Brotherband: Scorpion Mountain Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Part Four

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by John Flanagan

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Hal, his Brotherband crew and the Ranger Gilan have freed the twelve Araluens from slavery. Returning to Araluen, Gilan is given a new mission by King Duncan: protect his daughter, Princess Cassandra. A deadly sect known as the Scorpion Cult is thought to be behind an attempt on her life.

  Hal and the Brotherband again team up with Gilan to track down the would-be killers.

  In this fifth book in the Brotherband Chronicles, old friends re-emerge to take on new enemies as the worlds of Ranger’s Apprentice and Brotherband join forces in battle.

  For my son Michael, once more.

  A FEW SAILING TERMS EXPLAINED

  BECAUSE THIS BOOK involves sailing ships, I thought it might be useful to explain a few of the nautical terms that are to be found in the story.

  Be reassured that I haven’t gone overboard (to keep up the nautical allusion) with technical details in the book, and even if you’re not familiar with sailing, I’m sure you’ll understand what’s going on. But a certain amount of sailing terminology is necessary for the story to feel realistic.

  So, here we go, in no particular order.

  Bow: The front of the ship, also called the prow.

  Stern: The rear of the ship.

  Port and starboard: The left and right sides of the ship, as you’re facing the bow. In fact, I’m probably incorrect in using the term ‘port’. The early term for port was ‘larboard’, but I thought we’d all get confused if I used that.

  Starboard was a corruption of ‘steering board’ (or steering side). The steering oar was always placed on the right-hand side of the ship.

  Consequently, when a ship came into port it would moor with the left side against the jetty, to avoid damage to the steering oar. One theory says the word derived from the ship’s being in port – left side to the jetty. I suspect, however, that it might have come from the fact that the entry port, by which crew and passengers boarded, was also always on the left side.

  How do you remember which side is which? Easy. Port and left both have four letters.

  Forward: Towards the bow.

  Aft: Towards the stern.

  Fore and aft rig: A sail plan where the sail is in line with the hull of the ship.

  Hull: The body of the ship.

  Keel: The spine of the ship.

  Steering oar: The blade used to control the ship’s direction, mounted on the starboard side of the ship, at the stern.

  Tiller: The handle for the steering oar.

  Beam: The side of the ship. If the wind is abeam, it is coming from the side, at a right angle to the ship’s keel.

  Yardarm or yard: A spar (wooden pole) that is hoisted up the mast, carrying the sail.

  Masthead: The top of the mast.

  Bulwark: The part of the ship’s side above the deck.

  Gunwale: The upper part of the ship’s rail.

  Belaying pins: Wooden pins used to fasten rope.

  Oarlock or rowlock: The pegs that hold the oar in place.

  Telltale: A pennant that indicates the wind’s direction.

  Tacking: To tack is to change direction from one side to the other, passing through the eye of the wind.

  If the wind is from the north and you want to sail north-east, you would perform one tack so that you were heading north-east, and you could continue to sail on that tack for as long as you needed to.

  However, if the wind is from the north and you want to sail due north, you would have to do so in a series of short tacks, going back and forth on a zig-zag course, crossing through the wind each time, and slowly making ground to the north. This is a process known as beating into the wind.

  Wearing: When a ship tacks, it turns into the wind to change direction. When it wears, it turns away from the wind, travelling in a much larger arc, with the wind in the sail, driving the ship around throughout the manoeuvre. This was a safer way of changing direction for wolfships.

  Reach or reaching: When the wind is from the side of the ship, the ship is sailing on a reach, or reaching.

  Running: When the wind is from the stern, the ship is running. So would you if the wind was strong enough.

  Reef: To gather in part of the sail and bundle it against the yardarm to reduce the sail area. This is done in high winds to protect the sail and mast.

  Trim: To adjust the sail to the most efficient angle.

  Halyard: A rope used to haul the yard up the mast (haul-yard, get it?).

  Stay: A heavy rope that supports the mast. The backstay and forestay are heavy ropes running from the top of the mast to the stern and bow (it’s pretty obvious which is which).

  Sheets and shrouds: A lot of people think these are sails, which is a logical assumption. But in fact, they’re ropes. Shrouds are thick ropes that run from the top of the mast to the side of the ship, supporting the mast. Sheets are the ropes used to control or trim the sail – to haul it in and out according to the wind strength and direction. In an emergency, the order might be given to ‘let fly the sheets!’. The sheets would be released, letting the sail loose and bringing the ship to a halt. (If you were to let fly the sheets, you’d probably fall out of bed.)

  Way: The motion of the ship. If a ship is under way, it is moving. If it is making leeway, the wind is blowing it downwind so it loses ground.

  Back water: To row a reverse stroke.

  So, now you know all you need to know about sailing terms, welcome aboard the world of Brotherband!

