Ringer Woods were dark and close, with little light able to penetrate the dense, overhead canopy. Randall and his companions rode slowly across the uneven, hummocky ground, the horses picking their way carefully past fox holes and dropped branches any of which could have broken the leg of a faster moving animal.

Randall was feeling smug and proud at how well he was doing on his horse, deliberately overlooking the fact that the creature only had to walk forward, following the one in front. On those occasions when he had to steer the horse around a low hanging branch, though, it responded meekly and obediently, giving Randall a sense of great satisfaction that he was attracting no undue attention from these people who'd been riding all their lives. Of course, they hadn't attempted any great speed yet. Randall's only experience at riding a galloping horse had been while chasing outlaws in a computer game, but he was feeling less and less dread at the thought of having to do it in real life. In fact, he found himself hoping that the opportunity might arise at some point during the day.

He looked behind, to where the rat catcher was balancing uncertainly on his donkey, able to keep up only so long as they kept to a slow pace. Randall wasn't normally a talkative man, but the whole point of this trip was to make people see him as a leader, to bring himself to their attention, and so he decided to strike up a conversation. He pulled back on the reins, therefore, to slow his horse until the donkey was walking beside him. "You okay?" he asked.

"Fine," replied the rat catcher, frowning at Randall as if he resented the suggestion that he might not he. "You?"

"I'm okay," Randall replied. "I just wondered how you were doing on your... Your..."

"My donkey," said the rat catcher. "You know why I ride a donkey?" Randall shook his head. "Sure horses are faster, but they're fragile, delicate. You just look at 'em and they've gone lame or got sores under the saddle. Donkeys are hardier and can carry a heavier load. You won't see a horse that can carry all my rat catching gear in saddlebags. A horse owner would have to buy a cart, and you know how much they cost. Also, a donkey can eat anything. You have to watch a horse to make sure it doesn't eat a flower that blackens its liver or puts it down with the shivers." He shook his head in denial. "No, horses are more trouble than they're worth. Especially for a man like me who has to watch his coin."

"I didn't know any of that," Randall admitted. "Why don't more people ride donkeys, then?"

"People like to gallop," said the rat catcher derisively. "Plodding along ain't good enough for 'em. They got to get there faster, an' maybe fall off an' break their neck. An' horses look better. You ride higher on a horse, like a hero from the old wars, like that grand old General Marris in the square."

Randall nodded, remembering the statue he'd seen in the city of a man in military uniform brandishing a sword while his horse reared up on its back legs. "My name's Fletcher by the way," he said. "Watt Fletcher.

"John Measley," replied the rat catcher. "Pleased to meet you. You ever need rats caught, you just ask for John Measley. Best rat catcher in four cities."

"How much do you charge? Might be cheaper to just get a cat."

The rat catcher laughed. "The rats you get in Elmton these days? You'd need three cats for each rat, and even then I wouldn't put money on the outcome."

Randall stared at him, unable to tell if he was joking. Could the machines have created a breed of giant rat to make life more interesting for their pet humans? He laughed to cover his ignorance and the rat catcher laughed back. "Then I guess I'd better hire you," he said, " if I ever find myself with a rat problem. Ah, looks like we might be there."

There was a gap in the trees ahead of them, he saw, and the wool merchant, who'd taken the lead, was turning his horse to the right. Randall geed his horse into a trot, forgetting until after he'd done it that it was a real horse, not a mechanical device. He grinned with pleasure as the horse answered his command, picking up speed until it was passing the wool merchant's men and catching up to the man himself. This was fantastic! If he'd known that riding a real horse was like this he'd have started doing it years ago!

The wool merchant had turned aside onto a narrow road, he saw. Little more than a gap between the trees where a track of churned up dirt had been left by the passage of horses and carts. Randall pulled up level with the wool merchant and slowed his horse to ride beside him. "Is this the road to Duffield?" he asked.

"Yay," replied the other man. "If I reckon it rightly we're about a mile away. You'll be able ter rest yer tired bottom while we wait for the tax collector to turn up."

"If he hasn't been through already."

"No chance of that. Wombwell upon Deech has near a hundred families, it'll take him most of the day to get through 'em all. The bigger danger is that he'll be there all day and leave Duffield 'till tomorrow, but even if that happens the people o' Duffield'll be glad to put us up for the night." He laughed. "They'd be glad to see the tax collector harassed by outsiders, maybe driven away in fear, and no-one in town responsible for what happened."

"They'll know the tax collector'll be back, though. Next week or next month."

"Yay, but it'll still be fine entertainment for 'em. They'd probably pay us ter see him driven away with his breeches around his ankles..."

