She bit her lip. “That’s unfair, Kheldar.”
“Life is hard, Porenn.”
“He’s right, your Majesty,” Javelin said. “General Haldar has already committed treason by disobeying you. I don’t think he’d hesitate to add your murder to that crime.”
“We’re going to need some men,” Barak rumbled, “A few anyway. Otherwise we’re going to have to stop and wait for Brendig.”
Silk shook his head. “Haldar ‘s camped at the shallows. If what we suspect is true, he can keep Brendig from ever disembarking his troops.”
“Well,” Ce’Nedra demanded angrily, “what do we do now?”
“I don’t think we’ve got much choice,” Barak said. “We’ll have to turn around and go back to the shallows and arrest Haldar for treason. Then we turn around and come back with the pikemen.”
“That could take almost a week,” she protested.
“What other alternatives do we have? We have to have those pikemen.”
“I think you’re overlooking something, Barak,” Silk said, “Have you noticed a slight chill in the air the last two days?”
“A little -in the mornings.”
“We’re in northeastern Drasnia. Winter comes very early up here.”
“Winter? But it’s only early autumn.”
“We’re along way north, my friend. We could get the first snowfall at any time now.”
Barak started to swear.
Silk motioned Javelin aside, and the two of them spoke together briefly.
“It’s all falling apart, isn’t it, Garion?” Ce’Nedra said, her lower lip trembling.
“We’ll fix it, Ce’Nedra,” he said, taking her in his arms.
“But how?”
“I haven’t quite worked that out yet.”
“We’re vulnerable, Garion,” Barak said seriously. “We’re marching directly into cult territory with a vastly inferior force. We’re wide open to ambush.”
“You’ll need somebody to scout on ahead,” Beldin said, looking up from the piece of cold meat he had been tearing with his teeth. He stuffed the rest of the chunk in his mouth and wiped his fingers on the front of his filthy tunic. “I can be fairly unobtrusive if I want to be.”
“I’ll take care of that, uncle,” Polgara told him. “Hettar’s coming north with the Algar clans. Could you go to him and tell him what’s happened? We need him as quickly as he can get here.”
He gave her an appraising look, still chewing on the chunk of meat. “Not a bad idea, Pol,” he admitted. “I thought that married life might have made your wits soft, but it looks as if it’s only your behind that’s getting flabby.”
“Do you mind, uncle?” she asked acidly.
“I’d better get started,” he said. He crouched, spread his arms, and shimmered into the form of a hawk.
“I’ll be away for a few days,” Silk said, coming back to join them. “We might be able to salvage this yet.” Then he turned on his heel and went directly to his horse.
“Where’s he going?” Garion asked Javelin.
“We need men,” Javelin replied. “He’s going after some.”
“Porenn,” Polgara said, trying to look back down over her shoulder, “does it seem to you that I’ve been putting on a few extra pounds in the past months ?”
Porenn smiled gently. “Of course not, Polgara,” she said. “He was only teasing you.”
Polgara, however, still had a slightly worried look on her face as she removed her blue cloak. “I’ll go on ahead,” she told Garion. “Keep your troops moving, but don’t run. I don’t want you to blunder into something before I have a chance to warn you.” Then she blurred, and the great snowy owl drifted away on soft, noiseless wings.
Garion moved his forces carefully after that, deploying them into the best possible defensive posture as they marched. He doubled his scouts and rode personally to the top of every hill along the way to search the terrain ahead.
The pace of their march slowed to be no more than five leagues a day; though the delay fretted him, he felt that he had no real choice in the matter.
Polgara returned each morning to report that no apparent dangers lay ahead and then she flew away again on noiseless wings.
“How does she manage that?” Ce’Nedra asked. “I don’t think she’s sleeping at all.”
“Pol can go for weeks without sleep,” Durnik told her. “She’ll be all right -if it doesn’t go on fortoo long.”
“Belgarion,” Errand said in his light voice, pulling his chestnut stallion in beside Garion’s mount, “you did know that we’re being watched, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“There are men watching us.”
