“We can manage, your Highness,” Javelin assured her. “We might have to speed up the graduation of the current class at the academy and finish their training on the job, but we’ll manage.”
“Very well then, Javelin,” Porenn decided. “Ship them all out. Get every cult member out of Boktor, and separate them. I want them sent to the most miserable duty posts you can devise, and I don’t want any of them within fifty leagues of any other one. There will be no excuses, no sudden illnesses, and no resignations. Give each of them something to do, and then make him do it. I want every Bear-cultist who’s crept into the intelligence service out of Boktor by nightfall.”
“It will be my pleasure, Porenn,” Javelin said. “Oh, incidentally, that Nadrak merchant, Yarblek is back from Yar Nadrak, and he wants to talk to you about the salmon runs again. He seems to have this obsessive interest in fish.”
Chapter Twelve
THE RAISING OF the Cherek fleet to the top of the eastern escarpment took a full two weeks, and King Rhodar chafed visibly at the pace of the operation.
“You knew this was going to take time, Rhodar,” Ce’Nedra said to him as he fumed and sweated, pacing back and forth with frequent dark looks at the towering cliff face. “Why are you so upset?”
“Because the ships are right out in the open, Ce’Nedra,” he replied testily. “There’s no way to hide them or disguise them while they’re being raised. Those ships are the key to our whole campaign, and if somebody on the other side starts putting a few things together, we might have to meet all of Angarak instead of just the Thulls.”
“You worry too much,” she told him. “Cho-Hag and Korodullin are burning everything in sight up there. ‘Zakath and Taur Urgas have other things to think about beside what we’re hauling up the cliff.”
“It must be wonderful to be so unconcerned about things,” he said sarcastically.
“Be nice, Rhodar,” she said.
General Varana, still scrupulously dressed in his Tolnedran mantle, limped toward them with that studiously diffident expression that indicated he was about to make another suggestion.
“Varana,” King Rhodar burst out irritably, “why don’t you put on your uniform?”
“Because I’m not really officially here, your Majesty,” the general replied calmly. “Tolnedra is neutral in this affair, you’ll recall.”
“That’s a fiction, and we all know it.”
“A necessary one, however. The Emperor is still holding diplomatic channels open to Taur Urgas and ‘Zakath. Those discussions would deteriorate if someone saw a Tolnedran general swaggering around in full uniform.” He paused briefly. “Would a small suggestion offend your Majesty?” he asked.
“That all depends on the suggestion,” Rhodar retorted. Then he made a face and apologized. “I’m sorry, Varana. This delay’s making me bad-tempered. What did you have in mind?”
“I think you might want to give some thought to moving your command operations up to the top about now. You’ll want things running smoothly by the time the bulk of your infantry arrives, and it usually takes a couple of days to iron out the wrinkles when you set things up.”
King Rhodar stared at a Cherek ship being hoisted ponderously up the cliff face. “I’m not going to ride up on one of those, Varana,” he declared flatly.
“It’s absolutely safe, your Majesty,” Varana assured him. “I’ve made the trip myself several times. Even Lady Polgara went up that way just this morning.”
“Polgara could fly down if something went wrong,” Rhodar said. “I don’t have her advantages. Can you imagine the size of the hole I’d make in the ground if I fell that far?”
“The alternative is extremely strenuous, your Majesty. There are several ravines running down from the top. They’ve been leveled out a bit so that the horses can go up, but they’re still very steep.”
“A little sweating won’t hurt me.”
Varana shrugged. “As your Majesty wishes.”
“I’ll keep you company, Rhodar,” Ce’Nedra offered brightly. He gave her a suspicious look.
“I don’t really trust machines either,” she confessed. “I’ll go change clothes, and then we can start.”
“You want to do it today?” His voice was plaintive.
“Why put it off?”
“I can think of a dozen reasons.”
The term “very steep” turned out to be a gross understatement. “Precipitous” might have been more accurate. The incline made riding horses out of the question, but ropes had been strung along the steeper stretches to aid in the climb. Ce’Nedra, dressed in one of her short Dryad tunics, scampered hand over hand up the ropes with the agility of a squirrel. King Rhodar’s pace, however, was much slower.
