Ranger's Apprentice 3 & 4 Bindup (22 page)

Horace rose in his stirrups as Kicker reached a full gallop. He held the long ash pole out to his right-hand side, at right angles to his body and the line of travel. Ahead of him, standing unmoving in the middle of the field situated in front of the castle, Halt drew back the string of his longbow until the feathered end of the arrow touched the corner of his mouth.

Horace urged the battlehorse to an even faster pace, until they had reached maximum speed. He glanced out to his right, to make sure the helmet that he had attached to the end of the pole was still in the correct position, facing Halt. Then he looked back at the small figure on the grass before him.

He saw the first arrow released, spitting from the bow with incredible force and speeding towards the moving target. Then, in an almost incomprehensible blur of motion, Halt's hands moved and another arrow was on the way.

Almost at the same time, Horace felt a double concussion transmitted down the length of the ash pole he held out, as the two shafts slammed into the helmet within the space of half a second.

He allowed Kicker to ease down to a canter as they passed Halt, taking the horse in a wide circle to come to a stop before the Ranger. Halt now stood with his bow grounded, waiting patiently to see the result of his practice. Horace let the pole and the attached helmet dip to the ground in front of him. Both shafts, incredibly, had found their way through the helmet's vision slits and into the soft padding that Halt had put inside to protect the razor-sharp arrowheads.

As Halt took the old helmet in his hands, Horace swung his leg over the pommel and slid to the ground beside him. The grizzled Ranger nodded once as he inspected the result of his target practice.

‘Not bad,' he said. ‘Not bad at all.'

Horace dropped the end of his reins, allowing Kicker to wander off and crop the short, thick grass that grew on the tournament field. He was puzzled and more than a little worried by Halt's actions.

After the challenge had been issued and accepted, Deparnieux had agreed to return their weapons. Halt claimed that he had not fired an arrow in weeks and would need to hone his skills for the combat. Deparnieux, who practised his own combat skills daily, saw nothing unusual in the request. So the weapons had been returned, although the two Araluans were watched closely by at least half a dozen crossbowmen whenever they practised.

For the past three days, Halt had instructed Horace to gallop down the field, the helmet held out on the end of a pole, as he fired shafts at the eyeholes. Every time, at least one of the two shafts had found its mark. Generally, Halt managed to put both arrows through the tiny spaces he was aiming at.

Yet this was no more than Horace expected of the Ranger. Halt's skill with a longbow was legendary. There was no need for him to practise now, particularly when, by doing so, he was revealing his tactics to the Gallic warlord.

‘Is he watching?' Halt asked quietly, seeming to read Horace's thoughts. The Ranger had his back to the castle walls and couldn't see. But Horace, moving his eyes only and not his head, could make out the black silhouette at one of the castle's many terraces, hunched over the balustrade watching them – as he had done every time they had taken the field.

‘Yes, Halt,' he said now. ‘He's watching. But is it wise for us to do this where he can see?'

The very faintest trace of a smile seemed to touch the Ranger's lips.

‘Possibly not,' he replied. ‘But he'd make sure he saw us no matter where we practised, wouldn't he?'

‘Yes,' Horace admitted reluctantly, ‘but surely you don't need to practise, do you?'

Halt shook his head sadly. ‘Spoken like a true apprentice,' he said. ‘Practice never hurt anyone, young Horace. Bear that in mind when we get back to Castle Redmont.'

Horace eyed Halt unhappily as he eased the two arrows free from the straw and leather padding that filled the inside of the helmet.

‘There's something else,' he began, and Halt held up a hand to stop him.

‘I know, I know,' he said. ‘Your precious rules of chivalry are bothering you again, aren't they?' Horace was forced to nod reluctant agreement. It was a bone of contention between the two of them, and had been ever since Halt had arranged to challenge Deparnieux to a duel.

At first, the warlord had been enraged, then sarcastically amused, that a commoner might assume to challenge him.

‘I am a consecrated knight,' he spat at Halt. ‘A nobleman! I cannot be challenged to combat by any ruffian from the forest!'

The Ranger's brows had darkened at that. His voice, when he spoke, was low and dangerous. Inadvertently, both Deparnieux and Horace had leaned forward to listen more carefully to his words.

‘Guard your tongue, you lowborn cur!' Halt had replied. ‘You're speaking to a member of the royal house of Hibernia, sixth in line to the throne and with a lineage that was noble when you and yours were scouring the kennels for scraps to eat!'

