For what seemed a long while we went on ahead. A weight hung in the heart of every man of the small company. A sparrow could have frightened them. I was as weary of it all as I could be. Now and again I glanced at Charles who was tied to the horse on the opposite side of me. He did not speak, but by the look and nod he gave me, he stirred hope and courage in my breast and led me to believe that the worst of our journey had passed. In a quarter of an hour we saw before us a sharp bend in the road. The words of the Dwarf still rang in our ears. The captain drew his sword and bade each of his archers to make ready his bow. The horses were lined up three abreast and in straight array. If we were about to enter on a field of battle the men could have been scarcely more carefully arranged. The captain hardened his jaws. With a glint of determination in his eyes he urged his horse forward. We slowly entered the turn in the road. We made the bend. At any moment I expected to see an arrow come singing through the air and a man drop. In spite of myself my heart began to flutter like a bird’s. The soreness in my foot died out and the fact that I was a prisoner on my way to my doom faded from my mind like a passing cloud, for in one word the tenseness of the situation stirred every fibre and I was excited. But the fall of the horses’ hoofs was all that broke the silence. With a grimness that surprised me the captain held doggedly on his way. He looked neither to the right or left but held his head high. In the face of what we all expected it was his courage that gave strength to his men and pulled them through. We passed the bend in the road with no sign of the Dwarf or his deadly missiles. As far as we could see there was nothing ahead of us but a straight line. I looked along it in the hope that I would see some object or other that would give us hope. My eye rested on a speck. It was small and far away and black. It came nearer little by little. The captain and the men noticed it too and kept their gaze upon it steadily. The rays of the sun glinted upon it for a second and then I was able to see that it was a man on horseback, fully equipped with armor that shone and glittered in its newness. The closer he came the more of the details we could distinguish. He had on his head a casque with the closed visor concealing his face, and gauntlets on his hands that were of the same blackness as his armour. He was quite small and rode with an ease that assured us of long years spent in the saddle. As for weapons he carried no spear or lance like most knights on their way to tournament or field of battle, but only a sword that hung from his belt in a scrolled scabbard and a mace of tough wood with the knots pointed with steel, that dangled loosely at his side. He kept to the middle of the road. Not once did he urge his horse nor swerve to the right or the left. When he was finally abreast of us, he let the reins fall on the horse’s neck.