Ranger's Apprentice 12: The Royal Ranger

by John Flanagan

  There were two men on the road. They were a little past the spot where she had led the children off the high way and towards the caves, so they had obviously seen no sign that she had done so. She blessed her sudden instinct to have the children spread out. Even a non-tracker would have seen the deep swathe they would have cut through the grass if they’d moved in a tight-knit group.

  She had no doubt who the men might be and her heart sank. If they had come this far, it meant that Will had been taken. He never would have let them pass otherwise. He was probably lying dead somewhere back along the road. Her eyes filled with tears but she shook them away, angrily. If that were the case, she wanted to know. She wanted to be sure. And if he were dead, she would take her revenge on Ruhl and his gang – starting with the two on the road.

  They had paused uncertainly, looking up the road to the north, seeing no sign of the fugitives. She could just hear the dim mutter of their voices. They looked around the surrounding area and she forced herself to remain still. Movement could give away her position. As it was, she was just another dark mound among the rocks.

  The men’s voices were raised as they began to argue. She still couldn’t make out the words but the gestures and body language were unmistakable. One of them kept gesturing to the north. Obviously, he thought they should continue. The other threw up his arms in disgust and turned back to the south, beginning to retrace his steps.

  His companion shouted angrily at him. Then, with a shrug of resignation, he followed suit. They were still arguing as they headed back towards Hawkshead Bay.

  Maddie waited until they were out of sight, then hurried back inside the cave. She hesitated, weighing her choices. All her instincts were telling her to go after Will, to see if he was alive and if he needed help. But if she did, she would be deserting the children.

  She paced the sand floor of the cave for several minutes, torn by indecision. She knew Will would tell her that her responsibility lay with the children. But she couldn’t bring herself to agree. This was Will, her godfather, her mentor. She thought about the hours they had spent together in the woods around Redmont, the hours of calm, patient instruction and his quiet pleasure when she succeeded in a task he had set her. And she knew she couldn’t desert him. Even if he were dead, she had to know what had become of him – and if she abandoned him now, she might never find out.

  Her decision made, she looked around for Tim Stoker and saw him sleeping soundly by the wall of the cave. She moved to him, dropped to one knee and shook his shoulder gently. His eyes flew wide open and she could see the instant alarm in them.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s Maddie.’

  The panic in him died down and he knuckled his eyes drowsily.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked.

  Maddie shrugged. She had no idea of the exact time.

  ‘It’s still night,’ she said. ‘I want you to take charge here. I’m going back to find Will.’

  ‘What’s happened to him?’ he asked. The tension was back in his body and it was evident in his voice.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. He may have been taken by the Stealer.’ She didn’t say he may have been killed. She feared that saying it might make it real.

  Tim looked around at the sleeping children. The cave was dim and quiet, with only the occasional murmuring of one of the former captives as they tossed in their sleep.

  ‘Should I wake them up?’ he asked but again she shook her head.

  ‘Let them sleep. Go back to sleep yourself. You’re safe here. I’ll be back for you tomorrow, when I’ve found Will.’

  He nodded uncertainly. He felt safe and protected while she was around. Without her, he knew they were all vulnerable.

  She patted his shoulder encouragingly. ‘Just relax. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘If you say so,’ he replied. But his voice told her that he didn’t really believe it.

  She donned her cloak and checked her weapons, then led both horses out through the narrow opening. She left them unsaddled. It was easier for them to negotiate the narrow split in the rock face that way. Once in the open, she saddled them both.

  She knotted Tug’s reins around his neck so they wouldn’t hang down to trip him, then swung up into Bumper’s saddle.

  ‘Follow, Tug,’ she ordered and the little grey tossed his head obediently. She touched Bumper with her heels and cantered slowly across the open ground to the road. She rode up onto the raised surface and looked to the south. There was no sign of the two men but she didn’t want to come upon them unexpectedly so she held Bumper down to a walk, moving along in their tracks.

