They thumped their heels to their horses' flanks and charged through at a gallop. Behind them, the outlaws circled and then broke and ran toward the heap of canvas bags. Several ugly little fights broke out almost immediately, and three men were down before anyone thought to open one of the bags. The howls of rage could be heard quite clearly for some distance.
Barak was laughing when they finally reined in their horses after a couple of miles of hard riding. "Poor Kroldor." He chortled. "You're an evil man, Silk."
"I've made a study of the baser side of man's nature," Silk replied innocently. "I can usually find a way to make it work for me."
"Kroldor's men are going to blame him for the way things turned out," Hettar observed.
"I know. But then, that's one of the hazards of leadership."
"They might even kill him."
"I certainly hope so. I'd be terribly disappointed in them if they didn't."
They pushed on through the yellow foothills for the rest of the day and camped that night in a well-concealed little canyon where the light from their fire would not betray their location to the brigands who infested the region. The next morning they started out early, and by noon they were in the mountains. They rode on up among the rocky crags, moving through a thick forest of dark green firs and spruces where the air was cool and spicy. Although it was still summer in the lowlands, the first signs of autumn had begun to appear at the higher elevations. The leaves on the underbrush had begun to turn, the air had a faint, smoky haze, and there was frost on the ground each morning when they awoke. The weather held fair, however, and they made good time.
Then, late one afternoon after they had been in the mountains for a week or more, a heavy bank of clouds moved in from the west, bringing with it a damp chill. Garion untied his cloak from the back of the saddle and pulled it around his shoulders as he rode, shivering as the afternoon grew colder.
Durnik lifted his face and sniffed at the air. "We'll have snow before morning," he predicted.
Garion could also smell the chill, dusty odor of snow in the air. He nodded glumly.
Mister Wolf grunted. "I knew this was too good to last." Then he shrugged. "Oh, well," he added, "we've all lived through winters before."
When Garion poked his head out of the tent the next morning, an inch of snow lay on the ground beneath the dark firs. Soft flakes were drifting down, settling soundlessly and concealing everything more than a hundred yards away in a filmy haze. The air was cold and gray, and the horses, looking very dark under a dusting of snow, stamped their feet and flicked their ears at the fairy touch of the snowflakes settling on them. Their breath steamed in the damp cold.
Ce'Nedra emerged from the tent she shared with Aunt Pol with a squeal of delight. Snow, Garion realized, was probably a rarity in Tol Honeth, and the tiny girl romped through the soft drifting flakes with childish abandon. He smiled tolerantly until a well-aimed snowball caught him on the side of the head. Then he chased her, pelting her with snowballs, while she dodged in and out among the trees, laughing and squealing. When he finally caught her, he was determined to wash her face with snow, but she exuberantly threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, her cold little nose rubbing against his cheek and her eyelashes thick with snowflakes. He didn't realize the full extent of her deceitfulness until she had already poured a handful of snow down the back of his neck. Then she broke free and ran toward the tents, hooting with laughter, while he tried to shake the snow out of the back of his tunic before it all melted.
By midday, however, the snow on the ground had turned to slush, and the drifting flakes had become a steady, unpleasant drizzle. They rode up a narrow ravine under dripping firs while a torrentlike stream roared over boulders beside them.
Mister Wolf finally called a halt. "We're getting close to the western border of Cthol Murgos," he told them. "I think it's time we started to take a few precautions."
"I'll ride out in front," Hettar offered quickly.
"I don't think that's a very good idea," Wolf replied. "You tend to get distracted when you see Murgos."
"I'll do it," Silk said. He had pulled his hood up, but water still dripped from the end of his long, pointed nose. "I'll stay about half a mile ahead and keep my eyes open."
Wolf nodded. "Whistle if you see anything."
"Right." Silk started off up the ravine at a trot.
Late that afternoon, the rain began to freeze as it hit, coating the rocks and trees with gray ice. They rounded a large outcropping of rock and found Silk waiting for them. The stream had turned to a trickle, and the walls of the ravine had opened out onto the steep side of a mountain. "We've got about an hour of daylight left," the little man said. "What do you think? Should we go on, or do you want to drop back down the ravine a bit and set up for the night?"
Mister Wolf squinted at the sky and then at the mountainside ahead. The steep slope was covered with stunted trees, and the timberline lay not far above them. "We have to go around this and then down the other side. It's only a couple of miles. Let's go ahead."
Silk nodded and led out again.
They rounded the shoulder of the mountain and looked down into a deep gorge that separated them from the peak they had crossed two days before. The rain had slackened with the approach of evening, and Garion could see the other side of the gorge clearly. It was not more than half a mile away, and his eyes caught a movement near the rim. "What's that?" He pointed.
Mister Wolf brushed the ice out of his beard. "I was afraid of that."
"What?"
"It's an Algroth."
With a shudder of revulsion, Garion remembered the scaly, goatfaced apes that had attacked them in Arendia. "Hadn't we better run?" he asked.
"It can't get to us," Wolf replied. "The gorge is at least a mile deep. The Grolims have turned their beasts loose, though. It's something we're going to have to watch out for." He motioned for them to continue.
Faintly, distorted by the wind that blew perpetually down the yawning gorge, Garion could hear the barking yelps of the Algroth on the far side as it communicated with the rest of its pack. Soon a dozen of the loathsome creatures were scampering along the rocky rim of the gorge, barking to one another and keeping pace with the party as they rode around the steep mountain face toward a shallow draw on the far side. The draw led away from the gorge; after a mile, they stopped for the night in the shelter of a grove of scrubby spruces.
It was colder the next morning and still cloudy, but the rain had stopped. They rode on back down to the mouth of the draw and continued following the rim of the gorge. The face on the other side fell away in a sheer, dizzying drop for thousands of feet to the tiny-looking ribbon of the river at the bottom. The Algroths still kept pace with them, barking and yelping and looking across with a dreadful hunger. There were other things as well, dimly seen back among the trees on the other side. One of them, huge and shaggy, seemed even to have a human body, but its head was the head of a beast. A herd of swift-moving animals galloped along the fir rim, manes and tails tossing.
"Look," Ce'Nedra exclaimed, pointing. "Wild horses."
"They're not horses," Hettar said grimly.
"They look like horses."
"They may look like it, but they aren't."
"Hrulgin," Mister Wolf said shortly.
"What's that?"
"A Hrulga is a four-legged animal-like a horse-but it has fangs instead of teeth, and clawed feet instead of hooves."
"But that would mean-" The princess broke off, her eyes wide.
"Yes. They're meat-eaters."
She shuddered. "How dreadful."
"That gorge is getting narrower, Belgarath," Barak growled. "I'd rather not have any of those things on the same side with us."
"We'll be all right. As I remember, it narrows down to about a hundred yards and then widens out again. They won't be able to get across."
"I hope your memory hasn't failed you."
The sky above looked ragged, tattered by a gusty wind. Vultures soared and circled over the gorge, and ravens flapped from tree to tree, croaking and squawking to one another. Aunt Pol watched the birds with a look of stern disapproval, but said nothing.