King of The Murgos

Belgarath asked when they joined him.
    "There's something else burning up ahead," the little man reported. "I didn't get too close, but it looks like an isolated farmstead."
    "Let's go look," Durnik said to Toth, and the two of them rode off in the direction of the smudge of smoke lying low on the horizon to the east.
    "I'd certainly like to know if Urgit's doing all right," Silk said with a worried frown.
    "You really like him, don't you?" Velvet asked him.
    "Urgit? Yes, I think I do. We're very much alike in many ways." He looked at her. "I suppose that you're going to mention all of this in your report to Javelin?"
    "Naturally."
    "I really wish you wouldn't, you know."
    "Why on earth not?"
    "I'm not entirely sure. It's just that for some reason I don't think I want Drasnian Intelligence using my relationship to the King of Cthol Murgos for its own advantage. I think I want to keep it private."
    A silver twilight was settling over the lake when Durnik and Toth returned with grim faces. "It was a Murgo farmstead," Durnik reported. "Some Malloreans had been there. I don't think they were regular troops—probably deserters of some kind. They looted and burned, and regular troops don't usually do that, if they've got officers around to control them. The house is gone, but the barn is still partially intact."
    "Is there enough of it left to shelter us for the night?" Garion wanted to know.
    Durnik looked dubious, then shrugged. "The roofs still mostly there."
    "Is something wrong?" Belgarath asked him.
    Durnik made a small gesture and then walked away until he was out of earshot of the rest. Garion and Belgarath followed him.
    "What's the matter, Durnik?" Belgarath asked.
    'The barn's good enough to give us shelter," the smith said quietly, "but I think you ought to know that those Mallorean deserters impaled everybody on the farmstead. I don't think you want the ladies to see that. It isn't very pleasant."
    "Is there someplace where you can get the bodies under cover?" the old man asked.
    "I'll see what we can do," Durnik sighed. "Why do people do that sort of thing?"
    "Ignorance, usually. An ignorant man falls back on brutality out of a lack of imagination. Go with them, Garion. They might need some help. Wave a torch to let us know when you get finished."
    The fact that it was nearly dark helped a little. Garion was unable to see the faces of the people on the stakes. There was a sod-roofed cellar at the back of the still-smoldering house, and they put the bodies there. Then Garion took up a torch and walked some distance from the house to signal to Belgarath. The barn was dry, and the fire Durnik built in a carefully cleared area on the stone floor soon warmed it.
    "This is actually pleasant," Ce'Nedra declared with a smile as she looked around at the dancing shadows on the walls and rafters. She sat on a pile of fragrant hay and bounced tentatively a few times. "And this will make wonderful beds. I hope we can find a place like this every night."
    Garion walked over to the door and looked out, not trusting himself to answer. He had grown up on a farm not really all that much different from this one, and the thought of a band of marauding soldiers swooping down on Faldor's farm, burning and killing, filled him with a vast outrage. A sudden image rose in his mind. The shadowy faces of the dead Murgos hanging on those stakes might very well have been the faces of his childhood friends, and that thought shook him to the very core of his being. The dead here had been Murgos, but they had also been farmers, and he felt a sudden kinship with them. The savagery that had befallen them began to take on the aspect of a personal affront, and dark thoughts began to fill his mind.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
    By morning it was raining again, a drizzly sort of rain that made the surrounding countryside hazy and indistinct. They rode out from the ruins of the farmstead, dressed again in their slaver's robes, and turned northward along the eastern shore of the lake.
    Garion rode in silence, his thoughts as somber as the leaden waters of the lake lying to his left. The rage he had felt the previous evening had settled into an icy resolve. Justice, he had been told, was an abstraction, but he was determined that, should the Mallorean deserters responsible for the atrocity at the farm ever cross his path, he would turn the abstract into an immediate reality. He knew that Belgarath and Polgara did not approve of the sort of thing he had in