Halt's Peril

by John Flanagan

  The numbers were smaller here, of course. But they would be enough to provide him with enough booty for a fresh start somewhere else. Hibernia and Araluen were becoming increasingly dangerous for him and he planned to escape to a new location. He hadn't told his followers that he was planning to take the valuables they collected and abscond with them. They all assumed that he would begin rebuilding the Outsiders cult here in northern Araluen. And he was content to let them continue thinking that. He felt no loyalty towards the people who followed him.

  As he had that thought, he frowned, wondering what had become of the Genovesan, Bacari. It had been days now since the mercenary had reported in. He knew that the leader of his pursuers had been fatally injured in the confrontation in the drowned forest. Bacari had seen him wounded by a poisoned bolt, and he was definite in his assurances that there was no way the cloaked stranger could survive that wound. That was good news. The other two were little more than boys and Tennyson was confident that without their leader, they would soon become discouraged, give the pursuit away and return to wherever it was they had come from. The fact that there had been no sign of them for the past few days seemed to confirm the idea. He knew they had been close on his heels for weeks. Now they had simply disappeared.

  Perhaps Bacari had killed them – and been killed himself in a final confrontation with them. That was a possibility. More likely, he thought, the Genovesan had simply slipped away and left the country. After all, he had seen two of his compatriots killed and mercenaries like him had only one loyalty – to money. It was unlikely that he would continue to fight for Tennyson when he knew he was outnumbered and outmatched. But he had served his purpose. He had killed the leader of Tennyson's pursuers and, one way or another, caused the other two to abandon their pursuit. And this way, there was no need for Tennyson to pay him the final instalment of the fee he had been promised.

  All in all, he thought, it had turned out well. The last of the local converts had arrived at the camp that morning. Tomorrow, he would break camp here and move them to the cave complex that had been picked out for the purpose. He would inflame them and excite them, as he had done with so many simple country folk before them, and convince them to contribute their gold and jewels to build another altar to Alseiass. Then, when the time was right, he would quietly slip away with it.

  With the last of the Genovesans dead, Halt expressed his doubt that Tennyson would send anyone else back to spy on them or monitor their progress. In fact, he hoped that the preacher would assume they had given up the chase.

  'After all,' he told them while they were preparing to leave the camp site, 'Bacari will have told him that he hit me with a poisoned bolt. And since Tennyson knows nothing about Malcolm here, he probably thinks that I'm dead.'

  'Horace and I could still be following him,' Will pointed out.

  Halt looked doubtful. 'Possibly. But he knows you're both young. And he doesn't know you as well as I do. Chances are, he will have seen me as the real threat.'

  'I don't know whether to be insulted by that or not,' Horace said. Halt grinned easily at him.

  'As I said, he doesn't know you as well as I do. He's an arrogant man and he'll probably think you're too young to offer any threat to him. But just in case,' he said, looking at Will, 'you'd better take the point.'

  Will nodded. It was never wise to assume too much. He touched Tug's ribs with his heels and galloped ahead to scout the way. He reined in when he was about four hundred metres ahead and maintained that distance.

  Malcolm, who was riding double with Horace, watched the distant figure as he scouted the land ahead of them, quartering back and forth to make sure there was no one waiting in ambush to either side of the trail they were following. Will reminded the healer of a hound, questing for a scent.

  'He's a remarkable young man,' he said to Halt and he saw the small glow of pride in the bearded Ranger's eyes as he turned in his saddle to reply.

  'The best,' he said briefly.

  'You've known him how long?' Malcolm asked.

  'Since he was a small boy. I first noticed him when he slipped into Master Chubb's kitchen to steal some pies.'

  'Master Chubb?' Malcolm asked.

  Halt grinned at the memory of that day. 'He's the chef at Castle Redmont. A formidable man, wouldn't you say, Horace?'

  Horace grinned in his turn. 'He's deadly with his wooden ladle,' he said. 'Fast and accurate. And very painful. I once suggested that he should give ladle-whacking lessons to Battleschool students.'

  'You were joking, of course?' Malcolm said.

  Horace looked thoughtful before he replied. 'You know, not entirely.'

  'So,' Malcolm said, turning back to Halt, 'what did you have to say to Will when you caught him stealing these pies – and apparently risking life and limb to do so?'

  'Oh, I didn't let on that I was there. We Rangers can be very unobtrusive when we choose,' he said with mock modesty. 'I remained out of sight and watched him. I thought then that he had potential to be a Ranger.'

  Malcolm nodded. But an anomaly in the sequence of the story had Horace frowning thoughtfully.

  'Why?' he asked Halt.

  Halt looked quickly at him. Something in Horace's tone set off alarms in his mind. Horace lately had a tendency to ask awkward questions, he thought. He answered carefully.

  'Why? Because he was excellent at moving from cover to cover and remaining unseen. Chubb came into the room three times and never noticed him. So I thought, if he could manage that without formal training, he'd make a good Ranger.'

  'No,' said Horace deliberately, 'that wasn't what I meant. I meant, why did you remain unseen? Why were you hiding in the kitchen in the first place?'

