The Red Fox Clan

by John Flanagan

  “All okay?” Horace called from below.

  Gilan rose to peer over the top of the wooden wall, grinning. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll slip down and raise the locking bar on the gate.”

  “Watch your step,” Horace cautioned him. “The timbers in there mightn’t be as solid as the walls.”

  Gilan waved acknowledgment and made his way along the catwalk to where he could see a flight of stairs leading down into the interior of the fort. He paused at the top to look around. The timber wall enclosed a circular area approximately twenty meters in diameter. It wasn’t a very large space, he thought, but it would be easier to defend with their small body of men. There were three large huts and one smaller one in the inner compound. They were constructed from timber and seemed the worse for wear. Originally, the roofs had been thatched, but the thatching had long since rotted away. The huts themselves, built from lighter timber than the fort, had deteriorated badly. They leaned and sagged precariously, looking as if one good push would send them crashing to the ground.

  He studied the steps for a few seconds, testing them with his weight before he committed himself. The stairway moved slightly under his weight, and two of the risers groaned and creaked as he made his cautious way down to ground level.

  “Have to repair them,” he muttered. But on the whole, he was relieved to see that the stairs were sound. Obviously, the defensive, utilitarian parts of the fort had been built to last, using solid hardwood. The accommodation huts were another matter.

  He hurried to the gate, where a heavy wooden bar was secured in two massive iron brackets. The brackets were rusted, but still sound. He lifted the bar and set it to one side. Then he laid hold of the handle on the door and heaved. It opened a crack. Then the old hinges screamed a protest and it stopped moving.

  “Give it a shove!” he called to Horace. He felt the tall warrior’s weight pushing against the door and redoubled his own efforts to pull it open. Reluctantly, the hinges succumbed to their combined efforts and the door groaned halfway open. Then it stopped completely.

  “Needs a bit of oil,” he said.

  Horace stepped inside, his eyes darting around as he took in the interior of the fort. “Those huts have had it,” he said, and Gilan nodded agreement.

  “Yes. They’re rubbish. But the wall and the walkway look to be pretty solid. The steps need a little strengthening but they look all right. In fact, it should suit us quite nicely.”

  Horace put his shoulder against the gate and shoved hard. It gave another meter, then stopped. “As you say, this needs some oil.”

  Gilan shrugged. “Do we want it to open any farther?”

  Horace shoved the door again and opened it an additional few centimeters. “We’ll need to get the horses inside,” he said.

  Gilan pursed his lips. He had forgotten that detail. Then a thought struck him. “How do we get them up that final vertical wall?”

  “By dint of much pushing and heaving and scrambling,” Horace told him. “If all else fails, we’ll dig out a ramp for them.”

  Dismissing the matter of the gate, he strode into the inner compound. He drew his sword and held it casually beside him.

  Gilan raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think there’s anyone here,” he said mildly.

  Horace inclined his head. “Never hurts to be sure,” he said. He stopped by the smaller of the huts. Its walls sagged and the roof timbers had largely collapsed. The door, warped and full of gaps, hung haphazardly by one hinge. He set his foot against the doorpost and pushed. There was a creaking of old timbers and a groan as the fastening pegs gave way, and the entire front wall crashed down in a cloud of dust and splinters.

  “That, of course, was the commander’s quarters,” Gilan said.

  Horace sniffed disdainfully. “I’ll make do with a tent,” he said. “In fact, we all will.”

  They took another ten minutes to explore the interior of the fort—not that there was a great deal to see. It had obviously been unused for many years. There was a well in one corner, close to the gate, surrounded by a low stone parapet and covered with a circular wooden hatch. When Gilan slid the old, rotting wooden cover aside and tossed a pebble down, they heard a splash of water far below. Horace leaned over the dark hole and sniffed the air. There was no smell of corruption or rot. He saw an old wooden beaker hanging on a frayed cord beside the parapet and carefully lowered it down, mindful that the cord could break at any time. He felt the beaker touch the water and moved the cord gently so that the container tipped and filled. Then he retrieved it, sniffed the half-full contents and tasted it.

