Ranger's Apprentice 3 & 4 Bindup (38 page)

‘Halt,' Will said thoughtfully as he walked away from the council with Halt and Erak. ‘What did you mean when you said that about archers?'

Halt looked sideways at his apprentice and sighed. ‘It could make a big difference to the outcome,' he said. ‘The Temujai are archers themselves. But they rarely have to face an enemy with any particular skill with the bow.'

Will nodded. The longbow was traditionally an Araluan weapon. Perhaps because of the island kingdom's isolation from the countries on the eastern land mass, it had remained peculiar to Araluen. Other nationalities might use bows for hunting or even sport. But only in the armies of the Araluans would you find the massed groups of archers that could provide a devastating rain of arrows on an attacking force.

‘They understand the value of the bow as a strategic weapon,' he said. ‘But they've never had to cope with facing it themselves. I got some inkling of that when Erak
and I were running from them near the border. Once I'd put a few arrows close to them, they were decidedly reluctant to come dashing round any blind corners.'

The Jarl laughed quietly at the memory. ‘That's true enough,' he agreed. ‘Once you'd emptied a few saddles, they slowed down remarkably.'

‘You know, I've been thinking …' said the boy, and hesitated. Halt grinned quietly to himself.

‘Always a dangerous pastime,' he said gently.

But Will continued: ‘Maybe we should try to put together a force of archers. Even a hundred or so could make a difference, couldn't they?'

Halt shook his head. ‘We haven't the time, Will,' he replied. ‘They'll be on us within two weeks. You can't train archers in that short a time. After all, the Skandians have no skill with the bow to begin with. You'd have to teach them the very basics – nocking, drawing, releasing. That takes weeks, as you know.'

‘There are plenty of slaves here,' Will persisted. ‘Some of them would know the basics. Then all we'd have to do is control their range.'

Halt looked at his apprentice again. The boy was deadly serious, he could see. A small frown creased Will's forehead as he thought through the problem.

‘And how would you do that?' the Ranger asked. The frown deepened for a few seconds as Will gathered his thoughts.

‘It was something Evanlyn asked me that suggested it,' he said. ‘She was watching me shoot and she was asking how I knew how much elevation to give to a particular shot and I told her it was just experience. Then I thought
maybe I
could
show her and I was thinking, if you created – say – four basic positions …'

He stopped walking and raised his left arm as if it were holding a bow, then moved it through four positions – beginning horizontally and ultimately raising it to a maximum forty-five degree angle. ‘One, two, three, four, like that,' he continued. ‘You could drill a group of archers to assume those positions while someone else judged the range and told them which one to go to. They wouldn't need to be very good shots as long as the person controlling them could judge range,' he finished.

‘And deflection,' Halt said thoughtfully. ‘If you knew that at the second position your shafts would travel, say, two hundred metres, you could time your release so that the approaching enemy would reach that spot just as the arrow storm did.'

‘Well, yes,' Will admitted. ‘I hadn't taken it that far. I was just thinking of setting the range and having everyone release at the same time. They needn't aim for individual targets. They could just fire away into the mass.'

‘You'd need to anticipate,' Halt said.

‘Yes. But essentially, it would be the same as if I were firing one arrow myself. It's just that, as I released, I could call a hundred others to do the same.'

Halt rubbed his beard. He glanced at the Skandian. ‘What do you think, Erak?'

The Jarl merely shrugged his massive shoulders.

‘I haven't understood a word you've been saying,' he admitted cheerfully. ‘Range, defraction …'

‘Deflection,' Will corrected him and he shrugged.

‘Whatever. It's all a puzzle to me. But if the boy thinks
it might be possible, well, I'd tend to think he might be right.'

Will grinned at the big war leader. Erak liked to keep things simple. If he didn't understand a subject, he didn't waste energy wondering about it.

‘I tend to think the same way,' Halt said quietly, and Will looked at him in some surprise. He'd been waiting for his mentor to point out the fundamental flaw in his logic. Now, he saw that Halt was considering his proposal seriously. Then he noticed the look of exasperation that grew on Halt's face as he found the flaw.

‘Bows,' the Ranger said, disappointment in his voice. ‘Where would we find a hundred bows in time to let people train with them? There probably aren't twenty in all of Skandia.'

Will's heart sank as he heard the words. Of course. There was the problem. It took weeks to shape and craft a single longbow, trimming the bowstave just so, providing just the right amount of graduated flex along both arms. It was a craftsman's job and there was no way they would have time to make the hundred bows they would need. Disconsolately, he kicked at a rock in his path, then wished he hadn't. He'd forgotten that he was wearing soft-toed boots.

‘I could let you have a hundred,' Erak said, in the depressed silence that followed Halt's statement. Both the others turned to look at him.

‘Where would you find a hundred longbows?' Halt asked him, after a long pause. Erak shrugged.

‘I captured a two-masted cob off the Araluan coast three seasons ago,' he told them. He didn't have to explain
that when a Skandian said ‘season' he meant the raiding season. ‘She had a hold full of bows. I kept them in my store room until I could find a use for them. I was going to use them as fence palings,' he continued. ‘But they seemed a little too flexible for the job.'

