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John Flanagan

Halts peril

One

There was a raw wind blowing off the small harbour. It carried the salt of the sea with it, and the smell of imminent rain. The lone rider shrugged. Even though it was late summer, it seemed to have been raining constantly over the past week. Perhaps in this country it rained all the time, no matter what the season.

'Summer and winter, nothing but rain,' he said quietly to his horse. Not surprisingly, the horse said nothing.

'Except, of course, when it snows,' the rider continued. 'Presumably, that's so you can tell it's winter. ' This time, the horse shook its shaggy mane and vibrated its ears, the way horses do. The rider smiled at it. They were old friends.

'You're a horse of few words, Tug,' Will said. Then, on reflection, he decided that most horses probably were. There had been a time, quite recently, when he had wondered about this habit of his – talking to his horse. Then, mentioning it to Halt over the camp fire one night, he'd discovered it was a common trait among Rangers.

'Of course we talk to them,' the grizzled Ranger had told him. 'Our horses show a lot more commonsense than most people. And besides,' he'd added, a note of seriousness creeping into his voice, 'we rely on our horses. We trust them and they trust us. Talking to them strengthens the special bond between us. '

Will sniffed the air again. There were other smells apparent now, underlying the salt and the rain.

There was the smell of tar. Of new rope. Of dried seaweed. But, strangely, there was one smell missing – a smell he would have expected in any seaport along the eastern coast of Hibernia.

There was no smell of fish. No smell of drying nets.

'So what do they do here if they don't fish?' he mused. Aside from the slow clop of his hooves on the uneven cobbles, echoing from the buildings that lined the narrow street, the horse made no answer. But Will thought he already knew. It was why he was here, after all. Port Cael was a smugglers' town.

The streets down by the docks were narrow and winding, in contrast to the wide, well-laid out streets of the rest of the town. There was only an occasional lantern outside a building to light the way. The buildings themselves were mostly two-storeyed, with loading doors set on the second floors, and lifting gantries so that bales and barrels could be brought up from carts below. Warehouses, Will guessed, with storage room for the goods that shipowners smuggled in and out of the port.

He was nearly down to the docks themselves now and in the gap that marked the end of the street he could see the outlines of several small ships, moored to the dock and bobbing nervously on the dying efforts of the choppy waves that managed to force their way in through the harbour mouth.

'Should be around here somewhere,' he said and then he saw it. A single-storey building at the end of the street, with a low-lying thatched roof sweeping down to just above head height. The walls may have been whitewashed at one time but now they were a dirty smudged grey. A fitful yellow light shone through the small windows along the street-side wall and a sign hung creaking in the wind over the low doorway. A seabird of some kind, crudely rendered.