Erak's Ransom (7 page)

After two days at sea, Halt was mercifully in control of his stomach once more. That didn't stop an evilly grinning Svengal from asking after his health at every possible opportunity, or offering him choice titbits from the wolfship's limited larder.
'Chicken leg?' he said, an innocent grin splitting his face. 'Bit greasy but good nevertheless. Just the thing to stick to a man's ribs.'
'Svengal,' Halt said for the tenth time, 'I am over it. Are we clear on that? I am over being seasick. And I am definitely over your attempts to make me heave my insides over the railing.'
Svengal looked unconvinced. He knew Halt's strength of mind and he was sure that he was bluffing — that, deep down, the Ranger's stomach was still in turmoil. All it needed was a little suggestive prodding.
'If it's not to your taste, I've some lovely pureed chestnut sauce you could smother it in?' he suggested hopefully.
'Very well,' Halt agreed, 'give me the chicken leg. And fetch me the chestnut sauce — and some pickled cucumbers while you're about it. Oh, and you'd better bring me a large tankard of dark ale if you have any.'
Svengal grinned, convinced that Halt was bluffing. Within a few minutes he had the required food laid out on a small folding table by the steering position. He watched expectantly as Halt bit into the chicken, chewed slowly and swallowed. Jurgen, one of the crew, filled a mug with dark ale and set it down as well, then stood by with the small cask, ready for further instructions.
'All well then?' Svengal asked hopefully. Halt nodded.
'Fine. Bit overdone and stringy but otherwise all right.' He took a deep draught of the dark ale, which he knew was Svengal's favourite and which he knew was in limited supply. He thrust the tankard out to Jurgen.
'More,' he said briefly. The Skandian uncorked the cask and let a stream of the dark foaming ale run into the tankard. Halt drank again, draining most of the beer. He wiped the back of his hand across his lips.
'Not bad. Not bad at all,' he said and held the tankard out again. The smile on Svengal's face started to fade as he saw more of his favourite tipple gushing into Halt's tankard. A joke was a joke, he thought, but this was starting to get expensive.
'How many casks of that do we have left?' he asked the crewman.
'This is the last, skirl,' came the reply. He shook the cask experimentally to check how much was remaining and Svengal's practised ear could tell from the hollow splashing sound that it was less than half full. Or, as he thought in his suddenly anxious state of mind, more than half empty. Halt took another long pull and held the nearly empty tankard out.
'Better top me up,' he said.
'No!" Svengal's anxious cry stopped the crewman as he began to raise the cask once more. 'Leave it, Jurgen.'
Jurgen nodded, hiding a grin himself. He liked Svengal. But like all Skandians, he also appreciated a good practical joke. He admired the way the short-shanked Araluan had turned the tables on his captain.
'You're sure?' he asked. 'He seems to be enjoying it.' Halt belched lightly in confirmation and took another bite of sauce-smeared chicken leg.
'He's enjoying it too much,' Svengal replied shortly. He cast an aggrieved look at Halt. 'Some people don't know when a joke has gone too far.'
Halt smiled malevolently at him. 'So I've noticed,' he replied. 'So tell me. Are we done with the questions about my health and the state of my stomach?'
'Yes,' Svengal muttered darkly. 'I was only worried about you, that's all.'
'My heart is touched by your tender concern,' Halt said, straight-faced. Then, glancing over the port railing, he pointed to a long white line of beach that was visible on the coast of Iberion.
'Would that be a good place to take the horses ashore?' he asked. He knew that if Tug, Abelard, Blaze and Kicker spent too long without exercise, their muscles would grow stiff and soft and their condition would suffer. He and Svengal had discussed the need to put them ashore every few days and give them a run.
Svengal, all business again, screwed his eyes up as he looked at the coastline.
'Good as anywhere,' he said. 'This part of the coast is a long way from any large settlements. Wouldn't want the Iberians thinking we were invading them.' He took the half tankard of dark ale that Halt offered him and drank from it. 'Thanks.'