He fell silent at a disturbance in the woods to the north. Randall looked and saw a young man, no older than sixteen, running through the trees toward them. His shirt was torn and blood was running in a trickle from a cut to his head. The wool merchant reined his horse to a stop and slid out of the saddle, running to meet the boy as he scrambled and slid down an earthen embankment to reach the road. "What is is, lad?"

The boy, or young man, Randall couldn't decide which, fell to his knees before him. He was panting, out of breath, clearly terrified. There was a wild look in his eyes and he clutched at the wool merchant like a drowning man clutching at a lifebelt. He was trying to say something, but nothing came out but a series of long, wracking sobs.

A couple of the wool merchant's men had also dismounted and were gathering around. "Waylaid by bandits, perhaps," one of them said. "Looks like he's been in a fight."

"It's Tom Barley," the other man said, though. "His family owns a farm a couple miles north o' here. They're poor, got nothing worth stealing."

"Is that what it was, lad?" The wool merchant asked the boy. "Bandits? Were you attacked?"

The boy looked up into his eyes, staring with horror. "Orrrr..." he began. Then he broke down and began crying, covering his eyes with his arms as if he was ashamed. The wool merchant and his men glanced at each other, their faces going white with fear. Randall stared at them in confusion. What did they know that he didn't?

"We need to get back to the city," said one of the wool merchant's men. "Right now!"

"Too late for that," said the wool merchant, though. "If he lives that close, they could already be all around us..."

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The boy looked up again. Now that he was surrounded by armed men he seemed to be calming down and regaining control of himself. He stared at the wool merchant and clutched at his arms. "Orcs," he said, almost in a whisper. "Orcs. Orcs! Orcs! Orcs! Orcs! Orcs! ORCS!"

"Into the town!" cried the wool merchant. "Quick!" He and his men mounted up and the wool merchant reached down to help the boy climb up behind him. Then they kicked their horses into a gallop. Randall did the same, praying to every god he'd ever heard of that he'd be able to hang on. Everyone was staring into the woods as if they might suddenly come alive with the monsters, as if a hail of arrows might suddenly come flying out at them.

Suddenly Randall remembered the rat catcher, left behind on his donkey. He turned to look back and saw him far behind, desperately trying to kick the donkey into a gallop. Bet you wish you'd gotten a horse now, he thought humourlessly. He saw the rat catcher drop out of the saddle and ran after the others, shouting desperately for them not to leave him behind. Randall sat forward in his saddle again and concentrated on not falling off as the horse bounded and leapt under him.

Then a thought hit him and he acted on it immediately before his powerful sense of self preservation could take control again. He'd come out here for a reason; to gain political power by becoming the people's hero. Rescuing the rat catcher gave him the perfect opportunity to do that with only minimal harm to himself. It would only take seconds to ride back and pick him up. He'd only be putting himself at further risk if the orcs were already closing in on them, which he thought unlikely. The boy, Tom Barley, had managed to get away, after all. Would the orcs have allowed him to warn them if they were already surrounding them, preparing to attack?

It took him only a moment to process these thoughts and make his decision, an ability that had helped him many times in his rise in the business world where opportunities often had to be snapped up in seconds before a competitor could grab them first. He pulled his horse around, therefore, and rode back to where the rat catcher was still running after them, his eyes wide and his breath coming in shallow, desperate gasps. The man reached up to grab the saddle and pulled himself up into it behind Randall. The former businessman then turned his horse around and kicked it into a mad gallop after the others who were now dwindling in the distance ahead of them.

Duffield was a small town and its wall consisted of a palisade of tree trunks driven deep into the earth. From the outside it looked a fort from the old cowboy movies Randall had liked to watch except for towers on either side of the gate on which large wooden turret weapons stood looking as if they were designed to shoot an entire volley of arrows in one go. The two young men on guard duty by the gate saw the horsemen racing towards them and guessed the reason; there had been tales of small bands of orcs roaming the countryside for weeks now. One of them ran into town, crying a warning, while the other began shutting the gates.

He had one gate closed as the wool merchant and his men galloped through. Randall saw the guard closing the other gate and drove his heels into the horse's flanks, desperately urging it to greater speed. The horse didn't seem to be in any hurry, though, and actually slowed a little as if to tell Randall that he didn't appreciate his treatment of it. Randall repeated his urging, leaning forward over the horse's neck and shouting into its ear. Behind him, the rat catcher tightened his grip around Randall's waist and muttered heartfelt prayers to VIX.

Ahead of him the guard almost had the gate shut, but he was looking out at Randall and he left it open a couple of metres to allow the horse to squeeze through. Then two more townsmen joined him, helping him to close the door and fitting a bar across it. Randall let the horse slow to a stop and sat there while his pounding heart slowed to a more regular rhythm. He felt a moment of exhilaration that he'd successfuly ridden a galloping horse, but then he remembered the danger he was in and dropped out of the saddle to look around him.

