The Burning Bridge

by John Flanagan

  Will nodded. “I understand. Ride safely, Gilan.” The Ranger nodded. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then came to a decision.

  “Will,” he said quietly. “We’re in uncertain times and none of us knows what might be around the corner. It might be a good idea if you told Horace Tug’s code word.”

  Will frowned. The code word was a jealously guarded secret and he was reluctant to let anyone know it, even a trusted comrade like Horace. Seeing his hesitation, Gilan continued.

  “You never know what might happen. You could be injured or incapacitated and without the code word, Horace won’t be able to make Tug obey him. It’s just a precaution,” he added. Will saw the sense in the idea and nodded.

  “I’ll tell him tonight,” he said. “Take care, Gilan.”

  The tall Ranger leaned down and gripped his hand tightly.

  “One other thing. You’re in command here, and the others will take the lead from you. Don’t give them any sign that you’re not sure of yourself. Believe in yourself and they’ll believe in you too.”

  He nudged Blaze with his knee and the bay swung around toward the road. Gilan raised a hand in farewell to Horace and Evanlyn and cantered away. The dust of his passage was quickly dispersed by the keening wind.

  And then Will felt very small. And very alone.

  15

  THEY RODE AS HARD AS THEY COULD THAT NIGHT, HELD BACK somewhat by the docile pace that was all the pack pony could manage. The rain came back during the night to make them more miserable. But then, an hour before dawn, it cleared, so that the first streaks of light in the east painted the sky a dull pearl color. With the gathering light, Will began to look for a place to make camp.

  Horace noticed him looking around. “Why don’t we keep going for a couple more hours?” he suggested. “The horses aren’t really tired yet.”

  Will hesitated. They’d seen no sign of anyone else during the night, and certainly no evidence of any Wargals in the area. But he didn’t like to go against Gilan’s advice. In the past, he’d found that advice given by senior Rangers usually turned out to be worth following. He hesitated, then came to a decision as they rounded the next bend and saw a thicket of shrubs set back about thirty meters from the road. The bushes, while not more than three meters high at their tallest point, offered a thick screen, providing shelter from both the wind and any unfriendly eyes that might chance to come along.

  “We’ll camp here,” Will said, indicating the bushes. “That’s the first decent-looking campsite we’ve passed in hours. Who knows when we’ll see another?”

  Horace shrugged. He was quite content to let Will make the decisions. He had only been making a suggestion, not trying to usurp the Ranger apprentice’s authority in any way. Horace was essentially a simple soul. He reacted well to commands and to other people making decisions. Ride now. Stop here. Fight there. As long as he trusted the person making the decisions, he was happy to abide by them.

  And he trusted Will’s judgment. He had a hazy idea that Ranger training somehow made people more decisive and intelligent. And of course, in that he was right, to a large degree.

  As they dismounted and led their horses through the thick bushes into a clearing beyond, Will gave a small sigh of relief. He was stiffer than he’d realized after a full night in the saddle with only a few brief rests. Several good hours’ sleep seemed like a capital idea right now. He helped Evanlyn down from the pack pony—riding on the pack saddle as she had to, it was a little awkward for her to dismount. Then he began unstrapping their packs of food supplies and the rolled canvas length that they used as a weather shelter.

  Evanlyn, with barely a word to him, stretched, then walked a few paces away to sit down on a flat rock.

  Will, his forehead creased in a frown, tossed one of the food packs onto the sand at her feet.

  “You can start getting a meal ready,” he said, more abruptly than he’d really intended. He was annoyed that the girl would sit down and make herself comfortable, leaving the work to him and Horace. She glanced down at the pack and flushed angrily.

  “I’m not particularly hungry,” she told him. Horace started forward from where he was unsaddling his horse.

  “I’ll do it,” he said, keen to avoid any conflict between the other two. But Will held up a hand to stop him.

  “No,” he said. “I’d like you to rig the shelter. Evanlyn can get the food out.”

