"Oh, I understand, Garion. I just don't think that you accomplished anything, that's all. You killed—how many was it?"
"Eight."
"That many? All right—eight Malloreans. What did you prove by it?"
"I wasn't really out to prove anything, Grandfather. I just wanted to make sure that they never did it again. I can't even be absolutely certain that they were the men who killed those Murgo farmers. They did kill some people someplace, though, and people who do that sort of thing need to be stopped."
"You did that, all right. Does it make you feel any better?"
"No. I suppose not. I wasn't even angry when I killed them. It was just something that had to be done, so I did it. Now it's over, and I'd just as soon forget about it."
Belgarath gave him a long, steady look. "All right," he said finally. "As long as you keep that firmly in mind, I guess you haven't done yourself any permanent injury. Let's go back to the fire. It's chilly out here in the woods."
Garion slept badly that night, and Ce'Nedra, huddled almost fearfully in his arms, stirred restlessly and often whimpered in her sleep.
The next morning, Belgarath rose and looked about with a dark scowl. "This is absurd," he burst out quite suddenly. "Where is the sun?"
"Behind the clouds and fog, father," Polgara replied as she calmly brushed her long, dark hair.
"I know that, Pol," he retorted testily, "but I need to see it—even if only briefly—to get our direction. We could wind up wandering around in circles."
Toth, who had been building up the fire, looked over at the old man, his face impassive as always. He raised one hand and pointed in a direction somewhat at an oblique from that which they had been following the previous evening.
Belgarath frowned. "Are you absolutely sure?" he asked the giant.
Toth nodded.
"Have you been through these woods before?"
Again the mute nodded, then firmly pointed once more in the same direction.
"And if we go that way, we're going to come out on the south coast in the vicinity of the Isle of Verkat?"
Toth nodded again and went back to tending the fire.
"Cyradis said that he was coming along to aid us in the search, Grandfather," Garion reminded him.
"All right. Since he knows the way, we'll let him lead us through this forest. I'm tired of guessing."
They had gone perhaps two leagues that cloudy morning, with Toth confidently leading them along a scarcely perceptible track, when Polgara quite suddenly reined in her horse with a warning cry. "Look out!"
An arrow sizzled through the foggy air directly at Toth, but the huge man swept it aside with his staff.
Then a gang of rough-looking men, some Murgos and some of indeterminate race, came rushing out of the woods, brandishing a variety of weapons.
Without a moment's hesitation, Silk rolled out of his saddle, his hands diving under his slaver's robe for his daggers. As the bawling ruffians charged forward, he leaped to meet them, his heavy daggers extended in front of him like a pair of spears.
Even as Garion jumped to the ground, he saw Toth already advancing, his huge staff whirling as he bore down on the attackers, and Durnik, holding his axe in both hands, circling to the other side.
Garion swept Iron-grip's sword from its scabbard and ran forward, swinging the flaming blade in great arcs. One of the ruffians launched himself into the air, twisting as he did so in a clumsy imitation of a maneuver Garion had seen Silk perform so many times in the past. This time, however, the technique failed. Instead of driving his heels into Garion's face or chest, the agile fellow encountered the point of the burning sword, and his momentum quite smoothly skewered him on the blade.
Silk ripped open an attacker with one of his daggers, spun, and drove his other knife directly into the forehead of another.
Toth and Durnik, moving in from opposite sides, drove several of the assailants into a tight knot, and methodically began to brain them one after another as they struggled to disentangle themselves from each other.
"Garion!" Ce'Nedra cried, and he whirled to see a burly, unshaven man pull the struggling little queen from her saddle with one hand, even as he raised the knife he held in the other. Then he dropped the knife, and both his hands flew up to grasp the slim, silken cord that had suddenly been looped about his neck from the rear. Calmly, the golden-haired Velvet, her knee pushed firmly against the wildly threshing man's back, pulled her cord tighter and tighter. Ce'Nedra watched in horror as her would-be killer was efficiently strangled before her eyes.
Garion grimly turned and began to chop his way through the now-disconcerted attackers. The air around him was suddenly filled with shrieks, groans, and chunks of clothing and flesh. The ragged-looking men he faced flinched back as his huge sword laid a broad windrow of quivering dead in his wake. Then they broke and ran.
"Cowards!" a black-robed man screamed after the fleeing villains. He held a bow in his hand and he raised it, pointing his arrow directly at Garion. Then he suddenly doubled over sharply, driving his arrow into the ground before him as one of Silk's daggers flickered end over end to sink solidly into his stomach.
"Is anybody hurt?" Garion demanded, spinning around quickly, his dripping sword still in his hand.
"They are." Silk laughed gaily, looking around with some satisfaction at the carnage in the forest clearing.
"Please stop!" Ce'Nedra cried to Velvet in an anguished voice.
"What?" the blond girl asked absently, still leaning back against the silken cord drawn tightly about the neck of the now-limp man she had just strangled. "Oh, I'm sorry, Ce'Nedra," she apologized. "My attention wandered a bit, I guess." She released the cord, and the black-faced dead man toppled to the ground at her feet.
"Nice job," Silk congratulated her.
"Fairly routine." She shrugged, carefully coiling up her garrote.
"You seem to be taking it quite calmly."
"There's no particular reason to get excited, Kheldar. It's part of what we were trained to do, after all."
He looked as if he were about to reply, but her matter-of-fact tone obviously baffled him.
"Yes?" she asked.
"Nothing."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"Stop that!" Durnik said in disgust to Sadi, who was moving about the clearing casually sticking his small, poisoned dagger into each of the bodies littering the ground."Just making sure, Goodman," Sadi replied coolly. "It's not prudent to leave an enemy behind you who might be feigning death." He moved over to the black-robed man whom Silk had felled. "What's this?" he said with some surprise. "This one's still alive." He reached down to push the dying man's hood aside to look at his face, then pulled back his hand with a sharp intake of his breath. "You'd better have a look at this one, Belgarath," he said.