"There's not much question about the fact that they're going to get their feet wet," Durnik said, "but that's better than trying to scale a wall with somebody pouring boiling oil on your head, wouldn't you say?"
"Much, much better," Garion agreed.
They moved on through the chill night. Then something brushed Garion's cheek. At first he ignored it, but it came again -soft and cold and damp. His heart sank. "Durnik," he whispered, "it's starting to snow."
"I thought that's what it was. I think this is going to turn very unpleasant on us."
The snow continued to fall through the remainder of the night and on into the next morning. Though there were occasional flurries that swirled around the bleak fortress, the snowfall for the most part was intermittent. It was a wet, sodden kind of snow that turned to slush almost as soon as it touched the ground.
Shortly before noon, Garion and Lelldorin donned heavy wool cloaks and stout boots and went out of the snow-clogged encampment toward the north wall of Rheon. When they were perhaps two hundred paces from the base of the hill upon which the city rested, they sauntered along with a great show of casualness, trying to look like nothing more dangerous than a pair of soldiers on patrol. As Garion looked at the fortress city, he saw the red and black bear-flag once more, and once again that banner raised an irrational rage in him. "Are you sure that you'll be able to recognize your arrows in the dark?" he asked his friend. "There are a lot of arrows sticking in the ground out there, you know."
Lelldorin drew his bow and shot an arrow in a long arc toward the city. The feathered shaft rose high in the air and then dropped to sink into the snow-covered turf about fifty paces from the beginning of the slope. "I made the arrows myself, Garion," he said, taking another shaft from the quiver at his back. "Believe me, I can recognize one of them as soon as my fingers touch it." He leaned back and bent his bow again. "Is the ground getting soft under the wall?"
Garion sent out his thought toward the slope of the hill and felt the chill, musty dampness of the soil lying under the snow. "Slowly," he replied, "it's still pretty firm, though."
"It's almost noon, Garion," Lelldorin said seriously, reaching for another arrow. " I know how thoroughly Goodman Durnik thinks things through, but is this really working?"
"It takes a while," Garion told him. "You have to soak the lower layers of earth first. Then the water starts to rise and saturate the dirt directly under the wall itself. It takes time; but if the water started gushing out of rabbit holes, the people on top of the wall would know that something's wrong."
"Think of how the rabbits would feel." Lelldorin grinned and shot another arrow.
They moved on as Lelldorin continued to mark the jumping-off line of the coming night's assault with deceptive casualness.
"All right," Garion said. "I know that you can recognize your own arrows, but how about the rest of us? One arrow feels just like another to me."
"It's simple," the young bowman replied. "I just creep up, find my arrows and string them all together with twine. When you hit that string, you stop and wait for the wall to topple. Then you charge. We've been making night assaults on Mimbrate houses in Asturia for centuries this way." Throughout the remainder of that snowy day, Garion and Durnik periodically checked the level of moisture in the soil of the north slope of the steep knoll upon which the city of Rheon stood.
"It's getting very close to the saturation point, Garion," Durnik reported as dusk began to fall. "There are a few places on the lower slope where the water's starting to seep through the snow."
"It's a good thing it's getting dark," Garion said, shifting the weight of his mail shirt nervously. Armor of any kind always made him uncomfortable, and the prospect of the upcoming assault on the city filled him with a peculiar emotion, part anxiety, and part anticipation.
Durnik, his oldest friend, looked at him with an understanding that pierced any possible concealment. He grinned a bit wryly. "What are a pair of sensible Sendarian farm boys doing fighting a war in the snow in eastern Drasnia?" he asked.
"Winning -I hope."
"We'll win, Garion," Durnik assured him, laying an affectionate hand on the younger man's shoulder. "Sendars always win -eventually."
About an hour before midnight, Mandorallen began to move his siege engines, leaving only enough of them on the eastern and western sides to continue the intermittent barrage that was to mask their real purpose. As the hour wore on, Garion, Lelldorin, Durnik, and Silk crept forward at a half crouch toward the invisible line of arrows sticking up out of the snow.
