Just a warning, the language in this is slightly interesting…
It was with a curse that Will found himself caught outside in this torrential downpour. The stupid thing didn't appear to want to ease up and there was no way possible that it could get worse. The ranger was three hours away from his cabin in the trees and on foot. Tug himself at this point would be resting inside his nice warm stable.
Bastard…
Everyone else he knew were probably inside as well and avoiding this storm. Nice and safe. The rain didn't appear to be willing to let off as in every direction it was possible for one to look, the sky was a mass of dark grey. There wasn't blue anywhere. In fact, as he thought this, the rain grew heavier and Will changed direction slightly to get under the cover of the closest tree.
As soon as he got there the rain stopped.
Bastard…
He stepped out from under the tree and continued walking again, wishing to get as far as possible whilst the rain was only spitting rather than pissing down.
BOOM!
"Mother -" Will started. He didn't continue purely for the fact that Halt had managed to encourage any such language out of him for it to only be used in extreme circumstances. Such as this one.
He carefully picked his path down the mountain he was crossing so that he was in the one place he didn't want to go; out in the open. It would be just his luck if he would be walking under the canopy of the trees only for one of them to be struck. He so wished he had tug with him.
The rain came down heavier.
"Why?" he yelled upwards and allowed the rain to cover his face for the moment.
BOOM!
"Ok, I am moving," he continued.
Left foot
Right foot
Left foot
Right foot
And so it continued for another thirty minutes. The rain still came down at that constant pace and every now and then, when he decided to start talking to it as his only companion, it gave another "boom" at him.
The smarter thing to do would be to search for cover and wait the storm out, after all, that way he would be able to make an impromptu camp and if it appeared to not want to go away after a couple of hours, he could search for the small bits of wood that had been protected from the rain and make a small fire. He would then go hunting, for his bow as always was with him.
That way he would have food, water (from everywhere practically), warmth and shelter. The people in the village would just assume that he got called away for a while and they would have enough sense to get Halt if necessary. If a ranger needed him then they would think the same thing. Only those close to him would get slightly suspicious. When he was going out on some sort of job he always made sure to leave a note in a specific spot stating how long he expected he was going to be away for.
And the fact that he didn't take tug…
He wouldn't be in this position if it weren't for the small mistakes he had made in stalking a person in their suspicious operation.
It was the fact that whilst he was busy stalking one member of the suspicious operation another came out of the trees behind him talking about what they needed to do next to achieve their aims. Will had been caught in the dead centre between the two of them. If he moved, they both would have noticed the movements. It also didn't help that they were walking towards each other as they held their conversations. Will listened in, what they were saying was giving him enough information to arrest them.
If he didn't get attacked first.
About two minutes after the conversation first began the two men stopped walking towards each other, unknowingly holding the centre of their conversation right about Will's head. He prayed to whichever god was listening to allow them to hold this conversation then keep moving somewhere else, and they apparently did listen.
For all of the next ten minutes Will was safe. Well, as safe as one was when they were in the middle, literally, of two men talking about illegal operations. It was when the third man came that he was screwed.
The third man would have come to about three times the size of Will and nearly double that of Horace, and he wasn't small. The man also, unfortunately, looked as though he had some brains behind the brawn, which meant that he was the worst type of bogan of them all, huge, scary, vicious looking and smart. (1)
He reached the two people talking and bent down to retie his shoe. When he had done so, he looked up before standing up.
Right into Will's eyes.
The bogan's eyes had narrowed and he suddenly struck out, without warning from body movements that Will normally counted on to gauge where and when the person was going to attack.
Hit punch was well aimed and hit Will on the head, sending him to the lovely land of dreams.
When he woke up again there was a face peering into his from a distance of two inches away. Will automatically panicked and brought his head forwards the meet the other person's. For once this was a good thing as he found out it was the person who had hit him, knocking him out.
Quickly, without making it appear as though he himself had extracted revenge, he glanced around and attempted to point out the location of the other person. Turns out, they weren't in the campsite, having only agreed on one guard.
Will got up, gathered his equipment and left. Just as he was wondering why it was so easy the rain started, bringing him to his current predicament.
One foot.
Two foot.
One foot.
two foot.
Thus he continued for a very long time until the day was beginning to come to a close and he started to wonder if he was actually walking towards Redmont or not. With a loud sigh he found the safest looking tree and quickly hunted around the base of it in an attempt to find any dry wood.
It just wasn't his day.
Resigning himself to this fact, Will gathered his cloak around him and picked a spot under the tree to rest for a while, until either the storm had eased up or grew too loud for him to be outside in it.
Ten minutes later the thundering of a horse's hooves sounded out through the rain. Will jumped up and crept further into the shadow of the tree, suspecting suspicious characters as no one else was stupid enough or needed to leave urgent enough to be travelling in this weather.
The two horses came closer and Will kept repeating "trust the cloak."
He nearly cried when he found out that it was Halt leading Tug after getting worried about his missing adopted son.
Halt smiled seeing him, nodded towards Tug and they started heading home again, no conversation needed.
After all, Halt wasn't able to talk through his internal laughter at the predicament his old apprentice had found himself in.
(1) www. urbandictionary define. php? term=bogan
Because it is extremely funny (to me at least) and entertaining. (P.S. remove spaces)
I was just exploring the login section of this site and found out (actually I knew it before but never really bothered) that you can read the reviews that you gave once upon a time. It records your latest 300 reviews and so, being curious I went down and looked at the earliest review there.
I was disappointed to note that it was from 2011.
Having only reviewed 30 times last year, I have decided that it was a selfish wish to ask for more people reviewing my stories when I spend most of my time not reviewing myself. So instead I have decided to work on something this year.
I am going to review what I read. I understand that there are a lot of people who already do this and have committed to review everything they read, but I am wanting to take it one step further.
For every person who reviews on my stories, I am willing to review one of theirs (obviously there are limitations such as anon reviewers and those without stories). This is going to be my thing now and I expect people to hold me to it :)
Don't be afraid to review and then later on comment on how I haven't review yet.
Alyss Mainwaring