Ranger's Apprentice 12: The Royal Ranger

by John Flanagan

  Mutely, they all nodded.

  ‘Then come on. We’re going to jog for ten minutes, then walk for twenty. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and we’ve got to do it as fast as possible. Ready? Let’s go.’

  She led the way, jogging steadily, with Bumper on her right and Tug on his far side. The children hesitated, then followed in a ragged formation. Their feet rustled and shuffled through the coarse grass. Then they reached the high road and the going was easier. They had been badly treated and ill fed, she knew. But they were children and she knew that children were usually fit. They’d manage. They’d have to manage. She was aware of someone beside her on her left. She looked around and saw Tim jogging there. He was frowning.

  ‘Maddie?’ he said, his voice jerky and staccato as his feet hit the road.

  ‘What is it, Tim?’

  ‘If Will Treaty is chasing the Stealer, why do we have to get away from here?’

  She opened her mouth to answer, then hesitated, looking round. None of the others seemed to have heard his question.

  ‘Just keep that thought to yourself, will you?’ she said.

  She saw the understanding dawning in his eyes. He nodded once, then dropped back to his former place.

  The night wore on, and Will continued his game of cat and mouse with the slavers, letting them get closer to him, tantalising them with a quick sight of him, then moving quietly and surreptitiously away. It was a fine line to tread, keeping them on the hook without letting Ruhl know that he was doing so intentionally. But once the pattern was set and Ruhl accepted it, there was no risk that he’d give up the pursuit.

  He recalled all he knew about Ruhl. In the days following Alyss’s death, he had interviewed as many of his former victims as he could. And he’d interrogated the members of his gang that he’d caught.

  He had built up a picture of a cruel, ruthless and pitiless man. Intelligent, but with a fatal flaw. He could not stand to be crossed or thwarted. If that ever happened, Ruhl would be overcome with a blind, unreasoning rage and desire for revenge.

  ‘Much like I was,’ he muttered to himself.

  That rage would often cloud Ruhl’s judgement and lead him to hasty, ill-considered decisions.

  This was how Will believed that if he could spoil Ruhl’s plan to get the children away, the slaver would pursue him unrelentingly and single-mindedly, intent only on revenge. And so it was proving.

  As the dark hours slipped away, Will led the pursuit farther and farther south, knowing with grim satisfaction that Maddie was herding the children in the opposite direction as fast as their legs, and the two horses, could carry them.

  He glanced at the sky to the east. The first vague fingers of light were stealing above the horizon. Here and there, an occasional bird began calling, predicting the coming dawn.

  ‘Time to make myself scarce,’ he said. Once daylight came, it would be more difficult, with the lack of real cover available in the area. He let himself be seen once more, hearing the shouts of his pursuers. Then he crouched, staying just below the long coarse grass, and turned hard to the right. He covered two hundred metres this way, then dropped to the ground, pulling the cloak around him. He drew the saxe from its sheath and held it ready, hearing the rustling blunder of the slavers off to his left. He’d done this so often before that he knew that they could pass within a few metres of him and never be aware of his presence. The only way they might discover him was if one of them chanced to tread on him. He gripped the saxe a little more firmly.

  If that happened, it would be bad luck, slaver.

  He listened as they trampled through the long grass and low bushes, passing him by. The nearest pursuer passed twenty metres away. He waited till the noise of their passage dwindled, then died. Then he rose, still in a crouch, and began to ghost his way back towards the north.

  DAWN WAS SEVERAL hours behind them and the children straggled wearily along the road. They walked with heads down and lowered eyes, looking only at the next metre of hard, dusty road that lay ahead of them.

  Maddie had abandoned the attempt to alternate jogging and walking. They simply couldn’t maintain that pace and when she set them jogging, the weaker ones dropped behind, until they were moving in a long, uneven line that stretched for a hundred metres along the road. And the longer they jogged, the longer that line became, as the rearmost children dropped further and further behind. Before long, she realised, without her on their heels to urge them along, they’d begin to drop out and collapse by the roadside.