  John Flanagan

  PART ONE

  CASTLE ARALUEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘WHOA THERE, TOM! Steady on, fellow!’

  Tom was a plough horse, well past middle age and resigned,
like most of his placid breed, to the constant task of plodding up and down, hauling a plough that carved consecutive furrows in the rich earth of Halder farm. He wasn’t accustomed to being stopped in mid-furrow and he turned his shaggy head to look at his owner, Devon Halder.

  Devon, like his horse, was well past middle age. And the smock that he was wearing was liberally daubed with patches of drying mud. When he was asked in the local tavern that night what had led him to stop and turn around, he couldn’t really recall. Perhaps he had heard the slight sounds of creaking leather and rope, or the rustle of a sail in the brisk wind.

  Whatever it was, it was enough for Devon to halt Tom and turn to face the river behind him. When he did, the sight that met his eyes sent a sudden jolt of panic through him.

  Barely forty metres away, gliding smoothly up the river, was a ship.

  His first thought was that she was a wolfship, and Devon was old enough to remember when the sight of a Skandian wolfship on the river was a prelude to a sudden, savage attack. He tensed his muscles to run and spread the alarm in the nearby village. But he paused at the last second.

  The days when Skandians used to raid the coastal and river villages of Araluen were well in the past now. And besides, on second glance, this was no wolfship.

  She was similar in style and shape, sure enough. She was slim waisted and had a look of speed about her. She didn’t have the broad, capacious lines of a cargo hull. But there was no large square sail such as a wolfship would use. Instead, this ship was rigged with a triangular sail that was mounted fore and aft along the line of the ship, supported by a long, gracefully curving spar that swept up high above the hull.

  She was smaller than a wolfship. Also, at her bowpost, there was no carved wolf’s head, with raised hackles and snarling teeth. Instead, there was a carving in the shape of a bird’s head. And there was a motif of a seabird in flight on the sail – a graceful bird with wings spread wide. A heron, Devon realised.

  But the four circular wood and metal-reinforced shields arrayed down the starboard bulwark were unmistakably Skandian in design, although he noticed that a fifth shield, set level with the helmsman’s position, was shaped like a triangle.

  The crew, those he could see, were dressed in Skandian fashion – with leather and sheepskin vests and leggings held secure by criss-cross bindings. Yet he saw none of the horned helmets for which the Skandian sea wolves were well known, the sight of which would strike fear into any honest farmer’s heart. Instead, several of them wore dark woollen watch caps, rolled down to cover their ears against the cold.

  As he watched, the figure at the helm raised a hand in greeting. Devon shaded his eyes to look more closely at the helmsman. He appeared to be quite young, and relatively slim for a Skandian. The person beside him was more like a typical sea wolf, Devon thought. He was bulky, with wild grey hair blowing in the wind. As Devon watched, he realised that the second man had a wooden hook in place of his right hand.

  Definitely a sea wolf type, he thought. But then the man made a similar gesture of greeting. Devon returned the wave cautiously – his suspicions were still raised. Small as she might be, this was definitely a cruiser, a raiding ship. She was fast, lean hulled and potentially dangerous. And, as the shields arrayed down her bulwark attested, her crew were fighting men. He watched her closely as she sailed past, gradually pulling out into the centre of the river to round the approaching bend. The helmsman and his companion lowered their hands and seemed to lose interest in the elderly farmer and his plough horse.

  ‘That’ll give him something to talk about in the tavern tonight,’ Thorn said with a grin. ‘Probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to him since his plough got stuck on a tree root five days ago.’

  Hal raised an eyebrow. ‘Us? Exciting?’

  Thorn nodded, scratching his rump with the blunt end of his wooden hook.

  ‘He was a greybeard. He’d remember the times when the sight of a Skandian ship meant a raid. I’m surprised he didn’t go pelting off to raise the alarm when he saw us.’ Thorn had no idea how close the farmer had come to doing just that.

  As they rounded the bend and the farmer and his horse disappeared from sight, Kloof planted her forepaws onto the starboard bulwark and gave out a single bark. Then, content that she had asserted her superiority over all things Araluan, she dropped back to the deck, slid her front feet forward and flumped down onto the planks. For a few seconds, she watched Hal out of one eye, then she sighed and settled back to sleep.

  Hal cast his gaze over the tilled fields and green forests that lined the banks of the river. It was attractive country, he thought.

  ‘Did you ever raid in Araluen, Thorn?’ he asked.

  The old sea wolf shook his head. ‘Erak preferred to raid the Iberian coast, and sometimes Gallica or Sonderland. And now that I’ve seen Gilan in action with that bow of his, I’m glad he did. Maybe Erak knew something. Imagine facing half a dozen archers with Gilan’s skill and speed.’

  ‘Facing one would be bad enough,’ Hal agreed.

