“Arm yourselves!” the big man roared, drawing his sword.
Garion grasped Aunt Pol’s sleeve and tried to pull her from the light.
“Stop that!” she snapped, jerking her sleeve free. Another arrow whizzed out of the foggy woods. Aunt Pol flicked her hand as if brushing away a fly and muttered a single word. The arrow bounced back as if it had struck something solid and fell to the ground.
Then with a hoarse shout, a gang of rough, burly men burst from the edge of the trees and splashed across the brook, brandishing swords. As Barak and Hettar leaped forward to meet them, Lelldorin reemerged from the tent with his bow and began loosing arrows so rapidly that his hands seemed to blur as they moved. Garion was instantly ashamed that he had doubted his friend’s courage.
With a choked cry, one of the attackers stumbled back, an arrow through his throat. Another doubled over sharply, clutching at his stomach, and fell to the ground, groaning. A third, quite young and with a pale, downy beard on his cheeks, dropped heavily and sat plucking at the feathers on the shaft protruding from his chest with a bewildered expression on his boyish face. Then he sighed and slumped over on his side with a stream of blood coming from his nose.
The ragged-looking men faltered under the rain of Lelldorin’s arrows, and then Barak and Hettar were upon them. With a great sweep, Barak’s heavy sword shattered an upflung blade and crunched down into the angle between the neck and shoulder of the black-whiskered man who had held it. The man collapsed. Hettar made a quick feint with his sabre, then ran it smoothly through the body of a pockmarked ruffian. The man stiffened, and a gush of bright blood burst from his mouth as Hettar pulled out his blade. Durnik ran forward with his axe, and Silk drew his long dagger from under his vest and ran directly at a man with a shaggy brown beard. At the last moment, he dived forward, rolled and struck the bearded man full in the chest with both feet. Without pausing he came up and ripped his dagger into his enemy’s belly. The dagger made a wet, tearing sound as it sliced upward, and the stricken man clutched at his stomach with a scream, trying to hold in the blue-colored loops and coils of his entrails that seemed to come boiling out through his fingers.
Garion dived for the packs to get his own sword, but was suddenly grabbed roughly from behind. He struggled for an instant, then felt a stunning blow on the back of his head, and his eyes filled with a blinding flash of light.
“This is the one we want,” a rough voice husked as Garion sank into unconsciousness.
He was being carried – that much was certain. He could feel the strong arms under him. He didn’t know how long it had been since he had been struck on the head. His ears still rang, and he was more than a little sick to his stomach. He stayed limp, but carefully opened one eye. His vision was blurred and uncertain, but he could make out Barak’s bearded face looming above him in the darkness, and merged with it, as once before in the snowy woods outside Val Alorn, he seemed to see the shaggy face of a great bear. He closed his eyes, shuddered, and started to struggle weakly.
“It’s all right, Garion,” Barak said, his voice sunk in a kind of despair. “It’s me.”
Garion opened his eyes again, and the bear seemed to be gone. He wasn’t even sure he had ever really seen it.
“Are you all right?” Barak asked, setting him on the ground.
“They hit me on the head,” Garion mumbled, his hand going to the swelling behind his ear.
“They won’t do it again,” Barak muttered, his tone still despairing. Then the huge man sank to the ground and buried his face in his hands. It was dark and difficult to see, but it looked as if Barak’s shoulders were shaking with a kind of terrible suppressed grief – a soundless, wrenching series of convulsive sobs.
“Where are we?” Garion asked, looking around into the darkness.
Barak coughed and wiped at his face.
“Quite a ways from the tents. It took me a little while to catch up to the two who were carrying you off.”
“What happened?” Garion was still a bit confused.
“They’re dead. Can you stand up?”
“I don’t know.” Garion tried to get up, but a wave of giddiness swept over him, and his stomach churned.
