Ranger's Apprentice 1 & 2 Bindup (21 page)

Inside the ruined, overgrown courtyard, Halt crouched among the tumbled masonry that had once been Morgarath's stronghold. His leg, numb where the Kalkara had clawed him, was beginning to throb painfully and he could feel the blood seeping past the rough bandage he had thrown around it.

Somewhere close by, he knew the second Kalkara was searching for him. He heard its shuffling movements from time to time and once even its rasping breath as it moved close to his hiding place between two fallen sections of wall. It was only a matter of time before it found him, he knew. And when that happened, he was finished.

He was wounded and unarmed. His bow was gone, smashed in that first terrifying charge when he had fired arrow after arrow into the first of the two monsters. He knew the power of his bow and the penetrative qualities of his razor-sharp, heavy arrowheads. He couldn't believe that the monster had continued to absorb that hail of
arrows and still come on, seemingly undaunted. By the time it faltered, it was already too late for Halt to turn his attention to its companion. The second Kalkara was almost upon him, its massive, taloned paw smashing the bow from his grasp, so that he barely had time to scramble for safety onto the ruined wall.

As it clawed its way after him, he had drawn his saxe knife and struck at the terrible head. But the beast was too fast for him and the heavy knife glanced off one of its armoured forearms. At the same time, he found himself confronted by its red, hate-filled eyes and felt his mind leaving him, his muscles freezing in terror as he was drawn to the horrific beast before him. It took an immense effort to wrench his eyes away from the creature's gaze, and he staggered back, losing the saxe knife as the bear-like claws swiped at him and ripped down the length of his thigh.

Then he had run, unarmed and bleeding, trusting to the maze-like confusion of the ruins to evade the monster behind him.

He had sensed the change in the Kalkara's movements around late afternoon. Their steady and previously undeviating path to the north-east suddenly changed as the two beasts abruptly separated, each turning through ninety degrees and moving in different directions into the forest that surrounded them. Their trails, up until then so easy to follow, also showed signs of concealment, so that only a tracker as skilled as a Ranger would have been able to follow them. For the first time in years, Halt felt a cold
stone of fear in his belly as he realised that the Kalkara were now hunting him.

The Ruins were close by and he elected to make a stand there, rather than in the woods. Leaving Abelard safely out of harm's way, he made his way on foot to the Ruins. He knew the Kalkara would come after him once night fell, so he prepared as best he could, gathering deadfall wood to form the bonfire. He even found half a jar of cooking oil in the ruins of the kitchen. It was rancid and foul smelling but it would still burn. He poured it over the pile of wood and moved back to a spot where he could place the wall at his back. He had fashioned a supply of torches and kept them burning as darkness fell and he waited for the implacable killers to come for him.

He sensed them before he saw them. Then he made out the two shambling forms, darker patches against the darkness of the trees. They saw him immediately, of course. The flickering torch jammed into the wall behind him made sure of that. But they missed the pile of oil-soaked wood – and that was what he had been counting on. As they screamed their hunting cries, he tossed the burning torch into the pile and the flames leapt up instantly, flaring yellow in the darkness.

For a moment, the beasts hesitated. Fire was their one nemesis. But they saw the Ranger was nowhere near the flames and they came on – straight into the hail of arrows that Halt met them with.

If they'd had another hundred metres to cover, he might have managed to stop them both. He still had over a dozen arrows in his quiver. But time and distance were against him and he had barely escaped with his life. Now,
he huddled beneath two pieces of masonry that formed an A-shaped refuge, hidden in a shallow indentation in the ground, his cloak concealing him, as it had for years. His only hope now was that Will would arrive with Arald and Rodney. If he could evade the creature until help came, he might have a chance.

He tried not to think of the other possibility – that Gilan would arrive before them, alone and armed only with his bow and sword. Now that he had seen the Kalkara close up, Halt knew that one man had little chance of standing against one. If Gilan arrived before the knights, he and Halt would both die here.

The creature was quartering the old courtyard now like a hunting dog in search of game, adopting a methodical search pattern, back and forth, examining every space, every cranny, every possible hiding place. This time, he knew, it would find him. His hand touched the hilt of his small throwing knife, the only weapon left to him. It would be a puny, almost useless defence, but it was all he had left.

Then he heard it: the unmistakable heavy drumming of battlehorses' hooves. He looked up, watching the Kalkara through a small gap between the rocks that concealed him. It had heard them too. It was standing erect, its face turned towards the sound outside the ruined walls.

The horses stopped, and he heard the ringing scream of the mortally wounded Kalkara outside as it challenged these new enemies. The hoofbeats rose again, gaining speed and momentum. Then there was a scream and a gigantic red flash that towered for a moment into the sky. Dimly, Halt reasoned that the first Kalkara must have been thrust into the fire. He began to inch back, wriggling out of
his hiding place. Perhaps he could outflank the remaining Kalkara, moving to the side and scaling the wall before it noticed him. The chances seemed good. Its attention was drawn now to whatever was happening outside. But even as he had the thought, he realised it was no option. Though the Kalkara had apparently forgotten him for the moment, it was moving stealthily towards the tumbled masonry that formed a rough stairway to the top of the wall.

In a few more minutes, it would be in position to drop on his unsuspecting friends on the other side, taking them by surprise. He had to stop it.

