‘It’s a standard tactic of theirs,’ he said. ‘They’ll attack on a wide front, probing, hitting and retiring. Then they’ll appear to become fully engaged at one or two given points. They’ll stop their hit and run tactics and fight a pitched battle – just the sort of thing that will suit your men,’ he added, glancing at Ragnak. The Oberjarl nodded.
‘Then,’ Halt continued, ‘they will begin to lose. Their attack will lose its cohesion and they will try to withdraw.’
‘Good!’ said Borsa, and the two other jarls grunted agreement. Ragnak, however, sensed that there was more to come. He didn’t comment for the moment, but gestured for Halt to continue. The Ranger obliged.
‘They’ll give ground. Slowly at first, then faster and faster as panic seems to set in. Somehow they’ll never move so fast that your men lose contact with them. Gradually, more and more of your warriors will be drawn out of our line, away from the shield wall, away from our defences. As they pursue the enemy, the Temujai will become more and more desperate. At least, they’ll seem to. Then, at the right moment, they’ll turn.’
‘Turn?’ said the Oberjarl. ‘How do you mean?’
‘They’ll stop retreating when your men are strung out and in the open – the strongest and fastest well ahead of their comrades. Suddenly, they’ll find themselves cut off, surrounded by the Temujai cavalry. And remember, every one of their cavalrymen is an expert archer. They won’t bother coming to close quarters. They can pick your men off at their leisure. And the more they kill the leaders, the more enraged those behind will become. They’ll stream out to save their friends – or avenge them. They’ll be surrounded in turn. And wiped out.’
He paused. The five Skandians all looked at him, struck silent. They could imagine the scenario he described. They knew the temper of their men and could see how easily such a stratagem could succeed against them.
‘This is how they fight?’ Ragnak asked finally.
‘I’ve seen it, Oberjarl. Time and time again, I’ve seen it. They aren’t concerned with glory in battle. Only efficient killing. They’ll challenge our warriors to single combat, then ambush them with ten or twenty warriors at a time. If they can’t shoot to kill immediately, they’ll shoot to disable. Even your strongest warriors can’t continue with ten to fifteen arrow wounds in the legs. Then, when they’re helpless, the Temujai will kill them.’
He swept his gaze around the table. Satisfied that they could all see the danger that faced them, he sat down, straddling the bench. Finally, it was Borsa, the hilfmann, who broke the long silence that had fallen in the room.
‘So … where do you want to engage them?’ he asked. Halt spread his hands wide in a questioning gesture.
‘Why engage them at all?’ he asked. ‘We have time to withdraw before they arrive. We could move into the hills and the forest and keep hitting them as they come further and further along the coastal plain here.’
‘Run away, you mean?’ Ragnak asked, his tone angry.
Halt nodded several times. ‘Yes. Run away. But continue to hit them at twenty or thirty or fifty points along their column. Kill them. Burn their supplies. Harass them. Make their life one long, insufferable misery until they realise that this invasion was a bad idea. Then harass them back to the border until they’re gone.’
He paused. He knew there was little chance of winning this one. But he had to try. It was the best course open to them. His heart sank as Ragnak shook his head. Even Erak’s lips were compressed into a thin, disapproving line.
‘Abandon Hallasholm to them?’ asked Ragnak.
Halt shrugged. ‘If necessary. You can always rebuild.’
But now all the Skandians were shaking their heads and he knew what was behind it.
‘Abandon everything in Hallasholm to them?’ Ragnak persisted. This time Halt made no answer. He waited for the inevitable.
‘Our booty – the results of hundreds of years of raiding – leave that to them?’ Ragnak asked.
And that, Halt knew, was the crux of the matter. No Skandian would ever abandon the loot he had stored up over the years – the gold, the armour, the tapestries, the chandeliers, the thousand and one items that they hoarded and kept and gloated over in their store houses. He caught Will’s eye and shrugged slightly. He’d tried. He didn’t even wait to hear the answer from the Oberjarl and Ragnak didn’t bother to state it. His tone had said it all. Halt moved to the map once more and indicated the flat lands outside Hallasholm with his knife point.
‘Alternatively,’ he said, ‘we stop them here, where the coastal plain contracts to its narrowest point.’
The Skandians craned to look again. They nodded cautious approval, now that Halt had withdrawn the suggestion that they should abandon Hallasholm and its contents to the invaders.
‘This way, they can’t attack on a wide front. They’ll be cramped. And we can conceal men in the trees here – and even in the outbuildings along the shore.’
Lorak, older of the two jarls, frowned at the suggestion. ‘Won’t that weaken our shield wall?’
Halt shook his head. ‘Not noticeably. We’ll have more than enough men to form a solid defensive position here where the land is narrowest. Then, when the Temujai try their trick of falling back and bringing our men along with them, we’ll appear to go along with it.’
Erak moved forward to inspect the narrow neck of land that Halt was indicating.
‘You mean we’ll do as they want?’ he asked. Halt pushed out his bottom lip and cocked his head to one side.
‘We’ll appear to,’ he admitted. ‘But once they stop withdrawing to counterattack, we’ll bring our ambush forces out of hiding and hit them from behind. If we time it correctly, we could make life very unpleasant for them.’
The Skandians stood, staring down at the map. Borsa, Lorak and Ulfak had blank looks as they tried to visualise the movement. Erak and Ragnak, Halt was glad to see, were slowly nodding as they understood the idea.
‘Our best chance,’ he continued, ‘is to force them into the sort of engagement that suits your men best – close quarters, hand to hand, every man for himself. If we can catch them that way, your axemen will take a heavy toll on them. The Temujai rely on speed and movement for protection. They’re only lightly armed and armoured. If we had even a small force of archers, it could make an enormous difference,’ he added. ‘But I suppose we can’t have everything.’ Halt knew that the bow wasn’t a Skandian weapon. It was no use wishing for things that couldn’t be. But in his mind’s eye, he could see the devastation that an organised party of bowmen could cause. He shrugged, pushing the thought aside.
Erak looked up at the grey-cloaked Ranger. He’s small, he thought, but by the gods, he’s a warrior to reckon with.
‘We have to depend on our men keeping their heads,’ he said. ‘Then we have to time it just right when we spring our trap – otherwise the men coming from the forest and the outbuildings will be exposed themselves. It’s a risk.’
Halt shrugged. ‘It’s war,’ he replied. ‘The trick is to know which risks to take.’
‘And how do you know that?’ Borsa asked him, sensing that the small, bearded foreigner had gained the trust and the acceptance of the Oberjarl and his War Council. Halt smiled wolfishly at him.
‘You wait till it’s over and see who’s won,’ he said. ‘Then you know those were the right risks to take.’
‘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. B
ut 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 b
e 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.
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