That worried him a little bit, and it worried Ran Borune even more. The shrewd little emperor thought about it for a few moments. ‘How about a compromise here?’ he asked finally.

‘I’m willing to listen, Ran Borune,’ Rhodar said.

‘Why don’t we send half the legions to Arendia and leave the other half where they are?’

‘Will that be enough, Belgarath?’ Rhodar asked.

‘It’ll be touch and go,’ I replied dubiously.

‘Is that your Majesty’s decision?’ Cerran asked his emperor. ‘It covers both borders, but …’ He left it in the air.

‘I don’t see that we’ve got much choice, Cerran. We’re going to have to protect ourselves on both sides.’

‘I hate two-front wars,’ Cerran muttered. He scowled at the ceiling for a while. ‘Numerical superiority’s largely a matter of appearances,’ he mused. ‘Less than half the troops are actually engaged, in most cases. The rest are held in reserve - usually where the opposing general can see them.’

‘That’s the way it normally works, yes,’ Rhodar agreed.

‘I do have some additional forces available,’ Cerran told us. ‘They aren’t very well trained, they aren’t in good condition, and I wouldn’t want to venture any guarantees about how well they can fight, but they’ll look impressive to Kal Torak.’

‘Where did you come up with this phantom army of yours, Cerran?’ Ran Borune asked him.

‘There are eight legions in the imperial garrison right here in Tol Honeth, your Majesty. They’re fat and lazy, and they’re mostly Honethites. No man’s ever come up with a way to make real soldiers out of Honeths, but at least they’ll swell our ranks at Vo Mimbre.’

‘It’s a start,’ Rhodar conceded.

‘I think I can go a little further,’ Cerran added. ‘There are twelve legion training camps here in the vicinity of Tol Honeth, and seven more up near Tol Vordue. Those recruits probably can’t even march in a straight line yet, but they have got uniforms. That’d give us the appearance of twenty-seven additional legions to beef up our reserves. If we pull half of the regular legions off the southern border and reinforce them with these pseudo soldiers, Kal Torak’s going to look out and see something in excess of seventy-five legions - and King Eldrig’s berserkers - on his right flank. I think that’ll get his attention.’

‘General Cerran, you’re a genius!’ Ran Borune enthused.

‘You know, Belgarath,’ Rhodar said to me, ‘it might just work at that. Kal Torak’s probably crazy, but Ad Rak Cthoros of Cthol Murgos isn’t, and neither’s Yar Lek Thun of the Nadraks. They’re not going to let their armies be exterminated as long as there’s a Mallorean presence on this continent. They might bow down to Kal Torak, but they aren’t stupid enough to trust him. If it starts to look as if they’re seriously outnumbered, I think they’ll try to defect - or escape. I’ll talk with Cho-Ram about it. If the Murgos and Nadraks start getting homesick, I don’t think we should get in their way when they start back east.’

‘What about the Thulls?’ Cerran asked him.

‘The Thulls couldn’t find their way home without guide-dogs, General,’ Rhodar replied, laughing. ‘Thulls have what you might call a very limited sense of direction. Thulls have a very limited grasp of just about anything. It takes the average Thull a half a day just to tie his shoes.’

‘You gentlemen do realize that you’re basing the fate of the world on an elaborate trick, don’t you?’ Polgara asked us.

‘It’s a gamble, Lady Polgara,’ Rhodar admitted gaily, ‘but gambling’s a lot of fun sometimes, and the higher the stakes, the more exciting it is.’

She sighed and rolled her eyes upward, but she didn’t say anything.

‘It’s about the best we can do, Belgarath,’ Ran Borune apologized. ‘The legions are all spread out along the River of the Woods. General Cerran can get the ones closest to the coast down to the mouth of the River of the Woods and the Cherek fleet in fairly short order. Those that are further east would take too long to reach the coast to be of any use at Vo Mimbre anyway.’

‘I’ll take personal command of our forces in Arendia,’ Cerran added. ‘I might be able to persuade the Honeths to earn their pay for a change.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘if it’s the best we can do, it’ll have to be enough.’ I’m sure I sounded a little dubious, but I was actually quite pleased. Cerran’s phantom army might very well be enough to persuade Kal Torak to accept Brand’s challenge when the time came.

