Ranger's Apprentice, Book 8: The Kings of Clonmel: Book 8 Read online

  The corners of Crowley’s mouth turned down in an expression of distaste. “ The usual sort, I’m afraid.” He glanced at Gilan for confirmation. “You know the type of thing, don’t you, Gil?”

  Gilan nodded. “Only too well. ‘Come join our new religion,’ ” he mock quoted. “ ‘Our god is the only true god and he will protect you from the doom that is coming to the world. You will be safe and secure with us. Oh . . . and by the way, would you mind giving us all your valuables for the privilege of being kept safe?’ Is that the sort of thing?” he asked.

  Crowley sighed heavily.“That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. They warn people about impending disaster, and all the time, they’re the ones who are planning to cause it.”

  Gilan poured three steaming cups of coffee and passed them around.

  Crowley watched as the two younger Rangers spooned generous helpings of wild honey into theirs. He shook his head. “Never could get used to the taste of honey in my coffee. Halt and I used to argue over that in our younger days.”

  Will grinned.“If you’re Halt’s apprentice, you don’t have a choice. You learn to shoot a bow, throw a knife, move silently and put honey in your coffee.”

  “He’s a fine teacher,” Gilan said, sipping his coffee appreciatively. “So did Halt say what this new cult calls itself? They usually come up with some portentous-sounding name,” he added, in an aside to Will.

  “He didn’t say,” Crowley said. He seemed to be hesitating over whether to voice his next statement. Then he came to a decision. “He’s worried this might be a new outbreak of the Outsiders.”

  The name meant nothing to Will, but he saw Gilan’s head come up.

  “The Outsiders?” Gilan said. “I remember that name. It must have been in the second year of my apprenticeship. Didn’t you and Halt go off together to see them on their way?”

  Crowley nodded. “Along with Berrigan and several other Rangers.”

  “That must have been quite a cult,” Will said, surprise in his voice. There was an old Araluen saying—“One riot, one Ranger”—which meant that it rarely took more than a single Ranger to solve the biggest problems.

  “It was,” Crowley agreed. “ They were a very unpleasant bunch of people, and their poison had gone deep into the heart of the countryside. It took us some time to get the better of them. That’s why Halt is so intent on finding out more about this new group. If they’re a recurrence of the Outsiders, we’ll have to act quickly.”

  He tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire and set his cup down.

  “But let’s not worry about what might be a problem until we know that it is. In the meantime, we have a Gathering to organize. Gil, I was wondering if you’d give our two final-year apprentices some extra tuition in unseen movement?”

  “Of course,” Gilan said. If Crowley was an expert at moving without being heard, Gilan was the Corps’ master at moving without being seen. To a large degree, his skill was dependent upon instinct, but there were always practical tips he could pass on to others.

  “And as for you, Will,” Crowley said, “we have three first-years this season. Would you be interested in assessing their progress?”

  He saw Will’s attention snap back to the present. He could tell that the young man was still nursing his disappointment over the fact that his former teacher would not be coming. Just as well to give him something to take his mind off it, the older Ranger thought.

  “Oh, sorry, Crowley! What was that you said?” Will asked, a little guiltily.

  “Would you care to help out assessing our three first-years?” Crowley repeated, and Will nodded hastily.

  “Yes, by all means! Sorry. I was just thinking about Halt. I’ve been looking forward to seeing him,” he explained.

  “We all have,” Crowley said. “His grumpy face brings a special light to our day. But there’ll be time enough for that later.” He hesitated briefly. “As a matter of fact . . . no, never mind. That’ll keep.”

  “What will keep?” Will’s curiosity was aroused now, and Crowley smiled to himself. Curiosity was the sign of a good Ranger. But so was discipline.

  “Never mind. It’s something I’ll tell you about when the time is right. For now, I’d appreciate it if you’d coach the boys in archery and oversee a tactical exercise with them.”

