‘What do we do?’ Garion whispered, looking around for a way of escape. But before Silk could answer, a black-robed Grolim stepped through the door.
‘I like to see men who are so eager to fight,’ the Grolim purred in a peculiar accent. ‘The army needs such men.’
‘Recruiters!’ Varn exclaimed, breaking away from the red-garbed Malloreans and dashing toward a side door. For a second it looked as if he might escape; but as he reached the doorway, someone outside rapped him sharply across the forehead with a stout cudgel. He reeled back, suddenly rubber-legged and vacant-eyed. The Mallorean who had hit him came inside, gave him a critical, appraising glance, and then judiciously clubbed him in the head again.
‘Well?’ the Grolim asked, looking around with amusement. ‘What’s it to be? Would any more of you like to run, or would you all prefer to come along quietly?’
‘Where are you taking us?’ Besher demanded, trying to pull his arm out of the grip of one of the grinning recruiters.
‘To Yar Nadrak first,’ the Grolim replied, ‘and then south to the plains of Mishrak ac Thull and the encampment of his Imperial Majesty ’Zakath, Emperor of all Mallorea. You’ve just joined the army, my friends. All of Angarak rejoices in your courage and patriotism, and Torak himself is pleased with you.’ As if to emphasize his words, the Grolim’s hand strayed to the hilt of the sacrificial knife sheathed at his belt.
The chain clinked spitefully as Garion, fettered at the ankle, plodded along, one in a long line of disconsolate-looking conscripts, following a trail leading generally southward through the brush along the riverbank. The conscripts had all been roughly searched for weapons – all but Garion, who for some reason had been overlooked. He was painfully aware of the huge sword strapped to his back as he walked along; but, as always seemed to happen, no-one else paid any atention to it.
Before they had left the village, while they were all being shackled, Garion and Silk had held a brief, urgent discussion in the minute finger movements of the Drasnian secret language.
—I could pick this lock with my thumbnail – Silk had asserted with a disdainful flip of his fingers. —As soon as it gets dark tonight, I’ll unhook us and we’ll leave. I don’t really think military life would agree with me, and it’s wildly inappropriate for you to be joining an Angarak army just now – all things considered.—
—Where’s Grandfather? – Garion had asked.
—Oh, I imagine he’s about.—
Garion, however, was worried, and a whole platoon of ‘what-its’ immediately jumped into his mind. To avoid thinking about them, he covertly studied the Malloreans who guarded them. The Grolim and the bulk of his detachment had moved on, once the captives had been shackled, seeking other villages and other recruits, leaving only five of their number behind to escort this group south. Malloreans were somewhat different from other Angaraks. Their eyes had that characteristic angularity, but their bodies seemed not to have the singleness of purpose which so dominated the western tribes. They were burly, but they did not have the broad-shouldered athleticism of the Murgos. They were tall, but did not have the lean, whippetlike frames of the Nadraks. They were obviously strong, but they did not have the thick-waisted brute power of Thulls. There was about them, moreover, a kind of disdainful superiority when they looked at western Angaraks. They spoke to their prisoners in short, barking commands, and when they talked to each other, their dialect was so thick that it was nearly unintelligible. They wore mail shirts covered by coarse-woven red tunics. They did not ride their horses very well, Garion noted, and their curved swords and broad, round shields seemed to get in their way as they attempted to manage their reins.
Garion carefully kept his head down to hide the fact that his features – even more than Silk’s – were distinctly non-Angarak. The guards, however, paid little attention to the conscripts as individuals, but seemed rather to be more interested in them as numbers. They rode continually up and down the sweating column, counting bodies and referring to a document they carried with concerned, even worried expressions. Garion surmised that unpleasant things would happen if the numbers did not match when they reached Yar Nadrak.
A faint, pale flicker in the underbrush some distance uphill from the trail caught Garion’s eye, and he turned his head sharply in that direction. A large, silver-gray wolf was ghosting along just at the edge of the trees, his pace exactly matching theirs. Garion quickly lowered his head again, pretended to stumble, and fell heavily against Silk. ‘Grandfather’s out there,’ he whispered.
