'And I'd be based ... where exactly?' Will asked. Crowley's face showed a hint of concern. He hesitated before he answered.
'That's the problem. We can detach one knight from the Royal Guard without too much trouble. But we can't have two fiefs, yours and Halt's, left without their Rangers for extended periods of time. You'd have to give up Seacliff.'
'Oh,' Will said. Seacliff might be an unexciting little fief but it was his. He represented the King's authority on the sleepy little island and, much as he had been anxious for change earlier in the evening, the thought of simply giving it up came as a wrench to him.
'Exactly,' Crowley said, reading his thoughts. 'That's why Halt didn't want to be here when you decided. He knows that having your own fief is a big thing for a Ranger. It means independence and authority and he didn't want you to be influenced by his presence when I put this to you. He said he'd love to have you back at Redmont, but it had to be your decision to - '
'Back at Redmont!' Will said eagerly. 'You didn't mention that!'
Crowley frowned, then nodded. 'No. I suppose I didn't. Well, that was the plan. You'd take over Halt's cabin - he and Pauline are very comfortable in the castle these days - and you'd oversee one half of Redmont Fief while Halt looked after the other. It's a big fief, after all. There'd be plenty to do for both of you.'
A huge grin was spreading over Will's face at the thought of it. To go back to Redmont, where he'd grown up. To be with Halt and Baron Arald and Sir Rodney.
And Alyss, he thought. The grin, already wide, grew immense. Crowley noticed it. It was hard not to.
'I assume from the ridiculously happy look on your face that the idea meets with a certain amount of approval?' he said.
'Well ... yes, actually. It certainly does. But a thought struck him and he frowned at it. Crowley gestured for him to continue.
'Problem?' he prompted.
'Redmont is an important fief,' Will began. 'You can hardly leave that without a Ranger in place if Halt and I have to attend to matters somewhere else.'
Crowley beamed at him. 'I was hoping you'd raise that. Now I get a chance to show what an administrative genius I am. Gilan's new fief adjoins the north-eastern border of Redmont. In fact, Castle Whitby is less than ten kilometres from the border.' He raised a hand to still Will's instant question. 'Yes, yes. I know, Whitby is an important fief too. So that's why, if you agree to all this, Alun will base himself at Whitby rather than Castle Araluen. He can still attend to paperwork and administration for me and he'll be on hand if you and Halt are called away. In such a case, Gilan moves into Redmont Fief - '
'Which he is familiar with anyway,' Will interrupted.
'Exactly. He served his apprenticeship there, after all. Then Alun can resume temporary duty as Ranger of Whitby. And, of course, young Clarke will take your place at Seacliff. Didn't I say I'm a genius?' He spread his hands, as if looking for praise.
Will nodded acknowledgement. 'I have to agree.'
Crowley instantly became serious. 'Of course, we're lucky that at the moment we're blessed with a wealth of talented people. It all dovetails quite nicely. Mind you, you're yet to tell me if you accept.'
'Of course I accept,' Will told him. 'I couldn't think of a better plan.'
They shook hands on it, smiling. Then Crowley said cheerfully, 'Now all we have to do is tell Halt when he comes back from his little holiday by the seaside.'
* * *
Chapter 9
* * *
�Halt had been waiting in the darkness for over an hour when he heard the sound of someone moving though the low shrubs close to him.
Anyone else might have turned his head to look, trying to see where the newcomer might be. Halt knew that any movement could lead to his discovery so he stayed still as the rock he looked like. Instead his ears, attuned to judge movement and direction by years of training and practice, told him that there was one man, moving up the hill and slightly to the right of where Halt lay prone, merging into the long grass.
The stalker was good. He made only slight noises as he progressed up the hill. But slight noises were enough to alert a Ranger, and Halt lay, unmoving, as he judged that the other man had moved level with him, then past him.
Now he stopped moving and Halt realised that he was taking stock of the situation. There were four rocky outcrops within the next thirty metres. Any one of them could conceal Halt and Abelard.
