When darkness fell, he spelled the horses again, letting them drink sparingly from the small, folding leather bucket that he carried for the purpose. He took a large swig of the coffee, now with almost no trace of heat left in it. But the taste and the sweetness revived him. The moon was due to rise in an hour and he decided to wait for it. He was travelling unfamiliar ground and, surefooted as they might be, he didn't want to risk one of the horses stumbling or falling. He'd switch back to Tug when they set out again. It was time to do so anyway and, while Tug and Abelard were very similar, Abelard's gait was slightly different – a little stiffer and more abrupt. In time, he knew, he would become accustomed to it. But if they were travelling by night he'd prefer to lead the way on Tug.
After a time, the moon soared up over the eastern horizon, huge and silent and watchful while it was close to the horizon, seeming to shrink as it reached higher into the night sky. He put an arm around Abelard's neck, letting the horse nuzzle against him.
'Thanks, Abelard,' he said, then, on an impulse, 'Merci bien, mon ami. You've done well.'
The little horse rumbled acknowledgement and butted against him several times. Kicker, grazing nearby, looked up as Will retrieved his lead rope from the tree where it was tied and moved to mount Tug.
Once again in the familiar saddle – even Halt's saddle felt slightly different to his own – he looked around at the other two horses, patiently waiting his command.
'All right, boys,' he said. Let's get going.'
He was tired. Inestimably tired. And his body ached in a hundred different muscles. He had changed back to Abelard, then to Tug once more, and even the familiar saddle created its own form of torture for his aching legs and back and behind. He estimated that it was after midnight, so he had been riding, with a few brief stops, for well over twelve hours. And while he was riding, he was also concentrating fiercely. Concentrating on the course they were following, steering by the stars. Watching the ground ahead of them, alert for any obstacles or dangers.
The effort that went into this sort of concentration was almost as exhausting as the physical exertion.
The moon had set hours ago but he continued by starlight. The trees were becoming fewer and further between and he was climbing gradually to a plateau. The terrain now was a series of bare knolls, covered only by long, windswept grass. Soon, he decided, he would have to stop for a brief rest. Once again, it would be the lesser of two undesirable alternatives. If he kept riding too long, his attention would wander and sheer fatigue might lead him into a mistake – a wrong direction, or a poor choice of path. In the back of his mind, he nursed the fear that one of the horses might stumble or fall and injure himself because of some mistake made by Will – a mistake he might not have made if he had all his wits about him.
Once, they startled a large animal close to the faint trail they were following. There was a brief snarl of surprise and it bounded away, disappearing into the long grass before he could get a good look at it. The horses started nervously. Kicker neighed in alarm and pulled at the lead rope, nearly jerking the exhausted young Ranger from the saddle. He had no idea what the animal might have been. A wolf, perhaps, or a large hunting cat. He had heard that there was a species of lynx in this part of the country that could grow as large as a small bear.
Or it could have been a bear.
Whatever it was, if they chanced upon another one, he needed to have his wits about him. He realised with a guilty start that he had actually been dozing in the saddle when they had blundered upon it. Almost certainly, Tug and Abelard would have given him warnings. But he had been too exhausted to notice them.
He reined Tug in. It was time to stop and have a substantial rest. To close his eyes and sleep, if only for half an hour, and let his body be revitalised. Half an hour's proper sleep would do it, and as he had the thought, the idea of stretching flat out, rolling himself in his warm cloak and letting his eyes close and stay closed was too much to resist.
He glanced around the surrounding countryside. The terrain had been rising for some time now and they were close to the top of a large, bare hill. In the distance, he made out several irregular shapes in the dim starlight and for a moment he frowned, wondering what they were.
Then he realised. They were the barrows. The ancient burial mounds of long-dead warriors.
He recalled his flippant remark to Horace: Some folk think they're haunted. It had tripped off the tongue so easily in the daylight, scores of kilometres away. Now, here on this bare hill, with only the dim light of the stars, the whole idea seemed more forbidding, the barrows themselves more ominous.
'Great place you picked for a rest,' he muttered to himself and, groaning with the effort, swung down from Tug's back. His knees gave slightly as he touched the ground and he staggered a pace or two. Then he fastened Kicker's lead rope to Tug's saddle bow, loosened the little horse's girth strap, and looked for a clear space in the grass. Ghosts or no ghosts, he had to sleep.
The ground was hard and the cold struck through his cloak. But at the moment he first stretched out and groaned softly with pleasure, it felt as soft as the softest goose down mattress underneath him. He closed his eyes. He would wake in half an hour, he knew. If by any chance he didn't, Tug would wake him. But that was half an hour away.
For now, he could sleep.
He woke.
Instinctively, he knew that he hadn't been asleep for the full thirty minutes he had allotted to himself. Something had woken him. Something foreign.
Something hostile.
There had been no noise, he realised, as he tracked his thoughts back a few seconds. No sound had intruded into his consciousness to arouse him. It was something else. Something he could feel rather than see or hear. A presence. Something, or someone, was close by.
There was no outward sign that he was awake. His eyes were slitted so that he could see, without any observer realising that they were open. His breathing maintained the same steady rhythm that it had fallen into a few seconds after he had stretched out.
He took stock of the situation, reminding himself of where everything lay around him. The hilt of his saxe knife dug into his right side, where he had lain the double scabbard as he settled in to sleep. The fingers of his left hand touched the smooth surface of his bow, wrapped with him inside the cloak to protect the string from the dampness of the night air.
If there were someone close by, the saxe would be the better choice, he thought. He could spring to his feet and have it drawn and ready in a matter of seconds. The bow would be more cumbersome. He searched his senses, trying to determine a direction. Something had disturbed him. He was sure of that. Now he tried to sense where it lay. He gave himself over to pure instinct.
Where is it? Which direction?
He forced all conscious thought from his mind, letting it become a blank, removing all extraneous distractions the same way he did in the instant before releasing an arrow. His senses told him left. He slid his eyes sideways, without moving his head. But he still had them slitted, feigning sleep, and he could see nothing.