all pulled chairs up to his wobbly table and sampled his ale.
“Religion, Belgarath,” he replied.
“Isn’t that what starts every war?”
“Not always, but we can talk about that some other time. How could
religion start a war in Aloria? You people are all fully committed to
Belar.”
“Some are a little more committed than others,” he said, making a sour
face.
“Belar’s idea of going after the Angaraks is all very well, I suppose,
but we can’t get at them because there’s an ocean in the way.
There’s a priest in a place off to the east somewhere who’s just a
little thick-witted.” This? Coming from Uvar? I shudder to think of
how stupid that priest must have been for Uvar to notice!
“Anyway,” the king went on, “this priest has gathered up an army of
sorts, and he wants to invade the kingdoms of the South.”
“Why?”
Uvar shrugged.
“Because they’re there, I suppose. If they weren’t there, he wouldn’t
want to invade them, would he?”
I suppressed an urge to grab him and shake him.
“Have they done anything to offend him?” I asked.
“Not that I know of. You see, Belar’s been away for a while. He gets
homesick for the old days sometimes, so he takes some girls, a group of
warriors, several barrels of beer, and goes off to set up a camp in the
woods. He’s been gone for a couple of years now. Anyway, this priest
has decided that the southern kingdoms ought to join us when we go to
make war on the Angaraks and that it’d probably be more convenient if
we all worshiped the same God. He came to me with his crazy idea, and
I ordered him to forget about it. He didn’t, though, and he’s been out
preaching to the other clans. He’s managed to persuade about half of
them to join him, but the other half is still loyal to me. They’re
fighting each other off there a ways.” He made a vague gesture toward
the east.
“I
don’t think the clans that went over to him are so interested in
religion as they are in the chance to loot the southern kingdoms. The
really religious ones have formed what they call the Bear-cult. I
think it’s got something to do with Belar–except that Belar doesn’t
know anything about it.” He drained off his tankard and went into the
pantry for more ale.
“He’s not going to move until he finishes cutting firewood,” Belkira
said quietly.
I nodded glumly.
“Why don’t you two see what you can do to speed that up?” I
suggested.
“Isn’t that cheating?” Beltira asked me.
“Maybe, but we’ve got to get him moving before winter settles in.”
They nodded and went back outside again.
Uvar was a little startled by how much his woodpile had grown when he
and I went back outside again.
“Well,” he said, “now that that’s been taken care of, I guess maybe I’d
better go do something about that war.”
The twins and I cheated outrageously in the next several months, and we
soon had the breakaway clans on the run. There was a fairly large
battle on the eastern plains of what is now Gar og Nadrak. Uvar might
have been a little slow of thought, but he was tactician enough to know
the advantage of taking and holding the high ground and concealing the
full extent of his forces from his enemies. We quietly occupied a hill
during the middle of the night. Uvar’s troops littered the hillside
with sharpened stakes until the hillside looked like a hedgehog, and
his reserves hunkered down on the back side of the hill.
The breakaway clans and Bear-cultists who had camped on the plain woke
up the next morning to find Uvar staring down their throats. Since
they were Alorns, they attacked.
Most people fail to understand the purpose of sharpened stakes.
They aren’t there to skewer your opponent. They’re there to slow him
down enough to give you a clean shot at him. Uvar’s bowmen got lots of
practice that morning. Then, when the rebels were about halfway up the
hill, Uvar blew a cow’s-horn trumpet, and his reserves swept out in two
great wings from behind the hill to savage the enemy’s rear.
It worked out fairly well. The clansmen and the cultists didn’t really
have any options, so they kept charging up the hill, slashing at the
stakes with their swords and axes. The founder of the Bear-cult, a big
fellow with bad eyesight, came hacking his way up toward us. I think
the poor devil had gone berserk, actually. He was frothing at the
mouth by the time he got through all the stakes, anyway.
Uvar was waiting for him. As it turned out, the months the King of
Aloria had spent splitting wood paid off. Without so much as changing
expression, Bent-beak lifted his axe and split the rebellious priest of
Belar from the top of his head to his navel with one huge blow.
Resistance more or less collapsed at that point, and the Bear-cult went
into hiding, while the rebellious clans suddenly became very fond of
their king and renewed their vows of fealty.
Now do you see why war irritates me? It’s always the same. A lot of
people get killed, but in the end, the whole thing is settled at the
conference table. The notion of having the conference first doesn’t
seem to occur to people.
The she-wolfs observations were chilling.
“One wonders what they plan to do with the meat,” she said. That
raised the hackles on the back of my neck, but I rather dimly perceived
a way to end wars forever. If the victorious army had to eat the
fallen, war would become much less attractive. I’d gone wolf enough to
know that meat is flavored by the diet of the eatee, and stale beer
isn’t the best condiment in the world.
Uvar was clearly in control now, so the twins, the wolf, and I went
back to the Vale. The wolf, of course, left us when we reached
Poledra’s cottage, and my wife was in my tower when I got there,
looking for all the world as if she’d been there all along.
Belmakor had returned during our absence, but he’d locked himself in
his tower, refusing to respond when we urged him to come out. The
Master told us that our Melcene brother had gone into a deep depression
for some reason, and we knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t
appreciate any attempts to cheer him up. I’ve always been somewhat
suspicious about Belmakor’s depression. If I could ever confirm those
suspicions, I’d go back to where Belzedar is right now and put him
someplace a lot more uncomfortable.
This was a painful episode, so I’m going to cut it short. After
several years of melancholy brooding about the seeming hopelessness of
our endless tasks, Belmakor gave up and decided to follow Belsambar
into obliteration.
I think it was only the presence of Poledra that kept me from going
mad. My brothers were dropping around me, and there was nothing I
could do to prevent it.
Aldur summoned Belzedar and Beldin back to the Vale, of course.
Beldin had been down in Nyissa keeping an eye on the Serpent People,
and we all assumed that Belzedar had still been in Mallorea, although
it didn’t take him long to arrive. He seemed peculiarly reluctant to
join us in our sorrow, and I’ve always thought less of him because of
his attitude.
Belzedar had changed over the years. He still refused to give us any
details about his scheme to retrieve the Orb–not that we really had
much opportunity to talk with him, because he was quite obviously
avoiding us. He had a strangely haunted look on his face that I didn’t
think had anything to do with our common grief. It seemed too personal
somehow.
After about a week, he asked Aldur for permission to leave, and then he
went back to Mallorea.
“One notes that your brother is troubled,” Poledra said to me after
he’d gone.
“It seems that he’s trying to follow two paths at once. His mind is
divided, and he doesn’t know which of the paths is the true one.”
“Belzedar’s always been a little strange,” I agreed.
“One would suggest that you shouldn’t trust him too much. He’s not
telling you everything.”
“He’s not telling me anything,” I retorted.
“He hasn’t been completely open with us since Torak stole the Master’s
Orb. To be honest with you, love, I’ve never been so fond of him that
I’m not going to lose any sleep over the fact that he wants to avoid
us.”
“Say that again,” she told me with a warm smile.
“Say what again?”
“Love. It’s a nice word, and you don’t say it very often.”
“You know how I feel about you, dear.”
“One likes to be told.”