‘All right, all right,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I know you’re not. But believe me, I thought you’d be glad of this appointment – an adventurous lad like you should take to life as a Ranger like a duck to water. It’s a big opportunity for you, Will.’ He paused, studying the boy closely, seeing that he was still uncertain about the whole matter. ‘Very few boys are chosen to be apprentice Rangers, you know. The opportunity only comes up on rare occasions.’
Will nodded. But he still wasn’t totally convinced. He thought he owed it to his dream to have one last attempt at Battleschool. After all, the Baron did seem to be in an uncommonly good mood this evening, in spite of the fact that Will had broken into his office.
‘I wanted to be a warrior, sir,’ he said tentatively, but the Baron shook his head immediately.
‘I’m afraid your talents lie in other directions. Halt knew that when he first saw you. That’s why he asked for you.’
‘Oh,’ said Will. There wasn’t much else he could say. He felt he should be reassured by all that the Baron had said and, to a certain degree, he was. But there was still so much uncertainty to it all, he thought.
‘It’s just that Halt seems to be so grim all the time,’ he said.
‘He certainly doesn’t have my sparkling sense of humour,’ the Baron agreed, then, as Will looked blankly at him, he muttered something under his breath.
Will wasn’t sure what he’d done to upset him, so he thought it best to change the subject. ‘But … what does a Ranger actually do, my lord?’ he asked. Once again, the Baron shook his head.
‘That’s for Halt to tell you himself. They’re a quirky group and they don’t like other people talking about them too much. Now, perhaps you should go back to your quarters and try to get some sleep. You’re to report to Halt’s cottage at six o’clock in the morning.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Will said, rising from his uncomfortable perch on the edge of the chair. He wasn’t sure if he was going to enjoy life as a Ranger’s apprentice but it appeared he had no choice in the matter. He bowed to the Baron, who nodded briefly in return, then he turned away for the door. The Baron’s voice stopped him.
‘Will? This time, use the stairs.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ he replied seriously, and was a little puzzled by the way the Baron rolled his eyes to the sky and muttered to himself again. This time, Will could make out a few words. It was something about ‘jokes’, he thought.
He let himself out through the door. The sentries were still on duty on the landing by the stairs but Halt was gone.
Or at least, he appeared to be. With the Ranger, you could never be quite certain.
It felt strange to be leaving the castle after all these years. Will turned back at the bottom of the hill, his small bundle of belongings slung over his shoulder, and stared up at the massive walls.
Castle Redmont dominated the landscape. Built on top of a small hill, it was a massive, three-sided structure, facing roughly west and with a tower at each of the three corners. In the centre, protected by the three curtain walls, were the castle yard and the Keep, a fourth tower that soared above the others, and housed the Baron’s official quarters and his private living apartments, along with those of his senior officers. The castle was built in ironstone – a rock that was almost indestructible and, in the low sun of early morning or late afternoon, seemed to glow with an inner red light. It was this characteristic that gave the castle its name – Redmont, or Red Mountain.
At the foot of the hill, and on the other side of the Tarbus River, lay Wensley Village, a cheerfully haphazard cluster of houses, with an inn and those craft shops necessary to meet the demands of day-to-day country life – a cooper, wheelwright, smithy and harness maker. The land around had been cleared for some distance, both to provide farmlands for the villagers to tend and to prevent enemies from being able to approach unseen. In times of danger, the villagers would drive their flocks across the wooden bridge that spanned the Tarbus, removing the centre span behind them, and seek shelter behind the massive ironstone walls of the castle, protected by the Baron’s soldiers and the knights trained in Redmont’s Battleschool.
Halt’s cottage lay some distance away from both castle and village, nestling under the shelter of the trees at the edge of the forest. The sun was just rising over the trees as Will made his way to the log cabin. A thin spiral of smoke was rising from the chimney, so Will reasoned that Halt was already up and about. He stepped up onto the verandah that ran the length of one side of the house, hesitated for a moment, then, taking a deep breath, he knocked firmly on the door.
