The Belgariad, Vol. 2 (19 page)

"Somebody has to be."

"Don't you Sendars have any sense of adventure? Don't you ever do something without planning it all out in advance?"

"Not if we can help it," the King of Sendaria replied mildly.

Near the center of the supply-dump a number of large pavilions had been erected for the use of the leaders of the army and their supporting staff. About midafternoon, after she had bathed and changed clothes, Princess Ce'Nedra went over to the main tent to see what was happening.

"They're anchored about a mile downriver," Barak was reporting to his cousin. "They've been here for about four days now. Greldik's more or less in charge."

"Greldik?" Anheg looked surprised. "He doesn't have any official position."

"He knows the river." Barak shrugged. "Over the years he's sailed just about any place where there's water and a chance to make some profit. He tells me that the sailors have been drinking pretty steadily since they anchored. They know what's coming."

Anheg chuckled. "We'd better not disappoint them, then. Rhodar, how much longer will it be before your engineers are ready to start lifting my ships ap the escarpment?"

"A week or so," King Rhodar replied, looking up from his midafternoon snack.

"It will be close enough," Anheg concluded. He turned back to Barak. "Tell Greldik that we'll start the portage tomorrow morning - before the sailors have time to sober up."

Ce'Nedra had not fully understood the meaning of the word "portage" until she arrived the following morning at the riverbank to find the sweating Chereks hauling their ships out of the water and manhandling them along by main strength on wooden rollers. She was appalled at the amount of effort required to move a ship even a few inches.

She was not alone in that. Durnik the smith took one shocked look at the procedure and immediately went looking for King Anheg. "Excuse me, your Honor," he said respectfully, "but isn't this bad for the boats -as well as the men?"

"Ships," Anheg corrected. "They're called ships. A boat is something else."

"Whatever you call them - won't banging them along over those logs spring their seams?"

Anheg shrugged. "They all leak quite a bit anyway," he replied. "And it's always been done this way."

Durnik quickly saw the futility of trying to talk to the King of Cherek. He went instead to Barak, who was
rather glumly considering the huge ship his crew had rowed upriver to meet him. "She looks very impressive when she's afloat," the big red-bearded man was saying to his friend, Captain Greldik, "but I think she'll be even more impressive when we have to pick her up and carry her."

"You're the one who wanted the biggest warship afloat," Greldik reminded him with a broad smirk. "You'll have to buy enough ale to float that whale of yours before your crew's drunk enough to try to portage her -

not to mention the fact that it's customary for a captain to join in when the time comes to portage."

"Stupid custom," Barak growled sourly.

"I'd say that you're in for a bad week, Barak." Greldik's grin grew broader.

Durnik took the two seamen aside and began talking earnestly with them, drawing diagrams on the sandy riverbank with a stick. The more he talked, the more interested they became.

What emerged from their discussions a day later were a pair of lowslung cradles with a dozen wheels on each side. As the rest of the Chereks jeered, the two ships were carefully slid out of the water onto the cradles and firmly lashed in place. The jeering faded noticeably, however, when the crews of the two ships began trundling their craft across the plain. Hettar, who happened to ride by, watched for a few moments with a puzzled frown. "Why are you pulling them by hand," he asked, "when you're in the middle of the largest herd of horses in the world?"

Barak's eyes went very wide, and then an almost reverent grin dawned on his face.

The jeers that had risen as Barak's and Greldik's ships had been maneuvered onto their wheeled carriages turned rather quickly into angry mutterings as the carnages, pulled by teams of Algar horses, rolled effortlessly toward the escarpment past men straining with every ounce of strength to move their ships a few inches at a time. To leave it all to artistry, Barak and Greldik ordered their men to lounge indolently on the decks of their ships, drinking ale and playing dice.

King Anheg stared very hard at his impudently grinning cousin as the big ship rolled past. His expression was profoundly offended. "That's going too far!" he exploded, jerking off his dented crown and throwing it down on the ground.

King Rhodar put on a perfectly straight face. "I'd be the first to admit that it's probably not nearly as good as moving them by hand, Anheg. I'm sure there are some rather profound philosophical reasons for all that sweating and grunting and cursing, but it is faster, wouldn't you say? And we really ought to move right along with this."

