Ce’Nedra nervously paced the deck near the prow, her blue cloak tossing in the wind and her armor gleaming. Despite the dreadful knowledge concealed in her heart, there was an excitement to all of this. The gathering of men, swords, and ships, the running before the wind, the sense of a unified purpose, all combined to make her blood race and to fill her with an exhilaration she had never felt before.
The coast ahead loomed larger – a white sand beach backed by the dark green of the Arendish forest. As they neared the shoreline, an armored knight on a huge roan stallion emerged from the trees and rode down the beach to the edge of the water where foamy breakers crashed on the damp sand. The princess shaded her eyes with one hand and peered intently at the gleaming knight. Then, as he turned with a broad sweep of his arm which told them to continue up the coast, she saw the crest on his shield. Her heart suddenly soared.
“Mandorallen!” she cried out in a vibrant trumpet note as she clung to the ropes in the very prow of Barak’s ship, with the wind whipping at her hair.
The great knight waved a salute and, spurring his charger, galloped through the seething foam at the edge of the beach, the silver and blue pennon at the tip of his lance snapping and streaming over his head. Their ship heeled over as Barak swung the tiller, and, separated by a hundred yards or so of foaming surf, the ship and the rider on the beach kept abreast of each other.
It was a moment Ce’Nedra would remember for all her life – a single image so perfect that it seemed forever frozen in her memory. The great ship flew before the wind, cutting the sparkling blue water, with her white sails booming; the mighty warhorse on the beach plunged through the gleaming foam at the edge of the sand with spray flying out from beneath his great hooves. Locked together in that endless moment, ship and rider raced along in the warm spring sunshine toward a wooded promontory a mile ahead, with Ce’Nedra exulting in the ship’s prow and her flaming hair streaming like a banner.
Beyond the promontory lay a sheltered cove, and drawn up on the beach stood the camp of the Sendarian army, row upon orderly row of dun-colored tents. Barak swung his tiller over, and his sails flapped as the ship coasted into the cove with the Cherek fleet close behind.
“Ho, Mandorallen!” Barak bellowed as the anchor ropes sang and great iron anchors plunged down through crystal water toward the sandy bottom.
“My Lord Barak,” Mandorallen shouted his reply, “welcome to Arendia. Lord Brendig hath devised a means to speed thy disembarking.” He pointed to where a hundred or so Sendarian soldiers were busily poling a series of large rafts into position, lashing them together to form a long floating wharf extending out into the waters of the cove.
Barak laughed. “Trust a Sendar to come up with something practical.”
“Can we go ashore now?” King Rhodar asked plaintively as he emerged from the cabin. The king was not a good sailor, and his broad, round face had a pale greenish cast to it. He looked oddly comical in his mail shirt and helmet, and the ravages of seasickness on his face added little to his dignity. Despite his unwarlike exterior, however, the other kings had already begun to defer to his wisdom. Beneath his vast rotundity, Rhodar concealed a genius for tactics and a grasp of overall strategy that made the others turn to him almost automatically and accept his unspoken leadership.
A small fishing boat that had been pressed into service as a ferry drew alongside Barak’s ship, almost before the anchors had settled, and the kings and their generals and advisers were transferred to the beach in less than half an hour.
“I think I’m hungry,” Rhodar announced the moment he stepped onto solid ground.
Anheg laughed. “I think you were born hungry.” The king wore a mail shirt and had a broad swordbelt about his waist. His coarse features seemed less out of place somehow, now that he was armed.
“I haven’t been able to eat for two days, Anheg.” Rhodar groaned. “My poor stomach’s beginning to think I’ve abandoned it.”
“Food hath been prepared, your Majesty,” Mandorallen assured him. “Our Asturian brothers have provided goodly numbers of the king’s deer – doubtless obtained lawfully – though I chose not to investigate that too closely.”
