Guardians of the West

the beginning of the slope. "I made the arrows myself, Garion," he said, taking another shaft from the quiver at his back. "Believe me, I can recognize one of them as soon as my fingers touch it." He leaned back and bent his bow again. "Is the ground getting soft under the wall?"
    Garion sent out his thought toward the slope of the hill and felt the chill, musty dampness of the soil lying under the snow. "Slowly," he replied, "it's still pretty firm, though."
    "It's almost noon, Garion," Lelldorin said seriously, reaching for another arrow. " I know how thoroughly Goodman Durnik thinks things through, but is this really working?"
    "It takes a while," Garion told him. "You have to soak the lower layers of earth first. Then the water starts to rise and saturate the dirt directly under the wall itself. It takes time; but if the water started gushing out of rabbit holes, the people on top of the wall would know that something's wrong."
    "Think of how the rabbits would feel." Lelldorin grinned and shot another arrow.
    They moved on as Lelldorin continued to mark the jumping-off line of the coming night's assault with deceptive casualness.
    "All right," Garion said. "I know that you can recognize your own arrows, but how about the rest of us? One arrow feels just like another to me."
    "It's simple," the young bowman replied. "I just creep up, find my arrows and string them all together with twine. When you hit that string, you stop and wait for the wall to topple. Then you charge. We've been making night assaults on Mimbrate houses in Asturia for centuries this way." Throughout the remainder of that snowy day, Garion and Durnik periodically checked the level of moisture in the soil of the north slope of the steep knoll upon which the city of Rheon stood.
    "It's getting very close to the saturation point, Garion," Durnik reported as dusk began to fall. "There are a few places on the lower slope where the water's starting to seep through the snow."
    "It's a good thing it's getting dark," Garion said, shifting the weight of his mail shirt nervously. Armor of any kind always made him uncomfortable, and the prospect of the upcoming assault on the city filled him with a peculiar emotion, part anxiety, and part anticipation.
    Durnik, his oldest friend, looked at him with an understanding that pierced any possible concealment. He grinned a bit wryly. "What are a pair of sensible Sendarian farm boys doing fighting a war in the snow in eastern Drasnia?" he asked.
    "Winning -I hope."
    "We'll win, Garion," Durnik assured him, laying an affectionate hand on the younger man's shoulder. "Sendars always win -eventually."
    About an hour before midnight, Mandorallen began to move his siege engines, leaving only enough of them on the eastern and western sides to continue the intermittent barrage that was to mask their real purpose. As the hour wore on, Garion, Lelldorin, Durnik, and Silk crept forward at a half crouch toward the invisible line of arrows sticking up out of the snow.
    "Here's one," Durnik whispered as his outstretched hands encountered the shaft of an arrow.
    "Here," Lelldorin murmured, "let me feel it." He joined the smith, the both of them on their knees in the slush. "Yes, it's one of mine, Garion," he said very quietly. "They should be about ten paces apart."
    Silk moved quickly to where the two of them crouched over the arrow. "Show me how you recognize them," he breathed.
    "It's in the fletching," Lelldorin replied. "I always use twisted gut to attach the feathers."
    Silk felt the feathered end of the arrow. "All right," he said. "I can pick them out now."
    "Are you sure?" Lelldorin asked.
    "If my fingertips can find the spots on a pair of dice, they can certainly tell the difference between gut and linen twine," Silk replied.
    "All right. We'll start here." Lelldorin attached one end of a ball of twine to the arrow. "I'll go this way, and you go that."
    "Right." Silk tied the end of his ball of string to the same shaft. He turned to Garion and Durnik. "Don't overdo it with the water, you two," he said. "I don't particularly want to get buried in a mudslide out here." Then he moved off, crouched low and groping for the next arrow. Lelldorin touched Garion's shoulder briefly, then disappeared in the opposite direction.
    "The ground's completely soaked now," Durnik murmured. "If we open those fissures about a foot wide, it's going to flush most of the support out from under the wall."
    "Good."
    Again, they sent their