The cow, unnerved by the shouting and the metallic smell of blood, stood uncertainly, swaying its head, offering a half-hearted threat to the approaching strangers.
Nolan, a burly man who was one of Tennyson's inner circle, moved forward and seized the cow's halter, bringing it under control. The cow looked at him curiously, then Nolan slashed his knife across its throat. Blood jetted out and the cow staggered a few paces before its legs gave way and it collapsed into the grass.
The Outsiders stood around the thrashing animal in a circle, regarding it with satisfaction. There would be enough meat there to keep them fed for some time.
'Clean it and joint it,' Tennyson told Nolan. Before joining Tennyson's band, the big man had worked as a butcher. He nodded contentedly.
'Give me a hand,' he ordered three of the men around him. He'd need them to hold the carcass steady while he skinned and butchered it. Tennyson left him to the task and strode into the farmhouse. The doorway was low and he had to bow his head to enter. A quick search revealed a supply of potatoes, turnips and onions. His men gathered them up while he sent another two to pick some of the cabbages growing in the cultivated field. He looked around the neat little house. He was tempted to spend the night here under a roof for a change. But he had no idea if the farmer might have friends living nearby. It would be safer to gather up the food and keep moving.
Another of his followers met him as he emerged from the house.
'There are two more beasts in the barn,' he said. 'Do we want them?'
Tennyson hesitated. They had plenty of meat now, as well as the potatoes and onions from the house. If they were to carry anything more it would only slow them down. He glanced across to where Nolan was already working on the carcass. He'd stripped the skin away and laid it on the grass. He'd gutted and cleaned the body and was cutting the meat into joints, piling them on the bloodied skin.
'No,' he said. 'Burn the barn when we leave. And the house.' There was no real reason to burn them, he thought. But then, there was no reason not to, either. And the act of wanton destruction would go a long way towards restoring his good spirits.
The Outsider nodded. Then he hesitated, not sure what Tennyson intended.
'And the cows?' he asked. Tennyson shrugged. If he couldn't use them, he didn't see any sense leaving them for anyone else.
'Burn them in it.' Ten The path led Halt, Will and Horace a little east of south, and the coastline was angling out to the west. So as they travelled, they moved further and further away from the sea. The constant, salt-laden wind died away and they began to see trees again.
The land itself was wild and hilly, covered for the main part in gorse and heather. It lacked the gentle green beauty of the southern parts of Araluen that Will and Horace were accustomed to. But it had its own form of beauty – wild and rugged and unkempt. Even the trees, as they began to appear with greater frequency, seemed to stand as if challenging the elements to do their worst, their roots wide-set in the sandy ground, their branches thick and braced like brawny arms.
They had travelled perhaps a kilometre when Halt gave a low grunt. He swung down from the saddle and stepped off the trail to examine something. Will and Horace, riding single file behind him, dismounted and moved to peer over his shoulder. He was studying a small tuft of cloth, caught on a branch of tough heather that grew beside the trail.
'What do you make of that, Will?'
'Cloth,' Will said, then as Halt looked piercingly at him, he realised that he had stated the obvious and his mentor wanted more from him. He reached out and touched the small fragment, feeling it, rolling it gently between his forefinger and thumb. It was a smooth linen weave, perhaps from a shirt, he thought.
'It's nothing like the rough plaid the Scotti wear,' he said thoughtfully. Now he realised why they wove that thick, rough cloth. The heather and gorse of their homeland would rip anything lighter to shreds within a few weeks.
'Good work,' Halt said approvingly.
Horace smiled as he watched his two friends, crouched by the side of the track. In some ways, he knew, Halt would never stop teaching the younger Ranger. Will would always be his apprentice. And as he had the thought, he realised that Will, without thinking about it, would probably always want it that way.
'So what else occurs to you?' Halt asked.
Will looked around, studying the sandy path they had been travelling, seeing traces there that people had passed this way within the previous few days. But the rain and wind had made it almost impossible to deduce whether they had all travelled together or were in several separate parties.
'I'm wondering why the owner wasn't walking on the path itself. Why would he be shoving his way through the bushes when there's a clear path?'
Halt said nothing. But his body language, as he leaned towards Will and nodded encouragingly, told the young Ranger that he was on the right track. He looked at the path again, at the jumble of footprints, one over the other.
'The path is narrow,' he said finally. 'No room for more than two abreast. The person wearing this,' he indicated the small piece of material, 'was jostled off the path by the numbers. Maybe he stopped for a moment and he was bumped aside.'
'So we're following a large group of travellers. I'd say there are more than a dozen of them,' Halt said.
'The innkeeper said Tennyson had about twenty people with him,' Will said.
Halt nodded. 'Exactly. And I'd guess we're a day or two behind them.'
They stood erect. Horace shook his head in admiration.
'You mean you can figure out all that just from one little scrap of cloth?'
Halt regarded him sardonically. He was still bristling a little from Horace saying 'That's a fancy term for a guess' the previous day. Halt didn't forget criticism.
'No,' he said. 'We're guessing. We just wanted to make it sound scientific.'
Halt paused for a few seconds, as if inviting Horace to make some kind of reply, but wisely, Horace chose not to. Finally, the Ranger gestured to the path ahead of them.
'Let's get moving,' he said.
The wind had blown away the rainclouds of the previous night and the sky above them was a brilliant blue, even though the air temperature was cold and crisp. The heather that surrounded them varied in colour from deep brown to dull purple. Under the bright sunlight it seemed to shimmer with colour. Will spotted the next fragment of cloth almost by chance. It was nothing more than a thread, really, snagged on another branch – this time, one growing close to the path. And it would have been easy to miss in the purple heather because it blended in.
It too was purple.
Will signalled Horace, who was riding behind him, to rein in. Then he leaned down from the saddle and plucked the thread from the bush.
'Halt,' he called.
The bearded Ranger checked Abelard and swivelled in the saddle. He squinted at the purple thread on Will's forefinger, then smiled slowly. 'And who do we know who wears purple?'
'The Genovesans,' Will replied.
Halt took a deep breath. 'So it looks like we're on the right track.'
That was confirmed for them a few kilometres later. They smelt it first. The wind was too strong for the smoke to hang in the sky. It was blown away almost instantly. But the smell of burnt, charred wood and thatch – and something else – carried to them.
'Smoke,' Will said, reining in and turning his face to the wind to try to catch the scent more clearly. There was a faint trace of something else – something he'd smelt before, when he had been following the trail of one of Tennyson's raiding parties, far away to the south in Hibernia. It was the smell of burnt flesh.