that, Kheldar.’

  ‘Of course you weren’t.’

  ‘It’s a very good idea, though. I’m glad you thought of it.’

  It was some time after midnight when Silk returned to the large, firelit room in Garion’s headquarters. ‘It’s a very unpleasant night out there,’ the little man said, shivering and rubbing his hands together. He went over to stand in front of the fire.

  ‘Well, are they planning any surprises for us?’ Barak asked him, lifting a copper tankard.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Silk replied. ‘They’re building walls across the streets several houses back from our perimeter and they’re putting them just around corners so you won’t see them until you’re right on top of them.’

  ‘With archers and tubs of boiling pitch in all the houses nearby?’ Barak asked glumly.

  ‘Probably.’ Silk shrugged. ‘Do you have any more of that ale? I’m chilled to the bone.’

  ‘We’ll have to work on this a bit,’ Javelin mused.

  ‘Good luck,’ Barak said sourly, going to the ale keg. ‘I hate fighting in towns. Give me a nice open field any time.’

  ‘But the towns are where all the loot is,’ Yarblek said to him.

  ‘Is that all you ever think about?’

  ‘We’re in this life to make a profit, my friend,’ the raw-boned Nadrak replied with a shrug.

  ‘You sound just like Silk.’

  ‘I know. That’s why we went into partnership.’

  It continued to snow lightly throughout the following day. The citizens of Rheon made a few more probing attacks on Garion’s defensive perimeter, but for the most part they contented themselves with merely shooting arrows at anything that moved.

  About midmorning the next day, Errand picked his way over the rubble of the fallen north wall and went directly to the house from which Garion was directing operations. When he entered, his young face was tight with exhilaration, and he was panting noticeably. ‘That’s exciting,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’ Garion asked him.

  ‘Dodging arrows.’

  ‘Does Aunt Pol know you’re here?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I wanted to see the city, so I just came.’

  ‘You’re going to get us both in trouble, do you know that?’

  Errand shrugged. ‘A scolding doesn’t hurt all that much. Oh, I thought you ought to know that Hettar’s here—or he will be in an hour or so. He’s just a few miles to the south.’

  ‘Finally!’ Garion said with an explosive release of his breath. ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘Horse and I went out for a ride. He gets restless when he’s penned up. Anyway, we were up on that big hill to the south, and I saw the Algars coming.’

  ‘Well, let’s go meet them.’

  ‘Why don’t we?’

  When Garion and his young friend reached the top of the hill south of Rheon, they saw wave upon wave of Algar clansmen flowing over the snowy moors at a brisk canter. A single horseman detached himself from the front rank of that sea of horses and men and pounded up the hill, his long black scalplock flowing behind him. ‘Good morning, Garion,’ Hettar said casually as he reined in. ‘You’ve been well, I trust?’

  ‘Moderately.’ Garion grinned at him.

  ‘You’ve got snow up here.’

  Garion looked around in feigned astonishment. ‘Why, I do believe you’re right. I hadn’t even noticed that.’

  Another rider came up the hill, a man in a shabby, hooded cloak. ‘Where’s your Aunt, Garion?’ the man called when he was halfway up the hill.

  ‘Grandfather?’ Garion exclaimed with surprise. ‘I thought you were going to Mar Terrin.’

  Belgarath made an indelicate sound. ‘I did,’ he replied as he reined in his horse, ‘and it was an absolutely wasted trip. I’ll tell you about it later. What’s been going on here?’

  Briefly Garion filled them in on the events of the past several weeks.

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ Hettar noted.

  ‘The time goes faster when you keep occupied.’

  ‘Is Pol inside the city, then?’ Belgarath asked him.

  ‘No. She and Ce’Nedra and the other ladies are staying in the camp we built when we first got here. The cultists have been counterattacking against our positions inside, so I didn’t think it was entirely safe for them to be there.’

  ‘That makes sense. Why don’t you round up everybody and bring them to the camp. I think we need to talk about a few things.’

  ‘All right, Grandfather.’

  It was shortly after noon when they gathered in the main tent in the Rivan encampment outside the city.

  ‘Were you able to find anything useful, father?’ Polgara asked Belgarath as the old man entered the tent.

  Belgarath sprawled in a chair. ‘Some tantalizing hints was about all,’ he replied. ‘I get the feeling that Anheg’s copy of the Ashabine Oracles has been rather carefully pruned somewhere along the way—or more likely at the very beginning. The modifications seem to be a part of the original text.’

  ‘Prophets don’t usually tamper with their own prophecies,’ Polgara noted.

  ‘This one would have—particularly if parts of the prophecy said things he didn’t want to believe.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Torak. I recognized his tone and his peculiar turn of phrase almost immediately.’

  ‘Torak?’ Garion exclaimed, feeling a sudden chill.

  Belgarath nodded. ‘There’s an old Mallorean legend that says that after he destroyed Cthol Mishrak, Torak had a castle built at Ashaba in the Karandese Mountains. Once he moved in, an ecstasy came over him, and he composed the Ashabine Oracles. Anyway, the legend goes on to say that after the ecstasy had passed, Torak fell into a great rage. Apparently there were things in the prophecy that he didn’t like. That could very well account for the tampering I detected. We’ve always been told that the word gives meaning to the event. Torak may have believed that by altering the word, he could change the event.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘No. But Torak was so arrogant that he may have believe
d he could.’

  ‘But that puts us at a dead end, doesn’t it?’ Garion asked with a sinking feeling. ‘I mean—the Mrin Codex said that you had to look at all the mysteries, and if the Ashabine Oracles aren’t correct—’ He lifted his hands helplessly.

  ‘There’s a true copy somewhere,’ Belgarath replied confidently. ‘There has to be—otherwise the Codex would have given me different instructions.’

  ‘You’re operating on pure faith, Belgarath,’ Ce’Nedra accused him.

  ‘I know,’ he admitted. ‘I do that when I don’t have anything else to fall back on.’

  ‘What did you find at Mar Terrin?’ Polgara asked.

  Belgarath made a vulgar sound. ‘The monks there may be very good at comforting the spirits of all those slaughtered Marags, but they’re very bad at protecting manuscripts. The roof leaks in their library, and the copy of the Mallorean Gospels, naturally, was on a shelf right under the leak. It was so soggy that I could barely get the leaves apart, and the ink had run and smeared all over the pages. It was almost totally illegible. I spoke with the monks at some length about that.’ He scratched at one bearded cheek. ‘It looks as if I’m going to have to go a bit further afield to get what we need.’

  ‘You found nothing at all, then?’ Beldin asked.

  Belgarath grunted. ‘There was one passage in the Oracles that said that the Dark God will come again.’

  Garion felt a sudden chill grip his stomach. ‘Torak?’ he said. ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘I suppose you could take it to mean that, but if that’s what it really means, then why would Torak have gone to the trouble of destroying so many of the other passages? If the entire purpose of the Oracles was to predict his own return, I expect that he’d have been overjoyed to keep them intact.’

  ‘You’re assuming that old burnt-face was rational,’ Beldin growled. ‘I never noticed that quality in him very often.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Belgarath disagreed. ‘Everything Torak did was perfectly rational—as long as you accepted his basic notion that he was the sole reason for creation. No, I think the passage means something else.’