Halts peril

Gently, he reined Tug in as they reached a slightly wider part of the trail. He sat still for a moment, considering their position. After a few seconds, he was forced to accept the truth. They were lost. At least, he was.

'Do you have any idea where we are?' he asked Tug. The horse tossed his head and neighed sharply. It was an uncertain sound. For once, Tug's almost supernatural senses were defeated.

'We can't be too far away,' Will said hopefully. Although, in truth, they could have been travelling entirely in the wrong direction for the past hour. He had seen nothing familiar. He paused, sca

And heard frogs.

Several frogs, croaking.

'Listen!' he said urgently to Tug, and pointed in the direction from which he had heard the insistent sound. Tug's ears went up and his head swung to follow the sound. He heard them too.

'Find them,' Will ordered and, with a definite task in mind, Tug set off into the trees, brushing aside several saplings, forcing his way through some low undergrowth until he emerged on another path. It was just ten metres from the one they had been following and it appeared to be much more travelled. After a few metres, it diverged, angling away towards the sound of those frogs.

With growing certainty, Tug surged forward and then, without warning, the trees opened out and they emerged on the edge of a wide, black body of water.

'Grimsdell mere,' Will said triumphantly. From here, he knew, they were barely ten minutes' away from Healer's Clearing. But ten minutes in which direction? The black mere itself was familiar but the part of the bank where they had emerged wasn't. Once it was lost to sight, they could go blundering about the wood and lose themselves again within a few minutes.

Tug turned his head to look at him. There are the frogs. I did my bit.

Will patted his neck gratefully. 'Well done. Now it's time for me to do something.'

An idea came to him and, placing his fingers in either side of his mouth, he let go a shrill, piercing whistle. Tug started at the unexpected sound.

'Sorry,' Will told him. 'Here goes again.'

Again, he whistled, long and loud and shrill. The sound seemed to be swallowed up by the dark mass of the wood around them. He waited, counting the seconds till a minute had passed, then whistled once more.

He repeated the action another four times, allowing a minute to pass between each whistle. And each time, he sca

He was placing his fingers for a seventh whistle when he heard a rustling sound in the undergrowth close by. Tug rumbled a warning, which quickly turned to a sound of greeting. Then a black and white shape emerged, body low to the ground, heavy, white-tipped tail sweeping slowly from side to side in welcome.

Will dismounted painfully and moved to greet her, fondling the soft fur of her head, rubbing under her chin in the way dogs love to be patted. She raised her head to his touch, her eyes, one brown, the other a surprising manic blue, half-closed in pleasure.

'Hello, Shadow,' he said. 'You have no idea how delighted I am to see you.' Thirty-two From the crest of a ridge overlooking the small camp, Bacari watched.

He wondered why the young archer had ridden away. Maybe he'd given up the chase? Then he shook his head. That didn't seem to fit with what he had seen of these three so far. More likely he'd gone in search of a local apothecary or healer.

The bearded one would be in bad shape by now, he knew. Bacari had heard him cry out and heard the clatter of his bow as he'd dropped it. That told him that his bolt had at least wounded his enemy.

And a simple flesh wound was as good as a killing shot with the poison he had used on the bolt. He was surprised that the bearded stranger had survived as long as he had. He must be in excellent physical condition to resist the effects of the poison for so long. The Genovesan smiled grimly to himself. The young man's quest for a healer would be in vain. No country potion merchant would have the faintest idea how to counteract that poison. In fact, he thought, very few healers in large towns would know either.

It was all to the good, he thought. The camp site where Te

For a few seconds, he considered working his way into crossbow range and taking a shot at the young warrior. But he quickly abandoned the idea. He'd be crossing open ground, where he might easily be seen. If he missed his shot, he'd have to face the swordsman and he'd seen ample evidence of his skill in Hibernia. In addition, he had no way of knowing when the younger archer might return. No, he decided. Leave them be. They represented no immediate danger and his own priorities were changing.

It was time to report back to Te

By the time he reached the sprawling camp site, he could see that the numbers had already grown. There must have been over fifty new arrivals. He rode slowly through the camp to Te

One of the white robes stood guard outside the pavilion. As Bacari dismounted and walked stiffly towards the entrance, the guard began to draw himself up, as if he were going to bar the way. Bacari smiled at him, but there was something in the smile that told the man he was not a good person to cross. Hastily, the guard stepped back and beckoned him to enter.

Te

'Don't you ever knock?' Te

The Genovesan made a pretence of looking around for something in the canvas walls to knock on. With bad grace, Te

'So, what do you have to report?' the prophet said, finishing the last few words on the parchment.

'They've stopped,' Bacari said. That got Te

'Stopped? Where?'

'About four, maybe five hours' ride away. The older one is sick. He'll die soon.'

'You're sure of that?' Te

'Yes. The poison is in him. He's been wrapped in his blankets for almost two days now. I haven't seen him move. There's no way he will survive. Nobody does.'

Te

'He will,' Bacari assured him.

'What about the others? The two young ones?'

Bacari frowned as he answered. 'One has gone. The other stayed with the greybeard.'

'What do you mean, "gone"?' Te

'Gone means gone,' Bacari said insolently. 'He rode away. The other one stayed behind. He seems to be tending the bearded one.'

Te