King of the Murgos

Faintly, from somewhere to the east, a scream came out of the fog.

"There it is again," Silk said. He pulled his horse around.

"What are you doing?" Belgarath asked him.

"I'm going to have a look."

But Toth had moved his horse around until it was blocking the Drasnian's path. Gravely the giant shook his head.

"Toth, we have to know what's happening," Silk said.

Toth shook his head again.

"Toth," Garion said, "is what Sadi told us really true? Is there really such a thing as a Ravener?"

Toth's face grew bleak, and he nodded.

Another scream came out of the dim woods, seeming much closer this time. The scream was filled with horror and agony.

"Who is it?" Ce'Nedra demanded, her voice shrill with fright. "Who's screaming?"

"The men who attacked us," Eriond replied in a sick voice. "The ones who survived the fight. Something's running them down one by one."

"Raveners?" Garion asked him.

"I think so. Whatever it is, it's horrible."

"They're coming this way," Sadi said. "Let's get away from here." He drove his heels into his horse's flanks.

They plunged off into the gloomy wood, no longer even trying to follow the track. Their blind flight took them perhaps a half mile farther into the forest when Polgara suddenly pulled her horse to a halt. "Stop!" she commanded.

"What is it, Pol?" Durnik asked her.

But she pushed forward carefully to peer at a thicket half-obscured in the mist. "There's someone ahead," she whispered.

"A Ravener?" Garion asked in a low voice.

She concentrated for a moment. "No. It's one of the attackers. He's trying to hide."

"How far away is he?"

"Not far." She continued to peer into the shrouding mist. "There," she said. "He's behind that tree at the edge of the thicket—the one with the broken limb hanging down."

Garion vaguely saw a dark patch half-concealed behind a gnarled tree root rising out of the sodden leaves. Then a movement caught his eye, and he glimpsed a shambling figure coming out of the trees. It seemed gray, almost invisible in the hazy fog, and it was so gaunt that it resembled a skeleton. It was dressed in rags, stained with earth and blood. Its pale skull was covered with scanty hair, and it was half-crouched, snuffling audibly as it walked with its arms hanging loosely. Its eyes were vacant and its mouth agape.

Then another emerged from the woods, and yet another. As the creatures advanced, they made a low moaning sound that expressed nothing remotely intelligible, but rather seemed to convey only a dreadful hunger.

"He's going to run!" Polgara said.

With a despairing cry, the hidden assassin leaped to his feet and desperately began to run. The Raveners took up the chase, their moaning coming faster. Their shambling gait quickened, and their emaciated legs carried them through the wood at a surprising rate of speed.

Twisting and dodging, the panic-stricken ruffian fled among the trees, with his hideous pursuers gaining on him at every step. When he finally disappeared far back into the fog and gloom, they were no more than a few yards behind him.

His shriek was a shocking, horrible sound. Again he screamed—and again.

"Are they killing him?" Ce'Nedra's voice was shrill.

Polgara's face had gone absolutely white, and her eyes were filled with horror. "No," she replied in a shaking voice.

"What are they doing?" Silk demanded.

"They're eating him."

"But—" Silk broke off as more shrieks came out of the fog. "He's still—" He stared at her, his eyes gone very wide and the blood draining from his cheeks.

Ce'Nedra gasped. "Alive?" she said in a choked whisper. "They're eating him while he's still alive?"

"That's what I was trying to warn you about, your Majesty," Sadi said grimly. "When they go into their frenzy, they don't make any distinction between the living and the dead. They feed on anything."

"Toth," Belgarath said sharply. "Can they be frightened off?"

The mute shook his head, then turned to Durnik, gesturing rapidly, touching his head and then his stomach.

"He says that they aren't able to think enough to be afraid," the smith told him. "All they know is hunger."

"What are we going to do, father?" Polgara demanded.

"We're going to try to outrun them," he replied, "and if any of them get in our way, we'll have to kill them." He looked back at Toth. "How far can they run?" he asked.

Toth raised one hand and traced an arc over his head, then another, and then another.

"For days," Durnik interpreted.

Belgarath's face became very grim. "Let's go," he said "and stay together."

Their pace through the dreadful wood was more measured now, and the men all rode with their weapons in their hands.

The first attack came after they had gone no more than a mile. A dozen gray-faced Raveners shambled out from among the trees, moaning their hideous hunger and spreading out to block the path.

Garion spurred forward, swinging his sword in great arcs. Savagely, he chopped a path through the ranks of the slavering Raveners, who reached out mindlessly to pull him from his saddle. A terrible, rotting stink rose from them as he rode them down. He killed fully half of them as he crashed through, then whirled his horse to smash into them again, but pulled up sharply, his gorge rising. The Raveners who had escaped his sword were tearing at the bodies of those who had gone down, ripping out dripping gobbets of flesh and feeding them into their gaping mouths with their clawlike hands, even as they continued their awful moan.

Cautiously Belgarath and the others circled around that dreadful feeding, averting their eyes as they passed.

"It won't work, father," Polgara declared. "Sooner or later one of us is going to make a mistake. We're going to have to shield."

He thought about it for a moment. "You might be right, Pol," he admitted finally. He looked at Garion. "You and Durnik pay attention to how this is done," he instructed. "I want you to be able to take over when we get tired."

They started out at a walk as Belgarath and Polgara adjusted the barrier they were creating with the force of their combined will. They had gone no more than a little way when a gray-faced Ravener came loping out from among the twisted trees, slobbering and moaning. When it was perhaps ten yards from Durnik's horse, it suddenly stumbled back as if it had just run headlong into something solid. Moaning dreadfully, it came forward again and began to claw at the empty air with its filthy, long-nailed hands.