"They're going back!" Evanlyn told Will. But he'd already seen the movement and he was on his knees again, trying to frantically rebuild the fire.
"We'll have to reset the whole thing!" he muttered. Evanlyn dropped to her knees beside him and began shaping the half-burned strips and heavier pieces into a conical pyre.
"You watch the Wargals!" she said. "I'll look after this."
Will hesitated. After all, this was the fire she had set in the first place. He had a moment of doubt as he wondered if she'd done the job correctly. Then he looked up to the tunnel mouth, saw movement there once again and realized she was right. Grabbing his bow, he started to move toward the cover of some rocks nearby, but she stopped him.
"Your knife!" she said. "Leave it with me."
He didn't ask why. He slid the saxe from its scabbard and dropped it beside her. Then he moved to the rocks. The bridge groaned and trembled as the right-hand cable gave a little more. Silently, he cursed the caprice of wind that had fanned one fire and extinguished the other.
Encouraged by the lack of arrows whistling around their ears in the past few minutes, the four remaining Wargals had emerged from the tunnel again and were moving cautiously forward. Without any real intelligent leadership, and with a false sense of their own superiority, they stayed grouped together, an easy target. Will fired three times, carefully aimed shots.
Each one found its mark. The surviving Wargal looked at his fallen comrades, then lumbered into the cover of the rocks. Will sent another arrow skating off the granite directly above his head, to encourage him to stay where he was.
He checked his quiver. There were sixteen arrows left. Not a lot if the Wargals had sent for reinforcements. He glanced at Evanlyn. She seemed to be maddeningly slow with her efforts to rebuild the fire. He wanted to yell at her to hurry, but realized he would only distract her and slow her down if he did. He looked back to the tunnel, his fingers clenching and unclenching on the bow.
Four more figures emerged, running fast and fanning out so that they weren't grouped together. Will brought the bow up, sighted quickly and released at the one farthest to the right. He let go a little cry of exasperation as the arrow flew behind the running figure. Then he was obscured by the rocks.
Blessing the weeks and months of practice that Halt had insisted on, Will had another arrow out of the quiver and already nocked, without even looking at it. But the other three runners had gone to ground as well.
Now one of them rose in the middle of the line and darted forward. Will's snap shot cleaved the air above his head as he dived for cover. Then another was moving on the left, dropping into cover before Will could fire. His heart was beating rapidly as they made their quick rushes and he forced himself to breathe deeply and think calmly. The time to shoot would be in the last thirty meters, where there was less cover and where the arrows, with a shorter distance to cover, would be traveling faster and so be harder to dodge. Will's heart hammered inside his ribs. He was remembering the last time-only a few weeks ago-when fear had made his shots go wide. His face hardened as he determined that it would not happen again.
"Stay calm," he told himself, trying to hear Halt's voice saying the words. Another of the figures made a short rush and this time, as the firelight illuminated him more clearly, Will held his fire as his eyes confirmed what he had begun to suspect.
The newcomers weren't Wargals. They were Skandians.
25
G ILAN SLEPT LIKE A LOG FOR SIX HOURS, TOTALLY EXHAUSTED, in the tent where Halt had taken him. Throughout that time, he didn't stir once. His mind and body were shut down, drawing new strength from total rest.
Then, after those six hours, his subconscious mind stirred and began to function, and he began to dream. He dreamt of Will and Horace and the girl Evanlyn. But the dream was wild and confused and he saw them as captives of the Wargals, tied together while the two robbers Bart and Carney stood by and laughed.
Gilan rolled onto one side, muttering in his sleep. Halt, sitting nearby repairing the fletching on his arrows, glanced up. He saw that the young Ranger was still asleep and went back to his routine task. Gilan muttered again, then fell silent.
In his dream, he saw the servant Evanlyn as the King had described her-with her hair long and uncropped, masses of it flowing down her back, thick and lustrous and red.
And then he sat up, wide-awake.
"My God!" he said to a startled Halt. "It's not her!"
Halt swore as he spilled the thick, viscous glue that he was using to attach the goose feather vanes to the arrow shaft. Gilan's sudden movement had caught him by surprise. Now he mopped up the sticky liquid and turned with some irritation to his friend.
"Could you give a bit of warning when you're going to start shouting like that?" he said peevishly. But Gilan was already out of the camp bed and hauling on his breeches and shirt.
"I've got to see the King!" he said urgently. Halt stood warily, not altogether sure that Gilan wasn't sleepwalking. The young Ranger shoved past him, dashing out into the night, and tucking his shirt into his trousers as he went. Reluctantly, Halt followed him.
There was a slight delay as they reached the King's pavilion. The guard had changed several hours before and the new sentries didn't know Gilan by sight. Halt smoothed things over, but not before Gilan had convinced him that it was vital for him to see King Duncan, even if it meant waking him from a well-deserved sleep.
As it turned out, in spite of the late hour, the King wasn't sleeping. He and his supreme army commander were discussing possible reasons for the raids into Celtica when Gilan, barefoot, rumple-haired and with several buttons still askew on his shirtfront, was allowed into the pavilion. Sir David looked up in alarm at the sight his son presented.
"Gilan! What on earth are you doing here?" he demanded, but Gilan held up a hand to stop him.
"Just a moment, Father," he said. Then, he continued, facing the King, "Sir, when you described the maid Evanlyn earlier, did you say 'red' hair?"
Sir David looked to Halt for an explanation. The older Ranger shrugged and Sir David turned back to his son, anger clearly showing on his face.
"What difference does that make?" he began. But again Gilan cut him off, still addressing the King.
"The girl who called herself Evanlyn was blond, sir," he said simply. This time, it was King Duncan who held out a hand to silence his angry Battlemaster.
"Blond?" he asked.
"Blond, sir. She'd cut it short, as I said, but it was blond, like your own. And she had green eyes," Gilan told him, watching Duncan carefully, and sensing the importance of what he was telling him. The King hesitated a moment, covering his face with one hand. Then he spoke, the hope growing in his voice.
"And her build? Slight, was she? Small of stature?"
Gilan nodded eagerly. "As I said, sir, for a moment, we could have taken her for a boy. She must have used her maid's identity because she thought it was safer if she remained incognito." Now he understood those slight hesitations in Evanlyn's speech, and why she had a broader grasp of politics and strategy than most servants would be expected to have.
Slowly, Halt and Sir David began to realize the import of what was being said. The King looked from Gilan to Halt to David, then back to Gilan again.
"My daughter is alive," he said quietly. There was a long silence. It was finally broken by Sir David.
"Gilan, how far behind you were the two apprentices and the girl?"
Gilan hesitated. "Possibly two days' ride, Father," he estimated, following his father to the map table and indicating the farthest point that he thought Will and the others might have reached by now. Sir David took instant charge, sending messengers running to rouse the commander of the cavalry wing and have him prepare a company of light cavalry to leave camp immediately.