‘Excuse me, your Majesty,’ Varana objected, ‘but all of your strategy – even the fleet – is merely a delaying action.’
‘That’s the whole point, Varana,’ Rhodar told him bluntly. ‘All of this is really rather insignificant. What’s really important is going to happen in Mallorea when Belgarion reaches Cthol Mishrak. We’d better move, gentlemen. The Malloreans will be here before long, and we want to be ready for them.’
The cloudbank Polgara had pointed out was sweeping toward them with an alarming speed, a seething darkness of rolling purple, stalking forward on crooked legs of lightning. A hot wind seemed to flee out ahead of it, flattening the grass and whipping the manes and tails of the horses wildly. As King Rhodar and the others moved out to meet the approaching Mallorean army, Polgara, her face pale and her hair tossing behind her in the wind, climbed the grassy bank with Ce’Nedra and Durnik behind her and stood watching the approach of the cloud. ‘Take the child, Ce’Nedra,’ she said quite calmly. ‘Don’t let go of him, no matter what happens.’
‘Yes, Lady Polgara,’ Ce’Nedra said, holding out her arms to Errand. The child came to her immediately, his serious little face unafraid. She picked him up and held him close, her cheek against his.
‘Errand?’ he said, pointing at the approaching storm.
Then, among the ranks of their army, shadowy figures rose up out of the ground. The figures wore black robes and polished steel masks and carried cruel-pointed short spears. Without pausing to even think, a mounted young Mimbrate knight swept his broadsword from its scabbard and swung the whistling blade at one of the steel-masked figures. His sword passed through the figure with no effect. As he struck, however, a sizzling bolt of lightning struck him, seeming to attach itself to the point of his helmet. He stiffened convulsively as the lightning, like a writhing snake of intense light, clung to the tip of his steel helm. Smoke boiled out of the slits of his visor as he roasted inside his armor. His horse lurched forward onto its knees while the ghastly, flickering light engulfed them both. Then the lightning was gone, and horse and man collapsed, stone dead.
Polgara hissed and then raised her voice. She did not seem to be speaking that loudly, but the effect of her words reached the farthest edges of the army. ‘Do not touch the shadows,’ she warned. ‘They’re Grolim illusions and can’t hurt you unless you touch them. They’re here to draw the lightning to you, so stay clear of them.’
‘But, Mistress Pol,’ Durnik protested, ‘the troops won’t be able to hold ranks if they have to keep dodging the shadows.’
‘I’ll take care of the shadows,’ she replied grimly. She raised both arms above her head, her fists clenched. A look of dreadful concentration filled her face, and then she spoke a single word, opening her hands as she did so. The grass, which had been bending toward them in the hot wind preceding the storm, suddenly flattened in the opposite direction as the force of Polgara’s will rippled outward. As that force passed over each shadowy Grolim illusion, the figures seemed to flinch, then shrivel, and then with silent detonations, each shadow exploded into shards and fragments of darkness.
Polgara was gasping as the last of the shadows on the farthest edge of the army vanished, and she would have collapsed had Durnik not jumped to her side to support her. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked worriedly.
‘Just give me a moment,’ she said, wilting against him. ‘That took a great deal of effort.’ She smiled at him, a wan little smile, and then her head drooped wearily.
‘Won’t they come back?’ Ce’Nedra demanded. ‘What I mean is, it didn’t actually hurt the real Grolims, did it? Just their shadows.’
Polgara laughed weakly. ‘Oh, it hurt them, all right,’ she replied. ‘Those Grolims don’t have shadows any more. Not one of them will ever cast a shadow again.’
‘Not ever?’ the princess gasped.
‘Not ever.’
Then Beldin joined them, swooping in with the wind tearing at his feathers. ‘We’ve got work to do, Polgara,’ he growled even as he shimmered into his natural shape. ‘We’re going to have to break up this storm they’re bringing in from the west. I talked with the twins. They’ll work on the southern side of it, and you and I’ll take this side.’
She looked at him inquiringly.
‘Their army’s going to be advancing right behind the storm,’ he explained. ‘There’s no point in trying to hold it back now. It’s got too much momentum. What we want to do is break open the rear edge of it and let it spill back over the Angaraks.’
