Then Halt and Horace caught the scent too. Will exchanged a glance with his teacher and knew he'd recognised that ominous smell as well.
'Come on,' said Halt, and he urged Abelard into a canter, even though he knew they were already too late.
The crofter's cottage had stood in cleared ground, a few hundred metres from the path.
Now it was a pile of blackened ruins, still smoking a day after it had been consumed by fire. One section of the thatched roof remained partly intact. But its support structure had collapsed and it lay at an angle, propped up by the charred remnants of one wall.
'Thatch must have been damp,' Halt said. 'It didn't burn completely.'
They'd reined in a few metres short of the cottage. There was nobody left alive here. The bodies of a man and a woman sprawled face down in the long grass.
There had been a second building beyond the cottage – a barn, Will guessed. It too had been burned to ashes. There was nothing left of its walls, although, as with the cottage, some sections of the damp thatch had survived, only to collapse into the ruins. Tug sidestepped nervously as Will urged him towards the barn. The smell of burnt flesh was much stronger here and the horse objected to it. Among the ashes, Will could see two large, charred bodies. Cattle, he thought.
'Easy, boy,' Will told Tug. The little horse tossed his head uncomfortably, as if apologising for his nervous reaction. Then he steadied. Will swung himself down from the saddle, and heard a low warning rumble in Tug's chest.
'It's all right,' he told the horse. 'Whoever did this is long gone.'
And it soon became apparent who had done it. Will knelt beside the body of the crofter and gently moved the man's tangled plaid to one side, from where it had bunched up as he had fallen. Concealed by the folds of rough wool, he found the implements that had killed him: two crossbow bolts, barely a centimetre apart, buried deep in the man's back. There was little blood. At least one of the bolts must have hit the man's heart, killing him almost instantly. That was something to be grateful for, at least, Will thought. He looked up. Halt and Horace were still sitting their horses, watching him.
'Crossbow,' he said.
'Not a Scotti weapon,' Halt observed.
Will shook his head. 'No. I've seen bolts like this before. They're Genovesan. Tennyson has been here.'
Horace looked around the tragic little scene. His expression was a mixture of sadness and disgust. Picta and the Scotti might nominally be enemies of Araluen, but these people weren't soldiers or raiders. They were simple country folk, going about their day-to-day business, working hard and scraping a meagre living from this tough northern land.
'Why?' he said. 'Why kill them?'
In his young life, Horace had seen his share of battles and knew there was no glamour in war. But at least in war, soldiers knew their fate was in their own hands. They could kill or be killed. They had a chance to defend themselves. This was the pitiless slaughter of innocent, unarmed civilians.
Halt indicated another corpse, further away and half concealed in the long grass. There was a small cloud of flies buzzing about and a crow hopped on top of it, ripping at the carcass with its dagger of a beak. It was all that was left of another of the crofter's cattle. But this one had been killed and butchered for its meat.
'They wanted food,' he said. 'So they took it. When the crofter objected, they killed him and his wife and burned their house and barn.'
'But why? They could have overpowered him, surely. Why kill him?'
Halt shrugged. 'They've still got a way to go to the border,' he said. 'I guess they didn't want to leave anyone behind who could raise the alarm against them.' He looked around now, but saw no sign of other habitation. 'I'll bet there are half a dozen other little crofts like this within a few kilometres. Chances are there's a hamlet or village as well. Tennyson wouldn't want to take the risk that these people might gather a party and come after him.'
'He's a murdering swine,' Horace said quietly, as he listened to Halt's reasoning. The bearded Ranger gave a slight snort of disgust.
'Are you only beginning to figure that out?' he asked. Eleven Halt glanced warily around the horizon. 'We should get out of here,' he said, but Horace was already swinging down from his saddle.
'We can't leave them like this, Halt,' he said quietly. 'It's just not right.'
He began to unstrap the short spade that was part of his camping equipment. Halt leaned forward in the saddle.
'Horace, do you want to be here if some of these Scottis' friends turn up?' he asked. 'Because I don't think they'll be too willing to listen to explanations.'
But Horace was already surveying the ground, looking for a soft spot to begin digging.
'We should bury them, Halt. We can't just leave them here to rot. If they have any friends nearby, they'll appreciate the fact that we took the trouble.'
'I think you're assuming far too much reasoning power from the Scotti,' Halt told him. But he could see that he wouldn't change Horace's mind. Will had dismounted and had his own shovel as well. He looked up at Halt.
'Halt, if we don't bury them, they'll attract more crows and ravens. And that might attract their friends' attention,' he reasoned.
'What about that?' Halt asked, indicating the butchered carcass. Will shrugged.
'We can drag it into the middle of the barn's ashes,' he said. 'Cover it with sections of the thatch.'
Halt sighed, giving up the argument. In a way, he thought, Horace was right. It was the decent thing to do – and that was what set them apart from people like Tennyson. And besides, Will's argument made sense. Maybe, Halt thought, he had become a little too cold-blooded and pragmatic in his old age. He swung down from the saddle, took his own shovel and began digging.
'I'm too set in my ways to start doing the right thing,' he complained. 'You're a bad influence, Horace.'
They covered the two bodies with the thick plaids they had been wearing and laid them side by side in the shallow grave. While Will and Horace filled it in, Halt hitched a rope to Abelard's saddle and dragged the carcass into the blackened remains of the barn. Then he heaved several sections of the half-burned thatch over the body. The other two beasts were so badly burned that there was nothing left to attract scavengers.
Horace smoothed out the last shovelful of earth and stood erect, rubbing the small of his back.
'These shovels are too short,' he said. He glanced around at his companions. 'Should we say something over the grave?' he asked uncertainly.
'They won't hear us if we do,' Halt replied and jerked a thumb towards the waiting horses. 'Let's get mounted. We've given Tennyson too much time to get away from us as it is.'
Horace nodded, realising that Halt was right. Besides, he thought, it would be awkward saying words of farewell over two people whose names he didn't even know.
Halt waited until his two companions were mounted again. 'Let's pick up the pace,' he said, swinging Abelard's head to the south again. 'We've got a lot of time to make up.'
They held the horses to a steady lope throughout the rest of the afternoon. Tug and Abelard, of course, could maintain a pace like that for days if necessary. Kicker didn't have quite the same endurance, but his longer stride meant he was making the same progress for a lot less effort. The clear skies of the morning had gone as the wind shifted and brought banks of cloud rolling in from the west. Halt sniffed the air.
'Could rain tonight,' he said. 'Be good to be into the pass by then.'
'Why's that?' Will wanted to know.
'Caves,' Halt told him succinctly. 'The walls of the pass are lined with them and I'd rather spend the night in a nice warm, dry cave than sleeping out in this Pictish rain again.'