“What do we do?” Garion asked her, looking around helplessly.
“I’m going to have to concentrate on protecting the child,” she told him. “Step back, Garion.”
“What?”
“Get back away from me.” She bent and drew a circle in the sand, enclosing herself and the little boy in it. “Listen to me, all of you,” she said. “Until we’re out of this, none of you come any closer to me than this. I don’t want any of you getting hurt.” She drew herself up, and the white lock in her hair seemed to blaze.
“Wait,” Garion exclaimed.
“I don’t dare. They could attack again at any moment. It’s going to be up to you to protect your grandfather and the others.”
” Me?”
“You’re the only one who can do it. You have the power. Use it.” She raised her hand.
“How many of them are there that I have to fight off?” Garion demanded, but he already felt the sudden surge and the peculiar roaring sound in his mind as Aunt Pol’s will thrust out. The air about her seemed to shimmer, distorting like heat-waves on a summer afternoon. Garion could actually feel the barrier encircling her. “Aunt Pol?” he said to her. Then he raised his voice and shouted, “Aunt Pol!”
She shook her head and pointed at her ear. She seemed to say something, but no sound penetrated the shimmering shield she had erected.
“How many?” Garion mouthed the words exaggeratedly.
She held up both hands with one thumb folded in.
“Nine?” he mouthed again.
She nodded and then drew her cloak in around the little boy.
“Well, Garion?” Silk asked then, his eyes penetrating, “What do we do now?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“You heard her. Belgarath’s still in a daze, and she’s busy. You’re in charge now.”
“Me?”
“What do we do?” Silk pressed. “You’ve got to learn to make decisions.”
“I don’t know.” Garion floundered helplessly.
“Never admit that,” Silk told him. “Act as if you know—even if you don’t.”
“We-uh—we’ll wait until it gets dark, I guess—then we’ll keep going the same way we have been.”
“There.” Silk grinned. “See how easy it is?”
3
There was the faintest sliver of a moon low over the horizon as they started out across the black sand of the wasteland in the biting chill. Garion felt distinctly uncomfortable in the role Silk had thrust upon him. He knew that there had been no need for it, since they all knew where they were going and what they had to do. If any kind of leadership had actually been required, Silk himself was the logical one to provide it; but instead, the little man had placed the burden squarely on Garion’s shoulders and now seemed to be watching intently to see how he would handle it.
There was no time for leadership or even discussion when, shortly after midnight, they ran into a party of Murgos. There were six of them, and they came galloping over a low ridge to the south and blundered directly into the middle of Garion’s party. Barak and Mandorallen reacted with that instant violence of trained warriors, their swords whistling out of their sheaths to crunch with steely ringing sounds into the mail-skirted bodies of the startled Murgos. Even as Garion struggled to draw his own sword, he saw one of the black-robed intruders tumble limply out of his saddle, while another, howling with pain and surprise, toppled slowly backward, clutching at his chest. There was a confusion of shouts and shrill screams from terrified horses as the men fought in the darkness. One frightened Murgo wheeled his mount to flee, but Garion, without even thinking, pulled his horse in front of him, sword raised to strike. The desperate Murgo made a frantic swing with his own weapon, but Garion easily parried the badly aimed swipe and flicked his blade lightly, whiplike, across the Murgo’s shoulder. There was a satisfying crunch as the sharp edge bit into the Murgo’s mail shirt. Garion deftly parried another clumsy swing and whipped his blade again, slashing the Murgo across the face. All the instruction he had received from his friends seemed to click together into a single, unified style that was part Cherek, part Arendish, part Algar, and was distinctly Garion’s own. This style baked the frightened Murgo, and his efforts became more desperate. But each time he swung, Garion easily parried and instantly countered with those light, flicking slashes that inevitably drew blood. Garion felt a wild, surging exultation boiling in his veins as he fought, and there was a fiery taste in his mouth.
Then Relg darted in out of the shadows, jerked the Murgo off balance, and drove his hook-pointed knife up under the man’s ribs. The Murgo doubled over sharply, shuddered, then fell dead from his saddle.
“What did you do that for?” Garion demanded without thinking. “That was my Murgo.”
Barak, surveying the carnage, laughed, his sudden mirth startling in the darkness. “He’s turning savage on us, isn’t he?”
“His skill is noteworthy, however,” Mandorallen replied approvingly.
Garion’s spirits soared. He looked around eagerly for someone else to fight, but the Murgos were all dead. “Were they alone?” he demanded, somewhat out of breath. “I mean, were there any others coming along behind them? Maybe we should go look.”
“We do want them to find our trail, after all,” Silk reminded him. “It’s up to you of course, Garion, but if we exterminate all the Murgos in the area, there won’t be anyone left to report our direction back to Rak Cthol, will there?”
“Oh,” Garion said, feeling a little sheepish, “I forgot about that.”
“You have to keep the grand plan in view, Garion, and not lose sight of it during these little side adventures.”
“Maybe I got carried away.”
“A good leader can’t afford to do that.”
“All right.” Garion began to feel embarrassed.
“I just wanted to be sure you understood, that’s all.”
Garion didn’t answer, but he began to see what it was about Silk that irritated Belgarath so much. Leadership was enough of a burden without these continuously comments from the weasel-faced little man to complicate things.
“Are you all right?” Taiba was saying to Relg with a strange note of concern in her voice. The Ulgo was still on his knees beside the body of the Murgo he had killed.
“Leave me alone,” he told her harshly.
“Don’t be stupid. Are you hurt? Let me see.”
“Don’t touch me!” He cringed away from her outstretched hand. “Belgarion, make her get away from me.”
Garion groaned inwardly. “What’s the trouble now?” he asked.
“I killed this man,” Relg replied. “There are certain things I have to do—certain prayers—purification. She’s interfering.”
Garion resisted an impulse to swear. “Please, Taiba,” he said as calmly as he could, “just leave him alone.”
“I just wanted to see if he was all right,” Taiba answered a bit petulantly. “I wasn’t hurting him.” She had an odd look on her face that Garion could not begin to understand. As she stared at the kneeling Ulgo, a curious little smile flickered across her lips. Without warning, she reached her hand out toward him again.
Relg shrank back. “No!” he gasped.
Taiba chuckled, a throaty, wicked little sound, and walked away, humming softly to herself. After Relg had performed his ritual of purification over the dead Murgo’s body, they remounted and rode on. The sliver of moon stood high overhead in the chill sky, casting a pale light down on the black sands, and Garion looked about constantly as he rode, trying to pick out any possible dangers lurking ahead. He glanced frequently at Aunt Pol, wishing that she were not so completely cut off from him, but she seemed to be totally absorbed in maintaining her shield of will. She rode with Errand pulled closely against her, and her eyes were distant, unfathomable. Garion looked hopefully at Belgarath, but the old man, though he looked up from his doze at times, seemed largely unaware of his surroundings. Garion sighed, and his eyes resumed their nervous scrutiny of the trail ahead. They rode on through the tag-end of night in the biting chill with the faint moonlight about them and the stars glittering like points of ice in the sky above.