Halt's Ranger Apprentices- John Flanagan Ranger Apprentice fan-fiction

CHAPTER ONE:

The candles lit all around the room illuminated the small cottage at the fringe of the forest. The window next to the door had its curtains drawn back to scrape in the last of the pink sunset disappearing slowly behind the Castle Redmont. The stars were starting to show and the light in the room was fading leaving only the small candles to give light to the small wooden shack.
The place was a mess. There was dirty plates and saucepans scattered all over the small kitchen top bench and dust was gathering by the minute on the shelves holding books that had been stacked on there a long time ago. The place was silent with only the creaking of the wood as the wind brushed past it.
Suddenly the hinges of the small wooden door was slammed back smashing against the outside wall chipping a bit of the wood. Two figures walked in both carrying bags and sacks and blankets from a long trip. Their breathing heavy from exhaustion, their air coming out of their mouths in little puffs of smoke from the cold night wind that swamped their bodies.

"Well that was fun." the smaller of the two said, dumping the heavy sacks and bags at their feet. The taller one turned to look at the small figure not giving any emotion in his face.
"That last fox didn't taste bad did it?" The smaller leaned their head back to face the other one and nodded in agreement.
They were both wearing cloaks. The taller one wearing a mottled green and grey coloured one and the smaller one wearing a plain brown one. They both had the cowls over their heads and after a quick slam to shut the wooden and warn out door they flicked the cowls back revealing their features.
The taller of the two was a man revealing slight wisps of grey on his head of hair and the scars from what seemed like many years ago gave a sense of authority and experience around him. But given his height seeming smaller than was expected, some of the authority seemed to disappear. Although, his eyes were dark and grim, a threatening light sparkling in them danger constantly lurking in them.
The smaller one was revealed as a girl. Her dark brown eyes gleamed in the candlelight and her long hair that matched her eyes was dead straight, tied back to hand around her waste.There was no resemblance between the two, the man a scarred and gruff looking man, the grimness almost swallowing him whole, while the girl had innocence drowning her features with inexperience of the things the man had seen.
After the two let their eyes scan the mess they had left behind, they both shrugged simultaneously before heading their separate ways.
"Halt," she let out before even finishing a yawn, very unladylike. Halt nodded in response. "You wouldn't lie to me would you?" Halt frowned at her, a question already forming on his dry, cracked lips. "The whole time we were hunting foxes you avoided my questions about my mum." She felt a chill wander up her spine as the eyes she had grown up to love went darker than they already had been.
"Okay Squirt, go to sleep you'll need it in two days." Halt said, using the name he had been calling her for her whole life. Even though 'Squirt' wasn't exactly the perfect name, Squirt had never been very fussy over it, so it just stuck. The girl bit her tongue to prevent the questions to throw at him. Growing up, Halt as her guardian, she hadn't been able to knock any information about her dead parents. Every time they were brought up, she was immediately shut down, and his eyes would grow dark. Had they died so tragically?
Instead she focused on what he said about sleep, playing along with the change of subject that always happened in these situations.
"Right, the choosing day is in two days." she let out a little fake shriek of excitement and headed off to a wooden door. She lifted a hand and shook it briefly as a gesture of a lousy wave. "Goodnight Halt." Her voice being taken over by weariness, and went into her room and shut the door gently.
It wasn't that she wasn't excited about the choosing day, she just always had thought it was a special day to cherish with your own parents and not by yourself with a cold, grim guardian.
She loved Halt, she was glad she had someone unlike the orphans Baron Arald took in, but she always had this feeling that she was just like the rest of them or worse. Because she was a secret, and being a secret to somebody's life wasn't fun.
Sometimes, it just felt so... Lonely.
~
Halt slumped into a chair next to the table that had gathered dust with their absence from the place and groaned feeling all his muscles aching.
He sat there for a while just thinking. Thinking about the events of things that are about to take place in two days' time.
In two days' time it was Choosing Day, the day for the castle wards and kids in Redmont at the age of 15 to find their future. He looked towards the door Squirt had walked in to go to sleep and let a small smile creep onto his bearded face. He knew her future, and her future was to be a ranger like him, just like she's always said.
Although she was a girl, she was very strong willed and surprisingly good with weapons, unlike most girls or women that he knew, they were always elegant and proper but this girl who he had taken in and raised from when she was as young as 3 months old was ranger material.
But after the silence started to draw out in the darkness his small smile had faded.
Her mother died 3 months after giving birth to her from Wargals who were straying the countryside in search for their Lord Morgarath after the Hackham Heath battle and killed her with an arrow on a plain on the boundary of Castle Araluen while horseback riding on her horse. Her father on the other hand...