David Eddings - Queen of Sorcery

They arrived shortly thereafter at a Tolnedran hostel with thick, whitewashed walls and a red tile roof. Aunt Pol saw to it that Lelldorin was placed in a warm room, and she spent the night sitting by his bed caring for him. Garion padded worriedly down the dark hallway in his stocking feet a half-dozen times before morning to check on his friend, but there seemed to be no change.

By daybreak the rain had let up. They started out in the grayish dawn with Mandorallen still riding some distance ahead until they reached at last the edge of the dark forest and saw before them the vast, open expanse of the Arendish central plain, dun-colored and sere in the last few weeks of winter. The knight stopped there and waited for them to join him, his face somber.

“What’s the trouble?” Silk asked him.

Mandorallen pointed gravely at a column of black smoke rising from a few miles out on the plain.

“What is it?” Silk inquired, his rat face puzzled.

“Smoke in Arendia can mean but one thing,” the knight replied, pulling on his plumed helmet. “Abide here, dear friends. I will investigate, but I fear the worst.” He set his spurs to the flanks of his charger and leaped forward at a thunderous gallop.

“Wait!” Barak roared after him, but Mandorallen rode on obliviously. “That idiot,” the big Cherek fumed. “I’d better go with him in case there’s trouble.”

“It isn’t necessary,” Lelldorin advised weakly from his litter. “Not even an army would dare to interfere with him.”

“I thought you didn’t like him,” Barak said, a little surprised.

“I don’t,” Lelldorin admitted, “but he’s the most feared man in Arendia. Even in Asturia we’ve heard of Sir Mandorallen. No sane man would stand in his way.”

They drew back into the shelter of the forest and waited for the knight to come back. When he returned, his face was angry. “It is as I feared,” he announced. “A war doth rage in our path—a senseless war, since the two barons involved are kinsmen and the best of friends.”

“Can we go around it?” Silk asked.

“Nay, Prince Kheldar,” Mandorallen replied. “Their conflict is so widespread that we would be waylaid ere we had gone three leagues. I must, it would appear, buy us passage.”

“Do you think they’ll take money to let us pass?” Durnik asked dubiously.

“In Arendia there is another way to make such purchase, Goodman,” Mandorallen responded. “May I prevail upon thee to obtain six or eight stout poles perhaps twenty feet in length and about as thick as my wrist at the butt?”

“Of course.” Durnik took up his axe.

“What have you got in mind?” Barak rumbled.

“I will challenge them,” Mandorallen announced calmly, “one or all. No true knight could refuse me without being called craven. Wilt thou be my second and deliver my challenge, my Lord?”

“What if you lose?” Silk suggested.

“Lose?” Mandorallen seemed shocked. “I? Lose?”

“Let it pass,” Silk said.

By the time Durnik had returned with the poles, Mandorallen had finished tightening various straps beneath his armor. Taking one of the poles, he vaulted into his saddle and started at a rolling trot toward the column of smoke, with Barak at his side.

“Is this really necessary, father?” Aunt Pol asked.

“We have to get through, Pol,” Mister Wolf replied. “Don’t worry. Mandorallen knows what he’s doing.”

After a couple of miles they reached the top of a hill and looked down at the battle below. Two grim, black castles faced each other across a broad valley, and several villages dotted the plain on either side of the road. The nearest village was in flames, with a great pillar of greasy smoke rising from it to the lead-gray sky overhead, and serfs armed with scythes and pitchforks were attacking each other with a sort of mindless ferocity on the road itself. Some distance off, pikemen were gathering for a charge, and the air was thick with arrows. On two opposing hills parties of armored knights with bright-colored pennons on their lances watched the battle. Great siege engines lofted boulders into the air to crash down on the struggling men, killing, so far as Garion could tell, friend and foe indiscriminately. The valley was littered with the dead and the dying.

“Stupid,” Wolf muttered darkly.

“No one I know of has ever accused Arends of brilliance,” Silk observed.

Mandorallen set his horn to his lips and blew a shattering blast. The battle paused as the soldiers and serfs all stopped to stare up at him. He sounded his horn again, and then again, each brassy note a challenge it itself. As the two opposing bodies of knights galloped through the kneehigh, winter-yellowed grass to investigate, Mandorallen turned to Barak. “If it please thee, my Lord,” he requested politely, “deliver my challenge as soon as they approach us.”

Barak shrugged. “It’s your skin,” he noted. He eyed the advancing knights and then lifted his voice in a great roar. “Sir Mandorallen, Baron of Vo Mandor, desires entertainment,” he declaimed. “It would amuse him if each of your parties would select a champion to joust with him. If, however, you are all such cowardly dogs that you have no stomach for such a contest, cease this brawling and stand aside so that your betters may pass.”

“Splendidly spoken, my Lord Barak,” Mandorallen said with admiration.

“I’ve always had a way with words,” Barak replied modestly. The two parties of knights warily rode closer.

“For shame, my Lords,” Mandorallen chided them. “Ye will gain no honor in this sorry war. Sir Derigen, what hath caused this contention?”

“An insult, Sir Mandorallen,” the noble replied. He was a large man, and his polished steel helmet had a golden circlet riveted above the visor. “An insult so vile that it may not go unpunished.”

“It was I who was insulted,” a noble on the other side contended hotly.

“What was the nature of this insult, Sir Oltorain?” Mandorallen inquired.

Both men looked away uneasily, and neither spoke.

“Ye have gone to war over an insult which cannot even be recalled?” Mandorallen said incredulously. “I had thought, my Lords, that ye were serious men, but I now perceive my error.”

“Don’t the nobles of Arendia have anything better to do?” Barak asked in a voice heavy with contempt.

“Of Sir Mandorallen the bastard we have all heard,” a swarthy knight in black enamelled armor sneered, “but who is this red-bearded ape who so maligns his betters?”

“You’re going to take that?” Barak asked Mandorallen.

“It’s more or less true,” Mandorallen admitted with a pained look, “since there was some temporary irregularity about my birth which still raises questions about my legitimacy. This knight is Sir Haldorin, my third cousin-twice removed. Since it’s considered unseemly in Arendia to spill the blood of kinsmen, he thus cheaply gains reputation for boldness by casting the matter in my teeth.”

“Stupid custom,” Barak grunted. “In Cherek kinsmen kill each other with more enthusiasm than they kill strangers.”

“Alas.” Mandorallen sighed. “This is not Cherek.”

“Would you be offended if I dealt with this?” Barak asked politely.

“Not at all.”

Barak moved closer to the swarthy knight. “I am Barak, Earl of Trellheim,” he announced in a loud voice, “kinsman to King Anheg of Cherek, and I see that certain nobles in Arendia have even fewer manners than they have brains.”

“The Lords of Arendia are not impressed by the self bestowed titles of the pig-sty kingdoms of the north,” Sir Haldorin retorted coldly.

“I find your words offensive, friend,” Barak said ominously.

“And I find thy ape face and scraggly beard amusing,” Sir Haldorin replied.