Erak_s ransom ra-7

by John Flanagan

  ***

  As they reached the entrance to the hall, Alyss stopped and turned Will towards her.

  'Perhaps I should go back to the table,' she said. 'This Svengal doesn't know me and he might feel more comfortable talking if there are no strangers present.'

  As a Courier, her instincts for intrigue were finely honed and Will sensed she was right. There was obviously something out of the ordinary going on. Svengal's abrupt appearance proved that. He nodded and briefly took her hand in both of his.

  'You could be right,' he said. 'Besides, it will look better if one of us is back at the party.'

  He squeezed her hand then released it. She smiled at him, then turned and slipped back through the crowded room. Will watched her go, then turned away towards the small anteroom where Horace had taken their unexpected visitor.

  Svengal was slumped wearily on a bench as Will entered.

  'Will,' said the Skandian with a tired smile, rising stiffly to shake hands. 'Sorry to barge in at a time like this.'

  Will glanced up at Horace. 'What's going on?' he asked. From Svengal's downcast, weary manner, he gathered it was not good news.

  Horace shrugged. 'I thought we'd wait for you. Save him saying everything twice. What's going on out there?' He indicated the hall with a quick head gesture.

  'It's all back to normal. You got things settled before too many people had a chance to notice. Good work.'

  Horace made a small self-deprecating gesture and Will took another look at the Skandian.

  'You look just about done in, Svengal. Are you all right?'

  Svengal had slumped back onto the bench. He grinned ruefully, easing his aching back. 'I've felt better,' he said. 'I've spent two days and most of last night on one your blasted horses – all the way from Castle Araluen to here. I can hardly move my legs or back.'

  'Araluen?' Horace interrupted. 'What were you doing there?'

  'We sailed Wolfwind up that same river we took last time. I thought it was the best place to look for you all.' Will and Horace exchanged glances. 'I imagine that set the cat among the pigeons,' Will said. There was a treaty in place between Araluen and Skandia but even so, the unexpected sight of a wolfship so far inland could only have caused alarm.

  'We flew Evanlyn's pennant,' Svengal told him. 'We still had it in our flag locker. Is there anything to drink around here?'

  Will held up his hands in apology. 'Sorry. You could probably use something to eat as well,' he said.

  Svengal nodded several times. 'Yes. That would be good too. Haven't eaten in a while.'

  Will called to a page who had been stationed outside the door. The young boy put his head around the door frame, staring curiously at the massive Skandian, who grinned at him.

  'Bring us some wine… no, wait!' Will said as the boy began to dart away. The page returned. 'Get us a plate of food as well. A big plate. A platter, in fact. Lots of meat and bread. Don't worry about vegetables or greenery.' He knew that Skandian had a deep-seated contempt for salads as a food source.

  'Bring the wine in a flagon,' Horace added. 'Not one of those dainty glasses they're using outside. And hurry!'

  'Yes, sirs,' the page said. He raced away.

  'So tell us,' Will said, 'what brings you here in the middle of Halt's wedding?'

  Svengal shook his head in apology. 'Didn't know about that,' he told them. 'We've been at sea for months now. We need help and you were the only people we thought could give it.'

  'We?' Horace asked.

  'Erak and me. Well, Erak really. He told me to come here and find you – and Halt.'

  'So he's still in Hallasholm, I take it?' Will said.

  He was aware that Erak had turned his ship over to Svengal when he had assumed the office of Oberjarl. But Svengal shook his head.

  'Arrida,' he told them. 'He's been captured by the Arridi and they're holding him to ransom.'

  'What?' Will's voice rose to a higher pitch than he'd intended. He paused and composed himself. 'What the devil is he doing in Arrida?'

  'We were raiding,' Svengal explained. 'He was bored with sitting around talking to Borsa all day.'

  'I can imagine,' Will put in. He still harboured resentment for the Skandian hilfmann, who had assigned him to life as a yard slave – an almost certain death sentence in the bitter Skandian winter.

  'Get over it,' Horace told him and jerked a thumb at Svengal. 'Let's hear the story.'

  But the page chose that moment to return with a platter loaded with chicken legs, pork chops and a small mutton leg. There was also a tankard of wine on the tray that he set down. Svengal looked greedily at the food and drink.