  They had been moving for twenty minutes when she caught sight of moonlight glinting on something in the long grass by the side of the road. She dismounted and walked down the camber to check. It was Will’s bow. The stray beam had caught the waxed surface of the wood or she never would have seen it. Her spirits fell. Ruhl and his men had obviously caught up with him here. Probably, as she had surmised earlier, he had exhausted his supply of arrows and tossed the bow to one side so that they wouldn’t have it. She picked it up, turning it over in her hands, sadly running her finger along the smooth surface of the wood. She looked around but there was no sign of his body and she began to feel a ray of hope.

  Perhaps they had taken him prisoner. Perhaps he was still alive.

  She ran back to the horses, cramming Will’s bow into the arrow case behind Tug’s saddle, and mounted Bumper. She unslung her own bow and made sure the flap in her cloak that covered her arrows was open. She didn’t care now if she caught up to the two kidnappers on the road ahead of her. In fact, she found she was hoping that she would.

  She nudged Bumper forward and he responded instantly, striding out in a full gallop so that he fairly flew along the road, his hooves barely seeming to make contact with the hard-packed surface. Tug, with no rider to burden him, kept pace easily, a couple of metres behind and to the side.

  Overhead, the moon beamed its light down on them, so that the road seemed like a pale ribbon running through the grass. The two little horses pounded on, striding in perfect unison so that they sounded like one horse running, not two.

  Five minutes later, she crested a small hill and saw the two slavers ahead of them.

  The hill had masked the drumming hoofbeats but now the men heard them and turned in panic to face her. They were two hundred metres away and she urged Bumper to greater speed, dropping the reins on his neck and guiding him with her knees, reaching behind her for an arrow.

  The man on the right had a crossbow. He raised it, aiming at her. She waited a second or two, letting his aim steady, then nudged Bumper, urging him left, then a second later, right again.

  The double shift of direction did the trick. The man panicked, overcorrected and jerked at the trigger lever too quickly as he tried to keep her in his sights. She heard the quarrel buzz past on the left like an angry hornet. Then she rose in her stirrups, drawing back the arrow. She touched Bumper lightly with her right knee and he crabbed a little to the right, as he had been trained, leaving her with a clear shot straight ahead.

  At eighty metres, she released, waiting for the split second when Bumper’s four feet were all clear of the ground. The bow thrummed and she saw the arrow speed away to its mark. The crossbowman was straining to re-cock his weapon when the arrow struck him. He dropped the crossbow and staggered a few paces, before falling face down on the road.

  His companion looked at him in horror. Then he began to run towards her, his arm drawing back the throwing spear that he carried.

  Calmly, without haste, she reloaded and shot again. Her bow was lighter than Will’s and didn’t have the same staggering hitting power. But the man dropped the spear and stopped in his tracks, staring in horror at the arrow in his side. He clutched the wound and fell to his knees, doubled over. He was sobbing in pain as Maddie swept past him at full gallop, leaving him behind in a swirl of dust.

  She didn’t draw rein until she was
three hundred metres from the clifftops at Hawkshead Bay. Then she eased the horses down to a trot, edging off the road so their hoofbeats were muffled by the thick grass. At a hundred metres’ distance, she swung down from the saddle while Bumper was still moving. Signalling to the two horses to stand fast, she crouched low and ran to the edge of the cliff, dropping to hands and knees in the last few metres, creeping forward, fearful of what she might see.

  MILL WAS TIED to a thick stake, set firmly in the coarse sand of the beach.

  The stake had been one of the supports for the mess tent, but Ruhl had his men uproot it, then replant it deep in the sand, inland from the tents. Will’s hands had been dragged behind the stake and tied securely there. His feet had been tied together at the ankles, then secured to the bottom of the pole. Finally, a third rope had been looped round his throat and the pole, keeping him standing upright.

  Around his feet, and reaching as high as his knees, the slavers had placed a vast stack of brushwood. It was already tinder dry, but Ruhl had soaked it in oil to make sure it would burn instantly, and fiercely. The throat-closing smell of the oil reached Will’s nostrils, making him want to cough. He resisted the urge, not wishing to give Ruhl any satisfaction.