"Here's one," Durnik whispered as his outstretched hands encountered the shaft of an arrow.
"Here," Lelldorin murmured, "let me feel it." He joined the smith, the both of them on their knees in the slush. "Yes, it's one of mine, Garion," he said very quietly. "They should be about ten paces apart."
Silk moved quickly to where the two of them crouched over the arrow. "Show me how you recognize them," he breathed.
"It's in the fletching," Lelldorin replied. "I always use twisted gut to attach the feathers."
Silk felt the feathered end of the arrow. "All right," he said. "I can pick them out now."
"Are you sure?" Lelldorin asked.
"If my fingertips can find the spots on a pair of dice, they can certainly tell the difference between gut and linen twine," Silk replied.
"All right. We'll start here." Lelldorin attached one end of a ball of twine to the arrow. "I'll go this way, and you go that."
"Right." Silk tied the end of his ball of string to the same shaft. He turned to Garion and Durnik. "Don't overdo it with the water, you two," he said. "I don't particularly want to get buried in a mudslide out here." Then he moved off, crouched low and groping for the next arrow. Lelldorin touched Garion's shoulder briefly, then disappeared in the opposite direction.
"The ground's completely soaked now," Durnik murmured. "If we open those fissures about a foot wide, it's going to flush most of the support out from under the wall."
"Good."
Again, they sent their probing thoughts out through the sodden earth of the hillside, located the layer of rock, and then swept back and forth along its irregular upper side until they located the first fissure. Garion felt a peculiar sensation as he began to worm his thought down that narrow crack where the water came welling up from far below, almost as if he were extending some incredibly long though invisible arm with slender, supple fingers at its end to reach down into the fissure. "Have you got it?" he whispered to Durnik.
"I think so."
"Let's pull it apart then," Garion said, bracing his will.
Slowly, with an effort that made the beads of sweat stand out on their foreheads, the two of them forced the fissure open. A sharp, muffled crack reverberated up from beneath the sodden slope of the hillside as the rock broke under the force of their combined wills.
"Who's there?" a voice demanded from atop the city wall.
"Is it open wide enough?" Garion whispered, ignoring that alarmed challenge.
"The water's coming up much faster," Durnik replied after a moment's probing. "There's a lot of pressure under that layer of rock. Let's move on to the next place."
A heavy twang came from somewhere behind them, and a peculiar slithering whistle passed overhead as the line from one of Yarblek's catapult-launched grappling hooks arched up and over the north wall. The hook made a steely clink as it slapped against the inside of the wall, and then there was a grating sound as the points dug in.
Crouched low, Garion and Durnik moved carefully on to their left, trying to minimize the soggy squelching sound their feet made in the slush and probing beneath the earth for the next fissure. When Lelldorin came back to rejoin them, they had already opened two more of those hidden cracks lying beneath the saturated slope; behind and above them, there was a gurgling sound as the soupy mud oozed out of the hillside to cascade in a brown flood down the snowy slope.
"I got all the way to the end of the line of arrows,"
Lelldorin reported. "The string's in place on this side."
"Good," Garion said, panting slightly from his exertions. "Go back and tell Barak to start moving the troops into place."
"Right." Lelldorin turned and went off into the swirl of a sudden snow flurry.
"We'll have to be careful with this one," Durnik murmured, searching along under the soil. "There are a lot of fractures in the rock here. If we pull it too far apart, we'll break up the whole layer and turn loose a river." Garion grunted his agreement as he sent the probing fingers of his will out toward the fissure.
When they reached the last of their subterranean well springs, Silk came out of the dark behind them, his nimble feet making no sound as he moved through the slush.
"What kept you?" Durnik whispered to the little man. "You only had about a hundred yards to go."
"I was checking the slope," Silk replied. "The whole is starting to ooze through the snow like cold gravy. Then I went up and pushed my foot against one of the stones of the wall. It wobbled like a loose tooth."
