"Then we'll do it the other way. I've got to get to Zedar before he crosses into Cthol Murgos. If too many things get in my way, I'll have to be more direct."

"You should have done that from the beginning, father. Sometimes you're too delicate about things."

"Are you going to start that again? That's always your answer to everything, Polgara. You're forever fixing things that would fix themselves if you'd just leave them alone, and changing things when they don't have to be changed."

"Don't be cross, father. Help me down."

"Why not fly down?" he suggested.

"Don't be absurd."

Garion slipped away among the mossy trees, trembling violently as he went.

When Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf returned to the clearing, they roused the others. "I think we'd better move on," Wolf told them. "We're a little vulnerable out here. It's safer on the highway, and I'd like to get past this particular stretch of woods."

The dismantling of their night's encampment took less than an hour, and they started back along the woodcutter's track toward the Great West Road. Though it was still some hours before dawn, the moonbathed fog filled the night with misty luminosity, and it seemed almost as if they rode through a shining cloud that had settled among the dark trees. They reached the highway and turned south again.

"I'd like to be a good way from here when the sun comes up," Wolf said quietly, "but we don't want to blunder into anything, so keep your eyes and ears open."

They set off at a canter and had covered a good three leagues by the time the fog had begun to turn a pearly gray with the approach of morning. As they rounded a broad curve, Hettar suddenly raised his arm, signaling for a halt.

"What's wrong?" Barak asked him.

"Horses ahead," Hettar replied. "Coming this way."

"Are you sure? I don't hear anything."

"Forty at least," Hettar answered firmly.

"There," Durnik said, his head cocked to one side. "Hear that?"

Faintly they all heard a jingling clatter some distance off in the fog. "We could hide in the woods until they've passed," Lelldorin suggested.

"It's better to stay on the road," Wolf replied.

"Let me handle it," Silk said confidently, moving into the lead. "I've done this sort of thing before." They proceeded at a careful walk.

The riders who emerged from the fog were encased in steel. They wore full suits of polished armor and round helmets with pointed visors that made them look strangely like huge insects. They earned long lances with colored pennons at their tips, and their horses were massive beasts, also encased in armor.

"Mimbrate knights," Lelldorin snarled, his eyes going flat.

"Keep your feelings to yourself," Wolf told the young man. "If any of them say anything to you, answer in such a way that they'll think you're a Mimbrate sympathizer - like young Berentain back at your uncle's house."

Lelldorin's face hardened.