  His eyes locked with hers. They were both angry, but she realized she was in the wrong. She shrugged faintly and reached for the pack. “If it means so much to you,” she muttered, then asked: “Is it all right if Horace makes the fire for me? He can do it a lot quicker than I.”

  Will considered the idea, screwing up his face thoughtfully. He was reluctant to light a fire while they were still in Celtica. It hardly seemed logical to travel by night to avoid being seen, then light a fire whose smoke might be visible in daylight. Besides, there was another consideration that Gilan had pointed out to him the previous day.

  “No fire,” he said decisively, and Evanlyn tossed the food pack down sulkily.

  “Not cold food again!” she snapped. Will regarded her evenly.

  “Not so long ago, you would have happily eaten anything—hot or cold—as long as it was food,” he reminded her, and she dropped her eyes from his. “Look,” he added, in a more reasoning tone, “Gilan knows more about these things than any of us and he told us to make sure we aren’t spotted. All right?”

  She muttered something. Horace was watching the two of them, his honest face troubled by the conflict between them. He offered a compromise.

  “I could just make a small fire for cooking,” he suggested. “If we built it in under these bushes, the smoke should be pretty hard to see by the time it filters through.”

  “It’s not just that,” Will explained, slinging their water bags over one shoulder and taking his bow from the saddle scabbard. “The Wargals have an amazingly keen sense of smell. If we did light a fire, the smell of the smoke would hang around for hours after we’d put it out.”

  Horace nodded, conceding the point. Before anyone could raise any more objections, Will headed toward the jumble of rocks behind the campsite.

  “I’m going to scout around,” he announced. “I’ll see if there’s any water in the area. And I’ll just make sure we’re alone.”

  Ignoring the girl’s “Not that we’ve seen anyone all day,” which was muttered just loud enough for him to hear it, he began to scramble up the rocks. He made a careful circuit of the area, staying low and out of sight, moving from cover to scant cover as carefully as he could. Whenever you’re scouting, Halt had once said to him, move as if there’s somebody there to see you. Never assume that you’re on your own.

  He found no sign of Wargals or of Celts. But he did come across a small, clear stream that sluiced cold water over a bed of rocks. It was running fast enough to look safe for drinking, so he tested it and, satisfied that it wasn’t polluted, filled their water bags to the brim. The cold, fresh water tasted particularly good after the leathery-tasting supply from the bags. Once water had been in a water bag for more than a few hours, it began to taste more like the bag and less like water.

  Back at the campsite, Horace and Evanlyn were waiting for his return. Evanlyn had set out a plate of dried meat and the hard biscuit they had been eating in place of bread for some time now. He was grateful that she’d also put a small amount of pickle on the meat. Any addition to the tasteless meal was welcome. He noticed as they were eating that there was none on her plate.

  “Don’t you like pickles?” he asked, through a mouthful of meat and biscuit. She shook her head, not meeting his eyes.

  “Not really,” she replied. But Horace wasn’t prepared to let it rest at that.

  “She gave you the last of them,” he told Will.

  For a moment, Will hesitated, embarrassed. He’d just mopped up the last small mouthful of the tangy yellow pickles on a corner of biscuit, and popped it into h
is mouth. There was no way now he could offer to share it.

  “Oh,” he mumbled, realizing this was her way of making the peace between them. “Um…well, thanks, Evanlyn.”

  She tossed her head. With her close-cropped hair, the effect was a little wasted and the thought struck him that she was probably used to making that gesture with long blond locks that would accentuate the movement.

  “I told you,” she said. “I don’t like pickles.” But now there was a hint of a grin in her voice, and the earlier bad humor was gone. He looked up at her and grinned in reply.

  “I’ll take the first watch,” he finally said. It seemed as good a way as any of letting her know that he didn’t hold a grudge.

  “If you take the second watch as well, you can have my pickles too,” offered Horace, and they all laughed. The atmosphere in the little campsite lightened considerably as Horace and Evanlyn busied themselves shaking out blankets and cloaks and gathering some of the leafier branches from the bushes around them to shape into beds.