  'Oh, go ahead,' Horace told him.

  Svengal drank a third of the wine in one draught, then grabbed the mutton and tore off enough to feed a small family with his teeth. He chewed and swallowed for a few moments, his eyes closed blissfully as the food and drink sent energy coursing through him.

  'He was hungry,' Will muttered. Svengal said he'd been riding for two days – not a popular way of travelling for Skandians. It was becoming obvious that he hadn't stopped to eat. The sea wolf swallowed a last piece of mutton and took another gigantic gulp of wine. He wiped grease and wine from his whiskers with the back of one massive hand, then let go a belch loud enough to wake the dead.

  'I take it he likes our food,' Horace said. Will rolled his eyes impatiently.

  'Svengal,' he said, 'get on with it. How did Erak get himself captured? And how did you get away? What in God's name were you doing in Arrida? And – '

  Svengal held up a grease-smeared hand. 'Hey, two or three questions at a time, all right? Look, Erak was bored. He wanted to go to sea again. So he decided to go on one last raid.' He paused, considering. 'Well, he said it would be his last but I doubt it. I reckon he – '

  'Get on with it!' Will and Horace chorused together.

  'Oh… yeah, sorry. Well, we planned a raid.'

  'In Arrida?' Horace said incredulously and Svengal looked at him, an injured look on his face.

  'Yes. In Arrida. After all, we're not allowed to raid here these days, are we? We have to go further afield.'

  Will and Horace exchanged glances. 'I suppose that's our fault,' Will said. 'Go on, Svengal.'

  'Anyway, we planned to hit a town called Al Shabah. It's a trading town where they provision ships and we figured – well, Erak figured – there'd be a lot of money there. You see – '

  'Svengal,' Will said, 'I'm sure there were excellent reasons for raiding this El Shibah… '

  'Al Shabah,' Svengal corrected him, eyeing a chicken leg then reaching for it.

  'But just get on with what happened, all right?'

  'Well, we landed before dawn and everything seemed deserted. No guards. No lookouts. We made our way into the town and then we realised they'd been waiting for us. There were over a hundred troops in there – frontline troops too. Not the usual amateurs you find in those little towns- They were expecting us. They even knew that Erak was coming. They called him by name, knew he was Oberjarl. Said he was the only one they were interested in.'

  Let me get this straight. They ambushed all of you? The entire ship's crew?' Horace frowned at the thought. Svengal nodded.

  'They let the rest of us go because they needed us to collect the ransom. They even returned our weapons once we were back on board. Said they didn't want us captured by pirates while we were fetching the money.' He snorted in bitter amusement. 'Ironic, isn't it?'

  'How much is this ransom?' Will asked.

  'Eighty thousand reels,' Svengal said and the two young men whistled.

  'That's a lot of silver,' Horace said.

  Svengal shrugged. 'Erak is Oberjarl, after all.'

  Will was frowning as he thought over what Svengal had said. There was something he didn't understand.

  'Svengal, eighty thousand is a lot of money. But surely Erak could put his hands on that amount. As you say, he is the Oberjarl. Why did you come here for it?'

  'Erak told
me to come here. It could take the best part of a year for us to get to Skandia and then back to Arrida with the money… ' He trailed off, the thought not quite completed.

  Will nodded. 'That makes sense,' he said. 'And I'm sure King Duncan will lend the money. After all, Erak saved his daughter's life.' He sensed that Svengal had something else on his mind, something he was reluctant to say.

  'But?' he prompted and the seawolf sighed heavily.

  'Erak didn't want me to go back to Skandia with the news that he was a captive,' he said. 'He's pretty sure that he was betrayed by one of our own people.'

  Chapter 8

  'Betrayed?' King Duncan said. 'Why would his own people betray him? Last I heard, Erak was a popular choice as Oberjarl.'

  It was the following morning and even Baron Arald's spacious office was looking slightly crowded with the members present. In addition to the King and his daughter, Sir Anthony, Crowley, Halt and Pauline, Baron Arald and Sir Rodney, Horace, Gilan, Will and Alyss were all seated around the central desk, where Arald had given deference to the King. Svengal, exhausted by his ride to Araluen, was still sleeping off the effects of the journey. Although, Will thought with grim humour, the effects might be longer lasting than he expected. A novice leader, Svengal would be stiff and sore in every muscle and joint when he awoke.

