“Everything seems to be going according to plan, then,” the queen said, resuming her seat at the polished table near the window.
“There’s a bit of trouble in Arendia,” Javelin noted. “The usual ambushes and bickerings—nothing really serious. Queen Layla’s got the Tolnedran, Brador, so completely off balance that he might as well not even be in Sendaria.” He scratched at his long, pointed jaw. “There’s peculiar information coming out of Sthiss Tor. The Murgos are trying to negotiate something, but their emissaries keep dying. We’ll try to get somebody closer to Sadi to find out exactly what’s going on. Let’s see—what else? Oh, the Honeths have finally united behind one candidate—a pompous, arrogant jackass who’s offended just about everybody in Tol Honeth. They’ll try to buy the crown for him, but he’d be hopelessly incompetent as emperor. Even with all their money, it’s going to be difficult for them to put him on the throne. I guess that’s about all, your Highness.”
“I’ve had a letter from Islena in Val Alorn,” Queen Porenn told him.
“Yes, your Highness,” Javelin replied urbanely, “I know.”
“Javelin, have you been reading my mail again?” she demanded with a sudden flash of irritation.
“Just trying to stay current with what’s going on in the world, Porenn.”
“I’ve told you to stop that.”
“You didn’t really expect me to do it, did you?” He seemed actually surprised.
She laughed. “You’re impossible.”
“Of course I am. I’m supposed to be.”
“Can we get any help to Islena?”
“I’ll put some people on it,” he assured her. “We can probably work through Merel, the wife of the Earl of Trellheim. She’s starting to show some signs of maturity and she’s close to Islena.”
“I think we’d better have a close look at our own intelligence service, too,” Porenn suggested. “Let’s pin down everyone who might have any connections with the Bear-cult. The time might come when we’ll have to take steps.”
Javelin nodded his agreement.
There was a light tapping at the door.
“Yes?” Porenn answered.
The door opened and a servant thrust his head into the room. “Excuse me, your Highness,” he said, “but there’s a Nadrak merchant here—a man named Yarblek. He says he wants to discuss the salmon run.” The servant looked perplexed.
Queen Porenn straightened in her chair. “Send him in,” she ordered, “at once.”
9
The speeches were over. The orations that had caused Princess Ce’Nedra such agony had done their work, and she found herself less and less in the center of things. At first the days opened before her full of glorious freedom. The dreadful anxiety that had filled her at the prospect of addressing vast crowds of men two or three times a day was gone now. Her nervous exhaustion disappeared, and she no longer awoke in the middle of the night trembling and terrified. For almost an entire week she reveled in it, luxuriated in it. Then, of course, she became dreadfully bored.
The army she had gathered in Arendia and northern Tolnedra moved like a great sea in the foothills of Ulgoland. The Mimbrate knights, their armor glittering in the bright sunlight and their long, streaming, many-colored pennons snapping in the breeze, moved at the forefront of the host, and behind them, spreading out across the rolling green hills, marched the solid mass of Ce’Nedra’s infantry, Sendars, Asturians, Rivans, and a few Chereks. And there, solidly in the center, forming the very core, marched the gleaming ranks of the legions of Imperial Tolnedra, their crimson standards aloft and the white plumes on their helmets waving in time to their measured steps. It was very stirring for the first few days to ride at the head of the enormous force, moving at her command toward the east, but the novelty of it all soon wore thin.
Princess Ce’Nedra’s gradual drift away from the center of command was largely her own fault. The decisions now had to do more often than not with logistics—tedious little details concerning bivouac areas and field-kitchens—and Ce’Nedra found discussions of such matters tiresome. Those details, however, dictated the snail’s pace of her army.
Quite suddenly, to everyone’s astonishment, King Fulrach of Sendaria became the absolute commander of the host. It was he who decided how far they would march each day, when they would rest and where they would set up each night’s encampment. His authority derived directly from the fact that the supply wagons were his. Quite early during the march down through northern Arendia, the dumpy-looking Sendarian monarch had taken one look at the rather sketchy plans the Alorn kings had drawn up for feeding the troops, had shaken his head in disapproval, and then had taken charge of that aspect of the campaign himself. Sendaria was a land of farms, and her storehouses bulged. Moreover, at certain seasons, every road and lane in Sendaria crawled with wagons. With an almost casual efficiency, King Fulrach issued a few orders, and soon whole caravans of heavily laden wagons moved down through Arendia to Tolnedra and then turned eastward to follow the army. The pace of the army was dictated by those creaking supply wagons.
They were only a few days into the Ulgo foothills when the full weight of King Fulrach’s authority became clear.
“Fulrach,” King Rhodar of Drasnia objected when the King of the Sendars called a halt for yet another rest period, “if we don’t move any faster than this, it will take us all summer to get to the eastern escarpment.”
“You’re exaggerating, Rhodar,” King Fulrach replied mildly. “We’re making pretty good time. The supply wagons are heavy, and the wagon horses have to be rested every hour.”
“This is impossible,” Rhodar declared. “I’m going to pick up the per,”
“That’s up to you, of course.” The brown-bearded Sendar shrugged, coolly eyeing Rhodar’s vast paunch. “But if you exhaust my wagon horses today, you won’t eat tomorrow.”
And that ended that.
The going in the steep passes of Ulgoland was even slower. Ce’Nedra entered that land of thick forests and rocky crags with apprehension. She vividly remembered the flight with Grul the Eldrak and the attacks of the Algroths and the Hrulgin that had so terrified her that previous winter. There were few meetings with the monsters that lurked in the Ulgo mountains, however. The army was so large that even the fiercest creatures avoided it. Mandorallen, the Baron of Vo Mandor, rather regretfully reported only brief sightings.
“Mayhap if I were to ride a day’s march in advance of our main force, I might find opportunity to engage some of the more frolicsome beasts,” he mused aloud one evening, staring thoughtfully into the fire.
“You never get enough, do you?” Barak asked him pointedly.
“Never mind, Mandorallen,” Polgara told the great knight. “The creatures aren’t hurting us, and the Gorim of Ulgo would be happier if we didn’t bother them.”
Mandorallen sighed.
“Is he always like that?” King Anheg asked Barak curiously.
“You have absolutely no idea,” Barak replied.
The slow march through Ulgoland, regardless of how much it chafed Rhodar, Brand, and Anheg, did, however, conserve the strength of the army, and they came down onto the plains of Algaria in surprisingly good shape.
“We’ll go on to the Algarian Stronghold,” King Rhodar decided as the army poured down out of the last pass and fanned out across the rolling grasslands. “We need to regroup a bit, and I don’t see any point in moving to the base of the escarpment until the engineers are ready for us. Besides, I’d prefer not to announce the size of our army to any Thull who happens to glance down from the top of the cliff.”
And so, in easy stages, the army marched across Algaria, trampling a mile-wide swath through the tall grass. Vast herds of cattle paused briefly in their grazing to watch with mild-eyed astonishment as the horde marched by, then returned to their feeding under the protective watch of mounted Algar clansmen.