‘We’re planning a campaign, Eldrig, and those Tolnedran generals know just about all there is to know about strategy and tactics. Their advice could be useful.’

‘We’re not completely incompetent, Belgarath,’ he objected. ‘We’ve won every war we’ve ever been in so far, haven’t we?’

‘That’s been pure luck, Eldrig. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you Alorns have a habit of just making your wars up as you go along. Let’s do this one professionally - just for the sake of novelty, if nothing else.’

It took Pol and me a little while to persuade the Alorn Kings to go to Tol Honeth to seek the advice of the Tolnedran High Command, but they eventually agreed. Then my daughter and I left the Isle and flew on across Sendaria, over Ulgoland and on to the Algarian Stronghold. This time we didn’t really have any choice. We had to use the form of ducks.

I’ve referred to the Stronghold as a man-made mountain, and that comes fairly close. It looks like a walled city from the outside, but it’s not, since there aren’t any buildings inside. Such Algars as live there have constructed rooms and halls and corridors inside the walls themselves. The open space inside those walls is nothing more than an elaborate maze.

A tragedy, however, had occurred. It was one of those stupid accidents that crop up from time to time. Garel, heir to the Rivan throne, had gone out horseback riding, and his horse had stumbled, and Iron-grip’s heir had fallen and broke his neck when he hit the ground. Idiocy! What in the name of all seven Gods was he doing on a horse?

Fortunately, he’d already married an Algar girl, and she’d conceived and bore a son, Gelane. The line was still intact, although the little boy was only five years old. But that was all right. Everybody grows up - eventually.

I spoke with the boy and found, that like all the rest, he had uncommonly good sense. We’ve been lucky in that. If stupidity had cropped up in the Rivan line, we’d have been in a great deal of trouble.

‘Can’t I do something, grandfather?’ the earnest little boy asked me. ‘This is my responsibility, after all.’ That startled me.

‘What did you tell him, Pol?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘Everything, father,’ she replied calmly. ‘He’s entitled to know what this is all about.’

‘He doesn’t need that information, Pol! I thought we agreed to that.’

She shrugged. ‘I changed my mind. He is the Rivan King, father. If all our elaborate plans fall apart, he might have to take up the sword.’

‘He’s only a child, Pol. He couldn’t even lift that sword.’

‘We’ve got time, father. Torak hasn’t even begun the siege yet.’

‘The Mrin says that Brand’s going to confront Torak. Gelane’s not supposed to get involved.’

‘The Mrin’s very obscure, father, and sometimes things change. I want to be ready for any eventuality.’

‘I really think I could handle it, grandfather,’ Gelane assured me. ‘I’ve got an Algar friend who’s been teaching me how to use a sword.’

I sighed, and then I buried my face in my hands for a while.

There wasn’t really very much to do at the Stronghold except to wait for Torak. I suppose Pol and I could have left at any time, but I wanted to be absolutely certain that One-eye didn’t change direction on me again. The invasion of Drasnia had caught me completely off guard, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I wanted to make sure that he was completely committed before I went off and left him to his own devices. I also wanted to watch the defenders crush the first few assaults, just to make sure they knew what they were doing.

Riders from the outlying clans came by frequently during the next two weeks to keep us posted. Torak was still advancing, and he showed no signs of veering off.

Then, early one morning when dawn was turning the rain silver, Polgara’s voice woke me from my fitful sleep. ‘I think you’d better come up here, father.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I can’t understand you, father. Just come up to the parapet on top of the north wall, there’s something you’d better have a look at.’

I grumbled a bit, but I climbed out of bed and pulled on my clothes. What was she up to now? The fact that she couldn’t understand me was a clear sign that she’d changed form. I went out into the torchlit corridor outside my room and on up those interminable staircases that lead to the top of the Stronghold.

There was a snowy owl perched on the rain-swept battlements.

‘I’ve asked you not to do that, Pol,’ I reminded her.

She blurred and shimmered back into her own form. ‘I’m sorry, father,’ she said. ‘I’m not doing it to upset you. I’m following instructions. I think you’d better look at that,’ she told me, gesturing toward the north.

