Author's Note: Hehe. Couldn't resist. I may do one of these for The Hobbit (namely, have the movie characters react to the book), depending on how well this is received. Set shortly after Lost Stories, I'm intending this to be a doorstopper-fic of the main cast reacting to books 1-10. Not touching the Royal Ranger. Not.

Disclaimer: All Ranger's Apprentice material is property of John Flanagan and I lay no claim to it.

The summons from King Duncan had certainly been unusual, but then again, these were unusual circumstances.

After ensuring Tug would be properly looked after by the castle stablehands, Will and his new wife, Alyss Mainwaring Treaty, made their way up to the throne room to report to the King. Also present were the Princess Cassandra, Horace, Halt, and Crowley, but also - to the surprise of both Will and Alyss - Baron Arald, Lady Pauline, Sir Rodney, Gilan and...

"Jenny?" Alyss said, surprised but delighted to see her friend. Will grinned. "Jenny!" Jenny beamed back at them both, but before she could get a word in edgewise, Will was off. "What are you doing here? Did - ow!" Will was cut off when Alyss elbowed him in the side. He rubbed his ribs and glared at her, even though there was no real menace in his eyes, or anything much besides hurt and a little pouting. "That hurt!"

"Then don't drown Jenny in questions." Alyss replied, smiling slightly. Gilan and Horace were trying and failing to hold back their laughter - traitors, Will thought sourly - Cassandra, Baron Arald and Sir Rodney weren't even bothering to hide their amusement, Lady Pauline and King Duncan both looked mildly amused, and Halt was..well, Halt was Halt was Halt. The only indication of mirth was a raised eyebrow and a little mirth lurking in the corner of his eyes. Will huffed theatrically as he walked forward to join the lot of them. King Duncan started talking, and the laughter died down almost immediately.

"Best sit." He told them all. "We're going to be here a while." By way of explanation, he waved a hand to the stack of ten books on the table. The first volume, with the words The Ruins of Gorlan written across it, made Will frown. Gorlan. Hadn't that been Morgarath's old fief?

"These volumes appeared this morning. Nobody could tell me where they came from, but the attached note suggested I invite you all hear to read them." King Duncan continued.

Baron Arald nodded. "Fair enough, your majesty." He said. There wasn't a terrible amount of reasoning behind it, but this being a time of peace (and more importantly, a mostly-humorous fanfic) there was no reason not too.

"May I read first?" Cassandra asked, looking at her father, who nodded his permission. Picking up the book, she opened the volume and began to read.

Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, former Baron of Gorlan in the Kingdom of Araluen, looked out over his bleak, rainswept domain and, for perhaps the thousandth time, cursed.

The blood in Will's veins ran cold at the mention of Morgarath. Glancing across the table at Horace, he saw the tightening of the jaw and the slight pallor that had come over his skin and knew his friend was having a similar reaction. Cassandra paused in her reading to give Horace's hand a reassuring squeeze, then continued as Alyss laid her own hand on Will's.

This was all that was left to him now - a jumble of rugged granite cliffs, tumbled boulders, and icy mountains. Of sheer gorges and steep narrow passes. Of gravel and rock, with never a tree or a sign of green to break the monotony.

"Bit dramatic, wasn't he?" Gilan commented, trying to lighten the mood, deliberately invoking the past tense to subtly remind everyone that Morgarath was, in fact, dead, thanks to Horace. The sally gave rise to laughter from all those present, save for of course Halt, who's mouth nonetheless curled slightly at the edges.

Even though it had been fifteen years since he had been driven back into the forbidding realm that had become his prison, he could still remember the pleasant green glades and thickly forested hills of his former fief.

"Not how I remember it." Will muttered, and Sir Rodney snorted. Cassandra raised her eyebrows and both men quickly fell silent, but when the princess continued reading, there was a slight grin on her face.

The streams filled with fish and the fields rich with crops and game. Gorlan had been a beautiful, living place. The Mountains of Rain and Night were dead and desolate.

