David and Leigh Eddings – Belgarath the Sorcerer

“He’s only a child, Pol. He couldn’t even lift that sword.”

“We’ve got time, father. Torak hasn’t even begun the siege yet.”

“The Mrin says that Brand’s going to confront Torak. Gelane’s not

supposed to get involved.”

“The Mrin’s very obscure, father, and sometimes things change. I want

to be ready for any eventuality.”

“I really think I could handle it, grandfather,” Gelane assured me.

“I’ve got an Algar friend who’s been teaching me how to use a sword.”

I sighed, and then I buried my face in my hands for a while.

There wasn’t really very much to do at the Stronghold except to wait

for Torak. I suppose Pol and I could have left at any time, but I

wanted to be absolutely certain that One-eye didn’t change direction on

me again.

The invasion of Drasnia had caught me completely off guard, and I

wasn’t going to let that happen again. I wanted to make sure that he

was completely committed before I went off and left him to his own

devices. I also wanted to watch the defenders crush the first few

assaults, just to make sure they knew what they were doing.

Riders from the outlying clans came by frequently during the next two

weeks to keep us posted. Torak was still advancing, and he showed no

signs of veering off.

Then, early one morning when dawn was turning the rain silver,

Polgara’s voice woke me from my fitful sleep.

“I think you’d better come up here, father.”

“Where are you?”

“I can’t understand you, father. Just come up to the parapet on top of

the north wall. There’s something you’d better have a look at.”

I grumbled a bit, but I climbed out of bed and pulled on my clothes.

What was she up to now? The fact that she couldn’t understand me was a

clear sign that she’d changed form. I went out into the torch-lit

corridor outside my room and on up those interminable staircases that

lead to the top of the Stronghold.

There was a snowy owl perched on the rain-swept battlements.

“I’ve asked you not to do that, Pol,” I reminded her.

She blurred and shimmered back into her own form.

“I’m sorry, father,” she said.

“I’m not doing it to upset you. I’m following instructions.

I think you’d better look at that,” she told me, gesturing toward the

north.

I looked out over the battlements. The clouds overhead were dirty grey

and dawn-stained. The rain had slackened to some degree, so it wasn’t

that solid curtain I’d been staring at for the past several weeks. At

first I couldn’t really see anything, but then a movement caught my eye

about a mile out on that half-obscured plain. Then, as I looked

harder, a mass of humanity seemed to grow out of the mist, a huge,

faceless mass that stretched from horizon to soggy horizon.

Kal Torak had reached the Stronghold.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“Are you sure Torak’s with them?” I asked, still staring out at that

slow-moving army.

“Yes, father. I went out and looked.

That iron pavilion of his is right in the center of the crowd.”

“You did what? Polgara, that’s Torak out there! Now he knows you’re

here!”

“Don’t get excited, Old Man. I was told to do it. Torak had no way of

even knowing I was there. He’s inside his pavilion, and Zedar’s with

him.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Since he left Mallorea, I’d imagine. Let’s go alert the Algars, and

then I think we’ll have time for some breakfast. I’ve been up all

night, and I’m positively ravenous.”

It was midmorning by the time the Angaraks had completed their

encirclement of the Stronghold and noon before they tried their first

tentative assault. The Algars and the Drasnian pike men stayed out of

sight, and I think that unnerved Kal Torak’s generals just a bit.

They’d hauled their siege-engines into place, and they started out by

trying to loft boulders into the city. That didn’t work out very well,

because the walls were too high. I could see their engineers

feverishly trying to adjust the catapults to change their trajectory.

Then, more I think to get some sort of response from the defenders than

out of any hope of success, they mounted an attack on the front gate.

They rolled up battering rams, but that wasn’t really necessary. The

gate wasn’t locked. The first troops through the gate were Thulls.

Thulls always seem to get the dirty jobs in Angarak society.

I’m not even sure that the Thulls realized what they’d encountered when

they burst through the gate. As I’ve said before, the Stronghold isn’t

a city in the usual sense. Those enormous walls don’t enclose houses

and public buildings, they enclose an elaborate maze of narrow,

high-walled corridors without a roof in sight. The Thulls rushed in,

and all they found was geometry. They found corridors laid out in

straight lines, in curved lines, in lines so complex that they turned

back on themselves and almost seemed to dissolve off into unimaginable

dimensions.

The defenders allowed the Thulls to mill around inside that maze for

about an hour, and then they rose from their places of concealment atop

those twenty-foot-high interior walls and obliterated the intruders.

And the Mallorean generals and the kings of the western Angarak nations

still hadn’t seen a single defender. They didn’t see the horde of

Thullish soldiers again either. They’d sent several thousand men

through the gate, and not one of them ever came back out again–at

least not through the gate.

During the following night, however, they did start seeing the men they

had ordered inside. The Algar catapultists atop the walls began

lofting dead Thulls into the middle of the Angarak encampment. It’s

very hard to get any sleep when it’s raining Thulls.

The next day, the second siege got under way. There were three Algar

clans inside the Stronghold. The rest of them were outside. Kal Torak

had encircled the Stronghold, and then the free-roving Algar horsemen

encircled him. They didn’t take up positions or dig in fortifications

the way besiegers usually do, because cavalry doesn’t work that way.

The Algars kept moving, and Kal Torak’s generals and subordinate kings

never knew where or when they’d strike next. It was almost as

dangerous for them outside the walls as it was inside.

After a few days, I concluded that Cho-Ram’s tactics were working out

fine, and Pol and I said good-bye to Gelane, his mother, and the Algar

Clan-Chiefs defending the fortress. And then we flew off to the west

through the rainy, wind-swept gloom that seemed to have settled in

perpetually. We had other things to attend to.

With Kal Torak effectively pinned down in Algaria, we had some time to

expand and polish our plans. We moved our discussions from Riva to Tol

Honeth so that we could take advantage of the expertise of the Imperial

War College and the Tolnedran General Staff. I found working with

professional soldiers to be something of a novelty. Despite their

fearsome reputation, Alorns are at best only gifted amateurs, largely

because their rank is hereditary. A man who’s born a general doesn’t

have nearly the grasp of things a man who’s worked his way up through

the ranks has. Tolnedran officers work out contingency plans to deal

with surprises. The customary Alorn approach to a battlefield

emergency is simply to go berserk and kill everything in

sight–including trees and bushes.

Although Ran Borune had by now tentatively–and very reluctantly

–conceded that Pol and I might possibly have capabilities he wasn’t

prepared to admit actually existed, she and I remained largely in the

background during those meetings. As I told the emperor,

“There’s not much point in distracting your generals by telling them

things they’re not philosophically prepared to accept. If we announce

that I’m sneaking up on my seven thousandth birthday, they’ll spend so

much time trying to prove that we’re lying that they won’t be able to

pay attention to what they’re supposed to be doing. Let’s just tell

them that Pol and I are Rivans and let it go at that.”

The thing that baffled us the most was the fact that Urvon wasn’t

moving. He’d brought his army across the Sea of the East, right

enough, but then he’d settled down in the Hagga Military District on

the southern coast of Cthol Murgos as if he planned to put down roots.

Finally I sent word to the twins that I needed to talk with Beldin face

to face. You can only do so much at a distance.

My brother arrived a few days later and came to my room in the Cherek

embassy. It wasn’t a particularly large room, but I’m a plain sort of

person, so I don’t really need luxurious quarters. My first question

to him was fairly simple.

“What’s holding him up?”

“The Murgos,” he replied.

“What else? That and the fact that he hasn’t received his marching