  Aware of the possibility of pursuit, she kept casting anxious eyes to the horizon in the south, looking for the first sign of the slavers coming after them. Although she had immense confidence in Will’s ability to lead them away, she was conscious of something he had told her over and over again during her training.

  Any plan can go wrong, he’d say, and most of them do, sooner or later. Always be prepared for things to go wrong. If they do, you’ll be ready for them. If they don’t, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

  It was because of the fear of pursuit that she wanted them close, where she could see them and protect them if danger approached.

  So now they walked, trudging along, feet dragging. And she moved continually around the little group, urging the slower members on to greater efforts, pleading with them, cajoling them, threatening them – anything to keep them putting one foot in front of the other. She was tired herself, but she was too keyed up to notice the fact.

  ‘Come on, Julia,’ she said to one of the older girls for perhaps the hundredth time. ‘If the little ones can keep going, so can you.’

  Julia, predictably, burst into tears and stopped walking, head down, hands knuckling her streaming eyes.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ she wailed. ‘I want to ride. It’s my turn to ride.’

  Maddie had been alternating the riders, giving each child a turn to rest on horseback for fifteen minutes at a time. Julia, she knew, had been in the previous group and had dismounted, complaining about the fact, only five minutes previously. Her turn wouldn’t come again for another twenty-five minutes at least.

  Maddie glared at her. ‘Keep moving,’ she ordered.

  Julia pouted. ‘Why can’t Rob walk? He’s been riding the whole time. It’s not fair.’

  Maddie thought grimly that if she heard Julia utter the phrase it’s not fair one more time, she would slap her. Rob was the boy with the burnt leg. He had offered to take his place among the walkers but he limped so badly and he was so slow that he held the entire group back. She had decided he should continue riding, while the other nine alternated places.

  ‘Rob has a bad leg,’ she pointed out.

  Julia glared at her. ‘Well, both my legs are sore so I want to ride too.’

  Rob had overheard the exchange. Everyone had. He leaned down towards Maddie now.

  ‘I’ll walk for a while,’ he said. ‘She can take my place.’

  Maddie looked up at him, her face grim. ‘No, she can’t,’ she said firmly. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her legs. She’s just being selfish.’

  Julia sniffed. The tears were going to start again, Maddie thought. She moved closer to the girl and spoke in a low voice that only Julia could hear.

  ‘See that mound over there, beyond the bush with purple leaves?’ she said. Julia turned and looked at the spot she had indicated. The mound was nothing remarkable. It was just a small hillock. The girl nodded, frowning a little, wondering why Maddie had pointed it out.

  ‘Well, that’s an old burial mound. There are a lot of them in these parts.’

  Julia’s eyes widened at the words ‘burial mound’. She looked at the mound, then back at Maddie.

  ‘There are –’ Maddie sought for a properly frightening word and remembered her conversation by the river at Danvers Crossing ‘– grave wights in there. You know what a grave wight is, don’t you?’

  Julia shook her head. She didn’t know, but she didn’t like the sound of the word.

  ‘A wight is
an evil spirit that lives in a grave. They have long teeth and terrible claws and they attack people passing by and drag them into the grave to become wights like themselves.’

  Her imagination was taking wings now. So was Julia’s. Her face was pale.

  ‘But wights are afraid of one thing only . . .’ She paused, then nodded her head towards Bumper and Tug. ‘Horses. They can’t stand to be around horses. So as long as Bumper and Tug are with us, we’re safe.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Julia found her voice at last. It was a very small voice.

  Maddie nodded confidently. ‘I’m positive,’ she said. ‘But here’s the thing. If you don’t stop whining and complaining and wanting special treatment, I’m going to leave you here on your own. And once the horses are out of sight, the grave wights will come out after you.’

  Julia gave a mewling squeak of fear. Tears were flowing down her cheeks again. But these weren’t the same as the previous self-pitying tears. Now she was genuinely fearful. Maddie sighed unhappily. She felt incredibly guilty at using scare tactics to keep Julia going and she despised herself for doing so.