  The previous evening, after Will had reported the basic facts of Svengal's arrival, it had been decided to leave a detailed discussion till the morning. The wedding celebration had continued as if there had been no interruption. That had been Lady Pauline's decision. As she had said to Halt some weeks earlier, this was a big occasion for many of the guests – perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to brush shoulders with royalty.

  'Let them enjoy themselves,' she had said. 'We can deal with this in the morning.'

  Halt smiled at her as she said it. It was confirmation of the Baron's good judgement in appointing her to her high diplomatic position.

  Pauline also had an ulterior motive. She knew full well that this would be one of the few occasions in her life when she would persuade Halt to dance with her and she had no intention of letting it pass merely because Oberjarl Erak had carelessly got himself captured by the Arridi. It was, she thought, a matter of retaining a sense of perspective.

  So the dancing and feasting had continued. Then, just before midnight, an open carriage, pulled by two white mares, had arrived at the entrance to the dining hall. The newlyweds led a procession down the central aisle and were cheered aboard by a horde of well-wishers. In addition, hundreds of others had arrived from the village itself, where the Baron had contributed two steers to be roasted and several kegs of ale for a giant outdoor feast.

  These newcomers lined the path to the gatehouse, where the massive drawbridge and portcullis were open. Others waited outside, on either side of the road winding down the hill towards the forest. As the carriage passed by, they pelted it with flowers and cheers in equal amounts. Halt, who had spent his life in covert activities, moving unseen and unnoticed through the country, found it a novel and uncomfortable experience to be the centre of attention. He felt strangely exposed without the comforting concealment of his camouflage cloak and slumped low in his seat, trying to disappear into the plush cushions. Lady Pauline, on the other hand, sat upright and waved regally to the cheering people. And since the vast majority of those who arrive to gawk at any wedding go to see the bride in any case, his reticence went largely unnoticed.

  'Where will they be going?' a blacksmith's wife asked of nobody in particular as the carriage clattered down the hill.

  A housewife next to her – one of those people who always know the answer to every such question, replied with smug certainty.

  'I've heard that, deep in the woods, there's a special love-nest been built for them. A bower of flowers and precious materials where they'll spend the night.' Her imagination aided by her own statement, she then added authoritatively, 'What's more, there are specially trained songbirds in the trees and pure white deer will be grazing in the clearing for my lady's enjoyment.'

  The actual facts were more mundane. The carriage would stop at the little cabin just at the fringe of the forest, where Halt and Pauline would wait until the crowd had dispersed. Then they would board another, less ornate, carriage drawn by two nondescript bays and return to the castle, where Arald had set aside a suite of rooms as their permanent residence.

  So here they all were, discussing the remarkable turn of events that Svengal had brought to their door.

  'Erak's popular with the majority,' Will told the King, in answer to his question. 'But there's a small faction in Hallasholm who would like to see him lose his position. Small, but vocal and persistent.'

  'I assume our treaty has something to do with this?' Crowley asked. When Halt had led the Skandians to victory over an invading Temujai force, he had capitalised on the situation to create a treaty where large-scale raids on Araluen were discouraged by the Oberjarl. In Erak's case, 'discouraged' translated pretty much as 'forbidden'.

  'It doesn't help, that's for sure,' Will said. 'And the anti-Erak faction are using it as a lever to create dissension among the others. But it goes deeper than that.'

  'If there's an anti-Erak faction,' Lady Pauline said, 'one assumes that they must also have their own leader in mind. Who might that be? Do we know?'

  'We do,' Will told the room. Although he and Horace had both been privy to Svengal's news, they had decided that Will would conduct the briefing for the others. It was part of a Ranger's training to know how to assemble and report facts as cohesively as possible. 'It's a man called Toshak, a crony of Slagor's.'

  His eyes met Cassandra's as he said the name and he saw understanding dawning there. Slagor had tried to have Cassandra executed when she and Will had been among the Skandians. Later, she had discovered his part in a plot to betray the Skandian forces to the Temujai.

