Ranger's Apprentice 9 Halt's Peril

by John Flanagan

  Tennyson raised his hand in a sign of peace and continued towards the Scotti farmer. Rolf and his other followers spread out in a line either side of him. Bacari and Marisi, the second Genovesan, stayed close by him, a pace behind him. Both had their crossbows unslung and held unobtrusively close to their sides.

  The farmer turned and called back to the house. A few seconds later, a woman appeared at the door and moved to join her husband, standing ready to defend their home against these strangers.

  'We come in peace,' Tennyson called. 'We mean you no harm.'

  The farmer replied in his native tongue. Tennyson had no idea what the words were but the meaning was clear – stay away. The man stooped and drew something from the leather-bound legging on his right leg. He straightened and they could see a long, black-bladed dirk in his hand. Tennyson smiled reassuringly and continued to move forward.

  'We need food,' he said. 'We'll pay you well for it.'

  He had no intention of paying and no idea if the farmer could understand the common tongue he spoke in. Probably not, this far away from civilisation. The important thing was the soothing and placating tone.

  But the farmer wasn't convinced. He turned and shoved the cow violently, attempting to herd it back to the shelter of the barn. The black animal raised its head in alarm and began to wheel heavily away.

  'Kill him,' Tennyson said quietly.

  Almost immediately, he heard the slap-whizz of the two crossbows and two bolts streaked across the field to bury themselves in the man's back. He threw up his hands, gave a choked cry and fell face down in the grass. His wife uttered a scream and dropped to her knees beside him, speaking to him, trying to rouse him. But Tennyson knew from the way the man had fallen that he was dead when he hit the ground. It took a minute or so for the woman to come to the same realisation. When she did, she came to her feet, screamed what was obviously a curse at them and turned to run. She had gone three paces when Bacari, who had reloaded, shot again and sent her sprawling face down, a few metres from her husband.

  The cow, unnerved by the shouting and the metallic smell of blood, stood uncertainly, swaying its head, offering a half-hearted threat to the approaching strangers.

  Nolan, a burly man who was one of Tennyson's inner circle, moved forward and seized the cow's halter, bringing it under control. The cow looked at him curiously, then Nolan slashed his knife across its throat. Blood jetted out and the cow staggered a few paces before its legs gave way and it collapsed into the grass.

  The Outsiders stood around the thrashing animal in a circle, regarding it with satisfaction. There would be enough meat there to keep them fed for some time.

  'Clean it and joint it,' Tennyson told Nolan. Before joining Tennyson's band, the big man had worked as a butcher. He nodded contentedly.

  'Give me a hand,' he ordered three of the men around him. He'd need them to hold the carcass steady while he skinned and butchered it. Tennyson left him to the task and strode into the farmhouse. The doorway was low and he had to bow his head to enter. A quick search revealed a supply of potatoes, turnips and onions. His men gathered them up while he sent another two to pick some of the cabbages growing in the cultivated field. He looked around the neat little house. He was tempted to spend the night here under a roof for a change. But he had no idea if the farmer might have friends living nearby. It would be safer to gather up the food and keep moving.

  Another of his followers met him as he emerged from the house.

  'There are two more beasts in the barn,' he said. 'Do we want them?'

  Tennyson hesitated. They had plenty of meat now, as well as the potatoes and onions from the house. If they were to carry anything more it would only slow them down. He glanced across to where Nolan was already working on the carcass. He'd stripped the skin away and laid it on the grass. He'd gutted and cleaned the body and was cutting the meat into joints, piling them on the bloodied skin.

  'No,' he said. 'Burn the barn when we leave. And the house.' There was no real reason to burn them, he thought. But then, there was no reason not to, either. And the act of wanton destruction would go a long way towards restoring his good spirits.

  The Outsider nodded. Then he hesitated, not sure what Tennyson intended.

  'And the cows?' he asked. Tennyson shrugged. If he couldn't use them, he didn't see any sense leaving them for anyone else.

  'Burn them in it.'

  Ten

  The path led Halt, Will and Horace a little east of south, and the coastline was angling out to the west. So as they travelled, they moved further and further away from the sea. The constant, salt-laden wind died away and they began to see trees again.

  The land itself was wild and hilly, covered for the main part in gorse and heather. It lacked the gentle green beauty of the southern parts of Araluen that Will and Horace were accustomed to. But it had its own form of beauty – wild and rugged and unkempt. Even the trees, as they began to appear with greater frequency, seemed to stand as if challenging the elements to do their worst, their roots wide-set in the sandy ground, their branches thick and braced like brawny arms.

  They had travelled perhaps a kilometre when Halt gave a low grunt. He swung down from the saddle and stepped off the trail to examine something. Will and Horace, riding single file behind him, dismounted and moved to peer over his shoulder. He was studying a small tuft of cloth, caught on a branch of tough heather that grew beside the trail.

  'What do you make of that, Will?'

  'Cloth,' Will said, then as Halt looked piercingly at him, he realised that he had stated the obvious and his mentor wanted more from him. He reached out and touched the small fragment, feeling it, rolling it gently between his forefinger and thumb. It was a smooth linen weave, perhaps from a shirt, he thought.