"Well, if you weren't such a treacherous, backstabbing, greedy bastard, you'd still live there." Crowley pointed out, getting another round of laughter. It was always good fun to poke an old enemy such as Morgarath - especially when said old enemy was being a hypocrite.

"You do realize, of course, that 'treacherous' and 'backstabbing' mean the same thing." Halt pointed out. Crowley opened his mouth to reply, but Lady Pauline chose that moment to clear her throat. Cassandra took that as her cue to keep reading.

A platoon of Wargals -

"Hate those things." Will remarked, and Cassandra nodded in fervent agreement. Horace also shared the sentiment.

"What - exactly - are Wargals?" Jenny asked, simultaneously curious and worried about the answer.

"Big ugly, furry brutes with muzzles and fangs." Gilan offered bluntly.

"They also smell like they recently died." Will supplied, earning him a stern glance from Alyss. "What?" He asked.

"I don't think that was necessary." Alyss reprimanded him gently, motioning slightly towards Jenny, who looked faintly ill at the thought of such a smell. Gilan gave her a warm, reassuring smile, and she relaxed a little.

A platoon of Wargals was drilling in the castle yard below him. Morgarath watched them for a few seconds, listening to the guttural, rhythmic chant that accompanied all their movements. They were stocky, misshapen beings, with features that were halfway human, but with a long, brutish muzzle and fangs like a bear or a large dog.

"That's a much better description." Jenny decided, then winked at a mock-wounded-looking Gilan.

Avoiding all contact with humans - "Thank God." Baron Arald muttered - the Wargals had lived and bred in these remote mountains since ancient times. No one in living memory had ever set eyes upon one,

"If only that were true." Duncan said dryly, then gesturing for his daughter to keep reading when she looked up with in exasperation.

but rumors and legends had persisted of a savage tribe of semi-intelligent beasts in the mountains. Morgarath, planning a revolt

"Nice word for it - sorry, my lady." Baron Arald apologized quickly at Cassandra shot him a glare.

...planning a revolt against the kingdom of Araluen, had left Gorlan Fief to seek them out. If such creatures existed, they would give him an edge in the war that was to come.

It took him months, but he eventually found them. Aside from their wordless chant, Wargals had no spoken language, relying on a primitive form of thought awareness for communication. But their minds were simply and their intellects basic. As a result, they had been totally susceptible to domination by a superior intelligence and willpower.

"And there's his trademark arrogance." Sir Rodney remarked angrily, frowning ferociously. If it had been someone else under discussion, someone might have made an (unfounded) jab at Rodney's own (well-deserved) ego, but nobody was cruel enough to compare Redmont Fief's Battlemaster to Morgarath.

Morgarath bent them to his will and they became the perfect army for him - ugly beyond nightmares, utterly pitiless, and bound totally to his mental orders.

Now, looking at them, he remembered the brightly dressed knights in glittering armor who used to compete in the tourneys at Castle Gorlan, their silk-gowned ladies cheering them on and applauding their skills.

"Bet he misses those ladies." Crowley muttered, earning him glares from Alyss, Lady Pauline, Jenny, and Princess Cassandra, while Gilan, Will, and Horace all choked on their laughter.

Mentally comparing them to these black-furred, misshapen creatures, he cursed again.

Crowley spread his hands in a 'you see my point' gesture, and the glares returned.

The Wargals, attuned to his thoughts, sensed his disturbance and stirred uncomfortably, pausing in what they were doing. Angrily, he directed them back to their drill and the chanting resumed. Morgarath moved away from the unglazed window, closer to the fire that seemed utterly incapable of dispelling the damp and chill from this gloomy castle. Fifteen years, he thought to himself again. Fifteen years since he had rebelled against the newly crowned King Duncan, a youth in his twenties. He had planned it all carefully as the old king's sickness progressed, banking on the indecision and confusion that would follow his death to split the other barons and give Morgarath his opportunity to seize the throne.

"Because, of course, none of the barons would realize that they have a mad usurper on the throne and rally behind the actual King." Halt interjected, voice loaded with sarcasm. Duncan smiled gratefully at Halt, and Baron Arald nodded.

