Chapter Text
Will wasn’t sure what to think of the letter that was delivered by a nervous courier. It was marked by the royal seal, so he opened it immediately, but that didn’t mean he was sure what to do with its contents.
Dear Will,
I am hoping this letter reaches you in good health. I wrote to inform you of mine and Horace’s imminent visit. I ask you to clear your schedule as much as possible for the next few days after our arrival, I have something that I want to show you.
Bring Maddie as well, as this is probably something she would like to listen to. A few other people are going to be there, but you will understand once I show you what I uncovered. Meet us at Halt and Pauline’s suit in the morning in 2 days.
Kind Regards
Cassandra (Evanlyn )
Once he had read the message, Will had immediately cleared his plan for the next few days. If he was going by Evanlyn’s message, it seemed she had found something important enough to come to Redmont.
So, when the day came along, Will and Maddie made their way up to the suite and entered only to find Evanlyn, Horace, Gilan, Halt and Pauline already there waiting. They were all roughly in a circle, with Halt and Pauline sitting on the end of their bed and the others having to pull up chairs and move the table.
Before Will could ask what was going on, Evanlyn gestured for her friend and daughter to come sit down. Will sat next to Gilan, and Maddie sat next to her mother. Once they were all seated, Evanlyn pulled out something she had been hiding in her lap.
Once she had put the novel down no one made a move to pick it up. Maddie was the only one who didn’t know what was going on. She sat confused and frustrated at the lack of explanation. She eventually asked, “What’s going on. Why do you all seem so…worried all of a sudden?”
Will made a move to pick up the book and he looked at the cover before showing it to his apprentice. “Maddie, look.” He turned the book around so she could see the cover and read the title: The Burning Bridge.
It only took her a few moments before she realised what her mentor was saying. “That’s…that’s when you and mum burned down the bridge over the Fissure right?”
She then frowned, looking at her mother and asking, “But how did someone write a book about it, I thought there were only a few people that knew about the bridge?”
Cassandra nodded, but her expression remained forced and controlled. “From what they wrote in their previous book, The Ruins of Gorlan, this author knows things that they couldn’t possibly have heard about or witnessed. It seems they have another way of knowing, one that borders on magic.”
Maddie’s heart rate increased rapidly at the mention of magic. After everything she and Will had seen with Arazan’s wolves and Wargals, she was sure she wanted nothing else to do with magic for a very long time.
Before she could voice her opinions out loud, Will asked no one is particular, “Anyone remember what chapter we were up to?”
There was silence and Pauline asked, not unkindly, “Will, are you sure you want to continue reading, you do remember this is just before…”
She trailed off, not wanting to bring up any memories. Will just shrugged slightly, “It’ll be fine. Plus, we all know how it turns out anyway.”
Maddie did her best to stay quiet. Among all the people present, she was probably the one who knew the least about what had happened. She hadn’t been alive at the time, and no one was particularly willing to talk about it either. After a few more moments of silence, Halt spoke up for the first time saying, “I think we had just finished chapter 14.”
Will opened up the book and quickly flipped to chapter 14. He skimmed it and nodded in Halt’s direction before summarising, “Gilan, Horace and I had just gone on a mission to Celtica. We needed 3 people of some sort of status because of an old Celtic saying that one can be discrete, two can be a conspiracy, three is the number I trust.”
Maddie opened her mouth to comment but Will held up a finger and continued, ignoring the snort Halt made at the saying, “We discovered that many of the Celts had been bottled up at the southern peninsula. We had learned this from a girl we met calling herself Evanlyn who claimed to be a maid of a noble lady. Gilan rode ahead to warn everyone about what happened in Celtica, with me and Horace charged with making our own way back and bringing the girl. That’s about where we are up to.”
Will flipped the page and started reading. (Chapter 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.
Horace rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath, “Not every horse can be amazing as Ranger ones.”
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 colour. 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.
Halt raised an eyebrow at this.
In the past, he’d found that advice given by senior Rangers usually turned out to be worth following.
Gilan stared at Will from across the table, as he was pretty sure he had told the man at the gathering previously that he had been the most junior Ranger in the corps at the time.
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.
Maddie nodded at this, as she had learned from experience that camping out on windy, cold nights was just unpleasant, especially when there was very little cover.
“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?”
“Good thinking.” Gilan said offhandedly, “It’s harder to find a good campsite than you would think.” All the Rangers and Horace in the group raised an eyebrow.
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.
Gilan, Will, Pauline and Halt all tried to hide their smiles. Maddie just looked over at her father, surprise written all over her face. Cassandra patted her husband on the arm in sympathy and reassurance while he himself was turning slightly red.
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.
