The Ranger's Path: The King's Ranger Book 2

by AC Cobble

  Rew nodded but did not respond.

  After night fell, they scampered across the open, moonlit landscape like naughty field mice afraid of swooping owls. They followed a wending course between the low hills, keeping to the shallow valleys so their profiles would not be visible from a distance. Rew did not bother raising a fog of concealment around them again, but he did keep his senses attuned, reaching out and questing for any sign of pursuit. He felt nothing.

  As they moved, he mulled over how Duke Eeron had managed to cast a glamour covering Baron Worgon’s entire campsite. Had the same low magician that encompassed the campsite in darkness also cast upon the baron back in Yarrow? Since they’d walked into his court, Baron Worgon’s actions had not made sense to Rew, but it would take someone in the baron’s inner circle to have known about their arrival and been able to respond so quickly and effectively. And how had the duke surrounded the camp in a matter of hours with an entire army?

  There was only one answer, and Rew hated to consider the implications of it. The only way the ambush could have been staged was with the assistance of powerful users of both high and low magic. The attack had taken more spellcasting skill than Duke Eeron retained in his court, and whoever had done it had remained hidden. The fledgling necromancers they’d faced had not been capable of either the glamour nor moving such a large army into place. A hidden set of hands had supported the duke, and that made Rew nervous.

  There had been an informer close to Baron Worgon, and there had been resources arrayed to react quickly. The same person, different people? How had Worgon’s son, Fredrick, not caught the glamour before his father left, unless he was involved? But the man they’d seen wasn’t capable of high magic, was he? Rew sighed. He wasn’t going to figure out who it was with the information they had available, but he could guess why they’d done it.

  He looked back at the party and saw Cinda shuffling slowly behind him. She was still exhausted from the explosion of magic she’d unleashed the day before. The princes wanted Baron Fedgley’s necromantic talent, and if they couldn’t get it, they’d take his child’s. It was the only reason they would turn their eyes to Eeron’s duchy in the midst of the Investiture. Baron Fedgley and his children were in grave danger. The entire kingdom was, if they were found and forced to do the princes’ bidding. Of course, the entire kingdom was in danger if the Fedgleys didn’t do what Rew suspected they were capable of. Hissing in frustration, Rew kept walking. Danger surrounded them everywhere, and he didn’t know which way to run.

  Ahead of him, Anne glanced back, evidently hearing his violent exhale of breath. She raised an eyebrow, and Rew shook his head. He couldn’t tell her what he suspected—what he knew—but seeing the empath’s face gave him comfort. He understood what she would do if she had his knowledge.

  The concerns of the entire kingdom were too large for her. It was too much, too great a burden to be adequately evaluated, but the danger to the children was not. They could do something about the children. They could help them. No matter the danger, no matter the pieces moving across the kingdom, Anne would help the children.

  Raif joined him some time after that, and for half an hour, the two of them walked through the darkness without speaking. Finally, Raif acknowledged, “You were right. We shouldn’t have gone to see Baron Worgon. We lost days cooling our heels as bait in the tower, and then we nearly died in battle. Duke Eeron was a step or two ahead of the baron the entire time, and if we’d listened to you, we’d be in Spinesend already. Maybe that was our opportunity to rescue Father. With Duke Eeron focused on Baron Worgon... But now, he’ll know we’re coming.”

  Rew didn’t respond.

  “Why are you helping us?” asked the nobleman. “It’s not for any reward we can grant you, I know that. You’re risking your life for us and our father, yet I see nothing in it for you, Ranger. Is it only because Anne asked—well, that’s a polite way of saying it. Is it because Anne demanded you do so? Why does the empath have such sway over you? It’s obvious you’re a powerful man, and she’s only an innkeeper and a healer.”

  “There are different kinds of power, lad,” said Rew. He looked at the nobleman. “At first, it’s true, I was only helping because Anne asked. I thought I could get you lot off my hands and return to the wilderness before the Investiture swept me up. I’m afraid that’s not the way it worked, and now I suppose, I’m helping you because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “You don’t seem like a man who is afraid of much,” said Raif, “yet you’re afraid of the Investiture. Is it really so awful that it forced a man like you to hide away in the eastern wilderness for a decade?”

