The Tournament at Gorlan

Halt and Crowley are young Rangers on the run from their own Corps. The Commandant has stacked the service with loyalists, the king is sick, and Morgarath — the Baron of Gorlan — is about to stage a tournament that will conveniently eliminate any remaining obstacles to his claim on the throne. Halt and Crowley have to infiltrate the tournament, find enough honest Rangers to form a resistance, and stop the coup before it starts.

The Tournament at Gorlan is the first book of the Early Years duology and the first time we see Halt before the events of the main series. It also establishes the origin of the modern, reformed Ranger Corps that Will is eventually apprenticed into.