‘Just like old times,’ Evanlyn murmured with a small grin. Will turned quickly to her, smiling in return. All too clearly, he could see Morgarath’s bridge looming above them once more, with the fires they had set feeding voraciously on the tarred ropes and resin-laden pine beams. He sighed deeply. Given the chance to do it over, he still would have acted as he had. But he wished Evanlyn hadn’t been involved. Wished she hadn’t been captured with him.
Then, even as he wished it, he realised that she was the one bright spark in his life of misery now and that by wishing her away, he was wishing away the only small glow of happiness and normality in his days.
He felt a sense of confusion. In a moment of extreme surprise, he realised that, if she were not here with him, life would be barely worth living. He reached out and touched her hand lightly. She looked at him again and, this time, he was the first to smile.
‘Would you do it again?’ he asked her. ‘You know, the bridge and everything?’
This time, she didn’t smile back at him. She thought seriously for several seconds, then said:
‘In a moment. You?’
He nodded. Then he sighed again, thinking of all that they had left behind.
Unnoticed by the two young people, Erak had seen the little exchange. He nodded to himself. It was good for each of them to have a friend, he thought. Life was going to be hard for them when they reached Hallasholm and Ragnak’s court. They’d be sold as slaves and their life would be hard physical labour, with no respite and no release. One grindingly hard day after another, month in, month out, year after year. A person living that life would need a friend.
It would be going too far to say that Erak was fond of the two youngsters. But they had won his respect. The Skandians were a warrior race who valued bravery and valour in battle above all else, and both Will and Evanlyn had proved their courage when they’d destroyed Morgarath’s bridge. The boy, he thought, was quite a scrapper. He’d dropped the Wargals like ninepins with that little bow of his. Erak had rarely seen faster, more accurate shooting. He guessed that was a result of the Ranger training.
And the girl had shown plenty of courage too, first of all making sure the fire had caught properly on the bridge, then, when Will finally went down, stunned by a rock hurled by one of the Skandians, she’d tried to grab the bow herself and keep shooting.
It was difficult not to feel sympathy for them. They were both so young, with so much that should have been ahead of them. He’d try to make things as easy as possible for them when they reached Hallasholm, Erak thought. But there wasn’t a lot he’d be able to do. Then he shook himself angrily, breaking the introspective mood that had fallen over him.
‘Getting damn maudlin!’ he muttered to himself. He noticed that one of the rowers was trying to sneak a prime piece of pork from a provision sack nearby. He moved quietly behind the man and planted his foot violently in his backside, lifting him clean off the ground with the force of the kick.
‘Keep your thieving hands to yourself!’ he snarled. Then, ducking his head under the doorway lintel, he went into the dark, smoke-smelling hut to claim the best bunk for himself.
The tavern was a dingy, mean, little place, low ceilinged, smoke filled and none too clean. But it was close to the river where the big ships docked as they brought goods for trade into the capital, and so it usually enjoyed good business.
Right now, though, business had dropped off, and the reason for the decline was sitting at one of the spill-stained bare tables, close to the fireplace. He glared up at the tavern keeper now, his eyes burning under the knotted brows, and banged the empty tankard on the rough pine planks of the table.
‘It’s empty again,’ he said angrily. There was just the slightest slurring of his words to remind the tavern keeper that this would be the eighth or ninth time he’d refilled the tankard with the cheap, fiery brandy-spirit that was the stock in trade of dockside bars like this. A sale was a sale, he told himself doubtfully, but this customer looked like trouble waiting to happen and the tavern keeper wished fervently that he’d go and let it happen some place else.
His usual customers, with their uncanny instinct for trouble brewing, had mostly cleared out when the small man had arrived and begun drinking with such unswerving purpose. Only half a dozen had remained. One of them, a hulking stevedore, had looked over the smaller man and decided he was easy pickings. Small and drunken the customer might be, but the grey-green cloak and the double knife scabbard at his left hip marked him as a Ranger. And Rangers, as any sensible person could tell you, were not people to trifle with.