‘How many Grolims are working on the storm, Uncle?’ she asked him.
‘Who knows?’ He shrugged. ‘But it’s taking every bit of effort they can muster just to keep it under control. If the four of us hit the back side all at once, the pressures in the storm itself will do the rest.’
‘Why not just let it pass over?’ Durnik asked. ‘Our troops aren’t children. They won’t fall apart just because of a little squall.’
‘This isn’t just a little squall, blacksmith,’ Beldin said acidly. Something large and white thudded to the ground a few feet away. ‘If you get four or five of those hailstones on top of the head, you won’t care how the battle turns out.’
‘They’re as big as hens’ eggs,’ Durnik said in astonishment.
‘And they’ll probably get bigger.’ Beldin turned back to Polgara. ‘Give me your hand,’ he told her. ‘I’ll pass the signal to Beltira, and we’ll all strike at the same time. Get ready.’
More of the hailstones thudded into the springy turf, and one particularly large one shattered into a thousand fragments as it crashed down on a large rock with stunning force. From the direction of the army came an intermittent banging as the hailstones bounced off the armor of the Mimbrate knights or clanged down on the hastily raised shields of the infantry.
And then, mixed with the hail, the rain squalls struck – seething sheets of water driven before the wind like raging waves. It was impossible to see, and almost impossible to breathe. Olban jumped forward with his shield raised to protect Ce’Nedra and Errand. He winced once as a large hailstone struck his shoulder, but his shield arm did not waver.
‘It’s breaking, Pol!’ Beldin shouted. ‘Let’s push it once more. Let them eat their own storm for a while.’
Polgara’s face twisted into an agony of concentration, and then she half-slumped as she and Beldin unleashed their combined wills at the rolling sky. The sound of it was beyond belief as the vast forces collided. The sky ripped suddenly apart and lightning staggered and lurched through the smoking air. Great, incandescent bolts crashed into each other high above, showering the earth beneath with fireballs. Men fell, charred instantly into black, steaming husks in the driving downpour, but the casualties were not only among the men of the west.
The vast storm with its intolerable pressures recoiled as the combined wills of Polgara and Beldin on the north bank and the twins on the south bank ripped open the back edge of it, and the advancing Malloreans received that recoil full in the teeth. A curtain of lightning swept back across their close-packed ranks like an enormous, blinding broom, littering the earth with their smoking dead. As the fabric of Grolim sorcery which had driven the stormfront toward the river ripped apart, the gale winds suddenly reversed and flowed back, shrieking and howling, confounding the advancing Angaraks with rain and hail.
From out of the center of the dreadful cloud overhead, swirling fingers of murky black twitched and reached down toward the earth with hideous roaring sounds. With a last, almost convulsive jerk, one of those huge, swirling funnels touched the earth in the midst of the red-clad Malloreans. Debris sprayed up and out from the point of the dreadful vortex as, with ponderous immensity, it cut an erratic course two hundred yards wide directly through the enemy ranks. Men and horses were ripped to pieces by the insane winds within the swirling column of cloud, and bits of armor and shreds of red tunics – and worse – showered down on the stunned and terrified Malloreans on either side of the swath of absolute destruction m
oving inexorably through their midst.
‘Beautiful!’ Beldin exulted, hopping up and down in a grotesque display of glee.
There was the sudden sound of a great horn, and the close-packed ranks of Drasnian pikemen and Tolnedran legionnaires facing the faltering ranks of the Malloreans opened. From behind them, his armor streaming water, Mandorallen led the charge of the Mimbrate knights. Full upon the confused and demoralized Malloreans they fell, and the sound of the impact as they struck was a terrible, rending crash, punctuated by screams. Rank upon rank was crushed beneath the charge, and the terrified Malloreans wavered and then broke and fled. Even as they ran, the clans of Algar swept in among them from the flanks, their sabres flashing in the rain.
At a second blast of Mandorallen’s horn, the charging Mimbrates reined in, wheeled and galloped back, leaving a vast wreckage behind them.
The rain slackened fitfully, little more than errantly passing showers now, and patches of blue appeared among the racing clouds overhead. The Grolim storm had broken and dispersed back across the plains of Mishrak ac Thull.
