Enchanter's End Game Part 17

"A little sweating won't hurt me."

Varana shrugged. "As your Majesty wishes."

"I'll keep you company, Rhodar," Ce'Nedra offered brightly. He gave her a suspicious look.

"I don't really trust machines either," she confessed. "I'll go change clothes, and then we can start."

"You want to do it today?" His voice was plaintive.

"Why put it off?"

"I can think of a dozen reasons."

The term "very steep" turned out to be a gross understatement. "Precipitous" might have been more accurate. The incline made riding horses out of the question, but ropes had been strung along the steeper stretches to aid in the climb. Ce'Nedra, dressed in one of her short Dryad tunics, scampered hand over hand up the ropes with the agility of a squirrel. King Rhodar's pace, however, was much slower.

"Please stop groaning, Rhodar," she told him after they had climbed for an hour or so. "You sound like a sick cow."

"That's hardly fair, Ce'Nedra," he wheezed, stopping to mop his streaming face.

"I never promised to be fair," she retorted with an impish grin. "Come along, we still have a long way to go." And she flitted up another fifty yards or so.

"Don't you think you're a little underdressed?" he puffed disapprovingly, staring up at her. "Proper ladies don't show off so much leg."

"What's wrong with my legs?"

"They're bare - that's what's wrong with them."

"Don't be such a prig. I'm comfortable. That's all that matters. Are you coming or not?"

Rhodar groaned again. "Isn't it almost time for lunch?"

"We just had lunch."

"Did we? I'd forgotten already."

"You always seem to forget your last meal - usually before the crumbs have been brushed away."

"That's the nature of a fat man, Ce'Nedra." He sighed. "The last meal is history. It's the next one that's important." He stared mournfully up the brutal trail ahead and groaned again.

"This was all your idea," she heartlessly reminded him.

The sun was low in the west when they reached the top. As King Rhodar collapsed, Princess Ce'Nedra looked around curiously. The fortifications which had been erected along the top of the escarpment were extensive and quite imposing. The walls were of earth and stone and were perhaps thirty feet high. Through an open gate the princess saw a series of other, lower walls, each fronted by a ditch bristling with sharpened stakes and th.o.r.n.y brambles. At various points along the main wall rose imposing blockhouses, and within the walls were neat rows of huts for the soldiers.

The forts swarmed with men, and their various activities raised an almost perpetual cloud of dust. A party of Algar clansmen, smokestained and mounted on spent-looking horses, rode slowly in through the gate; and a few moments later, a contingent of gleaming Mimbrate knights, pennons snapping from their lances and the great hoofs of their chargers clattering on the stony ground, rode out in search of yet another town to destroy.

The huge hoists at the edge of the escarpment creaked and groaned under the weight of the Cherek ships being raised from the plain below; some distance away, within the fortified walls, the growing fleet sat awaiting the final portage to the headwaters of the upper River Mardu, some fifty leagues distant.

Polgara, accompanied by Durnik and the towering Barak, approached to greet the princess and the prostrate King of Drasnia.

"How was the climb?" Barak inquired.

"Ghastly," Rhodar wheezed. "Does anybody have anything to eat? I think I've melted off about ten pounds."

"It doesn't show," Barak told him.

"That sort of exertion isn't really good for you, Rhodar," Polgara told the gasping monarch. "Why were you so stubborn about it?"

"Because I have an absolute horror of heights," Rhodar replied. "I'd climb ten times as far to avoid being hauled up that cliff by those contraptions. The idea of all that empty air under me makes my flesh creep."

Barak grinned. "That's a lot of creeping."

"Will somebody please give me something to eat?" Rhodar asked in an anguished tone of voice.

"A bit of cold chicken?" Durnik offered solicitously, handing him a well-browned chicken leg.

"Where did you ever find a chicken?" Rhodar exclaimed, eagerly seizing the leg.

"The Thulls brought some with them," Durnik told him.

"Thulls?" Ce'Nedra gasped. "What are Thulls doing here?"

"Surrendering," Durnik replied. "Whole villages of them have been showing up for the past week or so. They walk up to the edge of the ditches along the front of the fortification and sit down and wait to be captured. They're very patient about it. Sometimes it's a day or so before anybody has the time to go out and capture them, but they don't seem to mind."

"Why do they want to be captured?" Ce'Nedra asked him.

