“Did you really set their village on fire?” Silk sounded a little shocked.
“Of course not,” Garion said.
“Where’s the smoke coming from then?”
“Lots of places.” Garion winked. “Out of the thatch on their roofs, up from between the stones in the streets, boiling up out of their cellars and granaries—lots of places. But it’s only smoke.” He swung down from Chretienne’s back and gathered up the discarded crossbows. He lined them up, nose down, in a neat row along the brushy barricade. “How long does it take to restring a crossbow?” he asked.
“Hours.” Silk suddenly grinned., “Two men to bend the limbs with a windlass and another two to hook the cable in place.”
“That’s what I thought,” Garion agreed. He drew his old belt knife and went down the line of weapons, cutting each twisted rope cable. Each bow responded with a heavy twang. “Shall we go, then?” he asked.
“What about this?” Silk pointed at the brushy barricade.
Garion shrugged. “I think we can ride around it.”
“What were they trying to do?” Durnik asked when they returned.
“An enterprising group of local peasants decided that the highway needed a tollgate about there.” Silk shrugged. “They didn’t really have the temperament for business affairs, though. At the first little distraction, they ran off and left the shop untended.”
They rode on past the now-deserted barricade with Yarblek’s laden mules plodding along behind them, their bells clanging mournfully.
“I think we’re going to have to leave you soon,” Belgarath said to the fur-capped Nadrak. “We have to get to Ashaba within the week, and your mules are holding us back.”
Yarblek nodded. “Nobody ever accused a pack mule of being fast on his feet,” he agreed. “I’ll be turning toward the west before long anyway. You can go into Karanda if you want to, but I want to get to the coast as quickly as possible.”
“Garion,” Polgara said. She looked meaningfully at the column of smoke rising from the village behind them.
“Oh,” he replied. “I guess I forgot.” He raised his hand, trying to make it look impressive. “Enough,” he said, releasing his will. The smoke thinned at its base, and the column continued to rise as a cloud, cut off from its source.
“Don’t overdramatize, dear,” Polgara advised. “It’s ostentatious.”
“You do it all the time,” he accused.
“Yes, dear, but I know how.”
It was perhaps noon when they rode up a long hill, crested it in the bright sunshine, and found themselves suddenly surrounded by mailed, red-tunicked Mallorean soldiers, who rose up out of ditches and shallow gullies with evil-looking javelins in their hands.
“You! Halt!” the officer in charge of the detachment of soldiers commanded brusquely. He was a short man, shorter even than Silk, though he strutted about as if he were ten feet tall.
“Of course, Captain,” Yarblek replied, reining in his horse.
“What do we do?” Garion hissed to Silk.
“Let Yarblek handle it,” Silk murmured. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“Where are you bound?” the officer asked when the rangy Nadrak had dismounted.
“Mal Dariya,” Yarblek answered, “or Mal Camat—wherever I can hire ships to get my goods to Yar Marak.”
The captain grunted as if trying to find something wrong with that. “What’s more to the point is where you come from.” His eyes were narrowed.
“Maga Renn.” Yarblek shrugged.
“Not Mal Zeth?” The little captain’s eyes grew even harder and more suspicious.
“I don’t do business in Mal Zeth very often, Captain. It costs too much—all those bribes and fees and permits, you know.”
“I assume that you can prove what you say?” The captain’s tone was belligerent.
“I suppose I could—if there’s a need for it.”
“There’s a need, Nadrak, because, unless you can prove that you haven’t come from Mal Zeth, I’m going to turn you back.” He sounded smug about that.
“Turn back? That’s impossible. I have to be in Boktor by midsummer.”
“That’s your problem, merchant.” The little soldier seemed rather pleased at having upset the larger man.
“There’s plague in Mal Zeth, and I’m here to make sure that it doesn’t spread.” He tapped himself importantly on the chest.
“Plague!” Yarblek’s eyes went wide, and his face actually paled. “Torak’s teeth! And I almost stopped there!” He suddenly snapped his fingers. “So that’s why all the villages hereabouts are barricaded.”
“Can you prove that you came from Maga Renn?” the captain insisted.
“Well—” Yarblek unbuckled a well-worn saddlebag hanging under his right stirrup and began to rummage around in it. “I’ve got a permit here issued by the Bureau of Commerce,” he said rather dubiously. “It authorizes me to move my goods from Maga Renn to Mal Dariya.
If I can’t find ships there, I’ll have to get another permit to go on to Mal Camat, I guess. Would that satisfy you?”
“Let’s see it.” The captain held out his hand, snapping his fingers impatiently.
Yarblek handed it over.
“It’s a little smeared,” the captain accused suspiciously.
“I spilled some beer on it in a tavern in Penn Daka.” Yarblek shrugged. “Weak, watery stuff it was. Take my advice, Captain. Don’t ever plan to do any serious drinking in Penn Daka. It’s a waste of time and money.”
“Is drinking all you Nadraks ever think about?”
“It’s the climate. There’s nothing else to do in Gar og Nadrak in the wintertime.”
“Have you got anything else?”
Yarblek pawed through his saddlebag some more. “Here’s a bill of sale from a carpet merchant on Yorba Street in Maga Renn—pockmarked fellow with bad teeth. Do you by any chance know him?”
“Why would I know a carpet merchant in Maga Renn? I’m an officer in the imperial army. I don’t associate with riffraff. Is the date on this accurate?”
“How should I know? We use a different calendar in Gar og Nadrak. It was about two weeks ago, if that’s any help.”
The captain thought it over, obviously trying very hard to find some excuse to exert his authority. Finally his expression became faintly disappointed. “All right,” he said grudgingly, handing back the documents. “Be on your way. But don’t make any side trips, and make sure that none of your people leave your caravan.”
“They’d better not leave—not if they want to get paid.
“Thank you, Captain.” Yarblek swung back up into his saddle.
The officer grunted and waved them on.
“Little people should never be given any kind of authority,” the Nadrak said sourly when they were out of earshot. “It lies too heavily on their brains.”
“Yarblek!” Silk objected.
“Present company excepted, of course.”
“Oh. That’s different, then.”
“Ye lie like ye were born to it, good Master Yarblek,” Feldegast the juggler said admiringly.
“I’ve been associating with a certain Drasnian for too long.”
“How did you come by the permit and the bill of sale?” Silk asked him.
Yarblek winked and tapped his forehead slyly. “Official types are always overwhelmed by official-looking documents—and the more petty the official, the more he’s impressed. I could have proved to that obnoxious little captain back there that we came from any place at all—Melcene, Aduma in the Mountains of Zamad, even Crol Tibu on the coast of Gandahar—except that all you can buy in Crol Tibu are elephants, and I don’t have any of those with me, so that might have made even him a little suspicious.”
Silk looked around with a broad grin. “Now you see why I went into partnership with him,” he said to them all.
“You seem well suited to each other,” Velvet agreed.
Belgarath was tugging at one ear. “I think we’ll leave you after dark tonight,” he said to Yarblek. “I don’t want some other officious soldier to stop us and count noses—or decide that we need a military escort.”