Guardians of the West

exclaimed, loosening his sword in its scabbard and searching the boulder-strewn slope and the brink of the cliffs with a hunter's trained eye.
    "Hold it a second," Durnik said sharply. He lifted his head and sniffed at the onshore breeze. "There's somebody up ahead."
    "What?" Garion said, a sudden excitement building up in him.
    "I just caught a distinct whiff of somebody who doesn't bathe regularly."
    Belgarath's face took on an intense expression. "Pol," he said, "why don't you take a quick look down there?"
    She nodded tersely, and her forehead furrowed with concentration. Garion felt and heard the whispered surge as she probed the empty-looking terrain ahead. "Chereks," she said after a moment. "About a dozen of them. They're hiding behind those boulders at the edge of the cliffs. They're watching us and planning an ambush."
    "Chereks?" Brin exclaimed. "Why would Chereks want to attack us?"
    "They're Bear-cultists," she told him, "and nobody knows why those madmen do anything."
    "What do we do?" Brin asked in a half whisper.
    "An ambusher always has the advantage," Verdan replied, "unless the person about to be ambushed knows that he's there. Then it's the other way around." He looked down the slope grimly, his big hand on his sword hilt.
    "Then we just go down there and spring their trap?" Brin asked eagerly.
    Kail looked at Belgarath. "What do you think, Ancient One? We have the advantage now. They're going to expect us to be startled when they jump out at us, but we'll be ready for them. We could have half of them down before they realize their mistake."
    Belgarath squinted at the setting sun. "Normally, I'd say no," he said. "These little incidental fights aren't usually very productive, but we're losing the light." He turned to Aunt Pol. "Is Geran anywhere in the vicinity?"
    "No," she replied. "There's no sign of him."
    Belgarath scratched at his beard. "If we leave the Chereks there, they're going to follow us, and I don't think I want them creeping along behind -particularly once it gets dark." His lined old face tightened into a wolfish grin. "All right, let's indulge ourselves."
    "Save a few of them, though, father," Polgara said. "I have some questions I'd like answered. And try not to get yourselves hurt, gentlemen. I'm a little tired for surgery today."
    "No surgery today, Lady Polgara," Brin promised blithely. "A few funerals, perhaps, but no surgery."
    She raised her eyes toward the sky. " Alorns," she sighed.
    The ambush did not turn out at all as the hidden Bear-cultists had anticipated. The fur-clad Cherek who leaped at Garion was met in midair by the flaming sword of the Rivan King and was sheared nearly in two at the waist by the great blade. He fell to the suddenly blood-drenched grass, writhing and squealing. Kail coolly split a charging cultist's head while his brothers fell on the startled attackers and savagely but methodically began to hack them to pieces.
    One cultist leaped atop a large rock, drawing a bow with his arrow pointed directly at Garion, but Belgarath made a short gesture with his left hand, and the bowman was suddenly hurled backward in a long, graceful arc that carried him out over the edge of the nearby cliff. His arrow went harmlessly into the air as he fell shrieking toward the foamy breakers five hundred feet below.
    "Remember, I need a few of them alive!" Polgara sharply reminded them, as the carnage threatened to get completely out of hand.
    Kail grunted, then neatly parried the thrust of a desperate Cherek. His big left fist swung in a broad arc and smashed solidly into the side of the Cherek's head, sending him spinning to the turf.
    Durnik was using his favorite weapon, a stout cudgel perhaps three feet long. Expertly, he slapped a cultist's sword out of his hand and cracked him sharply alongside the head. The man's eyes glazed, and he tumbled limply to the ground.
    Belgarath surveyed the fight, selected a likely candidate and then levitated him about fifty feet into the air. The suspended man was at first apparently unaware of his new location and kept slashing ineffectually at the surrounding emptiness.
    The fight was soon over. The last crimson rays of the setting sun mingled with the scarlet blood staining the grass near the edge of the cliff, and the ground was littered with broken swords and scraps of bloody bearskin.
    "For some reason, that makes me feel better," Garion declared, wiping his sword on the fallen body of one of the cultists. The Orb, he noted,