Halt was clear of the hiding place now, the small knife sliding free of the sheath almost of its own volition as he ran across the courtyard, dodging and weaving among the scattered rubble. The Kalkara heard him before he had gone half a dozen paces and it turned back on him, terrifying in its silence as it loped, ape-like, to cut him off before he could warn his friends.

Halt stopped suddenly, stock-still, eyes locked on the shambling figure coming at him.

In another few metres, its hypnotic gaze would seize control of his mind. He felt the irresistible urge to look into those red eyes growing stronger. Then he closed his own eyes, his brow furrowed in fierce concentration, and brought his knife hand up, back and forward in one smooth, instinctive memory throw, seeing the target moving in his mind's eye, mentally aligning the throw and the spin of the knife to the point in space where knife and target would arrive simultaneously.

Only a Ranger could have made that throw – and only one of a handful of them. It took the Kalkara in its right eye
and the beast screamed in pain and fury as it stopped to clutch at the sudden lance of agony that began in its eye and seared all the way to the pain sensors in its brain. Then Halt was running past it for the wall, scrambling up the rocks.

Will saw him as a shadowy figure as he scrambled onto the top of the ruined wall. But shadowy or not, there was something unmistakable about it.

‘Halt!' he cried, pointing so that the two knights saw him as well. All three of them saw the Ranger pause, look back and hesitate. Then a huge shape began to appear a few metres behind him as the Kalkara, whose wound was painful but nowhere near mortal, came after him.

Baron Arald went to remount. Then, realising that no horse could pick its way through the tumble of rocks and masonry beside the wall, he dragged his huge broadsword from its saddle scabbard and ran towards the ruins.

‘Get back, Will!' he shouted as he advanced and Will nervously edged Tug back to the fringe of the trees.

On the wall, Halt heard the shout and saw Arald running forward. Sir Rodney was close behind him, a huge battleaxe whirring in circles around his head.

‘Jump, Halt! Jump!' the Baron shouted and Halt needed no further invitation. He leapt the three metres from the wall, rolling to break his fall as he landed. Then he was up on his feet, running awkwardly to meet the two knights as the wound in his leg re-opened.

Will watched, his heart in his mouth, as Halt ran towards the two knights. The Kalkara hesitated a moment
then, screaming a bloodcurdling challenge, it leapt after him. But, whereas Halt had rolled to recover, the Kalkara simply transformed the three-metre drop into a huge, bounding leap, its unbelievably powerful rear legs driving it up and forward, covering the ground between it and Halt in that one movement. The massive arm swung, catching Halt a glancing blow and sending him rolling forward, unconscious. But the beast had no time to finish him off, as Baron Arald stepped up to meet it, the broadsword humming in a deadly arc for its neck.

The Kalkara was wickedly fast and it ducked the killing blow, then slammed its talons into Arald's exposed back before he could recover from the stroke. They slashed the chain mail as if it were wool and Arald grunted in pain and surprise as the force of the blow drove him to his knees, the broadsword falling from his hands, blood streaming from half a dozen deep slashes in his back.

He would have died then and there had it not been for Sir Rodney. The Battlemaster whirled the heavy war axe as if it were a toy, and crashed it into the Kalkara's side.

The armour of wax-matted hair protected the beast, but the sheer force of the blow staggered it so that it reeled back from the knight, screaming in fury and frustration. Sir Rodney advanced, placing himself protectively between the Kalkara and the prone figures of Halt and the Baron, his feet set, the axe drawing back for another crushing blow.

And then, strangely, he let the weapon fall from his grasp and stood before the monster, totally at its mercy as the power of the Kalkara's gaze, now channelled through its one good eye, robbed him of his will and his ability to think.

The Kalkara screamed its victory to the night sky. Black blood streamed down its face. Never in its life had it felt such pain as these three puny men had inflicted on it. And now they would die for presuming to stand against it. But the primitive intelligence that drove it wanted its moment of triumph and it screamed again and again over the three helpless men.

Will watched, horrified. A thought was forming, an idea was lurking somewhere at the edge of his mind. He looked to one side, saw the flickering torch that Baron Arald had discarded. Fire. The one weapon that could defeat the Kalkara. But he was forty metres away …

He whipped an arrow from his quiver, slipping from the saddle and running lightly to the flickering torch. A good supply of sticky, melted pitch had run down the handle of the torch and he quickly rolled the arrowhead in the soft, clinging stuff, forming a huge gobbet of it on the arrow. Then he placed it in the flame until it flared to life.

Forty metres away, the huge evil creature was satisfying its need for triumph, its screams rolling and echoing through the night as it stood over the two bodies – Halt unconscious, Baron Arald in a daze of pain. Sir Rodney still stood, frozen in place, hands dangling helplessly by his side as he waited for his death. Now the Kalkara raised one massive, taloned paw to strike him down and all the knight could feel was the paralysing terror of its gaze.

Will brought the arrow back to full draw, wincing at the pain as the flames singed against his bow hand. He raised his aim point a little to allow for the extra weight of the pitch, and released.

The arrow soared in a spark-trailing arc, the wind of its
passage subduing the flame to a mere coal. The Kalkara saw the flash of light coming and turned to look, sealing its own fate as the arrow struck it square in its massive chest.