‘Did you only just notice him?’ Silk sounded surprised. ‘I’ve been watching him for the last hour or more.’
When the trail turned away from the river and entered the trees, Garion felt the tension building up in him. He could not be sure what Belgarath was going to do, but he knew that the concealment offered by the forest provided the opportunity for which his grandfather had doubtless been waiting. He tried to hide his growing nervousness as he walked along behind Silk, but the slightest sound in the woods around them made him start uncontrollably.
The trail dipped down into a fair-sized clearing, surrounded on all sides by tall ferns, and the Mallorean guards halted the column to allow their prisoners to rest. Garion sank gratefully to the springy turf beside Silk. The effort of walking with one leg shackled to the long chain which bound the conscripts together was considerable, and he found that he was sweating profusely. ‘What’s he waiting for?’ he whispered to Silk.
The rat-faced little man shrugged. ‘It’s still a few hours until dark,’ he replied softly. ‘Maybe he wants to wait for that.’
Then, some distance up the trail, they heard the sound of singing. The song was ribald and badly out of tune, but the singer was quite obviously enjoying himself, and the slurring of the words as he drew closer indicated that he was more than a little drunk.
The Malloreans grinned at each other. ‘Another patriot, perhaps,’ one of them smirked, ‘coming to enlist. Spread out, and we’ll gather him up as soon as he comes into the clearing.’
The singing Nadrak rode into view on a large roan horse. He wore the usual dark, stained leather clothing, and a fur cap perched precariously on one side of his head. He had a scraggly black beard, and he carried a wineskin in one hand. He seemed to be swaying in his saddle as he rode, but something about his eyes showed him not to be quite so drunk as he appeared. Garion stared at him openly as he rode into the clearing with a string of mules behind him. It was Yarblek, the Nadrak merchant they had encountered on the South Caravan Route in Cthol Murgos.
‘Ho, there!’ Yarblek greeted the Malloreans in a loud voice. ‘I see you’ve had good hunting. That’s a healthy-looking bunch of recruits you’ve got there.’
‘The hunting just got easier.’ One of the Malloreans grinned at him, pulling his horse across the trail to block Yarblek’s way.
‘You mean me?’ Yarblek laughed uproariously. ‘Don’t be a fool. I’m too busy to play soldier.’
‘That’s a shame,’ the Mallorean replied.
‘I’m Yarblek, a merchant of Yar Turak and a friend of King Drosta himself. I’m acting on a commission that he personally put into my hands. If you interfere with me in any way, Drosta will have you flayed and roasted alive as soon as you get to Yar Nadrak.’
The Mallorean looked a trifle less sure of himself. ‘We answer only to ‘Zakath,’ he asserted a bit defensively. ‘King Drosta has no authority over us.’
‘You’re in Gar og Nadrak, friend,’ Yarblek pointed out to him, ‘and Drosta does whatever he likes here. He might have to apologize to ‘Zakath after it’s all over, but by then the five of you will probably be peeled and cooked to a turn.’
‘I suppose you can prove that you’re on official business?’ the Mallorean guard hedged.
‘Of course I can,’ Yarblek replied. He scratched at his head, his face taking on an expression of foolish perplexity. ‘Where did I put that parchment?’ he muttered to himself. Then he snapped his fingers. ‘Oh, y
es,’ he said, ‘now I remember. It’s in the pack on that last mule. Here, have a drink, and I’ll go get it.’ He tossed the wineskin to the Mallorean, turned his horse and rode back to the end of his pack string. He dismounted and began rummaging through a canvas pack.
‘We’d better have a look at his documents before we decide,’ one of the others advised. ‘King Drosta’s not the sort you want to cross.’
‘We might as well have a drink while we’re waiting,’ another suggested, eyeing the wineskin.
‘That’s one thing we can agree on,’ the first replied, working loose the stopper of the leather bag. He raised the skin with both hands and lifted his chin to drink.