  For his part, Will took one of the water bottles and his cloak and climbed up onto one of the larger rocks surrounding their camp. He settled himself as comfortably as possible, with a clear view of the rocky hills behind them in one direction, and over the bushes that screened them from the road in the other. Mindful as ever of Halt’s teaching, he settled himself among a jumble of rocks that formed a more or less natural nest, allowing him to peer between them on either side, without raising his head above the horizon level. He wriggled himself around for a few minutes, wishing there were not so many sharp stones to dig into him. Then he shrugged, deciding that at least they’d stop him from dozing off during his watch.

  He donned his cloak and raised the hood. As he sat there, unmoving among the gray rocks, he seemed to blend into the background until he was almost invisible.

  It was the sound that first alerted him. It came and went vaguely with the breeze. As the breeze grew stronger, so did the sound. Then, as the breeze faded, he could no longer hear anything, so that at first he thought he was imagining things.

  Then it came again. A deep, rhythmic sound. Voices, perhaps, but not like any he’d heard. It could have been singing, he thought, then, as the breeze blew a little harder, he heard it again. Not singing. There was no melody to it. Just a rhythm. A constant, unvarying rhythm.

  Again the breeze died and the sound with it. Will felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising. There was something unhealthy about that sound. Something dangerous. He sensed it in every fiber of his body.

  There it was again! And this time, he had it. Chanting. Deep voices chanting in unison. A tuneless chanting that had an unmistakable menace to it.

  The breeze was from the southwest, so the sound was coming from the road where they had already traveled. He raised himself slowly and carefully, peering under one hand in the direction of the breeze. From this point he could make out various curves and bends in the road, although some of it disappeared behind the rocks and hills. He estimated that he could see sections of the road for perhaps a kilometer and there was no sign of movement. Not yet, anyway.

  Quickly, he scrambled down from the rocks and hurried to wake the others.

  The chanting was closer now. It no longer died away as the breeze came and went. It was growing louder and more defined. Will, Horace and Evanlyn crouched among the bushes, listening as the voices came closer.

  “Maybe you two should move back a little,” Will suggested. He had left himself a relatively clear view of the road. He knew that, wrapped in his Ranger cloak, with his face concealed deep within the cowl, he would be virtually invisible, but he wasn’t so sure about the others. Without any reluctance, they squirmed back, deeper into the cover of the thick shrubs. Horace’s reaction was a mixture of curiosity and nervousness. Evanlyn, Will noted, was pale with fear.

  They had already struck the camp and moved the horses back about a hundred meters into the rocks. He glanced around quickly now to make sure they had left no sign of their presence. Satisfied that they had done all they could, he turned his attention back to the road.

  “Who are they?” Horace breathed as the chanting grew louder still. Will estimated that it was coming from somewhere around the nearest bend in the road, a mere hundred meters away.

  “Don’t you know?” Evanlyn replied, her voice strained with terror. “They’re Wargals.”

  16

  WILL AND HORACE BOTH TURNED QUICKLY TO LOOK AT HER. “Wargals? How do you know?” Will asked.

  “I’ve heard them before,” she said in a small voice, biting her lip. “They make that chanting sound as they march.”

  Will frowned. The four Wargals he and Halt had tracked had made no chanting sound. But then he realized those Wargals had been tracking their own quarry at the time.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw a movement at the bend in the road.

  “Get down!” he hissed urgently. “Keep your faces down!” And both Horace and Evanlyn dropped their faces into the sand. He reached up and pulled the shadowing depths of his cowl further over his own face, then held a forearm draped in the folds of his cloak to obscure everything but his eyes.

  The chant, he saw now, was a form of cadence, designed to keep the Wargals moving at the same pace—in the same way a sergeant might call the step for a troop of infantry. He counted perhaps thirty in the group. Big, heavyset figures, dressed in dark metal-studded jackets and breeches of some heavy material. They ran at a steady jog, chanting the guttural, wordless rhythm—which, he realized now, was nothing more than a series of grunts.

