That was when the first of the dogs burst from the trees.
This was no tracking dog. It ran silently, wasting none of its energy on the baying and howling of the others. This dog was a killer. A war dog, trained to chase silently, then attack without warning and without pity.
It was huge, its short coat mottled grey and black and its eyes blazing red with hate. It saw its quarry now and leapt at Abelard, aiming for the horse's throat with its massive fangs.
Any normal horse might have frozen in terror or shied violently at the sudden attack. But Abelard was a Ranger horse, well trained, intelligent and courageous. He spun on his rear legs and skipped sideways, avoiding the headlong rush of the monster. Yet he did it with a minimum of panic and with just the amount of movement necessary. Abelard's instinct, borne of long years of experience, told him that his best defence lay with the figure seated astride him. And a violent, sudden reaction could unseat his rider.
The dog's jaws snapped shut on empty air, missing the horse's throat by centimetres.
It hit the ground, spun and tensed, ready to spring again. Now, for the first time, it uttered a sound… a deep rumbling snarl.
Which was cut off almost instantly by Halt's first arrow.
Faced with a head-on target, the Ranger waited until the dog had lifted its head to sound that snarling challenge.
Abelard stood rock steady, giving Halt a stable platform.
Then Halt shot for the throat, the impact of the heavy arrow, with the eighty pounds of draw weight from his bow behind it, sending the dog staggering backwards and sideways.
The second arrow, coming within seconds of the first, struck the snarling killer in the heart, dropping it stone dead.
Halt patted his horse's neck. He knew the strength of will it had taken for Abelard to stand steadily, allowing him to shoot. He understood the depth of trust the little horse had just placed in him and was glad he hadn't let his old friend down.
'Good boy,' he said quietly. 'Now let's get out of here.'
They wheeled, running at a tangent to the way they had come. The country was unfamiliar to Halt and for the moment all he could do was try to put distance between himself and the baying hounds – as well as any other war dogs that might be loping silently through the woods after them.
The baying was still close behind them as they broke clear of the heavy tree cover and began moving up a slope. The ground was covered in waist-high gorse and shrubs, dotted with rocky outcrops and occasional groves of trees. But as he neared the top Halt saw, too late, that he had made a fatal mistake. What he had taken to be a hill was a bluff – a sloping piece of ground that gradually narrowed and led to a sheer cliff overlooking a deep, wide river.
He wheeled Abelard and began to race back down the slope. But they hadn't gone far before he saw mounted figures moving in the fringes of the trees at the base of the hill. It was too late to head back down. They were trapped halfway up. As he watched, another massive grey andblack shape detached itself from the group and came arrowing up the slope after them, belly close to the ground, huge fangs bared in a murderous snarl.
Abelard rumbled a warning.
'I see him,' Halt said quietly and the horse relaxed, its faith in Halt absolute.
Ordinarily, Halt was fond of dogs. But he would kill these beasts without a qualm. This was no dog. This was a pitiless killing machine, perverted by its cruel training so that it sought only to kill and kill again.
The dog was fifty metres away when Halt slid from the saddle, pocking an arrow as he did so. He let the ravening animal draw closer. Thirty metres. Twenty-five.
Abelard whinnied in mild consternation. What are you waiting for?
'Settle down,' Halt told him, and released.
It was an instant killing shot. The running dog simply collapsed in mid-stride, its legs buckling under it, its head dropping, so that it rolled several times, its momentum carrying it forward, before it came to a stop. A dead stop, Halt thought grimly.
Abelard whinnied again. Halt thought he could detect a note of satisfaction in the sound but he may have imagined it.
'I told you I know what I'm doing,' he said. But then he frowned. Because he wasn't sure what he was going to do next. He could see men emerging from the trees, gesturing upwards as they saw him and Abelard halfway up the slope. Several of them were carrying bows and one of them began to raise his, an arrow on the string.
He'd barely begun to draw when a black-shafted arrow hissed downhill and sent him tumbling back into the trees. His companions looked at his lifeless body, looked again at the indistinct figure above them and saw he was nocking another arrow.
As one, they broke back for the cover of the trees, stumbling over the excited hounds as they beat them out of the way. The second arrow slammed, quivering, into the trunk of a tree at chest height. The message was clear. Don't show yourself if you wish to remain healthy.
In the confusion, none of them saw the grey-cloaked figure lead his horse into a jumble of rocks. When they looked back up the slope, there was no sign of man or horse.
The day wore on. The sun rose to its zenith and began to descend towards the western horizon. But still the Outsiders could see no sign of the figure up the hill. They knew he was there – somewhere. But exactly where they had no idea – there were at least half a dozen piles of tumbled rock that could be sheltering the stranger and his horse. And they knew if they tried to rush blindly up the hill, they would pay for it with their lives.
In the midafternoon, they released another war dog to see if it might flush the Ranger out. The dog swung back and forth, sniffing the air for some trace of the man and horse. Then, catching a faint scent on the breeze, it began to run – the remorseless, belly-to-the-ground lope of its kind.
All eyes were on the dog as it settled into its stride. That was a mistake, for no one saw where the arrow came from as it struck the dog down and sent it rolling back down the slope, eyes glazed, tongue lolling.
Up the slope, behind a tumble of large boulders; Halt glanced to where Abelard lay, legs folded underneath him so that he was completely concealed from view.
'In Gallic,' Ranger said conversationally, 'this might be called an impasse. But you should know that. You speak Gallic, after all.'
He expected no answer from the horse, of course. But Abelard tilted his head at Halt, liking the sound of his voice.
'The question is, what do we do next?'
Again, Abelard had no answer. And for once, neither did Halt. He knew that when darkness came, he could make his way down the bluff and slip through the line of watchers. Even the dogs would pose no real problem for him. The wind had shifted so that it was blowing from them to him. They wouldn't pick up his scent until he was past them.
But the problem was Abelard. He couldn't hope to take the horse with him and avoid detection. Even if the men didn't see him, the dogs would certainly hear some slight noise from the horse's hooves on the ground. Ranger horses were trained to move quietly. But even they couldn't move as silently as a Ranger.
And Halt wasn't going to leave Abelard behind. That was unthinkable. He had no idea whether there were any more of the killer dogs waiting down there in the treeline.
If there were, Abelard on his own wouldn't stand a chance.
He considered moving back up the slope to the cliff.
He'd seen the river winding below the bluff, some ten to twelve metres below. If the water were deep enough, he could survive a jump into it. But Abelard wouldn't. He was much heavier than Halt. They would fall at the same speed, but the horse's extra mass meant he would hit the water with far greater force than Halt would. And unlike his master, Abelard couldn't streamline his body to reduce the impact when he hit the surface of the water. He would land on his belly.