And, as he had spoken, an unmistakable Hibernian burr had accented his words. Horace had looked at him in considerable surprise. He had never had the slightest idea that Halt was descended from a royal line. Deparnieux was equally taken aback by the news. He was right, of course. No knight was obliged to honour a challenge from one beneath him. But the grizzled archer's claim to royal blood put a different aspect on matters. His challenge must be treated seriously and with respect. Deparnieux could not
ignore it – particularly as it had been issued in the presence of several of his men. To refuse the challenge would undermine his position seriously.

As a result, he had accepted and the combat was set down for a week from that day.

Later, in their tower chambers, Horace had expressed his surprise about Halt's background.

‘I had no idea you were descended from Hibernian royalty,' he said. Halt snorted dismissively as he replied.

‘I'm not,' he said. ‘But our friend doesn't know that and there's no way he can prove I'm not. Therefore he has to take my challenge as binding.'

And it was this disregard for the strict conventions of chivalry that had Horace so concerned, as much as the fact that Halt seemed to be letting his enemy know exactly what tactics he had for the combat, which was now only a day away. Training in the Battleschool placed great store upon the conventions and obligations of knighthood. They were, so Horace had been taught for the past eighteen months, binding and inflexible. They placed obligations on those who would be knights and, while they gave them great privileges, those privileges had to be earned. A knight had to observe the rules. To live by them and, if necessary, to die for them.

Among the most binding and inflexible of those conventions was that of a knight's recourse to trial by combat. It was a course that could be followed only by those who were followers of one of the various chivalrous orders. Even Horace, as an unknighted warrior, wasn't strictly speaking entitled to challenge Deparnieux. But Halt certainly wasn't and the Ranger's cavalier attitude to
a system that Horace held in the highest esteem had shocked the boy – and continued to do so now.

‘Look,' said Halt, not unkindly, as he put an arm around Horace's brawny shoulders, ‘the rules of chivalry are a fine thing, I admit that. But only for those who abide by all the rules.'

‘But …' Horace began, but Halt stopped him by squeezing his shoulder.

‘Deparnieux has used those rules to kill, to plunder and to murder for god knows how many years. He accepts those parts of the rules that suit him and discards the ones that don't. You've seen that already.'

Horace nodded unhappily. ‘I know, Halt. It's just I've been taught that –'

Halt interrupted him again, but gently. ‘You've been taught by men who are noble,' he said. ‘By men who uphold the rules of chivalry – all the rules – and live according to them. Let me tell you, I know no finer man than Sir Rodney, or Baron Arald, for that matter. Men like that are the embodiment of everything that is right about chivalry and knighthood.'

He paused, looking intently at the boy's troubled face. Horace nodded agreement. Halt had chosen two of his role models in Rodney and the Baron. Seeing that he had made his point, Halt continued: ‘But a murdering, cowardly swine like Deparnieux cannot be allowed to claim the same standards as men like that. I have no compunction at all about lying to him as long as it helps me bring him to the point where I can fight him – and defeat him, with any luck.'

And at that point, Horace turned to him, his face still troubled, but perhaps a little less so.

‘But how can you hope to defeat him when he knows exactly what you plan to do?' he asked miserably. Halt shrugged and replied, without any trace of a smile:

‘Perhaps I'll get lucky.'

The hunting bow was awkward in Evanlyn's grip. She fumbled as she tried to set one of the arrows on the string, almost dropping it into the snow at her feet as she tried to keep her eyes on the small animal moving slowly across the clearing before her.

Unthinkingly, she hissed her annoyance and instantly the rabbit sat up on its hind legs, its ears twitching this way and that to see if they could catch another hint of the foreign sound it had just picked up, and the nose twitching this way and that as it sampled the air for any trace of a foreign scent.

Evanlyn froze, waiting till the animal had reassured itself that there was no immediate danger, then went back to scrabble with its forepaws in the snow, scraping it away to expose the wet, stunted grass underneath. Scarcely daring to breathe, she watched as the rabbit began to graze again, then, looking down this time, slipped the arrow onto the string, just under the nock mark that the bow's original maker had placed there.

At this point, the string had been built up in thickness, with a fine cord wound round and round it, so that the nock fitted snugly, holding the arrow in place without any need for her fingers to do so. It was a snug hold, but a light one nevertheless, and the force of the string's release would instantly break the grip and send the arrow on its way.

She brought the bow up now and began to draw back on the string with her right hand. She knew she wasn't doing this correctly. She'd seen enough archers in her time to know that this simply wasn't the way it was done. However, as she was beginning to appreciate, watching a trained archer and emulating his movements were two completely different matters. Will, she remembered, could nock and draw an arrow in one smooth, practised and seemingly effortless movement. She could picture the movement now in her mind, but it was totally beyond her abilities to re-create it. Instead she held the bow upright and quivering, gripping the arrow's nock between her finger and thumb, and attempting to draw the string back with the strength of her fingers and arm alone.

