It was too horrible to think about. Unable to restrain herself, the princess threw herself on her knees, clasped her arms about Polgara and Errand, and burst into tears.
"Now, now, there's no need to cry, Ce'Nedra," Polgara told her gently, smoothing the sobbing girl's hair with her hand. "Garion has still not reached the City of Endless Night, and Torak is still asleep. There's a little time left. And who knows? We might even win."
Chapter Thirteen
ONCE THE CHEREK fleet had been raised, the pace of activities within the fortifications began to quicken. King Rhodar's infantry units began to arrive from the encampment at the Aldur River to make the tortuous climb up the narrow ravines to the top of the escarpment; lines of wagons from the main supply dumps freighted food and equipment to the base of the cliff where the great hoists waited to lift the supplies up the mile-high basalt face; and the Mimbrate and Algar raiding parties moved out, usually before dawn, in their now far-flung search for as yet unravaged towns and crops. The depredations of the raiders, their short, savage sieges of poorly fortified Thullish towns and villages, and the mile-wide swaths of fire that they cut through fields of ripe grain had finally swung the sluggish Thulls into poorly organized attempts at resistance. The Thulls, however, inevitably raced to the last point of Mimbrate attack and arrived hours or even days too late, to discover only smoking ruins, dead soldiers, and terrified and dispossessed townsmen, or, when they attempted to intercept the swiftly moving Algars, they normally found only acre upon acre of blackened earth. The raiders had moved on, and the desperate attempts of the Thulls to catch up with them were entirely futile.
The notion of attacking the forts from which the raiders operated did not occur to the Thulls, or if it did, it was quickly dismissed. The Thulls were not emotionally suited to attacking heavily defended fortifications. They much preferred dashing about, chasing fires, and complaining bitterly to their Murgo and Mallorean allies about the lack of support they were receiving. The Malloreans of Emperor 'Zakath steadfastly refused to emerge from their staging areas around Thull Zelik. The Murgos of Taur Urgas, however, did make a few sorties in southern Thulldom, in part as a gesture toward the notion of Angarak unity - but more, King Rhodar surmised, as a part of their overall maneuvering for position. Murgo scouts were even occasionally discovered in the vicinity of the forts themselves. In order to sweep the area clear of these prying Murgo eyes, patrols went out every day from the forts to range through the arid hills. The parched, rocky valleys near the forts were randomly searched by Drasnian pikemen and platoons of legionnaires. Algar clansmen, supposedly resting from their long-range raids, amused themselves with an impromptu game they called "Murgo hunting." They made a great show of their frequent excursions and piously insisted that they were sacrificing their rest time out of a sense of responsibility for the security of the forts. They did not, of course, fool anybody with their protestations.
"The area does need to be patrolled, Rhodar," King Cho-Hag insisted. "My children are performing a necessary duty, after all."
"Duty?" Rhodar snorted. "Put an Algar on a horse and show him a hill he hasn't seen the backside of yet, and he'll always find an excuse to go take a look."
"You wrong us," Cho-Hag replied with a look of hurt innocence.
"I know you."
Ce'Nedra and her two closest companions had watched the periodic departure of the lighthearted Algar horsemen with increasingly sour expressions. Though Ariana was perhaps more sedentary in her habits and was accustomed, as all Mimbrate ladies were, to waiting quite patiently while the men were out playing, Adara, Garion's Algar cousin, felt her confinement most keenly. Like all Algars, she felt a deep-seated need to have the wind in her face and the thunder of hoofs in her ears. She grew petulant after a time and sighed often.
"And what shall we do today, ladies?" Ce'Nedra asked the two of them brightly one morning after breakfast. "How shall we amuse ourselves until lunchtime?" She said it rather extravagantly, since she already had plans for the day.
"There is always embroidery," Ariana suggested. "It doth pleasantly occupy the fingers and eyes while leaving the mind and lips free for conversation."
Adara sighed deeply.
"Or maybe we might go and observe my lord as he instructs his serfs in their warlike preparations." Ariana usually found some excuse to watch Lelldorin for at least half of each day.
"I'm not sure that I'm up to watching a group of men murder hay bales with arrows again today," Adara said a bit waspishly.
Ce'Nedra moved quickly to head off any incipient bickering. "We could make an inspection tour," she suggested archly.