There was a solid-sounding thud, and the feathered shaft of an arrow was quite suddenly protruding from his throat, just at the top of his red tunic. The wine gushed from the skin to pour down over his astonished face. His companions gaped at him, then reached for their weapons with cries of alarm, but it was too late. Most of them tumbled from their saddles in the sudden storm of arrows that struck them from the concealment of the ferns. One, however, wheeled his mount to flee, clutching at the shaft buried deep in his side. The horse took no more than two leaps before three arrows sank into the Mallorean’s back. He stiffened, then toppled over limply, his foot hanging up in his stirrup as he fell, and his frightened horse bolted, dragging him, bouncing and flopping, back down the trail.
‘I can’t seem to locate that document,’ Yarblek declared, walking back with a wicked grin on his face. He turned the Mallorean he had been speaking to over with his foot. ‘You didn’t really want to see it anyway, did you?’ he asked the dead man.
The Mallorean with the arrow in his throat stared blankly up at the sky, his mouth agape and a trickle of blood running out of his nose.
‘I didn’t think so.’ Yarblek laughed coarsely. He drew back his foot and kicked the dead man back over onto his face. Then he turned to smirk at Silk as his archers came out of the dark green ferns. ‘You certainly get around, Silk,’ he said. ‘I thought Taur Urgas had finished you back there in stinking Cthol Murgos.’
‘He miscalculated,’ Silk replied casually.
‘How did you manage to get yourself conscripted into the Mallorean army?’ Yarblek asked curiously, all traces of his feigned drunkenness gone now.
Silk shrugged. ‘I got careless.’
‘I’ve been following you for the last three days.’
‘I’m touched by your concern.’ Silk lifted his fettered ankle and jingled the chain. ‘Would it be too much trouble for you to unlock this?’
‘You’re not going to do anything foolish, are you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Find the key,’ Yarblek told one of his archers.
‘What are you going to do with us?’ Besher asked nervously, eyeing the dead guards with a certain apprehension.
Yarblek laughed. ‘What you do once that chain’s off is up to you,’ he answered indifferently. ‘I wouldn’t recommend staying in the vicinity of so many dead Malloreans, though. Somebody might come along and start asking questions.’
‘You’re just going to let us go?’ Besher demanded incredulously.
‘I’m certainly not going to feed you,’ Yarblek told him.
The archers went down the chain, unlocking the shackles, and each Nadrak bolted into the bushes as soon as he was free.
‘Well, then,’ Yarblek said, rubbing his palms together, ‘now that that’s been taken care of, why don’t we have a drink?’
‘That guard spilled all your wine when he fell off his horse,’ Silk pointed out.
‘That wasn’t my wine,’ Yarblek snorted. ‘I stole it this morning. You should know I wouldn’t offer my own drink to somebody I planned to kill.’
‘I wondered about that.’ Silk grinned at him. ‘I thought that maybe your manners had started to slip.’
Yarblek’s coarse face took on a faintly injured expression.
‘Sorry,’ Silk apologized quickly. ‘I misjudged you.’
‘No harm done.’ Yarblek shrugged. ‘A lot of people misunderstand me.’ He sighed. ‘It’s a burden I have to bear.’ He opened a pack on his lead mule and hefted out a small keg of ale. He set it on the ground and broached it with a practiced skill, bashing in its top with his fist. ‘Let’s get drunk,’ he suggested.
‘We’d really like to,’ Silk declined politely, ‘but we’ve got some rather urgent business to take care of.’
‘You have no idea how sorry I am about that,’ Yarblek replied, fishing several cups out of the pack.
‘I knew you’d understand.’
‘Oh, I understand, all right, Silk.’ Yarblek bent and dipped two cups into the ale keg. ‘And I’m as sorry as I can be that your business is going to have to wait. Here.’ He gave Silk one cup and Garion the other. Then he turned and dipped out a cup for himself.
Silk looked at him with one raised eyebrow.
Yarblek sprawled on the ground beside the ale keg, comfortably resting his feet on the body of one of the dead Malloreans. ‘You see, Silk,’ he explained, ‘the whole point of all this is that Drosta wants you – very badly. He’s offering a reward for you that’s just too attractive to pass up. Friendship is one thing, but business is business, after all. Now, why don’t you and your young friend make yourselves comfortable? This is a nice, shady clearing with soft moss to lie on. We’ll all get drunk, and you can tell me how you managed to escape from Taur Urgas. Then you can tell me what happened to that handsome woman you had with you down in Cthol Murgos. Maybe I can make enough money from this to be able to afford to buy her. I’m not the marrying kind, but by Torak’s teeth, that’s a fine-looking woman. I’d almost be willing to give up my freedom for her.’
