Free The Tournament at Gorlan by John A. Flanagan

are about to be. I assume that’s just one of many letters he sent out. There will have been messages to each of the barons in those fiefs, telling them that their local Ranger is to be replaced. Presumably, they’ll have been sent out under the King’s seal. He’s the only one who can appoint or dismiss a Ranger.” He paused, then added dryly, “And we know how easy it is to forge a sealed message.”
    Halt assumed a look of wide-eyed innocence.
    Crowley eyed him for several seconds, then continued. “But even if those men have already been dismissed, odds are they won’t have moved on too far. And in any case, our best chance of finding out where they’ve gone will be from people in the fiefs they were appointed to.”
    â€œVery well,” said Halt, “our first stop is Dacton Fief. If we get started now, we should be there by tomorrow afternoon.”
    Crowley nodded agreement and folded the map, placing it in one of his saddlebags. They re-saddled their horses, which had been unsaddled to let them rest and graze while the two men considered the situation. Within ten minutes, they were on the road.
    Both of them were glad to put Gorlan, and the risk of being intercepted by Morgarath’s men, behind them. After an hour of traveling on narrow back trails, they reached the high road to the west and set their horses to a slow lope. They traveled at what Crowley described as “Ranger pace,” cantering for twenty minutes, then walking the horses, leading them, for ten so that the animals could regain their strength. Every two hours, they stopped for ten minutes by the side of the road to rest and eatand drink a little—hard rations like dried beef and fruit washed down by cold water.
    By late afternoon, they were well on their way and they found a small clearing a hundred meters from the road, well screened by trees, where they set up camp. Halt spent some minutes scanning the road, watching for traffic passing in either direction. In that time, he saw one farmer, slowly leading a plow horse past them.
    â€œI think we can risk a small fire,” he said. “That road doesn’t seem to be very well traveled.”
    During the day they had sighted plentiful wildlife along the road and had shot two fat plovers and a rabbit. Halt skinned and cleaned them while Crowley went looking for wild salad greens. He returned after twenty minutes with a broad smile. In addition to the bitter greens, he dumped half a dozen earth-covered lumps beside the fire.
    â€œPotatoes,” he said triumphantly. “There’s a small farm about half a kilometer in that direction”—he gestured to the trees behind them—“and they have a very convenient potato field planted right up next to the tree line.”
    â€œExcellent,” Halt said. The thought of potatoes with the meat set his mouth watering. Salad greens were all very well, but potatoes added a sense of solidity to a meal, he thought. He was busy threading the plovers and the rabbit onto a green stick they could suspend over the fire. “Rub some of the dirt off them and we’ll cook them in the coals.”
    One of the small pleasures of traveling and camping, he decided, was that, to compensate for the nights spent in the rain with no hot food, there were occasions like this, when they couldtake the time to enjoy a good meal. He placed the spitted rabbit and birds beside the fire, ready to rest the green branch on two forked sticks driven into the ground either side of the fireplace. Crowley passed him the potatoes, now with most of the earth removed, and he pushed them into the coals at the side of the fire, heaping the glowing charcoal over them. The rest of the dirt would come away with the skins when the potatoes were cooked.
    â€œNothing like a brace of murphies to set off a meal,” he said contentedly.
    Crowley frowned at him. “Murphies?”
    â€œIt’s what we call