"Ce'Nedra, we've looked at every blockhouse and every hut within the walls a dozen times already," Adara said with some asperity, "and if I have some polite old sergeant explain the workings of a catapult to me one more time, I think I'll scream."
"We have not, however, inspected the outer fortifications, have we?" the princess asked slyly. "Wouldn't you say that's part of our duty too?"
Adara looked at her quickly, and then a slow smile appeared on her face. "Absolutely," she agreed. "I'm surprised that we hadn't thought of that before. We've been most neglectful, haven't we?"
Ariana's face took on a worned frown. "King Rhodar, I fear, would be most strenuous in his objections to such a plan."
"Rhodar isn't here," Ce'Nedra pointed out. "He's off with King Fulrach taking an inventory of the supply dumps."
"Lady Polgara would most certainly not approve," Ariana suggested, though her tone indicated that she was weakening.
"Lady Polgara is conferring with Beldin the sorcerer," Adara mentioned, her eyes dancing mischievously.
Ce'Nedra smirked. "That rather leaves us to our own devices, doesn't it, ladies?"
"We shall be soundly scolded upon our return," Ariana said. "And we will all be very contrite, won't we?" Ce'Nedra giggled.
A quarter of an hour later, the princess and her two friends, dressed in soft black leather Algar riding clothes, passed at a canter out through the central gate of the vast fort. They were accompanied by Olban, the youngest son of the Rivan Warder. Olban had not liked the idea, but Ce'Nedra had given him no time to object and definitely no time to send a message to anyone who could step in and stop the whole excursion. Olban looked worried, but, as always, he accompanied the little Rivan Queen without question.
The stake-studded trenches in front of the walls were very interesting, but one trench looked much like another, and it took a rare mind indeed to find much pleasure in the finer points of excavation.
"Very nice," Ce'Nedra said brightly to a Drasnian pikeman standing guard atop a high mound of dirt. "Splendid ditches - and all those excellently sharp stakes." She looked out at the arid landscape before the fortifications. "Where did you ever find all the wood for them?"
"The Sendars brought it in, your Majesty," he replied, "from someplace up north, I think. We had the Thulls cut and sharpen the stakes for us. They're quite good stake-makers - if you tell them what you want."
"Didn't a mounted patrol go out this way about a half an hour ago?" Ce'Nedra asked him.
"Yes, your Majesty. Lord Hettar of Algaria and some of his men. They went off that way." The guard pointed toward the south.
"Ah," Ce'Nedra said. "If anyone should ask, tell them that we're going out to join him. We should return in a few hours."
The guard looked a bit dubious about that, but Ce'Nedra moved quickly to head off any objections. "Lord Hettar promised to wait for us just beyond the south end of the fortifications," she told him. She turned to her companions. "We really mustn't keep him waiting too long. You ladies took absolutely too much time changing clothes." She smiled winsomely at the guard. "You know how it is," she said. "The riding habit must be just so, and the hair absolutely has to be brushed one last time. Sometimes it takes forever. Come along, ladies. We must hurry, or Lord Hettar will be vexed with us." With a brainless little giggle, the princess wheeled Noble and rode south at a gallop.
"Ce'Nedra, "Ariana exclaimed in a shocked voice once they were out of earshot, "you lied to him."
"Of course."
"But that's dreadful."
"Not nearly as dreadful as spending another day embroidering daisies on a stupid petticoat," the princess replied.
They left the fortifications and crossed a low, burned-brown string of hills. The broad valley beyond was enormous. Dun brown and treeless mountains reared up fully twenty miles away at the valley's far end. They cantered down into that vast emptiness, feeling dwarfed into insignificance by the colossal landscape. Their horses seemed no more than ants crawling toward the indifferent mountains.
"I hadn't realized it was so big," Ce'Nedra murmured, shading her eyes to gaze at the distant hilltops.
The floor of the valley was as flat as a tabletop, and it was only sparsely sprinkled with low, thorny bushes. The ground was scattered with round, fist-sized rocks, and the dust spurted, yellow and powdery, from each step of their horses' hoofs. Although it was scarcely midmorning, the sun was already a furnace, and shimmering heatwaves rippled the valley floor ahead, making the dusty, gray-green bushes seem to dance in the windless air.
