Eragon and Garzhvog did not stop that night but continued running through the hours of darkness and through the day thereafter. When morning arrived, the sky grew bright, but because of the Beor Mountains, it was almost noon before the sun burst forth between two peaks and rays of light as wide as the mountains themselves streamed out over the land that was still caught in the strange twilight of shadow. Eragon paused then, on the bank of a brook, and contemplated the sight in silent wonderment for several minutes.
As they skirted the vast range of mountains, their journey began to seem to Eragon uncomfortably similar to his flight from Gil’ead to Farthen Dûr with Murtagh, Saphira, and Arya. He even thought he recognized the place where they had camped after crossing the Hadarac Desert.
The long days and longer nights slipped by with both excruciating slowness and surprising speed, for every hour was identical to the last, which made Eragon feel not only as if their ordeal would never end but also as if large portions of it had never taken place.
When he and Garzhvog arrived at the mouth of the great rift that split the range of mountains for many leagues from north to south, they turned to their right and passed between the cold and indifferent peaks. Arriving at the Beartooth River—which flowed out of the narrow valley that led to Farthen Dûr—they forded the frigid waters and continued southward.
That night, before they ventured east into the mountains proper, they camped by a small pond and rested their limbs. Garzhvog killed another deer with his sling, this time a buck, and they both ate their fill.
His hunger sated, Eragon was hunched over, mending a hole in the side of his boot, when he heard an eerie howl that set his pulse racing. He glanced around the darkened landscape, and to his alarm, he saw the silhouette of a huge beast loping around the pebble-lined shore of the pond.
“Garzhvog,” said Eragon in a low voice, and reached over to his pack and drew his falchion.
Taking a fist-sized rock from the ground, the Kull placed it in the leather pocket of his sling, and then rising to his full height, he opened his maw and bellowed into the night until the land rang with echoes of his defiant challenge.
The beast paused, then proceeded at a slower pace, sniffing at the ground here and there. As it entered the circle of firelight, Eragon’s breath caught in his throat. Standing before them was a gray-backed wolf as big as a horse, with fangs like sabers and burning yellow eyes that followed their every movement. The wolf’s feet were the size of bucklers.
A Shrrg! thought Eragon.
As the giant wolf circled their camp, moving almost silently despite his great bulk, Eragon thought of the elves and how they would deal with a wild animal, and in the ancient language, he said, “Brother Wolf, we mean you no harm. Tonight our pack rests and does not hunt. You are welcome to share our food and the warmth of our den until morning.” The Shrrg paused, and his ears swiveled forward while Eragon spoke in the ancient language.
“Firesword, what are you doing?” growled Garzhvog.
“Don’t attack unless he does.”
The heavy-shouldered beast slowly entered their camp, the tip of his huge wet nose twitching the whole while. The wolf poked his shaggy head toward the fire, seemingly curious about the writhing flames, then moved over to the scraps of meat and viscera scattered over the ground where Garzhvog had butchered the buck. Crouching, the wolf snapped up the gobbets of flesh, then rose and, without a backward glance, padded off into the depths of the night.
Eragon relaxed and sheathed the falchion. Garzhvog, however, remained standing where he was, his lips pulled back in a snarl, looking and listening for anything out of the ordinary in the surrounding darkness.
At dawn’s first light, Eragon and Garzhvog left their camp, and running eastward, entered the valley that would lead them to Mount Thardûr.
As they passed underneath the boughs of the dense forest that guarded the interior of the mountain range, the air became noticeably cooler and the soft bed of needles on the ground muffled their footsteps. The tall, dark, grim trees that loomed over them seemed to be watching as they made their way between the thick trunks and around the twisted roots that knuckled up out of the moist earth, standing two, three, and often four feet high. Large black squirrels scampered among the branches, chattering loudly. A thick layer of moss blanketed the corpses of trees that had fallen. Ferns and thimbleberries and other green leafy plants flourished alongside mushrooms of every shape, size, and color.
