Guardians of the West

"Just to your left," Durnik murmured. "Isn't that a crack?"

Garion found it and wormed his way downward. The fissure seemed to grow damper and damper the deeper he went.

"It's wet-down there," he whispered, "but the crack's so narrow that the water's barely seeping up."

"Let's widen the crack -but not too much. Just enough to let a trickle come up."

Garion bent his will and felt Durnik's will join with his. Together they shouldered the crack in the rock a bit wider. The water lying beneath the rock layer gushed upward. Together they pulled back and felt the water begin to erode the hard-packed dirt under the wall, seeping and spreading in the darkness beneath the surface.

"Let's move on," Durnik whispered. "We ought to open up six or eight places under the wall in order to soak the ground thoroughly. Then tomorrow night we can push the cracks wide open."

"Won't that wash out this whole hillside?" Garion asked, also whispering.

"Probably ."

"That's going to make it a little hard for our troops when they rush this place."

"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.