The Ruins of Gorlan ra-1 Page 5

  Halt grunted. He pointed to one of the small rooms Will had noticed as he entered.

  "That'll be your room. You can put your things in there." He moved away to the woodstove in the kitchen area and Will hesitantly entered the room he had indicated. It was small but, like the rest of the cottage, it was also clean and comfortable-looking. A small bed lay alongside one wall. There was a wardrobe for clothes and a rough table with a washing basin and jug on it. There was also, Will noticed, another vase of freshly picked wildflowers adding a bright spot of color to the room. He put his small bundle of clothes and belongings on the bed and went back into the main room.

  Halt was still busy by the stove, his back to Will. Will coughed apologetically to attract his attention. Halt continued to stir coffee into a pot on the stove.

  Will coughed again.

  "Got a cold, boy?" asked the Ranger, without turning around. "Er… no, sir."

  "Then why are you coughing?" asked Halt, turning around to face him.

  Will hesitated. "Well, sir," he began uncertainly, "I just wanted to ask you… what does a Ranger actually do?"

  "He doesn't ask pointless questions, boy!" said Halt. "He keeps his eyes and ears open and he looks and listens and eventually, if he hasn't got too much cotton wool between his ears, he learns!"

  "Oh," said Will. "I see." He didn't, and even though he realized that this was probably no time to ask more questions, he couldn't help himself, repeating, a little rebelliously, "I just wondered what Rangers do, is all."

  Halt caught the tone in his voice and turned to him, a strange gleam in his eye.

  "Well then, I suppose I'd better tell you," he said. "What Rangers do, or more correctly, what Rangers' apprentices do, is the housework." Will had a sinking feeling as the suspicion struck him that he'd made a tactical error. "The… housework?" he repeated. Halt nodded, looking distinctly pleased with himself.

  "That's right. Take a look around." He paused, gesturing around the interior of the cabin for Will to do as he suggested, then continued, "See any servants?"

  "No, sir," Will said slowly.

  "No sir indeed!" Halt said. "Because this isn't a mighty castle with a staff of servants. This is a lowly cabin. And it has water to be fetched and firewood to be chopped and floors to be swept and rugs to be beaten. And who do you suppose might do all those things, boy?"

  Will tried to think of some answer other than the one which now seemed inevitable. Nothing came to mind, so he finally said, in a defeated tone, "Would that be me, sir?"

  "I believe it would be," the Ranger told him, then rattled off a list of instructions crisply. "Bucket there. Barrel outside the door. Water in the river. Ax in the lean-to, firewood behind the cabin. Broom by the door and I believe you can probably see where the floor might be?"

  "Yes, sir," said Will, beginning to roll up his sleeves. He'd noticed the water barrel as he approached, obviously holding the day's water supply for the cabin. He estimated that it would hold twenty or thirty buckets full. With a sigh, he realized he was going to have a busy morning.

  As he walked outside, the empty bucket in one hand, he heard the Ranger say contentedly as he poured himself a mug of coffee and sat down again: "I'd forgotten how much fun having an apprentice can be."

  Will couldn't believe that such a small and seemingly neat cottage could generate so much cleaning and general maintenance. After he had filled the water barrel with fresh river water (thirty-one buckets full), he chopped wood from a stack of logs behind the cabin, piling the split firewood into a neat stack. He swept out the cabin, then, after Halt decided that the rug on the living room floor needed beating, he rolled it up, carried it outside and draped it over a rope slung between two trees, beating it savagely so that clouds of dust flew from it. From time to time, Halt leaned out the window to give him encouragement, which usually consisted of curt comments such as "You've missed a bit on the left side" or "Put some energy into it, boy."

  When the rug had been replaced on the floor, Halt decided that several of his cooking pots didn't gleam with sufficient intensity.

  "We'll have to give them a bit of a scouring," he said, more or less to himself. Will knew by now that this translated to:

  "You'll have to give them a bit of a scouring." So, without a word, he took the pots to the river's edge and half filled them with water and fine sand, scouring and polishing the metal until it gleamed.

