'What is it, Halt?' he asked. He spoke in almost a whisper. It seemed more suitable somehow, in the proximity of so many dead trees.
'It's a drowned forest,' Halt told them.
Horace leaned forward, crossing both hands on the pommel of his saddle as he surveyed the scene of utter desolation that stretched before them.
'How does a forest drown?' he asked. Like Will, he kept his voice low, as if not wishing to disturb the tragic scene. The grey, gaunt shapes stretching out below them seemed to demand such a measure of respect. Halt pointed to the distant glitter of the river, visible beyond the thousands of trees and a low ridge.
'I'd say that river must have flooded,' he said. 'It would have been many years ago and it must have been a particularly wet season. The floodwaters spread over the low ground and, basically, the trees drowned. They're not capable of living when their root system is under water and so, gradually, they died off.'
'But I've seen floods before,' Horace said. 'A river floods. The waters rise. Then they recede and everything goes back pretty much to normal.'
Halt was studying the lie of the land now and he nodded acknowledgement of Horace's statement.
'Normally, you'd expect it to happen that way,' he said. 'And over a short period of time, the trees will survive. But look more closely. The river is contained by that low ridge beyond the forest. Once the waters rose over that ridge and flooded down to where the forest stood, there was no way it could recede again once the rain stopped. And I suspect that the rain kept on going for some time. The floodwater was trapped there among the trees. That's what killed them.'
Will shook his head sadly. 'How long ago?'
Halt pursed his lips. 'Fifty, sixty years, perhaps. Those trunks look empty of life. They will have been quietly rotting here for decades.'
He had been looking for the trail down the slope as they were speaking. Now he saw it and urged Abelard towards it. The others followed behind him. As they reached the flat ground below their earlier vantage point, they realised what a formidable barrier the drowned forest was. The grey trunks were all the same shade and their twisted, irregular shapes made it difficult to distinguish one from another. They merged together in a grey wall. It was almost impossible to discern detail or perspective.
'Now, this is what I'd call a good ambush site,' Halt said. Then, a few seconds later, he swung down from his saddle and walked forward several paces, studying the ground. He beckoned the others to join him.
'Will,' he said, 'you saw the tracks Tennyson and his party left in the grassland once we got out of the forest?'
Will nodded and Halt gestured at the ground around him. 'Take a good look at these and see if you can find any difference.'
There was a thread of wool hanging from a low bush in the grass. Further along, something gleamed on the ground. Will went to it and picked it up. It was a horn button. A little further along, he saw a distinct, perfectly formed heel print in a soft patch of ground. The grass itself was heavily trampled and beaten down.
'So, what do you think?' Halt asked.
There was definitely something wrong, Will thought, and Halt's question seemed to confirm that the older Ranger felt the same. Mentally, he pictured the tracks they had seen at the top of the rise behind them. Vague impressions in the dirt, occasional bruised blades of grass, almost invisible to a follower. Now here, conveniently, there were threads, buttons, and a deep footprint – just the sort of thing that Tennyson's party had seemed to be avoiding only a few hundred metres away. And the line of visual clues pointed in one clear direction – into the dead forest.
'It all seems a little… obvious,' he said, at length. And the moment he said it, he realised that was what had been bothering him about these tracks. Suddenly, after leaving a trail that could be followed only by highly trained trackers, the party ahead of them were leaving tracks that even Horace could follow.
'Exactly,' Halt said, staring into the grey depths of the dead forest. 'It's all very convenient, isn't it?'
'They wanted us to find the tracks,' Will said. It was a statement of fact, not a question, and Halt nodded slowly.
'Question is, why? Why would they want us to find them?'
'They want us to follow,' Horace said, surprising himself slightly. Halt gave him a grin.
'Well thought out, Horace. That cloak must be making you think like a Ranger.' He gestured towards the forest ahead of them. 'They wanted to make sure that we knew they'd gone this way. And there's only one reason for them to have done that.'
'They're waiting for us somewhere in there,' Will said. Like Halt, he was gazing steadily into the grey wasteland that faced them, frowning slightly as he tried to discern some sign of movement, some out-of-place item, among the long-dead trees. He had to blink several times. The tree trunks merged together in his vision and seemed to blur into one mass.
'It's what I'd do,' Halt said quietly. Then, with just a hint of contempt, he added, 'Although I hope I'd be a little more subtle about it. Those signs there are almost an insult to my intelligence.'
'They're not to know that, of course,' Horace put in. 'None of them will have had much to do with Rangers before. They can't know that Rangers can see the tracks left by a sparrow flying low over a piece of rocky ground.'
Halt and Will looked at him suspiciously.
'Was that sarcasm?' Halt asked.
'Sounded like it to me,' Will agreed.
'Well, Horace, were you being sarcastic?' Halt persisted.
Horace tried not to grin. He didn't entirely succeed. 'Not at all, Halt. I was being suitably respectful in the light of your amazing skills. Almost inhuman, they seem to be.'
'That was sarcasm,' Will said in a definite tone.
Horace shrugged diffidently. 'More irony than sarcasm, I think,' he said.
Halt nodded slowly. 'Nevertheless,' he said, 'our sarcastic friend – no, make that our ironic friend – has a point. The Genovesans have no idea that we know the first thing about tracking. They may suspect it. But they're not taking chances with this…' He indicated the footprint, the thread and the horn button. '… this spoonfeeding.'
'So, what do we do now?' Horace asked.
'What we do now,' Halt replied, 'is that you take the horses back a few hundred metres and wait. Will and I will flush these damn Genovesans out.'
Horace stepped forward to remonstrate with the Ranger, his hands outstretched.
'Oh come on, Halt! All right, I admit I was being sarcastic – just a little. But that's no reason to leave me out of things. You can trust me!'
But Halt was already shaking his head and he laid a hand on Horace's forearm to reassure him.
'Horace, I'm not punishing you. And I trust you every bit as much as I trust Will. But this is not the sort of fight you're trained for. And you're not armed for it, either,' he added.
Without his realising it, Horace's hand dropped to the hilt of his sword, sheathed at his side, in an instinctive gesture.
'I'm armed, all right!' he insisted. 'Just let me get to close quarters and I'll show these damned assassins how well armed I am! I think I'd like to have the murderer who killed Ferris at the point of my sword.'
Halt didn't release the young man's arm. He shook it gently to make his point.
'That's why I want you to wait back a little. This won't be a close-quarter fight. These men kill from a distance. Will and I have our bows so we'll be fighting them on even terms. But you won't get near them. They'll put enough crossbow bolts into you to make you look like a porcupine before you get within twenty metres of them.'
'But…' Horace began.
'Think about it, Horace. You won't be able to help if it comes to a fight. They'll be too far away. You'll just provide them with an extra target. And if Will and I have to keep an eye on you, we won't be able to concentrate on finding them and killing them before they kill us. Now please, take the horses back out of bow shot and let us do what we've been trained to do.'