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the saddle mounted on the mottled mare. Wollfen lifted himself up into position, he started pulling on the reins a little and squeezing his heels feeling for the horses reactions. The horse reacted well to both styles of commands and he let the reins go. Wollfen pressed his heels in unison and the horse moved forward, he then pressed his left heel and the horse moved to that side, he started liking her straight away. Turning the horse to face Raven he watched her shoving her boots into her side pack.
    “Aren’t you going to put them on?” She shook her head as she pulled herself up into her saddle,
    “No I have blisters on both heels, the boots are new and ill fitting, I won't put them on unless necessary.”
    “You must have tough feet to handle moving through the brush.” She laughed,
    “When have you ever known me to wear boots normally anyway? They are tougher than an orc's skin.” She poked her tongue as she moved out of the corral, Wollfen following.
    They rode around the perimeter of the encampment for awhile so Wollfen could get used to the horse's personality and he was immediately finding that they worked well together, the real test though would come when they faced a combat situation.
    “Shall we move off to your patrol area hon?” She nodded in agreement and they left.
    About ten minutes into the ride Raven tensed and looked around, Wollfen too was on alert,
    “No noises, it's too quiet.”
    She looked around at the immediate area sniffing the air, if there were orcs nearby they may smell them, orcs usually reeked. Wollfen got a whiff of something but he couldn’t be sure. He squeezed Raven's thigh and pointed, she understood and moved off away from him a bit and they started searching the area. They were getting close to the patrol zone and they should be coming up on the current ranger soon. They were about fifty yards apart  covering a wider area and moving much slower. Each of them scanning the underbrush as far as they could see and hear. There was still nothing and Wollfen figured they wouldn’t find anything before coming across the ranger.
    Then he heard a whistle like a bird, it was Raven catching his attention and when he looked he saw her waving him over. He moved across and pulled up beside the still seated woman. She pointed over to the other side into the underbrush and whispered,
    “That’s Bradan's horse laying there.”
    He saw the body of it partially covered with branches and dismounted then moved over to it, Raven followed suit. They pulled some of the branches away and saw some arrows sticking out of the carcass, they were orc arrows. Wollfen looked to Raven and he could see she had a worried look on her face, he looked the animal over more carefully and saw a splash of blood on top of the saddle. He whispered to her,
    “He is at least injured we need to fan out and look for him.”
    Without any further words they both started their search looking far more carefully through the brush all the while listening for sounds and sniffing the air. They kept looking for about thirty minutes when Wollfen spotted boots sticking out from behind a large tree, his heart sank as he approached carefully still looking about. Then as he came around the tree he saw the body, his shoulders slumped. Wollfen whistled a little loudly knowing Raven would come and he bent down to inspect him. He was face down and as he turned Bradan over Wollfen was shocked. Raven came up beside him and he commented,
    “He is just a boy?”
    “Yes, all of sixteen years old he only started his ranger duties a few weeks ago and he was loving it. So sad.”
    Wollfen looked up at her studying her face, she didn’t seem too upset by it all. He knew why, this sort of thing was a regular occurrence for the clans. He stood up sniffing the air, he still couldn’t tell for sure what he was smelling and gave Raven a questioning look. She in turn looked around and sniffed the air too, she started whispering again,
    “I