"Well," Durnik said in a tone of self-satisfaction, "it worked after all." There was a pause in the snowy darkness. "You mean you weren't actually sure?" Silk asked in a strangled voice.
"The theory was sound," the smith answered in an offhand sort of way. "But you can never be actually positive about a theory until you try it."
"Durnik, I'm getting too old for this."
Another grappling hook sailed overhead.
"We've got one more to open," Garion murmured. "Barak's moving the troops into place. Do you want to go back and tell Yarblek to send up the signal to Mandorallen?"
"My pleasure," Silk replied. "I want to get out of here before we're all hip-deep in mud anyway." He turned and went off into the dark.
Perhaps ten minutes later, when the last fissure had been opened and the entire north slope of the hill had turned into a slithering mass of oozing mud and freely running water, an orange ball of blazing pitch arched high in the air over the city. In response to that prearranged signal, Mandorallen's engines emplaced to the south began a continuous barrage, lofting their heavy stones high over the rooftops of Rheon to slam against the inside of the north wall. At the same time, the lines on Yarblek's grappling hooks tautened as the Nadrak mercenaries began to move their teams of horses away from the wall. There was an ominous creaking and grinding along the top of the hill as the weakened wall began to sway.
"How much longer do you think it's going to stand?" Barak asked as he came out of the darkness with Lelldorin at his side to join them.
"Not very." Durnik replied. "The ground's starting to give way under it." The groaning creak above them grew louder, punctuated by the continual sharp crashes along the inside as Mandorallen's catapults stepped up the pace of their deadly rain.
Then, with a sound like an avalanche, a section of the wall collapsed with a peculiarly sinuous motion as the upper portion toppled outward and the lower sank into the sodden earth. There was a great, splashing rumble as the heavy cascaded into the slush and mud of the hillside.
"A man should never try to put up stonework resting only on dirt," Durnik observed critically.
"Under the circumstances, I'm glad they did," Barak told him.
"Well, yes," Durnik admitted, "but there are right ways to do things." The big Cherek chuckled. "Durnik, you're an absolute treasure, do you know that?"
Another section of the wall toppled outward to splash onto the slope. Shouts of alarm and the clanging of bells began to echo through the streets of the fortified town.
"You want me to move the men out?" Barak asked Garion, his voice tense with excitement.
"Let's wait until the whole wall comes down," Garion replied. "I don't want them charging up the hill with all those building stones falling on top of them."
"There it goes." Lelldorin laughed gleefully, pointing toward the last, toppling section of the wall.
"Start the men," Garion said tersely, reaching over his shoulder for the great sword strapped to his back.
Barak drew in a deep breath. "Charge!" he roared in a vast voice.
With a concerted shout, the Rivans and their Nadrak allies plunged up through the slush and mud and began clambering over the fallen ruins of the north wall and on into the city, "Let's go!" Barak shouted. "We'll miss all the fighting if we don't hurry!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The fight was short and in many cases very ugly. Each element of Garion's army had been thoroughly briefed by Javelin and his niece, and they had all been given specific assignments. Unerringly, they moved through the snowy, firelit streets to occupy designated houses. Other elements, angling in from the edges of the breach in the north wall, circled the defensive perimeter Javelin had drawn on Liselle's map to pull down the houses and fill the streets with obstructing rubble.
The first counterattack came just before dawn. Howling Bear-cultists clad in shaggy furs swarmed out of the narrow streets beyond the perimeter to swarm up over the rubble of the collapsed houses, only to run directly into a withering rain of arrows from the rooftops and upper windows. After dreadful losses, they fell back.
As dawn broke pale and gray along the snowy eastern horizon, the last few pockets of resistance inside the perimeter crumbled, and the north quarter of Rheon was secure.