  Halt, meanwhile, had moved to a canvas chair on the verandah, where he sat reading through a tall pile of what looked to be official communications. Passing by once or twice, Will noticed that several of the papers bore crests and coats of arms, while the vast majority were headed with a simple oakleaf design.

  When Will returned from the riverbank, he held the pots up for Halt's inspection. The Ranger grimaced at his distorted reflection in the bright copper surface.

  "Hmmm. Not bad. Can see my own face in it," he said, then added, without a hint of a smile, "May not be such a good thing."

  Will said nothing. With anyone else he might have suspected it was a joke, but with Halt you simply couldn't tell. Halt studied him for a second or two, then his shoulders lifted slightly in a shrug and he gestured for Will to return the pots to the kitchen. Will was halfway through the door when he heard Halt behind him say: "Hmmm. That's odd." Thinking the Ranger might be talking to him, Will paused at the door.

  "I beg your pardon?" he said suspiciously. Each time Halt had found a new chore for him to attend to, he had seemed to begin the instruction with a statement like "How unusual. The living room rug is full of dust." Or "I do believe the stove is in dire need of a new supply of firewood," It was an affectation that Will had found more than a little annoying over the day, although Halt seemed to be quite fond of it. This time, however, it seemed that he had been genuinely musing to himself as he read through a new report-one of the oakleaf-crested ones, Will noted. Now, the Ranger looked up, a little surprised that Will had addressed him. "What's that?" he said.

  Will shrugged. "Sorry. When you said 'that's odd,' I thought you were talking to me."

  Halt shook his head several times, still frowning at the report in his hand. "No, no," he said, a trifle distractedly. "I was just reading this…" His voice trailed away and he frowned thoughtfully. Will, his curiosity roused, waited expectantly. "What is it?" he finally ventured to ask. As the Ranger turned those dark eyes on him, he instantly wished he hadn't. Halt regarded him for a second or two.

  "Curious, are you?" he said at length, and when Will nodded uncomfortably, he went on in an unexpectedly milder tone. "Well, I suppose that's a good trait for a Ranger's apprentice. After all, that's why we tested you with that paper in the Baron's office."

  "You tested me?" Will set the heavy copper kettle down by the door. "You expected me to try to see what it said?" Halt nodded. "Would have been disappointed if you hadn't. Also, I wanted to see how you'd go about it." Then he held up a hand to forestall the torrent of questions that were about to tumble out of Will's mouth. "We'll discuss that later," he said, glancing meaningfully at the kettle and the other pots. Will stooped to retrieve them, and turned back to the house once more. But curiosity still burned in him and he turned to the Ranger again.

  "So what does it say?" he asked, nodding toward the report. Again there was a silence as Halt regarded him, perhaps assessing him. Then he said:

  "Lord Northolt is dead. Apparently killed by a bear last week while out hunting."

  "Lord Northolt?" Will asked. The name was vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn't place it.

  "Former supreme commander of the King's army," Halt told him, and Will nodded, as if he had known this. But, since Halt seemed to be answering his questions, he was emboldened to continue.

  "What's so odd about it? After all, bears do kill people from time to time."

  Halt nodded. "True. But I would have thought Cordom Fief was a little far west for bears. And I would have thought Northolt was too experienced a hunter to go after one alone." He shr
ugged, as if dismissing the thought. "But then again, life is full of surprises and people do make mistakes." He gestured toward the kitchen again, indicating that the conversation was over. "When you've put those away, you might like to clean out the fireplace," he said.

  Will moved to do as he was told. But a few minutes later, as he walked past one of the windows to the large fireplace that took up most of one wall in the living room, he glanced out to see the Ranger tapping the report thoughtfully on his chin, his thoughts obviously a long way away.

  Chapter 8

  Sometime late in the afternoon, Halt finally ran out of jobs for Will. He looked around the cabin, noting the gleaming kitchen implements, the spotless fireplace, the thoroughly swept floor and totally dust-free rug. A stack of firewood lay beside the fireplace and another stack, cut and split into shorter lengths, filled the wicker basket beside the kitchen stove.