  They were all armed with an assortment of short spears, maces and battleaxes, which they carried ready for use.

  As yet, he couldn’t make out their features. They ran with a shambling movement in two files. Then he realized that they were escorting another group between the two files: prisoners.

  Now that the group was closer, he realized that the prisoners—about a dozen of them—were staggering along, trying desperately to keep pace with the chanting Wargals. He recognized them as Celts—miners, judging by the leather aprons and skullcaps they wore. They were exhausted, and as he watched, he could see the Wargals using short whips to urge them along.

  The chanting grew louder.

  “What’s happening?” Horace whispered, and Will could have cheerfully choked him.

  “Shut up!” he shot back. “Not another word!”

  Now the Wargals were closer and he could make out their faces. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise as he saw the thick, heavy jowls and noses that had lengthened and thickened almost to the size of muzzles. The eyes were small and savage and seemed to glow with a red hatred as they lashed their whips at the Celts. Once, as one of them snarled at a stumbling prisoner, Will caught a quick glimpse of yellow fangs. He was tempted to shrink down further. But he knew any movement now would risk discovery. He had to trust the shelter of his cloak. He wanted to close his eyes to those animal-like faces, but somehow, he couldn’t. He stared in fascinated horror as the terrible Wargals, creatures from a nightmare, chanting incessantly, jogged past the spot where he lay.

  The Celt miner couldn’t have lost his footing at a worse place.

  Lashed by one of the Wargals, he stumbled, staggered, then crashed over in the road, bringing down the prisoners on either side of him. Will could see now that they were roped together with a thick rawhide leash.

  As the column came to a confused stop, the chanting broke up into a series of snarls and growls from the Wargals. The two prisoners who had been brought down struggled to their feet, under a rain of lashes from their captors. The miner who had caused the fall lay still, in spite of the vicious whipping from one of the Wargals.

  Finally another joined the first, and began beating at the still figure with the butt of his heavy, steel-shod spear. There was no reaction from the miner. Watching in horror, Will realized that the man was dead. Eventually, that same realization came to the Wargals. At an incomprehens
ible command from one who must have been in charge, the two stopped beating the dead man and cut the bonds that attached him to the central leash. Then they picked up the limp body and threw it clear, hurling it toward the thicket where Will and the others sheltered.

  The body crashed into the bushes closest to the road and Will heard Evanlyn utter a small cry of fear. Facedown, not knowing what was happening, the sudden crashing in the bushes near her had obviously been too much for her to bear. She bit the noise off almost as soon as it started, but she was just a little too late.

  The leader of the Wargals seemed to have heard something. He turned now and stared hard at the spot where the body lay, wondering if the noise had come from the miner. Obviously, he was suspicious that the dead man might be merely foxing, in an effort to escape. He pointed and shouted an order and the Wargal with the spear stepped forward and ran it casually through the dead body.

  Still the commander’s suspicions weren’t satisfied. For a long moment, he stared into the bushes, looking straight at the spot where Will lay, wrapped in the protective camouflage of his Ranger cloak. The apprentice found himself staring deep into the angry red eyes of the savage thing out on the road. He wanted to drop his eyes away from that gaze, convinced that the creature could see him. But all of Halt’s training over the past year told him that any movement now would be fatal, and he knew that dropping his eyes could lead to a tiny, involuntary movement of his head. The true value of the camouflaged cloaks lay not in magic as so many people believed, but in the wearer’s ability to remain unmoving under close scrutiny.

  Forcing himself to believe, Will remained motionless, staring at the Wargal. His mouth was dry. His heart pounded at what seemed like twice its normal rate. He could hear the heavy, rasping breathing of the bearlike figure, see the nostrils twitching slightly as it sampled the light breeze, testing for unknown scents.