After a few minutes, the man was on the move again, angling away to the furthest outcrop on the right. That made sense, Halt thought. If he was going to check them all out, his best course would be to work from one end of the line to the other.
As the noise of his movement faded, Halt raised his head slightly, moving only a millimetre at a time.
He let out the low, gurgling chuckle that he had rehearsed with Abelard. Instantly, the noise of the Outsider's movement stopped as he tried to ascertain whether the sound was natural or not. Then, after thirty seconds - a sufficiently long gap so that it didn't sound like a response to the bird call - the low, snuffling snort of a horse came clearly from the rocks above Halt's position. Then, for good measure, Abelard shook his mane.
Good boy, thought Halt. Chin on hand, he watched a dark shape sliding across the hillside, angling towards the clump of rocks where Abelard was concealed. He was aiming to skirt the rocks, Halt saw, and approach from uphill. It was time to spoil his plans a little. Stealthily, the Ranger began crawling after the other man.
He moved with remarkable speed, making no sound and seeming to glide snake-like over the ground on his belly. He could see the other man still - a dark crouching shape in the night - and hear the slight sounds that he made. Halt, even moving on his belly, was gaining ground on him, approaching him from directly behind and downhill.
Once, his quarry stopped moving and glanced quickly around him. He was obviously no novice at this game. But Rangers weren't novices either. In fact, they were past masters at this form of unseen movement. As the crouching man stopped, Halt froze instantly. His face was up but he knew it was shadowed by his cowl. He also knew that if he dropped his head to hide his face, the movement would catch the other man's eye.
Trust the cloak. He'd dinned that lesson into Will's brain hundreds of times. Now he took note of it himself. The man's gaze passed over him, seeing nothing to alarm him. Then he faced back up the hill and began moving again. After a few seconds to make sure it wasn't a feint, that the man hadn't seen anything he felt was suspicious, Halt followed.
He was only a few metres behind his quarry now. He realised he could actually hear the man breathing. He's tense, Halt thought. With his veins charged with adrenaline, the stalker's breath was coming more heavily - probably without his realising the fact.
If he looked around now, cloak or no cloak, he was bound to see Halt right behind him. It was time to act. Halt rose slowly from the ground and crept forward in a low crouch, one of the strikers clenched in his right fist.
Perhaps Halt made some infinitesimal noise, or perhaps the other man just sensed a presence behind him, but he started to turn, a few seconds too late. Halt swung an overhand blow and brought the striker knob down hard onto the man's skull, just behind the left ear. He felt the shock up his arm as the man emitted a strangled grunt and collapsed, limp as a rag, onto the ground.
Still in a crouch, Halt grabbed him under the arms and quickly dragged him into the shelter of the rocks. Abelard looked at him curiously, but made no sound.
'Good boy,' Halt said briefly. The horse responded by raising then lowering his head.
'Let's see what we have here,' Halt said and rolled the unconscious man onto his back. The would-be stalker was armed with a small arsenal of weapons. There was a short sword slung across his back. In addition, he had a long stabbing dagger in a belt sheath, another smaller knife in a scabbard strapped to his left forearm, and a third tucked into the cuff of his boot. Halt examined them briefly. Cheap weapons, but kept well sharpened. He tossed them to one side. There was a length of
cord looped around the man's left shoulder. It was just over a metre in length and had a weighted ball at either end. A bolo, Halt recognised, a hunting weapon designed to be whirled around the head and thrown at a target's legs. When the rope snagged the target, the weighted ends would whip around, tripping the victim and binding its feet together. Drawing his saxe knife, Halt cut the weights off the end and tossed them into the gorse.
The man was wearing a soft hat, folded up to form a narrow brim, and a thigh-length jacket of rough wool, belted at the waist. Halt fastened the stalker's thumbs together with a pair of wood and rawhide thumb cuffs. Slipping the man's patched and shabby boots off, he fastened his big toes with another pair of cuffs, wrinkling his nose at the rank smell of the man's feet. When his prisoner was secured, he slipped his hands under the man's arms and dragged him to a large rock, leaning his shoulders against it. Then Halt sat down to wait for him to regain consciousness.