  “I am afraid of it,” agreed Rew, “terribly afraid, as anyone who knows anything about it should be. That’s one reason I’ve stayed in the east, but not the only one. I always thought it best—Pfah. I suppose there’s something about the three of you that’s convinced me to face my past, to face what I am. There’s only so long one can run, and while I worry what will happen when I stop running, I’ve realized that I have no choice. Maybe I never could have run far enough away from what I was—what I am—and it’s time to deal with that.”

  “Your past,” murmured Raif. “Do you mean your family?”

  Rew did not respond.

  “You’re a bastard,” guessed Raif.

  Rew laughed. “Aye, a bastard.”

  “Sorry,” mumbled the nobleman. “I didn’t mean—“

  “No, it’s true,” said Rew. “I’m a bastard. I know my father but nothing of my mother. I was brought into my father’s house when I was an infant, though never as his son. I was not there as family. Instead, I was fashioned into a tool, a weapon that my father could use against his enemies. It was not a life that I chose, when I was old enough to choose, to keep living.”

  “And you ran.”

  “I ran,” confirmed Rew. “I’ve been running since. I ran as far as I could while staying within the realm. I couldn’t take that final step to truly leave. I worry sometimes why that was. Why did I not board a ship in Carff and leave Vaeldon behind me? Why couldn’t I hike through the wilderness and find out what’s on the other side?”

  “Complicated or not, it’s hard to turn your back on family,” said Raif.

  “That is true.”

  Raif was quiet for a moment, then he asked, “So you do have some noble blood in your veins?”

  Rew snorted. “I do.”

  “You’re not proud of it?” wondered Raif.

  “As I told your sister,” said Rew, “your blood doesn't make you who you are. Your actions do. I take no pride in being born to a nobleman. It’s brought me no joy, and no good has come of it. No, I’d rather be judged on what I do. Will the world be a better place because I was in it, or will I simply scramble for more like everyone else? If I’m remembered at all, I’d rather it be because I did something, not because some nobleman rutted with a woman and neither bothered to dose her with moon tea.” He laughed. “I suppose, in a roundabout way, that’s the answer to your question, isn’t it? That is why I’m helping you. Maybe—I think I’m just now realizing that myself.”

  “You’ve given me something to think about,” said Raif.

  “You and me both. That’s all any of us can do, lad, because none of us have the answers. I do know this; there’s nothing wrong with being born a noble or as a commoner,” said Rew, “but your birth should be the start of your tale, not the end of it.”

  “It’s on all men to be good in this world,” agreed Raif, “no matter their station when they enter it.”

  “What good are you doing in the world, then?” Cinda asked, coming to walk beside her brother and looking around him at Rew. “What are you two talking about?”

  Rew smirked at her and winked at Raif. “We’re talking about life.”

  16

  The familiar white chalk foothills of the Spine loomed around them, but instead of offering cover and comfort, the ridges they traversed felt like skeletal fingers curling beneath
their feet. The party panted and gasped, constantly climbing up and down over ridges that jutted several hundred paces high. It was brutal travel, but it gave them a chance to hide if they were spotted, and it offered them the ability to look out from a height at the grass that spread around the base of the mountain range.

  When they did, they saw nothing except scatterings of tiny villages where farmers and herders scrapped out meager existences away from the trod of the nobles and their cities. Peering through Rew’s spyglass, they would study the villages and the animals they saw grazing there. They never saw soldiers or any other evidence that something was amiss. Life in those places seemed undisturbed and unconcerned with the battle that had taken place just days away. Far off the main highway that ran between Spinesend and Yarrow, Rew wondered how long it would take for those villages to find out there had been a battle.

  “There’s nothing to exploit for the nobles’ games, I guess,” said Anne, handing the spyglass back to Rew after spending a few moments watching one of the villages.