‘Come in,’ said a voice from inside. Will opened the door and went into the cottage.
It was small but surprisingly neat and comfortable-looking inside. He found himself in the main room, a combined living and dining area, with a small kitchen at one end, separated from the main area by a pine bench. There were comfortable chairs ranged round a fire, a well-scrubbed wooden table and pots and pans that gleamed from much polishing. There was even a vase of brightly coloured wildflowers on the mantel shelf and the early morning sun streamed cheerfully through a large window. Two other rooms led off the main room.
Halt sat in one of the chairs, his booted feet resting on the table.
‘At least you’re on time,’ he said gruffly. ‘Have you had your breakfast yet?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Will, staring in fascination at the Ranger. This was the first time he had ever seen Halt without his grey-green cloak and hood. The Ranger was wearing simple brown and grey woollen clothes and soft-looking leather boots. He was older than Will had realised. His hair and beard were short and dark, but peppered with steel grey flecks. They were both roughly trimmed and Will thought they looked as if Halt had cut them himself with his hunting knife.
The Ranger stood up. He was surprisingly small in build. That was something else that Will had never realised. The grey cloak had concealed a lot about Halt. He was slim and not at all tall. In fact he was considerably shorter than average height. But there was a sense of power and whipcord strength about him so that his lack of height and bulk didn’t make him any less daunting a figure.
‘Finished staring?’ asked the Ranger suddenly.
Will jumped nervously. ‘Yes, sir! Sorry, sir!’ he said.
Halt grunted. He pointed to one of the small rooms Will had noticed as he entered.
‘That’ll be your room. You can put your things in there.’
He moved away to the wood stove in the kitchen area and Will hesitantly entered the room he had indicated. It was small but, like the rest of the cottage, it was also clean and comfortable-looking. A small bed lay alongside one wall. There was a wardrobe for clothes and a rough table with a washing basin and jug on it. There was also, Will noticed, another vase of freshly picked wildflowers adding a bright spot of colour to the room. He put his small bundle of clothes and belongings on the bed and went back into the main room.
Halt was still busy by the stove, his back to Will. Will coughed apologetically to attract his attention. Halt continued to stir coffee into a pot on the stove.
Will coughed again.
‘Got a cold, boy?’ asked the Ranger, without turning around.
‘Er … no, sir.’
‘Then why are you coughing?’ asked Halt, turning round to face him.
Will hesitated. ‘Well, sir,’ he began uncertainly, ‘I just wanted to ask you … what does a Ranger actually do?’
‘He doesn’t ask pointless questions, boy!’ said Halt. ‘He keeps his eyes and ears open and he looks and listens and eventually, if he hasn’t got too much cotton wool between his ears, he learns!’
‘Oh,’ said Will. ‘I see.’ He didn’t, and even though he realised that this was probably no time to ask more questions, he couldn’t help himself, repeating, a little rebelliously, ‘I just wondered what Rangers do, is all.’
Halt caught the tone in his voice and turned to him, a strange gleam in his eye.
‘Well the
n, I suppose I’d better tell you,’ he said. ‘What Rangers do, or more correctly, what Rangers’ apprentices do, is the housework.’
Will had a sinking feeling as the suspicion struck him that he’d made a tactical error. ‘The housework?’ he repeated. Halt nodded, looking distinctly pleased with himself.
‘That’s right. Take a look around.’ He paused, gesturing around the interior of the cabin for Will to do as he suggested, then continued, ‘See any servants?’
‘No, sir,’ Will said slowly.
‘No sir indeed!’ Halt said. ‘Because this isn’t a mighty castle with a staff of servants. This is a lowly cabin. And it has water to be fetched and firewood to be chopped and floors to be swept and rugs to be beaten. And who do you suppose might do all those things, boy?’
Will tried to think of some answer other than the one which now seemed inevitable. Nothing came to mind so he finally said, in a defeated tone, ‘Would that be me, sir?’
