Ranger's Apprentice 12: The Royal Ranger (14 page)

‘Grind it. Usually I grind the beans into powder. That releases the coffee flavour, you see.’

She was still holding the pot. He took it from her and hinged the lid back, peering inside. Once the initial cloud of steam had dissipated, he could see a raft of little round brown shapes floating on top of the water.

He started to laugh. He couldn’t help it and, the moment he started, he knew it was a mistake. He forced himself to stop, but the damage was done. Maddie watched him, her face stricken, as she realised how badly she’d failed. She had wanted to cook him a good breakfast by way of saying ‘let’s start again’. But all she’d succeeded in doing was ruining his coffee. She now began to suspect that the bacon and eggs weren’t exactly right either.

Will covered his mouth, forcing the laughter back.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said contritely, although he could see the disappointment in her face. He could see the way her chin was set and her lips were pressed together as she willed herself not to cry.

‘I ruined it, didn’t I?’ she said. ‘Not just the coffee, but the rest of it as well.’

‘Let me put it this way . . . it’s not the best. Eating the bacon is a little like chewing shards of pottery. And the eggs deserved a better fate.’

She dropped her gaze, totally crestfallen. She hated to fail.

‘But I shouldn’t have laughed,’ he continued, in a gentler tone. ‘You tried and it was a nice thought. Nobody’s made me breakfast in months.’

‘I’ll bet nobody has ever made you a breakfast like that,’ she said, her eyes down.

‘I can’t say they have. But how can I expect you to get it right the first time? Have you ever cooked eggs and bacon before?’

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. In her mind, she had seen Will coming to the table, surprised and delighted, wolfing down the meal and sipping contentedly at his coffee. It was to have been her way of apologising for her behaviour with Jenny – behaviour that even now made her cringe as she thought of it.

And now this . . . this unmitigated disaster. She felt Will’s hand on her shoulder and she looked up. His eyes were very warm and gentle – like those of the Uncle Will she had known as a little girl.

‘Maddie, you made the effort and that’s the main thing. And while you might not have given me the world’s best breakfast, you did something else for me – something far more important.’

She cocked her head to one side curiously. ‘What?’

‘You made me laugh. And nobody’s done that in a long time.’

After breakfast – in Will’s case a hastily revised one of bread, some slices of a ham hanging in the larder and a cup of properly brewed coffee – they stepped out into the small clearing in front of the cabin for Maddie’s first session with the weapons she would be using for the next twelve months.

She watched eagerly as Will unrolled an oilskin to reveal them. He selected the double scabbard mounted on a thick leather belt first.

She had seen the peculiar double rig worn by Rangers before, of course. But she’d never had occasion to inspect the two knives that it held.

The saxe was first. It was the larger of the two, almost the length of a short sword. She’d had a saxe for some years, of course, but it was lighter and shorter than this. This was a Ranger’s everyday weapon for close fighting – heavy-bladed and razor-sharp. She rested her forefinger lightly on the blade, testing the edge.

‘It’s sharp,’ Will said, watching approvingly as she treated the weapon with respect and care. ‘And it’ll be up to you to keep it that way. If I ever inspect it and find traces of rust or a dull edge, you’ll be running back and forth to Foxtail Creek for the rest of the week.’

She nodded dutifully. The saxe was a plain-looking weapon. It was unadorned and unornamented, made from plain steel and leather with a brass pommel and crosspiece. But as she held it, she felt the perfect balance in the
weapon that made it feel light and easy to wield – in spite of the fact that the thick blade gave it considerable weight. She sensed that it had been made by a master craftsman and Will’s next words proved her right.

‘Our saxes are specially made for us,’ he said. ‘The steel is treated and worked so that it’s tremendously hard. Parry a sword stroke with one of these and you’ll leave a notch in the sword – while there’ll barely be a mark on the saxe. Except your father’s sword, of course,’ he added.

She looked at him curiously, all the while working the blade of the saxe back and forth, getting the feel of it. ‘My dad’s sword? What about it?’

‘It was crafted for him by the swordsmiths of Nihon-Ja. They use a similar technique to our weapon makers. Horace’s sword is a masterpiece. It’s harder and sharper than any blade in Araluen or the continent.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ she said. Her father had never mentioned it to her.

Will dismissed the subject, gesturing for her to re-sheathe the saxe. She did so and he drew the smaller knife from its scabbard.

The blade was around twenty centimetres long. It was narrow where it joined the hilt, but widened rapidly, then angled in sharply to form a razor-sharp point. The tapering shape of the blade added weight at the point, which was balanced by the weight of the hilt – constructed of leather discs and with a small brass crosspiece. Again there was a brass pommel at the end of the hilt.

‘You’ll be learning to throw this,’ he told her.

She pursed her lips. ‘I’ve never thrown a knife,’ she admitted.

Will shrugged. ‘The principle is simple enough. You throw it so that it spins in the air just enough for the point to be facing the target when it reaches it. The further the target, the more times you spin it.’

He showed her how to vary the rate of spin by holding the blade further up or closer to the tip.

‘Close to the tip and it’s going to spin faster. Set your grip further up the blade towards the hilt and it’ll turn more slowly through the air,’ he said. She nodded, trying the different positions, miming throwing the knife. She could feel how the position close to the point would impart greater spin on the blade.

