Silk felt the feathered end of the arrow. “All right,” he said. “I can pick them out now.”
“Are you sure?” Lelldorin asked.
“If my fingertips can find the spots on a pair of dice, they can certainly tell the difference between gut and linen twine,” Silk replied.
“All right. We’ll start here.” Lelldorin attached one end of a ball of twine to the arrow. “I’ll go this way, and you go that.”
“Right.” Silk tied the end of his ball of string to the same shaft. He turned to Garion and Durnik. “Don’t overdo it with the water, you two,” he said. “I don’t particularly want to get buried in a mudslide out here.” Then he moved off, crouched low and groping for the next arrow. Lelldorin touched Garion’s shoulder briefly, then disappeared in the opposite direction.
“The ground’s completely soaked now,” Durnik murmured. “If we open those fissures about a foot wide, it’s going to flush most of the support out from under the wall.”
“Good.”
Again, they sent their probing thoughts out through the sodden earth of the hillside, located the layer of rock, and then swept back and forth along its irregular upper side until they located the first fissure. Garion felt a peculiar sensation as he began to worm his thought down that narrow crack where the water came welling up from far below, almost as if he were extending some incredibly long though invisible arm with slender, supple fingers at its end to reach down into the fissure. “Have you got it?” he whispered to Durnik.
“I think so.”
“Let’s pull it apart then,” Garion said, bracing his will.
Slowly, with an effort that made the beads of sweat stand out on their foreheads, the two of them forced the fissure open. A sharp, muffled crack reverberated up from beneath the sodden slope of the hillside as the rock broke under the force of their combined wills.
“Who’s there?” a voice demanded from atop the city wall.
“Is it open wide enough?” Garion whispered, ignoring that alarmed challenge.
“The water’s coming up much faster,” Durnik replied after a moment’s probing. “There’s a lot of pressure under that layer of rock. Let’s move on to the next place.”
A heavy twang came from somewhere behind them, and a peculiar slithering whistle passed overhead as the line from one of Yarblek’s catapult-launched grappling hooks arched up and over the north wall. The hook made a steely clink as it slapped against the inside of the wall, and then there was a grating sound as the points dug in.
Crouched low, Garion and Durnik moved carefully on to their left, trying to minimize the soggy squelching sound their feet made in the slush and probing beneath the earth for the next fissure. When Lelldorin came back to rejoin them, they had already opened two more of those hidden cracks lying beneath the saturated slope; behind and above them, there was a gurgling sound as the soupy mud oozed out of the hillside to cascade in a brown flood down the snowy slope.
“I got all the way to the end of the line of arrows,” Lelldorin reported. “The string’s in place on this side.”
“Good,” Garion said, panting slightly from his exertions. “Go back and tell Barak to start moving the troops into place.”
“Right.” Lelldorin turned and went off into the swirl of a sudden snow flurry.
“We’ll have to be careful with this one,” Durnik murmured, searching along under the soil. “There are a lot of fractures in the rock here. If we pull it too far apart, we’ll break up the whole layer and turn loose a river.” 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 well springs, 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 is starting to ooze through the snow like cold gravy. Then I went up and pushed my foot against one of the 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?”
“My pleasure,” Silk replied. “I want to get out of here 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 rooftops 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 darkness 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 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 thereare 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.