'That's all right,' Halt told him, with the faintest trace of a grin. 'I don't like the stuff anyway.'
Svengal looked long and hard at him.
'Don't be surprised if I leave you and your precious horses ashore,' he said. 'Don't know why you need them along anyway. We'll be landing in Al Shabah to hand over the money, then sailing home again.'
'We hope,' Halt told him. 'I've learned that it always pays to be prepared for the unexpected. And a Ranger without his horse is like a Skandian without his ship.'
'Fair enough,' Svengal agreed. He glanced at the telltale — a light thread streaming from the top of the mast to gauge the direction of the wind. Seeing that there'd be no need to reset the sail, he heaved on the tiller and swung the wolfship's bow towards the long beach in the distance.
An hour later,
Wolfwind's
bow ran gently onto the sand, the ship coming to a halt with a sliding, grating noise.
The lifting slings were rigged once more and the horses were hoisted over the side into the shallow water. Tug looked balefully at Halt. He'd been enjoying himself for the past two days, quietly swaying from side to side in his comfortable, padded pen, eating at regular intervals, dozing in the sunshine and generally taking it easy while the wolfship bore him along. It wasn't the first time he and Halt had disagreed on the subject of how much rest a horse should have, how many apples it should be allowed to eat or how much exercise it really needed.
Still, it felt good to have firm ground underfoot once again and they hadn't been on board ship long enough to develop what the Skandians called the 'land wobbles' — where the ground seemed to rock and heave beneath you like the moving deck of a ship.
Tug shook himself all over, vibrating from his ears and short mane to his shaggy tail in the way horses do. Then he stood patiently as Will slipped a bridle over his nose. They weren't going to bother saddling the horses. Bareback would be fine for the current purpose. Evanlyn watched a little enviously as her four friends scrambled onto their horses. There had been no reason to bring a horse specially for her. If she needed to ride, they could buy a horse at Al Shabah. But Kicker and the three Ranger horses were all specially trained. No locally purchased horse would have the skills or the stamina they possessed. If the three Rangers or Horace needed horses, they needed the ones they were used to.
'Take it easy for the first few hundred metres,' Halt told the others. 'They'll want to run but we don't want them to strain anything.'
And indeed, in spite of Tug's initial displeasure at having his sea voyage interrupted, he found that he
did
want to run. He wanted to show Abelard and Blaze — and that big, dumb, musclebound battlehorse — just who was who when it came to speed.
He strained against the reins as they moved off, heading south. But Will held him in, allowing him only to walk at first, then to trot, then finally releasing him into a slow canter.
The four horses swept down the long curving beach in line abreast, cantering side by side, each one of them tossing his head and pulling stubbornly at the reins. Each one convinced that he was the fastest, most sure-footed, longwinded creature in the horse world. They rolled their eyes at each other, snorting and challenging each other — and accepting the challenges the others were throwing out. But the firm hands on their reins stopped them cutting loose.
Tug felt the blood coursing through him and the stiffness flowing out of his legs. He felt good. He felt alive. He felt he was doing what he was born to do. The sand underfoot was firm without being too hard. It flew in showers of wet clods behind him. The salt air filled his lungs and he breathed it deeply. He felt Will's hands relax a little and he surged forward, for a few moments moving ahead of the other horses until their riders allowed them to accelerate a little and Will checked his own increasing speed. Still shoulder to shoulder, the four horses went to a full canter along the beach.
On the high stern of the wolfship, Evanlyn stood on the railing, shading her eyes to watch them as they dwindled into the distance. She hated being left behind like this. Horace had offered to let her ride behind him but she had declined, It wasn't the same. She didn't want to be a passenger. She wanted to ride with her friends.
Svengal heaved himself up onto the railing with her, staring after the riders.
'I really don't know how you do it,' he told her quietly. He had watched the Araluans mount, then move away, sitting easily as if each was suddenly part of the animal itself. It was a skill he knew he would never, ever master. It looked like such fun, he thought. But it had nothing to do with the clutching, lurching, fearful clumsiness he felt when he ascended to a horse's back.
