Chapter Two
Lelldorin Of Wildantor was eighteen years old, although his ingenuous nature made him seem more boyish. No emotion touched him that did not instantly register in his expression, and sincerity shone in his face like a beacon. He was impulsive, extravagant in his declarations, and probably, Garion reluctantly concluded, not overly bright. It was impossible not to like him, however.
The following morning when Garion pulled on his cloak to go out and continue his watch for Hettar, Lelldorin immediately joined him. The young Arend had changed out of his garish clothing and now wore brown hose, a green tunic, and a dark brown wool cape. He carried his bow and wore a quiver of arrows at his belt; as they walked through the snow toward the broken west wall he amused himself by loosing arrows at targets only half visible ahead of him.
"You're awfully good," Garion said admiringly after one particularly fine shot.
"I'm an Asturian," Lelldorin replied modestly. "We've been bowmen for thousands of years. My father had the limbs of this bow cut on the day I was born, and I could draw it by the time I was eight."
"I imagine you hunt a great deal," Garion said, thinking of the dense forest all around them and the tracks of game he had seen in the snow.
"It's our most common pastime." Lelldorin stopped to pull the arrow he had just shot from a tree trunk. "My father prides himself on the fact that beef or mutton are never served at his table."
"I went hunting once, in Cherek."
"Deer?" Lelldorin asked.
"No. Wild boars. We didn't use bows though. The Chereks hunt with spears."
"Spears? How can you get close enough to kill anything with a spear?"
Garion laughed a bit ruefully, remembering his bruised ribs and aching head. "Getting close isn't the problem. It's getting away after you've speared him that's the difficult part."
Lelldorin didn't seem to grasp that.
"The huntsmen form a line," Garion explained, "and they crash through the woods, making as much noise as they can. You take your spear and wait where the boars are likely to pass when they try to get away from the noise. Being chased makes them bad-tempered, and when they see you, they charge. That's when you spear them."
"Isn't that dangerous?" Lelldorin's eyes were wide.
Garion nodded. "I almost got all my ribs broken." He was not exactly boasting, but he admitted to himself that he was pleased by Lelldorin's reaction to his story.
"We don't have many dangerous animals in Asturia," Lelldorin said almost wistfully. "A few bears and once in a while a pack of wolves." He seemed to hesitate for a moment, looking closely at Garion. "Some men, though, find more interesting things to shoot at than wild stags." He said it with a kind of secretive sidelong glance.
"Oh?" Garion was not quite sure what he meant.
"Hardly a day goes by that some Mimbrate's horse doesn't come home riderless."
Garion was shocked at that.
"Some men think that there are too many Mimbrates in Asturia," Lelldorin explained with heavy emphasis.
"I thought that the Arendish civil war was over."
"There are many who don't believe that. There are many who believe that the war will continue until Asturia is free of the Mimbrate crown." Lelldorin's tone left no question as to where he stood in the matter.
"Wasn't the country unified after the Battle of Vo Mimbre?" Garion objected.
"Unified? How could anybody believe that? Asturia is treated like a subject province. The king's court is at Vo Mimbre; every governor, every tax collector, every bailiff, every high sheriff in the kingdom is a Mimbrate. There's not a single Asturian in a position of authority anywhere in Arendia. The Mimbrates even refuse to recognize our titles. My father, whose line extends back a thousand years, is called landowner. A Mimbrate would sooner bite out his tongue than call him Baron." Lelldorin's face had gone white with suppressed indignation.
"I didn't know that," Garion said carefully, not sure how to handle the young man's feelings.
"Asturia's humiliation is almost at an end, however," Lelldorin declared fervently. "There are some men in Asturia for whom patriotism is not dead, and the time is not far off when these men will hunt royal game." He emphasized his statement by snapping an arrow at a distant tree.
That confirmed the worst of Garion's fears. Lelldorin was a bit too familiar with the details not to be involved in this plot.
As if he had realized himself that he had gone too far, Lelldorin stared at Garion with consternation. "I'm a fool," he blurted with a guilty look around him. "I've never learned to control my tongue. Please forget what I just said, Garion. I know you're my friend, and I know you won't betray what I said in a moment of heat."
That was the one thing Garion had feared. With that single statement, Lelldorin had effectively sealed his lips. He knew that Mister Wolf should be warned that some wild scheme was afoot, but Lelldorin's declaration of friendship and trust had made it impossible for him to speak. He wanted to grind his teeth with frustration as he stared full in the face of a major moral dilemma.
They walked on, neither of them speaking and both a little embarrassed, until they reached the bit of wall where Garion had waited in ambush the day before. For a time they stared out into the fog, their strained silence growing more uncomfortable by the moment.
"What's it like in Sendaria?" Lelldorin asked suddenly. "I've never been there."
"There aren't so many trees," Garion answered, looking over the wall at the dark trunks marching off in the fog. "It's an orderly kind of place."
"Where did you live there?"
"At Faldor's farm. It's near Lake Erat."
"Is this Faldor a nobleman?"
"Faldor?" Garion laughed. "No, Faldor's as common as old shoes. He's just a farmer - decent, honest, good-hearted. I miss him."
"A commoner, then," Lelldorin said, seeming ready to dismiss Faldor as a man of no consequence.
"Rank doesn't mean very much in Sendaria," Garion told him rather pointedly. "What a man does is more important than what he is." He made a wry face. "I was a scullery boy. It's not very pleasant, but somebody's got to do it, I suppose."
"Not a serf, certainly?" Lelldorin sounded shocked.
"There aren't any serfs in Sendaria."
"No serfs?" The young Arend stared at him uncomprehendingly.
"No," Garion said firmly. "We've never found it necessary to have serfs."
Lelldorin's expression clearly showed that he was baffled by the notion. Garion remembered the voices that had come to him out of the fog the day before, but he resisted the urge to say something about serfdom. Lelldorin would never understand, and the two of them were very close to friendship. Garion felt that he needed a friend just now and he didn't want to spoil things by saying something that would offend this likeable young man.
"What sort of work does your father do?" Lelldorin asked politely.
"He's dead. So's my mother." Garion found that if he said it quickly, it didn't hurt so much.
Lelldorin's eyes filled in sudden, impulsive sympathy. He put his hand consolingly on Garion's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice almost breaking. "It must have been a terrible loss."
"I was a baby." Garion shrugged, trying to sound offhand about it. "I don't even remember them." It was still too personal to talk about.
"Some pestilence?" Lelldorin asked gently.
"No," Garion answered in the same flat tone. "They were murdered."
Lelldorin gasped and his eyes went wide.
"A man crept into their village at night and set fire to their house," Garion continued unemotionally. "My grandfather tried to catch him, but he got away. From what I understand, the man is a very old enemy of my family."
"Surely you're not going to let it stand like that?" Lelldorin demanded.
"No," Garion replied, still looking out into the fog. "As soon as I'm old enough, I'm going to find him and kill him."