The Red Fox Clan

by John Flanagan

  In the barn, Bumper nickered a welcome to Maddie, his ears pricked and his eyes alert as he put his head over the half door to his stall. She fetched his saddle and bridle from their pegs and lifted the saddle up over his back.

  Where have you been? he demanded. He became quite touchy if Maddie left him to his own devices for too long. She patted his neck, then swung up into the saddle.

  “I’ve been busy,” she said softly. “I’ll tell you about it when we’re out of here.”

  Well, that’s all very well, but I’ve been worried about you. Never know what might happen to you if I’m not around.

  “Sundancer would look after me,” she said, and Bumper snorted loudly, rattling his mane at her.

  Sundancer? That overbred excuse for a horse? What could he do if you got into trouble?

  “Sundancer has excellent bloodlines,” she told him.

  But he was unimpressed. All thoroughbreds tend to be hysterical and far too excitable for their own good—or for yours.

  Ranger horses, of course, were bred from many different bloodlines. The Corps horse breeders selected horses for their differing qualities—some for speed, some for stamina, some for intelligence—and bred the best of those qualities into the shaggy little horses they provided to the Corps. As a result, horses like Bumper, who was nothing if not outspoken, tended to be somewhat snobbish about the merits, or otherwise, of thoroughbreds.

  Maddie sighed. “No wonder some people call horses nags.”

  Bumper jerked his head up and lapsed into silence. She smiled to herself. She’d finally got the best of him in a verbal duel, she thought. And she’d been saving that quip for some time now, looking for a chance to use it.

  “Talking to someone?” Warwick asked as they emerged into the sunlight.

  She shook her head. “Just myself. Bad habit I’ve gotten into.”

  Warwick nodded understandingly. “First sign of madness,” he said cheerfully. He had a shrewd idea that Rangers talked to their horses. He’d heard Gilan do it several times. But it would never do to let on that he knew, of course.

  “I’ll take a look around up at the abbey,” she said. He waved a cheerful farewell to her as she urged Bumper into a trot and headed out of the farmyard into the surrounding forest. They were halfway to the abbey before Bumper relented and spoke to her again. He was a garrulous little horse, and he couldn’t stand to be silent for too long, even if he was pretending to be offended.

  What do you expect to find up here? he asked as they negotiated the steep track that led to the abbey.

  “Probably nothing,” she admitted. “Warwick didn’t place too much faith in the reports that there’d been people up here.”

  The ground around the abbey, a two-story stone building with a bell tower at one end, had been cleared of trees, leaving an open space roughly fifty-by-thirty meters. The wind was stronger up here on the hilltop, and the treetops bent and waved in the breeze. There were several pines among them, and the wind created that strange surflike sound that pines make as the wind passes through their branches.

  She twitched the reins lightly, and Bumper came to a stop. She surveyed the area. It seemed unchanged since the last time she had been here.

  “No sign of anything,” she said. The ground was hard and rocky, and she knew it had rained the previous night. That and the constant wind would remove any faint trace of tracks that might have been here. Any sign of activity would likely be inside the building. She swung down from the saddle, grunting slightly at the ever-present twinge in her hip as her feet touched the ground and took her weight.

  “Stay here,” she told the horse. He pricked his ears but said nothing.

  Even though she didn’t expect trouble, she had been trained to always be ready for it. She took her bow from the leather bow case fastened behind Bumper’s saddle, unclipped her quiver from the saddlebow and clipped it onto her belt. The bow and quiver stayed out at the farm with Bumper. A relatively powerful recurve bow and a quiver full of arrows fitted with warheads might create unwanted curiosity around Castle Araluen.

  She nocked an arrow to the string and advanced toward the abbey. The double doors were closed, although the left-hand one showed a gap of several centimeters between it and its neighbor. She tried to remember if it had been unlocked on her previous visit, but couldn’t.

  “Some Ranger you are,” she muttered to herself. It was her constant expression of self-criticism. She stretched her left leg out, placed her foot against the slightly open door and shoved hard. There was a loud creak from the rusty hinges as the door swung farther open. The stiffness of the rust in the hinges stopped it before it slammed back against the door frame, but it left an opening big enough for her to pass through.

  She waited, listening for any sound of movement inside. Her heart rate was up, and her breathing came a little faster. To enter the abbey, she’d have to expose herself in the doorway, silhouetted by the outside light. She’d be a perfect target for anyone inside.

  If there were anyone inside.

  Moving quickly and silently, she slipped through the opening, stepping immediately to her right to clear the doorway, filling the opening for only a second or two before she slipped into the concealing shadows inside the old building.

  Nothing moved, except for a few dry leaves that stirred in the open doorway, swirling around as the wind blew in. Gradually, her eyes became accustomed to the dimness and she searched the interior, ready for any sign of danger. But there was nothing.

  The abbey was a large single room, with a small choir gallery against the rear wall. The bell tower rose above this gallery. A rickety old wooden ladder provided access to the gallery, which stood three meters above the floor of the main room. The high arched ceiling provided the extra height required to accommodate it. There was a window set in each of the walls beside it.