After several minutes, he moved away from the downwind position he had taken, his nose twitching again.
'Those feet of yours smell like something crawled into your boots and died there,' he said softly. There was no reply.
***
It was some fifteen minutes later that the man emitted a shuddering sigh. His eyelids flickered open and he shook his head to clear it.
Involuntarily, he tried to reach up to rub his eyes, then discovered that his hands were fastened securely behind his back. He struggled briefly against the restraint, then winced and uttered a cry of pain as the leather thong of the thumb cuffs cut into the soft skin at the base of his thumbs.
'Stay still and you won't hurt yourself,' Halt told him quietly.
The man looked up in alarm, registering Halt's presence for the first time. The Ranger had been sitting, quiet and unmoving, only a few metres away. Halt now saw a bewildered look pass over the unshaven face as the man tried to recall what had happened, how he had arrived in this predicament. From the expression on his face, he had no idea. Then bewilderment gave way to anger.
'Who are you?' he demanded roughly. His aggressive tone left no doubt that he was used to berating people to get his own way.
Halt smiled thinly. Had the man known anything about the grey-bearded figure sitting opposite him, that alone would have been enough to set alarm bells ringing. Halt rarely smiled, and even more rarely was it a sign of good humour.
'No,' he said calmly, 'I think that's my question. Who are you? What's your name?'
'Why should I tell you?' the Outsider demanded. His tone was still blustering and overbearing. Halt scratched his ear reflectively for a second or two, then replied.
'Well, let's just take stock of the situation, shall we? You're the one who's sitting there trussed up like a Yuletide goose. You can't move. Your head probably aches. And for the time being you have two ears.'
For the first time, a shadow of fear passed across the man's face. Not so much at the statement that he was tied hand and foot, more at the non sequitur about his ears.
'My ears?' he said. 'What have they got to do with it?'
'Just this,' Halt told him. 'If you don't stop talking as if you're in charge of things, I'll remove one of them for you.'
There was a whisper of steel on leather as Halt drew his saxe knife. The razor-sharp blade gleamed dully in the starlight as he held it up for the Outsider to see.
'Now,' he repeated, 'what's your name?'
The thin smile had disappeared from Halt's face now and there was an edge in his voice that told his prisoner the time for discussion was past. His eyes dropped from Halt's, the light of anger in them quickly fading.
'It's Colly,' he said. 'Colly Deekers. I'm an honest mill worker from Horsdale.'
Horsdale was a large town some fifteen kilometres away. Halt shook his head slowly. He slid the, saxe back into its sheath but somehow the disappearance of the weapon did nothing to raise Colly's spirits.
'Ah, Colly,' he said, 'we're going to get on a lot better if you stop trying to lie to me. You may be from Horsdale but I doubt that you're a mill worker. And I know you're not honest. So let's just leave those details out of our conversation, shall we?'
Colly said nothing. He was beginning to feel very uncomfortable. This was, after all, the man that he'd been sent to find - and to kill if the opportunity arose. And he had no doubt that the stranger was well aware of the fact. His mouth was dry all of a sudden and he swallowed several times.
'My friends will pay you if you release me,' he said. Halt regarded him, head tilted quizzically to one side.
'No they won't,' he replied scornfully. 'They'll do their best to kill me. Don't be so ridiculous - and don't take me for a fool. It annoys me and you're in no position to do that. I might change my mind about my plans for you.'
Colly's mouth was drier than ever now.
'Your plans for me?' he said. There was a slight croak in his voice. 'What are they?'
'In the morning,' Halt told him, 'Just after first light, I'm going to release you.'
His tone was serious. There was no sign of sarcasm in his words and Colly felt a surge of hope.
'You'll let me go?'
Halt pursed his lips. 'Yes. But there is one condition attached.'
The surge of hope died as quickly as it had come. Colly looked at the Ranger suspiciously.
