The Red Fox Clan
ALSO BY JOHN FLANAGAN:
BROTHERBAND CHRONICLES
BOOK 1: THE OUTCASTS
BOOK 2: THE INVADERS
BOOK 3: THE HUNTERS
BOOK 4: SLAVES OF SOCORRO
BOOK 5: SCORPION MOUNTAIN
BOOK 6: THE GHOSTFACES
BOOK 7: THE CALDERA
THE RANGER’S APPRENTICE EPIC
BOOK 1: THE RUINS OF GORLAN
BOOK 2: THE BURNING BRIDGE
BOOK 3: THE ICEBOUND LAND
BOOK 4: THE BATTLE FOR SKANDIA
BOOK 5: THE SORCERER OF THE NORTH
BOOK 6: THE SIEGE OF MACINDAW
BOOK 7: ERAK’S RANSOM
BOOK 8: THE KINGS OF CLONMEL
BOOK 9: HALT’S PERIL
BOOK 10: THE EMPEROR OF NIHON-JA
BOOK 11: THE LOST STORIES
THE ROYAL RANGER SERIES
BOOK 1: THE ROYAL RANGER: A NEW BEGINNING
RANGER’S APPRENTICE: THE EARLY YEARS
BOOK 1: THE TOURNAMENT AT GORLAN
BOOK 2: THE BATTLE OF HACKHAM HEATH
PHILOMEL BOOKS
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Copyright © 2018 by John Flanagan.
Published in Australia by Penguin Random House Australia in 2018.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Flanagan, John (John Anthony), author.
Title: The Red Fox Clan / John Flanagan.
Description: U.S. edition. | New York, NY : Philomel Books, 2018. | Series: Ranger’s apprentice: the royal ranger ; 2 Summary: “The mysterious Red Fox Clan, a group of anarchists all donning fox masks, have threatened Castle Araluen and question Princess Cassandra and Madelyn’s succession to the throne. Will they succeed in unseating Cassandra and Madelyn and take the throne for themselves?”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2018011891 | ISBN 9781524741389 (hardback) | ISBN 9781524741396 (ebook) Subjects: | CYAC: Apprentices—Fiction. | Fantasy. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / Survival Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Legends, Myths, Fables / Arthurian. | JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic.
Classification: LCC PZ7.F598284 Red 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018011891
Ebook ISBN 9781524741396
U.S. edition edited by Michael Green.
Jacket art © 2018 by Shane Rebenschied; Jacket design by Tony Sahara
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
To Rick Raftos, Agent Extraordinaire
CONTENTS
Also by John Flanagan
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
About the Author
PROLOGUE
He stood in the shadows to one side, letting the rage build within him. He needed the rage. He fed off it. It inflamed the passion and fire that went into his words and his delivery.
Audiences felt it and reacted to it. He had the ability to arouse the same rage in them. His audiences were, for the most part, unsophisticated country folk and villagers, and he used all the tricks of the rabble-rouser’s trade to play upon their prejudices and intolerance—to make them raise their fists to the heavens and cry for justice.
The basis for his own rage was simple. In his mind, he had been cheated out of his birthright, his right of inheritance. And it had been done at the whim of a monarch who sought to cement his own family’s succession to the throne. At the stroke of a pen, he had changed a centuries-old law of the land and decreed that, in Araluen, a female heir could succeed to the throne.
Most Araluens accepted the new law without thinking. But a small number of fanatics and conservatives resented it. They formed the Red Fox Clan, a subversive group with the avowed aim of bringing back the old ways—the law of male succession.
The Red Fox Clan had been few in number when he had first discovered them several years ago, with perhaps fewer than fifty members. But he had seen them as the key to attaining his destiny—the throne of Araluen. He had recognized that this movement, weak and unorganized as it was, could become the base from which he could launch his campaign.
Accordingly, he had joined them, bringing his undoubted talent for organization and leadership to their movement.
He had traveled from village to village, from town to town, preaching his message of prejudice in clandestine meetings, biding his time and watching the number of Clan members grow. That initial group of fewer than fifty now numbered in the hundreds. They were a powerful and well-financed movement. And he had gradually risen to the position of Vulpus Rutilus—the Red Fox, leader of the Clan.
He was a skilled and convincing orator, but that was only one aspect of his complex character. He could be hard and ruthless when he needed to be, and on more than one occasion he brutally crushed people who defied him or tried to impede his way to the top.