It grew hotter. There was no trace of moisture anywhere, and the sweat dried almost instantly on the flanks of their panting horses.
"I think we should give some thought to going back," Adara said, reining in her mount. "There's no way we can reach those hills at the end of the valley."
"She's right, your Majesty," Olban told the princess. "We've already come too far."
Ce'Nedra pulled Noble to a stop, and the white horse drooped his head as if on the verge of absolute exhaustion. "Oh, quit feeling sorry for yourself," she chided him irritably. This was not going at all as she had expected. She looked around. "I wonder if we could find some shade somewhere," she said. Her lips were dry, and the sun seemed to hammer down on her unprotected head.
"The terrain doth not suggest such comfort, princess," Ariana said, looking around at the flat emptiness of the rock-strewn valley floor.
"Did anyone think to bring any water?" Ce'Nedra asked, dabbing at her forehead with a kerchief.
No one had.
"Maybe we should go back," she decided, looking about rather regretfully. "There's nothing to see out here, anyway."
"Riders coming," Adara said sharply, pointing toward a mounted group of men emerging from an indented galley that lay like a fold on the flanks of a rounded hill a mile or so away.
"Murgos?" Olban demanded with a sharp intake of his breath. His hand went immediately to his sword.
Adara raised her hand to shade her eyes and stared at the approaching horsemen intently.
"No," she replied. "They're Algars. I can tell by the way they ride."
"I hope they have some water with them," Ce'Nedra said.
The dozen or so Algar riders rode directly toward them with a great cloud of yellow dust rising behind them. Adara suddenly gasped, and her face went very pale.
"What is it?" Ce'Nedra asked her.
"Lord Hettar is with them," Adara said in a choked voice.
"How can you possibly recognize anybody at that distance?"
Adara bit her lip, but did not reply.
Hettar's face was fierce and unforgiving as he reined in his sweating horse. "What are you doing out here?" he demanded bluntly. His hawkface and black scalp lock gave him a wild, even frightening appearance.
"We thought we'd go riding, Lord Hettar," Ce'Nedra replied brightly, trying to outface him.
Hettar ignored that. "Have you lost your mind, Olban?" he harshly asked the young Rivan. "Why did you permit the ladies to leave the forts?"
"I do not tell her Majesty what to do," Olban answered stiffly, his face red.
"Oh, come now, Hettar," Ce'Nedra protested. "What's the harm in our taking a little ride?"
"We killed three Murgos not a mile from here just yesterday," Hettar told her. "If you want exercise, run around the inside of the forts for a few hours. Don't just ride out unprotected in hostile territory. You've acted very foolishly, Ce'Nedra. We'll go back now." His face was grim as a winter sea, and his tone left no room for discussion.
"We had just made the same decision, my Lord," Adara murmured, her eyes downcast.
Hettar looked sternly at the condition of their horses. "You're an Algar, Lady Adara," he said pointedly. "Didn't it occur to you to bring water for your mounts? Surely you know better than to take a horse out in this kind of heat without any precautions at all."
Adara's pale face grew stricken.
Hettar shook his head in disgust. "Water their horses," he curtly told one of his men, "and then we'll escort them back. Your excursion is over, ladies."
Adara's face was flaming with a look of almost unbearable shame. She twisted this way and that in her saddle, trying to avoid Hettar's stern, unforgiving stare. No sooner had her horse been watered than she jerked her reins and dug her heels into his flanks. Her startled mount scrambled his hoofs in the gravel and leaped away, running back the way they had come across the rock-littered valley floor.
Hettar swore and drove his mount after her.
"Whatever is she doing?" Ce'Nedra exclaimed.
"Lord Hettar's rebuke hath stung our gentle companion beyond her endurance," Ariana observed. "His good opinion is dearer to her than leer life itself."
"Hettar?" Ce'Nedra was stunned.
"Hath not throe eye informed thee how it doth stand with our dear friend?" Ariana asked in mild surprise. "Thou art strangely unobservant, Princess."
"Hettar?" Ce'Nedra repeated. "I had no idea."
"Mayhap it is because I am Mimbrate," Ariana concluded. "The ladies of my people are most sensitive to the signs of gentle affection in others."