  "Hmmm. Not bad," he said. "Not bad at all."

  Will felt a surge of pleasure at the sparing praise, but before he could feel too pleased with himself, Halt added, "Can you cook, boy?"

  "Cook, sir?" Will asked uncertainly. Halt raised his eyes to some unseen superior being.

  "Why do young people invariably answer a question with another question?" he asked. Then, receiving no reply, he continued, "Yes, cook. Prepare food so that one might eat it. Make meals. I assume you do know what food is – what meals are?"

  "Ye-es," Will answered, careful to take any questioning inflection out of the word.

  "Well, as I told you this morning, this is no grand castle. If we want to eat food here, we have to cook food here," Halt told him.

  There was that word we again, Will thought. Every time so far that Halt had said we must, it had seemed to translate to mean you must.

  "I can't cook," Will admitted, and Halt clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

  "Of course you can't! Most boys can't. So I'll have to show you how. Come on."

  He led the way to the kitchen and introduced Will to the mysteries of cooking: peeling and chopping onions, choosing a piece of beef from the meat safe, trimming it and cutting it into neat cubes, then chopping vegetables, searing the beef in a sizzling pan, and finally adding a generous dash of red wine and some of what Halt called his "secret ingredients" The result was a savory-smelling stew, simmering on the top of the stove.

  Now, as they waited for the dinner to be ready, they sat on the verandah in the early evening and talked quietly.

  "The Rangers were founded over one hundred and fifty years ago, in King Herbert's reign. Do you know anything about him?" Halt looked sideways at the boy sitting beside him, tossing the question out quickly to see his response.

  Will hesitated. He vaguely remembered the name from history lessons in the Ward, but he couldn't remember any details. Still, he decided he'd try to bluff his way through it. He didn't want to look too ignorant on his first day with his new master.

  "Oh… yes," he said, "King Herbert. We learned about him."

  "Really?" said the Ranger expansively. "Perhaps you could tell me a little about him?" He leaned back and crossed his legs, getting himself comfortable. Will cast about desperately in his memory, trying to remember even a shred of detail about King Herbert. He'd done… something, but what?

  "He was…" He hesitated, pretending to gather his thoughts. "The king." That much he was sure of, and he glanced at Halt to see if he could stop now. Halt merely smiled and made a rolling gesture with his hand that meant go on.

  "He was the king… a hundred and fifty years ago," Will said, trying to sound certain of his facts. The Ranger smiled at him, gesturing for him to continue yet again.

  "Ummm… well, I seem to recall that he was the one who founded the Ranger Corps," he said hopefully, and Halt raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

  "Really? You recall that, do you?" he said, and Will had a horrible moment where he realized that Halt had merely said the Rangers were founded during his reign, not necessarily by him.

  "Ahhh, well, when I say he founded the Rangers, I actually mean he was the king when the Ranger Corps was founded," he said.

  "A hundred and fifty years ago?" Halt prompted. Will nodded emphatically. "That's right."

  "Well, that's remarkable, seeing how I just told you those facts a minute or so ago," the Ranger said, his eyebrows coming down like thunderclouds over his eyes. Will thought it might be better if he had said nothing. Finally, the Ranger said, in a milder tone: "Boy, if you don't know something, don't try to bluff your way through it. Simply tell me `I don't know,' is that clear?"

  "Yes, Halt," Will said, eyes downcast. There was a silence, then he said, "Halt?"

  "Yes?"

  "About King Herbert… I don't really know," Will admitted. The Ranger made a small snorting noise.

  "Well, I never would have guessed," he said. "But I'm sure you'll remember when I tell you that he was the one who drove the northern clans back over the border into the Highlands?" And, of course, the moment he mentioned it, Will did remember. King Herbert was known as the "Father of Modern Araluen." He had banded the fifty fiefs together into a powerful union to defeat the northern clans. Will could see a way to regain a little credit in Halt's eyes now. If he mentioned the "Father of Modern Araluen" title, maybe the Ranger would…

  "He's sometimes known as the Father of Modern Araluen," Halt was saying, and Will realized he'd left it too late. "He created the union between the fifty fiefs that's still our structure today."