  “Water’s clean,” he said.

  “That’s handy,” Gilan replied. He peered over the edge of the well’s parapet. He thought he could see a tiny circle of light reflecting from the black surface far below. He stepped back. There were four large barrels standing close by. He checked them but they were empty.

  “What are these for?” he asked.

  Horace shrugged. “Maybe for taking supplies of water to different points around the wall,” he said. He set the beaker down and looked around once more, satisfied with what he saw.

  “We’ll set up our tents in here,” he said. “Let’s bring the others up.”

  Gilan smiled. “You can do that,” he said. “I’ll stay here and keep watch.”

  Horace eyed him. “In other words, you don’t feel like going down that steep path and scrambling back up again.”

  Gilan held out his hands ingenuously. “You’re the commander. It’s your prerogative to lead the troops,” he said.

  Horace rolled his eyes. “As you say, I’m the commander. I could order you to do it while I take it easy up here.”

  “You know us Rangers,” Gilan replied. “We’re notoriously bad when it comes to obeying orders.”

  But Horace was already striding back toward the gate.

  27

  The hunting party assembled in the Castle Araluen courtyard the following morning, just as the sun was rising over the tops of the trees at the base of the hill. The three Skandians were already waiting when Maddie and Cassandra emerged from the keep tower.

  Maddie and Cassandra were accompanied by Dimon. He was armed with a hunting bow—a solid weapon but not as long or as powerful as the war bows carried by the castle’s archers or the Ranger Corps. The two princesses were armed with their slings, and each had a bulging pouch of lead shot at her belt. In case of emergencies, Maddie was also carrying a bow slung over her shoulder. With a draw weight of only forty pounds, it was not as powerful as the recurve bow she used as a Ranger, so it didn’t have the range and hitting power. But it would be useful enough for hunting. The sling wasn’t suitable for all forms of game, she knew.

  Dimon smiled when he saw the bow. “What do you expect to hit with that?” he asked. He had seen the standard of Maddie’s archery. Or at least, he thought he had.

  She shrugged. “You never know. I might get lucky.”

  He shook his head. “Not sure there’s that much luck in the world.”

  Stig and Thorn were both armed with heavy spears. Hal had a crossbow slung over his back. Cassandra had arranged for it to be fetched from the ship by the servants who took food to the rest of the Heron’s crew.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” Cassandra said cheerfully, and they replied with a chorus of greetings. “I trust you slept well?”

  Stig grimaced cheerfully. “I find it hard to get used to the fact that my bed isn’t moving when I come ashore after a long voyage,” he said. “Although it feels as if it is.”

  Hal agreed with Stig. “It takes a while to get your land legs back. By contrast, when we’re on board the ship, it feels as if it’s not moving at all,” he said. “We’ll be rolling around as if we’re drunk for a day or so.”

  “Why is that?” Maddie asked. She had no experience of sailing or ships and was finding their observati
ons interesting.

  The two Skandians shrugged. “Nobody knows,” Stig said. “It just happens that way. I guess we get used to the ship rolling, and when that’s not happening anymore, we somehow think it is.”

  The seventh member of the party was Ulwyn, a grizzled old forester who had hunted the woods around Castle Araluen for the past thirty years. He would act as their guide on the hunt, seeking out and following the tracks left by game—deer, rabbits and hares, and wildfowl. He carried a bow and had a long-bladed hunting knife in a scabbard on his belt. He was accompanied by his hunting dog, Dougal, a rather scruffy beast of indeterminate lineage, who lolled his tongue at them. Dougal was getting on in years, and he had a stiff rear leg, but that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for hunting, fetching game and tracking. Ulwyn had known Cassandra since she was a girl and was totally devoted to her. He nodded a greeting as he joined them.

  “Morning, Yer Highness,” he said.

  Cassandra smiled at him as she leaned down to scratch Dougal’s floppy ears. “Good morning, Ulwyn. I trust you’ll be able to find us some game today?”

