“What’s the matter, Durnik?” Belgarath asked.
‘The barn’s good enough to give us shelter,” the smith said quietly, “but I think you ought to know that those Malloreon deserters impaled everybody on the farmstead. I don’t think you want the ladies to see that. It isn’t very pleasant.”
“Is there someplace where you can get the bodies under cover?” the old man asked.
“I’ll see what we can do,” Durnik sighed. “Why do people do that sort of thing?”
“Ignorance, usually. An ignorant man falls back on brutality out of a lack of imagination. Go with them, Garion. They might need some help. Wave a torch to let us know when you get finished.”
The fact that it was nearly dark helped a little. Garion was unable to see the faces of the people on the stakes. There was a sod-roofed cellar at the back of the still-smoldering house, and they put the bodies there. Then Garion took up a torch and walked some distance from the house to signal to Belgarath. The barn was dry, and the fire Durnik built in a carefully cleared area on the stone floor soon warmed it.
“This is actually pleasant,” Ce’Nedra declared with a smile as she looked around at the dancing shadows on the walls and rafters. She sat on a pile of fragrant hay and bounced tentatively a few times. “And this will make wonderful beds. I hope we can find a place like this every night.”
Garion walked over to the door and looked out, not trusting himself to answer. He had grown up on a farm not really all that much different from this one, and the thought of a band of marauding soldiers swooping down on Faldor’s farm, burning and killing, filled him with a vast outrage. A sudden image rose in his mind. The shadowy faces of the dead Murgos hanging on those stakes might very well have been the faces of his childhood friends, and that thought shook him to the very core of his being. The dead here had been Murgos, but they had also been farmers, and he felt a sudden kinship with them. The savagery that had befallen them began to take on the aspect of a personal affront, and dark thoughts began to fill his mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By morning it was raining again, a drizzly sort of rain that made the surrounding countryside hazy and indistinct. They rode out from the ruins of the farmstead, dressed again ID their slaver’s robes, and turned northward along the eastern shore of the lake.
Garion rode in silence, his thoughts as somber as the leaden waters of the lake lying to his left. The rage he had felt the previous evening had settled into an icy resolve. Justice, he had been told, was an abstraction, but he was determined that, should the Malloreon deserters responsible for the atrocity at the farm ever cross his path, he would turn the abstract into an immediate reality. He knew that Belgarath and Polgara did not approve of the sort of thing he had in mind, so he kept his peace and contemplated the idea of vengeance, if not justice.
When they reached the muddy road coming in off the northern end of the lake and stretching out toward the southeast and the city of Rak Cthaka, they found it clogged with a horde of terrified civilians, dressed for the most part in ragged clothing and carrying bundles of what few possessions they had been able to salvage.
“I think we’ll stay off the road,” Belgarath decided. “We could never make any time through that mob.”
“Are we going on to Rak Cthaka?” Sadi asked him.
Belgarath looked at the crowd streaming along the road. “I don’t think you could find a raft in Rak Cthaka right now, much less a ship. Let’s go on into the forest and work our way south through the trees. I don’t much like staying out in the open in hostile territory, and fishing villages are better places to hire boats than the piers of a major city.”
“Why don’t you and the others ride on,” Silk suggested. “I’d like to ask a few questions.”
Belgarath grunted. “That might not be a bad idea. Just don’t be too long at it. I’d like to reach the Great Southern Forest sometime before the end of winter, if I can possibly manage it.”
“I’ll go with him, Grandfather,” Garion offered. “I need to get my mind off some things I’ve seen lately, anyway.”
The two of them rode through the knee-high grass toward the broad stream of frightened refugees fleeing southward. “Garion,” Silk said, reining in his horse, “isn’t that a Sendar—the one pushing the wheelbarrow?”
Garion shielded his eyes from the rain and peered at the sturdy fellow Silk had pointed out. “He sort of looks like a Sendar,” he agreed. “What would a Sendar be doing down here in Cthol Murgos?”
“Why don’t we go ask him? Sendars love to gossip, so he can probably give us some idea of what’s happening.” The little man walked his horse over until he was riding beside the stout man with the wheelbarrow. “Morning, friend,” he said pleasantly. “You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?”
The stout man set down his barrow and eyed Silk’s green Nyissan robe apprehensively. “I’m not a slave,” he declared, “so don’t get any ideas.”
“This?” Silk laughed, plucking at the front of the robe. “Don’t worry, friend, we’re not Nyissans. We just found these on some bodies back there a ways. We thought they might be a help if we happened to run into somebody official. What in the world are you doing in Cthol Murgos?”
“Running,” the Sendar said ruefully, “just like all the rest of this rabble. Didn’t you hear about what’s been happening?”
“No. We’ve been out of touch.”
The stout man lifted the handles of his barrow again and trudged along the grassy shoulder of the road. “There’s a whole Malloreon army marching west out of Gorut,” he said. “They burned the town I lived in and killed half the people. They didn’t even bother with Rak Cthaka, so that’s where we’re all going. I’m going to see if I can find a sea captain who’s going in the general direction of Sendaria. For some reason, I’m suddenly homesick.”
“You’ve been living in a Murgo town?” Silk asked with some surprise.
The fellow made a face. “It wasn’t altogether by choice,” he replied. “I had some trouble with the law in Tolnedra when I was there on business ten years ago and I took passage on board a merchantman to get out of the country. The captain was a scoundrel; when my money ran out, he sailed off and left me on the wharf at Rak Cthaka. I drifted on up to a town on the north side of the lake. They let me stay because I was willing to do things that are beneath Murgo dignity, but were too important to trust a slave to do. It was sort of degrading, but it was a living. Anyway, a couple days ago the Malloreons marched through. When they left, there wasn’t a single building standing.”
“How did you escape?” Silk asked him.
“I hid under a haystack until dark. That’s when I joined this mob.” He glanced over at the crowd of refugees slogging through the ankle-deep mud of the road. “Isn’t that pathetic? They don’t even have sense enough to spread out and walk on the grass. You certainly wouldn’t see soldiers doing that, let me tell you.”
“You’ve had some military experience, then?”
“I most certainly have,” the stout man replied proudly. “I was a sergeant in Princess Ce’Nedra’s army. I was at Thull Mardu with her.”
“I missed that one,” Silk told him with aplomb. “I was busy someplace else. Are there any Malloreons between here and the Great Southern Forest?”
“Who knows? I don’t go looking for Malloreons. You don’t really want to go into the forest, though. All this killing has stirred up the Raveners.”
“Raveners? What’s that?”
“Ghouls. They feed on dead bodies most of the time, but I’ve heard some very ugly stories lately. I’d make a special point of staying out of the forest, my friend.”
“We might have to keep that in mind. Thanks for the information. Good luck when you get to Rak Cthaka, and I hope you make it back to Camaar.”
“Right now, I’d settle for Tol Honeth. Tolnedran jails aren’t really all that bad.”
Silk grinned at him quickly, turned his horse, and led Gar-ion away from the road at a gallop to rejoin the others.
That afternoon they forded the River Cthaka some leagues upstream from the coast. The drizzle slackened as evening approached, though the sky remained cloudy. Once they had reached the far side of the river, they could see the irregular, dark shape of the edge of the Great Southern Forest, looming up beyond perhaps a league of open grassland.