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

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A/N: ISN'T THIS AMAZING?! I've updated two days in a row, when I make a promise, I make a promise (:

Also, if any of you guys are interested, my latest video on Youtube is up and is link in this part above/on the side. (:

His kind weren't known to be stealthy, his kind were good for being bulky and large men, Skandians, but he continued on through the forest where everything remained a shade of green, his feet barely ruffling a leaf out of place.

He wasn't truly a Skandian, he wasn't truly bulky either, but given his life was spent among the Skandians and Erak taking him in when the cold snow was his only family, and the only food scraps he could manage left him gasping for more, he was adopted as one of them, even though his small thin build told everyone otherwise.

It had beeen days of travelling on foot, almost at a constant run for several hours before he let himself walk for one hour, it was a repeated cycle, similar to how his father operated on his shaggy horse, similar to the ones he had recognised standing by the two strangers.

It was an ongoing cycle of the sun rising and the sun setting that he lost count of how long it took him to cover so much land, but he knew he was ahead of the two people, as the green of the forest ended and tracks from where Wargal slave rallies had walked on stretched out before him, with no sign of the cloaked people or their hoofprints on the ground, a method he had learnt from his father in Hibernia.

It took the majority of that afternoon at a steady jog before he finally let his trembling legs, that felt light from the excessiveness of use they were put under, rest under him as he took in the broad landscape, the construction that could mean the decision between winning or losing this war, and earning the booty he had originally come for.

But now, it was much more than goods he was looking to earn.  

The steps were engraved in the dirt, so he quickly descended them two at a time, small conversation reaching his ears from the Skandians he barely knew that had joined this war. The rest of the noise was roars from the ugly Wargals, and groans from the Celts.

It was near sunset, near end of work day, and the time of day where the Skandians, Wargals and slaves were deep in their work, moaning and groaning as they felt the heat of the Sun leave their backs, the signal for the work's end.

He was suppose to be among them, but instead he was ordered by Erak to track any odd tracks, anything that would tell of anyone following them, since not even the Gods could save them if Morgarath found that the Skandians had been found out, otherwise his wrath would fall underneath all the Skandian's shoulder -or at least more than they already were- no one thinks he has ever caught a calm breath since the escape of the prisoners with Scar's son.

His eyes scanned each face, searching for a familiar mole on Svengal's cheek, or maybe the ruthless hair of Erak's that always stayed at a length that tickled the rim of his eyelashes.

There was no one he could talk to there, that meant they had already retired through the hallway type cave, where everyone would file through within minutes. Making sure no Wargals took notice of his lack of work, so they wouldn't report him to Morgarath, he slipped through the cave, into an almost complete darkness save for the fading dim light of the sun that threw pink and orange hues across the sky and ground.

Immediately he found the group of Skandians that he called his comrades in battle, the men he shared a ship with at the early age of sixteen when he lost his father when he went to Araluen and never came back like he promised.

"Cadien?" Svengal said, looking up from the fire that had just begun to lick at small twigs. His look of polite greeting of seeing him turned to a look of concern as Cadien returned an expression that creased his clean-shaven features, another thing that marked him as different.