The Tournament at Gorlan (21 page)

T
HERE
WERE
STILL
FIVE
DAYS
B
EFORE
THE
TOURNAMENT
WAS
set to begin. Halt and Crowley had three days to wait before they could make the rescue attempt. Between them, they had come up with a plan of action. Crowley sat now, working on an arrow he had taken from his quiver.

He was binding two small iron rings to the shaft, just behind the warhead, pulling the rawhide thong tight, then fastening it with a quick series of half hitches. He tested the firmness of the binding, saw that the rings were securely held in place, and nodded. The rawhide thong was wet, having been soaked in water for some time before he tied it in place. As it dried out, it would shrink and the binding would become even more secure.

Halt took the finished product from his hands and turned it round, inspecting it keenly. The rings were set either side of the shaft, at right angles to the razor-sharp warhead.

“Two rings?” he asked, although he thought he knew the answer.

“For balance,” Crowley said. “We only need one, but that would throw off the balance of the shaft and make it more difficult to hit the mark.”

Halt inclined his head. “I could hit it with an hour's practice,” he said. “And this adds twice the weight.”

“The extra weight won't be significant. You're only shooting over a range of thirty meters or so. Might as well keep the shaft balanced as much as we can.”

“I suppose so.” Halt watched as Crowley took two more rings and a second length of saturated rawhide and began to make another identical arrow. The redhead sensed his gaze and looked up.

“Just making a couple of spares. Inconceivable as it might seem, you could miss.”

Halt grunted. “Remember, you'll also be shooting one from the top of the bluff to the terrace. Better make three or four spares.”

Crowley ignored him. As he worked, his companion began to study the coils of rope they had brought with them. Even without seeing the castle, they had known that they would have to cross the river and scale the walls—and those tasks would require plenty of rope. They'd purchased two large coils, and an equal amount of light twine, in a village they had passed on the way to Castle Wildriver. The iron rings came from a smithy in the same village and they had also bought an extra saddle horse—a long-legged young gelding with strength and speed in his lines. Duncan would need a good horse when they escaped. Once they reached the tournament grounds, Arald would supply him with a trained battlehorse.

Crowley grunted slightly as he heaved the second rawhide thong as tight as he could, then quickly knotted it. He tested the firmness of the knots, then set the arrow aside so that the rawhide could dry.

“Once they're dry, we should try a few shots to get used to the different weight,” he said.

Halt nodded, then reached for the coffeepot standing to one side of their small fireplace. “Just time for a mug of coffee in the meanwhile.”

Crowley was already beginning to work on a third arrow. “Good idea,” he said. Then he frowned as a thought struck him. “Have you noticed that Leander puts milk in his coffee?”

Halt grunted. “The man's a savage.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “This from the man who laces his coffee with honey?”

“Honey is natural,” Halt told him. “Milk is little short of an
abomination.”

For the next three days, they observed the castle, paying particular attention to the lack of sentries. What few guards there were tended to remain in the shelter of their guardhouses, well back from the parapet. Every hour or so, they would make a brief patrol around the walls, occasionally glancing down into the gorge beneath them, where the river thundered through the gap.

“They're complacent,” Halt observed critically.

“The castle hasn't been attacked in the past twenty years,” Crowley replied. “I suppose they think the river forms enough of a barrier. It would take hours to get an assault party across it. And then they'd be facing a sheer granite wall. Still, it's all the better for us.”

On the fourth day, immediately after one of the infrequent patrols, they moved down to the riverbank to a spot opposite the base of the castle. The roaring water shot past them, only a few meters away. Spray hung in the air and Halt kept his bow under his cloak, to prevent the bowstring becoming soaked and useless.

Idly, he twirled one of the specially prepared arrows between the fingers of his right hand. Crowley had done a good job. The arrow felt a little head-heavy compared with a normal shaft, but its balance was true and it turned evenly in his fingers. He looked up at the battlements, towering high above them. There was no sign of any guards keeping watch. They're overconfident, he thought. Crowley had told him that it had been years since there had been any assault on the castle. Apparently, the inhabitants felt the raging water was sufficient protection. Only a madman would consider crossing it.

“Like me,” he muttered to himself.

Crowley touched Halt's arm and pointed across to the far bank. “There,” he said. “The tree stump.”

At some time in the past, a massive tree had been cut down, close by the base of the castle wall. Possibly the castle's defenders thought it posed a threat, providing a way for attackers to climb the wall and gain access to one of the lower windows or turrets. They had sawn through the tree on an angle, so that when it fell, it would drop away from the castle and into the stream. Now, only a stump just over a meter tall remained, with its angled top facing them—a pale oval of dense hardwood.

Halt nodded, eyeing the smooth face of the stump, gauging the shot. The distance was less than thirty meters, but he knew the arrow would drop faster than a normal arrow.

“Get the line ready,” he told Crowley, as he uncovered his bow and nocked the arrow to the string.

Crowley took a length of light line from under his cloak and ran its end through one of the iron rings behind the arrow's broadhead. The broadhead itself was heavy iron and razor-sharp, designed to punch easily through an enemy's shield and chain mail.

