Horace and Will followed him as he walked to the door. He rapped with his knuckles on the painted wood and it swung half open under the impact, the leather hinges creaking.
'Anyone home?' he called.
'Apparently not,' Will said, after a few seconds' silence.
'Nobody home and the door unlatched,' Halt said. 'How curious.'
He led the way into the little farmhouse. They found themselves standing in a small kitchen-cum-living room. It was furnished with a wooden table and several rough-carved wooden chairs – obviously home-made. A cooking pot hung on a swivelling arm beside the fireplace. The fire was still burning, although it was almost down to coals. It was some time since fresh wood had been added to it.
Two other rooms led off from the large central room and a short ladder on one side led to a loft set under the thatch. Will mounted the ladder and peered around, while Horace checked the other rooms.
'Nothing,' Will reported.
Horace nodded agreement. 'Nothing anywhere. Where can they have gone?'
It was obvious from the condition of the room, the fire and a few eating and drinking implements on the table that the house had been inhabited quite recently. There was no sign of a fight or a struggle. The floor had been swept and the broom replaced beside the door. Halt ran a finger over a shelf beside the fireplace, where cooking implements were stored. He inspected his fingertip for signs of dust and found none.
'They've run off,' Halt said. 'They must have got wind that the Scotti are coming and ran off.'
'And left everything here?' Horace questioned, sweeping an arm around the room.
Halt shrugged. 'There actually isn't much. And if you'll notice, there are no cloaks or coats beside the door – just a set of empty pegs where they might have hung.'
He indicated a row of hanging pegs set into the wall beside the door – the spot where someone entering the room would hang an outer garment. Or, Will realised, where they would don it as they were leaving.
'But why leave the cattle behind for the Scotti?' Horace asked.
'They couldn't take them along, could they?' Halt replied. He crossed to the door and went outside again. Horace and Will followed as he made his way to the fenced cattle yard.
'They tried to drive them off,' he said, indicating the yard gate, where it stood wide open. 'But there's feed in the troughs there, and water. I guess once the people were gone, the cattle simply wandered back.'
The cattle looked up at him peacefully. Most of them were busy chewing and they seemed completely unalarmed by the sight of a stranger. They were stocky and solid, with shaggy coats to protect them from the northern winter months. And above all, they were placid beasts.
'Maybe they hoped if the Scotti got the cattle, they wouldn't bother to burn the house and barn,' Will suggested.
Halt raised an eyebrow. 'Maybe. But they'd bother, all right. Burning a house and barn is part of the fun for a Scotti.'
'So what should we do?' Horace asked. 'Simply fade away? After all, the farmer and his family will be safe from the raiders now.'
'True,' Halt said. 'But with the cattle gone and their home and barn and crops burned, they'll probably starve in the winter.'
'So what do you suggest we do, Halt?' Will asked.
Halt hesitated. He seemed to be considering a plan of action. Then he said, 'I think we should give them the cattle.'
Will regarded his mentor as if he had taken leave of his senses.
'If we're going to do that, why did we bother detouring here in the first place?' he asked. 'We might as well have continued on after Tennyson.' But then he noticed Halt was smiling grimly.
'When I say give them the cattle, I don't mean as a gift. Let's give them the cattle right in their faces.'
Understanding began to dawn on Will and Horace. Will was about to say something further when Halt stopped him and gestured to the far side of the clearing.
'Get back over there and keep watch. I want to know when they're coming. When they're clear of the thick trees, we'll stampede the cattle at them.'
Will nodded, a grin forming on his face as the thought of the surprise that was in store for the raiding Scotti. He swung up into Tug's saddle and galloped away across the field, riding on until he was some thirty or forty metres inside the thinning tree line. The trees here were more widely spaced than in the forest proper, he noted. And the trunks were thinner and lighter. It was probably an area that had been progressively thinned out over the years, providing the homestead with building materials and firewood. The widely spaced saplings would provide little shelter for the Scotti against a herd of charging cattle.
He found a leafy bush growing between two saplings, positioned Tug behind it and dismounted. He glanced back quickly at the farmhouse, where he could see the distant figures of his two friends standing by the cattle yard. It occurred to him that he had no idea how to stampede a herd of cattle. But he shrugged that fact away, comfortable in the knowledge that Halt would know. There was nothing that Halt didn't know, after all.
'How do you stampede cattle?' Horace asked.
'You startle them. You alarm them. We'll get them running, then mount up and drive them at the Scotti when they hit open ground,' Halt told him. He was walking among the herd of cattle, who watched him incuriously. He shoved at one of them. It was like shoving the side of a house, he thought. He waved his arms experimentally.
'Shoo!' he said. The cow broke wind noisily but made no other movement.
'You certainly scared that out of him,' Horace said, grinning.
Halt glared at him. 'Perhaps if you whipped off your cloak, they might be startled by your sudden appearance,' he suggested acidly.
Horace's grin broadened. He was, in fact, taking off his cloak but its removal seemed to have no effect on the herd. One or two of them rolled an eye at him. Several others broke wind.
'They do a lot of that, don't they?' he remarked. 'Maybe if we got them all pointed the same way, they could blow the Scotti back down the pass?'
Halt made an impatient gesture. 'Get on with it. You were raised on a farm, after all.'
Horace shook his head. 'I wasn't raised on a farm. I was raised in the Ward at Redmont,' he said. 'You were a Hibernian prince. Didn't you have herds of cattle?'
'We did. But we also had great oafs like you to take care of them.' He frowned thoughtfully. 'The bull is the key. If we get the bull running, the cows will follow him.'
Horace looked around the small herd. 'Which one's the bull?'
Halt's eyebrows both went up – a rare expression of emotion for the Ranger.
'You really did grow up in the Ward, didn't you?' Then he pointed. 'That one would appear to be the bull.'
Horace looked at the animal he was indicating. His eyes widened a little.
'He certainly would,' he agreed. 'So what do we do with him?'
'Startle him. Annoy him. Frighten him,' Halt said.
Horace looked doubtful. 'I'm not completely sure I want to do that.'
Halt snorted in disgust. 'Don't be such a ninny!' he said. 'After all, what can he do to you?'
Horace regarded the bull suspiciously. He wasn't as big as some bulls he had seen in the meadows around Redmont. But he was solidly built and well muscled. And, unlike the cows, he wasn't regarding the two strangers with a placid, docile gaze. Horace thought he could see a light of challenge in those little eyes.
'You mean aside from gore me?' he asked and Halt waved the protest aside dismissively.
'With those little horns? They're barely bumps on his forehead.'
In fact, the horns, while not being the wide-spreading ones that some northern cattle owned, were substantial. The ends were rounded and blunt, rather than pointed. But they still looked capable of inflicting damage.