I suppose that I’m the one who was ultimately responsible for the royal house of the Alorns. By general consensus, my brothers and I had continued to serve as liaisons between the various races, and we more or less automatically assumed responsibility for the people of whichever God we had personally invited to that conference in the Vale after Torak stole the Orb. I think that my entire life has been shaped by the fact that I had the misfortune to be saddled with the Alorns.
Our preparations for war took several years. The assorted histories of the period tend to gloss over that fact. There were border clashes with the Angaraks, of course, but no really significant battles. Finally the Gods decided that their people were ready – if anybody in those days could actually be called ready for war. The war against the Angaraks was like no other war in human history in that our deployment involved a general migration of the various races. The Gods were so intimately involved with their people in those days that the notion of leaving the women and children and old people behind while the men went off to fight simply didn’t occur to them.
Mara and Issa took their Marags and Nyissans and started their trek southeasterly into the lands of the Dals, even as the Tolnedrans and Arends began their swing toward the west. The Alorns, however, didn’t move. It was perhaps the only time I ever saw my Master truly vexed about anything. He instructed me with uncharacteristic bluntness to go north and find out what was holding them up.
So I went north again, and, as always by now, I didn’t go alone. I don’t know that we’d ever actually discussed it, but the young she-wolf had sort of expropriated me. Since she was along, I once again chose the shape of a wolf for the journey. She approved of that, I suppose. She was never totally satisfied with my real form, and she seemed much happier with me when I had four feet and a tail.
We found out what was holding up the Alorns almost before we reached the lands of the Bear-God. Would you believe that they were already fighting – with each other?
Alorn society – such as it was in those days – was clannish, and the bickering was over which clan-chief was going to take command of the entire army. The other Gods had encountered similar problems and had simply overruled the urges toward supremacy of the various factions and selected one leader to run things. Belar, however, wouldn’t do that. ‘I’m sure you can see my position, Belgarath,’ he said to me, when I finally found him. He said it just a little defensively, I thought.
I took a very deep breath, suppressing my urge to scream at him. ‘No, my Lord,’ I said in as mild a tone as I could manage. ‘Actually, I don’t.’
‘If I select one clan-chief over the others, it might be construed as favoritism, don’t you see? They’re simply going to have to settle it for themselves.’
‘The other races are already on the march, my Lord,’ I reminded him as patiently as I could.
‘We’ll be along, Belgarath,’ he assured me, ‘eventually.’
By then I knew Alorns well enough to realize that Belar’s ‘eventually’ would quite probably stretch out for several centuries.
The she-wolf at my side dropped to her haunches with her tongue lolling out. Her laughter didn’t improve my temper very much, I’ll confess.
‘Would you be open to a suggestion, my Lord?’ I asked the Bear-God in a civil tone.
‘Why, certainly, Belgarath,’ he replied. ‘To be honest with you, I’ve been racking my brains searching for a solution to this problem. I’d hate to disappoint my brothers, and I really don’t want to miss the war entirely.’
‘It wouldn’t be the same without you, my Lord,’ I assured him. ‘Now, as for your problem. Why don’t you just call all your clan-chiefs together and have them draw lots to decide which of them will be the leader of the Alorns?’
‘You mean just leave it all in the hands of pure chance?’
‘It is a solution, my Lord, and if you and I both promise not to tamper in any way, your clan-chiefs won’t have any cause for complaint, will they? They’ll all have an equal chance at the position, and if you order them to abide by the way the lot falls, it should put an end to all this …’ I choked back the word ‘foolishness.’
‘My people do like to gamble,’ he conceded. ‘Did you know that we invented dice?’
‘No,’ I said blandly. ‘I didn’t know that.’ To my own certain knowledge, every other race made exactly the same claim. ‘Why don’t we summon your clan-chiefs, my Lord? You can explain the contest – and the rules – to them, and we can get on with it. We certainly wouldn’t want to keep Torak waiting, would we? He’ll miss you terribly if you’re not there when the fighting starts.’
He grinned at me. As I’ve said before, Belar has his faults, but he was a likeable young God. ‘Oh, by the way, my Lord,’ I added, trying to make it sound like an afterthought, ‘if it’s all right with you, I’ll march south with your people.’ Somebody had to keep an eye on the Alorns.
‘Certainly, Belgarath,’ he replied. ‘Glad to have you.’
And so the Alorn clan-chiefs drew lots, and regardless of what Polgara may think, I did not tamper with the outcome. In my view, one clan-chief was almost the same as any other, and I really didn’t care who won – just as long as somebody did. As luck had it, the clan-chief who won was Chaggat, the ultimate great-grandfather of Cherek Bear-shoulders, the greatest king the Alorns have ever had. Isn’t it odd how those things turn out? I’ve since discovered that while I didn’t tamper and neither did Belar, something else did. The talkative friend Garion carries around in his head took a hand in the game. He was the one who selected Cherek’s ancestor to be the first King of the Alorns. But I’m getting ahead of myself – or had you noticed that?
Once the question of leadership had been settled, the Alorns started moving in a surprisingly short period of time – although it’s not all that surprising, if you stop and think about it. The Alorns of that era were semi-nomadic in the first place, so they were always ready to move on – largely, I think, because of their deep-seated aversion to orderliness. Prehistoric Alorns kept messy camps, and they found the idea of moving on to be far more appealing than the prospect of tidying up.
Anyway, we marched south, passing through the now-deserted lands of the Arends and the Tolnedrans. It was about midsummer when we reached the country formerly occupied by the Nyissans. We began to exercise a certain amount of caution at that point. We were getting fairly close to the northern frontier of the Angaraks, and it wasn’t very long before we began to encounter small, roving bands of the Children of Torak.
Alorns have their faults – lots of them – but they are good in a fight. It was there on the Angarak border that I first saw an Alorn berserker. He was a huge fellow with a bright red beard, as I recall. I’ve always meant to find out if he might have been a distant ancestor of Barak, Earl of Trellheim. He looked a lot like Barak, so there probably was some connection. At any rate, he outran his fellows and fell single-handedly on a group of about a dozen Angaraks. I considered the odds against him and started to look around for a suitable grave-site. As it turned out, however, it was the Angaraks who needed burying after he finished with them. Shrieking with maniacal laughter and actually frothing at the mouth, he annihilated the whole group. He even chased down and butchered the two or three who tried to run away. The children of the Bear-God, of course, stood there and cheered.
Alorns!
The frothing at the mouth definitely concerned my companion, though. It took me quite some time to persuade her that the red-bearded berserker wasn’t really rabid. Wolves, quite naturally, try to avoid rabid creatures, and my little friend was right on the verge of washing her paws of the lot of us.
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