She saw the slight wistfulness in his eyes and patted his hand.
'It's not hard. It just takes practice,' she said. 'I could teach you.'
But he shook his head. 'It's the practice that's the hard part,' he replied, absentmindedly rubbing his backside, where his muscles still had a faint memory of the ride to Redmont and back.
'Skipper!' Axel called down, from the lookout position on the cross tree of the mast. Svengal looked up and saw his arm outstretched to the north.
'We've got company,' Axel continued. Svengal shaded his eyes. Far to the north, on the low hills inland from the beach, he saw a glint of sunlight on metal — a helmet or a shield. A small cloud of dust could be seen as well. Riders, he thought. And quite a lot of them. He shrugged. It wasn't too surprising. Even though this was a sparsely inhabited part of the coast, the Iberians would have patrols out, and the sight of a beached wolfship would be a matter for investigation. The riders were still at least an hour away, he estimated. There was plenty of time to recall the four Araluans, load the horses aboard and sail away. But it was best to be careful.
'Better call them back,' he told a crewman, standing by with a ramshead horn for that purpose.
The man nodded, took a deep breath and blew two long blasts — the agreed recall signal.
Three kilometres down the beach, Halt heard the long mournful blasts. He reined in, signalling the others to do the same, and swivelled in the saddle, looking back along the beach to the ship. From his position, he couldn't see the approaching horsemen. But he knew Svengal would have a good reason for sounding the recall.
'Time to get back,' he said. 'Let's give them a ... '
Before he could finish the statement, Will and Tug were away, the little horse's legs churning as he shot to a full gallop within the space of a few strides. Blaze was close behind him and Horace and Kicker lumbered behind the other two, slowly building to the battlehorse's thundering full speed.
' ... run,' Halt said to nobody but himself. Then he touched Abelard with his knee and the finely trained horse shot away like an arrow from a bow. He'd catch Kicker, Halt knew. But there was no way he'd make up ground on Blaze and Tug.
Particularly Tug....

The Arridi coast was a thin brown line off the starboard side as
Wolfwind
slipped smoothly through the water. It was strangely quiet now that the crew had been able to ship their oars and set the big square sail. For the past four days, the wind had blown steadily from the east, directly opposed to their direction of travel. But as the sun had risen on this, the fifteenth day of their journey, the wind had shifted to the south. Svengal had the yardarm raised and braced round to an angle of forty-five degrees to catch the wind. The wolfship tried to turn upwind immediately, like a weathervane. But Svengal's firm control of sheets and tiller kept the bow pointed east.
Wolfwind
still crabbed to the north, inevitably, but the conflicting forces created by the wind in the sail, the resistance of the keel in the water and the turning force of the rudder resolved themselves into an east-north-east course for the ship.
And even if she was losing some ground to the north, she was making better progress to the east than she would under oars. Svengal knew that a wise captain conserved the strength of his oarsmen as far as possible.
'We're making some northing,' he told Halt, 'but we'll stay with the wind until we're closer to Al Shabah.'
Halt nodded agreement. Svengal knew what he was doing and there was nothing that the Ranger could suggest to improve their progress. He trusted the big Skandian's skill and judgement almost as much as he trusted Erak's.
Halt, Evanlyn and Svengal were deep in conversation now in the stern part of the ship, discussing plans for the coming negotiations. Horace was crouched beside Kicker in his pen, working to remove a stone that had become wedged under the battlehorse's shoe on their last run ashore.
Will stood alone in the very bow of the ship, chin resting on his forearm as he leaned on the bulwark. For perhaps the tenth time in as many days, he was feeling uneasy about what the future might hold.
Not the negotiations for Erak's release. He was certain that they would proceed smoothly and successfully. After all, Halt would be beside Evanlyn to guide her and advise her of any possible pitfalls.