  'I told you,' Halt said, with an edge to his voice, 'I was watching Will to see if he might have the potential to be a Ranger. So I didn't want him to see that I was watching.'

  'That's not what you said,' Horace replied. A little furrow had formed between his eyebrows.

  'Yes. It is.' Halt's answers were becoming shorter and shorter. Malcolm leaned back behind Horace's broad form to hide a smile. Halt's tone indicated that he no longer wanted to discuss this matter. But Horace wasn't inclined to give up.

  'No. You said, when Malcolm asked, that this was the first time you'd noticed Will. So you couldn't have gone to the kitchen to see what he was going to get up to. You hadn't noticed him before that day. That's what you said,' he added, driving his point home.

  'That's true. You did say that,' Malcolm chipped in helpfully and was rewarded with a glare from Halt.

  'Does it matter?' Halt asked.

  Horace shrugged. 'Not really, I suppose. I just wondered why you'd gone to the kitchen and why you took the trouble to remain unseen. Were you hiding from Master Chubb yourself? And Will just turned up by coincidence?'

  'And why would I be hiding from Master Chubb in his own kitchen?' Halt challenged. Again, Horace shrugged innocently.

  'Well, there was a tray of freshly made pies airing on the windowsill, wasn't there? And you're quite fond of pies, aren't you, Halt?'

  Halt drew himself up very straight in the saddle. 'Are you accusing me, Horace? Is that it? Are you accusing me of sneaking into that kitchen to steal the pies for myself?'

  His voice and body language simply reeked of injured dignity.

  'Of course not, Halt!' Horace hurried to assure him, and Halt's stiff-shouldered form relaxed a little.

  'I just thought I'd give you the opportunity to confess,' Horace added. This time, Malcolm couldn't conceal his sudden explosion of laughter. Halt gave them both a withering glance.

  'You know, Horace,' he said, at length, 'you used to be a most agreeable young man. Whatever happened to you?'

  Horace turned a wide grin on him. 'I've spent too much time around you, I suppose,' he said.

  And Halt had to admit that was probably true.

  Later that day, they reached the spot where Will had fought with Bacari. Will signalled for them to stop before the
y crested the final ridge, then he and Halt crept forward to survey the ground ahead.

  The camp site that he had seen previously was now deserted.

  'They've moved on,' Will said, and Halt rested his weight on his elbows, chewing a blade of grass thoughtfully.

  'Wherever it is they're going,' he agreed. 'How many would you say there were?'

  Will considered his answer for a few seconds before replying.

  'It was quite a big camp,' he said. 'I'd say up to a hundred people.'

  They rose and walked back down the slight slope to where Horace and Malcolm were preparing a quick meal of cold meat, fruit and bread.

  'Is there time to make coffee?' Horace asked.

  Halt nodded. 'There's always time for coffee.' He sat down by the small fire that Horace had built and glanced at Malcolm. He liked the healer and knew he had a good, analytical head on his shoulders.

  'Tennyson's party has joined up with a larger group,' he said. 'What would you make of that?'

  Malcolm paused thoughtfully. 'From what you've told me about his methods, I'd say the bulk of them are probably converts to his "religion" – people who've been living in this area.'

  'That's what I thought. He usually has twenty or so in his inner circle – the ones who know the whole religion is a fake. They run things for him. They collect the money. But the bulk of his followers are gullible country folk, who actually believe his brand of nonsense.'

  'But where would they have come from, Halt?' Horace asked. 'I thought you and Crowley destroyed the Outsiders movement in Araluen?'

  Halt shook his head. 'We did our best. We got rid of the hierarchy. But you can never stamp these cults out entirely. They'll move into remote areas like this and recruit the locals. He's probably had agents in this area for the past six months or so – just the way he was doing in Selsey.'

  'And it would have been a simple matter to send a messenger ahead to arrange that rendezvous point in the valley,' Will put in.

  'Exactly. And now he's gathering his people together for another push. They'll keep recruiting, then when they have the numbers, they'll move on to the next area – just as they did in Hibernia.' Halt shook his head angrily. 'They're like vermin! You stamp them out in one place and they rise up again in another.'

  Malcolm nodded. 'It's interesting, isn't it, how people are so ready to believe these charlatans? You realise you'll have to do more than just stamp this group out, don't you?'

  Halt looked up at him. He had a good idea what the balding little healer was talking about.

  'How's that?' he asked.

  Malcolm pursed his lips and leaned forward, idly poking a stick into the glowing coals of the fire.

  'If people believe in him, if they've accepted the line of claptrap he's peddling, it won't be enough to take him prisoner and put him on trial. Or even kill him, if that's what you had in mind.'

  Halt nodded wearily. 'I know,' he said. 'A public trial would give him the forum he needs. And if he dies, he'll become a martyr. Either way, another person will step up to take his place and build on the doubt and uncertainty that he's raised in people's minds. It'll be one long repeating cycle.'

  'Exactly,' Malcolm agreed. 'So there's only one course for you to follow. You have to discredit him. You have to prove to these followers of his that he is a cheat and a liar and a thief.'

  'We managed to do it in Clonmel,' Horace said.