‘I believe it would be,’ the Ranger told him, then rattled off a list of instructions crisply. ‘Bucket there. Barrel outside the door. Water in the river. Axe in the lean-to, firewood behind the cabin. Broom by the door and I believe you can probably see where the floor might be?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Will, beginning to roll up his sleeves. He’d noticed the water barrel as he approached, obviously holding the day’s water supply for the cabin. He estimated that it would hold twenty or thirty buckets full. With a sigh, he realised he was going to have a busy morning.
As he walked outside, the empty bucket in one hand, he heard the Ranger say contentedly, as he poured himself a mug of coffee and sat down again:
‘I’d forgotten how much fun having an apprentice can be.’
Will couldn’t believe that such a small and seemingly neat cottage could generate so much cleaning and general maintenance. After he had filled the water barrel with fresh river water (thirty-one bucketsful) he chopped wood from a stack of logs behind the cabin, piling the split firewood into a neat stack. He swept out the cabin, then, after Halt decided that the rug on the living room floor needed beating, he rolled it up, carried it outside and draped it over a rope slung between two trees, beating it savagely so that clouds of dust flew from it. From time to time, Halt leaned out the window to give him encouragement, which usually consisted of curt comments such as ‘You’ve missed a bit on the left side’ or ‘Put some energy into it, boy.’
When the rug had been replaced on the floor, Halt decided that several of his cooking pots didn’t gleam with sufficient intensity.
‘We’ll have to give them a bit of a scouring,’ he said, more or less to himself. Will knew by now that this translated to ‘You’ll have to give them a bit of a scouring.’ So, without a word, he took the pots to the river’s edge and half filled them with water and fine sand, scouring and polishing the metal until it gleamed.
Halt, meanwhile, had moved to a canvas chair on the verandah, where he sat reading through a tall pile of what looked to be official communications. Passing by once or twice, Will noticed that several of the papers bore crests and coats of arms, while the vast majority were headed with a simple oakleaf design.
When Will returned from the river bank, he held the pots up for Halt’s inspection. The Ranger grimaced at his distorted reflection in the bright copper surface.
‘Hmmm. Not bad. Can see my own face in it,’ he said, then added, without a hint of a smile, ‘May not be such a good thing.’
Will said nothing. With anyone else he might have suspected it was a joke, but with Halt you simply couldn’t tell. Halt studied him for a second or two, then his shoulders lifted slightly in a shrug and he gestured for Will to return the pots to the kitchen. Will was halfway through the door when he heard Halt behind him say:
‘Hmmm. That’s odd.’
Thinking the Ranger might be talking to him, Will paused at the door.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he said suspiciously. Each time Halt had found a new chore for him to attend to, he had seemed to begin the instruction with a statement like ‘How unusual. The living room rug is full of dust.’ Or ‘I do believe the stove is in dire need of a new supply of firewood.’
It was an affectation that Will had found more than a little annoying over the day, although Halt seemed to be quite fond of it. This time, however, it seemed that he had been genuinely musing to himself as he read through a new report – one of the oakleaf-crested ones, Will noted. Now, the Ranger looked up, a little surprised that Will had addressed him.
‘What’s that?’ he said.
Will shrugged. ‘Sorry. When you said “that’s odd”, I thought you were talking to me.’
Halt shook his head several times, still frowning at the report in his hand. ‘No, no,’ he said, a trifle distractedly. ‘I was just reading this …’ His voice trailed away and he frowned thoughtfully. Will, his curiosity roused, waited expectantly.
‘What is it?’ he finally ventured to ask. As the Ranger turned those dark eyes on him, he instantly wished he hadn’t. Halt regarded him for a second or two.
‘Curious, are you?’ he said at length, and when Will nodded uncomfortably, he went on in an unexpectedly milder tone. ‘Well, I suppose that’s a good trait for a Ranger’s apprentice. After all, that’s why we tested you with that paper in the Baron’s office.’
‘You tested me?’ Will set the heavy copper kettle down by the door. ‘You expected me to try to see what it said?’