And that was the crux of it, he realised. He had spent the better part of the last five years relying on Halt, trusting his judgement, following his lead. Just as they would all be doing when the ship finally reached Al Shabah and they went ashore to rescue Erak. Halt's presence, his foresight, his skill, his innate ability to solve any problem that raised itself, was an enormous source of security for Will. He was firmly convinced that there was nothing Halt couldn't do, no problem that he couldn't solve.
And soon, Will knew, he would be leaving that protective umbrella and striking out on his own. In three months time he would face his final assessment tests — designed to ascertain whether or not he had what it took to be a successful Ranger.
For the past year, this final assessment had loomed large in his mind. He had seen it as the culmination of his training, the final hurdle that he must leap before he received the Silver Oakleaf — symbol of a graduate Ranger. And he'd looked forward to it with some impatience.
But now, he realised, the assessment would not be the end. It would merely be the beginning of a new and even larger phase of his life. The real assessment would follow. And it would never cease, for as long as he remained a Ranger. Every day he would be tested. He would be called on to make life or death decisions — sometimes without enough time to consider them properly. People would look to him for advice and leadership and, suddenly, he doubted that he could provide it. He realised now that he wasn't ready for the role. He wasn't up to it. He could never be like Halt — so calm, self-assured, experienced.
So incontrovertibly
right
about everything.
He wasn't Halt. He was Will. Young, impulsive, green as grass. Without really thinking about it, he had somehow assumed that once he had graduated, he and Halt would continue to live in the comfortable little cabin just inside the edge of the forest. But Halt's marriage had brought Will to the realisation that those days were nearly over and Halt realised it, even if Will hadn't. Halt had already moved into the apartment that he and Lady Pauline shared at the castle, although he would continue to use the cabin in the forest as a base for his observation of the goings-on in the fief.
At first Will had viewed the change in circumstances with equanimity. The idea of having the cabin mostly to himself had a certain appeal. He could invite friends over for meals. Horace, if he happened to be visiting Redmont, as he did from time to time. And Alyss.
Alyss, he thought. Yes. It would be pleasant to sit by the fire in the cozy little cabin with the beautiful, tall blonde girl, talking over old times and new developments in their jobs. She was already a graduate Courier and already being sent on missions by her mentor, Lady Pauline. Alyss enjoyed sitting with him, listening to him play the mandola, nodding her head in time to the beat.
Unlike Halt, he thought with a wry smile, who groaned and fidgeted whenever Will produced the little instrument from its hard leather case.
But then, he realised, that would not be the way his life went. He wouldn't be in the cabin with or without Halt. He wouldn't be anywhere near Castle Redmont. Once he graduated, he would be assigned to another fief, one of fifty throughout the Kingdom. He could be sent hundreds of kilometres away from everyone and everything he knew. And when he got there, people would expect him to know what he was doing. They would look to him for guidance and advice and protection.
In short, they would think he was like Halt.
And he knew all too well that he wasn't. He sighed deeply at the thought.
'There's a happy sound,' said a cheerful voice at his elbow. He started with surprise. Even engrossed in his thoughts as he had been, he would have expected to be aware of anyone approaching him so closely.
Anyone but Gilan, he corrected himself. Possibly Halt, but definitely Gilan. The young Ranger seemed to be able to move in total silence when he chose to. He was the Ranger Corps' recognised master of unseen movement.
Gilan leaned now on the rail beside Will, looking at him curiously.
'Something on your mind?' he asked quietly. Gilan knew from his own experience that there were some problems that an apprentice didn't want to ask his mentor about. He knew, too, that he was in a unique position. As a former apprentice to Halt himself, he could understand most of the doubts that might be going through Will's mind at the moment. In fact, Gilan had a pretty shrewd idea as to why Will was sighing.
'No ... well, I suppose, sort of ... well, yes,' Will said.
Gilan's smile widened. 'And there's a choice of three answers for me. Never let it be said that you don't answer a question thoroughly.'
Will essayed a smile in return, but it was a wan little effort.
