The ground was littered with deadfalls – branches and twigs that the wind had snapped off from the trees high above and dropped to the forest floor. They formed an almost continuous carpet beneath his feet and, skilled as he was at moving silently, even Halt couldn't avoid some noise as they cracked and snapped under his soft tread. He could do it if he moved slowly, testing the ground with each foot before he put weight on it. But moving slowly was too dangerous an option. He needed speed. By moving quickly, he became an indistinct, grey-toned blur sliding among the bare trunks – and that would make him a more difficult target. Besides, there wasn't much point in moving silently if he wanted the Genovesans to know he was here.
He slipped into the cover of a thick, grey trunk. Over the years, long past the time when the trees had drowned, some undergrowth had taken hold in the forest floor and a clump of buckthorn had established itself about the base of the dead tree. The green leaves and the grey trunk of the tree would match the random colouring on his cloak to conceal him.
He crouched, scanning the forest ahead. Long years of training made sure that his head barely moved as he did so. It was his eyes that darted from side to side, seeking, testing, consciously changing their depth of focus to search from close in to further out. His face remained in the shadow thrown by the deep cowl. The Genovesans, if they were watching, would have seen him dart behind the tree. But now they would have lost sight of him as he blended in and, so long as he didn't move, they would be uncertain if he were still there or not.
All of which meant they would be looking for him, and not Will. He felt a grim sense of satisfaction knowing that Will was backing him up. By now, Halt thought, his young student would have begun to move, snaking away from the three-trunked tree they had sheltered behind, crawling low-bellied along the shallow gully to the shelter of the fallen trunk.
He couldn't think of anyone he would rather have with him. Gilan, perhaps. His unseen movement skills were second to none in the Corps. Or Crowley, of course, his oldest comrade.
But, skilled as they both were, he knew Will would always be his first choice. Crowley was experienced and calm under pressure. But he couldn't match Will in unseen movement. Gilan might move more stealthily than Will, but there was very little in it. And Will had an advantage that Gilan didn't. His mind moved a little quicker and he was inclined to see the unconventional alternative faster than Gilan. If the unexpected occurred, he knew Will could act on his own initiative and come up with the right solution. That wasn't to denigrate Gilan's worth at all. He was a fine Ranger and highly skilled. Will just had that slight edge in making a decision quickly and getting it right. Gilan would think about a situation and probably come to the same conclusion. With Will, it was an instinctive ability.
There was one other point, and it was a very important one in the current situation. Halt knew, although Will probably didn't, that Will was a better shot than either Crowley or Gilan.
In fact, he thought, with a grim smile, that might prove to be the most important point of all.
He waited a few more seconds, letting his breathing and his heart rate settle. In spite of what he had said to Will – that he had done this sort of thing before – he didn't like the idea of intentionally drawing the enemy's notice. Moving as he was through the trees, his back crawled with the expectation that any second, a bolt might slam into it. The very idea of moving so that his enemy could see him went against all his deeply ingrained training. Halt preferred to move without anyone ever seeing him, or ever being aware that he was there.
He knew that in these conditions, and with his cloak, he was presenting a very poor target. But the Genovesans were skilled marksmen. They were more than capable of hitting a poor target. That's why they were so highly paid by those who hired them, after all.
'You're wasting time,' he muttered. 'You just don't want to go back out there again, do you?'
And the answer, of course, was no. He didn't. But there was no alternative. He surveyed the path once more, picked out his route for the next five or ten metres, then glided quickly out from behind cover and went forward into the grey maze of dead trees.
Belly to the ground, using elbows, ankles and knees to propel himself forward and never rising higher than a completely prone position, Will slid out from behind the multiple-trunked dead tree. It was a technique called the snake crawl and he'd practised it for hours on end as an apprentice, sliding through low cover, trying to remain unseen by the keen gaze of his teacher. Time and again he would feel he was getting the technique right, only to have his ego dashed by a sarcastic voice: Is that a bony backside I see sticking up out of the grass by that black rock? I think it is. Perhaps I should put an arrow in it if its owner doesn't GET IT DOWN!
Today, of course, there was more at risk than a sarcastic ribbing from his teacher. Today, Halt's life, and his own, were dependent on his being able to keep that errant behind down, close to the ground with the rest of his body. He crawled slowly, moving the loose branches and twigs out of his path as he went. Unlike Halt, he couldn't afford to make the slightest noise. True, the forest was maintaining its litany of groans and scrapes and creaks. But the sharp sound of a snapping twig would tell a keen listener that someone was on the move out here.
Flat to the ground as he was, he found his vision focused on the short blades of grass only a few centimetres away from the tip of his nose. His world became this tiny space of dirt and grass and grey branches. He watched a small brown beetle hurry past, only centimetres from his face, ignoring him completely. A file of ants marched steadfastly over his left hand, refusing to be diverted from their purpose. He let them go, then edged forward slowly, carefully brushing a branch to one side. It made a small noise, magnified by his raw nerves, and he paused for a moment. Then he told himself that nobody could have heard that slight scrape over the background noises of the forest and he continued. The shelter of the fallen tree trunk was only a few metres away by now. Once he was behind that he could afford to move more swiftly – and more comfortably. There'd be no need to maintain this belly-to-the-ground posture when he was concealed behind the metre-thick tree trunk.
But for now, he resisted the urge to hurry into the cover of the trunk. Doing that could well undo all the work he'd put in so far. A sudden movement could draw attention. Instead, he concentrated on the old technique he'd taught himself as an apprentice, trying to sense that his body was actually forcing itself into the ground beneath him, becoming conscious of its weight pressing into the rough grass and dirt and sticks.
He felt completely vulnerable because, for once, he was effectively unarmed. In order to crawl completely prone, he had to unstring his bow, pushing it through two small retaining loops on his cloak, made for the purpose. Trying to crawl with a strung bow in these conditions was risking that a branch or twig or even a clump of grass could become snagged in the angle where the bowstring met the notched end of the bow. And the strung bow covered a much wider area of ground, making it more susceptible to snagging. Now it was held firmly in a straight line along his back, a straight piece of yew wood that would slide smoothly past snags and obstructions.