Torak wasn’t moving very fast. The weather still hadn’t really returned to normal, and his army was slogging through foot-deep mud. He also stopped frequently to crush every fortified house, every castle, and every serfs’ village he came across. The prisoners he took were turned over to the Grolims, of course. There were other things slowing him down as well - little things like the Algars, the Drasnians, the Ulgos, and the Asturian bowmen. The upper reaches of the River Arend are heavily forested, so there were lots of opportunities for ambushes. I’d had some doubts about the enthusiasm of the Asturians, to be honest with you. Kal Torak was invading Mimbre, after all, but after Eldallan’s bowmen had seen a few Angarak atrocities, their archery improved to the point that there was no place in the horde that was truly safe from Asturian arrows, and Kal Torak of Mallorea took horrid casualties as he marched west toward Vo Mimbre.

Beldin had flown north from the Desert of Araga, and he was with King Eldrig at the mouth of the River of the Woods. The Tolnedran legions were drifting in, but it didn’t seem to me that they were moving very fast. I didn’t make an issue of that with General Cerran, though. I needed him, so I was careful not to be offensive.

Eldrig was in the south with his fleet when the twins arrived in Tol Honeth with some additional clues they’d dredged out of the Mrin, but the rest of us still gathered in the Cherek embassy. If there was anyplace in Tol Honeth that was secure from the prying eyes and ears of Ran Borune’s spies, it was the Cherek embassy, and we were going to be talking about things that were none of Ran Borune’s business. I rather like the Cherek embassy in Tol Honeth anyway. It’s a homey, Alorn sort of place that’s a welcome relief from marble-encased Tolnedran stuffiness. The chairs are rough-hewn and covered with fur, and the fireplaces are always going, even in the summertime. Chereks are convinced that they discovered fire, so blazing fireplaces are a sort of religious observance for them.

Once we’d gathered in a fairly standard Alorn council chamber and the ambassador had sent his bully-boys through the building to weed out any spies, we got down to business. Beltira uncased one of the scrolls of the Mrin and read to us from it. ‘“Behold!”’ he read. ‘“It shall come to pass that the Dragon God shall be engaged before the golden city for three days, and then the Child of Light shall issue his challenge. And on the third day shall all be decided by the EVENT.”’

‘At least it won’t be a protracted siege,’ Cho-Ram noted.

‘I’d been sort of hoping that it might be,’ I said. I went to the map and measured off some distances. ‘I think we’d better stop harassing Torak’s rear and pull those troops back a bit. If we keep crowding him, he might not stop to regroup. He’ll just rush out onto that plain around Vo Mimbre and start the assault on the city. Whether we like it or not, that’ll be the first day of that three-day battle the Mrin talks about, and I want Eldrig and Cerran to be a lot closer before things get that far along.’

‘He might just go ahead and attack anyway, Belgarath,’ Rhodar pointed out. ‘He’s the one with the calendar, so he knows when he has to be there. We don’t. If he’s running behind, he won’t stop.’

‘Logic suggests that he gave himself plenty of time, Rhodar,’ Pol disagreed. ‘A lot of things have to happen before the EVENT, and Torak knows that - probably even better than we do. Certain things are going to have to be in place before Brand can issue his challenge, and if Torak does anything to disrupt any of that, we’ll have an entirely different EVENT - one that’s probably not even mentioned in the Mrin or the Ashabine Oracles. At that point, nobody’ll know what’s going to happen.’

‘We could just go ahead and throw everything we’ve got in his path,’ Rhodar suggested. ‘That should delay him a bit.’

‘But that’d put the battle someplace other than at Vo Mimbre,’ Brand objected, ‘and the EVENT must take place there.’

‘Well, father,’ Pol said to me, ‘are you going to make one of those great leaps of faith you keep talking about?’

‘I think I’m going to have to. You and I should probably go to Vo Mimbre and give Aldorigen some instructions. I don’t want the Mimbrate knights to start feeling muscular and invincible. If they come charging out of the gates of Vo Mimbre before the legions and the Chereks are in place, they’ll be obliterated. I think we’re only going to have one chance at this, so we’d better get it right the first time. We’ve done all we can here, so you gentlemen had better take your leave of Ran Borune and go join your forces. We all know the signals and what we’re supposed to do when they come. Pol and I’ll go to Vo Mimbre and put a leash on Aldorigen. Then we’ll just sit tight and wait for the Cherek fleet. Don’t provoke any confrontations, but don’t let Kal Torak lure you out of position either.’