The town consisted of about a dozen buildings, most of them dwellings, huddled in the centre to leave a circular open area between them and the walls. There was also a large barn, a tavern and a supply shop. Every building had a sloping tiled roof. There was no church, he was relieved to see. The possibility that there might be a priest here had only just occurred to him. Someone was ringing a bell and wooden shutters were being closed across every window. A woman ran past Randall carrying a baby in her arms. She sped through a door and someone slammed it shut behind her.

"Thank you, Sir!" cried the rat catcher, also dismounting and falling to his knees in front of him. "VIX bless you, Sir! You saved me!"

Randall wondered whether people were still impressed by self deprecating modesty in this century. If people nowadays were more impressed by bragging and posturing, the time to find out was while he had an audience of only one. "There was very little danger," he said therefore. "And I couldn't just leave you out there. It wouldn't have been human."

"You risked your life for me! Everyone knows how the orcs send scouts ahead of the main force. You knew you could have been shot down by an arrow but you came anyway! You're a hero, Sir! A real hero!"

Randall felt a moment of queasiness and rubbed a finger around the collar of his shirt. Scouts? Then he saw the wool merchant staring at him, though, a look of grudging admiration in his eyes, and Randall saw other heads turning towards him as well. It had been worth it, then. He'd made a good start. Now he had to take charge of the town's defence. He knew nothing about battles or combat tactics, but that didn't matter. All he had to do was find out what the defenders wanted to do anyway and then tell them to do it.

"Who's in charge here?" he demanded. Nobody answered him, they were too busy running this way and that, mainly towards the walls to climb up onto the walkway and stare out into the forest. Randall strode across the hard packed ground to grab a townsman by the shoulder and spin him around to face him. "Who's in charge here?" he repeated.

"Uh, Morris, I suppose," the man replied. "He normally runs the tavern, but when there's trouble..."

"Where is he?" demanded Randall. The man pointed to one of the men on the wall and Randall strode off towards him.

The stairs up to the walkway were slippery with moss and slime and Randall climbed carefully to the top where there was a railing to protect people from the three metre drop. The palisade rose a further two metres above the men walking there, but there were gaps in it to allow the defenders to see out across the forest. Randall counted about thirty defenders, all armed with short swords and bows and arrows and ranging in ages from thirteen to sixty, and every eye was staring out across the area of open ground that had been cleared between the wall and the nearest trees.

Randall made his way to the man that had been pointed out to him, a man who appeared to be in his fifties with long hair tied back in a ponytail. The wool merchant and his men were gathered around him and Morris was giving orders, telling them where to position themselves to best aid in the town's defence. Tom Barley was there as well, still looking shaky but determined to do his bit with the pitchfork he'd borrowed from someone.

Randall waited until everyone had received their orders and had gone off to obey before going forward to face Morris. "You need to get everyone evenly spaced," he said. "There's no telling what way they'll come from."

The man turned to give Randall an irritable look. "And you are?" he asked.

"Watt Fletcher," Randall replied. "Those were my men you were just ordering around." It had been his idea to confront the tax collector so it wasn't exactly a lie. He carried on speaking before Morris could challenge the assertion. "Did the tax collector make it here? We could use his soldiers."

"No," the other man replied. "We didn't know he was coming."

"Well, he is, or at least he was planning to, with three or four professional soldiers. Not many I know, but every professional soldier is worth three farmers." He had just pulled the number out of the air so he hoped it wasn't ludicrously inaccurate.

"These farmers have seen their share of action," Morris replied, his eyes narrowing. "This is hardly the first time we've seen orcs in this area."

"How many were there last time?" asked Randall.

"Just the one war band. Luckily we had warning and we were able to get all the surrounding farmers into our walls. This time..."

Randall nodded. He wanted to ask how many orcs there were in a war band, but that would have revealed his ignorance. "Was there a chieftain among them?" he asked.

"A chieftain leading just one war band? When was the last time you came face to face with orcs?"

"About a week ago," replied Randall. Again, not exactly a lie if finding one dead orc counted as coming face to face with it. "I wasn't counting on facing them again so soon, though. I didn't bring a weapon."

"There should be a few pitchforks lying around in the barn. Go get one." Morris then dismissed Randall from his attention and looked back out through the gap in the wall.

The idea of actually using a weapon in combat filled Randall with dread, but possibly facing an orc with empty hands dismayed him even more. He headed back towards the stairs, therefore, intending to take the other man's advice, but before he could take more than a couple of steps a cry went out from a man a few dozen metres further along the wall. "Orcs!" he cried. "Orcs in the trees!"

"How many?" someone shouted back, but then arrows started flying from out of the forest and everyone ducked down behind the wall to shelter from them.