Rangers Apprentice

•[19] The Plains

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3rd POV

It was a cold, cheerless camp. Tired from the hard pace they had been keeping up, the Rangers ate a cold meal – bread, dried fruit and cold meat once more, washed down with cold water from their canteens.
Will was beginning to hate the sight of the virtually tasteless hard rations they carried.
Then Halt took the first watch as Will, Y/n and Gilan rolled themselves into their cloaks and slept.
It wasn't the first rough camp that Will had endured since his training period began.
But this was the first time there wasn't the slight comfort of a crackling fire, or at least a bed of warm coals, to sleep by.
Y/n wasn't fully used to it, but it wasn't the first time she had to sleep by no fire or warm coals.

Will slept fitfully, uncomfortable dreams chasing through his subconscious – dreams of fearful creatures, strange and terrifying things that stayed just outside his consciousness, but close enough to the surface that he felt their presence, and was unsettled by them.
He was almost glad when Halt shook him gently awake for his watch.
He and Y/n are on watch together. Halt seemed he would lend them some mercy since he felt sorry for that fact that they will have to endure so much at a young age.

The wind was scudding clouds across the moon. The moaning song of the Stones was stronger than ever. Will felt a weariness of spirit and wondered if the Stones had been designed to wear people down like this. The long grass around them hissed a counterpoint to the far-off keening. Halt pointed to a spot in the heavens, indicating an angle of elevation for Y/n and Will to remember.
"When the moon reaches that angle," he told the apprentices, "turn over the watch to Gilan."

Will nodded, rousing himself and standing to stretch his stiff muscles. He picked up his bow and quiver and walked to the bush Halt had selected as a vantage point. Y/n was already there, rubbing her tired eyes and yawning.
Rangers on watch never stayed in the open by the camp site but always moved away ten or twenty metres, and found a place of concealment.
That way, strangers coming upon the camp site would be less likely to see them.
It was one of the many skills Will had learned in his months of training.
He took two arrows from the quiver and held them between the fingers of his bow hand.
He would hold them thus for the four hours of his watch. If he needed them, there would be no excessive movement as he took an arrow from his quiver – movement that might alert an attacker. Then he flipped the cowl of his cloak over his head so he would merge with the irregular shape of the bush. Y/n already had done this, and even Will could barely see her.

Her head and eyes scanned constantly from side to side as Halt had taught him, changing focus constantly, from close to the camp site and out to the dim horizon around them. That way, his vision would not become fixated on one distance and one area and he'd stand a better chance of seeing movement.
"God, I hate that sound," Y/n whispered lowly.
"Me too, I feel like clawing my hair out right now," Will chuckles back.
But he was met with no answer.

From time to time, they turned slowly through a complete circle, scanning the entire ground around them, moving slowly to keep their own movement as imperceptible as possible.
The keening of the Stones and the hissing of wind through the grass formed a constant background.

But they began to hear other noises as well – the rustling of small animals in the grass, and other, less explicable, sounds.
With each one, Wills heart raced a little faster, wondering if this might be the Kalkara, creeping in on the sleeping figures of his friends. Once, he was convinced that he could hear the breath of a heavy animal.
He wouldn't dare let Y/n know his fears, but little did he know, she was feeling the exact same.

Fear rose up in him, clutching at his throat, until he realised that, with his senses tuned to the utmost degree, he could actually hear his companions breathing quietly in their sleep.
He knew that, from any more than five metres away, he and Y/n would be virtually invisible to the human eye, thanks to the cloak, the shadows and the shape of the bush around him.
But he wondered if the Kalkara depended on sight alone. Perhaps they had other senses that would tell them that there was an enemy concealed in the bush.
Perhaps, even now, they were moving closer, concealed by the long shifting grass, ready to strike...
His nerves, already stretched beyond endurance by the Stone Flutes' dismal song, urged him to spin round and identify the source of each new sound as he heard it. But he knew that to do so would be to reveal himself.
The two forced themselves to move slowly, turning carefully until they faced the direction from which they thought the sound had come, assessing each new risk before discarding it.
In the long hours of tense watching, Will and Y/n saw nothing but the racing clouds, the fleeting moon and the undulating sea of grass that surrounded them. By the time the moon reached the preordained elevation, Will was physically and mentally drained.