  'It's nothing like the rough plaid the Scotti wear,' he said thoughtfully. Now he realised why they wove that thick, rough cloth. The heather and gorse of their homeland would rip anything lighter to shreds within a few weeks.

  'Good work,' Halt said approvingly.

  Horace smiled as he watched his two friends, crouched by the side of the track. In some ways, he knew, Halt would never stop teaching the younger Ranger. Will would always be his apprentice. And as he had the thought, he realised that Will, without thinking about it, would probably always want it that way.

  'So what else occurs to you?' Halt asked.

  Will looked around, studying the sandy path they had been travelling, seeing traces there that people had passed this way within the previous few days. But the rain and wind had made it almost impossible to deduce whether they had all travelled together or were in several separate parties.

  'I'm wondering why the owner wasn't walking on the path itself. Why would he be shoving his way through the bushes when there's a clear path?'

  Halt said nothing. But his body language, as he leaned towards Will and nodded encouragingly, told the young Ranger that he was on the right track. He looked at the path again, at the jumble of footprints, one over the other.

  'The path is narrow,' he said finally. 'No room for more than two abreast. The person wearing this,' he indicated the small piece of material, 'was jostled off the path by the numbers. Maybe he stopped for a moment and he was bumped aside.'

  'So we're following a large group of travellers. I'd say there are more than a dozen of them,' Halt said.

  'The innkeeper said Tennyson had about twenty people with him,' Will said.

  Halt nodded. 'Exactly. And I'd guess we're a day or two behind them.'

  They stood erect. Horace shook his head in admiration.

  'You mean you can figure out all that just from one little scrap of cloth?'

  Halt regarded him sardonically. He was still bristling a little from Horace saying 'That's a fancy term for a guess' the previous day. Halt didn't forget criticism.

  'No,' he said. 'We're guessing. We just wanted to make it sound scientific.'

  Halt paused for a few seconds, as if inviting Horace to make some ki
nd of reply, but wisely, Horace chose not to. Finally, the Ranger gestured to the path ahead of them.

  'Let's get moving,' he said.

  The wind had blown away the rainclouds of the previous night and the sky above them was a brilliant blue, even though the air temperature was cold and crisp. The heather that surrounded them varied in colour from deep brown to dull purple. Under the bright sunlight it seemed to shimmer with colour. Will spotted the next fragment of cloth almost by chance. It was nothing more than a thread, really, snagged on another branch – this time, one growing close to the path. And it would have been easy to miss in the purple heather because it blended in.

  It too was purple.

  Will signalled Horace, who was riding behind him, to rein in. Then he leaned down from the saddle and plucked the thread from the bush.

  'Halt,' he called.

  The bearded Ranger checked Abelard and swivelled in the saddle. He squinted at the purple thread on Will's forefinger, then smiled slowly. 'And who do we know who wears purple?'

  'The Genovesans,' Will replied.

  Halt took a deep breath. 'So it looks like we're on the right track.'

  That was confirmed for them a few kilometres later. They smelt it first. The wind was too strong for the smoke to hang in the sky. It was blown away almost instantly. But the smell of burnt, charred wood and thatch – and something else – carried to them.

  'Smoke,' Will said, reining in and turning his face to the wind to try to catch the scent more clearly. There was a faint trace of something else – something he'd smelt before, when he had been following the trail of one of Tennyson's raiding parties, far away to the south in Hibernia. It was the smell of burnt flesh.

  Then Halt and Horace caught the scent too. Will exchanged a glance with his teacher and knew he'd recognised that ominous smell as well.

  'Come on,' said Halt, and he urged Abelard into a canter, even though he knew they were already too late.

  The crofter's cottage had stood in cleared ground, a few hundred metres from the path.

  Now it was a pile of blackened ruins, still smoking a day after it had been consumed by fire. One section of the thatched roof remained partly intact. But its support structure had collapsed and it lay at an angle, propped up by the charred remnants of one wall.

  'Thatch must have been damp,' Halt said. 'It didn't burn completely.'

  They'd reined in a few metres short of the cottage. There was nobody left alive here. The bodies of a man and a woman sprawled face down in the long grass.

  There had been a second building beyond the cottage – a barn, Will guessed. It too had been burned to ashes. There was nothing left of its walls, although, as with the cottage, some sections of the damp thatch had survived, only to collapse into the ruins. Tug sidestepped nervously as Will urged him towards the barn. The smell of burnt flesh was much stronger here and the horse objected to it. Among the ashes, Will could see two large, charred bodies. Cattle, he thought.

  'Easy, boy,' Will told Tug. The little horse tossed his head uncomfortably, as if apologising for his nervous reaction. Then he steadied. Will swung himself down from the saddle, and heard a low warning rumble in Tug's chest.

  'It's all right,' he told the horse. 'Whoever did this is long gone.'

