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.
Between them, Halt and Will had found a hundred slaves who claimed to have some level of skill with the bow. Finding them had been one matter. Convincing them that they should volunteer to help defend Hallasholm was something else.
As a burly Teutlander forester, who seemed to have assumed the role of spokesman for them, told the two Rangers, ‘Why should we help the Skandians? They’ve done nothing for us except enslave us, beat us and give us too little food to eat.’
Halt eyed the man’s ample girth speculatively. If some of the slaves were underfed, this one could hardly claim to be one of them, he thought. Still, he decided to let that matter pass.
‘You might find it more agreeable to be a slave of the Skandians than to fall into the hands of the Temujai,’ he told them bluntly.
Another of the assembled men spoke up. This one was a southern Gallican and his outlandish accent made his words almost indecipherable. Will finally pieced the sounds together in sufficient order to know that the man had asked: ‘What do the Temujai do with their slaves?’
Halt turned a steely gaze on the Gall. ‘They don’t keep slaves,’ he said evenly, and a buzz of expectation ran through the assembled men. The big Teutlander stepped forward again, grinning.
‘Then why would you expect us to fight against them?’ he asked. ‘If they beat the Skandians, they’ll set us free.’
There was a loud mumble of consent among the others behind him. Halt held up a hand and waited patiently. Eventually, the hubbub died away and the slaves looked at him expectantly, wondering what fu
rther inducement he could offer them – what he would consider to be more attractive to them than the prospect of freedom.
‘I said,’ he intoned clearly, so that everyone could hear him, ‘they don’t keep slaves. I didn’t say they set them free.’ He paused, then added, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, ‘Although the religious ones among you may consider death to be the ultimate freedom.’
This time, the commotion among the slaves was even louder. Finally, the self-appointed spokesman stepped forward again, and asked, with a little less assertion, ‘What do you mean, Araluan? Death?’
Halt made a careless gesture. ‘The usual, I suppose: the sudden cessation of life. The end of it all. Departure for a happier place. Or oblivion, depending upon your personal beliefs.’
Again a buzz ran through the crowd. The Teutlander studied Halt closely, trying to see some indication that the Ranger was bluffing.
‘But …’ He hesitated, not sure whether to ask the next question, not sure that he wanted to know the answer. Then, urged by his companions, he went on: ‘Why should these Temujai want to kill us? We’ve done nothing to them.’
‘The truth of the matter is,’ Halt told them all, ‘you mean nothing to them either. The Temujai consider themselves a superior race. They’d kill you out of hand because you can do nothing for them – but left behind their backs, you could constitute a threat.’
A nervous silence settled over the crowd now. Halt let them digest what he had said, then he spoke again.
‘Believe me, I’ve seen what these people are like.’ He looked into the faces of the crowd. ‘I can see there are some Araluans among you. I’ll give you my word as a Ranger that I’m not bluffing. Your best chance of survival is to fight with the Skandians against these Temujai. I’ll leave you for half an hour to consider what I’ve said. You Araluans might tell the others what a Ranger’s word means,’ he added. Then, beckoning for Will to follow, he turned on his heel and walked some distance away, out of earshot.
‘We’re going to have to offer them more,’ he said, when the others couldn’t hear him. ‘Reluctant recruits will be almost useless to us. A man’s got to have something worth fighting for if he’s going to do his best. And that’s what we’re going to need from this bunch – their best effort.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ Will asked, almost jogging to keep pace with his teacher’s urgent stride.
‘We’re going to see Ragnak,’ Halt told him. ‘He’s going to have to promise to free every slave who fights for Hallasholm.’
Will shook his head doubtfully.
‘He won’t like that,’ he said. Halt turned and looked at him, a faint grin touching the corner of his mouth.
‘He’ll hate it,’ he agreed.
‘Freedom?’ Ragnak exploded. ‘Give them their freedom? A hundred slaves?’
Halt shrugged disdainfully. ‘Probably closer to three hundred,’ he replied. ‘A lot of them will have women and children they’ll want to take with them.’
The Oberjarl gave an enormous snort of incredulous laughter. ‘Are you mad?’ he asked the Ranger. ‘If I give three hundred slaves their freedom, we’ll have virtually no slaves left. What will I do then?’
‘If you don’t, you may find you have no country left,’ Halt replied, totally unfazed by the Oberjarl’s sarcasm. ‘As to what you would do next, you could try paying them. Make them servants instead of slaves.’
‘Pay them? To do the work they’re doing now?’ Ragnak spluttered indignantly.
‘Why not? The gods know you can afford it well enough. And you might find they do a better job if they’ve got something more than a beating to look forward to at the end of the day.’
‘To hell with them!’ Ragnak said. ‘And to hell with you, Ranger. I agreed to listen to you but this is ridiculous. You’ll turn me into a beggar if I let you have your way. First you want me to abandon Hallasholm to this rabble of horsemen. Now you want me to send all my slaves off back to where they came from. To hell with you, I say.’