"It's unnatural," Anheg growled, still glaring at the two ships, which were already several hundred yards away.

Rhodar shrugged. "Anything's unnatural the first time you try it."

"I'll think about it," Anheg said darkly.

"I wouldn't think for too long," Rhodar suggested. "Your popularity as a monarch is going to go downhill with every mile - and Barak's the sort of man who'll parade that contraption of his back and forth in front of your sailors every step of the way to the escarpment."

"He would do that, wouldn't he?"

"I think you can count on it."

King Anheg sighed bitterly. "Go fetch that unwholesomely clever Sendarian blacksmith," he sourly instructed one of his men. "Let's get this over with."
Later that day the leaders of the army gathered again in the main tent for a strategy meeting. "Our biggest problem now is to conceal the size of our forces," King Rhodar told them all. "Instead of marching everybody to the escarpment all at once and then milling around at the base of the cliff, it might be better to move the troops in small contingents and have them go directly up to the forts on top as soon as they arrive."

"Will such a piecemeal approach not unduly delay our progress?" King Korodullin asked.

"Not all that much," Rhodar replied. "We'll move your knights and Cho-Hag's clansmen up first so you can start burning cities and crops. That will give the Thulls something to think about beside how many infantry regiments we're bringing up. We don't want them to start counting noses."

"Couldn't we build false campfires and so on to make it appear that we have more men?" Lelldorin suggested brightly.

"The whole idea is to make our army appear smaller, not bigger," Brand explained gently in his deep voice.

"We don't want to alarm Taur Urgas or 'Zakath sufficiently to make them commit their forces. It will be an easy campaign if all we have to deal with are King Gethell's Thulls. If the Murgos and the Malloreans intervene, we'll be in for a serious fight."

"And that's the one thing we definitely want to avoid," King Rhodar added.

"Oh," Lelldorin said, a bit abashed, "I didn't think of that." A slow flush rose in his cheeks.

"Lelldorin," Ce'Nedra said, hoping to help him cover his embarrassment, "I think I'd like to go out and visit with the troops for a bit. Would you accompany me?"

"Of course, your Majesty," the young Asturian agreed, quickly rising to his feet.

"That's not a bad idea," Rhodar agreed. "Encourage them a bit, Ce'Nedra. They've walked a long way, and their spirits may be sagging."

Lelldorin's cousin Torasin, dressed in his customary black doublet and hose, also rose to his feet. "I'll go along, if I may," he said. He grinned rather impudently at King Korodullin. "Asturians are good plotters, but rather poor strategists, so I probably wouldn't be able to add much to the discussions."

The King of Arendia smiled at the young man's remark. "Thou art pert, young Torasin, but methinks thou art not so fervent an enemy of the crown of Arendia as thou dost pretend."

Torasin bowed extravagantly, still grinning. Once they were outside the tent, he turned to Lelldorin. "I could almost learn to like that man - if it weren't for all those thees and thous," he declared.

"It's not so bad - once you get used to it," Lelldorin replied. Torasin laughed. "If I had someone as pretty as Lady Ariana for a friend, she could thee me and thou me all she wanted," he said. He looked archly at Ce'Nedra. "Which troops did you wish to encourage, your Majesty?" he bantered.

"Let's visit your Asturian countrymen," she decided. "I don't think I'd care to take you two into the Mimbrate camp - unless your swords had been taken away from you and your mouths had been bricked up."

"Don't you trust us?" Lelldorin asked.

"I know you," she replied with a little toss of her head. "Where are the Asturians encamped?"

"That way," Torasin answered, pointing toward the south end of the supply dump.

Smells of cooking were carried by the breeze from the Sendarian field kitchens, and those smells reminded the princess of something. Instead of randomly circulating among the Asturian tents, she found herself quite
deliberately searching for some specific people.

She found Lammer and Detton, the two serfs who had joined her army on the outskirts of Vo Wacune, finishing their afternoon meal in front of a patched tent. They both looked better fed than they had when she had first seen them, and they were no longer dressed in rags. When they saw her approaching, they scrambled awkwardly to their feet.