  And it soon became apparent who had done it. Will knelt beside the body of the crofter and gently moved the man's tangled plaid to one side, from where it had bunched up as he had fallen. Concealed by the folds of rough wool, he found the implements that had killed him: two crossbow bolts, barely a centimetre apart, buried deep in the man's back. There was little blood. At least one of the bolts must have hit the man's heart, killing him almost instantly. That was something to be grateful for, at least, Will thought. He looked up. Halt and Horace were still sitting their horses, watching him.

  'Crossbow,' he said.

  'Not a Scotti weapon,' Halt observed.

  Will shook his head. 'No. I've seen bolts like this before. They're Genovesan. Tennyson has been here.'

  Horace looked around the tragic little scene. His expression was a mixture of sadness and disgust. Picta and the Scotti might nominally be enemies of Araluen, but these people weren't soldiers or raiders. They were simple country folk, going about their day-to-day business, working hard and scraping a meagre living from this tough northern land.

  'Why?' he said. 'Why kill them?'

  In his young life, Horace had seen his share of battles and knew there was no glamour in war. But at least in war, soldiers knew their fate was in their own hands. They could kill or be killed. They had a chance to defend themselves. This was the pitiless slaughter of innocent, unarmed civilians.

  Halt indicated another corpse, further away and half concealed in the long grass. There was a small cloud of flies buzzing about and a crow hopped on top of it, ripping at the carcass with its dagger of a beak. It was all that was left of another of the crofter's cattle. But this one had been killed and butchered for its meat.

  'They wanted food,' he said. 'So they took it. When the crofter objected, they killed him and his wife and burned their house and barn.'

  'But why? They could have overpowered him, surely. Why kill him?'

  Halt shrugged. 'They've still got a way to go to the border,' he said. 'I guess they didn't want to leave anyone behind who could raise the alarm against them.' He looked around now, but saw no sign of other habitation. 'I'll bet there are half a dozen other little crofts like this within a few kilometres. Chances are there's a hamlet or village as well. Tennyson wouldn't want to take the risk that these people might gather a party and come after him.'

  'He's a murdering swine,' Horace said quietly, as he listened to Halt's reasoning. The bearded Ranger gave a slight snort of disgust.

  'Are you only beginning to figure that out?' he asked.

  Eleven

  Halt glanced warily around the horizon. 'We should get out of here,' he said, but Horace was already swinging down from his saddle.

  'We can't leave them like this, Halt,' he said quietly. 'It's just not right.'

  He began to unstrap the short spade that was part of his camping equipment. Halt leaned forward in the saddle.

  'Horace, do you want to be here if some of these Scottis' friends turn up?' he asked. 'Because I don't think they'll be too willing to listen to explanations.'

  But Horace was already surveying the ground, looking for a soft spot to begin digging.

  'We should bury them, Halt. We can't just leave them here to rot. If they have any friends nearby, they'll appreciate the fact that we took the trouble.'

  'I think you're assuming far too much reasoning power from the Scotti,' Halt told him. But he could see that he wouldn't change Horace's mind. Will had dismounted and had his own shovel as well. He looked up at Halt.

  'Halt, if we don't bury them, they'll attract more crows and ravens. And that might attract their friends' attention,' he reasoned.

  'What about that?' Halt asked, indicating the butchered carcass. Will shrugged.

  'We can drag it into the middle of the barn's ashes,' he said. 'Cover it with sections of the thatch.'

  Halt sighed, giving up the argument. In a way, he thought, Horace was right. It was the decent thing to do – and that was what set them apart from people like Tennyson. And besides, Will's argument made sense. Maybe, Halt thought, he had become a little too cold-blooded and pragmatic in his old age. He swung down from the saddle, took his own shovel and began digging.

  'I'm too set in my ways to start doing the right thing,' he complained. 'You're a bad influence, Horace.'

  They covered the two bodies with the thick plaids they had been wearing and laid them side by side in the shallow grave. While Will and Horace filled it in, Halt hitched a rope to Abelard's saddle and dragged the carcass into the blackened remains of the barn. Then he heaved several sections of the half-burned thatch over the body. The other two beasts were so badly burned that there was nothing left to attract scavengers.

  Horace
smoothed out the last shovelful of earth and stood erect, rubbing the small of his back.

  'These shovels are too short,' he said. He glanced around at his companions. 'Should we say something over the grave?' he asked uncertainly.

  'They won't hear us if we do,' Halt replied and jerked a thumb towards the waiting horses. 'Let's get mounted. We've given Tennyson too much time to get away from us as it is.'

  Horace nodded, realising that Halt was right. Besides, he thought, it would be awkward saying words of farewell over two people whose names he didn't even know.

  Halt waited until his two companions were mounted again. 'Let's pick up the pace,' he said, swinging Abelard's head to the south again. 'We've got a lot of time to make up.'

  They held the horses to a steady lope throughout the rest of the afternoon. Tug and Abelard, of course, could maintain a pace like that for days if necessary. Kicker didn't have quite the same endurance, but his longer stride meant he was making the same progress for a lot less effort. The clear skies of the morning had gone as the wind shifted and brought banks of cloud rolling in from the west. Halt sniffed the air.