  He had been tied here for several hours and his hands and feet were numb. Again and again, Will had tried to force the ropes apart, trying to stretch the fibres, or find some give in the knots themselves. But it was a futile effort. He tried once again, but he couldn’t feel his hands any more. If the ropes weren’t loosened soon and the circulation restored to his hands and feet, he thought, he’d lose fingers and toes, or even the hands themselves.

  Then he shrugged. Losing fingers was going to be the least of his worries.

  Further down the beach, about twenty metres away, Ruhl and his remaining men were seated round the camp fire, passing a flagon of Iberian brandy from hand to hand. As Will watched, the Stealer took a long swig, then placed the flagon to one side.

  He rose, a little unsteadily, then stooped and took a flaming brand from the fire.

  Weaving slightly, Ruhl made his way up the beach to where Will stood, trapped against the stake, unable to move. Will felt his stomach clench. This would be the third time Ruhl carried out the charade of pretending to light the fire around him.

  On the previous two occasions, he had taunted Will, placing the flaming torch a few centimetres from the stacked firewood, then pulling it back again at the last minute. Then he would repeat the action, so that Will never knew when his last moments were about to come.

  Would this be the time he would go ahead with his threat?

  Now Ruhl stood before his captive, unsteady on his feet, his face flushed with the effect of the alcohol. He leaned forward, peering at the bearded face before him, trying to see some sign of fear, some plea for mercy.

  ‘Well, Treaty, is this the time? Are you about to go to meet your lovely wife once more? What do you say?’

  He dipped the flaming end of the brand close to the piled oil-soaked wood. Will stared straight ahead, resisting the almost overwhelming temptation to watch as the flames wavered, inches away from the stacked branches.

  ‘How about it, Treaty? Are you going to ask me for mercy? If you do, I might give you an easy end. Just a quick sword thrust and you won’t have to worry about these flames.’

  The burning brand waved in front of Will’s face, so close that he could feel its heat against his eyes, feel his beard and eyebrows beginning to singe.

  ‘Nothing to say? You’ll make plenty of noise in a minute, when I drop this torch in the fire . . . whoops!’

  He let the torch drop, clumsily catching it again just before it fell into the stacked firewood. Will felt his stomach heave with fear. But he showed no sign of it.

  ‘That was a near-run thing, wasn’t it, Treaty?’ Ruhl sneered. He rolled his eyes and waved the torch above the firewood once more, making a mocking sing-song noise.

  ‘Get on with it, Jory. Kill him and make an end of it. Stop taunting the man.’

  One of the slavers had turned from the camp fire to watch Ruhl’s performance. He had seen him tormenting the Ranger twice before, and seen that the bearded man showed no sign of fear. He felt a grudging respect for him and, in inverse proportion, a diminishing regard for his leader. Ruhl was enjoying himself too much, he thought. Killing an enemy was one thing, but continuing to taunt and sneer and pretend, then pulling back at the last minute, showed a level of malice that even a hardened criminal couldn’t stomach.

  But Ruhl now turned on his underling in a fury.

  ‘You don’t tell me what to do, Anders!’ he shouted, his voice rising to a high-pitched level just short of hysteria. He strode angrily back down the beach to the camp fire, tossing the flaming branch to one side as he went, and confronting the man who had challenged him. He stood over the man, shouting abuse at him. Will heaved a sigh of relief and sagged a little against the cruel bonds that held him.

  ‘He’s my prisoner!’ Ruhl shouted. ‘I want to hear him beg! I want him to plead for mercy! And I will hear him do it and you will shut up. Or you will join him. Do . . . you . . . understand?’

  The man shifted back. He was at a disadvantage, sitting while Ruhl stood over him. He knew Ruhl was more than capable of carrying out the threat he had just made. But he’d worked for the Stealer for some months now, and he also knew that if he showed weakness, it could prove fatal. Ruhl preyed on weakness. Besides, he doubted that his companions would back Ruhl up and tie him to the stake with the Ranger.

  ‘It’s not going to happen, Jory, that’s all. As I say, kill him and be done with it.’