“Never mind. I’ll carry you,” Barak said in a now – grimly practical voice. An owl screeched from a nearby tree, and its ghostly white shape drifted off through the trees ahead of them. As Barak lifted him, Garion closed his eyes and concentrated on keeping his stomach under control.
Before long they came out into the clearing and its circle of firelight.
“Is he all right?” Aunt Pol asked, looking up from bandaging a cut on Durnik’s arm.
“A bump on the head is all,” Barak replied, setting Garion down.
“Did you run them off?”
His voice was harsh, even brutal.
“Those that could still run,” Silk answered, his voice a bit excited and his ferret eyes bright. “They left a few behind.” He pointed at a number of still shapes lying near the edge of the firelight.
Lelldorin came back into the clearing, looking over his shoulder and with his bow half drawn. He was out of breath, his face was pale, and his hands were shaking. “Are you all right?” he asked as soon as he saw Garion.
Garion nodded, gently fingering the lump behind his ear.
“I tried to find the two who took you,” the young man declared, “but they were too quick for me. There’s some kind of animal out there. I heard it growling while I was looking for you – awful growls.”
“The beast is gone now,” Barak told him flatly.
“What’s the matter with you?” Silk asked the big man.
“Nothing.”
“Who were these men?” Garion asked.
“Robbers, most likely,” Silk surmised, putting away his dagger. “It’s one of the benefits of a society that holds men in serfdom. They get bored with being serfs and go out into the forest looking for excitement and profit.”
“You sound just like Garion,” Lelldorin objected. “Can’t you people understand that serfdom’s part of the natural order of things here? Our serfs couldn’t take care of themselves alone, so those of us in higher station accept the responsibility of caring for them.”
“Of course you do,” Silk agreed sarcastically. “They’re not so wellfed as your pigs nor as well – kenneled as your dogs, but you do care for them, don’t you?”
“That’ll do, Silk,” Aunt Pol said coolly. “Let’s not start bickering among ourselves.” She tied a last knot on Durnik’s bandage and came over to examine Garion’s head. She touched her fingers gently to the lump, and he winced.
“It doesn’t seem too serious,” she observed.
“It hurts all the same,” he complained.
“Of course it does, dear,” she said calmly. She dipped a cloth in a pail of cold water and held it to the lump. “You’re going to have to learn to protect your head, Garion. If you keep banging it like this, you’re going to soften your brains.”
Garion was about to answer that, but Hettar and Mister Wolf came back into the firelight just then.
“They’re still running,” Hettar announced. The steel discs on his horsehide jacket gleamed red in the flickering light, and his sabre was streaked with blood.
“They seemed to be awfully good at that part of it,” Wolf said. “Is everyone all right?”
“A few bumps and bruises is about all,” Aunt Pol told him. “It could have been much worse.”
“Let’s not start worrying about what could have been.”
“Shall we remove those?” Barak growled, pointing at the bodies littering the ground near the brook.
“Shouldn’t they be buried?” Durnik asked. His voice shook a little, and his face was very pale.
“Too much trouble,” Barak said bluntly. “Their friends can come back later and take care of it – if they feel like it.”
“Isn’t that just a little uncivilized?” Durnik objected.
Barak shrugged. “It’s customary.”
Mister Wolf rolled one of the bodies over and carefully examined the dead man’s gray face.
“Looks like an ordinary Arendish outlaw,” he grunted. “It’s hard to say for sure, though.”
Lelldorin was retrieving his arrows, carefully pulling them out of the bodies.
“Let’s drag them all over there a ways,” Barak said to Hettar. “I’m getting tired of looking at them.”
Durnik looked away, and Garion saw two great tears standing in his eyes.
“Does it hurt, Durnik?” he asked sympathetically, sitting on the log beside his friend.
“I killed one of those men, Garion,” the smith replied in a shaking voice. “I hit him in the face with my axe. He screamed, and his blood splashed all over me. Then he fell down and kicked on the ground with his heels until he died.”