The Battle for Skandia- Character Reaction

9

"Here, Jenny." The book was passed to the cook next.

DEEP IN THE SHELTER OF THE PINE TREE, WRAPPED IN THE inadequate warmth of the two blankets, Will spent a fitful night, dozing for short periods, then being woken by the cold and his racing thoughts.

"Is there ever a time where you don't think?" Horace asked, grinning. Will chuckled.

It was Halt who answered the question. "All the time."

"Like you're any better."

"Of course I am."

"Boys," Pauline said, and the two subsided. At least he got the last work, Halt thought with satisfaction.

Foremost in his mind was his sense of utter inadequacy. Faced with the need to rescue Evanlyn from her captors, he had absolutely no idea how he might accomplish the task. They were six men, well armed and capable- looking. He was a boy, armed only with a small hunting bow and a short dagger. His arrows were good only for small game—with points made by hardening the end of the wood in a fire and then sharpening them. They were nothing like the razor-sharp broadheads that he had carried in his quiver as an apprentice Ranger. "A Ranger wears the lives of two dozen men on his belt," went the old Araluen saying.

"I'm pretty sure it's a lot more than twenty four," Horace muttered.

He racked his brain again and again throughout the long periods of sleeplessness. He thought bitterly that he was supposed to have a reputation as a thinker and a planner. "You do," the Araluens chorused. He felt that he was letting Evanlyn down with his inability to come up with an idea. And letting down others too. In his mind's eye, half asleep and dozing, he saw Halt's bearded face, smiling at him and urging him to come up with a plan. Then the smile would fade, first to a look of anger, then, finally, of disappointment. Halt gave a silent sigh. He thought of Horace, his companion on the journey through Celtica to Morgarath's bridge. The heavily built warrior apprentice had always been content to let Will do the thinking for the two of them. Will sighed unhappily as he thought how misplaced that trust had become. Perhaps it was an aftereffect of the warmweed to which he had been addicted. Perhaps the drug rotted a user's brain, making him incapable of original thought.

"It didn't," Halt said quietly. Will gave him a small smile.

Time and again through that unhappy night, he asked himself the question, "What would Halt do?" But the device, so useful in the past for providing an answer to his problems, was ineffectual. He heard no answering voice deep within his subconscious, bringing him counsel and advice.

"Haven't you heard his voice enough?" Gilan asked, grinning. Will snickered, and Halt rolled his eyes.

The truth was, of course, that given the situation and the circumstance, there was no practical action that Will could take. Virtually unarmed, outnumbered, on unfamiliar ground and sadly out of condition, all he could do would be to keep watching the strangers' encampment and hope for some change in the circumstances, some eventuality that might provide him with an opportunity to reach Evanlyn and get her away into the trees.

"I mean, it did work out, just not the way I expected," Will remarked.

Finally abandoning the attempt to rest, he crawled out from under the pine tree and gathered his meager equipment together. The position of the stars in the heavens told him that it was a little over an hour before he could expect to see the first light of dawn filtering through the treetops.

"At least that's one skill I've remembered," he said miserably, speaking the words aloud, as had become his custom during the night.