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Chapter 2

After the eventful first chapter, most of the people in the room were slightly reluctant to read the next chapter.

"Who wants to read next?" Duncan asked, not sounding like he wanted anyone to answer.

Rodney raised his hand, and Pauline passed him the book.

THE TWO RIDERS EMERGED FROM THE TREES AND INTO A CLEAR meadow. Down here in the foothills of Teutlandt, the coming spring was more apparent than in the high mountains that reared ahead of them. The meadow grasses were already showing green and there were only isolated patches of snow, in spots that usually remained shaded for the greater part of the day.

Will frowned. "Are those the Temujai?"

Most of the room looked confused at his words.

"The Temujai are the people who Evanlyn saw in the woods," he elaborated.

Halt rolled his eyes. "It says Teutlandt, you idiot."

"Oh, sorry."

Halt sighed, Will would probably never learn to think before he spoke.

A casual onlooker might have been interested to notice the horses that followed behind the two mounted men. They might even have mistaken the men, at a distance, for traders who were hoping to take advantage of the first opportunity to cross through the mountain passes into Skandia, and so benefit from the high prices that the season's first trade goods would enjoy.

Horace frowned. "Why do traders get more money if they sell 'the season's first trade goods'?"

Halt sighed and sat back, leaving someone else to do the explaining.

Pauline glared at Halt. "You see Horace, the first traders of the season get more money because the buyers have not yet had access to the goods the traders are selling. This way, the traders can charge more for the items that would have been cheaper if they had arrived later."

"What Pauline means is that, if you have not been able to have something you enjoy very much for a season, you would be willing to pay more for that something, correct?' Gilan interjected.

Horace nodded.

"So, if you were a trader, and you knew that people would be willing to pay more for something they do not have, but want, you could charge higher prices, yes?"

"Yes."

"But if you arrive late, after the first few people have arrived, you know that you will have to charge lower prices for your goods to be sold. Then everyone would have to lower their prices."

Horace stared at Gilan, then shrugged. "If you say so." He was happy with being a knight, when all he had to do was whack whoever needed whacking. He didn't need to know this sort of thing. Leave that to the Rangers.

Gilan rolled his eyes.

But a closer inspection would have shown that these men were not traders. They were armed warriors. The smaller of the two, a bearded man clad in a strange grey and green dappled cloak that seemed to shift and waver as he moved, had a longbow slung over his shoulders and a quiver of arrows at his saddle bow.

Will's eyes widened slightly. "Halt?"

"Who did you think it was?" Halt snapped.

His companion was a larger, younger man. He wore a simple brown cloak, but the early spring sunshine glinted off the chain mail armour at his neck and arms, and the scabbard of a long sword showed under the hem of the cloak. Completing the picture, a round buckler was slung over his back, emblazoned with a slightly crude effigy of an oakleaf.

Duncan smiled slightly. Horace saw and flushed slightly. "It was Halt's idea," he muttered.

Halt decided to help Horace out. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do remember a certain someone going on and on about how he wasn't supposed to have an insignia until he graduated Battleschool. It was rather irritating."

Everyone else laughed, knowing how Halt would do whatever he wanted and no one could stop him. Except for Pauline.

Their horses were as mismatched as the men themselves. The younger man sat astride a tall bay—long-legged, with powerful haunches and shoulders, it was the epitome of a battlehorse. A second battlehorse, this one a black, trotted behind him on a lead rope. His companion's mount was considerably smaller, a shaggy barrel-chested horse, more a pony really. But it was sturdy, and had a look of endurance to it. Another horse, similar to the first, trotted behind, lightly laden with the bare essentials for camping and traveling. There was no lead rein on this horse. It followed obediently and willingly.

"Tug!"

Halt gestured for Rodney to continue reading and ignore Will.

Horace craned his neck up at the tallest of the mountains towering above them. His eyes squinted slightly in the glare of the snow that still lay thickly on the mountain's upper half and now reflected the light of the sun.