The world narrowed once Eragon and Garzhvog were fully inside the long valley. The gigantic mountains pressed close on either side, oppressive with their bulk, and the sky was a distant, unreachable strip of sea blue, the highest sky Eragon had ever seen. A few thin clouds grazed the shoulders of the mountains.
An hour or so after noon, Eragon and Garzhvog slowed as a series of terrible roars echoed among the trees. Eragon pulled his sword from its sheath, and Garzhvog plucked a smooth river rock from the ground and fit it in the pocket of his sling.
“It is a cave bear,” said Garzhvog. A furious, high-pitched squeal, similar to metal scraping over metal, punctuated his statement. “And Nagra. We must be careful, Firesword.”
They proceeded at a slow pace and soon spotted the animals several hundred feet up the side of a mountain. A drove of reddish boars with thick, slashing tusks milled in squealing confusion before a huge mass of silver-brown fur, hooked claws, and snapping teeth that moved with deadly speed. At first the distance fooled Eragon, but then he compared the animals to the trees next to them and realized that each boar would have dwarfed a Shrrg and that the bear was nearly as large as his house in Palancar Valley. The boars had bloodied the cave bear’s flanks, but that seemed to only enrage the beast. Rearing on his hind legs, the bear bellowed and swatted one of the boars with a massive paw, knocking it aside and tearing open its hide. Three more times the boar attempted to rise, and three more times the cave bear struck at it, until at last the boar gave up and lay still. As the bear bent to feed, the rest of the squealing pigs fled back under the trees, heading higher up the mountain and away from the bear.
Awed by the bear’s strength, Eragon followed Garzhvog as the Urgal slowly walked across the bear’s field of vision. Lifting his crimson snout from the belly of his kill, the bear watched them with small, beady eyes, then apparently decided they were no threat to him and resumed eating.
“I think even Saphira might not be able to overcome such a monster,” Eragon murmured.
Garzhvog uttered a small grunt. “She can breathe fire. A bear cannot.”
Neither of them looked away from the bear until trees hid it from view, and even then they kept their weapons at readiness, not knowing what other dangers they might encounter.
The day had passed into late afternoon when they became conscious of another sound: laughter. Eragon and Garzhvog halted, and then Garzhvog raised a finger and, with surprising stealth, crept through a wall of brush toward the laughter. Placing his feet with care, Eragon went with the Kull, holding his breath for fear his breathing would betray their presence.
Peering through a cluster of dogwood leaves, Eragon saw that there was now a well-worn path at the bottom of the valley, and next to the path, three dwarf children were playing, throwing sticks at each other and shrieking with laughter. No adults were visible. Eragon withdrew to a safe distance, exhaled, and studied the sky, where he spotted several plumes of white smoke perhaps a mile farther up the valley.
A branch snapped as Garzhvog squatted next to him, so that they were about level. Garzhvog said, “Firesword, here we part.”
“You will not come to Bregan Hold with me?”
“No. My task was to keep you safe. If I go with you, the dwarves will not trust you as they should. Thardûr mountain is close at hand, and I am confident no one will dare hurt you between here and there.”
Eragon rubbed the back of his neck and looked back and forth between Garzhvog and the smoke east of them. “Are you going to run straight back to the Varden?”
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With a low chuckle, Garzhvog said, “Aye, but maybe not so fast as we did coming here.”
Unsure of what to say, Eragon pushed at the rotten end of a log with the tip of his boot, exposing a clutch of white larvae squirming in the tunnels they had excavated. “Don’t let a Shrrg or a bear eat you, eh? Then I would have to track down the beast and kill him, and I don’t have the time for that.”
Garzhvog pressed both his fists against his bony forehead. “May your enemies cower before you, Firesword.” Standing and turning, Garzhvog loped away from Eragon. The forest soon hid the Kull’s bulky form.