Someone standing in the group behind Mandorallen laughed, and Ce’Nedra looked at the handsome young man with reddish-gold hair and the longbow slung over the shoulder of his green doublet. Ce’Nedra had not had much opportunity to become acquainted with Lelldorin of Wildantor while they had been at Riva. She knew him to be Garion’s closest friend, however, and she realized the importance of gaining his confidence. It should not be too hard, she decided as she looked at his open, almost innocent face. The gaze he returned was very direct, and one glance into those eyes told the princess that there was a vast sincerity and very little intelligence behind them.
“We’ve heard from Belgarath,” Barak advised Mandorallen and the young Asturian.
“Where are they?” Lelldorin demanded eagerly.
“They were in Boktor,” King Rhodar replied, his face still a trifle green from his bout of seasickness. “For reasons of her own, my wife let them pass through. I imagine they’re somewhere in Gar og Nadrak by now.”
Lelldorin’s eyes flashed. “Maybe if I hurry, I can catch up with them,” he said eagerly, already starting to look around for his horse.
“It’s fifteen hundred leagues, Lelldorin,” Barak pointed out politely.
“Oh-” Lelldorin seemed a bit crestfallen. “I suppose you’re right. It would be a little difficult to catch them now, wouldn’t it?”
Barak nodded gravely.
And then the blond Mimbrate girl, Ariana, stepped forward, her heart in her eyes. “My Lord,” she said to Lelldorin, and Ce’Nedra remembered with a start that the two were married – technically at least. “Throe absence hath given me great pain.”
Lelldorin’s eyes were immediately stricken. “My Ariana.” He almost choked. “I swear that I’ll never leave you again.” He took both her hands in his and gazed adoringly into her eyes. The gaze she returned was just as full of love and just as empty of thought. Ce’Nedra shuddered inwardly at the potential for disaster implicit in the look the two exchanged.
“Does anyone care that I’m starving to death right here on the spot?” Rhodar asked.
The banquet was laid on a long table set up beneath a gaily striped pavilion on the beach not far from the edge of the forest. The table quite literally groaned under its weight of roasted game, and there was enough to eat to satisfy even the enormous appetite of King Rhodar. When they had finished eating, they lingered at the table in conversation.
“Thy son, Lord Hettar, hath advised us that the Algar clans are gathering at the Stronghold, your Majesty,” Mandorallen reported to King Cho-Hag.
Cho-Hag nodded.
“And we’ve had word from the Ulgo-Relg,” Colonel Brendig added. “He’s gathered a small army of warriors from the caves. They’ll wait for us on the Algarian side of the mountains. He said you’d know the place.”
Barak grunted. “The Ulgos can be troublesome,” he said. “They’re afraid of open places, and daylight hurts their eyes, but they can see in the dark like cats. That could be very useful at some point.”
“Did Relg send any – personal messages?” Taiba asked Brendig with a little catch in her voice.
Gravely, the Sendar took a folded parchment from inside his tunic and handed it to her. She took it with a rather helpless expression and opened it, turning it this way and that.
“What’s the matter, Taiba?” Adara asked quietly.
“He knows I can’t read,” Taiba protested, holding the note tightly pressed against her.
“I’ll read it to you,” Adara offered.
“But maybe it’s – well-personal,” Taiba objected.
“I promise I won’t listen,” Adara told her without the trace of a smile.
Ce’Nedra covered her own smile with her hand. Adara’s penetrating and absolutely straight-faced wit was one of the qualities that most endeared her to the princess. Even as she smiled, however, Ce’Nedra could feel eyes on her, and she knew that she was being examined with great curiosity by the Arends – both Asturian and Mimbrate – who had joined them. Lelldorin in particular seemed unable to take his eyes from her. The handsome young man sat close beside the blond Mimbrate girl, Ariana, and stared openly at Ce’Nedra even while, unconsciously perhaps, he held Ariana’s hand. Ce’Nedra endured his scrutiny with a certain nervousness. To her surprise, she found that she wanted this rather foolish young man’s approval.
“Tell me,” she said directly to him, “what are the sentiments here in Asturia – concerning our campaign, I mean?”