  “Consider it done.” Will thought for a few seconds, then added, “Do I need to set the tactical exercise?”

  Crowley shook his head. “No. We’ve done that. Just see them through solving it. It should amuse you,” he added cryptically. He rose and dusted off the seat of his trousers. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said. “See you at the feast tonight.”

  3

  “ALL RIGHT,” WILL TOLD THE THREE BOYS, “LET’S SEE YOU SHOOT. Ten arrows each.”

  He indicated three large, standard bull’s-eye-design targets set up seventy-five meters downrange. The three stepped forward to the firing line. A little farther down the line, two senior Rangers were practicing, shooting at targets no bigger than a large dinner platter, set at the one-hundred-and-fifty-meter mark. For a few moments, the three first-year apprentices watched in awe as the two marksmen slammed arrow after arrow into the almost invisible targets.

  “Anytime before sunset would be fine,” Will drawled. He had no idea that he was mimicking the dry, mock-weary tone of voice that Halt had used with him when he was first learning the skills of a Ranger.

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” said the nearest of the three boys. They all looked at him, wide-eyed. He sighed.

  “Stuart?” he said to the boy who had spoken.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You don’t call me sir. We’re both Rangers.”

  “But . . . ,” began one of the other boys. He was stockily built and had a mass of red hair that flopped untidily over his forehead. Will searched his memory for the boy’s name: Liam, he remembered.

  “Yes, Liam?”

  The boy shuffled awkwardly.“But we’re apprentices, and you’re—” He stopped. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say. It was probably something ridiculous like, “But we’re apprentices, and you’re you.”

  Because although Will didn’t know it, he was a subject of awe for these boys. He was the legendary Will Treaty, the Ranger who had rescued the King’s daughter from Morgarath’s Wargal army, then protected her when they were kidnapped by raiding Skandians. Then he had trained and led a company of archers in the battle against the Temujai riders. And only the previous year, he had repelled a Scotti invasion on the northern frontier of the kingdom.

  These three would look up to any graduate Ranger. But Will Treaty was only a few years older than they were, and so was a subject for hero worship of the highest degree. As a result, they had been somewhat surprised when they met him. They had expected a larger-than-life figure—a hero in classical terms. Instead, they were introduced to a fresh-faced, youthful person with a ready smile and a slim build, who stood a little less than average height. Had Will realized it, he would have been amused and more than a little embarrassed. It was exactly the sort of reaction he was used to seeing in people who met Halt for the first time. Unknown to him, his own reputation was beginning to rival that of his former teacher.

  Will may not have comprehended the hero worship these boys felt for him personally. But he did understand the gulf they felt existed between a Ranger and an apprentice. He had felt the same way.

  “You’re apprentice Rangers,” he said. “And the important word there is Rangers.” He tapped the silver oakleaf amulet that hung around his neck. “As a wearer of the Silver Oakleaf, I might expect obedience and some level of deference from you. But I do not expect you to call me sir. My name is Will, and that’s what you call me. You’d call my friend Gilan and my former master Halt, if he were here. That’s the Rangers’ way.”

  It was a small point, he knew, but an important one. Rangers were a unique breed and on occasion they needed to assert authority over people who were nominally far senior to them in r
ank. It was important that these boys knew that they might one day need to call upon the power and trust that the King conferred upon his Rangers. All of them—apprentices and graduates alike. The self-confidence they would need to do so was built initially by their sense of equality with their peers in the Ranger Corps.

  The three apprentices exchanged glances as they took in what Will had said. He saw their shoulders straighten a little, their chins come up fractionally.

  “Yes . . . Will,” said Liam. He nodded to himself, as if trying the word out and liking what he heard. The others echoed the sentiment, nodding in their turn. Will gave them a few moments to savor the sense of confidence, then glanced meaningfully at the sun.

  “Well, sunset’s getting closer all the time,” he said to himself. He hid a smile as three arrows slid out of their quivers. A few seconds later, three bows twanged and he heard the familiar scrape-slither as the shots were on their way to the target.

