Ranger's Apprentice - Rescue

Chapter 10

Will kept himself in the shadows as he snuck away from the little clearing that he left Tug in.

He'd given the little horse the signal for silence, and instantly, Tug had tossed his mane in understanding. As such, Will knew that he could trust Tug not to get himself captured. Still, as always, the horse had been sure to cast a weary gaze in Will's direction, making sure that Will knew Tug wasn't a fan of his going off without him.

"I'll be fine," he'd told the horse. "Don't be such a mother hen."

Tug had tossed his mane again at the insult.

If you didn't act so impulsively sometimes, I wouldn't have to worry.

Will had rolled his eyes, confident that he would never get the last word in with his horse. Then, he had snuck away in the direction he knew the fortress would be.

Now, a few minutes later, the stone building was well within sight. Will could see the lights from the torches shining through the trees. As he judged his distance to be less than a hundred meters away from the fortress, he flattened himself against a tree. Likely, there would be  guards positioned somewhere outside. Will forced his breathing to steady as he remained still, scanning the woods before him.

A small flutter of motion to his left told him that he had been right. There was a guard standing a little more that ten meters away, and until now, the man had been standing still enough that Will hadn't seen him. Now, he saw another movement to his right.

Carefully, Will assessed the situation. He was fairly confident that he could sneak between the two without getting caught. Still, he felt the familiar tenseness in his stomach that told him to be careful. Nervousness, Will decided, wasn't going to go away with any amount of training or experience. He had grown accustomed to the feeling over the past five years, like it or not.

Moving barley a centimeter at a time, Will pulled his cowl further up over his head, making sure to conceal the whites of his eyes. In the dark, and facing the torch light as Will was now, he knew that the fire would reflect in his eyes and would make him doubly visible to the guards around him.

Trust the cloak, Will reminded himself as he felt a pressing urge to run past the guards as quickly as he could. Trust the cloak. Trust the cloak.

The words gradually took on the sound of Halt's voice. Somehow, that served to comfort Will and and calm his nerves considerably.

He inched past the guards, waiting to move until one or both of them were shifted away from the location where Will was standing. He trailed the patterns of the shadows, easily passing through the dancing firelight unseen.

Then he flattened himself against the darkest part of the stone fortress' walls as soon as he got the chance, surveying the area from which he had come. Not a single person seemed to be on edge. No one seemed to have noticed the silent yet dangerous cloaked figure that had found his way amid their ranks.

Will watched in silence, still as a rock, as the guards switched for the next four hours. He realized with some fear how close he had come to being caught. If one of those guards had come to relieve the old ones a moment sooner, he could have been facing disaster. He resisted the urge to sigh. He would be here a while, he realized. It would take at least an hour for the new guards to settle down. If he tried to find a way into the fortress now, it was very likely that he would make some sort of unintentional sound and be caught.

Slowly, he sank to the ground, careful not to make any sort of scraping noise against the wall. As his rear touched the grass below, he relaxed and dropped the last few centimeters.

When he heard a small snap, louder than it should have been in the dead of night, his body froze and the blood drained from his face. He forced himself to stay still, praying that the sound had gone unnoticed. His pulse began to quicken, however, as he heard one of the guards speak.

"Did you hear that?"

Blast it, Will thought, cursing his impulsive behavior. He had known better than to sit down with such force, and without checking the ground beneath him first. But instinct was to simply sit down, and that's what he had done.

Halt, Will thought immediately, would have been severely disappointed in him. And what was more, Tug had been right about Will's impulsive behavior.

"Came from over there," a second voice was saying now. Will felt himself begin to panic as he realized that the guard was pointed directly at him.

This time, he knew that trusting the cloak wouldn't work. He had been discovered. It was time to run.

And run he did, straight up the stairwell that led into the fortress. He kept his footsteps as light as possible, thanking the heavens that there was currently no one in the hallway to stop him. Footsteps behind him told him that the guards were now coming inside, raising the alarm as they went. Desperate to hide himself before the enemy caught sight of him again, he ducked into the nearest door and closed it behind him.

He leaned against it, head back and eyes closed, as he attempted to catch his breath. That was when he noticed the smell.

It was rancid, like urine and blood and sweat all mixed together. As he opened his eyes, he realized in disgust that those were exactly the things he was smelling. The room was clearly the room Annalise had seen during her escape. Chains were held to the wall, a pair of cuffs on the end of them. Judging by the relatively fresh pool of blood, Will guessed that whoever had been held here was tortured not too long ago.

Then Will noticed a movement beside him. He hadn't seem the man at first, seeing as how his eyes had been drawn to the disgusting torture spot. But as Will listened to the sound of the guards outside the door running past, calling for help to find him, he jumped violently at the movement inside the room. In seconds, his saxe knife was in his hand. It nearly slipped from his grip as he turned to the new man, gasping aloud as he recognized the curly hair and scrawny frame.

The man was George Carter.