'Gil,' he said finally, 'when you were about to take the silver, did you think you were ... ' He hesitated, not sure how to put it, then tried another tack. 'I mean, did you feel sort of ... '
He was about to say 'inadequate' but he couldn't imagine the word applying to Gilan. Gilan had a claim on Will's respect that was second only to Halt's. He was an expert archer, like all Rangers. But unlike any of the others, he was also a master swordsman. He alone of the fifty serving Rangers carried a sword in addition to the regular Ranger weapons. He was also, as Will had just been reminded, an expert in the art of silent movement. And he was respected among the Corps by other Rangers, far senior to him in years. On several occasions, Will had heard Crowley and Halt discussing Gilan's future in the Corps and he knew that Gilan was marked down for high office.
The fact that this might have something to do with Gilan's being Halt's former apprentice didn't occur to Will. But the word 'Inadequate' would be an insult to someone as capable and skilled as Gilan.
Gilan studied the troubled young man beside him and felt a surge of affection for him.
'Were you going to say "unready" ?' he asked and Will seized on the word gratefully. It was less insulting than the one he had nearly used.
'Yes! Exactly! Did you feel unready for it all?'
Gilan nodded several times before answering. His smile became a little wistful as he thought back to those days years ago when he felt exactly the same doubts he was sure Will was feeling now.
'You know, a year before my finals, I was quite sure I knew it all.'
'Well, yes. Of course,' Will said. Gilan would have been more than ready a year before most apprentices. Then he realised that a year ago, he had felt exactly the same way. He turned to look at the tall Ranger.
'Then,' Gilan continued, 'in my last few weeks, I realised how much I didn't know.'
'You?' Will said incredulously. 'But you're — '
Gilan held up a hand to silence him. I started thinking, "What am I going to do without Halt to advise me? What will I do when he's not around to clear up the mistakes I make?" And the whole thing had me shaking in my boots.
'I thought, "I can't possibly do this job. I can't be Halt! How can I ever be as wise and clever and, let's face it, as downright sneaky as he is?" Is that pretty much the way you're feeling now?' he concluded.
Will was shaking his head in amazement. 'That's it in a nutshell! How can I be like Halt? How can anyone?' Again, the enormity of it all weighed down on him and his shoulders slumped. Gilan put a comforting arm around them.
'Will, the very fact that you're worrying about it says you'll be up to the job. Remember, nobody expects you to be Halt. He's a legend, after all. Haven't you heard? He's eight feet tall and kills bears with his bare hands ... '
Will had to smile at that. Halt's reputation throughout the Kingdom was pretty much the way Gilan had stated it. People meeting him for the first time were surprised to find he was actually a little smaller than average.
'So you can't possibly live up to that. But remember this, you have been trained by the very best in the business. And you've been privileged to stand beside him for the past five years and see how he approaches a problem. Believe me, a lot of that rubs off. Once you have your own fief, you'll soon realise how much you do know.'
'But what if I make a mistake?' Will asked.
Gilan threw back his head and laughed. 'A mistake?
One
mistake? You should be so lucky. You'll make dozens! I made four or five on my first day! Of course you'll make mistakes. Just don't make any of them twice. If you do mess things up, don't try to hide it. Don't try to rationalise it. Recognise it and admit it and learn from it. We never stop learning, none of us. Not even Halt,' he added, seriously.
Will nodded his gratitude. He felt a little better. He cocked his head suspiciously.
'You're not just saying this to make me feel better, are you?' he asked.
Gilan shook his head. 'Oh no. If you don't believe me, ask Halt to tell you about some of my whoppers. He loves reminding me of them. Now let's go see what they've been talking about so seriously.'
And with his arm around the younger man's shoulders still, he led him away from the bow and back to the small group by the tiller. Halt glanced up as they approached, caught a look from Gilan and had a pretty shrewd idea what they had been talking about.
'Where have you two been?' he asked, his tone light.
'Admiring the view,' Gilan told him. 'Thought you might need some advice from the two wisest heads on board.'
Halt said nothing. But his suddenly raised eyebrow spoke volumes.