Ce’Nedra looked toward the south bank and saw that the storm there had also dispersed and that the forces under the command of King Cho-Hag and King Korodullin were assaulting the front ranks of the demoralized Murgo army. Then the princess looked sharply at the south channel of the river. The last bridges of Cherek ships had broken loose during the violent storm, and there was now only open water on that side of the island. The last troops remaining in the city were streaming across the bridge over the north channel. A tall Sendarian lad was among the last to cross. As soon as he reached the bank, he came immediately upriver. As he drew nearer, Ce’Nedra recognized him. It was Rundorig, Garion’s boyhood friend from Faldor’s farm, and he was openly weeping.
‘Goodman Durnik,’ he sobbed as he reached them, ‘Doroon’s dead.’
‘What did you say?’ Lady Polgara demanded, raising her tired face suddenly.
‘Doroon, Mistress Pol,’ Rundorig wept. ‘He drowned. We were crossing over to the south bank when the storm broke the ropes holding the ships. Doroon fell into the river, and he didn’t know how to swim. I tried to save him, but he went under before I could reach him.’ The tall young man buried his face in his hands.
Polgara’s face went absolutely white, and her eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘Take care of him, Durnik,’ she told the smith, then turned and walked away, her head bowed in her grief.
‘I tried, Durnik,’ Rundorig blurted, still sobbing. ‘I really tried to reach him – but there were too many people in my way. I couldn’t get to him in time. I saw him go under, and there was nothing I could do.’
Durnik’s face was very grave as he put his arm about the weeping boy’s shoulders. The smith’s eyes were also filled, and he said nothing.
Ce’Nedra, however, could not weep. She had reached out her hand and plucked these unwarlike young men from their homes and dragged them halfway across the world, and now one of Garion’s oldest friends had died in the chill waters of the River Mardu. His death was on her head, but she could not weep. A terrible fury suddenly filled her. She turned to Olban. ‘Kill them!’ she hissed from between clenched teeth.
‘My Queen?’ Olban gaped at her.
‘Go!’ she commanded. ‘Take your sword and go. Kill as many Angaraks as you can – for me, Olban. Kill them for me!’ And then she could weep.
Olban looked first at the sobbing little princess and then at the milling ranks of the Malloreans, still reeling from the savagery of the Mimbrate assault. His face grew exultant as he drew his sword. ‘As my Queen commands!’ he shouted and ran to his horse.
Even as the decimated front ranks of the Malloreans fled, hurried by the sabre-wielding Algars, greater and greater numbers of their countrymen reached the field, and soon the low hills to the north were covered with them. Their red tunics made it look almost as if the earth itself were bleeding. It was not the Malloreans, however, who mounted the next attack. Instead, thick-bodied Thulls in mud-colored smocks marched reluctantly into position. Directly behind the Thulls, mounted Malloreans urged them on with whips.
‘Basic Mallorean strategy,’ Beldin growled. ‘’Zakath wants to let the Thulls do most of the dying. He’ll try to save his own troops for the campaign against Taur Urgas.’
Ce’Nedra raised her tear-streaked face. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked the misshapen sorcerer.
‘We kill Thulls,’ he said bluntly. ‘A charge or two by the Mimbrates ought to break their spirits. Thulls don’t make very good soldiers, and they’ll run away as soon as we give them the chance.’
Even as the sluggish forces of Mishrak ac Thull flowed like a mudslide downhill toward the solid line of pikemen and legionnaires, the Asturian archers just to the rear of the infantry raised their bows and filled the air with a solid, arching sheet of yard-long arrows. The Thulls quailed as rank after rank melted under the withering storm of arrows. The shouts of the Malloreans at the rear became more desperate, and the crack of their whips filled the air.
And then Mandorallen’s horn sounded, the ranks of infantry opened and the armored knights of Mimbre charged again. The Thulls took one look at the steel-clad men and horses crashing toward them and immediately bolted. The Mallorean whip-men were swarmed under and trampled in the panic-stricken flight of the Thull army.
‘So much for the Thulls,’ Beldin grunted with satisfaction as he watched the rout. He grinned an evil grin. ‘I imagine that ‘Zakath will speak firmly to King Gethell about this.’
