Silk rather glumly agreed. "I'd like to get that matter straightened out, but I don't suppose we really have the time, do we?"
"No, not really. The summer is very, very short up north, and the crossing to Mallorea is unpleasant, even in the best weather. When you get to the tavern, tell everybody that we want to try our luck in the gold fields of the north range. There's bound to be somebody around who'll want to show off his familiarity with trails and passes-particularly if you offer to buy him a few drinks."
"I thought you said you knew the way," Silk protested.
"I know one way - but it's a hundred leagues east of here. Let's see if there's something a little closer. I'll come by the tavern after I get the supplies." The old man mounted and went off up the dirt street, leading their packhorse behind him.
Silk and Garion had little trouble finding someone in the smelly tavern willing to talk about trails and passes. Quite to the contrary, their first question sparked a general debate.
"That's the long way around, Besher," one tipsy gold hunter interrupted another's detailed description of a mountain pass. "You go left at the falls of the stream. It saves you three days."
"I'm telling this, Varn," Besher retorted testily, banging his fist down on the scarred table. "You can tell them about the way you go when I'm finished."
"It'll take you all day just like that trail you're so fond of. They want to go look for gold, not admire scenery." Varn's long, stubbled jaw thrust out belligerently.
"Which way do we go when we get to the long meadow up on top?" Silk asked quickly, trying to head off the hostilities.
"You go right," Besher declared, glaring at Varn.
Varn thought about that as if looking for an excuse to disagree. Finally he reluctantly nodded. "Of course that's the only way you can go," he added, "but once you get through the juniper grove, you turn left." He said it in the tone of a man anticipating contradiction.
"Left?" Besher objected loudly. "You're a blockhead, Varn. You go right again."
"Watch who you're calling a blockhead, you jackass!"
Without any further discussion, Besher punched Varn in the mouth, and the two of them began to pummel each other, reeling about and knocking over benches and tables.
"They're both wrong, of course," another miner sitting at a nearby table observed calmly, watching the fight with a clinical detachment. "You keep going straight after you get through the juniper grove."
Several burly men, wearing loose-fitting red tunics over their polished mail shirts, had entered the tavern unnoticed during the altercation, and they stepped forward, grinning, to separate Varn and Besher as the two rolled around on the dirty floor. Garion felt Silk stiffen beside him.
"Malloreans!" the little man said softly.
"What do we do?" Garion whispered, looking around for a way of escape. But before Silk could answer, a black-robed Grolim stepped through the door.
"I like to see men who are so eager to fight," the Grolim purred in a peculiar accent. "The army needs such men."
"Recruiters!" Varn exclaimed, breaking away from the red-garbed Malloreans and dashing toward a side door. For a second it looked as if he might escape; but as he reached the doorway, someone outside rapped him sharply across the forehead with a stout cudgel. He reeled back, suddenly rubber-legged and vacant-eyed. The Mallorean who had hit him came inside, gave him a critical, appraising glance, and then judiciously clubbed him in the head again.
"Well?" the Grolim asked, looking around with amusement. "What's it to be? Would any more of you like to run, or would you all prefer to come along quietly?"
"Where are you taking us?" Besher demanded, trying to pull his arm out of the grip of one of the grinning recruiters.
"To Yar Nadrak first," the Grolim replied, "and then south to the plains of Mishrak ac Thull and the encampment of his Imperial Majesty 'Zakath, Emperor of all Mallorea. You've just joined the army, my friends. All of Angarak rejoices in your courage and patriotism, and Torak himself is pleased with you." As if to emphasize his words, the Grolim's hand strayed to the hilt of the sacrificial knife sheathed at his belt.
The chain clinked spitefully as Garion, fettered at the ankle, plodded along, one in a long line of disconsolate-looking conscripts, following a trail leading generally southward through the brush along the riverbank. The conscripts had all been roughly searched for weapons-all but Garion, who for some reason had been overlooked. He was painfully aware of the huge sword strapped to his back as he walked along; but, as always seemed to happen, no one else paid any attention to it.
Before they had left the village, while they were all being shackled, Garion and Silk had held a brief, urgent discussion in the minute finger movements of the Drasnian secret language.
I could pick this lock with my thumbnail-Silk had asserted with a disdainful flip of his fingers. As soon as it gets dark tonight, I'll unhook us and we'll leave. I don't really think military life would agree with me, and it's wildly inappropriate for you to be joining an Angarak army just now - all things considered.
-Where's Grandfather? Garion had asked.
-Oh, I imagine he's about.
Garion, however, was worried, and a whole platoon of "what-ifs" immediately jumped into his mind. To avoid thinking about them, he covertly studied the Malloreans who guarded them. The Grolim and the bulk of his detachment had moved on, once the captives had been shackled, seeking other villages and other recruits, leaving only five of their number behind to escort this group south. Malloreans were somewhat different from other Angaraks. Their eyes had that characteristic angularity, but their bodies seemed not to have the singleness of purpose which so dominated the western tribes. They were burly, but they did not have the broad-shouldered athleticism of the Murgos. They were tall, but did not have the lean, whippetlike frames of the Nadraks. They were obviously strong, but they did not have the thick-waisted brute power of Thulls. There was about them, moreover, a kind of disdainful superiority when they looked at western Angaraks. They spoke to their prisoners in short, barking commands, and when they talked to each other, their dialect was so thick that it was nearly unintelligible. They wore mail shirts covered by coarse-woven red tunics. They did not ride their horses very well, Garion noted, and their curved swords and broad, round shields seemed to get in their way as they attempted to manage their reins.
Garion carefully kept his head down to hide the fact that his features - even more than Silk's - were distinctly non-Angarak. The guards, however, paid little attention to the conscripts as individuals, but seemed rather to be more interested in them as numbers. They rode continually up and down the sweating column, counting bodies and referring to a document they carried with concerned, even worried expressions. Garion surmised that unpleasant things would happen if the numbers did not match when they reached Yar Nadrak.