Horace shrugged. 'Not really, I suppose. I just wondered why you'd gone to the kitchen and why you took the trouble to remain unseen. Were you hiding from Master Chubb yourself? And Will just turned up by coincidence?'

'And why would I be hiding from Master Chubb in his own kitchen?' Halt challenged. Again, Horace shrugged innocently.

'Well, there was a tray of freshly made pies airing on the windowsill, wasn't there? And you're quite fond of pies, aren't you, Halt?'

Halt drew himself up very straight in the saddle. 'Are you accusing me, Horace? Is that it? Are you accusing me of sneaking into that kitchen to steal the pies for myself?'

His voice and body language simply reeked of injured dignity.

'Of course not, Halt!' Horace hurried to assure him, and Halt's stiff-shouldered form relaxed a little.

'I just thought I'd give you the opportunity to confess,' Horace added. This time, Malcolm couldn't conceal his sudden explosion of laughter. Halt gave them both a withering glance.

'You know, Horace,' he said, at length, 'you used to be a most agreeable young man. Whatever happened to you?'

Horace turned a wide grin on him. 'I've spent too much time around you, I suppose,' he said.

And Halt had to admit that was probably true.

Later that day, they reached the spot where Will had fought with Bacari. Will signalled for them to stop before they crested the final ridge, then he and Halt crept forward to survey the ground ahead.

The camp site that he had seen previously was now deserted.

'They've moved on,' Will said, and Halt rested his weight on his elbows, chewing a blade of grass thoughtfully.

'Wherever it is they're going,' he agreed. 'How many would you say there were?'

Will considered his answer for a few seconds before replying.

'It was quite a big camp,' he said. 'I'd say up to a hundred people.'

They rose and walked back down the slight slope to where Horace and Malcolm were preparing a quick meal of cold meat, fruit and bread.

'Is there time to make coffee?' Horace asked.

Halt nodded. 'There's always time for coffee.' He sat down by the small fire that Horace had built and glanced at Malcolm. He liked the healer and knew he had a good, analytical head on his shoulders.

'Tennyson's party has joined up with a larger group,' he said. 'What would you make of that?'

Malcolm paused thoughtfully. 'From what you've told me about his methods, I'd say the bulk of them are probably converts to his "religion" – people who've been living in this area.'

'That's what I thought. He usually has twenty or so in his inner circle – the ones who know the whole religion is a fake. They run things for him. They collect the money. But the bulk of his followers are gullible country folk, who actually believe his brand of nonsense.'

'But where would they have come from, Halt?' Horace asked. 'I thought you and Crowley destroyed the Outsiders movement in Araluen?'

Halt shook his head. 'We did our best. We got rid of the hierarchy. But you can never stamp these cults out entirely. They'll move into remote areas like this and recruit the locals. He's probably had agents in this area for the past six months or so – just the way he was doing in Selsey.'

'And it would have been a simple matter to send a messenger ahead to arrange that rendezvous point in the valley,' Will put in.

'Exactly. And now he's gathering his people together for another push. They'll keep recruiting, then when they have the numbers, they'll move on to the next area – just as they did in Hibernia.' Halt shook his head angrily. 'They're like vermin! You stamp them out in one place and they rise up again in another.'

Malcolm nodded. 'It's interesting, isn't it, how people are so ready to believe these charlatans? You realise you'll have to do more than just stamp this group out, don't you?'

Halt looked up at him. He had a good idea what the balding little healer was talking about.

'How's that?' he asked.

Malcolm pursed his lips and leaned forward, idly poking a stick into the glowing coals of the fire.

'If people believe in him, if they've accepted the line of claptrap he's peddling, it won't be enough to take him prisoner and put him on trial. Or even kill him, if that's what you had in mind.'

Halt nodded wearily. 'I know,' he said. 'A public trial would give him the forum he needs. And if he dies, he'll become a martyr. Either way, another person will step up to take his place and build on the doubt and uncertainty that he's raised in people's minds. It'll be one long repeating cycle.'

'Exactly,' Malcolm agreed. 'So there's only one course for you to follow. You have to discredit him. You have to prove to these followers of his that he is a cheat and a liar and a thief.'

'We managed to do it in Clonmel,' Horace said.

'We caught him unawares there, with the legend of the Sunrise Warrior. And we tricked him into pinning everything on trial by combat. He won't fall for that again. This time, we'll have to do something new. Something he's not expecting.'

'Like what?' Will asked and Halt gave that tired smile again.

'When I think of it, you'll be the first to know.' Forty-three The abandoned camp told them little that they didn't already know. They walked through the areas of flattened grass where tents had been pitched, inspected the blackened circles left by a score of small cook fires and examined the small items that had been discarded or forgotten – a shoe here with a broken strap and holes in the underside that were past repairing, a rusted cook pot, a broken knife. And, of course, food scraps and garbage that had been hastily buried and dug up once more by foxes after the people had left.

The ground was soft and there were still footprints in evidence round the camp. These showed that a reasonable proportion of the people who had stopped here had been women.

'All the more reason to believe these are converts,' Halt said.

Malcolm agreed, but raised a further point. 'Still, women or not, a hundred people is rather a large handful for the four of us to take on. Do you have any ideas how we're going to handle that task?'

'Simple,' Halt told him. 'We'll surround them.'

And he said it with such a straight face that, for a moment, Malcolm actually thought he was serious.

There was one item of interest to be found and that was the direction Tennyson and his newly augmented band of followers had taken when they broke camp and departed. After several weeks of travelling consistently to the southeast, Tennyson now swung to the left, heading due east. The small party gathered round Halt as he unfolded his chart of the area. He indicated a range of hills marked on the map, a day's journey away to the east.

'Looks as if he's heading for these hills – as we thought.'

Horace, craning to read the map over his shoulder, read the notation on the map where Halt was pointing. 'Caves,' he said.

Halt looked up and nodded. 'Those old sandstone cliffs and hills will be honeycombed with them, according to what it says here.'

Malcolm asked to see the map and when Halt handed it over he studied it for some minutes, tracing a path with his finger here, frowning as he read a notation there. Finally, he looked up at Halt.

'This is quite amazing,' he said. 'There's so much detail here. How did you come by this?'

Halt smiled and took the map back and folded it carefully.

'It's part of what the Ranger Corps does,' he told the healer. 'For the past twenty-five years or so, we've kept ourselves busy updating maps of the Kingdom. Each Ranger is responsible for his own area of operations and we send updated charts to Crowley each year. He has them copied and distributed.'

Malcolm nodded. 'Ah yes, I know Crowley. He contacted me shortly after Will spent time with us. He was interested to know more about my healing practices.'