John Flanagan - Oakleaf bearers

"So what are they doing here?" Horace asked, and Halt regarded him gravely, gnawing at his lower lip as he considered a possible answer.

"That's the question, isn't it?" he asked. "Perhaps we should follow this smaller group and see what we can find out. At least as long as they're heading in the direction we want to go."

And slinging his bow over his left shoulder, he walked to where Abelard stood patiently, reins trailing loosely on the ground. Horace hurried after him, swinging up astride the black battlehorse he had been riding to impress the border guards. All at once, the finery that he had donned to play the role of a Gallican courier seemed a little incongruous. He nudged the black with his heel and set out after Halt.

The other two horses followed, the battlehorse on its lead rein, and Tug trotting quietly along without any need for urging or direction.

Halt leaned down from the saddle, studying the ground.

"Look who's back," he said, indicating a trail in the snow. Horace nudged his horse closer and peered at the ground. To him there was nothing evident, other than a confusion of hoofprints, rapidly losing definition in the soft, wet snow.

"What is it?" he asked finally.

Halt replied without looking up from the track. "The single rider who went off on his own has come back."

Some way back, the trail had split, with one rider leaving the group and heading deeper into Skandia, while the main party had circled to the north, maintaining the same distance from the border. Now, apparently, that single rider had rejoined the group.

"Well, that makes it easier. Now we don't have to worry about his coming up behind us while we're trailing the others," Halt said. He started Abelard forward, then stopped, his eyes slitted in concentration.

"That's odd," he said, and slid down from the saddle to crouch on one knee in the snow. He studied the ground closely, then peered back in the direction from which the single rider had rejoined the group. He grunted, then straightened up, dusting wet snow from his knees.

"What is it?" Horace asked. Halt screwed his face into a grimace. He wasn't totally sure of what he was seeing, and that bothered him. He didn't like uncertainties in situations like this.

"The single rider didn't rejoin the group here. They went this way at least a day before he did," he eventually said. Horace shrugged. There was a logical reason for that, he thought.

"So he was heading after them to a rendezvous," he suggested. Halt nodded agreement.

"More than likely. They're obviously a reconnaissance group and he may have gone scouting by himself. The question is, who followed him when he came back?"

That raised Horace's eyebrows. "Someone followed him?" he asked. Halt let go a deep breath in frustration.

"Can't be sure," he said briefly. "But it looks that way. The snow's melting quickly and the tracks aren't totally clear. It's easy enough to read the horse's tracks, but this new player is on foot:if he's really there," he added uncertainly.

"So:," Horace began. "What should we do?"

Halt came to a decision. "We'll follow them," he said, mounting once more. "I won't sleep comfortably until I find out what's going on here. I don't like puzzles."

The puzzle deepened an hour later when Tug, following quietly behind the two riders, suddenly threw back his head and let go a loud whinny. It was so unexpected that both Halt and Horace spun in their saddles and stared at the little horse in amazement. Tug whinnied again, a long, rising tone that had a note of anxiety in it. Horace's spare battlehorse jerked at its lead rope and whinnied in alarm as well. Horace was able to quell an incipient response from the black that he was riding, while Abelard, naturally, remained still.

Angrily, Halt made the Ranger hand signal for silence and Tug's whinny cut off in midnote. The others gradually quieted as well.

But Tug continued to stand in the trail, forelegs braced wide apart, head up and nostrils flaring as he sniffed the frigid air around them. His body trembled. He was on the brink of giving vent to another of those anguished cries and only the discipline and superb training of all Ranger horses was preventing him from doing so.

"What the devil:," Halt began, then, sliding down from the saddle, he moved quietly back to the distressed horse, patting Tug's neck gently.

"Hush now, boy," he murmured. "Settle now. What's the trouble with you then?"

The quiet voice and the gentle hands seemed to soothe the little horse. He put his head down and rubbed his forehead against Halt's chest. The Ranger gently fondled the little horse's ears, still speaking to him in a soft croon.

"There you are:if only you could talk, eh? You know something. You sense something, isn't that right?"

Horace watched curiously as the trembling gradually eased. But he noticed the little horse's ears were still pricked and alert. He might have been quieted, but he wasn't at ease, the apprentice realized.

"I've never seen a Ranger horse behave like that before," he said softly, and Halt looked up at him, his eyes troubled.

"Neither have I," he admitted. "That's what has me worried."

Horace studied Tug carefully. "He seems to have calmed down a little now," he ventured, and Halt laid a hand across the horse's flank.

"He's still taut as a bowstring, but I think we can keep going. There's only an hour or so till dark and I want to see where our friends are camped for the night."

D EEP IN THE SHELTER OF THE PINE TREE, WRAPPED IN THE inadequate warmth of the two blankets, Will spent a fitful night, dozing for short periods, then being woken by the cold and his racing thoughts.

Foremost in his mind was his sense of utter inadequacy. Faced with the need to rescue Evanlyn from her captors, he had absolutely no idea how he might accomplish the task. They were six men, well armed and capable-looking. He was a boy, armed only with a small hunting bow and a short dagger. His arrows were good only for small game-with points made by hardening the end of the wood in a fire and then sharpening them. They were nothing like the razor-sharp broadheads that he had carried in his quiver as an apprentice Ranger. "A Ranger wears the lives of two dozen men on his belt," went the old Araluen saying.

He racked his brain again and again throughout the long periods of sleeplessness. He thought bitterly that he was supposed to have a reputation as a thinker and a planner. He felt that he was letting Evanlyn down with his inability to come up with an idea. And letting down others too. In his mind's eye, half asleep and dozing, he saw Halt's bearded face, smiling at him and urging him to come up with a plan. Then the smile would fade, first to a look of anger, then, finally, of disappointment. He thought of Horace, his companion on the journey through Celtica to Morgarath's bridge. The heavily built warrior apprentice had always been content to let Will do the thinking for the two of them. Will sighed unhappily as he thought how misplaced that trust had become. Perhaps it was an aftereffect of the warmweed to which he had been addicted. Perhaps the drug rotted a user's brain, making him incapable of original thought.

Time and again through that unhappy night, he asked himself the question, "What would Halt do?" But the device, so useful in the past for providing an answer to his problems, was ineffectual. He heard no answering voice deep within his subconscious, bringing him counsel and advice.

The truth was, of course, that given the situation and the circumstance, there was no practical action that Will could take. Virtually unarmed, outnumbered, on unfamiliar ground and sadly out of condition, all he could do would be to keep watching the strangers' encampment and hope for some change in the circumstances, some eventuality that might provide him with an opportunity to reach Evanlyn and get her away into the trees.