  He nodded several more times. “That’ll be so, my lady. We’ll strike out down to the lake, where we should find geese and ducks.” He nodded at the sling coiled under her belt. “You should be able to bring down a few with that sling of yours. Then we’ll angle over toward Sentinel Hill. There’s been deer sighted there in the last few days.”

  “Sighted by whom?” Maddie asked.

  He grinned knowingly at her. “Why, by me, my young lady,” he said.

  She nodded to herself. She would have expected him to go out the previous day and search for the best hunting spots for them.

  Ulwyn looked around, making sure everyone was ready. “Shall we go?”

  Out of deference to the Skandians, they had elected not to ride. They walked across the drawbridge and headed downhill toward the forest, Ulwyn leading the way. The grass was still wet with dew, and looking behind them, Maddie could see the dark tracks they were leaving as they displaced the moisture from the grass. They passed the small grove that masked the entrance to the tunnel under the moat, and she surreptitiously studied her companions to see if anyone noticed anything unusual about the spot. Nobody did, of course. People had been walking past that hidden tunnel for years without seeing anything out of the ordinary. Ulwyn led them slightly to the right, and she was relieved to see they would pass well clear of the glade where Bumper was tethered. She doubted that anyone else would sense his presence, but she couldn’t be sure of Ulwyn. Or Dougal.

  She started suddenly as she heard the whir of Cassandra’s sling beside her, and the hiss of her shot as she let fly. A hare had broken cover in the grass ten meters ahead of them. It had barely reached half speed when the lead shot smacked into it and bowled it over.

  “Stay awake,” her mother told her.

  Maddie made an appreciative gesture with her hands. “Good shot,” she said, and the Skandians chorused their agreement.

  Cassandra smiled a little smugly, it has to be admitted. “Even with my faulty technique?”

  Maddie shook her head with a tired grin. She and her mother used totally different techniques with their slings, and Maddie had always held that Cassandra’s was less efficient, and slower, than her own. Her mother was obviously delighted that she had scored before her daughter, beating her to the shot.

  Ulwyn gathered the hare into his game bag and they moved on into the trees.

  “What’s wrong with Cassandra’s technique?” Hal asked.

  Maddie sniffed. “Just about everything. She makes up for bad technique with extraordinary good luck.”

  “Ha!” Her mother snorted and gave her a superior smile.

  Maddie held her tongue. We’ll see what’s what when we reach the lake, she thought to herself.

  But to her chagrin, when she and Cassandra let fly at two rising ducks, her shot grazed the tail of the one she aimed at, doing no more than knocking a feather loose, whereas her mother’s target dropped like a stone into the lake as her shot hit dead center. In spite of his stiff rear leg, Dougal bounded away, hurling himself into the lake and churning the water to retrieve the fallen bird.

  “Ha!” said Cassandra again, as Dougal dropped the duck at her feet.

  Maddie reddened but said nothing. Again, Ulwyn gathered the prize into his game bag.

  Thorn watched the byplay between the two women with amusement. “So,” he said to Maddie, “your mother whirls her sling around her head horizontally two or three times and then releases. You don’t do that. You let it fall back behind your shoulder, then you step forward and whip the sling overhead to release it.” He looked at Hal, who was always interested in the mechanics of weaponry. “Sort of like the way Lydia uses her atlatl, isn’t it?”

  Hal agreed. “No whirling,” he said.

  Maddie regarded them both, not sure if they were teasing her, and felt the heat rising in her cheeks.

  “It’s more efficient my way,” she said, trying to sound objective. “All that whirling and whirring wastes time and gives game a chance to escape—or an enemy to shoot first.”

  “I can see that,” Hal replied solemnly.

  “Yet,” said Cassandra, “here am I with a duck and a hare in the bag and you, with your superior method, have downed . . . how many? Oh, that’s right,” she said, “precisely none.”

  “The day isn’t over yet, Mother,” Maddie told her, speaking very precisely.

