As the last word came to his mind he became conscious of something else – the by now familiar nauseatingly sweet smell of rotting bodies. As he walked further to the back of the smithy, he made out the shapes of several carcasses in the small meadow behind it. Sheep, most of them. But there was also one huddled furry body that had been the dog that guarded them.

The survivors of the attack must have buried or carried away the bodies of the four human victims. But they had no time or inclination to dispose of the remains of the animals.

`Can't say I blame them,' he said, and moved back to the main building, where the strong smell of charred wood and ashes masked the unpleasant smell of corruption. He began to cast around the site for tracks, stopping almost immediately at the sight of a large red-brown stain on the grass on the shallow slope leading to the river. Blood.

There were more signs in that spot. Footprints, faint now after a few days had passed, and the marks where several horses had ridden up from the river. The hoofprints were deep and easily visible in the softened ground – far deeper than a walking animal would have left. These horses had been galloping. And one of them had galloped right past the spot where the large blood stain still marked the grass.

He looked around, from the river to the main building, picturing what had happened.

The raiders had crossed the river then, led by several mounted men, had charged up the shallow slope, across the open grassy meadow. One of the men from Duffy's Ford had run forward to stop them – or perhaps delay them while the others tried to escape. And he'd been cut down here.

Will searched around the immediate area and soon found a sickle lying a few metres away, almost hidden by the long grass. He turned it over with the toe of his boot. Already, a few rust stains were showing on the curved blade. He shook his head. The makeshift weapon would have given its owner little chance against the determined raiders. He had been cut down without a second thought. Probably a sword or spear thrust, Will thought, a weapon that would have given its owner a longer reach than the short-handled sickle. The desperate and brave defender had never really had a hope of defending himself.

He followed the hoofprints back up the slope for a few metres. One horse had diverted to the right and he followed it to another drying brown blood stain. He dropped to one knee to study the ground more closely and made out the faint trace of footprints in the grass and mud. Small footprints, he saw. A child.

He closed his eyes briefly. He could see the scene in his mind's eye. A boy or girl, terrified by the galloping, screaming men, had tried to run for the shelter of the trees. One of the raiders had swung out of line to pursue the little running figure. Then he'd cut his victim down from behind. Without pity. Without mercy. He could have let the child escape. What harm could a child have done them? But he hadn't. Will's lips set in a hard line as he realised that this atrocity had been committed, at least ostensibly, in the name of religion.

`You'd better pray that your god will protect you,' he said quietly. Then he rose from the crouching position he'd assumed to view the tracks. There was no point studying further on events that had taken place here. He knew the general outline and he could picture some of the details as well.

Now it was time to track these murderers back to their lair, wherever that might be.

He remounted Tug and urged the little horse into the river. The raiders had come from the other side. Presumably they had returned there as well. The water came no higher than Tug's belly and there was little current to contend with. The small horse splashed easily across the sandy bottom to the far bank. Leaning out of the saddle, Will searched for the party's return tracks.

It didn't take him long to find them. It had been a large party, perhaps twenty or thirty men, he estimated. It was certainly the largest group to have crossed the ford in the preceding few days, so the tracks were easy to follow. Added to that, they'd made no attempt to cover the sign of their passing, although perhaps a person without a Ranger's skill at tracking wouldn't have been able to follow them.

Or perhaps the raiders simply didn't expect anybody to dare make the attempt.

That was more likely the case, Will thought. They'd been raiding and killing and burning throughout Hibernia, virtually unopposed, for months now. It was logical that they would have begun to believe that there was no one who could be a threat to them. Will smiled grimly to himself as he followed the trail of hoofprints and footprints to the south-west.

`Just keep believing that,' he said. Tug swung his head curiously at the unexpected sound of his master's voice. Will patted the coarse-maned neck reassuringly.

`Nothing,' he said. 'Just ignore me.'

Tug tossed his head briefly. Fine. Let me know if you want to talk.

The raiding party had moved onto a narrow trail now and there was less need to search for every heel print, every indentation in the damp ground. Time enough for that when he reached a fork in the track. For the moment, Will could simply follow the track, noting the occasional sign that a group of people had passed by – broken branches, threads of cloth caught on twigs and at one point, a dried pile of horse droppings. This sort of tracking he could do in his sleep, he thought.

Eventually, the trail forked and he saw that the band had diverged to the left, taking the smaller of the two trails. The ground began to gradually rise and the tree cover, although still substantial, was thinning out as they climbed higher. In the middle distance, Will could make out the steep cliffs of an escarpment. He had the sense that they were nearing the end of their search. He doubted that the raiders would have climbed the escarpment. Their disregard for the possibility that they might be followed dictated against it. If they hadn't taken any steps to cover their tracks, he doubted that they'd bother with the difficulty of climbing that forbidding line of black granite cliffs, although to do so would have given a virtually unassailable sanctuary.

He reined Tug in, sniffing the air experimentally. There was a trace of something on the faint breeze – something that was just a little unexpected, just a little out of place. He turned his head from side to side, still sniffing, trying to determine what it was. Then he had it.

Smoke. Or rather, ashes. The wet ashes of a dead camp fire.

They moved on, the smell becoming stronger and more pungent. A hundred metres further along the track, he found its source, in a spot where the trail widened out to form a substantial clearing. There was ample evidence that the raiders had camped here for the night. There were the blackened circles of four fires, and flattened spaces on the grass where men had rolled into their blankets and slept. More dung showed where the band's half dozen horses had been picketed.

Will sat on a tree stump and considered the scene, Tug watching him with intelligent eyes.

`They camped here, so we can't be too close to their eventual destination,' he said. That made sense when he thought about the escarpment he had seen earlier. It must still be a good half day's ride away from their current position. If darkness had been closing in when they reached this point, it would have been an ideal place for them to camp.

`At least we know we're on the right trail,' he told Tug and the little horse cocked his head to one side.

I never doubted it.

Will grinned at him. Sometimes, he wondered how accurate his interpretations of Tug's unspoken messages were. And he wondered if other Rangers talked to their horses the way he did when they were alone. He had a suspicion that Halt did, but he'd never seen proof of the fact.