  The door was set midway along one of the long side walls, so she could see both the gallery and the altar and pulpit. Several rows of pews were still standing in the church, but at least half of them had been taken by local inhabitants over the years. They were made of good-quality timber, and there was no sense leaving it here to rot. She guessed that if she inspected the farmhouses in the area, she’d find where the old pews had been converted to household furniture—settles, chairs, bedsteads and the like.

  The door creaked softly as a stronger-than-usual gust of wind moved it a few more inches on its stiff hinges. She realized she’d been holding her breath and let it out now in a long sigh. She lowered the bow and released the tension she’d held on the string.

  Then she saw the fox face.

  At first sight, it appeared to be nothing more than random scratch marks in the hard-packed earth floor. But then she realized that the marks formed a definite shape. It was upside down from her viewpoint, but as she moved closer, she made it out for what it was—a rough outline of a fox’s mask. It was on the floor between two of the surviving pews, and she guessed that it must have been scratched onto the hard earth with the point of a stick or a metal spike of some sort. Possibly the artist had been sitting on the pew idly passing the time, amusing himself while he waited for the meeting—if that was what had transpired here—to begin.

  One thing was sure. It hadn’t been here on her previous visit.

  “So . . . ,” she said thoughtfully, “it looks as if something has been going on here after all.”

  She searched the rest of the floor and found no further sign of activity. But a fox’s face scratched into the earth was a good indication of who had been here. It was too big a coincidence to be anyone other than the Red Fox Clan. And as Will was fond of telling her, We don’t believe in coincidence.

  Satisfied that there were no further clues to what had been going on, she retraced her steps to the door, pulling it closed behind her as she went out, leaving it as she had found it when she arrived.

 
Bumper raised his head curiously. Find anything?

  “Yes. It seems that Barnaby Coddling wasn’t imagining things,” she told him. “We’re going to have to come back here and keep an eye on the place.”

  Bumper flicked his tail at an errant horsefly. Suits me.

  Maddie stroked his neck idly as she considered her options. There was no way of knowing when the Foxes might meet here again. That meant she would have to keep a constant watch on the abbey, and that would mean slipping out of the castle each night via the tunnel.

  “I’m going to have to move you closer to the castle,” she said. “I’ll find a spot for you where the forest begins.” She could be spending hours on watch at the abbey, and the thought of walking each night to get here didn’t appeal. And she could hardly ride Sundancer out and switch horses at the farm as she’d done today. She’d be seen leaving and arriving back. If people knew she was absent from the castle for hours each night, questions would be asked—by her mother, among others.

  “And I don’t have any answers for her yet,” she admitted to herself. “Just a vague hunch that something underhanded is going on.”

  She rode back to the farm, where Warwick had finished repairing the plow traces and was now replacing a broken hinge on the home paddock gate.

  “Don’t you ever have a day off?” she asked.

  He shook his head cheerfully. “A farmer doesn’t know what that means,” he said. “Find anything up at the abbey?”

  She told him about the fox face scratched into the floor.

  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as she described it. “I never noticed that before,” he said. “Why would someone do that?”

  She shrugged. “I guess to pass the time while they were waiting. Anyway, I’m going to be coming out here for the next few nights to keep watch. I’ll find a spot for Bumper closer to the castle. Can you lend me a bucket and a horse blanket for him?” She looked at the sky, with white clouds driven by the gusting wind. The rain seemed to have passed. “And a sack of oats if you have them,” she added.

  Warwick nodded and strode into the barn to collect the items she needed. As he handed them to her, he asked, “Want me to come with you to watch the abbey?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll be better alone. Two of us will be twice as easy to spot. And I’m used to staying out of sight.”

  She swung up onto Bumper’s back and, leaning down, unhitched Sundancer’s reins from the post.

  “I’d better get back and meet those Skandians,” she said.

  23

  Leading Sundancer behind her, she rode Bumper into the forest and headed at a brisk trot toward the castle. She had surveyed the land around the castle over the past few days and had earmarked a spot where Bumper would be out of sight.

  It was a small glade set about twenty meters inside the forest, below Castle Araluen. There was a clearing about eight meters across, surrounded by thick-growing trees that would conceal it from anyone passing by. The trees would also provide shelter for her horse in the event that the weather turned bad—although Bumper was a hardy little animal and used to spending time in the open. Still, there was no need for him to be any more uncomfortable than he had to be, which was why she had asked to borrow a blanket for him.

  They reached the spot she had selected and she dismounted. She tethered Sundancer to a low-lying branch and then led Bumper through the foliage that grew up between the trees, shoving the thicker branches to one side. The Arridan whinnied uncertainly as they disappeared into the trees, and she called to him.

  “I’ll be back. Don’t panic.”

  Thoroughbreds, Bumper sniffed. They’re so hysterical.

  She ignored the statement, looking round the clearing. It was an ideal spot for him, and she quickly unsaddled him, laying the saddle and bridle over a horizontal branch. She unstrung her bow, unclipped the quiver from her belt and slid them both into the waterproof bow case attached to Bumper’s saddle. She threw the blanket over his back and fastened the straps around his shoulders and under his belly.