Halt nodded. ‘Would have been disappointed if you hadn’t. Also, I wanted to see how you’d go about it.’ Then he held up a hand to forestall the torrent of questions that were about to tumble out of Will’s mouth. ‘We’ll discuss that later,’ he said, glancing meaningfully at the kettle and the other pots. Will stooped to retrieve them, and turned back to the house once more. But curiosity still burned in him and he turned to the Ranger again.
‘So what does it say?’ he asked, nodding towards the report. Again there was a silence as Halt regarded him, perhaps assessing him. Then he said:
‘Lord Northolt is dead. Apparently killed by a bear last week while out hunting.’
‘Lord Northolt?’ Will asked. The name was vaguely familiar to him but he couldn’t place it.
‘Former supreme commander of the King’s army,’ Halt told him and Will nodded, as if he had known this. But, since Halt seemed to be answering his questions, he was emboldened to continue.
‘What’s so odd about it? After all, bears do kill people from time to time.’
Halt nodded. ‘True. But I would have thought Cordom Fief was a little far west for bears. And I would have thought Northolt was too experienced a hunter to go after one alone.’ He shrugged, as if dismissing the thought. ‘But then again, life is full of surprises and people do make mistakes.’ He gestured towards the kitchen again, indicating that the conversation was over. ‘When you’ve put those away, you might like to clean out the fireplace,’ he said.
Will moved to do as he was told. But a few minutes later, as he walked past one of the windows to the large fireplace that took up most of one wall in the living room, he glanced out to see the Ranger tapping the report thoughtfully on his chin, his thoughts obviously a long way away.
Sometime late in the afternoon, Halt finally ran out of jobs for Will. He looked around the cabin, noting the gleaming kitchen implements, the spotless fireplace, the thoroughly swept floor and totally dust-free rug. A stack of firewood lay beside the fireplace and another stack, cut and split into shorter lengths, filled the wicker basket beside the kitchen stove.
‘Hmmm. Not bad,’ he said. ‘Not bad at all.’
Will felt a surge of pleasure at the sparing praise, but before he could feel too pleased with himself, Halt added, ‘Can you cook, boy?’
‘Cook, sir?’ Will asked uncertainly. Halt raised his eyes to some unseen superior being.
‘Why do young people invariably answer a question with another question?’ he asked. Then, receiving no reply, he continued, ‘Yes, c
ook. Prepare food so that one might eat it. Make meals. I assume you do know what food is – what meals are?’
‘Ye-es,’ Will answered, careful to take any questioning inflection out of the word.
‘Well, as I told you this morning, this is no grand castle. If we want to eat food here, we have to cook food here,’ Halt told him. There was that word ‘we’ again, Will thought. Every time so far Halt had said we must, it had seemed to translate to mean you must.
‘I can’t cook,’ Will admitted, and Halt clapped his hands and rubbed them together.
‘Of course you can’t! Most boys can’t. So I’ll have to show you how. Come on.’
He led the way to the kitchen and introduced Will to the mysteries of cooking: peeling and chopping onions, choosing a piece of beef from the meat safe, trimming it and cutting it into neat cubes, then chopping vegetables, searing the beef in a sizzling pan, and finally adding a generous dash of red wine and some of what Halt called his ‘secret ingredients’. The result was a savoury-smelling stew, simmering on the top of the stove.
Now, as they waited for the dinner to be ready, they sat on the verandah in the early evening and talked quietly.
‘The Rangers were founded over one hundred and fifty years ago, in King Herbert’s reign. Do you know anything about him?’ Halt looked sideways at the boy sitting beside him, tossing the question out quickly to see his response.
Will hesitated. He vaguely remembered the name from history lessons in the Ward, but he couldn’t remember any details. Still, he decided he’d try to bluff his way through it. He didn’t want to look too ignorant on his first day with his new master.
‘Oh … yes,’ he said, ‘King Herbert. We learned about him.’
‘Really?’ said the Ranger expansively. ‘Perhaps you could tell me a little about him?’ He leaned back and crossed his legs, getting himself comfortable.
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