The stevedore learned that the hard way. The fight barely lasted a few seconds, leaving him stretched unconscious on the floor. His companions hastily departed for a friendlier, and safer, atmosphere. The Ranger watched them go and signalled for a refill. The innkeeper stepped over the stevedore, nervously topped up the Ranger’s tankard, then retreated behind the relative safety of the bar.
Then the real trouble started.
‘It has come to my attention,’ the Ranger announced, enunciating his words with the careful precision of a man who knows he has drunk too much, ‘that our good King Duncan, lord of this realm, is nothing but a poltroon.’
If the atmosphere in the bar before this had been anticipatory, it now became positively sizzling with tension. The eyes of the few remaining customers were locked on the small figure at the table. He gazed around, a grim little smile playing on his lips, just visible between the grizzled beard and the moustache.
‘A poltroon. A coward. And a fool,’ he said clearly.
Nobody moved. This was dangerous talk. For a normal citizen to abuse or insult the King in public like this would be a serious crime. For a Ranger, a sworn member of the Kingdom’s special forces, it was close to treason. Nervous glances were exchanged. The few remaining customers wished they could leave quietly. But something in the Ranger’s calm gaze told them this was no longer an option. They noticed now that the longbow he had leant against the wall behind him was already strung. And the quiver beside it was full of arrows. They all knew that the first person to try to go through the front door would be followed in rapid time by an arrow. And they all knew that Rangers, even drunk Rangers, rarely missed what they aimed at.
Yet to remain here while the Ranger berated and insulted the King was equally dangerous. Their silence might well be taken as acquiescence should anyone ever find out what was going on.
‘I have it on good authority,’ the Ranger continued, almost jovially now, ‘that Good King Duncan is not the lawful occupant of the throne. I’ve heard it said that he is, in fact, the son of a drunken privy cleaner. Another rumour has it that he was the result of his father’s fascination with a travelling hatcha-hatcha dancer. Take your pick. Either way, it is hardly the correct lineage for a king, is it?’
A small sigh of concern passed from someone’s lips. This was becoming more and more dangerous by the moment. The tavern keeper shifted nervously behind the bar, saw a movement in the back room and moved to get a clearer view through the doorway. His wife, on her way into the tap room with a plate of pies for the bar, had stopped as she heard the Ranger’s last statement. She stood white-faced, her eyes meeting her husband’s in an unspoken question.
He glanced quickly at the Ranger, but the other man’s attention was now focused on a wagoner who was trying to make himself inconspicuous at the far end of the bar.
‘Don’t you agree, sir … you in the yellow jerkin with most of yesterday’s breakfast spilt upon it … that such a person doesn’t deserve to be King of this fair land?’ he asked. The wagoner mumbled and shifted in his seat, unwilling to make eye contact.
The tavern keeper jerked his head almost imperceptibly towards the back entrance of the building. His wife looked away to it, then back to him, her eyebrows raised in a query. ‘The Watch,’ he mouthed carefully and saw understanding dawn in her eyes. Stepping quietly, and still out of the Ranger’s line of sight, she crossed the back room an
d let herself out the rear door, closing it behind her as silently as she could manage.
For all her care, the latch made a slight click as it fell into place behind her. The Ranger’s eyes snapped around to the tavern keeper, suspicious and questioning.
‘What was that?’ he demanded and the tavern keeper shrugged, rubbing damp palms nervously on his stained apron. He didn’t try to speak. He knew his throat was far too dry to form words.
For a fleeting moment, he thought he saw a flash of satisfaction in the other man’s expression, but he dismissed the thought as ridiculous.
As the minutes dragged by, the Ranger’s insults and slanders of King Duncan grew more vivid and more outrageous. The landlord swallowed nervously. His wife had been gone ten minutes now. Surely she must have found a detachment of the Watch? Surely they should be arriving here any minute, to remove this dangerous man and stop this treasonous talk?