‘I’m sure she’d be flattered,’ Silk replied. ‘What then?’
‘What when?’
‘After we get drunk. What do we do then?’
‘We’ll probably get sick – that’s what usually happens. After we get well, we’ll run on down to Yar Nadrak. I’ll collect the reward for you, and you’ll be able to find out why King Drosta lek Thun wants to get his hands on you so badly.’ He looked at Silk with an amused expression. ‘You might as well sit down and have a drink, my friend. You aren’t going anywhere just now.’
Chapter Five
Yar Nadrak was a walled city, lying at the juncture of the east and west forks of the River Cordu. The forests had been cleared for a league or so in every direction from the capital by the simple expedient of setting fire to it, and the approach to the city passed through a wilderness of burned black snags and rank-growing bramble thickets. The city gates were stout and smeared with tar. Surmounting them was a stone replica of the mask of Torak. That beautiful, inhumanly cruel face gazed down at all who entered, and Garion suppressed a shudder as he rode under it.
The houses in the Nadrak capital were all very tall and had steeply sloping roofs. The windows of the second storeys all had shutters, and most of the shutters were closed. Any exposed wood on the structures had been smeared with tar to preserve it, and the splotches of the black substance made all the buildings look somehow diseased.
There was a sullen, frightened air in the narrow, crooked streets of Yar Nadrak, and the inhabitants kept their eyes lowered as they hurried about their business. There appeared to be less leather involved in the clothing of the burghers of the capital than had been the case in the back country, but even here most garments were black, and only occasionally was there a splash of blue or yellow. The sole exception to this rule was the red tunic worn by the Mallorean soldiers. They seemed to be everywhere, roaming at will up and down the cobblestoned streets, accosting citizens rudely and talking loudly to each other in their heavily accented speech.
While the soldiers seemed for the most part to be merely swaggering bullies, young men who concealed their nervousness at being in a strange country with an outward show of bluster and braggadocio, the Mallorean Grolims were quite another matter. Unlike the western Grol
ims Garion had seen in Cthol Murgos, they rarely wore the polished steel mask, but rather assumed a set, grim expression, thin-lipped and narrow-eyed; as they went about the streets in their hooded black robes, everyone, Mallorean and Nadrak alike, gave way to them.
Garion and Silk, closely guarded and mounted on a pair of mules, followed the rangy Yarblek into the city. Yarblek and Silk had kept up their banter during the entire ride downriver, exchanging casual insults and reliving past indiscretions. Although he seemed friendly enough, Yarblek nonetheless remained watchful, and his men had guarded Silk and Garion every step of the way. Garion had covertly watched the forest almost continually during the three-day ride, but he had seen no sign of Belgarath and he entered the city in a state of jumpy apprehension. Silk, however, seemed relaxed and confident as always, and his behavior and attitude grated at Garion’s nerves, for some reason.
After they had clattered along a crooked street for some distance, Yarblek turned down a narrow, dirty alleyway leading toward the river.
‘I thought the palace was that way,’ Silk said to him, pointing toward the center of town.
‘It is,’ Yarblek replied, ‘but we aren’t going to the palace. Drosta’s got company there, and he prefers to do business in private.’ The alleyway soon opened out into a seedy-looking street where the tall, narrow-looking houses had fallen somewhat into disrepair. The lanky Nadrak clamped his mouth shut as two Mallorean Grolims rounded a corner just ahead and came in their direction. Yarblek’s expression was openly hostile as the two approached.
One of them stopped to return his gaze. ‘You seem to have a problem, friend,’ the Grolim suggested.
‘That’s my business, isn’t it?’ Yarblek retorted.
‘Indeed it is,’ the Grolim replied coolly. ‘Don’t let it get out of hand, though. Open disrespect for the priesthood is the sort of thing that could get you into serious trouble.’ The black-robed man’s look was threatening.