‘Bows tend to be that way,' Halt said slowly, and when Erak looked at him, uncomprehending, he added: ‘More flexible than fence palings. It's one of the qualities we look for in a bow.'

‘Well, I suppose you'd know,' Erak said casually. ‘Anyway, I've still got them. There must be thousands of arrow shafts as well. I thought they'd come in handy one day.'

Halt reached up and laid a hand on the massive shoulder. ‘And how right you were,' he said. ‘Thank the gods for the Skandian habit of hoarding everything.'

‘Well, of course we hoard,' Erak explained. ‘We risk our lives to take the stuff in the first place. There's no sense in throwing it away. Anyway, do you want to see if you could use them?'

‘Lead on, Jarl Erak,' Halt said, shaking his head in wonder and lifting an eyebrow at Will.

Erak set out towards the large, barnlike store house by the docks where he kept the bulk of his plunder.

‘Excellent,' he said happily, rubbing his hands together. ‘If you decide to use them, I'll be able to charge Ragnak.'

‘But this is war,' Will protested. ‘Surely you can't charge Ragnak for doing something that will help defend Hallasholm?'

Erak turned his delighted smile on the young Ranger. ‘To a Skandian, my boy, all war is business.'

Evanlyn had been waiting for Halt and Will to leave Ragnak's War Council. As the two grey-cloaked figures, in company with the burly Jarl Erak, emerged from the Great Hall and walked across the open ground that fronted it, she started forward to intercept them. Then she stopped, uncertain how to proceed. She had been hoping that Will might come out by himself. She didn't want to approach him in front of Erak and Halt.

Evanlyn was bored and miserable. Worse, she was feeling useless. There was nothing specific she could do to contribute to the defence of Hallasholm, nothing to keep her mind occupied. Will had obviously become part of the inner circle of the Skandian leadership, and even when he wasn't in meetings with Halt and Erak, he was off practising with his bow. It sometimes seemed that he used his practice sessions to avoid her. She felt a little flare of anger as she recalled his reaction when she asked him to teach her to shoot. He'd laughed at her!

Horace was no better. Initially, he'd been happy to keep her company. But then, seeing Will constantly practising, he'd felt guilty and began spending time on the practice field himself, honing his own skills with a small group of Skandian warriors.

It was all Will's fault, she thought.

Now, as she watched him talking with his old teacher, and saw the two of them stop as Will made a point, she realised with a sense of sadness that there was a part of Will's life from which she would always be excluded. Young as he was, he was already a part of the mysterious, close-knit Ranger clan. And Rangers, she had been told since she was small child, kept themselves to themselves. Even her father the King had been frustrated from time to time by the close-mouthed nature of the Ranger Corps. As the realisation hit home, she turned sadly away, leaving the two Rangers, master and apprentice, to their discussion with the Skandian Jarl.

Morosely, she kicked at a stone on the ground in front of her. If only there were something for her to do!

She stood uncertainly, undecided where to go next. She turned abruptly, to see if Will and Halt were still standing talking where she'd last seen them. As it turned out, they had moved on, but her sudden turn brought her into unexpected eye contact with a familiar, though unwelcome, figure.

Slagor, the thin-lipped, shifty-eyed wolfship captain whom she had first seen on the rocky, windswept island of Skorghijl, had just emerged from one of the smaller buildings that flanked Ragnak's Great Hall. He stood now, staring after her. There was something in his look that made her uncomfortable. Something knowing, something
that boded ill for her. Then, as he realised she had seen him, he turned away, walking quickly into the darkshadowed alleyway between the two buildings. She frowned to herself. There had been something suspicious about the Skandian's manner, she thought. Half because she wanted to know more, and half because she was bored, with nothing constructive to do, she set out after him.

There had been something in the way he looked at her that told her it might be better if he didn't know she was following him. She moved to the end of the alley and peered cautiously around, just catching sight of him as he turned right at the rear of the building. She paralleled his path, moving cautiously to the next alley, pausing, then peering round again. Once more, she caught a quick glimpse of Slagor and she guessed from his general direction that he was heading for the quays, where the wolfships docked. Realising that her own actions might appear highly suspicious, she glanced quickly around, to see if anyone might be watching her. Apparently not, she decided. Still, she crossed back to the far side of the street before following in the pursuit of the wolfship skirl.

As she slid unobtrusively from building to building, she saw him several more times, confirming her first impression that he was heading for the docks. That was logical. Presumably his ship was among the fleet moored there. Probably Slagor had some ship's business to attend to, she thought. The suspicious manner that she had noticed was probably nothing more than his normal shifty-eyed demeanour.

Then she cast the doubts aside. There had been something else: something knowing. Something calculating.
Evanlyn was, naturally, constantly aware of her precarious position here in Hallasholm. Ragnak might have no interest in punishing a recaptured slave. But if her real identity were to become known, his reaction was a foregone conclusion. He had vowed to kill any member of the Araluan royal family. Now, it seemed important to her to find out what had been behind Slagor's look. She quickened her pace, and hurried down one of the narrow connecting alleys, emerging in the broad waterfront thoroughfare that Slagor had taken.