But, just as important, he had learned at an early age that a more effective way to achieve his ends was by charm and apparent friendliness. His mother had told him as a boy, when she dinned into his brain the injustice that had been done to him—“You catch more flies with honey than vinegar”—and he had applied that lesson well as he grew in years and maturity.
He had cultivated the ability to make others like him, to convince them he was their friend. A consu
mmate actor, he had learned to hide animosity behind an outer show of warmth and geniality—and a winning smile. Even now, there were half a dozen people in the upper ranks of the Red Fox Clan whom he hated. Yet not one of them was aware of the fact, and all of them regarded him as a friend, a warm and generous ally.
And there were others—those outside the cult, people he viewed as his most bitter adversaries—who had no idea of the depths of hatred that simmered below his outer layer of easygoing cordiality.
Now the time was approaching when he could cast that pretense aside and reveal his true feelings, and he felt a deep sense of satisfaction at the thought of it.
The meeting was being held in a large clearing in the woods, between three large villages where he had recruited members to the Clan. He scanned them now. Only Clan members had been invited, and a screen of guards armed with clubs and swords were in place to make sure that no outsider would witness the meeting. There were nearly a hundred people present—an excellent turnout. In the beginning, he had spoken to audiences of fewer than a dozen people—people who were only half interested in what he had to say but were looking for some diversion from their drab, humdrum lives. The movement had gathered its own momentum and energy. There was an expectant buzz among the crowd as they waited for him to speak.
He judged that it was time to do so. The past few years had seen him develop a sense of timing when dealing with crowds. He had the ability to know when he should appear—and then to wait those vital few minutes longer until expectancy had turned into eagerness and enthusiasm for the cause.
There was a raised speaking platform to his left, lit by flaring torches and with a backdrop bearing the face of a red fox.
He donned his mask now—a stylized fox face that covered his eyes, nose and cheeks. He pulled the fur-trimmed scarlet cloak tighter around his body and mounted the three low steps at the back of the stage, pushing through the backdrop to appear, almost magically, in the flaring torchlight.
There was a moment’s silence as he appeared, then shattering applause as he threw his arms wide, with the scarlet cloak spread behind him.
“My friends!” he shouted, having waited just the right amount of time so that the applause was beginning to ebb but was not yet completely silent.
Now it died away as they waited for his words. He spoke, his voice ringing out, reaching to those at the very back.
“For thousands of years, our country was guided by a law that said only a male heir could succeed to the throne. It was a good law. It was a just law. And it was a law that respected the will of the gods.”
A rumble of approval ran through the crowd. He wondered briefly why they accepted so readily the concept that this was a law approved by the gods. But they did. They always did. It was part of that big lie that he had created—the lie that, told often enough, became truth in the minds of those listening.
“Then, some years ago, a king decided, without any consultation or discussion, that he could change this law. With the stroke of a pen, he changed it. Arbitrarily and arrogantly.”
He stepped forward to the front of the stage and leaned toward his audience, his voice rising in pitch and volume. “Did we want this law changed?”
He paused, and the expected result came. “No!” roared the crowd. If they hadn’t responded, he had people planted through their ranks who would have led the cry of protest.
“Did we ask for this law to be changed?”
“No!” The response echoed around the clearing.
“So why did he do it?” This time, he continued immediately. “To secure the succession of his own family. To ensure that his granddaughter would inherit the throne. And her daughter.” When the King had changed the law, his granddaughter was yet to be born. But people were willing to overlook hard facts in the height of their passion.
“Was he right to do it?”
“NO-O-O!”
“Was it just?”
“NO-O-O!”
“Or was it an act of selfish arrogance—and total disregard for the people of this kingdom?”
“YE-E-S!”
He paused, letting their fervor die down a little, then resumed in a lower, more reasonable tone.
“Can a woman lead this country in time of war?” He shook his head. “No, she cannot. A woman isn’t strong enough to stand up to our enemies. What does a woman know about war and military matters and holding our borders secure?”
This time he held out his hands, prompting an answer, and got it.
“NOTHING! NOTHING!”
“Then, my friends, the time has come for us to act upon what is right! To change this unjust, this unasked-for, this godless law back to the old law of this land. Are you with me?”
“YES!” they shouted.
