In the spring they caught polliwogs along the marshy edges of the pond and climbed trees to stare in wonder at the tiny blue eggs the birds had laid in twiggy nests in the high branches.
It was Doroon, naturally, who fell from a tree and broke his arm one fine spring morning when Zubrette urged him into the highest branches of a tree near the edge of the pond. Since Rundorig stood helplessly gaping at his injured friend and Zubrette had run away almost before he hit the ground, it fell to Garion to make certain necessary decisions. Gravely he considered the situation for a few moments, his young face seriously intent beneath his shock of sandy hair. The arm was obviously broken, and Doroon, pale and frightened, bit his lip to keep from crying.
A movement caught Garion's eye, and he glanced up quickly. A man in a dark cloak sat astride a large black horse not far away, watching intently. When their eyes met, Garion felt a momentary chill, and he knew that he had seen the man before-that indeed that dark figure had hovered on the edge of his vision for as long as he could remember, never speaking, but always watching. There was in that silent scrutiny a kind of cold animosity curiously mingled with something that was almost, but not quite, fear. Then Doroon whimpered, and Garion turned back.
Carefully he bound the injured arm across the front of Doroon's body with his rope belt, and then he and Rundorig helped the injured boy to his feet.
"At least he could have helped us," Garion said resentfully.
"Who?" Rundorig said, looking around.
Garion turned to point at the dark-cloaked man, but the rider was gone.
"I didn't see anyone," Rundorig said.
"It hurts," Doroon said.
"Don't worry," Garion said. "Aunt Pol will fix it."
And so she did. When the three appeared at the door of her kitchen, she took in the situation with a single glance.
"Bring him over here," she told them, her voice not even excited. She set the pale and violently trembling boy on a stool near one of the ovens and mixed a tea of several herbs taken from earthenware jars on a high shelf in the back of one of her pantries.
"Drink this," she instructed Doroon, handing him a steaming mug.
"Will it make my arm well?" Doroon asked, suspiciously eyeing the evil-smelling brew.
"Just drink it," she ordered, laying out some splints and linen strips.
"Ick! It tastes awful," Doroon said, making a face.
"It's supposed to," she told him. "Drink it all."
"I don't think I want any more," he said.
"Very well," she said. She pushed back the splints and took down a long, very sharp knife from a hook on the wall.
"What are you going to do with that?" he demanded shakily.
"Since you don't want to take the medicine," she said blandly, "I guess it'll have to come off."
"Off?" Doroon squeaked, his eyes bulging.
"Probably about right there," she said, thoughtfully touching his arm at the elbow with the point of the knife.
Tears coming to his eyes, Doroon gulped down the rest of the liquid and a few minutes later he was nodding, almost drowsing on his stool. He screamed once, though, when Aunt Pol set the broken bone, but after the arm had been wrapped and splinted, he drowsed again. Aunt Pol spoke briefly with the boy's frightened mother and then had Durnik carry him up to bed.
"You wouldn't really have cut off his arm," Garion said.
Aunt Pol looked at him, her expression unchanging. "Oh?" she said, and he was no longer sure. "I think I'd like to have a word with Mistress Zubrette now," she said then.
"She ran away when Doroon fell out of the tree," Garion said.
"Find her."
"She's hiding," Garion protested. "She always hides when something goes wrong. I wouldn't know where to look for her."
"Garion," Aunt Pol said, "I didn't ask you if you knew where to look. I told you to find her and bring her to me."
"What if she won't come?" Garion hedged.
"Garion!" There was a note of awful finality in Aunt Pol's tone, and Garion fled.
"I didn't have anything to do with it," Zubrette lied as soon as Garion led her to Aunt Pol in the kitchen.
"You," Aunt Pol said, pointing at a stool, "sit!"
Zubrette sank onto the stool, her mouth open and her eyes wide.
"You," Aunt Pol said to Garion, pointing at the kitchen door, "outl"
Garion left hurriedly.
Ten minutes later a sobbing little girl stumbled out of the kitchen. Aunt Pol stood in the doorway looking after her with eyes as hard as ice.
"Did you thrash her?" Garion asked hopefully.
Aunt Pol withered him with a glance. "Of course not," she said. "You don't thrash girls."
"I would have," Garion said, disappointed. "What did you do to her?"
"Don't you have anything to do?" Aunt Pol asked.
"No," Garion said, "not really."
That, of course, was a mistake.
"Good," Aunt Pol said, finding one of his ears. "It's time you started to earn your way. You'll find some dirty pots in the scullery. I'd like to have them scrubbed."
"I don't know why you're angry with me," Garion objected, squirming. "It wasn't my fault that Doroon went up that tree."
"The scullery, Garion," she said. "Now."
The rest of that spring and the early part of the summer were quiet. Doroon, of course, could not play until his arm mended, and Zubrette had been so shaken by whatever it was that Aunt Pol had said to her that she avoided the two other boys. Garion was left with only Rundorig to play with, and Rundorig was not bright enough to be much fun. Because there was really nothing else to do, the boys often went into the fields to watch the hands work and listen to their talk.
As it happened, during that particular summer the men on Faldor's farm were talking about the Battle of Vo Mimbre, the most cataclysmic event in the history of the west. Garion and Rundorig listened, enthralled, as the men unfolded the story of how the hordes of Kal Torak had quite suddenly struck into the west some five hundred years before.
It had all begun in 4865, as men reckoned time in that part of the world, when vast multitudes of Murgos and Nadraks and Thulls had struck down across the mountains of the eastern escarpment into Drasnia, and behind them in endless waves had come the uncountable numbers of the Malloreans.
After Drasnia had been brutally crushed, the Angaraks had turned southward onto the vast grasslands of Algaria and had laid siege to that enormous fortress called the Algarian Stronghold. The siege had lasted for eight years until finally, in disgust, Kal Torak had abandoned it. It was not until he turned his army westward into Ulgoland that the other kingdoms became aware that the Angarak invasion was directed not only against the Alorns but against all of the west. In the summer of 4875 Kal Torak had come down upon the Arendish plain before the city of Vo Mimbre, and it was there that the combined armies of the west awaited him.