He was twenty metres ahead of her as she peered cautiously round the end of the building. His back was turned and she realised that he had no idea that she had been following him. To the left, the masts of the moored wolfships formed a forest of bare poles, bobbing and swaying with the movement of the water. On the right of the street were a series of waterfront taverns. It was towards one of these that Slagor was hurrying now, she realised.

Some instinct made her ease into a doorway as the skirl reached the tavern entrance. It was as well she did, for he turned and looked back the way he had come, apparently checking to see if anyone had followed him. She frowned to herself as she shrank into the shadows of the doorway. Why should Slagor be nervous, here in the middle of Hallasholm? Certainly he was one of the less popular wolfship captains, but it was unlikely that anyone would actually do him harm. There was obviously something going on, she thought, and she determined to get to the bottom of it. Close by, moored to one of the timber quays, she saw Slagor's ship,
Wolf Fang
. She recognised it by the distinctive carved figurehead. No two wolfships had the
same figurehead and she remembered this one all too well from the day when
Wolf Fang
had come limping into the anchorage at Skorghijl. With it had come the news of Ragnak's Vallasvow against her father and herself, so she had good reason to remember the grotesquely carved icon.

For a moment, she hesitated in the doorway. Then, the door behind her opened and two Skandian women emerged, shopping baskets in hand. They stared at the stranger on their doorstep and she hurriedly apologised and moved away. Behind her, she heard the angry comments of the women as they headed for the market square. She was too obvious here, she realised. Any moment, Slagor might emerge from the tavern and see her. She glanced uncertainly at the ship, then came to a decision and, moving at a half run, she made her way down the waterfront to the quay where
Wolf Fang
was moored. It was reasonable to assume that Slagor might come here eventually, and then she might get an inkling of what he was up to.

There was an anchor watch aboard, of course. But it was just one man and he was at the stern, leaning on the bulwark and staring at the harbour and the sea beyond. Crouching below the level of the high prow, she approached the ship and vaulted lightly over the railing, her soft shod feet making virtually no sound as she landed on the planks of the deck. She dropped immediately into the rowing well, set below the main deck, where the rowing crew would normally sit to wield their heavy, white oak oars. The area was deserted at the moment, and she was concealed from the sight of the solitary guard at the stern. But it was only a temporary hiding place and she looked now for a better one.

Right at the prow of the ship was a small triangular space, screened by a canvas flap. It was large enough to accommodate her if she crouched and she moved quickly into it now, letting the canvas screen fall back into place behind her. She found herself sitting on coils of stiff, coarse rope, and something hard jabbed into her side. Shifting to a better position, she realised that it had been the fluke of the anchor and the coils of heavy rope were the anchor cable. With the ship moored alongside the quay, there was no need to use the anchor and she remembered seeing Erak's men stow his ship's anchor in a similar small triangular space when they had crossed the Stormwhite. She thought it would be as good a hiding place as any for the moment. Then she wondered if she might not be wasting her time here. Odds were that Slagor had simply come this way to visit the tavern and that after he'd drunk his fill of the harsh spirits the Skandians favoured, he'd probably head on back to his lodge.

She shrugged morosely. She had nothing better to do with her time. She might as well give it an hour or so and see if anything transpired. What that ‘anything' might be, she really had no idea. She'd followed Slagor on an impulse. Now, following the same impulse, she was crouched here, waiting to see what she might overhear if and when he came aboard.

It was warm in the confines of the forepeak and, once she'd moved a few of the coils, the rope made a relatively comfortable resting place. She wriggled herself into a better position and rested her chin on her elbows, peering through a small gap in the canvas to see if anything was happening outside. She felt the footsteps of the sentry as
he crossed to the landward side of the ship, giving up his scrutiny of the harbour, and heard him call to someone on the shore. There was an answering voice but the words were too muffled for her to make out. Probably just a casual greeting to a passing friend, she reasoned. She yawned. The warmth was making her drowsy. She hadn't slept well the night before, thinking about Will and how their friendship seemed to be eroding with every passing day. She tried to dislike Halt, blaming him for the sudden estrangement between them. But she couldn't. She liked the small, roughly bearded Ranger. There was a dry sense of humour about him that appealed to her. And after all, he had rescued her from the Temujai reconnaissance party. She sighed. It wasn't Halt's fault. Nor Will's. It was just the way things were, she guessed. Rangers were different to other people. Even princesses.

Especially princesses.

She woke suddenly, thinking she was falling. She hadn't realised that she'd drifted off to sleep, lying here on the coils of rope. But she knew what had woken her. The deck beneath her had dropped suddenly as
Wolf Fang
heaved herself into a short head sea. Now she could hear the creak and thump of the oars in their rowlocks and she realised, with a terrible sinking feeling, that she was trapped on board.

Wolf Fang
was putting to sea and she had no way of knowing where they were heading.