It took perhaps a hundred yards for Hettar to overtake Adara's plunging horse. He seized her reins in one fist and jerked her roughly to a stop, speaking sharply to her, demanding to know what she was doing. Adara twisted this way and that in her saddle, trying to keep him from seeing her face as he continued to chide her.
Then a flicker of movement no more than twenty feet from the two of them caught Ce'Nedra's eye. Astonishingly, a mail-shined Murgo rose up out of the sand between two scrubby bushes, shaking off the sheet of brown-splotched canvas beneath which he had lain concealed. As he rose, his short bow was already drawn.
"Hettar!" Ce'Nedra screamed as the Murgo raised his bow. Hettar's back was to the Murgo, but Adara saw the man aiming his arrow at the Algar's unprotected back. With a desperate move, she ripped her reins from Hettar's grip and drove her horse into his. His mount lurched back, stumbled and fell, throwing the unprepared man to the ground even as Adara, flailing her horse's flanks with the ends of her reins, plunged directly at the Murgo.
With only the faintest flicker of annoyance, the Murgo released his arrow at the charging girl.
Even at that distance, Ce'Nedra could hear the distinct sound the arrow made when it struck Adara. It was a sound she would remember with horror for the remainder of her life. Adara doubled sharply, her free hand clutching at the arrow buried low in her chest, but her plunging gallop did not falter nor change as she rode the Murgo down. He tumbled and rolled beneath the churning hoofs of her horse, then lurched again to his feet as soon as she had passed over him, his hand jerking at his sheathed sword. But Hettar was already upon him, sabre flashing in the glaring sunlight. The Murgo screamed once as he fell.
Hettar, his dripping sabre still in his hand, turned angrily to Adara. "What a stupid thing," he roared at her, but his shout cut off suddenly. Her horse had come to a stop a few yards beyond the Murgo, and she drooped in her saddle, her dark hair falling like a veil across her pale face and both of her hands pressed to her chest. Then, slowly, she toppled from her saddle.
With a strangled cry, Hettar dropped his sabre and ran to her.
"Adara!" the princess wailed, her hands going to her face in horror even as Hettar gently turned the stricken girl over. The arrow, still stan
ding out of her lower chest, throbbed with the rhythm of her faltering heartbeat.
When the rest of them reached the pair, Hettar was holding Adara in his arms, staring into her pale face with a stricken look. "You little fool," he was murmuring in a broken voice. "You little fool."
Ariana slid from her saddle even before her horse stopped moving and ran to Hettar's side. "Do not move her, my Lord," she told him sharply. "The arrow hath pierced her lung, and shouldst thou move her, its keen edge will gash out her life."
"Take it out," Hettar said from between clenched teeth.
"Nay, my Lord. To pull the arrow now will do more damage than to leave it."
"I can't bear to see it sticking out of her like that," he almost sobbed.
"Then don't look, my Lord," Ariana said bluntly, kneeling beside Adara and placing a cool, professional hand on the wounded girl's throat.
"She's not dead, is she?" Hettar almost begged.
Ariana shook her head. "Gravely wounded, but her life doth still pulse within her. Instruct thy men to improvise a litter at once, my Lord. We must convey our dear friend to the fortress and Lady Polgara's ministrations immediately, lest her life drain away."
"Can't you do something?" he croaked.
"Not here in this sun-blasted desolation, my Lord. I have neither instruments nor medications, and the wound may be past my skill. The Lady Polgara is her only hope. The litter, my Lord. Quickly!"
Polgara's face was somber, and her eyes as hard as flint when she emerged from Adara's sickroom late that afternoon.
"How is she?" Hettar demanded. He had been pacing up and down in the main corridor of the blockhouse for hours, stopping every so often to strike savagely at the crudely built stone walls with his impotent fists.
"Somewhat improved," Polgara replied. "The crisis is past, but she's still terribly weak. She's asking for you."
"She will recover, won't she?" Hettar's question had a note of fear in it.
"Probably - if there aren't any complications. She's young, and the wound looked more serious than it actually was. I gave her something that will make her very talkative, but don't stay too long. She needs rest." Polgara's eyes moved to Ce'Nedra's tear-streaked face. "Come to my room after you've seen her, your Majesty," she said firmly. "You and I have something to discuss."
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