Garion stood somberly at a broken upper window of a house overlooking the cleared area that marked the outer limits of that part of the town that was under his control. The bodies of the cultists who had mounted the counterattack lay sprawled in twisted, grotesque heaps, already lightly dusted with snow.
"Not a bad little fight," Barak declared, coming into the room with his blood-stained sword still in his hand. He dropped his dented shield in a corner and came over to the window.
"I didn't care much for it," Garion replied, pointing at the windrows of the dead lying below. "Killing people is a very poor way of changing their minds."
"They started this war, Garion. You didn't."
"No," Garion corrected. "Ulfgar started it. He's the one I actually want."
"Then we'll have to go get him for you," Barak said, carefully wiping his sword with a bit of tattered cloth.
During the course of the day, there were several more furious counterattacks from inside the city, but the results were much the same as had been the case with the first. Garion's positions were too secure and too well covered by archers to fall to these sporadic sorties.
"They don't actually fight well in groups, do they?" Durnik said from the vantage point of the upper story of that half-ruined house.
"They don't have that kind of discipline," Silk replied. The little man was sprawled on a broken couch in one corner of the room, carefully peeling an apple with a small, sharp knife. "Individually, they're as brave as lions, but the concept of unified action hasn't quite seeped into their heads yet."
"That was an awfully good shot," Barak congratulated Lelldorin, who had just loosed an arrow through the shattered window.
Lelldorin shrugged. "Child's play. Now, that fellow creeping along the roof-line of the house several streets back -that's a bit more challenging." He nocked another arrow, drew, and released all in one smooth motion.
"You got him," Barak said.
"Naturally"
As evening approached, Polgara and Beldin returned to the camp outside the city. "Well," the gnarled sorcerer said with a certain satisfaction, "you won't have to worry about the pikemen for a while." He held out his twisted hands to one of Yarblek's glowing braziers.
"You didn't hurt them, did you?" Porenn asked quickly.
"No." He grinned. "We just bogged them down. They were going through a marshy valley, and we diverted a river into it. The whole place is a quagmire now. They're perched on hummocks and in the branches of trees waiting for the water to subside."
"Won't that stall Brendig as well?" Garion asked.
"Brendig's marching around that valley." Polgara assured him, sitting near one of the braziers with a cup of
tea. "He should be here in a few days." She looked at Vella. "This tea is really excellent," she said.
"Thank you, Lady Polgara," the dark-haired dancer replied. Her eyes were fixed on Ce'Nedra's copper curls, radiant in the golden candlelight. She sighed enviously. "If I had hair like that, Yarblek could sell me for double the price."
"I'd settle for half," Yarblek muttered, "just to avoid all those incidental knifings."
"Don't be such a baby, Yarblek," she told him. "I didn't really hurt you all that much."
"You weren't the one who was doing the bleeding."
"Have you been practicing your curses, Vella?" Beldin asked.
She demonstrated -at some length.
"You're getting better," he congratulated her.
For the next two days, Garion's forces worked to heap obstructions along the rubble-choked perimeter of the north quarter of Rheon to prevent a counterattack in force from crossing that intervening space. Garion and his friends observed the process from a large window high up in the house which they had converted into a headquarters.
"Whoever's in charge over there doesn't seem to have a very good grasp of basic strategy," Yarblek noted. "He's not making any effort to block off his side of that open space to keep us out of the rest of his city." Barak frowned. "You know, Yarblek, you're right. That should have been his first move after we secured this part of town."
"Maybe he' s too arrogant to believe that we can take more of his houses," Lelldorin suggested.
"Either that or he's laying traps for us back out of sight," Durnik added.
"That's possible, too," Barak agreed. "More than possible. Maybe we ought to do a little planning before we start any more attacks."
Before we can plan anything, we have to know exactly what kind of traps Ulfgar has waiting for us," Javelin said.
Silk sighed and made a wry face. " All right. After dark I'll go have a look."
"I wasn't really suggesting that, Kheldar."
"Of course you weren't."
It's a very good idea, though. I'm glad you thought of it."
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