  “That should keep you cozy,” she told him. He looked at her sidelong, and she gestured to a narrow gap between the trees on the side of the glade farthest from the castle. “There’s a stream through there, about five meters away,” she said. They could hear the water bubbling and splashing cheerfully. “And I’ll leave you some oats. Don’t eat them all at once.”

  Bumper snorted. Such an injunction was beneath his dignity. She poured half the oats into the bucket and set it under a tree for him. Bumper was trained to eat sparingly. She knew he wouldn’t simply munch down the oats as soon as she was gone. And he would remain in the glade without needing to be tethered—except when he needed water. If there were any passersby, he would stay silent and unmoving. She didn’t like leaving him here when he could have been in Warwick’s warm barn, but there was no alternative.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow night,” she told him. She and Warwick had discussed her plan to keep watch at the abbey, and they both agreed that it was unlikely the Foxes would gather there tonight—so soon after they had been there. Previously, signs of activity at the abbey had been at least five or six days apart. So, it would likely be close to a week before they reconvened. But to be on the safe side, she would begin watching the following night.

  “I’ll take a quick look up there tonight just to make sure,” Warwick told her, and she had agreed to that.

  She patted Bumper’s neck, and he bumped his head against her shoulder affectionately. Then she slipped back through the trees, untied Sundancer’s bridle and swung up into the saddle.

  “Stay out of sight,” she called back to Bumper, and he whinnied briefly, which she took as Tell me something I don’t know. Then she touched her heels to Sundancer and trotted out of the trees and onto the open parkland. Once on clear ground, she touched him again and set him to a fast canter up the hill.

  He wasn’t Bumper, she thought, but he was an excellent horse. He had a smooth, easy gait and an exceptional turn of speed. She increased the pace to a gallop and he stretched out, covering the ground in long, easy strides, his hooves barely seeming to touch the ground. As she came closer to the castle, she saw her mother, mounted on her black gelding, waiting outside the walls at the end of the drawbridge. Dimon and another rider were with her, standing a few meters away.

  She reined in beside her mother, Sundancer scattering tufts of grass and clumps of mud as she did so. She laughed with the sheer exhilaration of the dash up the hill.

  Cassandra glanced meaningfully at the sun, almost overhead. “You’re nearly late,” she said.

  Maddie grinned at her. “Which means I’m on time—or even a little early,” she replied.

  Cassandra shrugged, then turned as a stable boy led a string of three ponies across the drawbridge and handed the lead rein to Dimon’s companion. All of the ponies were saddled, and, she noticed, all of them were quite elderly and docile.

  The young captain saw Maddie’s curious gaze and gestured to the horses. “They’re for the Skandians,” Dimon told her, answering her unasked question.

  “Couldn’t we find them something a little more lively?” she asked. One of them, a dappled gray, looked in danger of falling asleep in mid-stride.

  Her mother answered her. “Skandians aren’t keen riders,” she said. “They’ll ride when they have to, but they’d rather not.”

  “You’re coming with us?” Maddie asked Dimon.

  He nodded. “Of course. I can’t let the princess ride off without protection—although I’d rather have a half troop.”

  “Two of you will be enough,” Cassandra said easily. “After all, I’m armed.” She tapped the polished wood hilt of the katana in her belt. “And Maddie and I both have our slings.” Like her daughter, Cassandra always carried her sling and a pouch of shot with her when she traveled anywhere.

  She paused for a second to mak
e sure the trooper had the horses ready to move, then pointed to the northeast, the direction where the River Semath lay. “Let’s get moving,” she said.

  They proceeded at a gentle trot—the best pace the three tubby old ponies could manage, Maddie assumed. Halfway down the slope, they angled to the east. They rode into the trees, following a wide bridle path. After fifteen minutes, the trees began to thin out until they were riding on a clear grassy area, with only occasional growths. The river gleamed silver in the middle distance. It was wide and slow flowing at this point. From here, it wound down to the coast, some fifteen kilometers away. Inland, it cut back to the south, emerging by the picturesque village that lived under Castle Araluen’s protection, then disappearing into the wooded flatlands that lay in that direction.

  They reined in at the sturdy wooden jetty on the banks of the river. Cassandra stood in her stirrups, shading her eyes as she peered downstream. Half a kilometer away from their vantage point, there was a sharp bend in the river. As yet, there was no sign of the wolfship—Maddie assumed the Skandians would be in a wolfship.

  “There she is,” Dimon said, pointing. A small, graceful craft was rounding the bend, traveling at a considerable speed, in spite of the light wind. Maddie was surprised to see that it wasn’t a wolfship—at least not one like any that she had seen in pictures.

  It was smaller than she expected, with four oars on each side instead of the normal ten to fifteen. And the sail was a triangular shape, set along the line of the hull instead of a square sail set crosswise. As she watched, the ship reached the northern bank of the river and turned to the left to tack toward them. As its bow came round, she was surprised to see the triangular sail lose its taut shape and slide down the stumpy mast. In its place, another sail slid up on the downwind side, caught the wind and filled into a smooth, swelling shape. The ship, which had lost a little speed in the turn, accelerated once more, a distinctive white bow wave forming under its forefoot.