"There aren't any Grolims here," Durnik explained. "No altars to Torak and no sacrificial knives. The Thulls seem to feel that getting away from that sort of thing is worth the inconvenience of being captured. We take them in and put them to work on the fortifications. They're good workers, if you give them the proper supervision."

"Is that entirely safe?" Rhodar asked around a mouthful of chicken. "There might be spies among them."

Durnik nodded. "We know," he said, "but the spies are usually Grolims. A Thull doesn't have the mental equipment to be a spy, so the Grolims have to do it themselves."

Rhodar lowered his chicken leg in astonishment. "You're letting Grolims inside the fortifications?" he demanded.

"It's nothing all that serious," Durnik told him. "The Thulls know who the Grolims are, and we let them deal with the problem. They usually take them a mile or so along the escarpment and then throw them off. At first they wanted to do it right here, but some of their elders pointed out that it might not be polite to drop Grolims down on top of the men working below, so they take them some place where they won't bother anybody when they fall. A very considerate people, the Thulls. One could almost get to like them."

"You've sunburned your nose, Ce'Nedra," Polgara told the little princess. "Didn't you think of wearing a hat?"

"Hats give me a headache." Ce'Nedra shrugged. "A little sunburn won't hurt me."

"You have an appearance to maintain, dear," Polgara pointed out. "You're not going to look very queenly with your nose peeling."

"It's nothing to worry about, Lady Polgara. You can fix it, can't you? You know-" Ce'Nedra made a little gesture with her hand that was meant to look magical.

Polgara gave her a long, chilly look.

King Anheg of Cherek, accompanied by the broad-shouldered Rivan Warder, approached them. "Did you have a nice climb?" he asked Rhodar pleasantly.

"How would you like a punch in the nose?" Rhodar asked him. King Anheg laughed coa.r.s.ely.

"My," he said, "aren't we grumpy today? I've just had some news from home that ought to brighten your disposition a bit."

"Dispatches?" Rhodar groaned, hauling himself wearily to his feet. Anheg nodded. "They sent them up from down below while you were getting your exercise. You're not going to believe what's been going on back there."

"Try me."

"You absolutely won't believe it."

"Anheg, spit it out."

"We're about to get some reinforcements. Islena and Porenn have been very busy these last few weeks."

Polgara looked at him sharply.

"Do you know something?" Anheg said, holding out a folded dispatch. "I wasn't even aware of the fact that Islena knew how to read and write, and now I get this."

"Don't be cryptic, Anheg," Polgara told him. "What have the ladies been up to?"

"I gather that after we left, the Bear-cult began to make itself a bit obnoxious. Grodeg apparently felt that with the men out of the way, he could take over. He started throwing his weight around in Val Alorn, and cult members began to surface in the headquarters of Drasnian intelligence in Boktor. It looks as if they've been making preparations for something for years. Anyway, Porenn and Islena began pa.s.sing information back and forth, and when they realized how close Grodeg was to getting his hands on real power in the two kingdoms, they took steps. Porenn ordered all the cult members out of Boktor - sent them to the most miserable duty posts she could think of - and Islena rounded up the Bear-cult in Val Alorn - every last one of them - and shipped them out to join the army."

"They did what?" Rhodar gasped.

"Isn't it amazing?" A slow grin spread across Anheg's coa.r.s.e face. "The beauty of the whole thing is that Islena could get away with it, while I couldn't. Women aren't supposed to be aware of the subtleties involved in arresting priests and n.o.blemen - the need for evidence against them and so on - so what would be gross impropriety on my part will be laughed off as ignorance on hers. I'll have to apologize to Grodeg, of course, but it will be after the fact. The cult will be here, and they'll have no honest reason to go back home."

Rhodar's answering grin was every bit as wicked as Anheg's. "How did Grodeg take it?"

"He was absolutely livid. I guess Islena faced him down personally. She gave him the choice of joining us or going to the dungeon."

"You can't put the High Priest of Belar in a dungeon," Rhodar exclaimed.

"Islena didn't know that, and Grodeg knew that she didn't. She'd have had him chained to the wall in the deepest hole she could find before anybody had gotten around to telling her that it was illegal. Can't you just see my Islena delivering that kind of ultimatum to the old windbag?" There was a note of fierce pride in Anheg's voice.

King Rhodar's face grew very sly. "There's bound to be some rather hot fighting in this campaign sooner or later," he noted.

Anheg nodded.

"The Bear-cult prides itself on its fighting ability, doesn't it?" Anheg nodded again, grinning.

