Guardians of the West

no effect on his limp body. That, of course, gave the whole thing away. First a few and then a score or more cult members ran directly through Garion's illusion. Lelldorin's hands blurred as he shot arrow after arrow into the milling ranks at the mouth of the gully. "There're too many of them, Garion," he shouted. "I can't hold them. We'll have to fall back."
    "Aunt Pol!" Garion yelled. "They're breaking through!"
    "Push them back," she called to him. "Use your will."
    He concentrated even more and pushed a solid barrier of his will at the men emerging from the gully. At first it seemed that it might even work, but the effort he was exerting was enormous, and he soon began to tire. The edges of his hastily erected barrier began to fray and tatter, and the men he was trying so desperately to hold back began to find those weak spots.
    Dimly, even as he bent all of his concentration on maintaining the barrier, he heard a sullen rumble, almost like distant thunder.
    "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