"The air was already moving. Dead-calm air is altogether different. Do you have the remotest idea of how much air you've got to move to stir even the faintest breath of air? Do you know what kind of pressures are involved - how much all that air weighs?"

"Air doesn't weigh anything," Ce'Nedra protested.

"Really?" Beldin replied with heavy sarcasm. "I'm so glad you told me. Would the two of you shut up and let me get my breath?"

"But how is it that she collapsed and you didn't?" Ce'Nedra protested.

"I'm stronger than she is," Beldin replied, "and more vicious. Pol throws her whole heart into things when she gets excited. She always did. She pushed beyond her strength, and it exhausted her." The twisted little man straightened, shook himself like a dog coming out of water and looked around, his face bleak. "I've got work to do," he said. "I think we've pretty much worn out the Mallorean Grolims, but I'd better keep an eye on them, just to be safe. You two stay here with Pol - and keep an eye on that child." He pointed at Errand, who stood on the sandy beach with his small face very serious.

Then Beldin crouched, shimmering already into the form of a hawk, and launched himself into the air almost before his feathers were fully formed.

Ce'Nedra stared after him as he spiraled upward over the battlefield and then turned her attention back to the unconscious Polgara.

The charge of Korodullin's Mimbrate knights came at the last possible moment. Like two great scythes, the armored men on their massive chargers sliced in at a thundering gallop from the flanks with their lances leveled and cut through the horde of Murgos rushing toward the waiting pikemen and legionnaires. The results were devastating. The air was filled with screams and the sounds of steel striking steel with stunning impact. In the wake of the charge lay a path of slaughtered Murgos, a trail of human wreckage a hundred yards wide.

King Cho-Hag, sitting on his horse on a hilltop some distance to the west, nodded his approval as he watched the carnage. "Good," he said finally. He looked around at the eager faces of the Algar clansmen clustered around him. "All right, my children," he said calmly, "let's go cut up the Murgo reserves." And he led them at a gallop as they poured down off the hill, smoothly swung around the outer flanks of the tightly packed assault forces and then slashed into the unprepared Murgo units bringing up the rear.