Doing it that way, she could barely manage to bring the arrow to half draw. She pursed her lips in anger. That would have to do. She closed one eye and squinted down the arrow, trying to aim it at the small creature, which was feeding contentedly and oblivious to the mortal danger lurking in the trees fringing the clearing. With more hope than conviction, she finally released her grip on the arrow.

Three things happened.

The bow jerked in her grip, throwing the arrow off its
aim by at least three metres. The arrow itself flipped out of the bow, with barely enough power behind it to cause it to pierce flesh, and the string slapped painfully against the soft inside skin of her right forearm. She yelped in pain and dropped the bow. The arrow skated off the bole of a tree and disappeared into the forest on the far side of the clearing.

The rabbit came upright again and peered at her, a look of total puzzlement seeming to come over it as it cocked its head to see her more clearly. Then, dropping to all fours, it ambled slowly out of the clearing and into the trees.

So much, she thought bitterly, for the mortal peril hanging over its head.

She picked up the bow, rubbing the painful spot on her forearm where the string had slapped her, and went to look for the arrow. After ten minutes' searching, she decided it would have to remain lost. Glumly, she headed back to the small cabin.

‘I guess I'm going to have to practise more,' she muttered.

This had been her second attempt at hunting. Her first had been equally fruitless and every bit as discouraging. For what must have been the fiftieth time, she sighed over the thought that if Will were healthy, he would have no difficulty at all in using the bow to provide food for their table.

She had shown him the bow, of course, hoping that the sight of the weapon might awaken some spark of memory within him. But he had done nothing other than stare at it with that disinterested, disingenuous expression that had become all too familiar to her.

There had been a fresh snowfall overnight and the snow was knee deep as she trudged back to the cabin. It had been the first snow in over a week and that had also set her to thinking. Winter must be more than halfway over and, eventually, when the spring came, the Skandians from Hallasholm would again begin to move through these mountains. Perhaps some might even arrive to use the cabin she and Will were wintering in. He would have to be recovered by then so they could begin the long trek south, and she had no idea how long his recovery might take. He seemed to be improving with each day, but she couldn't be sure. Nor could she really be sure how long they had until the spring thaw began to melt the snow.

They were in a race, she knew. But it was a race where she had no sight of the finish line. It could be on her any day.

The cabin came into view. She was relieved to see that a thin whisper of woodsmoke still issued from the chimney. She'd banked the fire before she'd left earlier in the day, hoping that she'd put enough fuel on to keep it burning through her absence. Nothing was more disheartening, she had already discovered, than arriving home cold and wet to a dead fire.

Naturally, there was no way she could expect Will to tend the fire while she was away. Even a simple task like that seemed beyond him. It was not, she realised, that he was unwilling. He was simply totally uninterested in doing or saying anything beyond the most basic functions. He ate, slept and occasionally came to her with that pleading expression in his eyes, asking for more warmweed. At least, she consoled herself, it had been some time since he had done that.

For the rest of the time, he simply sat wherever he might be, staring at the floor, or his hand, or a piece of wood, or whatever might have formed a focus point for his eyes at the time.

The old leather hinges on the cabin door creaked as she swung it inward. The noise was enough to draw Will's attention to her. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the cabin, much as he had been when she left, some hours earlier.

‘Hullo, Will. I'm back,' she said, forcing a smile onto her face. She always tried, living in the hope that one day he would answer her.

This was not to be that day. The boy showed no sign of reply or interest. Sighing to herself, she leaned the small bow against the wall, just inside the door. Vaguely, she realised that she should unstring the bow, but she was too dispirited to do so right at the moment.

She crossed to the pantry and took out a small piece of their dwindling supply of dried beef. There was rice there too and she began preparing the beef-flavoured rice that had become their staple meal over the last few weeks, setting water to boil so that she could steep the meat in it and prepare a thin stock with at least a little flavour to it.

She had measured out a cup of the rice and was setting it into another pan when she heard a slight noise behind her. Turning, she realised that Will had moved from the position he'd occupied for most of the afternoon. He was now sitting near the doorway. She wondered what had caused him to move, then decided that it was probably a random inclination on his part.

Then she saw what it was, and she gave a jerk of surprise, spilling some of the precious rice onto the table.

The little bow was still leaning against the wall by the door. But now, it had been unstrung.