Halt was back, back on the very scene he had just left. And it was as if he'd never even gone.

The light was just starting to come through the trees in the early morning, and the birds chirped softly. A light mist had settled over everything, but the smoky haze of destruction had thinned only a little. His boot nudged aside a piece of bread, smooshed and dirty, trampled into the ground as he made his way through the destroyed and desolate campsite. Tables and benches were flipped over, broken in half, peppered with arrows stuck fast into the hard wood and gouged with various weapons. Platters of food had been swept off the tables, and were now slopped all over the ground, huge shanks of meat coated in dust, but still eerily warm and fragrant. Wilted greens had been stomped into the ground and pitchers of water and wine had been shattered, the ceramic pieces spread all around. Several platters had been used as shields, with arrows stuck in the wood, some hacked apart by Temujai sabers.

But the worst part was the blood.

The bodies of several Temujai were still there, abandoned by their own countrymen, laying where they had died in their own pools of blood. Most had multiple stab wounds from knives, and a few even had arrow wounds, stuck fast in their armour and rib cages. Their blood spread around them, shining red halos marking their deaths and sealing their fates. Their skin was waxy and pale, their lips blue tinted as their blood separated, and their eyes had clouded over to a milky white color. Halt gingerly stepped over an arm, splayed at an unnatural angle from the body of a dead Tem'uj. Halt glanced down at his face as he stepped over him, and he grimaced. He looked to be only a boy, with a small, skinny frame and minimal facial hair. Even in death, his eyes were wide and frightened. He looks like Will, Halt thought, and then immediately shook the image out of his head. Don't think like that. It doesn't help anything to worry.

"Will!" Halt turned slowly, looking for movement among the trees. "Will! Where are you?"

"...here..."

"Will! I'm coming!"

Halt whirled around frantically at the sound of his apprentice's voice, searching for where it had come from. He stumbled over the arm of the dead Tem'uj in his haste, but ignored it as he saw a hand waving feebly, and he hurried over.

It was Will. He lay on the ground, splayed and limp, a saber stuck fast in his chest with blood saturating the ground around him. His head lay back, his eyes shut, but he glanced weakly up as Halt scrambled over to him. His eyes flickered open, revealing the same brown eyes Halt had looked into daily for nearly a decade. A small, wane smile turned the corners of his pale lips upward, and he held out a shaking arm. Halt fell to his knees next to his young apprentice, his hands cradling his head and trying to staunch the steady flow of blood from his chest. "Will, oh god, Will, please, no - "

"Halt... Pull yourself together..." Will muttered, waving away Halt's scrambling hands with a weak flick of his fingers.

"What happened? Look at me."

Will looked up into Halt's eyes, blinking as he struggled to focus, his brown eyes glazing over. "I tried to save... Them... Are they - are they alright - " He gasped for breath and his eyes widened as he tried to sit up, his arms flailing towards two figures lying on the ground a few meters away.

Halt held him down, hissing, "No, stay still, I'll check..." He slowly rose up onto one knee and peered over to the two fallen, unmoving figures. It was an older Ranger, his face too slashed and bruised to identify, a saber cut slicing him open from shoulder to hip. He lay silent, still, and unmoving, clearly dead. Next to him lay the mangled body of a young boy in a poorly fitting Ranger's uniform, an arrow stuck in his throat. He had barely even bled, as he had died almost instantly, so he looked as though he could almost still be alive. Halt swallowed hard and turned back to Will, kneeling over him. "Will... They didn't make it."

Will's face fell, and he muttered softly, "I could have saved them..."

"No, no, you did all you could. The fact that you're lying here like this... Means you gave your all." Halt squeezed Will's arm.

"...I suppose I already knew that." He paused for a moment, then looked back up at Halt. "Halt, I know - " he swallowed hard, his hand touching the saber that protruded from his chest, "I know I'm not going to make it."

Halt shook his head, pressing down harder on Will's bloody flesh. "No, you're going to be fine, you'll be alright. We need help! Help!" Halt called out into the forest, but nothing moved. They were alone.

"Halt, they're all gone. Don't waste your breath... I don't have very much left anyway."