  “ Ten shots,” he said. “ Then we’ll see how you’re doing.”

  He strolled to a nearby tree and sat beneath it, his back leaning comfortably against the trunk. With his cowl pulled up and his face in shadow, he seemed to be dozing.

  But his eyes were moving ceaselessly, missing nothing as he studied every aspect of the three boys’ shooting technique.

  For the next two days, Will assessed their skills with the bow, correcting small faults in technique as he did so. Liam had developed a habit of measuring his full draw by touching his right thumb to the corner of his mouth.

  “Touch your mouth with your forefinger, not the thumb,” Will told him. “If you use the thumb, your hand tends to twist to the right, and that will throw the arrow off line when you release.”

  Liam nodded and made the slight adjustment. Immediately, his accuracy improved—particularly on the longer shots, where the slight change in angle had a greater effect.

  Nick, the quietest of the three, was gripping his bow too tightly. He was an intense young man and eager to succeed. Will sensed that was where the viselike grip came from. Nick was allowing his determination to affect the relaxed grip that the bow needed. A tight grip meant the bow often skewed to the left at the moment of release, resulting in a wild, inaccurate shot. Again, Will corrected the fault and set the young man to practice.

  Stuart’s technique was sound, without any major faults at this stage. But like the others, his skill would only reach the required Ranger level with hours of practice.

  “Practice and more practice,” Will told them. “Remember the old saying: ‘An ordinary archer practices until he gets it right. A Ranger practices . . .’?” He let the phrase hang in the air, waiting for them to finish it off.

  “Until he never gets it wrong,” they chorused. He nodded, smiling approval.

  “Remember it,” he said.

  On the third day, however, there was a respite from the hours of practice with the bow. The previous evening, the boys had received the written outline of the tactical exercise that had been set for them. They had spent the hours between dinner and lights-out going over the problem and forming their first ideas for a solution.

  Will had received the details of their assignment at the same time. He shook his head when he read the outline.

  “Crowley and his sense of humor,” he said, closing the folder in mild exasperation. Gilan looked up from where he was sewing up a tear in his cloak. He’d chosen to demonstrate unseen movement through a thorntree clump that afternoon, and his cloak had paid the price.

  “What’s he done?” he asked.

  Will smacked the folder with the back of his hand. “This tactical assignment. The one he said would amuse me? The boys have to devise a way to besiege and capture a castle garrisoned by invaders and set in a northern fief. They have to recruit a suitable attacking force and take the castle. Sound familiar?”

  Gilan grinned. “I’ve heard of someone having a similar problem,” he admitted.

  It was almost identical to the situation that had faced Will the previous winter, at Castle Macindaw.

  “Seems like my life’s become a walking tactical exercise,” Will grumbled.

  He was closer to the truth than he realized. Crowley had circulated a detailed account of the siege to the entire Corps. Will’s fellow Rangers had studied his tactics and were highly impressed by them. Those with apprentices had begun using the siege as an example of initiative and imagination in dealing with the problem of having a much smaller force than common tactical wisdom would deem suitable.

  Gilan knew all this, but he didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell Will. He sensed that his friend might be embarrassed at the thought of such notoriety. Naturally, Will had been the only Ranger in the Corps who had not received Crowley’s summary.

  “What resources do they have available?” Gilan asked.

  Will frowned as he opened the folder again, turning to the Assets and Resources list. Having been set the problem, the boys were given certain resources they could draw on to help them devise a solution.

  “A traveling jongleur,” he read. That had been his own disguise at Macindaw. “Very funny. He won’t be much help. One mounted knight—hello, Horace. The former garrison of the castle—forty of them, scattered all over the countryside, of course. A troop of acrobats, tumblers and players . . . hmmm, they could be handy. And the people of the local village.”

  “No shipwrecked Skandians or reformed sorcerers?” Gilan teased him gently.