I looked out over the battlements. The clouds overhead were dirty-grey and dawn-stained. The rain had slackened to some degree, so it wasn’t that solid curtain I’d been staring at for the past several weeks. At first I couldn’t really see anything, but then a movement caught my eye about a mile out on that half-obscured plain. Then, as I looked harder, a mass of humanity seemed to grow out of the mist, a huge, faceless mass that stretched from horizon to soggy horizon.

Kal Torak had reached the Stronghold.

Chapter 38

‘Are you sure Torak’s with them?’ I asked, still staring out at that slow-moving army.

‘Yes, father. I went out and looked. That iron pavillion of his is right in the center of the crowd.’

‘You did what? Polgara, that’s Torak out there! Now he knows you’re here!’

‘Don’t get excited, old man. I was told to do it. Torak had no way of even knowing I was there. He’s inside his pavilion, and Zedar’s with him.’

‘How long has this been going on?’

‘Since he left Mallorea, I’d imagine. Let’s go alert the Algars, and then I think we’ll have time for some breakfast. I’ve been up all night, and I’m positively ravenous.’

It was mid-morning by the time the Angaraks had completed their encirclement of the Stronghold, and noon before they tried their first tentative assault. The Algars and the Drasnian pikemen stayed out of sight, and I think that unnerved Kal Torak’s generals just a bit. They’d hauled their siege-engines into place, and they started out by trying to loft boulders into the city. That didn’t work out very well, because the walls were too high. I could see their engineers feverishly trying to adjust the catapults to change their trajectory.

Then, more I think to get some sort of response from the defenders rather than out of any hope of success, they mounted an attack on the front gate. They rolled up battering-rams, but that wasn’t really necessary. The gate wasn’t locked. The first troops through the gate were Thulls. Thulls always seem to get the dirty jobs in Angarak society.

I’m not even sure that the Thulls realized what they’d encountered when they burst through the gate. As I’ve said before, the Stronghold isn’t a city in the usual sense. Those enormous walls don’t enclose houses and public buildings, they enclose an elaborate maze of narrow, high-walled corridors without a roof in sight. The Thulls rushed in, and all they found was geometry. They found corridors laid out in straight lines, in curved lines, in lines so complex that they turned back on themselves and almost seemed to dissolve off into unimaginable dimensions.

The defenders allowed the Thulls to mill around inside that maze for about an hour, and then they rose from their places of concealment atop those twenty-foot-high interior walls and obliterated the intruders.

And the Mallorean generals and the kings of the western Angarak nations still hadn’t seen a single defender. They didn’t see the horde of Thullish soldiers again either. They’d sent several thousand men through the gate, and not one of them ever came back out again - at least not through the gate.

During the following night, however, they did start seeing the men they’d ordered inside. The Algar catapultists atop the walls began lofting dead Thulls into the middle of the Angarak encampment. It’s very hard to get any sleep when it’s raining Thulls.

The next day, the second siege got underway. There were three Algar clans inside the Stronghold. The rest of them were outside. Kal Torak had encircled the Stronghold, and then the free-roving Algar horsemen encircled him. They didn’t take up positions or dig in fortifications the way besiegers usually do, because cavalry doesn’t work that way. The Algars kept moving, and Kal Torak’s generals and subordinate kings never knew where or when they’d strike next. It was almost as dangerous for them outside the walls as it was inside.

After a few days, I concluded that Cho-Ram’s tactics were working out fine, and Pol and I said good bye to Gelane, his mother, and the Algar clan-chiefs defending the fortress. And then we flew off to the west through the rainy, wind-swept gloom that seemed to have settled in perpetually. We had other things to attend to.

With Kal Torak effectively pinned down in Algaria, we had some time to expand and polish our plans. We moved our discussions from Riva to Tol Honeth so that we could take advantage of the expertise of the Imperial War College and the Tolnedran General Staff. I found working with professional soldiers to be something of a novelty. Despite their fearsome reputation, Alorns are at best only gifted amateurs, largely because their rank is hereditary. A man who’s born a general doesn’t have nearly the grasp of things a man who’s worked his way up through the ranks has. Tolnedran officers work out contingency plans to deal with surprises. The customary Alorn approach to a battlefield emergency is to simply go berserk and kill everything in sight - including trees and bushes.