"Yes, my lord," the Battlemaster replied.

Baron Arald turned back to Will. "You've done a good job, Will. We'll take care of this now. As for you, you look as if you could use eight hours' solid sleep."

Wearily, aching in every muscle and joint, Will drew himself erect.

"I'd like to come with you, my lord," he said. He sensed that the Baron was about to disagree and added hurriedly, "Sir, none of us knows what is going to happen, and Gilan is out there somewhere on foot. Besides…" He hesitated. "Go on, Will," the Baron said quietly and, when the boy looked up, Arald saw the steel in his eyes. "Halt is my master, sir, and he's in danger. My place is with him," Will said.

The Baron assessed him shrewdly, then came to a decision.

"Very well. But at least you can get an hour's rest. There's a cot in that annex over there." He indicated a curtained-off section of the study." Why don't you use it?"

"Yes, sir," said Will gratefully. His eyes felt as if he'd had handfuls of sand rubbed into them. He had never been happier to obey an order in his life.

Chapter 29

THROUGH THAT LONG AFTERNOON, WILL FELT AS IF HE HAD lived his entire life in the saddle, his only respite being the hourly changes from one horse to another.

A brief pause to dismount, loosen the girth straps of the horse he had been riding, tighten those on the horse which had been following, then he would remount and ride on. Again and again, he marveled at the amazing endurance shown by Tug and Blaze as they maintained their steady canter. He even had to rein them in a little, to keep pace with the battlehorses ridden by the two knights. Big, powerful and trained for war as they might be, they couldn't match the constant pace of the Ranger horses, in spite of the fact that they were fresh when the small party had left Castle Redmont.

They rode without speaking. There was no time for idle talk and, even if there had been, it would have been difficult to hear one another above the drumming thunder of the four heavy battlehorses, the lighter rattle of Tug and Blaze's hooves and the constant clank of equipment and weapons that accompanied them as they rode.

Both men carried long war lances – hard ash poles more than three meters in length, tipped with a heavy iron point. In addition, each had a broadsword strapped to their saddles – huge, two-handed weapons that dwarfed the swords they normally wore in day-to-day use-and Rodney had a heavy battle-ax slung at the rear right pommel of his saddle, It was the lances on which they would place greatest trust, however. They would keep the Kalkara at a distance, and so reduce the chance that the knights might be frozen by the terrifying stare of the two beasts. Apparently, the hypnotic gaze was only effective at close quarters. If a man couldn't see the eyes clearly, there was little chance of their paralyzing him with their gaze.

The sun was dropping fast behind them, throwing their shadows out before them, long and distorted by the low angle light. Arald glanced over his shoulder at the sun's position and called to Will. "How long before dusk, Will?" Will turned in his saddle and frowned at the descending ball of light before answering. "Less than an hour, my lord." The Baron shook his head doubtfully. "It'll be a close run to get there before full dark then," he said. He urged his battlehorse onward, increasing speed a little. Tug and Blaze matched the increase without effort. None of them wanted to be hunting the Kalkara in the dark.

The hour's rest at the castle had done wonders for Will. But it seemed that it had happened in another lifetime now. He thought over the cursory briefing that Arald had given as they mounted to leave Redmont. If they found the Kalkara at the Gorlan Ruins, Will was to hold back while the Baron and Sir Rodney charged the two monsters. There were no complex tactics involved, just a headlong charge that might take the two killers by surprise. "If Halt's there, I'm sure he'll take a hand too. But I want you well back out of harms way, Will. That bow of yours won't make any impression on a Kalkara."

"Yes, sir," Will had said. He had no intention of getting close to the Kalkara. He was more than content to leave things to the two knights, protected by their shields, helmets and half armor of chain mail shirts and leggings. However, Arald's next words quickly dispelled any overconfidence he might have had in their ability to deal with the beasts.

"If the damn things get the better of us, I'll want you to ride for more help. Karel and the others will be somewhere behind us. Find them, then go after the Kalkara with them. Track those beasts down and kill them." Will had said nothing to that. The fact that Arald even contemplated failure, when he and Rodney were the two foremost knights within a two hundred kilometer radius, spoke volumes of his concern about the Kalkara. For the first time, Will realized that in this contest, the odds were heavily against them.

The sun was trembling on the brink of the world, the shadows at their longest, and they still had several kilometers to go. Baron Arald raised a hand and brought the party to a stop. He glanced at Rodney and jerked a thumb at the bundle of pitch-soaked torches each man carried behind his saddle. "Torches, Rodney," he said briefly. The Battlemaster demurred for a moment.

"Are you sure, my lord? They'll give away our position if the Kalkara are watching." Arald shrugged. "They'll hear us coming anyway. And among the trees, we'll move too slowly without the light. Let's take the chance." He was already striking his flint and steel together, igniting a spark that set his small pile of tinder smoking, then flaring into flame. He held the torch in the flame and the thick, sticky pine pitch with which it was impregnated suddenly caught and burst into yellow flame. Rodney leaned toward him with another torch and lit it in the Baron's flame. Then, holding the torches high, their lances held in place by leather thongs looped around their right wrists, they resumed their gallop, thundering into the darkness beneath the trees as they finally left the broad road they had been following since noon.

It was another ten minutes before they heard the screaming.

It was an unearthly sound that twisted the stomach into knots of fear and turned the blood cold. Involuntarily, the Baron and Sir Rodney reined in as they heard it. Their horses plunged wildly against the reins. It came from straight ahead of them and rose and fell, until the night air quaked with the horror of it.

"Good God in heaven!" the Baron exclaimed. "What is that?" His face was ashen as the hellish sound soared through the night toward them, to be answered immediately by another, identical howl.

But Will had heard the terrible noise before. He felt the blood leave his face now as he realized his fears were being proven correct.

"It's the Kalkara," he said. "They're hunting."

And he knew there was only one person out there that they could be after. They had turned back and were hunting Halt. "Look, my lord!" Rodney said, pointing to the rapidly darkening night sky. Through a break in the tree cover, they saw it, a sudden flare of light reflecting in the sky, evidence of a fire in the near distance. "That's Halt!" the Baron said. "Bound to be. And he'll need help!" He rammed his spurs into the tired battlehorse's flanks, urging the beast forward into a lumbering gallop, the torch in his hand streaming flame and sparks behind him as Sir Rodney and Will galloped in his tracks.

It was an eerie sensation, following those flaming, spitting torches through the trees, their elongated tongues of flame blowing back behind the two riders, casting weird and terrifying shadows among the trees, while ahead of them, the glow of the large fire, presumably lit by Halt, grew stronger and nearer with each stride.