"I don't think he thought that far ahead, somehow." Sir Rodney deadpanned, and everyone (except, of course, for Halt) laughed.

Secretly, he had trained his army of Wargals, massing them up here in the mountains, ready for the moment to strike. Then, in the days of confusion and grief following the king's death, when the barons traveled to Castle Araluen for the funeral rites, leaving their armies leaderless, he had attacked, overrunning the southeastern quarter of the kingdom in a matter of days, routing the confused, leaderless forces that tried to oppose him.

Duncan, young and inexperienced -

Cassandra's voice sharpened and she frowned at the pages at the description of her father, and Halt scowled deeply, silently marking up another slight he never got the chance to personally repay Morgarath for.

- could never have stood against him. The kingdom was his for the taking. The throne was his for the taking.

"Think again, you - " Halt started, but was immediately hushed by Lady Pauline, to general laughter from the others. Cassandra continued reading with a grin on her face.

Then Lord Northolt, the old king's supreme commander, had rallied some of the younger barons into a loyal confederation, giving strength to Duncan's resolve and stiffening the wavering courage of the others. The armies had met at Hackham Heath,

Arald, Rodney, Crowley, and Duncan all glanced at Halt, who stared stonily at Cassandra as she read the rest of the chapter.

close to the Slipsunder River, and the battle swayed in the balance for five hours, with attack and counterattack and massive loss of life. The Slipsunder was a shallow river, but its treacherous reaches of quicksand and soft mud and formed an impassable barrier, protecting Morgarath's right flank.

But then one of the gray-cloaked meddler known as Rangers led a force of heavy cavalry across a secret ford ten kilometers upstream. The armored horsemen appeared the crucial moment of the battle and fell upon the rear of Morgarath's army.

Gilan and Will both grinned, and Gilan reached over to thump Halt on the shoulder. "Well done, you gray-cloaked meddler you!" He said cheerfully, earning him a baleful look from Halt that did nothing to dispel the blinding smile the younger ranger was wearing on his face.

The Wargals, trained in the tumbled rocks of the mountains, had one weakness. They feared horses,

"I thought they got their fear of horses from that attack?" Will asked, confused. Halt merely shrugged. "It varies. Depends on who you ask." He said mildly.

and could never stand against such a surprise cavalry attack. They broke retreating to the narrow confines of Three Step Pass, and back to the Mountains of Rain and Night. Morgarath, his rebellion defeated, went with them.

And here he had been exiled these fifteen years. Waiting, plotting, hating the men who had done this to him.

"Well, you could have surrendered and you could have just been executed and we would have been done with the whole thing." Horace pointed out, earning a reproachful look, tinged with grudging mirth, from his wife, Alyss, and Lady Pauline, hearty agreement from Arald and Rodney, and mixed responses from Duncan and Will.

Now, he thought, it was time for his revenge. His spies told him the kingdom had grown slack and complacent and his presence here was all but forgotten. The name Morgarath was a name of legend nowadays, a name mothers used to hush fractious children, threatening that if they did not behave, the black lord Morgarath would come for them.

The time was ripe. Once again, he would lead his Wargals into an attack. But this time, he would have allies. And this time, he would sow the ground with uncertainty and confusion beforehand. This time, none of those who conspired against him previously would be left alive to aid King Duncan.

Unconsciously, the Lady Pauline took her husband's hand, as if to reassure herself that Halt was there, and that Morgarath's vengeful attempt on his life hadn't succeeded. Of course it hadn't, but now, with Cassandra's words echoing through the room in the dead silence, it was easy enough to let the uncertainty and fear creep through her. Cassandra continued in a hushed voice.

For the Wargals were not the only ancient, terrifying creatures he had found in these somber mountains. He had two other allies, even more fearsome - the dreadful beasts known as the Kalkara.

The time was ripe to unleash them.

A collective shiver ran around the table and the mention of the Kalkara. Rodney, Will, Arald, and Halt all recalled their nighttime fight with the two dreadful beasts. It was Gilan who finally broke the silence.

"Well, whoever wrote this certainly knows how to tell a story."