Mandorallen’s knights thundered back to their positions behind the infantry, and the two armies glared at each other across a field littered with Angarak dead.
Ce’Nedra began to shiver as a sudden chill swept the battlefield. Although the sun had broken through the ragged clouds as the Grolim storm rapidly dispersed, there was no warmth to it. Even though all trace of wind had died, it grew colder. Then from the ground and from the dark surface of the river, tendrils of fog began to rise.
Beldin hissed. ‘Polgara,’ he snapped to the grieving sorceress, ‘I need you.’
‘Leave me alone, Uncle,’ she replied in a voice still choked with sorrow.
‘You can cry later,’ he told her harshly. ‘The Grolims are drawing the heat out of the air. If we don’t stir up a wind, the fog’s going to get so thick you’ll be able to walk on it.’
She turned, and her face was very cold. ‘You don’t respect anything, do you?’ she said flatly.
‘Not much,’ he admitted, ‘but that’s beside the point. If the Grolims can build up a good fog bank, we’ll have the whole stinking Mallorean army on top of us before we can even see them coming. Let’s go, Pol. People get killed; it happens. You can get sentimental about it later.’ He held out his gnarled, lumpy hand to her.
The tendrils of fog had begun to thicken, lying in little pockets now. The littered battlefield in front of the infantry lines seemed to waver, and then disappeared entirely as the fog congealed into a solid wall of white.
‘Wind, Pol,’ Beldin said, taking hold of her hand. ‘As much wind as you can raise.’
The struggle which ensued then was a silent one. Polgara and Beldin, their hands joined together, gathered in their wills and then reached out with them, probing, searching for some weakness in the mass of dead-calm air that imprisoned the thickening fog along the banks of the river. Fitful little gusts of breeze swirled the eddying fog, then died as quickly as they had arisen.
‘Harder, Pol,’ Beldin urged. His ugly face streamed with rivulets of sweat as he struggled with the vast inertness of unmoving air.
‘It’s not going to work this way, Uncle,’ she declared, pulling her hand free. Her face showed her own strain. ‘There’s nothing to get hold of. What are the twins doing?’
‘The Hierarchs of Rak Cthol are riding with Taur Urgas,’ the hunchback replied. ‘The twins have their hands full dealing with them. They won’t be able to help.’
Polgara straightened then, stee
ling herself. ‘We’re trying to work too close,’ she said. ‘Every time we start a little local breeze, a dozen Grolims jump in and smother it.’
‘All right,’ Beldin agreed.
‘We’ll have to reach out farther,’ she continued. ‘Start the air moving somewhere out beyond their range so that by the time it gets here, it has so much momentum that they can’t stop it.’
Beldin’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s dangerous, Pol,’ he told her. ‘Even if we can do it, it’s going to exhaust the both of us. If they throw anything else at us, neither of us will have any strength left to fight them.’
‘It’s a gamble, Uncle,’ she admitted, ‘but the Grolims are stubborn. They’ll try to protect this fog bank even after all chance of maintaining it has gone. They’ll get tired, too. Maybe too tired to try anything else.’
‘I don’t like maybes.’
‘Have you got a better idea?’
‘Not right now, no.’
‘All right, then.’
They joined hands again.
It took, it seemed to the princess, an eternity. With her heart in her throat she stared at the two of them as they stood with their hands joined and their eyes closed – reaching out with their minds toward the hot, barren uplands to the west, trying with all their strength to pull that heated air down into the broad valley of the River Mardu. All around her, Ce’Nedra seemed to feel the oppressive chill of Grolim thought lying heavily on the stagnant air, holding it, resisting all effort to dissipate the choking fog.
Polgara was breathing in short gasps, her chest heaving and her face twisted with an inhuman striving. Beldin, his knotted shoulders hunched forward, struggled like a man attempting to lift a mountain.
And then Ce’Nedra caught the faintest scent of dust and dry, sun-parched grass. It was only momentary, and she thought at first that she had imagined it. Then it came again, stronger this time, and the fog eddied sluggishly. But once more that faint scent died, and with it the breath of air that had carried it.