Rangers Apprentice: Return of the Dead

Tournament At Gorlan: Sneak Peek Chapter

It had been raining for a week.

Not heavy rain, but a steady, persistent, soaking rain that finally overcame the protective oil in their woolen cloaks and worked its way into the fabric itself, making it heavy and sodden.

And cold.

As they had done for the previous few nights, Halt and Crowley were camping out in the woods. Halt suggested that they should avoid towns and villages until they were sure they were clear of Morgarath's sphere of influence, and Crowley initially agreed. Halt, after all, had more experience of traveling as a fugitive than he did. Now, however, he wasn't quite so sure about the decision.

They were sitting under a rectangular oilskin sheet that they had spread between four trees, with the lower side angled so that the rain would run off it. The ground beneath them was saturated and they had constructed low cots from tree branches to keep them off the wet earth. Each cot consisted of a rectangular frame, with a series of short crosspieces, and leafy boughs laid across it to form a rough mattress. Each day, they would disassemble the frames and carry the longer timber pieces with them, lashed in a bundle.

A few meters away, their horses were tethered. The animals huddled together, sharing their body warmth and keeping their hindquarters turned to the wind and rain.

Halt shivered and pulled his cloak more tightly around him. As he moved, a runnel of water ran off the cowl and landed on his nose, continuing its downward passage to drip off the end. Seeing it, Crowley laughed.

Halt turned an accusing eye on him. "What do you find so amusing?" he asked coldly.

Crowley, also huddled inside his cloak, nodded his head toward his friend. "You sitting there, hunched over and dripping, like an old man with a runny nose," he said. Unfortunately, the shrugging movement dislodged a stream of water from his own cowl and the drops ran down his nose. He sniffed, the smile dying on his face.

"You find it amusing that I'm soaked to the skin and dying of cold?" Halt asked.

Crowley made as if to shrug, then realized that such a movement would send more water running, and restrained himself. "Not amusing, perhaps. But certainly diverting."

Halt turned, very carefully, to face him. "And from what does this sight divert you?" he asked, with careful attention to his grammar. When Halt was in a bad mood, he invariably paid careful attention to his grammar.

"From the fact that I'm also sitting here with water running off my nose, cold, wet and miserable," Crowley said.

Halt considered that. "You're uncomfortable?"

Crowley nodded, sending more water cascading. "Totally," he said.

"Some Ranger you turned out to be," Halt told him. "I thought Rangers could face the worst discomfort in the line of duty with a smile on their lips and a song in their heart. I didn't realize they would sit around whining and complaining."

"Facing discomfort doesn't mean I'm not entitled to whine and complain about it. Besides, only a few minutes ago, I was laughing and cheerful." Crowley shivered, and pulled his cloak tighter. More water ran off it. "These cloaks are good up to a point. But once the water has soaked into them, they're worse than nothing."

"If you were sitting here wrapped in nothing you'd soon see the difference," Halt replied. Crowley grunted, and a brief silence fell over the campsite, broken only by the persistent patter of rain on the leaves and the occasional stomp of one of the horses' hooves.

They were faced with another cold supper. The air was so moisture laden that getting a spark to take from Halt's flint and steel to ignite a handful of tinder would be beyond his capabilities. And even if he could manage that, there was no dry firewood. Usually, they traveled with an emergency supply of tinder and kindling, but they had run out of both two days previously.