Lady Margaret winced slightly. "That must have been bright."

"You mean to tell me we're going over that?" he asked, his eyes widening.

Will rolled his eyes. "You think so?"

Horace looked embarrassed.

Halt looked sidelong at him, with the barest suggestion of a smile. Horace, however, intent on studying the massive mountain formations facing them, failed to see it.

Will laughed. "A good thing, though. If Horace had seen Halt smiling, he would probably faint." Halt and Horace glared at Will. However, the former apprentice showed no signs of being affected.

"Not over," said the Ranger. "Through."

Horace frowned thoughtfully at that. "Is there a tunnel of some kind?"

"A pass," Halt told him. "A narrow defile that twists and winds through the lower reaches of the mountains and brings us into Skandia itself."

Horace digested that piece of information for a moment or two. Then Halt saw his shoulders rise to an intake of breath and knew that the movement presaged yet another question. He closed his eyes, remembering a time that seemed years ago when he was alone and when life was not an endless series of questions.

Will, not knowing whether this was a compliment or not, decided not to say anything.

Halt noticed this, and inwardly thanked Will. Although he acted otherwise, he was proud of Will. Will had been trained well, and was one of the best Rangers in the Corps.

Then he admitted to himself that, strangely, he preferred things the way they were now.

Will let out a whoop. "I knew it!" he yelled. "I knew you really liked me when I asked questions! Horace, you owe me half a silver!"

Halt glared at Will while Crowley started to giggle. Halt turned his withering glare to Crowley who ignored him.

Rodney decided to ignore them and continue.

However, he must have made some unintentional noise as he awaited the question, for he noticed that Horace had sealed his lips firmly and determinedly. Obviously, Horace had sensed the reaction and had decided that he would not bother Halt with another question. Not yet, anyway.

Will chuckled. "Good for you! Or maybe not, if Halt really feels this way."

Halt slapped Will.

Which left Halt in a strange quandary. Because now that the question was unasked, he couldn't help wondering what it would have been.

Will laughed again.

All of a sudden, there was a nagging sense of incompletion about the morning. He tried to ignore the feeling but it would not be pushed aside. And for once, Horace seemed to have conquered his almost irresistible need to ask the question that had occurred to him.

"Finally!"

Halt waited a minute or two but there was no sound except for the jingling of harness and the creaking of leather from their saddles. Finally, the former Ranger could bear it no longer.

"Ha! Halt can't bear not knowing a question when he acts like he hates it! Gilan, note that down. Next time we can use that against Halt!"

"I dare you to." Halt, as always, was totally calm.

"What?"

The question seemed to explode out of him, with a greater degree of violence than he had intended. Taken by surprise, Horace's bay shied in fright and danced several paces sideways.

Halt sighed. "And that is why Ranger horses are so much better than battlehorses. They may be small, but at least they don't spook at loud noises."

Horace scowled.

Horace turned an aggrieved look on his mentor as he calmed the horse and brought it back under control.

"What?" he asked Halt, and the smaller man made a gesture of exasperation.

"That's what I want to know," he said irritably. "What?"

Alyss sighed. "He doesn't understand what you mean, Halt."

"I know that now Alyss, I was just annoyed at Horace at that moment," replied Halt.

Horace peered at him. The look was all too obviously the sort of look that you give to someone who seems to have taken leave of his senses. It did little to improve Halt's rapidly rising temper.

Gilan groaned. "Oh, Horace. I wish you would become a bit more sensitive to Halt."

Halt shot Gilan a glare, who grinned sunnily back.

"What?" said Horace, now totally puzzled.

The rest of the room also looked confused.

"Don't keep parroting at me!" Halt fumed. "Stop repeating what I say! I asked you 'what,' so don't ask me 'what' back, understand?"

Horace considered the question for a second or two, then, in his deliberate way, he replied: "No."

