The Ruins of Gorlan: Book One (RANGER'S APPRENTICE) by John Flanagan

Author:John Flanagan [Flanagan, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Publisher: Puffin
Published: 2006-06-08T04:00:00+00:00

18

WILL COULDN’T HELP SMILING TO HIMSELF. ANYTHING LESS like a ferocious, charging wild boar, he couldn’t imagine.

“How did you know he was there?” he asked Halt in a soft voice. The Ranger shrugged.

“Saw him a few minutes ago. You’ll learn eventually to sense when someone’s watching you. Then you know to look for them.”

Will shook his head in admiration. Halt’s powers of observation were uncanny. No wonder people at the castle held him in such awe!

“Now then,” Halt said sternly,“why are you skulking there? Who told you to spy on us?”

The old man rubbed his hands nervously together, his eyes flicking from Halt’s forbidding expression to the arrow tip, lowered now but still nocked to the string on Will’s bow.

“Not spying, sir! No, no! Not spying. I heard you coming and thought you was that monster porker coming back!”

Halt’s eyebrows drew together.“You thought I was a wild boar?” he asked. Again, the farmer shook his head.

“No. No. No. No,” he gabbled.“Leastways, not once I’d saw you! But then I wasn’t sure who you might be. Could be bandits, like.”

“What are you doing here?” Halt asked. “You’re not a local, are you?”

The farmer, anxious to please, shook his head once again.

“Come from over Willowtree Creek, I do!” he said.“Been trailing that porker and hoping to find someone as could turn him into bacon.”

Halt was suddenly vitally interested. He dropped the mock severe tone in which he had been talking.

“You’ve seen the boar, then?” he asked, and the farmer rubbed his hands again and looked fearfully around, as if nervous that the “porker” would appear from the trees any minute.

“Seen him. Heard him. Don’t want to see him no more. He’s a bad ’un, sir, mark my words.”

Halt glanced back at the tracks again.

“He’s certainly a big one, anyway,” he mused.

“And evil, sir!” the farmer went on.“That ’un has a real devil of a temper in him. Why, he’d as soon tear up a man or a horse as have his breakfast, he would!”

“So what did you have in mind for him?” Halt asked, then added, “What’s your name, by the way?”

The farmer bobbed his head and knuckled his forehead in salute.

“Peter, sir. Salt Peter, they calls me, on account of I likes a little salt on my meat, I do.”

Halt nodded.“I’m sure you do,” he said patiently.“But what were you hoping to do about this boar?”

Salt Peter scratched his head and looked a little lost. “Don’t rightly know. Hoped maybe I’d find a soldier or a warrior or a knight to get rid of him. Or maybe a Ranger,” he added as an afterthought.

Will grinned. Halt stood up from where he’d gone down on one knee to examine the tracks in the snow. He dusted a little snow from his knee and walked back to where Salt Peter stood, nervously shifting from one foot to another.

“Has he been causing a lot of trouble?” the Ranger asked, and the old farmer nodded rapidly, several times.

“That he has, sir! That he has! Killed three dogs.

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