'How's the arm?' Will asked, keeping his voice calm and unconcerned.
'It's fine!' Halt flared angrily at him, and again Abelard shifted his feet nervously.
'It's just that you were rubbing it,' Will said in a placating tone. But Halt's temper was fully aroused by now.
'Yes. I was. Because it hurts. Let yourself get shot by a crossbow one of these days and you'll know about that! Now are we going to dillydally here all day talking about my eyes and my arm and worrying my horse? Be still, Abelard!' he snapped.
Will's jaw dropped. He had never, ever, in the time he had spent with Halt, heard the Ranger raise his voice to Abelard. Rangers just didn't do that with their horses.
'Halt,' he began, but Halt interrupted him.
'Because while we waste time here, Farrell and his henchmen are getting further and further away!'
'Farrell?' This time it was Horace's turn to be totally concerned. 'Halt, we're after Tennyson, not Farrell. Farrell was the Outsider leader at Selsey village!'
He was right. Farrell had led a band of Outsiders in an attempted raid on a small isolated fishing village on the West Coast of Araluen. It was this event that first alerted Halt to the Outsiders' wider plans in Hibernia. Halt glared now at Horace.
'I know that!' he snapped. 'Do you think I don't know that? Do you think I'm mad?'
There was a pause. Neither Will nor Horace knew what to say next. Halt swung his furious glare from one to the other, challenging them.
'Well? Do you?' he repeated. Then, when neither of them said anything, he shook Abelard's reins roughly and set him to a slow canter.
Heading west.
'Will, what's happening?' Horace asked as Halt rode off in the wrong direction.
'I don't know. But it's all bad, I can tell you that,' Will replied. He urged Tug after Abelard, calling after his mentor.
'Halt! Come back!'
Horace followed, uncertainly. The bearded Ranger didn't bother to turn in the saddle to reply to Will. But they heard him calling.
'Come on, if you're coming! We're wasting time and those Temujai can't be far behind us now!'
'Temujai?' Horace said to Will. 'The Temujai are thousands of kilometres away!'
Will shook his head sadly, urging Tug to increase his pace.
'Not in his mind,' he said grimly. He understood now. Something had caused Halt to lose all sense of the situation and time. He was seeing enemies and events from the past. From a few months back and from years prior to that, all hopelessly jumbled in his mind.
'Halt! Wait for me!' he called.
Then, suddenly, he set Tug to a full gallop as his mentor threw up his arms, let out a strangled cry and fell crashing to the ground beside a thoroughly alarmed Abelard.
And lay there, unmoving. Twenty-five 'Halt!'
The anguished cry was torn from Will as he urged Tug into a full gallop. Reaching the still figure lying in the long grass, he threw himself from the saddle and knelt beside him. Abelard stepped nervously beside his master, his head down, trying to nudge Halt with his muzzle, looking for some sign of life. The little horse nickered constantly, but there was a whine of anxiety in the sound – a note that Will had never heard before.
'Still, Abelard,' he said quietly. He gestured with the back of his hand to wave the horse away. 'Get back, boy.'
The horse wasn't doing Halt any good and his stepping and nudging could only get in the way. Reluctantly, Abelard paced back a few steps. Although he would normally only respond to Halt, he was intelligent enough to recognise that his master was incapacitated and that Will was next in the chain of command. Reassured by the calm tone of Will's voice, he stopped making the small, distracted noises and stood still. His ears were pricked upright, however, and his eyes never strayed from Halt.
Halt was lying face down and, gently, Will rolled him over. He moved the cowl back from Halt's face. His eyes were shut and his face was deathly pale. He didn't seem to be breathing and for a moment Will felt a surge of horror rush through him.
Halt dead? It couldn't be! It was impossible. He could not imagine a world without Halt in it.
Then the still figure gave a shuddering sigh and began to breathe again and Will felt relief flood through his system. Horace arrived, swinging down from the saddle and dropping to his knees on the other side of the fallen Ranger. The concern was obvious on his face.
'He's not…' He hesitated.
Will shook his head. 'He's alive. But he's unconscious.'
Halt gave vent to another shuddering breath that seemed to shake his entire body. Then his breathing settled a little. But he was breathing raggedly, and taking only shallow breaths. That was why, Will realised, he was being racked by those great shuddering sobs every so often. He needed the extra oxygen in his lungs.
Quickly, he stood and removed his cloak, folding it to form a makeshift cushion.
'Lift his head,' he told Horace. The tall warrior gently raised Halt's head clear of the grass and Will slid the folded cloak under it. Horace lowered Halt's head onto it. He studied the still form of the Ranger, his sense of helplessness showing on his young face.
'Will,' he said, 'what do we do? What's happened to him?'
Will shook his head, then leaned forward and gently raised one of Halt's eyelids with his thumb. There was no reaction from the unconscious Ranger. But as Will studied his eye, he noticed that the pupil remained dilated, even though the day was relatively bright. He knew that it was an automatic reaction for the pupil to close down when exposed to sudden bright light. Apparently, Halt's system wasn't reacting to normal stimuli.
'What is it?' Horace asked. He hoped that the fact that Will had done something, anything, was an indication that he had some idea of what the problem might be. Again, Will shook his head.
'I don't know,' he muttered.
He allowed the eye to close again. He put one finger on Halt's throat, feeling for the pulse in the large artery there. It was fluttery and uneven, but at least it was there. He sat back on his haunches, pondering the situation. All Rangers were trained to administer basic medical treatment in the event of a colleague being wounded. But this was beyond bandaging and stitching. This wasn't a wound he could isolate and…
A wound! The moment he had the thought, he was reminded of Halt's constant rubbing and scratching at the minor wound to his forearm. He gripped the sleeve of Halt's jacket, along the line that he had stitched up only the night before, and ripped the stitching apart, letting the sleeve fall back away from his arm.
The bandage was still in place. A slight stain showed on it where blood had seeped through the material before the bleeding stopped. He leaned forward and sniffed lightly at the wound, then recoiled hurriedly, with an exclamation of disgust.
'What is it?' Horace asked quickly.
'His arm. It smells foul. I think that might be where the trouble lies.' Mentally, he berated himself. He should have thought of that sooner. Then he dismissed his moment of self-criticism. The wound had seemed like a minor one. There had been no reason to suspect any connection between it and Halt's current behaviour. He drew his throwing knife and slid the razor-sharp edge under the end of the bandage. Abelard rumbled a warning.
'It's all right, Abelard,' he said, without lifting his eyes from his task. 'Settle, boy. Settle.'
Tug moved to stand close to his companion, brushing against Abelard and offering comfort and support. He nickered gently, as if to reassure Abelard that Will had the situation well in hand. Will wished that he felt the same confidence.
He slit the bandage and lifted it away from Halt's arm. The cut ends opened easily but where the bandage lay over the wound, it seemed to have stuck. That puzzled him a little. He didn't think there would have been enough blood from the wound to have dried and stuck the bandage in place like this. He was loath to simply rip the bandage away. He didn't know how much extra damage that might do.