  "I sort of remember that now," Will put in. He thought the addition of "sort of" helped it sound as if he wasn't just being wise after the event. Halt looked at him, one eyebrow raised, then continued.

  "At the time, King Herbert felt that to remain safe, the kingdom needed an effective intelligence force."

  "An intelligent force?" said Will. "Not intelligent. Intelligence. Although it does help if your intelligence force is also intelligent. Intelligence is knowledge of what your enemies, or your potential enemies, are up to. What they're planning. What they're thinking. If you know that sort of thing in advance, you can usually come up with a plan to stop them. That's why he founded the Rangers-to keep the kingdom informed. To act as the eyes and ears of the kingdom."

  "How do you do that?" Will asked, his interest aroused now. Halt noted the change in tone and a momentary gleam of approval touched his eyes.

  "We keep our eyes and ears open. We patrol the kingdom – and beyond. We listen. We observe. We report back." Will nodded to himself, thinking. Then he asked: "Is that the reason why you can make yourselves invisible?"

  Again, the Ranger felt that moment of approval and satisfaction. But he made sure the boy didn't notice it.

  "We can't make ourselves invisible," he said. "People just think we can. What we do is make ourselves very hard to see. It takes years of learning and practice to do it properly – but you already have some of the skills required."

  Will looked up, surprised. "I do?"

  "When you crossed the castle yard last night, you used the shadows and the movement of the wind to conceal yourself, didn't you?" Will nodded. "Yes." He'd never met anyone before who actually understood his skill for moving without being seen. Halt continued. "We use the same principles: to blend into the background. To use it to conceal us. To become part of it."

  "I see," said Will slowly.

  "The trick is to make sure that nobody else does," Halt told him. For a moment, Will thought the Ranger had made a joke. But when he looked up, Halt was as grim-faced as ever.

  "How many Rangers are there?" he asked. Halt and the Baron had referred more than once to the Ranger Corps, but Will had only ever seen one-and that was Halt.

  "King Herbert established the Corps at fifty. One for each of the fifty fiefdoms. I'm based here. My colleagues are based at the other forty-nine castles throughout the kingdom.

  "In addition to providing intelligence about potential enemies, Rangers are the law keepers," said Halt. "We patrol the fiefdom assigned to us a
nd make sure that the laws are being obeyed."

  "I thought Baron Arald did that," Will put in. Halt shook his head.

  "The Baron is a judge," he said. "People bring their complaints to him so he can settle them. Rangers enforce the law. We take the law out to the people. If a crime has been committed, we look for evidence. We're particularly suited to that role since people often don't realize we're around. We investigate to see who's responsible."

  "What happens then?" Will asked. Halt gave a small shrug. "Sometimes we report back to the baron of the fief and he'll have the person arrested and charged. Sometimes, if it's a matter of urgency, we just… deal with it."

  "What do we do?" Will asked before he could stop himself. Halt gave him a long, considering look.

  "Not too much if we've only been an apprentice for a few hours," he replied. "Those of us who've been Rangers for twenty years or more tend to know what to do without asking."

  "Oh," said Will, suitably chastened. Halt continued.

  "Then, in times of war, we act as special troops – guiding the armies, scouting before them, going behind enemy lines to cause the enemy grief and so on." He glanced down at the boy. "It's a bit more exciting than working on a farm." Will nodded. Perhaps life as a Ranger's apprentice was going to have its appeal after all. "What sort of enemies?" he asked, After all, Castle Redmont had been at peace for as long as he could remember.

  "Enemies from within and without," Halt told him, "People like the Skandian sea raiders – or Morgarath and his Wargals."

  Will shivered, recalling some of the more lurid stories about Morgarath, the Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night. Halt nodded somberly as he saw Will's reaction.

  "Yes," he said, "Morgarath and his Wargals are definitely people to be worried about. That's why the Rangers keep an eye on them. We like to know if they're gathering, if they're getting ready for war."

  "Still," said Will, as much to reassure himself as for any other reason, "the last time they attacked, the barons' armies made mincemeat out of them."