| Halt's Ranger Apprentices | This is War | Volume 2 |

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A/N: PLEASE READ.

I'm gonna make this quick because I know you probably just want to read, but I just want to quickly promise you that I will focus more on this book. I promise, I promise, I promise. Because it's not fair, no matter how busy I may be, I want to write this book and I want you all to read it. I was really dissapointed in myself to post the last chapter, becayse my heart wasn't in it and I have been recently just contemplating to just discard this book. But, I started this series, and I love this series but I've been lacking motivation, now I'm determined to finish it.

So I'm back! Enjoy my fluffy mushrooms (:

Hoofbeats thundered on the ground like a drum, Beauty's stepping steady in determination to get her master out of harms way, Annabelle's heart leaping and tripping over itself within her chest. Beauty's breath was organised between her strides, while Annabelle's was ragged and tired. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?

Gilan.

The bark surrounded the trees she was racing past wore damage erosion from the weather, but the worn of bark looked more like eyes, staring at her, knowing what she had done.

Gilan.

She held the reins tightly in her fists, but it didn't stop from everything slipping away.

Gilan. The man who had been the brother she never had. Gilan, the one who had given her some release from Halt's grim countenance. Gilan, the one who was behind her, fighting Wargals that had killed the mother she never knew, for her, to save her. She would never have run away from her mother if she was there the day she died, and she didn't even know the woman, so why was she running now, and not helping the man she already knew?

In that moment, she burst out under direct view of the sun. She felt the golden eye watching her as the trees did. Spreading out before her were plains that stretched out for miles, and would have been nothing but flatness to spread out across the horizon had the small town of canvases and tents not interrupted the straight line.

The Plains of Uthal, where her refuge lay, where she would be safe was barely one-hundred metres away. But what was the point of going to refuge when she was empty-handed. Empty-handed of the people that had helped her make it here.

Logan, Alex, Gilan, Will, Horace, even Devon. They were there, Logan by her side in the cell in Morgarath's lair. Alex sitting next to her in the forest his eyes intensely concentrated on her as he told her his belief in her. Gilan, telling her to run when all odds were agianst him. Will, the boy she met in Redmont's town square, who had become to mean everything to her. Horace, being the boy that had met her fist before her name and had become her closest friend. And, Devon who no longer shared a smile with her, but had once trusted her before anyone else did. They were there, but now where was she?

She stood, without them, she made it, without them.

Tugging on Beauty's reins, she turned away from the place she could be safe for them.

<-------<<<<-

Gilan watched as the Wargal numbers grew to ten, and his grew to no more than himself. He knew this was the end, there was no doubting it, he knew that thinking he could win this would only lead him into a fool's death at least if he faced the fact now, he would die with what pride he had left, even if it was alone, and no one would find his remains, since he knew of the infamous ways that Wargals dealt with their victims after death if they weren't immediately retrieved.

At least Annabelle was safe, at least she had gotten away and hadn't been stuck here with him. All the Gods that listened know how much he would never forgive himself if her let her die beside him.