  They moved on from the lake—the other ducks and geese there had all taken flight, and it would be some time before they settled to the water again. The hunting party headed toward Sentinel Hill, and Maddie began to see signs that deer had passed this way recently. She didn’t let on that she’d seen the tracks—that would be a little out of character for a princess. But it was evident that Ulwyn had noticed them, and she saw him nodding contentedly to himself.

  He appeared to have missed something else, though, and she thought it might be important that he knew about it. She pointed to several long gashes in the bark of a tree, low down and close to the ground.

  “What caused this, Ulwyn?” she asked ingenuously.

  “Why, that was well spotted, my lady!” Ulwyn said. He went down on one knee and touched the slashes. Maddie could see from where she stood that the sap on the disturbed bark was dry. The marks were many hours old.

  Ulwyn looked up at her. “I saw these yesterday when I was scouting,” he said. “A boar did this, my lady.”

  She made her eyes widen. “A wild boar?” she asked breathlessly.

  The old hunter smiled grimly. “Well, we don’t have any tame ones around here, Lady Madelyn. But he’ll be long gone by now,” he said reassuringly.

  But Maddie had noticed something that the old hunter seemed to have missed. There were several more slashes on an adjacent tree, and the sap was still oozing wetly in them.

  “What about those?” she asked.

  Ulwyn looked, then frowned. “Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. “Those were made today. And not so long ago.” Then he raised his voice to speak to the rest of the group. “Eyes open, everyone. We don’t want to come upon this one without seeing him first.”

  Thorn had watched the interplay between the young princess and Ulwyn. He wasn’t taken in by her pretended ignorance. You knew perfectly well what those marks were, he thought. And you wanted the rest of us to be on the alert for the boar.

  Maddie turned suddenly and caught him looking at her. He grinned and tapped one finger along the side of his nose. She frowned at him, suspecting that he’d seen through her playacting, then shook her head and turned away.

  They moved on through the trees. Conscious that the boar might be close to them, and knowing that the sling would be virtually useless against it, she had coiled up the weapon and tucked it into her belt. Instead, she nocked an arrow to the bowstring and held the
bow loosely, ready to shoot if necessary. Dimon saw the movement and smiled to himself once more, shaking his head.

  They were working in a large half circle, planning to return to the lake, where the ducks might have resettled. Hal sighted a small deer and shot it with his crossbow. It was a good shot. The little animal leapt into the air, ran half a dozen paces, then fell dead. Ulwyn quickly field dressed it, and Thorn and Stig tied its four legs over a stout sapling, carrying it between them.

  Maddie estimated they were halfway back to the lake when Dougal began barking frantically, and darted forward toward a dense thicket of bushes at the far side of the clearing they were crossing. The hunters stopped, startled by his sudden outburst. From the thicket, they could hear the movement of a large, heavy body crashing into the bushes and branches, and hear an enraged, threatening squeal.

  “It’s the boar!” Ulwyn yelled, then called to his frantic, near- hysterical dog, “Dougal! Back away now! Back away!”

  But Dougal paid him no heed. The old dog darted forward toward the thicket, shoving his head between the dense-growing bushes and barking nonstop. The noises from within the thicket increased, and then suddenly Dougal turned tail and retreated as a shaggy, dark figure erupted from the bushes and charged after him.

  The little dog tried to dodge, but his stiff back leg betrayed him, and he stumbled so that the boar was upon him. It butted its head into his ribs, and he squealed in fright and pain as the impact threw him several meters.

  The hunters began to move in. Stig and Thorn dropped the carcass of the deer and moved forward, spears raised. Hal brought up his crossbow, and Dimon nocked an arrow to his bow. Ulwyn was panicking, terrified that his dog would be injured. Luckily, the boar had not used its tusks so far.

  The boar dashed forward, and Dougal managed to leap awkwardly to one side, evading the slashing tusks. As the two animals moved round each other, one slashing and squealing, the other dodging awkwardly, none of the hunters had a clear shot or cast at the boar.