  “Not all nobles are bad, you know,” muttered Cinda, clambering up beside the empath and the ranger at the top of the rocky ridge they were standing upon.

  “Not all,” agreed Anne.

  Rew didn’t need to look at the empath’s face to see that while she didn’t think all were bad, she thought most were. She’d spent enough time in the world and seen enough of the injury such folk caused. It made Anne’s insistence that they help the children even more curious. There were children everywhere that needed help, after all. There were probably some down in the village that would benefit from the empath’s ministrations, but Anne never asked to go down so she could grant her healing to the common people. Instead, she kept with the party up in the foothills, assisting a pair of nobles fight against the plots of other nobles.

  It wasn’t like her.

  Rew peeked through the spyglass himself, seeing nothing amiss, but in the distance, he spied the gleam of light reflecting on water. A river wriggled out across the plain. In the mountains, it might be no more than a trickle of a stream, but it was water, and where there was water, there was life.

  He closed the spyglass and called out to the group, “I think we have a chance of decent hunting if we hurry. I see water we can reach a few hours before dark. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to have some fresh game in the pot tonight.”

  “What are you waiting for, then?” asked Raif, starting down the opposite side of the ridge.

  Rew stowed his spyglass and started after the youth, grinning. Raif had been quiet the last two days, focused on the difficult travel in the mountains, so it was good to see the boy taking an interest in something. After subsisting on what little rations they’d fled with from Baron Worgon’s camp, Rew couldn’t blame him.

  “You want to take a turn with my bow?” asked Zaine, walking easily beside the ranger, her feet padding lightly on the rocky slope.

  Rew shook his head. “I’ll go with you and give you a bit of advice, but dinner is on you tonight.” The thief scowled at him, and he winked back at her. “You’re not a bad shot when you’re in a hurry. It’s only when you take time to aim that you have trouble.”

  “Maybe if a rabbit comes at us and threatens my life, you’ll have something to eat, then,” she retorted.

  “You never know,” said Rew, and he hurried up, pulling Raif away from the steep slope he was starting on. Rew pointed to the sheer wall at the top of the ridge and directed the boy to an easier path. Nobles. He shook his head, and they kept hiking.

  Later that day, unencumbered by their gear, Rew and Zaine climbed higher into the mountains. Two hundred paces below them was a thin band of water that splashed and poured its way down into the grassy foothills where it spread into a proper river. Up high, it was deep and fast. Rew saw fish in some of the larger, calmer pools, and he decided he would try to rig a line and a lure that evening. He could wake up early, and as the sun kissed the water and the others slept, it’d be a good chance to try his luck.

  But for now, they were searching for more difficult game. He’d seen signs of goats, which would make a great meal if they could track the spry creatures down. In the autumn, with any luck, they’d find a fat one that had spent the summer gorging, preparing for a long winter. Not to mention, in Rew’s experience, the fattest goats were the slowest goats.

  But mountain goats, even fat ones, weren’t easy prey. They were agile and quick, and so close to the village they’d spied with the glass, the goats would be wary of people and would have learned to avoid them. If they hadn’t, they would already be in some villager’s belly.

  “If you’ve time, it’s best to craft a small shelter for yourself and spend a few days laying out food for the animals,” advised Rew, leaping up onto a waist-high rock and then reaching a hand down to haul Zaine after him. She ignored his proffered hand and ascended just as gracefully as he had. “Goats, deer, hogs, any of the calmer sort of natural beasts learn where the food is and then start coming back. That’s when you strike.”

  “And if you don’t have days to build a shelter and train them to come to your food?” asked Zaine, breathing heavily, putting her hands on either side of a narrow chute of rock and pushing herself up it.

  “Then you look for where they can find water, and you’ve got to get a bit lucky,” advised Rew.

  They scampered up the steep, rocky incline until they found a flat piece of land that overlooked a narrow valley. The valley was carved out of the mountain and was only fifty paces wide and five hundred long. It was flat and filled with sediment that had grown thick, shrub-like trees. The finger of water they’d been following ran through the middle of it, but around the water, the ground was obscured by heavy growth.