  Will snorted in derision. “No. At least he’s spared me that.”

  He trailed off, chewing on a fingernail as he mulled over the problem. Acrobats. They could be handy in getting to the top of the wall. He riffled through a few pages to find the diagram of the castle. Wall height was between three and four meters. A formidable barrier for a normal man. But a trained acrobat might . . .

  He snapped himself out of it, slamming the pages shut once more. It wasn’t his problem. The three boys had to find a way to solve it. All he had to do was assess the practicality of their solution.

  “Sounds like fun,” Gilan murmured.

  Will shook his head. “I can’t wait to see what they come up with.”

  4

  HALT LAY UNMOVING IN THE GORSE ABOVE THE VILLAGE OF Selsey, his cloak concealing him from sight, his eyes moving constantly as he surveyed the scene below him. He had been observing the village for several days, unseen by any of its inhabitants or by the new arrivals who had taken up residence on the shore.

  Selsey was a small and humble fishing village. A dozen or so cottages were clustered at the northern end of the beach, at the foot of the steep hill. The beach itself was narrow—barely a hundred meters wide. It lay at the end of a shallow cove, where a roughly triangular bite was taken out of the rocky coastline.

  The hills on three sides slanted steeply down to the water and the narrow beach. They were high enough to protect the village and the bay from the wind and storms that could sweep along this coastline. The fourth side was open to the sea, but even on that side, Halt’s keen eyes could make out the swirl of water that marked a bar just inside the mouth of the cove—a jumble of rocks below the water’s surface that would break up the big waves as they tried to come pounding in, driven by a westerly wind.

  On the southern side of the cove, he could see a narrow section of calm, undisturbed water—deeper water that marked a passage through the bar. That would be the point where the handful of fishing boats pulled up on the beach would gain access to the open sea.

  He took in the condition of the cottages. They were small, but they were far from hovels. They were well built, freshly painted and comfortable looking.

  The boats were in similar condition. The masts and booms were recently varnished to protect them from the damage caused by the salt air and water. The sails were neatly furled along their booms. The rigging was taut and well maintained, and the hulls were all in good condition and had obviously been painted not too long ago.

  So while the village might
appear small and unimportant at first glance, a closer scrutiny told a different story. This was a well-ordered little community. And in a section of coast where there were few other sheltered spots like this, the fishermen would find ready markets for their catch in the neighboring villages. That meant it was a prosperous community—and probably had been for years on end.

  And that, of course, explained the presence of the Outsiders here. His eyes narrowed as the thought struck him. He’d been right to forgo the Gathering this year and track down the source of the vague rumors that had been coming in from the West Coast of Araluen.

  They were vague because this wild stretch of coastline was one of the few areas in the country that was under the jurisdiction of none of the fifty fiefs. It was a patch of land that had slipped through the cracks when the fief boundaries had been drawn up, many years ago. Possession of the area had been disputed, with a group of displaced Hibernians claiming it for their own. The Araluen King at the time took a quick look at the rugged, inhospitable coastal area and decided they were welcome to it. He had bigger problems on his mind as he tried to weld fifty recalcitrant, bickering barons into a cohesive governing structure for the country as a whole.

  So this twenty-kilometer section of coastline was left to its own devices. Of course, had the King realized that he was ceding control of one of the best natural harbors within a hundred kilometers, he might have acted differently. But the existence of this little cove was a well-kept secret. So the little fishing settlement had prospered quietly over the years, beholden to no one and answerable to no king.

  Yet it lay close to the extreme western border of Redmont Fief, so in recent years Halt had taken to keeping an occasional eye on the area—unnoticed by the local inhabitants.

  In the past few months he had heard rumors about a religious cult whose behavior sounded disturbingly familiar. People spoke of newcomers who would arrive in a village or hamlet with a simple message of friendship. They would bring toys for the children and small gifts for the leaders of the community.