Sorceress of Darshiva

"Yes," she murmured. "I saw that almost immediately."

They rode back along the beach to the abandoned fishing village. "Do you want me to do it, Grandfather?" Garion coffered. "Set fire to the driftwood, I mean?"

"No," the old man replied, "I'll take care of it. You and Pol take the others on down along the shoreline. I'll catch up in a bit."

"Do you want these?" Durnik asked, offering the old man his flint and steel.

Belgarath shook his head. "I'll do it the other way," he f'said. "I want to give the Chandim some noise to listen to, as well as the fire to watch. That should get their undivided attention." He strode off into the fog, heading back up the beach.

"Come along, Garion," Polgara said, pushing back the hood of her cloak. "We'll scout ahead again. I think we'll want to move fairly fast."

The two of them walked a short distance down the beach and made the change once more. "Keep your mind awake as well as your ears and nose," Polgara's voice silently instructed. "With this fog, the Chandim will probably be watching with their thoughts rather than their eyes."

"Yes, Aunt Pol," he replied, loping toward the upper end of the beach. Sand was different underfoot than grass or turf. It gave slightly under his paws and it slowed him a bit. He decided that he did not really like running in sand. He ran along for a couple of miles without any encounters, then heard and felt a shockingly loud surge coming from somewhere behind him. He flinched and glanced back over shoulder. The fog was illuminated by a sooty orange color.

There was another surge that sounded almost like a detonation, then another, and another.

"Tacky, father," he heard Polgara say disapprovingly. "Why are you being so ostentatious?"

"I just wanted to be sure they heard me, is all," the old man replied.

"They probably heard you in Mal Zeth. Are you coming back now?"

"Let me start a few more fires first. The Chandim have a limited attention span. Besides, the smoke should confuse the Hounds' sense of smell."

There were several more detonations. "That should do it." Belgarath's thought had a note of self-satisfaction in it.

About twenty minutes later, the great silver wolf came out of the fog like a ghost. "Oh, there you are," Belgarath said to Garion in the way of wolves. "Let's spread out a bit and move right along. Durnik and the others are right behind us."

"Did the Chandim go back to the beach to see what was happening?"

"Oh, yes." Belgarath's tongue lolled out in the wolfs version of a grin. "They were definitely curious. There were quite a few of them. Shall we go?"

They ran along for about another hour before Garion's nostrils caught the scent of a horse and rider coming from somewhere ahead. He loped on through the fog, ranging back and forth until he pinpointed the man's location. Then he ran forward. It was a solitary Temple Guardsman who was galloping northward toward the towering fires Belgarath had ignited. Garion rushed him, snarling terribly. The Guardsman's horse squealed in panic, rearing up onto his hind legs and dumping his startled rider into a bleached pile of driftwood. The horse fled, and the Guardsman groaned as he lay tangled up in the white logs and branches half-buried in the sand.

"Trouble?" Belgarath's thought came out of the fog.

"A Guardsman," Garion replied. "He fell off his horse. I think he may have broken some things."

"Was he alone?"

"Yes, Grandfather. Where are you?"

"Just a ways ahead of you. There are some woods up here. This looks like as good a place as any to turn west. I don't think we need to go all the way down to Gandahar."

"I'll tell Aunt Pol to pass the word to Durnik."

The woods were quite extensive, and there was very little undergrowth. At one point, Garion passed the embers of a campfire still glowing in the foggy dark. The campsite, however, was deserted, and there were signs that whoever had been there had departed in some haste. The track of churned loam on the forest floor indicated that the people had galloped off toward the fires on the beach. Garion ran on.

Near the edge of the woods, a faint breeze carried a sharp canine reek. Garion stopped. "Grandfather," he sent his thought out urgently, "I smell a dog up ahead."

"Only one?"

"I think so." He crept forward, his ears and nose alert. "I can only smell one," he reported.

"Stay put. I'll be right there."

Garion dropped to his haunches and waited. A few moments later, the silver wolf joined him.

"Is he moving around at all?" Belgarath asked.

"No, Grandfather. He seems to be just sitting in one place. Do you think we can slip around him?"

"You and I could, but I don't think that Durnik and the others would be able to. The Hounds can hear and smell almost as well as wolves can."

"Can we frighten him off?"

"I doubt it. He's bigger than we are. Even if we did, he'd just go for help—and we definitely don't want a pack of the Hounds on our trail. We're going to have to kill him."

"Grandfather!" Garion gasped. For some reason, the thought of deliberately killing another canine profoundly '' shocked him.

"I know," Belgarath agreed. "The notion's repugnant, but we don't have any choice. "

He's blocking our way out of this area, and we have to be clear of here by daylight. Now listen carefully. The Hounds are big, but they're not very agile. They particularly aren't very good at turning around in a hurry. I'll confront him head-on. You run in behind him and hamstring him. You know how to do that?"

That knowledge was instinctive in wolves, and Garion found, almost with surprise, that he knew precisely what to do. "Yes," he replied. The speech of wolves is limited in its emotional range, so he could not indicate how uncomfortable this impending encounter made him.

"All right," Belgarath continued, "once you cut his hamstrings, get back out of the range of his teeth. He'll try to turn on you. That's instinctive, so he won't be able to stop himself. That's when I'll take his throat."

Garion shuddered at the deliberateness of the plan. Belgarath was proposing not a fight, but a cold-blooded killing. "Let's get it over with, Grandfather," he said unhappily.

"Don't whine, Garion," Belgarath's thought came to him. "He'll hear you."

"I don't like this," Garion thought back.

"Neither do I, but it's the only thing we can do. Let's go." They crept among the fog-dimmed tree trunks with the smell of the Hound growing stronger in their nostrils. It was not a pleasant smell, since dogs will eat carrion, while wolves will not. Then Garion saw the Hound outlined black against the fog beyond the edge of the trees. Belgarath paused, indicating that he also saw their intended victim. Then the two wolves separated and moved in the slow, deliberate pace of the hunt, setting each paw carefully and noiselessly down on the damp forest loam.