Halt choked back a wave of emotion. "No, Will, please - "

"Halt... Listen. I need you to do something for me. First, tell Evanlyn that she already saved me enough, and that she'll be a great queen."

"Will, don't talk like that - "

"Halt! Please... I don't have much time." Will sucked in a raggedy breath, his voice getting softer and softer. "Tell Horace I love him like a brother, and that he should try to live a little longer than me." By now, Will was whispering, and Halt had to lean down next to his lips to hear him. "Tell Pauline that she was a better mother than one could ever wish for." He coughed, and blood trickled down his cheek. "Tell - tell Alyss that I... that I love her forever and she'll always be in my heart." Halt's eyes welled over, and tears spilled down his cheeks. "And Halt..." Will took one last deep breath, his hand weakly clutching Halt's. "I need you to promise me that you won't mourn me too much. Because I'll always be... With you. In there." His trembling finger poked Halt's chest, right on his sternum, where his heart was. "We'll go on another adventure again. You'll see."

He exhaled, squeezing Halt's hand one last time.

"You'll see."

And then he was gone.

Halt sat stone still, staring at his eyes, willing them to open. But they didn't.

And everything was still.

All at once, Will's body shrank down under the torn and bloody Ranger uniform until all but a small lump lay buried under the folds of the cloak. Halt reached out with trembling fingers and pulled aside the layers of cloth. It was the young boy from the snow. His thick brown hair, fisty hands, and long lashes were so similar. His eyes lay open, the achingly familiar sparkle fading, covered by clouds, and it was then that he noticed the saber still stuck in the baby's belly. "Guh-Ahhhhhh-" Halt cried out as he stumbled away from the tiny body in shock, tears still dripping down his face.

As he staggered backward, he looked around and realized they were dead. They were all dead. Every one of them. The arm he had stumbled over belonged to the mangled young boy in the ill-fitting uniform, and the body next to him was another Ranger, but this one was Berrigan. Gilan leaned against a tree, his body peppered with several arrows, his bow clenched tightly in his stiff, dead hands. Another moan came from nearby, and Halt turned to see Crowley squinting up at him, impaled by a large lance, sucking in his last few breathes. "Halt, why did you leave?" he gasped. "You left us..."

"No, I didn't, I didn't leave, I would never leave you, any of you - "

"I'm dying because... You left." Crowley gazed at him through unseeing eyes.

"But I didn't! I wouldn't - "

Thud.

"Ow..." Sudden pain blocked out everything, his vision flashing and his head pounding. Halt's hands flew up as he gripped his head, clenching his teeth as the pain began to subside. He cracked open his eyes and blinked at the sudden light. The sun was still high in the sky, and a little fire was crackling a few meters away. He was staring up at a canopy of trees, and he rolled over a little and felt the hard ground beneath him and the rock under his head.

"The princess has finally awakened from her slumber. A disturbed slumber, but a slumber none the less." Crowley sat across the fire on a small log, wiping off his knife with a rag, a mildly amused and entertained expression on his face.

Halt scowled and slowly sat up, still settling back into reality. "What... The hell happened?"

Crowley dropped his knife back into its scabbard before replying, "You were dreaming so violently that you banged your own head against the rock you were sleeping on."

"Oh. I was... Dreaming." It began as a question, and ended as a statement. Well, that was... Some dream. "Violent is a good word for it, since I managed to nearly knock myself out in the process."

"Oh, it was violent, alright. You've been thrashing around for a good fifteen minutes now. I tried to wake you as soon as you started, but I couldn't." Crowley stood and walked over to where Halt sat. He took his hand and helped him sit down on another log set across the fire from his own.

Halt stared into the fire, blinking away flashes of Will's dead body still pulsing on his eyelids. "Did I... Talk? Make noises?"

Crowley harrumphed loudly. "You sure did. Said lots of things. You want to tell me what the dream was about this time?"

Halt wrung his hands under his cloak and shook away the last few haunting images and remaining grogginess. "It was nothing... Same as last time mostly. Just..."

"Just what?"

