Chapter Six
DESPITE THE PROMISE OF the brief sunset, the next day dawned cold and murky with a chill drizzle that wreathed down among the trees and made the entire forest sodden and gloomy. They left the inn early and soon entered a part of the wood that seemed more darkly foreboding than even the ominous stretches through which they had previously passed. The trees here were enormous, and many vast, gnarled oaks lifted their bare limbs among the dark firs and spruces. The forest floor was covered with a kind of gray moss that looked diseased and unwholesome.
Lelldorin had spoken little that morning, and Garion assumed that his friend was still struggling with the problem of Nachak's scheme. The young Asturian rode along, wrapped in his heavy green cloak, his reddish-gold hair damp and dispirited-looking in the steady drizzle. Garion pulled in beside his friend, and they rode silently for a while. "What's troubling you, Lelldorin?" he asked finally.
"I think that all my life I've been blind, Garion," Lelldorin replied.
"Oh? In what way?" Garion said it carefully, hoping that his friend had finally decided to tell Mister Wolf everything.
"I saw only Mimbre's oppression of Asturia. I never saw our own oppression of our own people."
"I've been trying to tell you that," Garion pointed out. "What made you see it finally?"
"That village where we stayed last night," Lelldorin explained. "I've never seen so poor and mean a place - or people crushed into such hopeless misery. How can they bear it?"
"Do they have any choice?"
"My father at least looks after the people on his land," the young man asserted defensively. "No one goes hungry or without shelter - but those people are treated worse than animals. I've always been proud of my station, but now it makes me ashamed." Tears actually stood in his eyes.
Garion was not sure how to deal with his friend's sudden awakening. On the one hand, he was glad that Lelldorin had finally seen what had always been obvious; but on the other, he was more than a little afraid of what this newfound perception might cause his mercurial companion to leap into.
"I'll renounce my rank," Lelldorin declared suddenly, as if he had been listening to Garion's thoughts, "and when I return from this quest, I'll go among the serfs and share their lives - their sorrows."
"What good will that do? How would your suffering in any way make theirs less?"
Lelldorin looked up sharply, a half dozen emotions chasing each other across his open face. Finally he smiled, but there was a determination in his blue eyes. "You're right, of course," he said. "You always are. It's amazing how you can always see directly to the heart of a problem, Garion."
"Just what have you got in mind?" Garion asked a little apprehensively.
"I'll lead them in revolt. I'll sweep across Arendia with an army of serfs at my back." His voice rang as his imagination fired with the idea.
Garion groaned. "Why is that always your answer to everything, Lelldorin?" he demanded. "In the first place, the serfs don't have any weapons and they don't know how to fight. No matter how hard you talk, you'd never get them to follow you. In the second place, if they did, every nobleman in Arendia would join ranks against you. They'd butcher your army; and afterward, things would be ten times worse. In the third place, you'd just be starting another civil war; and that's exactly what the Murgos want."
Lelldorin blinked several times as Garion's words sank in. His face gradually grew mournful again. "I hadn't thought of that," he confessed.
"I didn't think you had. You're going to keep making these mistakes as long as you keep carrying your brain in the same scabbard with your sword, Lelldorin."
Lelldorin flushed at that, and then he laughed ruefully. "That's a pointed way of putting it, Garion," he said reproachfully.
"I'm sorry," Garion apologized quickly. "Maybe I should have said it another way."
"No," Lelldorin told him. "I'm an Arend. I tend to miss things if they aren't said directly."
"It's not that you're stupid, Lelldorin," Garion protested. "That's a mistake everyone makes. Arends aren't stupid - they're just impulsive."
"All this was more than just impulsiveness," Lelldorin insisted sadly, gesturing out at the damp moss lying under the trees.
"This what?" Garion asked, looking around.
"This is the last stretch of forest before we come out on the plains of central Arendia," Lelldorin explained. "It's the natural boundary between Mimbre and Asturia."
"The woods look the same as all the rest," Garion observed, looking around.
"Not really," Lelldorin said somberly. "This was the favorite ground for ambush. The floor of this forest is carpeted with old bones. Look there." He pointed.
At first it seemed to Garion that what his friend indicated was merely a pair of twisted sticks protruding from the moss with the twigs at their ends entangled in a scrubby bush. Then, with revulsion, he realized that they were the greenish bones of a human arm, the fingers clutched at the bush in a last convulsive agony. Outraged, he demanded, "Why didn't they bury him?"
"It would take a thousand men a thousand years to gather all the bones that lie here and commit them to earth," Lelldorin intoned morbidly. "Whole generations of Arendia rest here - Mimbrate, Wacite, Asturian. All lie where they fell, and the moss blankets their endless slumber."
Garion shuddered and pulled his eyes away from the mute appeal of that lone arm rising from the sea of moss on the floor of the forest. The curious lumps and hummocks of that moss suggested the horror which lay moldering beneath. As he raised his eyes, he realized that the uneven surface extended as far as he could see, "How long until we reach the plain?" he asked in a hushed voice.
"Two days, probably."
"Two days? And it's all like this?"
Lelldorin nodded.
"Why?" Garion's tone was harsher, more accusing than he'd intended.
"At first for pride - and honor," Lelldorin replied. "Later for grief and revenge. Finally it was simply because we didn't know how to stop. As you said before, sometimes we Arends aren't very bright."
"But always brave," Garion answered quickly.
"Oh yes," Lelldorin admitted. "Always brave. It's our national curse."
"Belgarath," Hettar said quietly from behind them, "the horses smell something."
Mister Wolf roused himself from the doze in which he usually rode. "What?"
"The horses," Hettar repeated. "Something out there's frightening them."
Wolf's eyes narrowed and then grew strangely blank. After a moment he drew in a sharp breath with a muttered curse.
"Algroths," he swore.
"What's an Algroth?" Durnik asked.
"A non-human-somewhat distantly related to Trolls."
"I saw a Troll once," Barak said. "A big ugly thing with claws and fangs."
"Will they attack us?" Durnik asked.
"Almost certainly." Wolf's voice was tense. "Hettar, you're going to have to keep the horses under control. We don't dare get separated."
"Where did they come from?" Lelldorin asked. "There aren't any monsters in this forest."
"They come down out of the mountains of Ulgo sometimes when they get hungry," Wolf answered. "They don't leave survivors to report their presence."
"You'd better do something, father," Aunt Pol said. "They're all around us."
Lelldorin looked quickly around as if getting his bearings. "We're not far from Elgon's tor," he offered. "We might be able to hold them off if we get there."