“Where?”
“Several places. They’re awfully well hidden. And there are other men galloping back and forth between that town we’re going to and the army back at the river.”
“I don’t like that very much,” Barak said. “It sounds as if they’re trying to co-ordinate something.”
Garion looked back over his shoulder at Queen Porenn, who rode beside Ce’Nedra. “Would the Drasnian army attack us if Haldar ordered them to?” he asked.
“No,” she said quite finally. “The troops are absolutely loyal to me. They’d refuse that kind of order.”
“What if they thought they were rescuing you?” Errand asked. “Rescuing?”
“That’s what Ulfgar is suggesting,” the young man replied. “The general’s supposed to tell his troops that our army here is holding you prisoner.”
“I think theywould attack under those circumstances, your Majesty.” Javelin said, “and if the cult and the army catch us between them, we could be in very deep trouble.”
“Whatelse can go wrong?” Garion fumed.
“At least it isn’t snowing,” Lelldorin said. “Not yet, anyway.”
The army seemed almost to crawl across the barren landscape as the clouds continued to roll ponderously overhead.
The world seemed locked in a chill, colorless gray, and each morning the scum of ice lying on the stagnant pools was thicker.
“We’re never going to get there at this rate, Garion,” Ce’Nedra said impatiently one gloomy midday as she rode beside him.
“If we get ambushed, we might not get there at all, Ce’Nedra,” he replied. “I don’t like this any more than you do, but I don’t think we’ve really got much choice.”
“I want my baby.”
“So do I.”
“Well, do something then.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“Can’t you-?” She made a vague sort of gesture with one hand.
He shook his head. “You know that there are limits to that sort of thing, Ce’Nedra.”
“What good is it then?” she demanded bitterly, pulling her gray Rivan cloak more tightly about her against the chill.
The great white owl awaited them just over the next rise. She sat on a broken limb of a dead-white snag, observing them with her unblinking golden eyes.
“Lady Polgara,” Ce’Nedra greeted her with a formal inclination of her head.
Gravely the white owl returned her a stiff little bow. Garion suddenly laughed.
The owl blurred, and the air around it wavered briefly. Then Polgara was there, seated sedately on the limb with her ankles crossed. “What’s so amusing, Garion?” she asked him.
“I’ve never seen a bird bow before,” he replied. “It just struck me as funny, that’s all.”
“Try not to let it overwhelm you, dear,” she said primly. “Come over here and help me down.”
“Yes, Aunt Pol.”
After he had helped her to the ground, she looked at him soberly. “There’s a large cult force lying in wait two leagues ahead of you,” she told him.
“How large?”
“Half again as large as yours.”
“We’d better go tell the others,” he said grimly, turning his horse.
“Is there any way we could slip around them?” Durnik asked after Polgara had told them all of the cultists lying in ambush ahead.
“I don’t think so, Durnik,” she replied. “They know we’re here, and I’m sure we’re being watched.”
“We must needs attack them, then,” Mandorallen asserted. “Our cause is just, and we must inevitably prevail.”
“That’s an interesting superstition, Mandorallen,” Barak told him, “but I’d prefer to have the numbers on my side.” The big man turned to Polgara. “How are they deployed? What I mean is-”
“I know what the word means, Barak.” She scraped a patch of ground bare with her foot and picked up a stick.
“This trail we’re following runs through a ravine that cuts through that low range of hills just ahead. At about the deepest part of the ravine, there are several gullies running up the sides. There are four separate groups of cultists, each one hiding in a different gully.” She sketched out the terrain ahead with her stick. “They obviously plan to let us march right into the middle of them and then attack us from all sides at once.”
Durnik was frowning as he studied her sketch. “We could easily defeat any one of those groups,” he suggested, rubbing thoughtfully at one cheek. “All we really need is some way to keep the other three groups out of the fight.”
“That sort of sums it up,” Barak said, “but I don’t think they’ll stay away just because they weren’t invited.”
“No,” the smith agreed, “so we’ll probably have to put up some kind of barrier to prevent their joining in.”