He moved to one side, wrapping one end of the line around his wrist and letting the rest of it lie on the riverbank in smooth coils, ready to run out when the arrow was under way. There were a few twigs on the riverbank and he carefully removed them, making sure nothing would snag or impede the line. There was at least sixty meters of line in the coiled rope, enough to bridge the river twice. The end was fastened to a small sapling behind them.

“Keep the line clear,” Halt said, his eyes still fixed on the
target as he saw, in his mind, the path of the arrow and its trailing length of line.

Crowley checked one more time. “It's clear,” he said. “Just make sure you don't tread on it with your big, clumsy feet.”

“Clumsy yourself,” Halt muttered. But he checked carefully as he set his feet in a balanced stance, making doubly sure the line was nowhere near them. He began to draw the bow back to its full draw. The string and wood creaked loudly under the eighty-five-pound strain but his face showed no sign of the massive effort it took.

Crowley moved to stand a little ahead of him, holding the line clear.

“Stop jumping around,” Halt told him.

Crowley decided it was better not to make a sarcastic reply, but to let his friend concentrate on the shot. It wasn't a difficult shot by any means, but Halt's life would be depending on it.

“I won't move,” he said calmly. Halt snorted, then drew in a deep breath, sighted, exhaled half the breath and released.

The arrow flashed across the river, dead on line for the tree stump, the arc of the twine following behind it as it unwound smoothly out of the coils on the ground between them.

The arrow slammed into the tree stump, three centimeters from the center, and buried the barbed iron head deep into the hardwood.

“You missed,” Crowley said.

Halt glanced at him, unsmiling. “There's a crack in the center of the stump. I aimed to miss it.” He set his bow to one side and reached for the coil of heavier rope that they had brought with them. Quickly, he tied it to the end of the light line that now stretched in a double loop across the river, and tested the knot.

“Haul it in,” he told Crowley.

The redheaded Ranger began hauling the light line in, feeling it running smoothly through the greased iron ring on the arrow. Before long, the heavier line began to jerk out across the river in pursuit of the lighter line. Halt held the second rope as high as possible, maintaining a light tension on it to keep it clear of the racing water.

As the heavier line reached the ring, there was a moment of resistance as the knot joining the two lines jammed slightly. Crowley gave it a little slack, then tried again. This time, the knot ran through smoothly, and the thicker rope began its return journey across the river, pulled along by the light twine.

Once they had the end back on their side of the bank, they secured the double line to a solid tree trunk behind them and tugged on the rope to test that the arrowhead was firmly set. There was no sensation of movement or looseness. Crowley surveyed the rope, sagging in an arc so that it was a meter above the river's surface.

“I think you're good to go,” he said.

He helped Halt into a harness they had fashioned from a few meters of rope. It had loops for his arms and ran round his chest, fastening at the front. He took the loose end and formed a loop over the rope spanning the river, tying it off with several half hitches. He tested the knots for security and stepped back, satisfied.

“Are you sure I'll need this?” Halt asked doubtfully.

“You'll need it. If you let go of the rope, you'll be swept five hundred meters downstream before you can draw breath—although breathing might be a problem in itself. You'd be hard pressed to keep your head above water in that current,” Crowley
told him.

“I wasn't planning on letting go of the rope,” Halt said.

Crowley raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Halt stepped toward the river's edge, treading carefully on the wet, uneven rocks. Crowley steadied him as he stepped into the water at the edge of the bank. He was wearing only his shirt and trousers, and had left his boots on the riverbank.

Halt cursed as the water rose to his knees.

“What is it?” Crowley asked, instantly concerned.

“It's cold,” Halt told him.

Crowley shook his head in relief. “Of course it's cold. It's fed by snowmelt. That's why I wanted you to do this part.”

Halt glared at him and stepped farther into the river. The bottom shelved steeply and with one more step he was chest deep. He gasped as the cold water rose round his body, then he pushed off into the stream.

Instantly, he was engulfed by the racing, ice-cold water. His feet were swept from under him. He gasped again, then the violent current forced him under and his hands let go of the rope. With the gasp, he released most of the air in his lungs and found himself twisting violently underwater, held by the harness around his chest, and with no air. He had been turned onto his back and he reached wildly behind him for the rope. But his reach was restricted by his position and his hands grasped uselessly at the water. He was blinded by the wild rush of the water against his eyes and he felt his lungs bursting as he tried desperately to get his head above water for air. Water forced its way up his nostrils and he coughed once, unable to prevent the reflex action. Immediately, he swallowed more
water. He thought he heard Crowley call out but he couldn't make out the words. In any case, he couldn't answer his friend. The urge to take a breath was becoming unbearable, even though he knew he was underwater and any such action would spell the end for him.

After all the dangers he had faced in his young life, he thought this was a particularly useless way to die—twisting and turning on the end of a rope in a river, like a hooked trout. In spite of himself, he allowed a little water to force its way into his mouth, instantly coughed and gagged and swallowed more water. His chest was bursting with the need for air. He knew he couldn't last much longer. Then he managed to twist onto his side and his flailing left hand touched something.