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Informationen zum Autor John Flanagan grew up in Sydney, Australia, hoping to be a writer. John began writing Ranger’s Apprentice for his son, Michael, ten years ago, and is still hard at work on the series and its spinoff, Brotherband Chronicles. He currently lives in the suburb of Manly, Australia, with his wife. In addition to their son, they have two grown daughters and four grandsons. Klappentext The international bestselling series with over 5 million copies sold in the U.S. alone!In the wake of Araluen's uneasy truce with the raiding Skandians comes word that the Skandian leader has been captured by a dangerous desert tribe. The Rangers - and Will - are sent to free him. But the desert is like nothing these warriors have seen before. Strangers in a strange land, they are brutalized by sandstorms, beaten by the unrelenting heat, tricked by one tribe that plays by its own rules, and surprisingly befriended by another. Like a desert mirage, nothing is as it seems. Yet one thing is constant: the bravery of the Rangers."Bringing together many favorite characters for a grand adventure, this book delivers both excitement and quiet good times." - Booklist Perfect for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone, Christopher Paolini's Eragon series, and George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire series. The sentry never saw the dark-clad figure ghosting through the night toward Castle Araluen. Merging with the prevailing patterns of light and shade thrown by the half-moon, the interloper seemed to blend into the fabric of the night, matching the rhythm of the trees and cloud shadows as they moved with the moderate wind. The sentry’s post was in the outer cordon, outside the walls of the massive castle, by the southeastern tower. The moat rippled gently behind him, its surface stirred by the wind so that the reflections of the stars in the dark water were set shimmering in a thousand tiny points of light. Before him stretched the massive parkland that surrounded the castle, carefully tended, immaculately mown and dotted with fruit and shade trees. The ground sloped gently away from the castle. There were trees and small shady dells where couples or individuals could sit and relax and picnic in relative privacy, sheltered from the sun. But the trees were small and they were well spaced out, with plenty of open ground between them so that concealment would be denied to any large attacking force. It was a well-ordered compromise between the provision of privacy and relaxation and the need for security in an age when an attack could conceivably happen at any time. Thirty meters to the left of where the sentry stood, a picnic table had been fashioned by attaching an old cart wheel to the sawn-off stump of what had been a larger tree. Several rustic benches were placed around the table and a smaller tree had been planted to one side to shade it at noon. It was a favorite spot for the knights and their ladies, affording a good overview of the green, pleasant parklands that sloped away to the distant dark line of a forest. The intruder was heading toward this table. He slipped into the shadows of a small grove forty meters from the bench, then dropped belly-down to the ground. Taking one last look to get a bearing, the dark figure snaked out of the shadows, facedown, heading for the shelter of the table. Progress was painstakingly slow. This was a trained stalker who knew that any rapid movement would register with the sentry’s pe-ripheral vision. As shadows of clouds passed over the park, the crawling figure would move with them, rippling unobtrusively across the short grass, seeming to be just one more moving shadow. The dark green clothing aided concealment. Black would have been too dark and would have created too deep a shadow. It took ten minutes to cover the distance to the table. A few ...
