Guardians of the West

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 for too 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 they would 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."
    "What else 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