John Flanagan - Halts peril

He listened to the grinding, chomping sound of the three horses as they ate and looked around, a frown on his face. 'Don't know where I'll find firewood.'

Halt regarded him with a slight smile. 'No point in looking,' he said. 'There's none around and we can't have a fire anyway. Once it's dark, even a small fire will be visible for miles and we never know who's watching.'

Horace sighed. Cold food again. And nothing but cold water to wash it down. He was nearly as fond of coffee as the two Rangers.

'Let me know when we start having fun,' he said.

There was a fine rain in the night and they woke under damp blankets. Halt rose, stretched and groaned as his aching muscles nagged at him.

'I really am getting too old for this,' he said. He looked around the low horizon, bounded by scrubby heather and long grass, and saw no sign of anyone watching them. He gestured towards the blackberry bush and said to Will, 'I think we can risk a fire this morning. See if you can cut some dry branches from inside that thicket.'

Will nodded. He'd be grateful for a hot drink to start the day. He crawled into the tangled blackberry bush and swore quietly when a bramble stuck him.

'Mind the brambles,' Halt said.

'Thank you for stating the obvious,' Will told him. But he got to work with his saxe knife and cut a bundle of the thin dry stalks. Halt was right. The thick tangle had kept the rain from penetrating and Will backed out of the tunnel he had cut with a substantial bundle of sticks. None of them would burn for long, but they'd give off little smoke.

'Should be enough to boil the coffee pot,' he said. Halt nodded. They'd eat a cold breakfast again – hard bread and dried fruit and meat. But it would be more palatable with a hot, sweet mug of coffee to wash it down.

A little later, they sat, savouring their second cups.

'Halt,' Will said, 'can I ask you something?'

He saw his old mentor's mouth begin to frame the perennial answer to that question and hurried on before Halt could speak.

'Yes, I know. I just did. But I want to ask you something else, all right?'

A little miffed that Will had forestalled his stock answer, Halt gestured for him to go ahead.

'Where do you think Tennyson is heading?'

'I'd say,' the Ranger answered, after a few seconds' deliberation, 'that he'll be heading south now that he has the chance. Back into Araluen.'

'How do you know that?' Horace asked. He was interested to hear the answer. He was always impressed at the two Rangers' ability to read a situation and come up with the correct answer to a problem. Sometimes, he thought, they almost seemed to have divine guidance.

'I'm guessing,' Halt told him.

Horace was a little disappointed. He'd expected a detailed analysis of the situation. The ghost of a smile showed on Halt's face. He was well aware that Horace occasionally entertained exaggerated ideas of Ranger skills and abilities.

'Sometimes that's all you can do,' Halt said, a note of apology in his voice. Then he decided it might be a good idea to explain his train of thinking. He reached behind him to his saddle bag and took out a leather map case. He spread a map of the northern half of the border country between Araluen and Picta out before him. The two young men positioned themselves either side of him.

'I figure we're about here,' he said, tapping his forefinger on a spot several centimetres in from the coast. Will and Horace could see the Mull of Linkeith marked, and the Craiskill River, which meandered back to the northeast, angling away from the relatively direct eastern path they had been following. Horace leaned forward, peering more closely.

'Where's the path we're on?' he asked. Halt regarded him patiently.

'We don't mark every little footpath and game trail on these maps, you know,' he said. Horace stuck out his bottom lip and shrugged. The action said that he thought such things should be marked. Halt decided to ignore him.

'Tennyson probably wants to head south,' he said. 'And this fork in the trail has been the first opportunity he's had to do it.'

Will scratched his head thoughtfully. 'Why south? You said that last night. What makes you so sure?'

'I'm not sure,' Halt told him. 'But it's a reasonable assumption.'

Horace snorted disparagingly. 'Fancy word for a guess.'

Halt glared at him but Horace made sure he wasn't making eye contact with the Ranger. Halt shook his head and continued.

'We know Tennyson didn't particularly want to come to Picta,' he said. 'O'Malley told us that, remember?'

Understanding was beginning to dawn on Horace's face. His faith in Ranger infallibility was slowly being restored.

'That's right,' he said. 'You asked him and he said Tennyson just wanted to get out of Hibernia.'

'Exactly. And Picta was the place O'Malley was going. So he dropped Tennyson off at the Craiskill River. Now, I'd be willing to bet that the Outsiders don't have any influence in Picta so far…'

'What makes you say that?' Will wanted to know.

'The Scotti aren't particularly tolerant of new religions,' Halt told him. 'And the local brand of intolerance is a little more violent than it is in Araluen. Try to start a new religion in this country and they'll string you up by your thumbs – particularly if you ask them for gold as the price of conversion.'

'Not a bad policy really,' Horace said.

Halt regarded him levelly. 'Exactly. However, it's reasonable to assume there are pockets of influence dotted around the remote parts of Araluen. I'd be surprised if Selsey was the only place they've infiltrated.'

Selsey was the isolated West Coast fishing village where Halt had first discovered the Outsiders' activity.

'And even if that's not the case, he really has no other choice, does he?' Will said. 'He can't stay in Hibernia because he knows we were after him there. He can't stay in Picta…'

'… or they'll string him up by the thumbs,' Horace put in, grinning. He liked the mental image of the overweight, self-important Tennyson strung up by the thumbs.

'So Araluen is the logical choice,' Halt finished. He tapped the map again, indicating a location south of the position he had originally pointed to. 'And this is the closest path through the mountains back into Araluen. One Raven Pass.'

The border between Araluen and Picta was delineated by a range of rugged mountains. They weren't particularly high but they were steep and forbidding and the easiest ways through them were a series of mountain passes.

'One Raven Pass?' Horace repeated. 'Why One Raven?'

'One raven is sorrow,' Will said absently, repeating the old proverb.

Halt nodded. 'That's right. The pass is the site of an old battle many years ago. A Scotti army was ambushed in the pass and wiped out to a man. Legend has it that since then, no bird life will live there. Except for a solitary raven, who appears every year on the anniversary of the battle and whose cries sound like Scotti widows weeping for their men.'

'How many years ago did this happen?' Horace asked. Halt shrugged, as he rolled up the map and replaced it in his map case.

'Oh, three or four hundred years back, I suppose,' he said carelessly.

'And how many years does a raven live?' Horace asked, a small frown furrowing the skin between his eyes. Halt rolled his eyes to heaven, seeing what was coming.

Will tried to step in. 'Horace…'

Horace held up a hand to forestall him.

'I mean, it's not as if it's breeding there and this is its great-great-great-great-grandson raven, is it?' he said. 'After all, it's one raven, and one raven can hardly have great-great-great-grandsons on its own, can it?'

'It's a legend, Horace,' Halt said deliberately. 'It's not meant to be taken literally.'

'Still,' said Horace doggedly, 'why not call it something sensible? Like Battle Pass? Or Ambush Pass?'