“Please stop groaning, Rhodar,” she told him after they had climbed for an hour or so. “You sound like a sick cow.”
“That’s hardly fair, Ce’Nedra,” he wheezed, stopping to mop his streaming face.
“I never promised to be fair,” she retorted with an impish grin. “Come along, we still have a long way to go.” And she flitted up another fifty yards or so.
“Don’t you think you’re a little underdressed?” he puffed disapprovingly, staring up at her. “Proper ladies don’t show off so much leg.”
“What’s wrong with my legs?”
“They’re bare – that’s what’s wrong with them.”
“Don’t be such a prig. I’m comfortable. That’s all that matters. Are you coming or not?”
Rhodar groaned again. “Isn’t it almost time for lunch?”
“We just had lunch.”
“Did we? I’d forgotten already.”
“You always seem to forget your last meal – usually before the crumbs have been brushed away.”
“That’s the nature of a fat man, Ce’Nedra.” He sighed. “The last meal is history. It’s the next one that’s important.” He stared mournfully up the brutal trail ahead and groaned again.
“This was all your idea,” she heartlessly reminded him.
The sun was low in the west when they reached the top. As King Rhodar collapsed, Princess Ce’Nedra looked around curiously. The fortifications which had been erected along the top of the escarpment were extensive and quite imposing. The walls were of earth and stone and were perhaps thirty feet high. Through an open gate the princess saw a series of other, lower walls, each fronted by a ditch bristling with sharpened stakes and thorny brambles. At various points along the main wall rose imposing blockhouses, and within the walls were neat rows of huts for the soldiers.
The forts swarmed with men, and their various activities raised an almost perpetual cloud of dust. A party of Algar clansmen, smokestained and mounted on spent-looking horses, rode slowly in through the gate; and a few moments later, a contingent of gleaming Mimbrate knights, pennons snapping from their lances and the great hoofs of their chargers clattering on the stony ground, rode out in search of yet another town to destroy.
The huge hoists at the edge of the escarpment creaked and groaned under the weight of the Cherek ships being raised from the plain below; some distance away, within the fortified walls, the growing fleet sat awaiting the final portage to the headwaters of the upper River Mardu, some fifty leagues distant.
Polgara, accompanied by Durnik and the towering Barak, approached to greet the princess and the prostrate King of Drasnia.
“How was the climb?” Barak inquired.
“Ghastly,” Rhodar wheezed. “Does anybody have anything to eat? I think I’ve melted off about ten pounds.”
“It doesn’t show,” Barak told him.
“That sort of exertion isn’t really good for you, Rhodar,” Polgara told the gasping monarch. “Why were you so stubborn about it?”
“Because I have an absolute horror of heights,” Rhodar replied. “I’d climb ten times as far to avoid being hauled up that cliff by those contraptions. The idea of all that empty air under me makes my flesh creep.”
Barak grinned. “That’s a lot of creeping.”
“Will somebody please give me something to eat?” Rhodar asked in an anguished tone of voice.
“A bit of cold chicken?” Durnik offered solicitously, handing him a well-browned chicken leg.
“Where did you ever find a chicken?” Rhodar exclaimed, eagerly seizing the leg.
“The Thulls brought some with them,” Durnik told him.
“Thulls?” Ce’Nedra gasped. “What are Thulls doing here?”
“Surrendering,” Durnik replied. “Whole villages of them have been showing up for the past week or so. They walk up to the edge of the ditches along the front of the fortification and sit down and wait to be captured. They’re very patient about it. Sometimes it’s a day or so before anybody has the time to go out and capture them, but they don’t seem to mind.”
“Why do they want to be captured?” Ce’Nedra asked him.
“There aren’t any Grolims here,” Durnik explained. “No altars to Torak and no sacrificial knives. The Thulls seem to feel that getting away from that sort of thing is worth the inconvenience of being captured. We take them in and put them to work on the fortifications. They’re good workers, if you give them the proper supervision.”