  'We caught him unawares there, with the legend of the Sunrise Warrior. And we tricked him into pinning everything on trial by combat. He won't fall for that again. This time, we'll have to do something new. Something he's not expecting.'

  'Like what?' Will asked and Halt gave that tired smile again.

  'When I think of it, you'll be the first to know.'

  Forty-three

  The abandoned camp told them little that they didn't already know. They walked through the areas of flattened grass where tents had been pitched, inspected the blackened circles left by a score of small cook fires and examined the small items that had been discarded or forgotten – a shoe here with a broken strap and holes in the underside that were past repairing, a rusted cook pot, a broken knife. And, of course, food scraps and garbage that had been hastily buried and dug up once more by foxes after the people had left.

  The ground was soft and there were still footprints in evidence round the camp. These showed that a reasonable proportion of the people who had stopped here had been women.

  'All the more reason to believe these are converts,' Halt said.

  Malcolm agreed, but raised a further point. 'Still, women or not, a hundred people is rather a large handful for the four of us to take on. Do you have any ideas how we're going to handle that task?'

  'Simple,' Halt told him. 'We'll surround them.'

  And he said it with such a straight face that, for a moment, Malcolm actually thought he was serious.

  There was one item of interest to be found and that was the direction Tennyson and his newly augmented band of followers had taken when they broke camp and departed. After several weeks of travelling consistently to the southeast, Tennyson now swung to the left, heading due east. The small party gathered round Halt as he unfolded his chart of the area. He indicated a range of hills marked on the map, a day's journey away to the east.

  'Looks as if he's heading for these hills – as we thought.'

  Horace, craning to read the map over his shoulder, read the notation on the map where Halt was pointing. 'Caves,' he said.

  Halt looked up and nodded. 'Those old sandstone cliffs and hills will be honeycombed with them, according to what it says here.'

  Malcolm asked to see the map and when Halt handed it over he studied it for some minutes, tracing a path with his finger here, frowning as he read a notation there. Finally, he looked up at Halt.

  'This is quite amazing,' he said. 'There's so much detail here. How did you come by this?'

  Halt smiled and took the map back and folded it carefully.

  'It's part of what the Ranger Corps does,' he told the healer. 'For the past twenty-five years or so, we've kept ourselves busy updating maps of the Kingdom. Each Ranger is responsible for his own area of operations and we send updated charts to Crowley each year. He has them copied and distributed.'

  Malcolm nodded. 'Ah yes, I know Crowley. He contacted me shortly after Will spent time with us. He was interested to know more about my healing practices.'

  'He said he was going to do that,' Will put in. He remembered telling Halt and Crowley about Malcolm during his debriefing session. They were interested in the healer's medical skills – and the other skills of deception and illusion that he had demonstrated. Knowing Malcolm, Will had been confident that he would share his medical skills with them, but not the other skills, which were his alone.

  'In any event,' Halt said, bringing matters back to the present, 'I'd wager this is where Tennyson is heading.'

  'Yes,' Malcolm agreed. 'If he's planning to set up a headquarters and add to his band of followers, a nice cave complex would be as good a place as any.'

  'Well, standing here isn't going to get us any closer to him,' Halt said. 'We've given him too much of a lead already.'

  He strode back to where Abelard waited for him and mounted quickly. Then he waited impatiently while the others followed his example. Will noticed him fidgeting with his reins as he watched Malcolm make two unsuccessful attempts to mount behind Horace.

  'For god's sake, Horace,' Halt finally cried out. 'Can't you just haul him up behind you?'

  'Take it easy,' Will said softly.

  Halt looked at him quickly, then gave him a shamefaced smile. 'Sorry,' he said. 'It's just that after all these delays, I'm anxious to catch up with him.'

  But it was that very anxiety and eagerness to close with Tennyson that eventually let him down. Halt was pushing himself too hard. Under normal circumstances, he would have had no trouble keeping up to the pace he was setting. But he wasn't fully recovered from the effects of t
he poison, or the days lying close to death in his blankets. Halt had used up a large part of his natural energy reserves and it would take more than a day or two to restore them.

  That evening, when they camped, he slid from the saddle and stood, head bowed and exhausted. When Will went to unsaddle and water Abelard, he offered only token resistance.

  Will and Horace took care of the minor chores, gathering firewood, building the fire and preparing the meal. Horace even set out Halt's bedroll and blankets for him, laying them out on a small pile of leafy branches that he gathered together. Halt reacted with surprise when he saw it.

  'Thanks, Horace,' he said, touched by the young warrior's concern for him.

  Horace shrugged. 'Think nothing of it.'

  They noticed that when the meal was done, and after the obligatory cups of coffee, Halt didn't linger round the camp fire talking, as he would usually do. He took himself off to his bedroll and slept soundly.

  'The sleep of the exhausted,' Malcolm said wryly, eyeing the still figure.

  'Is he all right?' Will asked anxiously.

  'He's fine, so far as the poison is concerned. But he's working himself too hard. He doesn't have the strength to keep this pace up. See if you can get him to ease up a little.' He knew that if the suggestion came from Will, there was more chance that Halt might take heed. Will wasn't so sure.