But it wasn’t enough for him. “Are you ALL with me? Will we go back to the old way? The right way? The way of the gods?”
“YESSSS!”
Their roar of agreement was so deafening that they woke the starlings roosting in the trees around the clearing. Vulpus Rutilus turned away to hide his smile of triumph. When he had his features under control, he turned back, speaking now in a low voice that had them craning forward to listen.
“Well, my friends, now is the time for the Red Fox Clan to rise up. In two months’ time, we will gather at Araluen Fief, and then I will give you your orders.”
1
They were coming closer to Maddie’s hiding place.
There were a dozen of them, spread out in a long cordon, five meters apart and covering sixty meters of territory. Each one carried a flaming torch, holding it high to dispel the gathering gloom of twilight. She was approaching the line of searchers head-on. If she could break through the line, or simply remain unseen while they passed her, she would be free and clear.
Actually, “hiding place” was something of an overstatement for Maddie’s position. She was simply lying prone, covered from head to toe by her cloak, among knee-high, dried stalks of grass.
In the fields on either side of the one she had selected to hide in, the grass grew waist high, waving gently in the early evening breeze. It would have provided better concealment from the dozen men searching for her. But she had chosen the shorter grass for a reason.
They would expect a fugitive to seek concealment in the longer grass, so they would look more carefully there. The short stubble where she lay provided only scant cover, and the searchers would study the ground with less attention to detail, assuming they would easily spot someone trying to stay concealed there.
At least, that was what she hoped when she had selected her current path through the search line. In addition, the fields on either side were narrower, so the searchers would be closer together. Since they’d expect her to be hiding there, they would pay greater attention to the ground and any abnormalities they might see there.
Like a huddled shape under a gray-green Ranger cloak.
The uncertain light also gave her an advantage. The sun had sunk below the horizon, and only a reflection of its light remained in the western sky. It cast long shadows and pools of darkness across the rough surface of the field. And instead of aiding the searchers, the light from the pitch-fed torches was flickering and uneven, making their task even more difficult as it shifted and wavered.
She could sense the yellow glow of one of the torches now, as a searcher came closer. She resisted the unbearable temptation to look up and see where he was. Her face was darkened by the mud and grime she had smeared on it before setting out to break through the cordon. But even so, it would shine as a pale oval in the dusk. And the movement would be even more noticeable. She lay, facedown, her eyes fixed on the stalks of dry grass a few centimeters from her face, seeing the yellow torchlight creeping over them, casting shadows that gradually shortened as the source of light grew closer and closer.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she h
eard the rustle of boots. She could hear the blood pulsing in her ears like a drumbeat.
Trust the cloak. The old mantra, drummed into her brain over and over by her mentor, repeated itself now. The searcher couldn’t hear her heartbeat. That was a fanciful notion, she knew. And if she stayed still as a corpse, he wouldn’t see her either. The cloak would protect her. It always had in the past, and it would do so now.
“All right! I see you. Stand up and surrender.”
The voice was very close. It couldn’t have been more than three meters away. And there was a confident tone to it. For a second, she nearly gave in to the urge to stand. But then she remembered Will’s words when he had been instructing her in the art of remaining unseen by searchers.
They may try to trick you into showing yourself. They might call out that they can see you and tell you to stand up. Don’t fall for it.
So she lay motionless. The voice came again. “Come on! I said I can see you!”
But the voice wasn’t as confident as it had been. There was a distinct uncertainty to it, as if the searcher realized the ruse had been unsuccessful—or that there was nobody near him concealed in the rough grass. After a few more seconds, he muttered a soft curse and began to move again. His boots crunched in the stubble, and she sensed he had passed her by—which meant he was casting his gaze ahead of him and away from her. She watched the tiny shadows thrown by the grass stalks elongate and angle to the left. He was moving to the right, then.
She realized she had been holding her breath and silently released it, feeling the tension in her body ease. Her heart rate slowed from its wild gallop to a more controlled canter.
In a few minutes, he’d be clear of her and unable to hear any slight noise she might make moving. She waited, counting slowly to 120, listening as the rustle of his boots moved away until she could no longer hear them. She tensed her muscles. When she had gone to ground, her left arm had been thrown out ahead of her. Her right was doubled underneath her body, and she would use that to help her rise from the ground a few centimeters and begin to creep slowly away from her hiding spot.