And, even as he framed the thought, the front door banged back on its hinges and a squad of five men, led by a corporal, forced their way into the dimly lit room. Each of them was armed with a long sword and a short, heavyheaded club hanging at his belt, and each wore a round buckler slung across his back.
The corporal appraised the room as his men fanned out behind him. His eyes narrowed as they made out the figure hunched at the table.
‘What’s going on here?’ he demanded and the Ranger smiled. It was a smile that never reached his eyes, the tavern keeper noticed.
‘We were talking politics,’ he said, his words laden with sarcasm.
‘Not what I heard,’ the corporal replied, thin lipped. ‘I heard you were talking treason.’
The Ranger’s mouth formed an incredulous O and his eyebrows arched in mock surprise.
‘Treason?’ he repeated, then looked curiously around the room. ‘Has someone here been telling tales out of school then? Is someone here a tell-tale tit, whose tongue should be … split!’
It happened so quickly that the tavern keeper barely had time to throw himself flat behind the bar. As the Ranger spat out the last word, he had somehow scooped up the longbow from behind him and nocked and fired an arrow. It slammed into the wall behind the spot where the tavern keeper had been standing a second before, and buried itself deep into the wood panel, quivering still with the force of its impact.
‘That’s enough …’ the corporal began. He started to move forward but, incredibly, the Ranger had another arrow nocked already. The dully gleaming broadhead was aimed at the corporal’s forehead, the bow was drawn and tensed. The corporal stopped, staring death in the face.
‘Put it down,’ he said. But his voice lacked authority and he knew it. It was one thing to keep dockside drunks and rowdies in line, another entirely to face a Ranger, a skilled fighter and a trained killer. Even a knight would think twice about such a confrontation. It was way beyond the capabilities of a simple corporal of the Watch.
Yet the corporal was no coward and he knew he had a duty to perform. He swallowed several times, then slowly, slowly, raised his hand to the Ranger.
‘Put … down … the … bow,’ he repeated. There was no answer. The arrow remained centred on his forehead, at eye level. Hesitantly, he took a pace forward.
‘Don’t.’
The word was flat and unequivocal. The corporal was sure he could hear his own heart beating, rattling like a kettledrum. He wondered if others in the room could hear it too. He took a deep breath. He’d taken an oath of loyalty to the King. He wasn’t a noble or a knight, just an ordinary man. But his word meant as much to him as it did to any highborn officer. He’d been happy to wield his authority for years, dealing with drunks and minor criminals. Now the stakes were higher, much higher. Now was the time to return payment for those years of authority and respect.
He took another step.
The twang of the bow releasing was almost deafening in the tension-charged room. Instinctively, violently, the corporal flinched and staggered back a pace, expecting the burning agony of the arrow, then the blackness of certain death.
And realised what had happened: the bowstring had snapped.
The Ranger stared incredulously at the useless weapon in his hands. The tableau remained frozen for a full five seconds. Then the corporal and his men leapt forward, swinging the short, heavy clubs that they carried, swarming over the small grey and green clad figure.
As the Ranger went down under the rain of blows, no one noticed him drop the small blade he had used to sever the bowstring. But the tavern keeper did wonder how a man who had moved so quickly to defeat a stevedore twice his size now seemed to be so slow and vulnerable.
On the barren, windswept island of Skorghijl, Will was running.
He had done five laps of the shingle beach. Now he turned towards the steep cliffs that reared above the tiny harbour. His legs burned with the effort as he forced himself to climb, the muscles in his thighs and calves protesting. The weeks of inactivity on the wolfship had taken their toll on his fitness and now he was determined to regain it, to harden his muscles and bring his body back to the fine-tuned edge that Halt had demanded of him.
He might not be able to practise his archery or knifework, but he could at least make sure his body was ready if the chance came to escape.
And Will was determined that such a chance would come.