'A condition ?' he prompted and Halt replied briskly.
'Yes. After all, you can't expect me to just turn you loose and say "no hard feelings", can you? You would have killed me if the opportunity had arisen. I'm willing to give you a chance to escape. Uphill.'
'Uphill? There's nothing up the hill,' Colly said, trying desperately to work out where this conversation was going.
'As a matter of fact there is. There's a bluff about twelve metres high, with a river running below it. The water's deep so it'll be quite safe for you to jump.' In his brief glimpse of the river, Halt had noticed that the fast-flowing water cut under the bluff in a sharp curve. That should mean that the bottom had been scoured out over the years. A thought struck him. 'You can swim, I assume?'
'Yes. I can swim,' Colly said. 'But I'm not going jumping off some bluff just because you say so!'
'No, no. Of course not. That'd be asking far too much of you. You'll jump off because if you don't, I'll shoot you. It'll be the same effect, really. If I have to shoot you, you'll fall off. But I thought I'd give you a chance to survive.' Halt paused, then added, 'Oh, and if you decide to run downhill, I'll also shoot you. Uphill and off is really your only chance of survival.'
'You can't be serious!' Colly said. 'Do you really ... ?'
But he got no further. Halt leaned forward, putting up a hand to stop the outburst. His face was quite close to Colly's as he spoke and his voice was very serious.
'Colly, take a good, long look into my eyes and tell me if you see anything, anything at all, that says I'm not deadly serious.'
His eyes were deep brown, almost black. They were steady and unwavering and there was no sign of anything there but. utter determination. Colly looked at them and after a few seconds, his eyes dropped away. Halt nodded as the other man's gaze slid away from his.
'Good. Now we've got that settled, you should try to get some sleep. You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow.'
* * *
Chapter 10
* * *
�As they crested the last hill before the ground fell away to a flat plain, Will eased Tug to a stop.
'Hold it here, boy,' he said softly. He always enjoyed this moment, the moment when Redmont first came into view. The plain below spread away, cut by the Tarbus River, with Redmont village nestled along its banks. Then, on the far bank, the ground rose again to create the natural defensive position where Redmont stood - massive, solid and beginning to glow red in the late afternoon sun.
He remembered previous times he'd stopped here to draw breath: when he had almost finished the wild ride to alert the Baron and Sir Rodney about the Kalkara. And, more recently, in a happier time, when he ha
d received Alyss's letter and ridden through the night to see her. His mouth moved in a slight smile at that thought. She was down there somewhere. He narrowed his eyes, peering into the distance to see if, just possibly, there was some sight of her tall, white-clad shape on the battlements or in
the village or on the flat land in front of the castle. Not surprisingly, there was none. He shrugged, smiling at his fanciful expectation.
Away to one side, among the trees where the forest encroached on the open ground cleared around the castle, he caught a glimpse of the little cabin where he had spent his apprenticeship with Halt. The smile widened.
'We're home,' he said to Tug and the little horse tossed his head impatiently.
Not so long as we're standing here gawking, the action said
and Will twitched the reins lightly on his horse's neck. 'All right. Let's get down there.'
Suddenly, they were both seized with the same sense of urgency to be home and Tug rocketed away from a standing start to a full gallop as only he could. Ranger horses were renowned for their amazing acceleration but there wasn't one in the Corps that could match Tug.
There were still workers in the fields and they looked up from their humdrum tasks of ploughing and sowing at the sound of the drumming hoofbeats. Several of them waved, recognising the slightly built figure on the stocky little horse as he thundered past them, crouched forward over Tug's neck, his mottled cloak streaming out behind.
For a brief moment, they wondered what news the fast-moving Ranger was bringing. Then, shrugging, they went back to their work. Whatever it was, good or bad, there were other people more qualified than they to deal with it. In the meantime, there was farming to be done.
There was always farming to be done.
Tug's hooves rattled briefly on the removable bridge across the Tarbus, then they began the final climb up to
THE KINGS OF CLONMEL Page 6