  Alyss saw the byplay between Will and the blonde Princess. Her lips tightened slightly but, trained diplomat that she was, she swiftly composed her features before anyone noticed.

  'Slagor?' the King said. 'But surely he's dead? Erak had him executed for treason at the end of the war, didn't he?'

  I tried to convince him not to,' Cassandra put in. I thought it was a bad idea and I felt… responsible, I suppose.'

  The King shook his head. 'No. It's unpleasant, my dear, but it had to be done. Slagor betrayed his country in time of war. You can't leave people like that unpunished. He deserved what he got and you have nothing to blame yourself for.'

  'The Princess has a point, however,' Halt said. And as the others looked at him, he went on to explain, 'Executing a criminal often makes a martyr of him. Once he's dead and gone, people all too often forget the crimes he's committed and start to see a more sanitised version. A person like that starts to be seen as a victim, then as a figurehead for anyone who has an axe to grind. No pun intended,' he added, remembering that Slagor had been beheaded. Will nodded in agreement. 'That's pretty much the way Erak sees it, according to Svengal. Toshak, the leader of a rebel clique, doesn't give a fig about Slagor's fate. He's using him as a symbol to further his own purpose. Which is to take over as Oberjarl.'

  The King nodded slowly. It made sense. 'Which is why Erak doesn't want Svengal going back to Skandia with the news that he's been captured – and that it'll cost the Skandians eighty thousand reels to get him back. It might be quicker and cheaper just to elect a new Oberjarl.'

  Sir Rodney had listened to the conversation so far without speaking. Now he frowned thoughtfully and posed a question.

  'Given that there may be people who want Erak out of the way, that's still no proof that they were involved in his capture, is it?' he asked. 'After all, that might just have been good luck on the part of the Arridi.'

  Will nodded. 'That could be right, Sir Rodney. But there's more to it. The Skandian raiding fleet meets before any raiding season and assigns territories by lot. So the other captains – and Toshak was one of them �
� knew Erak's ship would be raiding that part of the coast.'

  'Still,' Crowley said, 'Rodney has a good point. It could have been simple luck on the Arridi's part that allowed them to ambush Erak. They could have heard a wolfship was in the area and set up the trap – arranging to sell him the false timetable. There's no hard evidence that Toshak was involved.'

  'Except for one thing,' Horace put in. He felt Will was being besieged on all sides and might need a little help. 'They weren't just waiting for any wolfship. They knew it was Erak who was coming and they knew he was the Oberjarl. Only a Skandian could have told them that.'

  Rodney and Crowley both nodded thoughtfully, seeing the logic in the argument. Cassandra was watching her father anxiously. She felt they were getting off the real point.

  'We'll lend Erak the money, won't we, Dad?' she said. Her father looked up at her. He was inclined to do so, but he hadn't totally made up his mind. Eighty thousand was a lot of money. Not a crippling amount, admittedly. But it wasn't a sum you would just throw away.

  'I'm sure Erak is good for the money, your majesty,' Halt said. He had already decided that, in the unlikely event that Duncan wouldn't agree to the loan, he would go and shake Erak free of the clutches of the Arridi tribesmen.

  'Yes, yes,' Duncan said, still considering. 'And the actual amount is sure to be less. The Arridi would be insulted if we didn't haggle a little.'

  'I owe Erak my life, Father,' Cassandra said quietly, but firmly. The use of the word 'father' alerted Duncan to the fact that she was beginning to think he might be reluctant to help Erak. Before he could say anything, she continued.

  'Not just when he helped Will and me to escape. But later, when Slagor exposed my true identity and tried to have me killed, Erak was ready to get me away then.'

  Duncan raised a hand to calm her down. He could hear her voice rising in pitch and he didn't want a confrontation with so many people present.

  'Cassie, I fully intend to pay the ransom. It's the mechanics of the whole thing that are a little difficult.' He could see that this statement satisfied his daughter, but she looked puzzled, so he went on. 'For a start, I'm not putting eighty thousand reels – or whatever the final amount might be – on a wolfship and waving goodbye as it sails off for Arrida. There's too great a chance that it could be lost… storms, shipwrecks, pirates. It's too risky.'