  Zaine raised an eyebrow, and Rew nodded. If he was a goat living on this mountain, it seemed as good a place as any to find food and spend his day. The young thief nocked an arrow on her bow and pursed her lips. Rew touched her shoulder and pointed along the rim of the valley. If they descended into the thick bush, they couldn’t see more than a dozen paces in front of them, and Zaine’s bow would be useless. From above, though, they had a chance of scaring any animals out of the brush and she’d have a shot at them.

  Rew leaned toward her and whispered in her ear. “You move quietly over to the other end of the valley, and I’ll stay here. When you’re in place, I’ll rush in and flush out anything that’s hiding.”

  Zaine, moving with the silent feet of a thief, circled the valley high on the rock face. She moved confidently for someone who had grown up in a city, but Rew supposed during that time, she’d learned to pass like an owl on the wind. Her parents dead, trapped with family who did not want her, surviving on the street, the thieves…

  He shook his head and drew the two throwing knives from his boots. He hoped to scare any game rather than have to take it down with a knife, but it was wise to be prepared for anything when you couldn’t see what you were rushing into, and the growth near the water was too tight for his longsword to be effective.

  Zaine settled down on the other side of the valley, her bow held ready in her hands. She signaled to Rew and then drew her bowstring, waiting.

  Rew began a low hooting sound and walked into the bush, kicking and stomping on anything on the ground he thought might make some noise. He kept the hooting going, directing his voice up the valley.

  He was a third of the way through when he heard scrambling ahead of him, the crash of bodies, and the click of hooves running across loose stone. There were no calls from the animal, no panicked warning to others that he could identify, but something was fleeing ahead of him.

  Rew pushed through the undergrowth quicker, wondering what it was he’d startled. A goat, most likely. Were there deer up in these mountains? He’d never spent time in this part of the Spine, and while he’d only identified scat from goats so far, it didn’t mean nothing else lived there.

  He thought about that and suddenly started to scramble. Goat or deer, mayb
e, but what else could be in these hills? Rock trolls, silver-breasted harpies, simians? Narjags or ayres? Shoving branches aside, cursing at the thick vegetation, he struggled ahead before deciding he wasn’t going to make quick time at the base of the valley. He cut to his left, forcing his way out and scrambling up the rim of rock that surrounded the low-lying trees.

  Zaine was standing at the far end with her arrow drawn back to her ear, evidently having heard something approach. Rew opened his mouth to shout, to warn her to run, when a tawny goat burst from the trees and bounded toward her. Zaine released her arrow.

  The shaft whizzed off her bow toward the goat but flew half a dozen paces behind it. The goat, ignoring the missile, raced away with the dexterity of one born to the mountains.

  Zaine nocked another arrow and pulled the string back to her ear.

  Rew grinned when a second goat leapt into view.

  The thief fired again, this time compensating for the speed of the animal, and her arrow thumped into the goat’s side. It squealed and went down kicking.

  Running along the rock face, Rew moved around the valley to the thief and her prey. She was still standing rooted in the same spot, looking open-mouthed at the goat she’d taken down. Rew arrived and saw the animal was still breathing. He put his back to her, knelt, and stabbed one of his knives into its throat, seeking its brain. His back still turned, he wiped the blade clean and slid it into his boot. Zaine didn’t seem the squeamish type, but one never knew with children. He turned and grinned. “Well done.”

  “Did you see that?” babbled Zaine. “I—I shot the thing. I can’t believe I actually hit it.”

  That evening, they risked their first fire in three days and, over the course of several hours, roasted the goat on a spit.

  Rew eyed the plume of smoke that rose from the fire into the night, but judged it worth it when he saw the grins and gleaming eyes of the younglings. So far from the wilderness and despite his momentary panic earlier, they’d have little concern from natural beasts in these mountains. There should not be any of the Dark Kind nearby, either. In the vicinity of Spinesend, the world was tame, compared to the wilderness Rew had come to call home. It was only human hunters Rew was truly worried about, and they were far enough afield that their little fire shouldn’t attract any of those.