The three rangers tracked the mysterious man's trail until it grew dark out. "We might as well take a rest," called out Halt, "we aren't going to have much luck tracking him in this light. I know things are fairly peaceful right now, but we are entering a war and I don't want to take any chances, so we should assign watches. I'll take the first watch, and then you can take over Will, and then wake up Gilan."
The two younger Rangers curled up in their cloaks and went to sleep as Halt took his position, concealed behind a bush. In the morning, when Gilan woke the two sleeping rangers up, they set off to tracking again. A good couple of hours passed before Will broke the silence, "Look! There's more tracks!"
"Someone must have met up with him," said Halt. "We might as well find out where the newcomer came from."
"Ok!" replied Will, who hurried off in front trailing the new set of tracks backwards.
"I'm just glad he's back to his old eager self," Halt murmured to Gilan, who couldn't agree more.
Despite Will's eagerness and curiousity, he remained focused and managed to successful track the prints to the Castle of Norgate fief. The three rangers went to enter the Castle but were stopped at the gates. "I'm sorry, but no one is to be allowed in or out, not even Rangers," one of the guards stated.
"You have no authority over the ranger corps," Halt reminded the guard, "now, what has happened here?"
"Oh you haven't heard yet?" asked the other guard. "It's a very tragic matter, for it means Morgorath still has spies here. Someone attempted to assassin the Baron."
"Attempted?" questioned Halt.
"Yes," replied the first guard again, "The Baron had very nearly died, but he pulled through. Currently he is in a bad, but stable state in the infirmary."
Authors note:
In case you're wondering about the characters used in this, at the time I started this story I had only read the first book, and currently I can only find the first two, so if there are major characters that come around later, sorry that they're left out.