‘That doesn’t sound too easy,’ she said doubtfully and he nodded at her.

‘It’s not. I said the principle was simple. The practice is definitely something else. Like everything a Ranger does, it requires practice, practice and . . .’ He paused, raising an eyebrow for her to complete the statement.

‘More practice?’ she asked.

‘Got it in one. That’s the secret of most of our skills. When it comes down to it, throwing a knife is like cooking a perfect egg. The more you do it, the better you get – although the techniques are quite different.’

She replaced the throwing knife in its sheath. She weighed the double scabbard in her hand for a few moments, admiring the matched look of the two weapons and the plain, practical design. Deceptively plain, because, having examined them, she now knew that hours of painstaking, expert work had gone into their construction.

She set the knives down and looked expectantly at the oilskin wrap. There was another item hidden in its folds,
a longer, slender item. And she thought she knew what it was.

‘What’s next?’ she asked. She tried to keep her voice neutral, but Will heard the tone of expectancy in it. She was enjoying this session. She was interested in weapons. That was no surprise, considering her penchant for hunting. But that interest was a good thing and it would serve her well in the months to come, during the constant, repetitive actions of practice. A person needed that core of interest to keep practising and keep improving.

‘What’s next is our principal weapon,’ he said. ‘The bow.’

HER EYES WERE
riveted on the bow as he unwrapped it. She frowned. It was like no other bow she had ever seen.

To begin with, it was short, perhaps only two-thirds the length of a normal longbow. And the shape was bizarre, to say the least. The centre section, comprising approximately two-thirds of its overall length, was a thick, dark piece of wood, with little apparent curve. In the centre of that was a grip made of soft leather, padded and shaped to fit the hand. But at either end, two spurs of wood were set, so that they stood out an angle to the front of the bow – projecting forward.

Will handed the weapon to her and she examined it closely. The two reverse spurs had been carefully shaped to fit flush to the ends of the centre section – which had also been carefully planed and angled. They had obviously been glued into place, then bound tightly with cord, which
had been reinforced with more glue and several layers of varnish to prevent fraying.

At first glance, it seemed that the bow, which formed a wide, flattened W-shape, should be strung simply from one spur to the other, bending the bow into something that resembled the continuous curve of a normal longbow or shortbow. But as she looked more carefully, she could see the notches that would hold the string in place were shaped so that the bow would have to be bent back away from the direction of the two spurs. That way, she could see, the centre section of the bow would form one curve, with the two spurs curving back in the opposite direction at either end.

‘It’s a recurve bow,’ Will said, after letting her study it for several minutes. ‘The Temujai use them. I used one in my first few years as an apprentice. The recurved limbs give you a higher arrow speed for a lower draw weight. This one is about fifty pounds. You should be able to manage that after you build up your strength.’

He traced a finger down the outside edge of the bow. ‘It’s reinforced with deer sinew here to provide extra flex and recovery.’

‘Who made it?’ she asked. She was still turning the bow this way and that in her hands, admiring the workmanship that had gone into it. The wood had been shaped carefully and planed smooth. She could see the layer of sinew now that he pointed it out. But the whole bow had been varnished with a dark lacquer so that it had an overall dark brown tone. The lacquer was a matt finish, she noticed, so that there would be no reflections of light coming from it. The leather grip sat comfortably in her hand, although
when the bow was unstrung, with the two recurved sections pointing outwards, it felt a little unbalanced.

‘I did,’ he told her. ‘Halt showed me how to make one when I was an apprentice.’

‘Could you show me?’ she asked eagerly, and he nodded approvingly at her, once again noting her obvious interest in, and appreciation for, a good weapon.

‘Time for that later. First you need to learn to shoot this one. Have you shot a bow before?’

She nodded dubiously. Archery was practised as a social sport by the ladies at Castle Araluen and she had joined in occasionally. But the bows they used were nothing like this one. They were simple longbows – made from lightweight staves with a draw weight of twenty pounds or less, for the less muscular frames of the women who shot them. From what he had said, this one would be more than twice as difficult to draw back.

‘Nothing like this one,’ she said. She turned it around, trying to work out how to string it. With the bows she had used previously, she had simply grounded one end and used her body weight to bend the stave, sliding the string up into its end notch. But she didn’t like the thought of forcing one of those carefully constructed recurve ends against the ground. ‘How do I string it?’ she asked.

He reached out and took the bow from her.

‘There are two ways you can do it. The first way is with a bow stringer, like this,’ he said. He took a length of thick cord from his jerkin’s side pocket and unrolled it. There was a small leather cylinder at one end and a wide loop, padded with leather, at the other. He slid the cylinder over the end of the bow where the string was already set in its
notch, then placed the loop over the other limb, some thirty centimetres before the recurve began. The other end of the bowstring was already looped over the limb of the bow, with the string itself hanging in a loose curve.

Holding the bow with the string hanging down, he stepped onto the long loop of the heavy cord, pinning it to the ground, then began to force the bow upwards, using his back, arm and leg muscles to bend the limbs. The leather pad on the end of the bow stringer prevented its slipping down the limb as he applied increasing force. The bow creaked as the limbs bent further and further and, as they did, he slid the small loop of the bowstring up the limb, past the recurve, until it settled into the notch cut at the end of the bow.