“What if he’d asked to see what was inside?”
Silk grinned and held up his cupped hand. Tightly wedged between the folds of skin in his palm were several silver coins. “I like to be ready for eventualities,” he said. Then he looked back over his shoulder. “I think we should leave now. The soldiers are coming back to the road.”
The next encounter was a bit more serious. Three Temple Guardsmen blocked the road. Their shields were in front of them and their lances were at the ready. Their faces were devoid of thought. “My turn,” Garion said, settling his helmet more firmly in place and shifting his shield. He lowered his lance and thumped Chretienne with his heels. As he charged, he could hear another horse pounding along behind him, but he did not have time to look back. It was all so stupid, but he felt that surge in his blood again. “Idiocy,” he muttered. Then he easily unhorsed the Guardsman in the center. Durnik, he noted, had cut his lance perhaps two feet longer than was standard. With a quick flick of his shield, he deflected the lances of the other two Guardsmen and thundered on between them. Chretienne’s hooves slammed down into the still-tumbling body of the fallen Guardsman. Garion reined in sharply and whirled the big gray to face the two he had left behind. But there was no need. The man riding behind him was Toth, and the two Guardsmen had already tumbled limply from their saddles.
“I could find work for you in Arendia, Toth,” he said to the huge man. “Somewhere there has to be someone to convince them that they’re not invincible.”
Toth grinned at him in a soundless laugh.
Central Voresebo was in total chaos. Pillars of smoke rose from burning villages and farms. Crops had been put to the torch, and bands of armed men savagely attacked each other. One such skirmish was taking place in a burning field, and both sides were caught up in such a frenzy that they paid no attention to the wall of flame sweeping down on them.
Mutilated bodies seemed to be everywhere, and there was no way Garion could shield Ce’Nedra from the horrors littering the ditches and even the road itself.
They galloped on.
As dusk descended over the stricken countryside, Durnik and Toth turned aside from the road to seek shelter for the night. They returned to report that they had discovered a low thicket lying in a gully a mile or so back from the road. “We won’t be able to build any fires,” Durnik said soberly, “but if we stay fairly quiet, I don’t think anybody’s going to find us.”
The night was not pleasant. They took a cold supper in the thicket and tried for what scant shelter they could make out of what was available, since they could not erect their tents in the dense brush. Autumn was in the air, and it was cold, once the sky turned dark. As the first light of dawn touched the eastern horizon, they rose, ate a hasty breakfast, and rode on.
The cold, miserable night and the senseless slaughter all around them made Garion angry, and he grew angrier with each passing mile. About midmorning he saw a black-robed Grolim standing beside an altar several hundred yards out in a field to the right of the road. A band of roughly dressed soldiers were dragging three terrified villagers toward the altar by ropes tied about the victims’ necks. Garion did not even stop to think. He discarded his lance, drew Iron-grip’s sword, cautioned the Orb to avoid display, and then charged.
The Grolim was apparently so caught up in his religious frenzy that he neither heard nor saw Garion bearing down on him. He screamed once as Chretienne thundered over the top of him. The soldiers took one startled look at Garion, threw away their weapons, and fled. That did not seem to satisfy his anger, however. Implacably, he pursued them. His anger was not so great, though, as to goad him into killing unarmed men. Instead, he simply rode them down one by one. When the last had tumbled beneath the big gray’s hooves, Garion wheeled, freed the prisoners, and cantered back to the road.
“Don’t you think that was a little excessive?” Belgarath demanded angrily.
“Not under the circumstances, no,” Garion snapped back. “At least I’m fairly sure that one group of soldiers in this stinking country won’t be dragging civilians to the altar—at least not until all the broken bones mend.”
Belgarath snorted in disgust and turned away.
Still enraged, Garion glared belligerently at Polgara. “Well?” he demanded.
“I didn’t say anything, dear,” she said mildly. “Next time, though, don’t you think you should let your grandfather know what you’re planning? These little surprises set his teeth on edge sometimes.”
Beldin came flaring in. “What happened out there?” he asked curiously when he had resumed his own form. He pointed at the groaning soldiers dotting the nearby field.
“My horse needed some exercise,” Garion said flatly. “Those soldiers got in his way.”
“What’s got you so foul-tempered this morning?”
“This is all so stupid.”
“Of course it is, but get ready for some more of it. The border of Rengel is just ahead, and things are just as bad down there as they are here.”
CHAPTER THREE
They paused at the border to consider their alternatives. The guardpost at the boundary was deserted, but black columns of smoke rose from burning villages, and they could clearly see large groups of men moving across the landscape, looking tiny in the distance.
“Things are a tittle more organized down here,” Beldin reported. “About all we saw in Voresebo were fairly small bands, and they were more interested in loot than fighting. The groups are bigger on up ahead, and there’s a certain semblance of discipline. I don’t think we’ll be able to bluff our way through Rengel the way we did Voresebo.”
Toth made a series of obscure gestures.
“What did he say?” Belgarath asked Durnik.
“He suggests that we travel at night,” Durnik replied.
“That’s an absurd notion, Toth,” Sadi protested. “If things are dangerous in the daytime, they’ll be ten times more dangerous at night.”
Toth’s hands began to move again. For some reason, Garion found that he could almost understand what the huge mute was trying to say.
“He says that you looked at the idea too fast, Sadi,” Durnik translated. “We’ve got certain advantages.” The smith frowned slightly, and he looked back at his friend. “How did you find out about that?” he asked.
Toth gestured again.
“Oh,” Durnik nodded. “I guess she would know, wouldn’t she?” He turned to the others. “He says that Belgarath, Pol, and Garion can lead the way in their other forms. The darkness wouldn’t be that big a problem for a pair of wolves and an owl.”
Belgarath tugged thoughtfully at one earlobe. “It’s got possibilities,” he said to Beldin. “We could avoid just about anybody out there that way. Soldiers don’t move around in the dark very much.”
“They post sentries, though,” the hunchback pointed out.
“Garion, Pol, and I wouldn’t have much trouble locating them and leading the rest of you around them.”
“It’s going to be slow going,” Velvet said. “We won’t be able to travel at a gallop, and we’ll have to detour around every sentry we come across.”
“You know,” Silk said, “now that I think about it, it’s not such a bad idea. I sort of like it.”
“You always enjoy sneaking around in the dark, Kheldar,” Velvet said to him.
“Don’t you?”
“Well—” Then she smiled at him. “I suppose I do, yes— but then, I’m a Drasnian, too.”
“It would take too long,” Ce’Nedra protested. “We’re only a little way behind Zandramas. If we try to sneak, she’ll get ahead again.”
“I don’t see that we’ve got much choice, Ce’Nedra,” Garion told her gently. “If we just try to plow our way across Rengel, sooner or later we’re going to run into more soldiers than we can handle.”
“You’re a sorcerer,” she said accusingly. “You could wave your hand and just knock them out of our way.”
“There are limits to that, Ce’Nedra,” Polgara said. “Both Zandramas and Urvon have Grolims in the region. If we tried to do it that way, everybody in Renget would know exactly where we were.”
Ce’Nedra’s eyes filled with tears, and her lower lip began to tremble. She turned and ran blindly away from the road, sobbing.
“Go after her, Garion,” Polgara said. “See if you can get her calmed down.”
They took shelter for the rest of the day in a grove of beech trees about a mile from the road. Garion tried to sleep, knowing that the night ahead of them would be very long; but after about an hour, he gave up and wandered restlessly about the camp. He shared Ce’Nedra’s impatience. They were so close to Zandramas now, and moving at night would slow their pace to a crawl. Try though he might, however, he could think of no alternative.