  ‘I’ll kill him when I am ready to kill him,’ Ruhl said, speaking with exaggerated precision and care. ‘And not when some third-rate cutpurse like you tells me to. Understand?’

  Anders nodded. He’d shown enough defiance, he thought. ‘Whatever you say, Jory,’ he muttered. Ruhl reached past him for the flagon and sat down heavily, his back to the prisoner tied to the stake. He didn’t see Will sag with relief as his death was postponed yet again.

  And he didn’t notice that one of the shapeless rock outcrops that studded the beach behind Will had moved several metres closer to the Ranger while he was berating his henchman.

  Maddie’s heart thumped against her ribs. She could hear it pounding and she wondered how it was not audible to those on the beach.

  She’d taken in the situation in the camp, then crept silently down the cliff path to the beach, close by the cave entrance. From there, she had moved stealthily from one large rock to another, dropping into cover as she reached each one. It was a blessing that the beach was so littered with large rocks, and that Ruhl had elected to place the stake and the fire so far up the beach, and not further down, in the clearer ground past the camp fire. She’d watched the Stealer as he taunted Will and she realised that the man was insane – dangerously insane.

  Sooner or later, he would carry out his threat and set fire to the piled brushwood around Will’s knees. And she sensed that it would be sooner. If he moved towards Will again, she believed that the time for threats would be over. Will would never give in and beg, she knew. And she sensed that Ruhl knew it as well by now. Next time he left the fire, Will would die. She was huddled on the beach now, a shapeless mass under her cloak, and only a few metres behind Will. Cautiously, she raised a corner of her cowl. The gang – what remained of them – were sitting round the fire drinking again. They were staring into the flames, which she knew would ruin their night vision. Emboldened by the realisation, she crept forward, a few centimetres at a time to avoid making noise, until she was directly behind Will. Crouched low, hidden by the pile of firewood, she drew her saxe and sliced quickly through the rope around his legs.

  She felt him tense as the rope fell away and she stood slowly, staying concealed behind him.

  ‘It’s me. Maddie,’ she breathed. ‘Hold on a moment and I’ll have you free.’

  Will groaned softly, trying to suppress the
noise. His arms and legs had been constricted by the tight bonds for hours. As the blood rushed back to his numb legs and feet, it was sheer agony. Then the saxe sliced through the rope binding his hands, and the rope around his throat.

  His hands and forearms also felt the unbearable stabbing pain of returning circulation and he sagged against the stake, unable to maintain his balance and letting out a louder groan of agony. This time, the men around the fire heard him. One of them stood up.

  ‘What was that?’

  He saw Will lurch a pace away from the stake, then clutch his arms around it as he desperately tried to regain his balance.

  ‘It’s the Ranger! He’s loose!’

  Pandemonium broke out as they grabbed for their weapons and scrambled to their feet. Maddie dropped the saxe to one side and hastily unwound her sling from her waist, loading a shot into the pouch.

  Initially, blinded by the bright flames they’d been staring into, none of Ruhl’s men noticed the dark shape behind Will. But as Maddie stepped clear to one side, her loaded sling swinging gently behind her, they saw her and hesitated.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘There’s someone with him!’

  Only Ruhl reacted immediately. He pointed to the two figures beside the stake.

  ‘Get them! Kill them!’

  But as he said the words, Maddie’s first shot smashed into one of his men.

  Studying the tableau from the top of the cliff, she had noticed that two of them wore boiled-leather breastplates and she doubted that her bow would have the power to punch through them. Accordingly, she had elected to use the sling, leaving the bow and quiver behind for the awkward climb down the cliff. Now, she realised she had made the right choice.

  The lead ball, travelling with tremendous force, smashed into the leather breastplate just below the man’s heart, bending and deforming the leather, driving a huge dent into it. The ball didn’t penetrate, but the shock of the impact did. It was transmitted directly and virtually undiminished to the slaver’s body. Two ribs caved in and a huge bruise began to form immediately. His heart faltered, picked up again. The man gave a strangled cry and fell to the ground, knees drawn up, trying to breathe, and feeling knives of pain slice into his ribs as he did.