The Battle for Skandia by John Flanagan Read Free Book Online Page A

carefully and moved among the bodies, studying the awful scene.
    â€œWho could have done this?” said Horace in a horrified voice. “They’ve been stabbed over and over again.”
    â€œNot stabbed,” Halt told him. “Shot. These are arrow wounds. And then the killers collected their arrows from the bodies. Except for this one.” He held up the broken half of an arrow that had been lying concealed under one of the bodies. The Skandian had probably broken it off in an attempt to remove it from the wound. The other half was still buried deeply in his thigh. Halt studied the fletching style and the identification marks painted at the nock end of the arrow. Archers usually identified their own shafts in such ways.
    â€œCan you tell who did this?” Horace asked quietly, and Halt looked up to meet his gaze. Horace saw an expression of deep concern in the Ranger’s eyes. That fact alone, more than the carnage around them, sent a wave of uneasiness through him. He knew it took a lot to worry Halt.
    â€œI think so,” said the Ranger. “And I don’t like it. It looks like the Temujai are on the move again.”

7
    THE TRACKS LED TO THE EAST. AT LEAST, THAT WAS THE general direction Will had discerned from them. As the unknown horseman had made his way down the mountain, the track wound and twisted on itself, of necessity, as he followed the narrow, circuitous trails through the thick pine. But always, whenever there was a fork in the trail, the horseman chose the one that would eventually take him eastward once more.
    Exhausted before the first hour was out, Will kept doggedly on, stumbling in the snow from time to time and, on occasions too numerous to count, falling full length to lie groaning.
    It would be so easy, he thought, to just stay here. To let the aches in his unfit muscles slowly ease, to let the pounding of the pulse in his temples calm down and to just . . . rest.
    But each time the temptation seized him, he thought of Evanlyn: how she had hauled him up the mountain. How she had helped him escape from the stockade where the yard slaves waited for their eventual death. How she had nursed him and cured him of the mind-numbing addiction to warmweed. And as he thought of her and what she’d done for him, somehow, each time, he found a tiny, hidden reservoir of strength and purpose. And somehow he dragged himself to his feet again and staggered on in pursuit of the tracks in the snow.
    Will kept dragging one foot after another, his eyes cast down to the tracks. He saw nothing else, noticed nothing else. Just the impressions of the hooves in the snow.
    The sun dropped behind the mountain and the instant chill that accompanied its disappearance ate through his clothes, damp with the sweat of his exertions, and gnawed deep into his flesh. Dully, he reflected that he was lucky he had thought to bring the blankets with him. When he finally stopped for the night, the damp clothes would become a potential death trap. Without the warmth and dryness of the blankets to cocoon him, he could freeze to death in his damp clothes.
    The shadows deepened and he knew nightfall wasn’t far away. Still he kept on, keeping going as long as he could distinguish the scuffed hoofmarks in the trail. He was too exhausted to notice the variations in the tracks—the deep troughs dug by the horse’s locked-up front legs as it had slid down the steeper sections of the path. Those areas were only remarkable to him for the fact that he fell down them himself, more often than not. He could read none of the subtleties and secret messages that he had been trained to see. It was enough that there was a clear trail to follow.
    It was all he was capable of.
    It was long after dark and he was beginning to lose sight of the tracks now. But he continued as long as there was no possible deviation, no fork in the trail where he might have to choose one direction over another. When he came to a place