Most of the people in the room laughed, some banging their heads against the table in an attempt to hold back their laughter. Crowley was not one of these.

Halt took a deep breath, his eyebrows contracted into a deep V, and beneath them his eyes sparked with anger. But before he could speak, Horace forestalled him.

"What 'what' are you asking me?" he said. Then, thinking how to make his question clearer, he added, "Or to put it another way, why are you asking 'what'?"

Gilan smirked.

Controlling himself with enormous restraint, and making no secret of the fact, Halt said, very precisely: "You were about to ask a question."

Horace frowned. "I was?"

"Yes, Horace, you were."

Halt nodded. "You were. I saw you take a breath to ask it."

"I see," said Horace. "And what was it about?"

For just a second or two, Halt was speechless.

"HA! Take that! Never knew the great Halt who kills bears with his bare hands would be speechless."

He opened his mouth, closed it again, then finally found the strength to speak.

"That is what I was asking you," he said. "When I said 'what,' I was asking you what you were about to ask me."

"I wasn't about to ask you 'what,'" Horace replied, and Halt glared at him suspiciously. It occurred to him that Horace could be indulging himself in a gigantic leg pull, that he was secretly laughing at Halt. This, Halt could have told him, was not a good career move. Rangers were not people who took kindly to being laughed at. He studied the boy's open face and guileless blue eyes and decided that his suspicion was ill-founded.

Horace smiled secretly to himself, his ploy had worked!

"Then what, if I may use that word once more, were you about to ask me?"

Horace drew breath once more, then hesitated. "I forget," he said. "What were we talking about?"

"Never mind," Halt muttered, and nudged Abelard into a canter for a few strides to draw ahead of his companion.

Rodney grinned. "And Halt finally gives up."

Halt kicked him under the table.

Sometimes the Ranger could be confusing, and Horace thought it best to forget the whole conversation. Yet, as happens so often, the moment he stopped trying to consciously remember the thought that had prompted his question, it popped back into his mind again.

Jenny nodded. "That happens a lot."

"Are there many passes?" he called to Halt.

The Ranger twisted in his saddle to look back at him. "What?" he asked.

Crowley was shaking with barely supressed laughter.

Horace wisely chose to ignore the fact that they were heading for dangerous territory with that word again. He gestured to the mountains frowning down upon them.

Will cocked his head. "Never knew mountains could frown."

Alyss sighed. "It's called personification, Will. That is when people give inanimate objects human like characteristics."

"I knew that!"

Pauline shook her head with a small smile and Rodney decided to continue.

"Through the mountains. Are there many passes into Skandia through the mountains?"

Halt checked Abelard's stride momentarily, allowing the bay to catch up with them, then resumed his pace.

"Three or four," he said.

"Then don't the Skandians guard them?" Horace asked. It seemed logical to him that they would.

"Obviously."

"Of course they do," Halt replied. "The mountains form their principal line of defense."

"So how did you plan for us to get past them?"

The Ranger hesitated. It was a question that had been taxing his mind since they had taken the road from Chateau Montsombre. If he were by himself, he would have no trouble slipping past unseen. With Horace in company, and riding a big, spirited battlehorse, it might be a more difficult matter.

"Oy! I'm insulted!"

He had a few ideas but had yet to settle on any one of them.

"I'll think of something," he temporized, and Horace nodded wisely, satisfied that Halt would indeed think of something. In Horace's world, that was what Rangers did best, and the best thing a warrior apprentice could do was let the Ranger get on with thinking while a warrior took care of walloping anyone who needed to be walloped along the way. He settled back in his saddle, contented with his lot in life.

Crowley snickered. "So remarkably Horace!"

Rodney glared at him but said, "That's it for this chapter."

Thanks for all of the reviewers, it is nice to see that people like our story! Thanks to Vanadesse Sadroniel for helping to write this. Thanks to PFT3000 for being the beta for this story. RangerIthilwen