She shook her head. "I think I'm too close to the Orb, father. I keep getting an echo that blots things out more than a mile or so away."

"It always has been noisy," he grunted sourly.

"Talk to it, father," she suggested. "Maybe it will listen to you."

He gave her a long, hard look - a look she returned quite calmly. "I can do without that, miss," he told her finally in a crisp voice.

There was another low rumble, from the south this time. "Thunder?" Silk said, looking a bit puzzled. "Isn't this an odd time of year for it?"

"This plain breeds peculiar weather," Belgarath said. "There isn't anything between here and Drasnia but eight hundred leagues of grass."

"Do we try for the Vale then?" Barak asked.

"It looks as if we'll have to," the old man replied.

Durnik came back down the hill. "They're coming across the river," he reported, "but they aren't spreading out yet. It looks as if they want to get more men across before they start looking for us."

"How hard can we push the horses without hurting them?" Silk asked him.

"Not very," Durnik replied. "It would be better to save them until we absolutely have to use up whatever they've got left. If we walk and lead them for an hour or so, we might be able to get a canter out of them - for short periods of time."

"Let's go along the back side of the crest," Belgarath said, picking up the reins of his horse. "We'll stay pretty much out of sight that way, but I want to keep an eye on Taur Urgas." He led them at an angle back up out of the swale.

The clouds had broken even more now, and the tatters raced in the endless winds that swept the vast grassland. To the east, the sky was turning a pale pink. Although the Algarian plain did not have that bitter, arid chill that had cut at them in the uplands of Cthol Murgos and Mishrak ac Thull, it was still very cold. Garion shivered, drew his cloak in tight about him, and kept walking, trailing his weary horse behind him.

There was another brief rumble, and the little boy, perched in the saddle of Aunt Pol's horse laughed. "Errand," he announced.

"I wish he'd stop that," Silk said irritably.

They glanced from time to time over the crest of the long hill as they walked. Below, in the broad valley of the Aldur River, the Murgos of Taur Urgas were fording in larger and larger groups. It appeared that fully half his army had reached the west bank by now, and the red and black standard of the king of the Murgos stood planted defiantly on Algarian soil.

"If he brings too many more men down the escarpment, it's going to take something pretty significant to dislodge him," Barak rumbled, scowling down at the Murgos.