"Maybe a bit more... Potent. If dreams can be potent. I don't know if they are normally, but this one was."

"Do you want to tell me what happened?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Why?"

Halt sighed. "Let's just say I am in no hurry to remember the details of a dream like that."

"Why?"

Halt glared at him. "It was disturbing."

Crowley was quiet for a long moment. "Oh. Alright." He hesitated awkwardly. "Whenever you want to tell me, go ahead."

"I don't want to."

"You'll tell me eventually, you'll see. Maybe not now, but sometime soon."

"Whatever. What were we doing before I... Took a nap?"

Crowley visibly resigned himself to changing topics and said, "We were following those tracks I found, but we both decided to stop and have a rest, since neither of us slept last night. You took first watch while I slept, and then we switched and you dreamed your crazy dream. Is it all coming back to you now?"

Halt nodded. "Yes, I'm just a little out of it right now. I remember."

"Mmmm, good... So what was Will doing in your dream?"

Halt sat bolt upright at the sudden question. "How did you know? That Will was in my dream?"

Crowley laughed humorlessly. "Let's just say you said his name more than a few times. Loads of times, actually. So, what was up with Will this time?"

Halt started to refuse, but Crowley gave him a look, and he stopped. What's the harm in telling him? It's not like it can get any worse than that. "I dreamed that... Will died."

Crowley's expression suddenly became unreadable, some strange mix between confusion, understanding, panic, and pity. "Oh." That was all he said. "Well, I was not expecting that at all... No wonder you were disturbed."

They both sat back in puzzled silence. Then Crowley spoke up again. "Why would you dream something like that? When we left, he was... Very much alive, and doing very well. Why do you think he's dead?"

"I don't think he's dead, I'm just having strange dreams, that's all. And this is the first one he's died in."

"The first? How many have you had? I thought you had only had the one?"

Halt wrung his fingers again. "Maybe... Two or three?"

"But we've only gone through one night, and slept once!"

"I've been daydreaming, too. But those are just short and brief. It's been worse when I'm sleeping. But only... A few times. Two or three."

Crowley raised an eyebrow. "Sure, four or five is more like it. What's bothering you so much to dream like this? Do you want to talk about it - "

"No, I don't want to talk about it. I already told you. I'm done." Halt turned away angrily, clenching his fists and squeezing his eyes shut against the flashes of images from the dream.

"Halt... It's better if you just get it out now. It's obviously something serious that's disturbing you, and it's messing up your whole routine. It's messing up your sleep, for god's sakes, and if you can't escape in sleep, then you can't escape at all. We need to fix this - "

"Crowley, I appreciate it, but right now, talking about it is only going to make it worse, especially after having a dream like that. I will tell you about it all later... I promise. Just... Not right now."

Crowley stared long and hard at Halt, and then finally relented. "Fine. But I'll be taking you up on that promise later, got it?"

"Got it. Now, I don't know about you, but we really should get going if we are going to delay these Temujai in time for Will to get the others back safely, what do you think?"

Crowley nodded. "Yes, we should get going." He got up to go saddle up Cropper, and he turned back he did so. Halt stood looking into the fire, pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes squeezed shut. When he blinked, his glassy eyes reflected the fire a little too brightly.

What's going on with Halt?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few hours later, in the midday warmth, when the sun had just rose to its highest point, Halt and Crowley lay flat on the ground on a ridge overlooking a small valley. The sky above them was slightly overcast and brightly lit, and cool breeze whispered softly through the tall grass. Below them, a small herd of Temujai horses stood tethered together and a group of men sat in groups on the ground, talking softly to one another. A few had gotten up and were filling up their water bottles in the nearby stream a few funded meters away in the middle of the valley. Halt rubbed a few small pebbles between his thumbs as he looked down on the unsuspecting enemy and grinned faintly at Crowley. "We got 'em."

Crowley smiled, glancing sidelong at Halt. The bright Light overhead cast his face into almost complete shadow. "Not quite yet. We still have to stop them from getting closer to Araluen. But finding was the first and most important step to achieving that."

Halt blinked at him once. "So... We got 'em."