"Well, my friends," she asked, trying to put them at ease, "how do you find army life?"

"We don't have anything to complain about, your Ladyship," Detton replied respectfully.

"Except for all the walking," Lammer added. "I hadn't realized that the world was this big."

"They gave us boots," Detton told her, holding up one foot so that she could see his boot. "They were a bit stiff at first, but the blisters have all healed now."

"Are you getting enough to eat?" Ce'Nedra asked them.

"Plenty," Lammer said. "The Sendars even cook it for us. Did you know that there aren't any serfs in the kingdom of the Sendars, my Lady? Isn't that astonishing? It gives a man something to think about."

"It does indeed," Detton agreed. "They grow all that food, and everybody always has plenty to eat and clothes to wear and a house to sleep in, and there's not a single serf in the whole kingdom."

"I see that they've given you equipment, too," the princess said, noting that the two now wore conical leather helmets and stiff leather vests.

Lammer nodded and pulled off his helmet. "It's got steel plates in it to keep a man from getting his brains knocked out," he told her. "They lined us all up as soon as we got here and gave every man a helmet and these hard leather tunics."

"They gave each of us a spear and a dagger, too," Detton said.

"Have they showed you how to use them?" Ce'Nedra asked.

"Not yet, your Ladyship," Detton replied. "We've been concentrating on learning how to shoot arrows."

Ce'Nedra turned to her two companions. "Could you see that somebody takes care of that?" she said. "I want to e sure that everybody knows how to defend himself, at least."

"We'll see to it, your Majesty," Lelldorin answered.

Not far away, a young serf was seated cross-legged in front of another tent. He lifted a handmade flute to his lips and began to play. Ce'Nedra had heard some of the finest musicians in the world performing at the palace in Tol Honeth, but the serf boy's flute caught at her heart and brought tears to her eyes. His melody soared toward the azure sky like an unfettered lark.

"How exquisite," she exclaimed.

Lammer nodded. "I don't know much about music," he said, "but the boy seems to play well. It's a shame he's not right in the head."

Ce'Nedra looked at him sharply. "What do you mean?"

"He comes from a village in the southern part of the forest of Arendia. I'm told it's a very poor village and that the lord of the region is very harsh with his serfs. The boy's an orphan, and he was put to watching the cows when he was young. One time one of the cows strayed, and the boy was beaten half to death. He can't
talk any more."

"Do you know his name?"

"Nobody seems to know it," Detton replied. "We take turns looking out for him - making sure he's fed and has a place to sleep. There's not much else you can do for him."

A small sound came from Lelldorin, and Ce'Nedra was startled to see tears streaming openly down the earnest young man's face.

The boy continued his playing, his melody heartbreakingly true, and his eyes sought out Ce'Nedra's and met them with a kind of grave recognition.

They did not stay much longer. The princess knew that her rank and position made the two serfs uncomfortable. She had made sure that they were all right and that her promise to them was being kept, and that was all that really mattered.

As Ce'Nedra, Lelldorin, and Torasin walked toward the camp of the Sendars, they suddenly heard the sound of squabbling on the other side of a large tent.

"I'll pile it any place I want to," one man was saying belligerently.

"You're blocking the street," another man replied.

"Street?" the first snorted. "What are you talking about? This isn't a town. There aren't any streets."

"Friend," the second man explained with exaggerated patience, "we have to bring the wagons through here to get to the main supply dump. Now please move your equipment so I can get through. I still have a lot to do today."

"I'm not going to take orders from a Sendarian teamster who's found an easy way to avoid fighting. I'm a soldier."

"Really?" the Sendar replied dryly. "How much fighting have you seen?"

"I'll fight when the time comes."

"It may come quicker than you'd expected if you don't get your gear out of my way. If I have to get down off this wagon to move it myself, it's likely to make me irritable."

"I'm all weak with fright," the soldier retorted sarcastically.

"Are you going to move it?"

"No."

"I tried to warn you, friend," the teamster said in a resigned tone.

"If you touch my gear, I'll break your head."