Ignoring the girl's "Not that we've seen anyone all day," which was muttered just loud enough for him to hear it, he began to scramble up the rocks. He made a careful circuit of the area, staying low and out of sight, moving from cover to scant cover as carefully as he could. Whenever you're scouting, Halt had once said to him, move as if there's somebody there to see you. Never assume that you're on your own.

He found no sign of Wargals or of Celts. But he did come across a small, clear stream that sluiced cold water over a bed of rocks. It was running fast enough to look safe for drinking, so he tested it and, satisfied that it wasn't polluted, filled their water bags to the brim. The cold, fresh water tasted particularly good after the leathery-tasting supply from the bags. Once water had been in a water bag for more than a few hours, it began to taste more like the bag and less like water.

Back at the campsite, Horace and Evanlyn were waiting for his return. Evanlyn had set out a plate of dried meat and the hard biscuit they had been eating in place of bread for some time now. He was grateful that she'd also put a small amount of pickle on the meat. Any addition to the tasteless meal was welcome. He noticed as they were eating that there was none on her plate.

"Don't you like pickles?" he asked, through a mouthful of meat and biscuit. She shook her head, not meeting his eyes.

"Not really," she replied. But Horace wasn't prepared to let it rest at that.

"She gave you the last of them," he told Will.

For a moment, Will hesitated, embarrassed. He'd just mopped up the last small mouthful of the tangy yellow pickles on a corner of biscuit, and popped it into his mouth. There was no way now he could offer to share it.

"Oh," he mumbled, realizing this was her way of making the peace between them. "Um:well, thanks, Evanlyn."

She tossed her head. With her close-cropped hair, the effect was a little wasted and the thought struck him that she was probably used to making that gesture with long blond locks that would accentuate the movement.

"I told you," she said. "I don't like pickles." But now there was a hint of a grin in her voice, and the earlier bad humor was gone. He looked up at her and grinned in reply.

"I'll take the first watch," he finally said. It seemed as good a way as any of letting her know that he didn't hold a grudge.

"If you take the second watch as well, you can have my pickles too," offered Horace, and they all laughed. The atmosphere in the little campsite lightened considerably as Horace and Evanlyn busied themselves shaking out blankets and cloaks and gathering some of the leafier branches from the bushes around them to shape into beds.

For his part, Will took one of the water bottles and his cloak and climbed up onto one of the larger rocks surrounding their camp. He settled himself as comfortably as possible, with a clear view of the rocky hills behind them in one direction, and over the bushes that screened them from the road in the other. Mindful as ever of Halt's teaching, he settled himself among a jumble of rocks that formed a more or less natural nest, allowing him to peer between them on either side, without raising his head above the horizon level. He wriggled himself around for a few minutes, wishing there were not so many sharp stones to dig into him. Then he shrugged, deciding that at least they'd stop him from dozing off during his watch.

He donned his cloak and raised the hood. As he sat there, unmoving among the gray rocks, he seemed to blend into the background until he was almost invisible.

It was the sound that first alerted him. It came and went vaguely with the breeze. As the breeze grew stronger, so did the sound. Then, as the breeze faded, he could no longer hear anything, so that at first he thought he was imagining things.

Then it came again. A deep, rhythmic sound. Voices, perhaps, but not like any he'd heard. It could have been singing, he thought, then, as the breeze blew a little harder, he heard it again. Not singing. There was no melody to it. Just a rhythm. A constant, unvarying rhythm.

Again the breeze died and the sound with it. Will felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising. There was something unhealthy about that sound. Something dangerous. He sensed it in every fiber of his body.

There it was again! And this time, he had it. Chanting. Deep voices chanting in unison. A tuneless chanting that had an unmistakable menace to it.

The breeze was from the southwest, so the sound was coming from the road where they had already traveled. He raised himself slowly and carefully, peering under one hand in the direction of the breeze. From this point he could make out various curves and bends in the road, although some of it disappeared behind the rocks and hills. He estimated that he could see sections of the road for perhaps a kilometer and there was no sign of movement. Not yet, anyway.

Quickly, he scrambled down from the rocks and hurried to wake the others.

The chanting was closer now. It no longer died away as the breeze came and went. It was growing louder and more defined. Will, Horace and Evanlyn crouched among the bushes, listening as the voices came closer.

"Maybe you two should move back a little," Will suggested. He had left himself a relatively clear view of the road. He knew that, wrapped in his Ranger cloak, with his face concealed deep within the cowl, he would be virtually invisible, but he wasn't so sure about the others. Without any reluctance, they squirmed back, deeper into the cover of the thick shrubs. Horace's reaction was a mixture of curiosity and nervousness. Evanlyn, Will noted, was pale with fear.

They had already struck the camp and moved the horses back about a hundred meters into the rocks. He glanced around quickly now to make sure they had left no sign of their presence. Satisfied that they had done all they could, he turned his attention back to the road.

"Who are they?" Horace breathed as the chanting grew louder still. Will estimated that it was coming from somewhere around the nearest bend in the road, a mere hundred meters away.

"Don't you know?" Evanlyn replied, her voice strained with terror. "They're Wargals."

W ILL AND H ORACE BOTH TURNED QUICKLY TO LOOK AT HER. "Wargals? How do you know?" Will asked.

"I've heard them before," she said in a small voice, biting her lip. "They make that chanting sound as they march."

Will frowned. The four Wargals he and Halt had tracked had made no chanting sound. But then he realized those Wargals had been tracking their own quarry at the time.

Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw a movement at the bend in the road.

"Get down!" he hissed urgently. "Keep your faces down!" And both Horace and Evanlyn dropped their faces into the sand. He reached up and pulled the shadowing depths of his cowl further over his own face, then held a forearm draped in the folds of his cloak to obscure everything but his eyes.

The chant, he saw now, was a form of cadence, designed to keep the Wargals moving at the same pace-in the same way a sergeant might call the step for a troop of infantry. He counted perhaps thirty in the group. Big, heavyset figures, dressed in dark metal-studded jackets and breeches of some heavy material. They ran at a steady jog, chanting the guttural, wordless rhythm-which, he realized now, was nothing more than a series of grunts.

They were all armed with an assortment of short spears, maces and battleaxes, which they carried ready for use.

As yet, he couldn't make out their features. They ran with a shambling movement in two files. Then he realized that they were escorting another group between the two files: prisoners.

Now that the group was closer, he realized that the prisoners-about a dozen of them-were staggering along, trying desperately to keep pace with the chanting Wargals. He recognized them as Celts-miners, judging by the leather aprons and skullcaps they wore. They were exhausted, and as he watched, he could see the Wargals using short whips to urge them along.