He drove himself up the steep slope, the small stones and shale slipping and giving way under his feet. The higher he went, the more the wind plucked at his clothes until, finally, he reached the top of the cliff and was exposed to the full force of the north wind – the Summer Gales, as the Skandians called them. On the northern side of the island, the wind drove the waves against the unyielding black rock, sending fountains of spray high into the air. In the harbour behind him, the water was relatively calm, sheltered from the wind by the massive horseshoe of cliffs that surrounded it.
As he always did when he reached this point, he scanned the ocean for some sign of a ship. But as ever, there was nothing to see but the relentlessly marching waves.
He looked back into the harbour. The two large huts seemed ridiculously small from here. One was the dormitory where the Skandian crew slept. The other was the eating hall where they spent most of their time, arguing, gambling and drinking. To the side of the dormitory, built against one of the long side walls, was the lean-to that Erak had assigned to him and Evanlyn. It was a small space but at least they didn’t have to share with the Skandians, and Will had rigged an old blanket across one end to provide Evanlyn with a little privacy.
She was sitting outside the lean-to now. Even from this distance, Will could see the dispirited slump in her shoulders and he frowned. Some days ago, he had suggested that she might like to join him in his attempt to keep fit. She had dismissed the idea out of hand. She seemed to have simply accepted their lot, he thought. She had given in and over the past few days, their exchanges had become increasingly waspish as he tried to boost her spirits and talked about the possibility of escape – for he already had an idea forming in that direction.
He was puzzled and hurt by her attitude. It was unlike the Evanlyn he remembered from the bridge – the brave, resolute partner who had run across the narrow beams of the bridge to help him without any thought for her personal safety, then tried to fight off the Skandians as they closed in on them.
This new Evanlyn was strangely dispirited. Her negative attitude surprised him. He would never have picked her as someone who would quit when the going got tough.
Maybe that’s how girls were, he told himself. But he didn’t believe it. He sensed there was something else, something she hadn’t told him. Shrugging away the thoughts, he started down the cliff once more.
The downhill run was easier than uphill, but not by too much. The slippery, treacherous surface beneath his feet meant that he had to continually run faster and faster to maintain his balance, setting off miniature landslides as he went. Where the uphill course had burned his thigh muscles, now he felt it in his calves an
d ankles. He reached the bottom of the slope, breathing hard, and dropped to the shingle to do a series of rapid pushups.
His shoulders were burning after a few minutes but he kept at it, forcing himself past the point of pain, blinded by the perspiration that was running into his eyes until, eventually, he could continue no longer. Exhausted, he collapsed, his arms unable to bear his weight, and lay face down on the shingle, panting for breath.
He hadn’t heard Evanlyn approaching as he was doing the pushups. Now he was startled by the sound of her voice.
‘Will, it’s a waste of time.’
Her voice didn’t have the argumentative tone that had been so much in evidence in the last few days. She sounded almost conciliatory, he thought. With a slight groan of pain, he pushed himself up from the shingle, then rolled over and sat, dusting the wet sand from his hands.
He smiled at her and she smiled in return, then moved to sit beside him on the beach.
‘What’s a waste of time?’ he asked. She made a vague gesture that included the beach where he had just been doing pushups and the cliff he had climbed and descended.
‘All this running and exercising. And all this talk of escape.’
He frowned slightly. He didn’t want to start an argument with her, so he was careful not to react too vehemently to her words. He tried to keep a reasonable, neutral tone.
‘It’s never a waste of time to stay in shape,’ he said.
She nodded, conceding that point. ‘Perhaps not. But escaping? From here? What chance would we have?’
He knew he would have to be careful now. If it seemed he was lecturing her, she might well retreat into her shell again. But he knew how important it was to keep hope alive in a situation like this and he wanted to impress that fact on her.
‘I’ll admit it doesn’t look too promising,’ he said. ‘But you never know what tomorrow may bring. The important thing is to stay positive. We mustn’t give up. Halt taught me that. Never give up because, if an opportunity arises, you have to be ready to take it. Don’t give up, Evanlyn, please.’