  I’m no better than the Storyman, she thought. But she was only young herself, barely a few years older than Julia, and she too was close to exhaustion. On top of that, she was at her wits’ end to find a way to keep the other girl moving. Over the course of the morning, she had pleaded and cajoled and begged. But Julia was sunk deep in her own welter of self-pity and nothing Maddie had tried could motivate her. She saw that her scare tactics had finally got through and, reluctantly, she decided to continue. It could be a matter of saving the girl’s life, after all.

  ‘Now you’d better keep going,’ she said. ‘You’d better keep walking. And you’d better stop complaining. Or I’m going to leave you behind for the wights. Understand?’

  Julia looked into Maddie’s eyes. She could see no sign of pity there, only the harsh determination to do as she was threatening. Julia wiped her eyes with the back of her hands and nodded.

  ‘Then GET MOVING!’ Maddie roared at her.

  Galvanised by the shout and the fear of grave wights, Julia stepped out smartly, overtaking the line of walking children and making her way to the very front. She kept looking repeatedly over her shoulder to the mound of earth, as if expecting to see spectral forms rising from it at any minute. But she kept walking, and with renewed energy.

  The boy Tim had been an interested audience to this exchange between Maddie and Julia. He stepped closer to Maddie now. His eyes were red-rimmed with weariness and his face was caked with a thin layer of dust where it had settled on the perspiration, then dried. But in spite of that, he smiled.

  ‘Grave wights and burial mounds?’ he said softly. ‘Looks like an ordinary old run-of-the-mill hill to me.’

  Maddie shook her head wearily. ‘She asked for it.’

  Tim nodded. ‘And she got it.’

  It was an hour after dawn when Jory Ruhl realised he’d been duped.

  There’d been no sighting of that cloaked, dark figure since well before first light. They had blundered on, heading south, looking for another glimpse of him. During the hours of darkness, these had come frequently enough, so that they could keep track of the direction he was taking. He had rarely been more than a hundred and fifty metres ahead of them, sometimes closer.

  Now he had disappeared. There was open ground before them, covered with that ubiquitous long, coarse grass, and Ruhl could see for three kilometres. But there was no sign of the man they were pursuing.

  Ruhl began to curse violently. The man had obviously given them the slip after that final sighting, encouraging them to keep hurrying south while he slipped away in another direction.

  One of his henchman, the dark-cloaked man who had accompanied Ruhl on the raid at Willow Vale, hurried over.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  Ruhl turned on him furiously. ‘That blasted archer has tricked us! He’s led us on and then backtracked in another direction, curse him!’

  The cloaked man looked around uncertainly. ‘Are you sure?’ he said, and instantly suffered the penalty for doubting Jory Ruhl. The Stealer swung his fist backhanded and struck the man, sending him staggering.

  ‘Of course I’m not sure, you fool! If I was sure, I’d know where to find him!’ he screamed, flecks of spittle flying from his lips. Instinctively, his follower backed away. He’d seen what Ruhl could do in a rage like this.

  ‘All right, Jory, take it easy,’ he pleaded, his hands up in a placating gesture. But Ruhl was beyond any calming down.

  ‘Why am I surrounded by incompetents?’ he demanded. ‘Didn’t any of you think he might have slipped away? Didn’t anyone notice that we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him for over an hour?’

  Didn’t you? the cloaked man thought. But he was wise enough not to voice the question.

  Ruhl looked around his followers and realised one was missing. There was no sign of the Storyman.

  ‘And where the blazes is Victor? I’ll wager he’s skived off to the camp and is sitting around drinking ale and doing nothing! That’s just what the lazy swine would do! Typical of him! Typical of all of you, you useless bunch of incompetents.’

  Nobody could tell him what had become of the Storyman, and Ruhl stormed up and down, screaming abuse and insults at his men, cursing them for not noticing his absence, and for not realising that their quarry had given them the slip. They had all seen how unpredictable Ruhl could be in this sort of mood. They all gave him room, moving away from him. And they all avoided making eye contact.