"They'd be perfect for spearheading any attacks, wouldn't they?" Anheg's grin grew positively vicious.

"I imagine that their casualties will be heavy," the King of Drasnia suggested.

"It's in a good cause, after all," Anheg replied piously.

"If you two have quite finished gloating, I think it's time I got the princess in out of the sun," Polgara told the two grinning monarchs.

The fortified positions atop the escarpment bustled with activity for the next several days. Even as the last of the Cherek ships were raised up the cliffs, the Algars and Mimbrates extended their depredations out into the Thullish countryside.

"There aren't any crops standing for fifty leagues in any direction," Hettar reported back. "We'll have to go out farther to find anything else to burn."

"You find many Murgos?" Barak asked the hawk-faced man.

"A few." Hettar shrugged. "Not enough to make it interesting, but we run across one every now and then."

"How's Mandorallen doing?"

"I haven't seen him for a few days," Hettar replied. "There's a lot of smoke coming from the direction he went, though, so I imagine he's keeping busy."

"What's the country like out there?" King Anheg asked.

"Not bad, once you get past the uplands. The part of Thulldom along the escarpment here is pretty forbidding."

"What do you mean by forbidding? I've got to haul ships through that country."

"Rock, sand, a few thornbushes and no water," Hettar replied. "And it's hotter than the backdoor of a furnace."

"Thanks," Anheg said.

"You wanted to know," Hettar told him. "Excuse me. I need a fresh horse and some more torches."

"You're going out again?" Barak asked him.

"It's something to do."

Once the last of the ships had been raised, the Drasnian hoists began lifting tons of food and equipment that soon swelled King Fulrach's supply dumps within the forts to overflowing. The Thullish prisoners proved to be an invaluable a.s.set, carrying whatever burden they were told to carry without complaint or hesitation. Their coa.r.s.e features shone with such simpleminded grat.i.tude and eagerness to please that Ce'Nedra found it impossible to hate them, even though they were technically the enemy. Slowly, bit by bit, the princess discovered the facts that made the lives of the Thullish people such an unrelieved horror. There was not a family among them that had not lost several members to the knives of the Grolims - husbands, wives, children, and parents had all been selected for sacrifice, and the thought uppermost in every Thull's life was to avoid the same fate at any cost. The perpetual terror had erased every hint of human affection from the Thull's makeup. He lived in dreadful isolation, without love, without companionship, without any feeling but constant anxiety and dread. The reputedly insatiable appet.i.te of Thullish women had nothing whatsoever to do with morals or lack of them. It was a simple matter of survival. To escape the knife, a Thullish woman was forced to remain perpetually pregnant. She was not driven by l.u.s.t, but by fear, and her fear dehumanized her entirely.

"How can they live that way?" the princess burst out to Lady Polgara as the two of them returned to their makeshift quarters in the stout blockhouse which had been erected inside the walls for the use of the leaders of the army. "Why don't they rebel and drive the Grolims out?"

"And just who's supposed to lead a rebellion, Ce'Nedra?" Polgara asked her calmly. "The Thulls know that there are Grolims who can pick the thoughts from a man's mind as easily as you'd pick fruit in an orchard. If a Thull even considered organizing some kind of resistance, he'd be the next one dragged to the altar."

"But their lives are so horrible, " Ce'Nedra objected.

"Perhaps we can change that," Polgara said. "In a way what we're trying to do is not only for the benefit of the west, but for the Angaraks as well. If we win, they'll be liberated from the Grolims. They might not thank us at first, but in time they might learn to appreciate it."

"Why shouldn't they thank us?"

"Because if we win, dear, it will be because we've killed their G.o.d. That's a very hard thing to thank someone for."

"But Torak is a monster."

"He's still their G.o.d," Polgara replied. "The loss of one's G.o.d is a very subtle and terrible injury. Ask the Ulgos what it's like to live without one. It's been five thousand years since UL became their G.o.d, and they still remember what it was like before he accepted them."

"We are going to win, aren't we?" Ce'Nedra asked suddenly, all her fears flooding to the surface.

"I don't know, Ce'Nedra," Polgara answered quietly. "No one does - not me, not Beldin, not my father, not even Aldur. All we can do is try,"

"What will happen if we lose?" the princess asked in a tiny, frightened voice.

"We'll be enslaved in exactly the same way the Thulls are," Polgara replied quietly. "Torak will become King and G.o.d over the entire world. The other G.o.ds will be banished forever, and the Grolims will be unleashed upon us all."