Eragon filled his lungs with the fresh mountain air, then pushed his way through the wall of brush. As he emerged from the thicket of brakes and dogwood, the tiny dwarf children froze, the expressions on their round-cheeked faces wary. Holding his hands out to his sides, Eragon said, “I am Eragon Shadeslayer, Son of None. I seek Orik, Thrifk’s son, at Bregan Hold. Can you take me to him?” When the children did not respond, he realized they understood nothing of his own language. “I am a Dragon Rider,” he said, speaking slowly and emphasizing the words. “Eka eddyr aí Shur’tugal… Shur’tugal… Argetlam.”
At that, the children’s eyes brightened, and their mouths formed round shapes of amazement. “Argetlam!” they exclaimed. “Argetlam!” And they ran over and threw themselves at him, wrapping their short arms around his legs and tugging at his clothes, shouting with merriment the entire time. Eragon stared down at them, feeling a foolish grin spread across his face. The children grasped his hands, and he allowed them to pull him down the path. Even though he could not understand, the children kept up a continuous stream of Dwarvish, telling him about what he knew not, but he enjoyed listening to their speech.
When one of the children—a girl, he thought—held her arms out toward him, he picked her up and placed her on his shoulders, wincing as she grasped fistfuls of his hair. She laughed, high and sweet, which made him smile again. Thus accoutered and accompanied, Eragon made his way toward Mount Thardûr and there to Bregan Hold and his foster brother, Orik.
FOR MY LOVE
Roran stared at the round, flat stone he held cupped in his hands. His eyebrows met in a scowl of frustration.
“Stenr rïsa!” he growled under his breath.
The stone refused to budge.
“What are you up to, Stronghammer?” asked Carn, dropping onto the log where Roran sat.
Slipping the stone into his belt, Roran accepted the bread and cheese Carn had brought him and said, “Nothing. Just woolgathering.”
Carn nodded. “Most do before a mission.”
As he ate, Roran allowed his gaze to drift over the men he found himself with. Their group was thirty strong, himself included. They were all hardened warriors. Everyone carried a bow, and most also wore a sword, although a few chose to fight with a spear, or with a mace or a hammer. Of the thirty men, he guessed that seven or eight were close to his own age, while the rest were several years older. The eldest among them was their captain, Martland Redbeard, the deposed earl of Thun, who had seen enough winters that his famed beard had become frosted with silver hairs.
When Roran had first joined Martland’s command, he had presented himself to Martland in his tent. The earl was a short man, with powerful limbs from a lifetime of riding horses and wielding swords. His titular beard was thick and well groomed and hung to the middle of his sternum. After looking Roran over, the earl had said, “Lady Nasuada has told me great things about you, my boy, and I have heard much else from the stories my men tell, rumors, gossip, hearsay, and the like. You know how it is. No doubt, you have accomplished notable feats; bearding the Ra’zac in their own den, for example, now there was a tricky piece of work. Of course, you had your cousin to help you, didn’t you, hmm?… You may be accustomed to having your way with the people from your village, but you are part of the Varden now, my boy. More specifically, you are one of my warriors. We are not your family. We are not your neighbors. We are not even necessarily your friends. Our duty is to carry out Nasuada’s orders, and carry them out we will, no matter how any one of us might feel about it. While you serve under me, you will do what I tell you, when I tell you, and how I tell you, or I swear upon the bones of my blessed mother—may she rest in peace—I will personally whip the skin off your back, no matter to whom you may be related. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Very good. If you behave yourself and show you have some common sense, and if you can manage to stay alive, it is possible for a man of determination to advance quickly among the Varden. Whether you do or not, however, depends entirely on if I deem you fit to command men of your own. But don’t you believe, not for one moment, not one blasted moment, that you can flatter me into a good opinion of you. I don’t care whether you like or hate me. My only concern is whether you can do what needs to be done.”
“I understand perfectly, sir!”
“Yes, well, maybe you do at that, Stronghammer. We shall know soon enough. Leave and report to Ulhart, my right-hand man.”
Roran swallowed the last of his bread and washed it down with a swig of wine from the skin he carried. He wished they could have had a hot dinner that night, but they were deep in the Empire’s territory, and soldiers might have spotted a fire. With a sigh, he stretched out his legs. His knees were sore from riding Snowfire from dusk until dawn for the past three days.
