"Garion!" Lelldorin cried. "Horsemen -hundreds of them!"
In dismay, Garion looked quickly up the ravine and saw a sudden horde of riders coming down the steep cut from the east. "Aunt Pol!" he shouted, even as he reached back over his shoulder to draw Iron-grip's great sword.
The wave of riders, however, veered sharply just as they reached him and crashed directly into the front ranks of the cultists who were on the verge of breaking through his barrier. This new force was composed of lean, leather-tough men in black, and their eyes had a peculiar angularity to them.
"Nadraks! By the Gods, they're Nadraks!" Garion heard Barak shout from somewhere across the ravine.
"What are they doing here?" Garion muttered, half to himself.
"Garion!" Lelldorin exclaimed. "That man in the middle of the riders -isn't that Prince Kheldar?"
The new troops charging into the furious melee quickly turned the tide of battle. They charged directly into the faces of the startled cultists who were emerging from the mouths of the gullies, inflicting dreadful casualties.
Once he had committed his horsemen, Silk dropped back to join Garion and Lelldorin in the center of the ravine.
"Good day, gentlemen," he greeted them with aplomb. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting."
"Where did you get all the Nadraks?" Garion demanded, trembling with sudden relief.
"In Gar og Nadrak, of course."
"Why would they want to help us?"
"Because I paid them." Silk shrugged. "You owe me a great deal of money, Garion."
"How did you find so many so fast?" Lelldorin asked.
"Yarblek and I have a fur-trading station just across the border. The trappers who brought in their furs last spring were just lying around, drinking and gambling, so I hired them."
"You got here just in time," Garion said.
"I noticed that. Those fires of yours were a nice touch."
"Up until the point where they started throwing water on them. That's when things started to get tense."
A few hundred of the trapped cultists managed to escape the general destruction by scrambling up the steep sides of the gullies and fleeing out onto the barren moors; but for most of their fellows, there was no escape.
Barak rode out of the gully where the Rivan troops were mopping up the few survivors of the initial charge. "Do you want to give them the chance to surrender?" he asked Garion.
Garion remembered the conversation he and Polgara had had several days previously. "I suppose we should," he said after a moment's thought.
"You don't have to, you know," Barak told him. "Under the circumstances, no one would blame you if you wiped them out to the very last man."
No," Garion said, "I don't think I really want to do that. Tell the ones that are left that we'll spare their lives if they throw down their weapons."
Barak shrugged. "It's up to you."
"Silk, you lying little thief!" a tall Nadrak in a felt coat and an outrageous fur hat exclaimed. He was roughly searching the body of a slain cultist. "You said that they all had money on them and that they were loaded down with gold chains and bracelets. All this one has on him is fleas."
"Perhaps I exaggerated just a trifle, Yarblek," Silk said urbanely to his partner.
"I ought to gut you, do you know that?"
"Why, Yarblek," Silk replied with feigned astonishment, "is that any way to talk to your brother?"
"Brother!" the Nadrak snorted, rising and planting a solid kick in the side of the body that had so sorely disappointed him.
"That's what we agreed when we went into partnership -that we were going to treat each other like brothers."
"Don't twist words on me, you little weasel. Besides, I stuck a knife in my brother twenty years ago -for lying to me."
As the last of the trapped and outnumbered cultists threw down their arms in surrender, Polgara, Ce'Nedra, and Errand came cautiously up the ravine, accompanied by the filthy, hunchbacked Beldin.
"Your Algar reinforcements are still several days away." the ugly little sorcerer told Garion. " I tried to hurry them along, but they're very tenderhearted with their horses. Where did you get all the Nadraks?"
"Silk hired them."
Beldin nodded approvingly. "Mercenaries always make the best soldiers," he said.
The coarse-faced Yarblek had been looking at Polgara, his eyes alight with recognition. "You're still as handsome as ever, girl," he said to her. "Have you changed your mind about letting me buy you?"
"No, Yarblek," she replied. "Not yet, anyway. You arrived at an excellent time."
"Only because some lying little thief told me there was loot to be had." He glared at Silk and then nudged the body he was standing over with his foot. "Frankly, I'd make more money plucking dead chickens."
Beldin looked at Garion. "If you intend to see your son again before he has a full beard, you'd better get moving," he said.
"I've got to make some arrangements about the prisoners," Garion replied.
"What's to arrange?" Yarblek shrugged. "Line them up and chop off their heads."
"Absolutely not!"
"What's the point of fighting if you can't butcher the prisoners when it's over?"
"Someday when we have some time, I'll explain it to you," Silk told him.
"Alorns!" Yarblek sighed, casting his eyes toward the murky sky.
"Yarblek, you mangy son of a dog!" It was a raven-haired woman in leather breeches and a tight-fitting leather vest.
There was at once a vast anger and an overwhelming physical presence about her. "I thought you said we could make a profit by picking over the dead. These vermin don't have a thing on them."
"We were misled, Vella," he replied somberly, giving Silk a flinty look.
"I told you not to trust that rat-faced little sneak. You're not only ugly, Yarblek, you're stupid as well.".
Garion had been looking curiously at the angry woman.
"Isn't that the girl who danced in the tavern that time in Gar og Nadrak?" he asked Silk, remembering the girl's overwhelming sensuality that had stirred the blood of every man in that wayside drinking establishment.
The little man nodded. "She married that trapper -Tekk- but he came out second best in an argument with a bear a few years back, and his brother sold her to Yarblek."
"Worst mistake I ever made," Yarblek said mournfully. "She's almost as fast with her knives as she is with her tongue." He pulled back one sleeve and showed them an angry red scar. "And all I was trying to do was to be friendly."