Guardians of the West

"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."