Crowley's cowl tipped back a little so Halt could see him roll his eyes and nod. "So we did. Now, let's go hear what they have to say for themselves."

The two men slid down off the slope and crept down the ridge, just out of sight, continuing until they had reached the valley level. Then they began to slip silently and slowly through the trees, the dappled light hiding them, keeping themselves apart so as not to be seen, creeping ever closer to the Temujai. From what Halt could see, some sort of decorated officer, not a Shan, but someone of high military rank, was speaking quickly and softly to the others. As they ghosted farther and farther, Halt could pick out a few words from what they were saying. As they drew even closer he began to faintly hear complete sentences. As soon as he could hear just well enough to understand, he subtly signalled Crowley and dropped down smoothly into the tall grass. He kept his face pressed into the grass so as not to be seen by the men sitting across the circle. They spoke in their quick, fluent language, but Halt could remember some of it from the time he had lived with them and did his best to translate for himself.

"...once the water had been refilled, we will keep going."

"Yes, and we must be even more watchful. The Shan happened across one of the Atabi in the woods again early this morning..." Halt froze. The Shan met a Ranger? Which one? Where? Is the Ranger alright? He heard them continuing, and quickly filed away that piece of information.

"...if we do not have anymore delays, we will reach Araluen by late tonight, when the moon is out and over our heads. On our way, it should be easy pickings, since most of the Atabi are wounded. Temujai, are you ready to finally take revenge on those who have shamed us?"

"Atabi ükhel! Urt amid Shan! Atabi ükhel! Urt amid Shan!..."

Death to the Atabi. Long live our Leader.

All the Temujai whispered this fatal chant furiously, spittle flying off their lips and grinning with the excitement of vengeance, as if they were some dark cult baying for blood to quench their evil thirst. Halt had to fight to keep his face still as he moved his head ever so slightly to the left, and saw Crowley looking at him from his hiding place about twenty meters away. He gave an almost unintelligible nod. We've seen enough. He gestured for Crowley to go back. As soon as he had gone, Halt crawled slowly, silently, invisibly around the circle of men. He was aiming for a large tree stump, where they had all set their water bags to be filled. A lower infantry man had been filling them, but he had just finished and had settled down with his back turned only a few meters away. Halt wriggled up over the roots of the stump and slowly drew his throwing knife. Carefully, precisely, deliberately, he began pricking the bottom on the water bags, only making thin, hairline tears in the thick, rubber material near the stitching at the bottom. The water immediately began to leak out, but only in a tiny, invisible stream. Halt pricked every single water bag, then sheathed his knife and slid back deep into the trees to catch his breath. The Temujai had not stirred. He hadn't been seen. What they don't know is that they will be running out of water here in less than an hour and not know why. He slowly inched his way back to the cover of a tree, then stood and moved carefully back up the ridge.

The game has begun.

****************

Greetings to all.

So how did you like it? Please don't hate me now. I really hope you didn't get too emotional there, you know I would never actually kill Will. Well... Maybe never. At this point, I can't really promise you anything. Just hang in there, I have a plan, and I think you'll all love it! I welcome and love reading about your opinions and thoughts about the chapter, ESPECIALLY this one, so please tell me what you thought in the comments.

Once again, I notified everyone at the beginning of this story, but I'll do it again: I am using Mongolian as my language that the Temujai speak. Based on some of my research. Mr. Flanagan based them off of the ancient Mongols. As you all probably have figured out, I am not an ancient Mongol, nor do I speak that language even remotely. So I am currently using Google Translate set to Mongolian. I know, it's sorta weird and I'm not sure if it's really right... But I'm doing my best. If you had trouble understanding what the minimal language I put in meant, just let me know in the comments and I'd be happy to clarify. Also, I am putting together a glossary so that you can be more easily informed about the language in this story.

Thanks so much for reading, and please go ahead and vote if you enjoyed it! I am trying to destroy the evil and irritating phenomenon known as typos, so if you saw one, send me an alert so I can vanquish it! I really think you will all love this next chapter... I have a lot of it already written and it's going to be exciting! I'll be posting it very soon. ;)