The Burning Bridge

I."

Will considered the idea, screwing up his face thoughtfully. He was reluctant to light a fire while they were still in Celtica. It hardly seemed logical to travel by night to avoid being seen, then light a fire whose smoke might be visible in daylight. Besides, there was another consideration that Gilan had pointed out to him the previous day.

"No fire," he said decisively, and Evanlyn tossed the food pack down sulkily.

"Not cold food again!" she snapped. Will regarded her evenly.

"Not so long ago, you would have happily eaten anything-hot or cold-as long as it was food," he reminded her, and she dropped her eyes from his. "Look," he added, in a more reasoning tone, "Gilan knows more about these things than any of us and he told us to make sure we aren't spotted. All right?"

She muttered something. Horace was watching the two of them, his honest face troubled by the conflict between them. He offered a compromise.

"I could just make a small fire for cooking," he suggested. "If we built it in under these bushes, the smoke should be pretty hard to see by the time it filters through."

"It's not just that," Will explained, slinging their water bags over one shoulder and taking his bow from the saddle scabbard. "The Wargals have an amazingly keen sense of smell. If we did light a fire, the smell of the smoke would hang around for hours after we'd put it out."

Horace nodded, conceding the point. Before anyone could raise any more objections, Will headed toward the jumble of rocks behind the campsite.

"I'm going to scout around," he announced. "I'll see if there's any water in the area. And I'll just make sure we're alone."

Ignoring the girl's "Not that we've seen anyone all day," which was muttered just loud enough for him to hear it, he began to scramble up the rocks. He made a careful circuit of the area, staying low and out of sight, moving from cover to scant cover as carefully as he could. Whenever you're scouting, Halt had once said to him, move as if there's somebody there to see you. Never assume that you're on your own.

He found no sign of Wargals or of Celts. But he did come across a small, clear stream that sluiced cold water over a bed of rocks. It was running fast enough to look safe for drinking, so he tested it and, satisfied that it wasn't polluted, filled their water bags to the brim. The cold, fresh water tasted particularly good after the leathery-tasting supply from the bags. Once water had been in a water bag for more than a few hours, it began to taste more like the bag and less like water.

Back at the campsite, Horace and Evanlyn were waiting for his return. Evanlyn had set out a plate of dried meat and the hard biscuit they had been eating in place of bread for some time now. He was grateful that she'd also put a small amount of pickle on the meat. Any addition to the tasteless meal was welcome. He noticed as they were eating that there was none on her plate.

"Don't you like pickles?" he asked, through a mouthful of meat and biscuit. She shook her head, not meeting his eyes.

"Not really," she replied. But Horace wasn't prepared to let it rest at that.

"She gave you the last of them," he told Will.

For a moment, Will hesitated, embarrassed. He'd just mopped up the last small mouthful of the tangy yellow pickles on a corner of biscuit, and popped it into his mouth. There was no way now he could offer to share it.

"Oh," he mumbled, realizing this was her way of making the peace between them. "Um:well, thanks, Evanlyn."

She tossed her head. With her close-cropped hair, the effect was a little wasted and the thought struck him that she was probably used to making that gesture with long blond locks that would accentuate the movement.

"I told you," she said. "I don't like pickles." But now there was a hint of a grin in her voice, and the earlier bad humor was gone. He looked up at her and grinned in reply.

"I'll take the first watch," he finally said. It seemed as good a way as any of letting her know that he didn't hold a grudge.

"If you take the second watch as well, you can have my pickles too," offered Horace, and they all laughed. The atmosphere in the little campsite lightened considerably as Horace and Evanlyn busied themselves shaking out blankets and cloaks and gathering some of the leafier branches from the bushes around them to shape into beds.

For his part, Will took one of the water bottles and his cloak and climbed up onto one of the larger rocks surrounding their camp. He settled himself as comfortably as possible, with a clear view of the rocky hills behind them in one direction, and over the bushes that screened them from the road in the other. Mindful as ever of Halt's teaching, he settled himself among a jumble of rocks that formed a more or less natural nest, allowing him to peer between them on either side, without raising his head above the horizon level. He wriggled himself around for a few minutes, wishing there were not so many sharp stones to dig into him. Then he shrugged, deciding that at least they'd stop him from dozing off during his watch.

He donned his cloak and raised the hood. As he sat there, unmoving among the gray rocks, he seemed to blend into the background until he was almost invisible.

It was the sound that first alerted him. It came and went vaguely with the breeze. As the breeze grew stronger, so did the sound. Then, as the breeze faded, he could no longer hear anything, so that at first he thought he was imagining things.

Then it came again. A deep, rhythmic sound. Voices, perhaps, but not like any he'd heard. It could have been singing, he thought, then, as the breeze blew a little harder, he heard it again. Not singing. There was no melody to it. Just a rhythm. A constant, unvarying rhythm.

Again the breeze died and the sound with it. Will felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising. There was something unhealthy about that sound. Something dangerous. He sensed it in every fiber of his body.

There it was again! And this time, he had it. Chanting. Deep voices chanting in unison. A tuneless chanting that had an unmistakable menace to it.

The breeze was from the southwest, so the sound was coming from the road where they had already traveled. He raised himself slowly and carefully, peering under one hand in the direction of the breeze. From this point he could make out various curves and bends in the road, although some of it disappeared behind the rocks and hills. He estimated that he could see sections of the road for perhaps a kilometer and there was no sign of movement. Not yet, anyway.

Quickly, he scrambled down from the rocks and hurried to wake the others.

The chanting was closer now. It no longer died away as the breeze came and went. It was growing louder and more defined. Will, Horace and Evanlyn crouched among the bushes, listening as the voices came closer.

"Maybe you two should move back a little," Will suggested. He had left himself a relatively clear view of the road. He knew that, wrapped in his Ranger cloak, with his face concealed deep within the cowl, he would be virtually invisible, but he wasn't so sure about the others. Without any reluctance, they squirmed back, deeper into the cover of the thick shrubs. Horace's reaction was a mixture of curiosity and nervousness. Evanlyn, Will noted, was pale with fear.

They had already struck the camp and moved the horses back about a hundred meters into the rocks. He glanced around quickly now to make sure they had left no sign of their presence. Satisfied that they had done all they could, he turned his attention back to the road.

"Who are they?" Horace breathed as the chanting grew louder still. Will estimated that it was coming from somewhere around the nearest bend in the road, a mere hundred meters away.

"Don't you know?" Evanlyn replied, her voice strained with terror. "They're Wargals."