Will smiled slightly at this, and Horace spoke up, also smiling “And I haven’t regretted that decision since.”
He had a hazy idea that Ranger training somehow made people more decisive and intelligent.
Halt snorted at that, while Gilan and Maddie chuckled to themselves. Will tried to keep his voice steadily as he fought the urge to laugh.
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.
Halt looked over and said, “Get used to it.” Will rolled his eyes in response, replying drily, “Don’t worry, I did.”
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.
Maddie looked at her mother, and the Queen winced slightly at the mention of her past actions.
“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.”
“Mum, it wasn’t that hard to do.” Maddie said to her mother, who groaned in frustration. “I wish I could slap myself for being so spoiled right now.” Horace put an arm around her saying, “Don’t worry, it’s not like it didn’t work out in the end.”
His eyes locked with hers. They were both angry, but she realized she was in the wrong.
“Thankfully.” Cassandra muttered under her breath.
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.
“He’s not wrong.” Said Halt quietly, largely to himself.
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.
Cassandra was blushing and slouched slightly in her seat. Maddie moved a bit closer and whispered, “Don’t worry, I was a lot worse on my first campout.” The Queen had to stop herself from snorting at that, forever thankful that Will had been able to discipline her daughter. Will watched the exchange, not voicing out that he had to put up with both of them for a time, before he continued.
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?”
Gilan elbowed Horace, as if to say ‘He’s not wrong you know’ but Horace just rolled his eyes in response.
She muttered something. Horace was watching the two of them, his honest face troubled by the conflict between them.
Halt quickly glanced at Horace for a moment before concluding, Yes, he does have a rather honest face.
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.”
Pauline spoke up for the first time, “What about the smoke? Wouldn’t that give you away, especially to Wargals and their sense of smell?”
“It’s not just that,” Will explained, slinging their water bags over one shoulder and taking his bow from the saddle scabbard.
Will thought to himself gratefully, thank god I learned from the first time, once was enough.
“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.
“You never know if someone’s following you. Assuming can make you complacent, seeing what you expect to see.” Gilan pointed out. Cassandra nodded at this, and said angrily, “If only you’d pointed that out to my past, hopeless self.”
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.
Maddie glanced at her mentor, surprised to learn that he also needed to be taught that. Whenever they were camping on a mission together, he’d always have to remind her to be careful while scouting. He’d always seem like a natural at it, while she always had to be reminded even this late into her apprenticeship.
He found no sign of Wargals or of Celts.
Thankfully, Will found himself thinking, shivering at the thought of what could have happened if he had found someone.
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.
“You don’t like pickles mum?” Maddie asked, Cassandra shook her head, smiling, “I always give mine to someone else if I ever get any.”
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 his mouth. There was no way now he could offer to share it.
“You can keep them Will, I really wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t like pickles.” Cassandra said with a straight face.
“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 humour 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.
“If only I’d known that.” Maddie said sadly. Will raised an eyebrow retorting, “You’re not bribing me with pickles just to get out of first or second watch.” His apprentice pouted in response.
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.
“Sorry Will, but I doubt any amount of wiggling could help you find a good spot of Celtic ground not covered in sharp pointy rocks.” Gilan said cheerfully. Will glared at his commandant before continuing to read.
Then he shrugged, deciding that at least they’d stop him from dozing off during his watch.
“Not a good idea also.” Maddie noted, smiling at her mentor who also gave her a glare.
He donned his cloak and raised the hood. As he sat there, unmoving among the grey rocks, he seemed to blend into the background until he was almost invisible.
“Trust the cloak.” All the Ranger’s simultaneously chorused, each knowing the phrase was a key part of unseen movement. All the non-Ranger’s just rolled their eyes at the four.
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.
“I would hope not.” Halt said, earning him a kick under the table from his wife.
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 shivered as the memory resurfaced in his head. The Wargals chant would forever be in his memory, regardless of how long he lived.
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 fibre 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.
Everyone was silent. Maddie was entirely glad that the Wargals they’d encountered didn’t chat like Morgarath’s ones, as that would just added to her nightmares.
The breeze was from the southwest, so the sound was coming from the road where they had already travelled. 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 kilometre 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.
The tension in the room could be cut with a knife. Whatever this John Flanagan knew about their past, Will was certain he did it justice. Creating a story so close to the original feeling, Will would be lying if he said that it wasn’t impressive.
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.
“How were you not afraid?” Maddie asked her father, as she remembered her own encounter with the dangerous beasts. He shrugged, “I’d only heard stories up until that point, so I wasn’t sure what exactly I was meant to be afraid of.”
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.”
“Dun dun der…” Gilan said helpfully, only to get wacked by both Pauline and Will who were sitting next to him.