John Flanagan: Halts peril

'The cathedral?' Halt said sardonically. 'Are you getting carried away with Tennyson's religious fervour, Will?'

Will grinned. 'It seemed like a good name for it, Halt. It's easily the size of a small cathedral. I can call it the Great Hall if you'd rather,' he added. Halt didn't answer. Will hadn't expected him to.

'And how many people in all?' Halt asked.

'Counting twenty of Tennyson's white robes…'

'His white robes? Who are they?' Malcolm interrupted.

'They're his bully boys and collectors,' Will explained. 'His henchmen, if you like, the ones who are in on the secret.' Malcolm signalled his understanding and indicated for Will to proceed. 'Counting them, there's close to one hundred and twenty, I'd say. Plus there's obviously one of the bandit gangs operating in the area.'

Halt chewed on a twig for a few seconds. 'The outlaws can wait,' he said. 'Our first priority is to discredit Tennyson in front of these new converts, then take care of him and his henchmen.'

'How do you propose doing that?' Malcolm asked. He looked at the three determined faces before him. Only three of them. And Will had said there were at least twenty of Tennyson's henchmen still with him.

'There will probably be violence involved,' Halt said, with deceptive mildness in his voice.

'Three against twenty?' Malcolm queried, pushing the matter.

Halt shrugged. 'Few, if any, of those twenty will be trained warriors. They'll mostly be thugs, used to killing from behind and terrorising unarmed farmers. It's amazing how those people melt away when they face people who know one end of a weapon from the other.'

Malcolm wasn't completely convinced. But then, he thought, he'd seen Will and Horace in action at the storming of Castle Macindaw, where the two of them had forced their way to the top of the walls and held out against the garrison until their own men could scale the ladders and join them. Maybe they could handle twenty roughnecks.

Horace, watching him, saw the doubt in his eyes. 'There's an old saying, Malcolm,' he said. 'One riot, one Ranger. Do you understand?'

'I assume it means that in the event of a riot or disturbance, all it takes is one Ranger to restore order?' Malcolm said.

Horace nodded. 'Exactly. Well, looking around, I see we have twice as many Rangers as we need here. So I imagine I'll be able to have a little holiday while they take care of matters.'

Halt and Will both snorted disdainfully and he smiled at them. 'I'll be happy to sit back and watch you both do all the work,' he added.

'In other words, it'll be business as usual?' Will asked.

Horace looked a little hurt. He'd left himself open for that, he realised. Then he became more serious.

'Halt, I've been thinking…' He paused, looking expectantly at the two Rangers. 'Aren't you going to say always a dangerous thing?' he asked.

Halt and Will exchanged a glance, then shook their heads. 'No. You're expecting it. There's no fun in it when you're expecting it,' Will told him.

Horace shrugged, disappointed. He'd had a snappy comeback ready for them. Now he'd have to save it for another time.

'Oh, well, anyway, it occurred to me that you want to discredit Tennyson, not just take him prisoner and march him off to Castle Araluen?'

Halt nodded. 'That's important. We have to destroy his myth. What do you have in mind?'

'Well, I thought it might help if he was confronted by the shade of King Ferris.'

Halt considered the idea. Tennyson had never realised that on the first occasion when 'Ferris' had challenged and defied him, he was actually facing Halt, disguised as his twin brother. And on other occasions when he had seen the Ranger, his features had been obscured by the deep cowl he wore.

'Not a bad idea, Horace,' he said. 'Tennyson deals in hocus-pocus and trickery. If we serve up some of the same, it might throw him off balance. And he might just be surprised into some sort of damning admission.'

He fingered his beard, which had grown back in the weeks that had passed since Horace had shaved it to resemble his twin's.

'Pity,' he said. 'I was just getting used to having my beard back in its usual condition.'

'Scruffy,' Will said, before he could stop himself. Halt turned a withering gaze on him.

'I prefer to think "luxuriant",' he said, with considerable dignity.

Will hurried to agree. 'Of course. That was the word I was looking for. I don't know why I ever said scruffy.'

And he managed to say it with such a straight face that Halt couldn't help knowing that, inside, Will was holding his sides with laughter. Forty-seven The following day, before they broke camp and set out, Malcolm insisted on giving Halt a complete physical examination.

'Let's make sure you're up to all this exertion,' he said. 'Take off your shirt and sit down here.' He indicated a fallen log that was close to the fireplace.

'Of course I'm up to it,' Halt told him briskly. But then he realised he'd met his match when it came to stubbornness. The healer stepped back and drew himself to his full height. Since he was a little shorter than Halt, who wasn't the tallest person in the Kingdom, this, of itself, didn't amount to a great deal. But his air of authority added immensely to his stature.

'Look here,' he said severely, 'your former apprentice dragged me across league after league of wild country, on a half-mad horse in the middle of the night, to come here and save your miserable, ungrateful hide. Which I did, without complaint or hesitation.

'Now I intend to finish the job I started – and not let you finish the job the Genovesan started. So I intend to give you a complete check-over now to make sure you're fit again – and up to the relatively minor task of confronting a hundred-odd enemies with just two people to back you up. Is that perfectly all right with you?'

When he put it that way, Halt had to admit that he had a point. And he knew he owed the bird-like man his life. But still, it went against the grain for Halt to submit meekly to anyone's orders – as King Duncan had discovered on several occasions. He threw out one last challenge.

'And if it's not all right with me?' he said belligerently. But Malcolm matched his attitude, stepping forward so that his face was only a few centimetres from the Ranger's.

'Then I'll ask Will to report the fact to this Lady Pauline I've heard so much about,' he said. He was rewarded by a quick flicker of doubt in Halt's eyes.

'And I'll do it,' Will called from the other side of the camp site, where he had been sitting quietly for several minutes enjoying the clash of wills between these two stubborn men.

'Well, I suppose you might as well…' Halt said, and, stripping off his shirt, he straddled the log. Malcolm began his examination, peering into his throat and eyes and ears, tapping him on the inside of the elbows with a soft wood mallet, placing a hollow tube with a bell-shaped end against his back and chest and putting his ear to the other end.

'What's that for?' Horace asked. He had moved closer as Malcolm went to work and now he stood a few paces away, watching with interest, in spite of Halt's growing irritation.

'It's none of your business,' the Ranger growled warningly. But Horace was not to be deterred.

'What can you hear?' he asked Malcolm. The healer hid a smile as he answered. 'His heart and lungs.'

Horace made a small moue of interest. 'Really? What do they sound like?'

'It's none of his business what my heart and lungs sound like,' Halt began.

But Malcolm was already beckoning Horace forward. 'Have a listen for yourself.'

Halt reflected how difficult it was to retain dignity and authority when someone else was poking and probing and tapping and you were sitting, half dressed, on a log. He glared at Horace but the young warrior ignored him. Stepping forward eagerly, Horace held the end of the tube in his ear, bending to put the large end against Halt's back. His eyes widened as he listened.