Every minute I expected to feel a knife-thrust in my back.

I thought of digging my heels into the horse's sides and trying to gallop off anywhere, but abandoned the idea, first because I could not desert Marut, of whom I had lost touch in the gloom, and secondly because I was hemmed in by the escort.

For the same reason I did not try to slip from the horse and glide away into the forest.

There was nothing to be done save to go on and await the end.
It came at last some hours later.

We were out of the forest now, and there was the moon rising, past her full but still very bright.