David Eddings - Enchanter's End Game

“I didn’t think you’d thought. Sometimes I don’t think you know how to think.”

Silk looked around apprehensively. “Now what do we do?” he asked.

“We’d better get out of here—as fast as our horses can carry us,” Belgarath said. He glared at Garion. “Are you sure you don’t have a trumpet somewhere under your clothes?” he asked with heavy sarcasm. “Maybe you’d like to blow a few fanfares as we go along.” He shook his head in disgust and then gathered up his reins. “Let’s ride,” he said.

The aspens were stark white and motionless under the dead sky, and they rose, straight and slender, like the bars of an interminable cage. Belgarath led them at a walk, carefully weaving his way through the endless stretches of this vast, silent forest.

“How much farther?” Silk asked the old man tensely.

“Not much more than a day, now,” Belgarath replied. “The clouds ahead are getting thicker.”

“You say the cloudbank never moves?”

“Never. It’s been stationary since Torak put it there.”

“What if a wind came along? Wouldn’t that move it?”

Belgarath shook his head. “The normal rules have been suspended in that region. For all I know, the cloud might not actually be cloud. It might be something else.”

“Like what?”

“An illusion of some kind, perhaps. The Gods are very good at illusions.”

“Are they looking for us? The Grolims, I mean.”

Belgarath nodded.

“Are you taking steps to keep them from finding us?”

“Naturally.” The old man looked at him. “Why this sudden urge for conversation? You’ve been talking steadily for the last hour.”

“I’m a little edgy,” Silk admitted. “This is unfamiliar territory, and that always makes me nervous. I’m much more comfortable when I’ve got my escape routes worked out in advance.”

“Are you always ready to run?”

“In my profession you have to be. What was that?”

Garion heard it too. Faintly, somewhere far off behind them, there was a deep-toned baying—one animal at first, but soon joined by several others. “Wolves?” he suggested.

Belgarath’s face had grown bleak. “No,” he replied, “not wolves.” He shook his reins, and his nervous horse began to trot, the sound of its hoofs muffled by the rotting loam lying thick beneath the aspens.

“What is it then, Grandfather?” Garion asked, also pushing his horse into a trot.

“Torak’s Hounds,” Belgarath replied tersely.

“Dogs?”

“Not really. They’re Grolims—rather specialized ones. When the Angaraks built the city, Torak decided that he needed something to guard the surrounding countryside. Certain Grolims volunteered to take on nonhuman shapes. The change was permanent.”

“I’ve dealt with watchdogs before,” Silk said confidently.

“Not like these. Let’s see if we can outrun them.” Belgarath didn’t sound very hopeful.

They pushed their horses into a gallop, weaving in and out among the tree trunks. The limbs slapped against their faces as they rode, and Garion raised his arm to ward them off as the three of them plunged on.

They crested a low ridge and galloped down the far side. The baying behind them seemed to be closer now.

Then Silk’s horse stumbled, and the little man was almost thrown from his saddle.

“This isn’t working, Belgarath,” he said as the old man and Garion reined in. “This ground’s too treacherous for us to keep this pace.”

Belgarath held up his hand and listened for a moment. The deep-toned baying was definitely closer.

“They’re outrunning us anyway,” the old man agreed.

“You’d better think of something,” Silk said, looking back nervously.

“I’m working on it.” Belgarath raised his face to sniff at the air. “Let’s keep going. I just got a whiff of stagnant water. The area’s dotted with swampy places. We might be able to hide our scent if we can get into a big enough patch of water.”

They moved on down the slope toward the bottom of the valley. The odor of standing water grew steadily stronger as they rode.

“Just ahead.” Garion pointed toward a patch of brown water intermittently visible among the white tree trunks.

The swamp was quite extensive, a broad patch of reeking, oily water trapped in the bottom of a thickly grown basin. Dead trees thrust up out of the water, their leafless branches seeming almost tike clawed hands reaching up in mute supplication to the indifferent sky.

Silk wrinkled his nose. “It stinks bad enough to hide our scent from almost anything,” he said.

“We’ll see,” Belgarath replied. “This would probably throw off an ordinary dog, but don’t forget that the Hounds are really Grolims. They have the ability to reason, so they won’t be relying on scent alone.”

They pushed their reluctant horses into the murky water and began to splash along, changing direction frequently, weaving in and out among the dead tree trunks. Their horses’ hoofs stirred up rotting vegetation from the bottom, filling the air with an even more powerful stench.

The sound of the baying Hounds drew closer, filled now with an excitement and a terrible hunger.

“I think they’ve hit the edge of the swamp,” Silk said, cocking his head to listen.

There was a momentary bafflement in the baying behind them.

“Grandfather!” Garion cried, reining in sharply.

Directly before them, knee-deep in the brown water stood a slavering black dog-shape. It was enormous—fully as large as a horse, and its eyes actually burned with a malevolent green fire. Its front shoulders and chest were massive, and the fangs protruding from its mouth were at least a foot long, curving down cruelly and dripping foam.

“We have you now,” it growled, seeming almost to chew on the words as it twisted its muzzle into speech. The voice issuing from its mouth was a rasping, tearing sound.

Silk’s hand instantly flashed toward one of his hidden daggers.

“Never mind,” Belgarath told him. “It’s only a projection—a shadow.”

“It can do that?” Silk’s tone was startled.

“I told you that they’re Grolims.”

“We hunger,” the fiery-eyed Hound rumbled. “I will return soon with my pack-mates, and we will feed on man-meat.” Then the shape flickered and vanished.

“They know where we are now.” Silk’s voice was alarmed. “You’d better do something, Belgarath. Can’t you use sorcery?”

“That would just pinpoint our location. There are other things out there as well as the Hounds.”

“I’d say we’ll have to chance it. Let’s worry about one thing at a time. Did you see those teeth?”

“They’re coming,” Garion said tensely. From far back in the sway he could clearly hear the sound of splashing.

“Do something, Belgarath!”

The sky overhead had grown darker, and the air seemed suddenly oppressively heavy. From far off there was an angry mutter of thunder. A vast sigh seemed to pass through the forest.

“Keep going,” Belgarath said, and they splashed off through the slimy brown water toward the far side of the swamp. The aspen trees on the solid ground ahead of them quite suddenly turned the silvery undersides of their leaves upward, and it was almost as if a great, pale wave had shuddered through the forest.

The Hounds were very close now, and their baying was triumphant as they plunged through the oily, reeking swamp.

And then there was a brilliant blue-white flash, and a shattering clap of thunder. The sky ripped open above them. With a sound nearly as loud as the thunder, they were engulfed in a sudden deluge. The wind howled, ripping away the aspen leaves in great sheets and whirling them through the air. The rain drove horizontally before the sudden gale, churning the swamp to froth and obliterating everything more than a few feet away.