"I don't quite follow you, Fulrach," Anheg said.

"Instead of letting Sir Mandorallen annihilate these thousand Murgos all by himself, why not select a contingent from each part of the army to deal with them? Not only will that give us some experience in tactical coordination, but it'll give all the men a sense of pride. An easy victory now will stiffen their backs when we run into more difficult times later."

"Fulrach, sometimes you positively amaze me," Rhodar declared. "I think the whole trouble is that you don't look that clever."

The contingents that were to turn south to meet the approaching Murgos were selected by lot, once again at the suggestion of King Fulrach. "That way there'll be no suspicion in the army that this is some kind of elite force," he noted.

While the rest of the column pushed on toward the headwaters of the River Mardu, the miniature army under the command of Barak, Hettar, and Mandorallen veered to the south to intercept the enemy spearhead.

"They'll be all right, won't they?" Ce'Nedra nervously asked Polgara as she watched them growing smaller and smaller as they rode off across the arid valley toward the solid line of mountains to the south.

"I'm certain they will, dear," Polgara replied confidently.

The princess, however, did not sleep that night. For the first time, members of her army were committed to a real battle, and she tossed and turned the entire night, imagining all manner of disasters.

About midmorning of the following day, however, the special force returned. There were a few bandages here and there and perhaps a dozen empty saddles, but the look of victory shone on every face.

"Very nice little fight," Barak reported. The huge man was grinning broadly. "We caught them just before sundown. They never knew what hit them."

General Varana, who had accompanied the force to observe, was a bit more precise as he described the engagement to the assembled kings.

"The general tactics did work pretty much as we'd planned," he said. "The Asturian archers swept the column with an arrow storm to begin with, and then the infantry units moved into position at the top of a long slope. We interspersed legionnaires, Drasnian pikemen, Sendars and the Arendish serf units evenly along the entire front with the archers behind them to continue harassing the enemy with arrows. As we expected, the Murgos charged. As soon as they'd committed themselves, the Chereks and Rivans moved into position behind them, and the Algars began slashing their flanks. When the Murgo assault began to falter, the Mimbrate knights made their charge."