In the back of his mind, Roran felt a faint but constant pressure, a mental itch that, night or day, pointed him in the same direction: the direction of Katrina. The source of the sensation was the ring Eragon had given him, and it was a comfort to Roran knowing that, because of it, he and Katrina could find each other anywhere in Alagaësia, even if they were both blind and deaf.
Beside him, he heard Carn muttering phrases in the ancient language, and he smiled. Carn was their spellcaster, sent to ensure that an enemy magician could not kill them all with a wave of his hand. From some of the other men, Roran had gathered that Carn was not a particularly strong magician—he struggled to cast every spell—but that he compensated for his weakness by inventing extraordinarily clever spells and by excelling at worming his way into his opponents’ minds. Carn was thin of face and thin of body, with drooping eyes and a nervous, excitable air. Roran had taken an immediate liking to him.
Across from Roran, two of the men, Halmar and Ferth, were sitting in front of their tent, and Halmar was telling Ferth, “… so when the soldiers came for him, he pulled all his men inside his estate and set fire to the pools of oil his servants had poured earlier, trapping the soldiers and making it appear to those who came later as if the whole lot of them had burned to death. Can you believe it? Five hundred soldiers he killed at one go, without even drawing a blade!”
“How did he escape?” Ferth asked.
“Redbeard’s grandfather was a cunning bastard, he was. He had a tunnel dug all the way from the family hall to the nearest river. With it, Redbeard was able to get his family and all their servants out alive. He took them to Surda then, where King Larkin sheltered them. It was quite a number of years before Galbatorix learned they were still alive. We’re lucky to be under Redbeard, to be sure. He’s lost only two battles, and those because of magic.”
Halmar fell silent as Ulhart stepped into the middle of the row of sixteen tents. The grim-faced veteran stood with his legs spread, immovable as a deep-rooted oak tree, and surveyed the tents, checking that everyone was present. He said, “Sun’s down, get to sleep. We ride out two hours before first light. Convoy should be seven miles northwest of us. Make good time, we strike just as they start moving. Kill everyone, burn everything, an’ we go back. You know how it goes. Stronghammer, you ride with me. Mess up, an’ I’ll gut you with a dull fishhook.” The men chuckled. “Right, get to sleep.”
Wind whipped Roran’s face. The thunder of pulsing blood filled his ears, drowning out every other sound. Snowfire surged between his legs, galloping. Roran’s vision had narrowed; he sa
w nothing but the two soldiers sitting on brown mares next to the second-to-last wagon of the supply train.
Raising his hammer overhead, Roran howled with all his might.
The two soldiers started and fumbled with their weapons and shields. One of them dropped his spear and bent to recover it.
Pulling on Snowfire’s reins to slow him, Roran stood upright in his stirrups and, drawing abreast of the first soldier, struck him on the shoulder, splitting his mail hauberk. The man screamed, his arm going limp. Roran finished him off with a backhand blow.
The other soldier had retrieved his spear, and he jabbed at Roran, aiming at his neck. Roran ducked behind his round shield, the spear jarring him each time it buried itself in the wood. He pressed his legs against Snowfire’s sides, and the stallion reared, neighing and pawing at the air with iron-shod hooves. One hoof caught the soldier in the chest, tearing his red tunic. As Snowfire dropped to all fours again, Roran swung his hammer sideways and crushed the man’s throat.
Leaving the soldier thrashing on the ground, Roran spurred Snowfire toward the next wagon in the convoy, where Ulhart was battling three soldiers of his own. Four oxen pulled each wagon, and as Snowfire passed the wagon Roran had just captured, the lead ox tossed his head, and the tip of his left horn caught Roran in the lower part of his right leg. Roran gasped. He felt as if a red-hot iron had been laid against his shin. He glanced down and saw a flap of his boot hanging loose, along with a layer of his skin and muscle.