  All except one – one of the Iberian sailors who had joined their group when La Bruja had slipped out on the ebbing tide. He stepped forward, meeting Jory’s gaze steadily.

  ‘Jefe, I think you may be right,’ he said.

  Ruhl turned on him with withering scorn. ‘Oh, you do, do you? How very perceptive of you. And what do you propose to do about it?’

  The man shrugged, ignoring the sarcasm and the rage. ‘In my country, before I was sailor, I was hunter.’

  ‘Well, let’s give three cheers for you, you ignorant Iberian peasant!’ Ruhl replied. He went to turn away angrily, but the man raised his voice a little and continued.

  ‘I was a perseguidor, a –’ he searched for the Araluan word, then found it ‘– a tracker. I could follow the tracks animals made.’ He indicated his feet, then the ground below them. ‘And men,’ he added.

  Ruhl’s rage dissipated as quickly as it had begun. He turned back, looking at the man with narrowed eyes.

  ‘Are you a good . . . perseguidor?’ he asked carefully.

  The man shrugged. ‘I was the best in my province,’ he said simply. ‘I think I can find where this man has gone.’

  Slowly, very slowly, a smile began to broaden over Ruhl’s face.

  The dark-cloaked man shook his head. The smile was possibly more unpleasant than the red-faced screaming, spitting bout of rage that had preceded it. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering about his leader’s sudden changes of mood, the way he could go from screaming fury to total calm in a blink of an eye – and back again.

  There was something very wrong in that mind, he thought.

  ‘I’M GOING TO have to give them a real rest soon,’ Maddie muttered to herself.

  She’d just called a ten-minute break, and the children sank wearily and gratefully to the ground on the side of the road. Maddie helped Rob down from the saddle. He thanked her and limped to the roadside, sitting down carefully to avoid jolting his throbbing leg.

  Even he was exhausted and he’d been riding the entire time. The others were silent, almost catatonic. For hours, they’d concentrated on placing one foot in front of another, until it seemed there was nothing else in their lives. Maddie went to unhook the water skin from Bumper’s saddle. Suddenly, the effort seemed too much for her and she leaned her head against the black and white coat for a few precious seconds. Her legs ached. Her feet were sore. There was a blister forming on her right
heel and, for the moment, she could go no further.

  Why don’t you ride for a while?

  She looked up. Bumper had turned his head to look at her. His big brown eye was full of sympathy and concern for her wellbeing. She shook her head.

  Can’t. I have to keep going or they’ll think they can stop.

  Bumper trembled the skin and muscles of his shoulder, as horses do. To Maddie, it looked suspiciously like a shrug – and she knew horses couldn’t shrug. Once again, she reached up for the water skin. It was less than half full by now, even though she had been doling it out as sparingly as she could manage since they’d been on the road. There was another skin hanging from Tug’s saddle, but she’d used that first and it was virtually empty.

  She took a swig of the lukewarm, leather-flavoured water, then slung the skin over her shoulder and began moving among the exhausted children, passing the skin to them, making sure that nobody took more than his or her fair share.

  She’d just taken the skin back from one of the youngest girls when Tim Stoker, who was standing in the middle of the road, at its highest point, called softly to her.

  ‘Maddie. Someone’s coming.’

  Her heart missed a beat and she hurried to stand beside him. He was shading his eyes with his right hand, peering away to the south, and she began searching in the same direction.

  There was a figure just cresting the horizon. That would be the direction she could expect Ruhl and his gang to come from – if they had given up the chase after Will.

  It would also be the direction from which she might expect Will. But she was conscious of his teaching – always expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed.

  She looked at the children. None of them, aside from Tim, showed any interest in the distant figure. They sat on the roadside, heads down, elbows cradled on knees.

  They were at the end of their tether, she knew. If that figure in the distance was a forward scout, if Ruhl’s men were just over the horizon, she would never get them moving fast enough to avoid recapture.