He glared at the Ranger for a few seconds, then, with a contemptuous wave of his hand, he turned away, refusing even to make eye contact. Halt waited a few seconds, then spoke to Erak, who was standing by his Oberjarl, an uncomfortable look on his face.
‘I’m telling you, we need these men,’ he said forcefully. ‘Even with them, we can still lose. But with them fighting willingly for us, we’ll have a chance.’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of the Oberjarl. ‘Tell him,’ he said finally, then turned on his heel and left the council room, Will hurrying behind him as he went.
As they left the Hall, Halt said, almost to himself, but loud enough for Will to hear, ‘I wonder if it occurs to them that if the slaves agree unwillingly to fight for them, and if, by some mad mischance, we do win, there’s nothing to stop the slaves turning their weapons on the Skandians.’ That thought had occurred to Will. He nodded agreement. ‘That’s why,’ Halt continued, ‘we’ve got to give them something worth fighting for.’
They waited at the training field for over an hour. The slaves had come to a decision, agreeing to fight against the Temujai. However, a few shifty eyes among the group told Halt and Will that, once the battle was over, the newly armed men were not going to return meekly into slavery.
There was a buzz of expectation as Erak arrived. He walked up to Halt and Will, who were standing a little apart from the archers.
‘Ragnak agrees,’ he said quietly. ‘If they fight, he’ll free them.’
Halt shook his head gratefully. He knew where the real impetus for Ragnak’s decision had come from.
‘Thank you,’ he said simply to Erak. The Skandian shrugged and Halt turned to Will.
‘They’ll be your men. They need to get used to taking orders from you. You tell them.’
Will hesitated, surprised. He had assumed that Halt would do the talking. Then, at an encouraging nod from his master, he stepped forward, raising his voice.
‘Men!’ he called and the low murmur of conversation among the group died instantly. He waited a second or two to make sure he had their full attention, then continued.
‘Ragnak has decided. If you fight for Skandia, he’ll set you free.’
There was a moment of stunned silence. Some of these men had been slaves for ten years or more. Now, here was this slightly built youth telling them that the end to their suffering was in sight. Then a mighty roar of triumph and jubilation swept through them, at first wordless and inchoate, but rapidly settling into a rhythmic chant of one word from one hundred throats:
‘Free-dom! Free-dom! Free-dom!’
Will let them celebrate for a while longer. Then he climbed onto a tree stump where he could be seen by all of them and waved his arms for silence. Gradually, the chant died away and they crowded closer around him, eager to hear what else he had to tell them.
‘That’s all very well,’ he said when they had quietened down. ‘But first, there’s the small matter of beating the Temujai. Let’s get to work.’
Halt and Erak watched as Will supervised the issuing of arrows to the men. Unconsciously, both men nodded their approval of the boy. Then Erak turned to Halt.
‘I nearly forgot, Ragnak had a further message for you. He said if we lose this battle and he loses his slaves as well, he’s going to kill you for it,’ he said cheerfully.
Halt smiled grimly. ‘If we lose this battle, he may have to get in line to do it. There’ll be a few thousand Temujai cavalrymen in front of him.’
Will called the last group of ten men forward to the firing line. The preceding group moved to the rear of the waiting ranks, and sat down to watch. He was working the men in small groups at this stage. That gave him a manageable group to work with as he tested their ability to follow his orders and shoot at a pre-determined elevation.
‘Ready!’ he called and each man took an arrow from the bin in front of him and nocked it to the string. They stood ready, their heads turned towards him, waiting for his next order.
&nb
sp; ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘don’t try to judge the shot yourself. Just go to the position I call, make a full draw and a smooth release when I call it.’
The men nodded. Initially, they hadn’t liked the idea of having their shooting controlled by someone as young as Will. Then, after Halt had encouraged his apprentice to give a demonstration of high-speed pinpoint shooting, they had reluctantly agreed to the system Will had devised.
Will took a deep breath, then called firmly: ‘Position three! Draw!’
Ten arms holding bows rose to a position approximately forty degrees from the horizontal. Will quickly glanced down the line to see that each man had remembered the correct position. He’d been drilling the four different elevations into them all day. Satisfied, and before the strain of holding the bows at full draw became too great, he called:
‘Shoot!’
Almost as one, there was a rapid slither of released bowstrings and a concerted hiss of arrows arcing through the air.
Will watched the small flight of shafts as they arced upwards, then nosed over and plunged down to bury themselves up to half their length in the turf. Again he called to the waiting line of men: ‘Position three, ready!’
As before, the ten men nocked arrows to the strings, waiting for Will’s next call.
‘Draw … shoot!’
Again there was the slithering slap of released bowstrings hitting the archers’ arm guards, and the sound of the wooden shafts scraping past the bows as they were hurled into the air. This time, as the arrows came down, Will changed his command.
‘Position two … ready!’
The line of left arms holding the bows extended and tilted up to a thirty degree angle.
‘Draw … shoot!’
Ranger's Apprentice 3 & 4 Bindup Page 38