  Stig was sitting on a coil of rope several metres away, idly putting an edge on his already razor-sharp saxe knife as he listened to their conversation.

  ‘D’you think Gilan will be at Castle Araluen yet?’ he asked.

  Originally, they had planned to leave Cresthaven Bay at the same time as the Ranger, who was riding overland back to the capital. But they’d had a long, hard voyage south to Socorro and Hal wanted the Heron in tip-top shape for her first appearance at Castle Araluen. There were some sections of running rigging that had frayed and needed splicing and repairing, and there was a large, splintered gash in one of the planks on the waterline, where they had nearly run aground pursuing the renegade ship Nightwolf through the shoals. It took half a day to plane that smooth and repaint the timber so that there was no sign of the damage.

  In addition, Edvin wanted to replenish their stores and fresh food and suggested that they should do it at Cresthaven, where the village was contracted to supply their needs as part of the duty ship agreement.

  ‘No point spending our money elsewhere when they’ll provide it for nothing here,’ Edvin had said, and Hal had agreed.

  As a result, they had sailed out of Cresthaven and headed north to the river mouth some two days after Gilan had ridden off, waving farewell as he topped the rise above the bay where they were moored.

  ‘He should be,’ Hal replied to Stig’s question. ‘It’s a little over a day’s ride and I’m told those Ranger horses cover ground at a prodigious rate.’

  ‘He can have the welcome committee ready for us then,’ Thorn added. ‘Maybe this king of theirs will come down to the jetty to greet us.’

  Hal smiled sidelong at his old friend. ‘From what I’ve heard of kings, they don’t stand around on windy jetties waiting for roughneck sailors to arrive.’

  ‘Do you consider yourself a roughneck?’ Thorn asked. ‘I’ve always thought of you as quite sophisticated.’

  ‘I may be. But you’re roughneck enough for all of us,’ Hal told him and Thorn grinned contentedly.

  ‘Yes. I’m glad to say I am.’

  Further forward, in the waist of the ship and with no responsibilities to attend to during this current long reach of the river, the twins were bickering, as they were wont to do. They had been silent for some time, much to the crew’s relief, but that was a situation too good to last.

  ‘You know that brown-eyed girl who was sitting on your lap at the welcome home feast?’ Ulf began.

  Wulf eyed him suspiciously, before replying. ‘Yes. What about her?’

  Ulf paused, smiling quietly to himself, preparing to throw out his verbal challenge. ‘Well, she fancied me,’ he said.

  Wulf looked at him, eyebrows raised. ‘She fancied you?’

  Ulf nodded emphatically. ‘So you noticed too?’

  Wulf snorted in annoyance. ‘I wasn’t agreeing,’ he said. ‘I was querying you. That was why I raised my voice at the end of the sentence. It s
ignified that I was saying, What do you mean, she fancied you?’

  ‘I mean she found me attractive – actually, very attractive. It was obvious, after all.’

  Wulf paused for several seconds. ‘If it was so obvious that she fancied you – that she found you attractive – why was she sitting on my lap?’

  Ulf waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘That’s what makes it so obvious. She wanted to make me jealous, so she played up to you. She was playing hard to get.’

  ‘Well, she played it very well. You certainly didn’t get her,’ his brother told him, with some heat in his voice. He had noticed Ulf admiring the girl early in the evening and had swooped, successfully, before his brother could act.

  Lydia, who was leaning on the bulwark several metres away, groaned audibly as the exchange continued.

  Ulf laughed. ‘I could have if I wanted to. She was overwhelmed by my devilish good looks.’

  ‘Devilish good looks? You’re as ugly as a mange-ridden monkey,’ Wulf told him. But his brother was already shaking his head.

  ‘It’s odd that someone as unattractive as yourself would say that,’ he replied. ‘That was why she chose to sit with you when she planned to make me jealous. She chose the most unattractive person she could see.’

  ‘Then obviously,’ Wulf retorted, ‘she couldn’t see you.’

  Of course, what made this discussion puzzling for the rest of the crew was that Ulf and Wulf were identical in every respect. For one of them to call the other ugly was for him to call himself ugly as well. But they never seemed to grasp that fact.

  As they continued speaking, their voices, at first lowered, rose in volume so that the entire crew could listen to their meaningless drivel. Hal decided that enough was enough.

  ‘Ingvar?’ he called.

  The massively built boy was sitting forward of the mast, leaning back against it, his long legs splayed out on the deck before him. He turned and peered back towards the steering position.

  ‘Yes, Hal?’

  ‘Would you say that sailing down a river counts the same as being at sea?’

  The rules of the ship were that if the twins carried on one of their idiotic arguments at sea, Ingvar was within his rights to throw one of them overboard. In fact, some of the crew felt, he was obliged to throw one overboard. Usually, a reference to this fact was enough to stop the mindless discussions they enjoyed so much.