"Will!" Halt called, striding into the cabin and throwing the door back with today's mail in his hand. "Pack your things. We leave in ten minutes."
Will jumped in surprise at his mentor's startling appearance and nearly dropped his quill in the process. "What!? Where are we going? What's going on?"
"Nine minutes and forty seconds!" came Halt's brusque reply as walked past Will and into the kitchen to grab their travelling cooking gear. He dropped all but one envelope onto the table as he passed.
"Okay, okay! I'm going!" Will jumped up and quickly gathered the map he was studying, much too eager to put it away considering topography and map-reading had never been his strongest subject. He rushed into his room and grabbed the gear he would need before jogging to the stable to pack them all onto Tug.
Approximately nine minutes and thirty seconds later, Will swung up onto Tug and followed Halt out of their cabin's stable.
"So, what's going on? Where are we going? Who wrote to you that's so important?" Will asked again, barely taking a breath between each question.
Halt rolled his eyes and made Abelard sidestep so that there was enough room on the path for him and Will to ride side by side. "If you really must know," Halt said acerbically. "Crowley wrote to us, and given that he is our Commandment, I thought he was important enough to listen to."
"Crowley wrote to us? What does he want?" Will asked excitedly.
"Don't know yet," Halt responded, not even trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. "That's why we're headed to him to see what he needs."
"We're headed to him?" Will parroted. "That means we're going to Castle Arulean, right?"
"That is where Crowley lives," Halt said dryly.
Will beamed and sucked in a happy breath, filling his chest with air and joy. "Yes!" he breathed out giddily and faced the road ahead of them. Going to Castle Arulean meant seeing Horace and Evanlyn again. He hadn't had a chance to see either one of them in months now and he was keen to see where he and the Princess stood. The last time he saw her, she was rather angry with him, and all of his best efforts to persuade her otherwise seemed to have the opposite effect than what he had hoped to accomplish.
Halt, always adept to reading people, knew exactly what was going through Will's mind and this was the precise reason that he refused to tell him where they were headed before they were on the road: his excitement might have gotten in the way of a quick departure. Plus, it was a good test for his patience. That, and it brought Halt no mote of joy to torture him ever so slightly.