“William,” he said in greeting. “What’s the situation?”
The scout pointed with his bow down the road. “They’re about forty meters that way,” he said. “They’re concealed in the trees either side of the road, but if you look carefully you can see them.”
Crowley leaned down in his saddle and peered along the road, under the overhanging branches of the oak.
“Just by that blackened stump,” William said, and now Crowley could make out slight movement in the shadows of the trees.
“They’re probably wondering where the carriage is,” Donald said.
Crowley nodded. It had been several minutes since Donald had ridden back to warn them, and they’d taken several more to get the carriage off the road and ride back to where William was keeping an eye on the outlaw band.
“Let’s not keep them waiting,” Crowley said, and urged Cropper out from under the trees and toward the bend in the road. “Bows ready,” he said over his shoulder. But there was no need for the command. These were experienced men, seasoned fighters. Their bows were always ready.
He drew an arrow from his quiver and laid it on the bow, nocking it automatically, without needing to look. He rode out into the open, rounding the bend and facing the forty meters of straight road that led to the spot where the bandits were hidden. William and Donald rode with him, a few paces behind him. As they came onto the road, they spread out a few meters on either side, and all three halted their horses, keeping them at an angle so their way was clear to shoot.
Crowley heard a startled exclamation from the trees ahead. Then silence.
“Show yourselves!” he ordered. “We know you’re there.”
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then there was a rustle of movement in the trees and the bandits emerged onto the road. They were mounted on a mixed assortment of horses: some of them shaggy farm ponies; some horses they had clearly stolen from wealthier victims. And they bore an equally assorted range of weapons and armor. Spears, of course, and axes, swords and clubs. Some had chain-mail shirts and others were protected by leather vests sewn with bronze plates, shaped like scales. None of them would be any protection against an arrow shot from an eighty-pound longbow.
The man at the front, presumably their leader, wore a pot-shaped helmet with a fringe of mail hanging down behind to protect his neck. He carried a long two-handed sword, although Crowley doubted that he knew how to use it properly. Longswords required a great deal of strength and practice.
The bandit brandished it clumsily over his head. “Throw down your weapons!” he commanded.
Obviously, the bandits had decided they had little to fear from three lightly armed and unarmored archers. Archers, in their limited experience, were cowards—they would slink onto a battlefield, loose a few arrows, then dash to safety behind the armored lines of their armies.
“I think that’s what I want you to do,” Crowley said pleasantly. “I’ll count to five and I want to see all those weapons on the road.” He turned quickly to his two companions and said in lowered tones, “Shoot on four. Aim to wound if you can, but if you’re not sure, just hit them anywhere. I’ll take the leader.”
The two archers grunted agreement. Crowley began to count.
“One. Two. Three. Four . . .”
And as he said four, he whipped his bow up, drew, sighted and shot in a heartbeat. William and Donald shot a fraction of a second after him.
Crowley’s arrow hit the bandit leader in the upper part of his right arm, the force of the arrow spinning him sideways and throwing him out of the saddle. He dropped the longsword as he fell, landing awkwardly across it. He tried to rise to his feet, but the shock and the intense pain in his arm made his knees weak and he collapsed back into the dust.
William’s shot hit another bandit in the thigh. The man screamed and his horse reared, throwing him. Donald’s target moved at the last moment and the arrow, aimed for his shoulder, thudded into his chest. He reeled back over his horse’s rump and crashed to the road and lay still.
In the time that the two archers’ targets took to hit the road, Crowley had loosed another three arrows in rapid succession. Every one found its mark, and three more bandits went down. Donald and William looked at the Ranger in wide-eyed admiration. They were good shots, but this level of speed and accuracy was something else entirely.
In a matter of a few seconds, the band had lost their leader and nearly half their companions, dead or wounded. The remainder were stunned for a few seconds. Then two of them gathered their reins to flee.
“Don’t move!” Crowley’s voice cracked out down the road. His bow was up again, an arrow on the string. The bandits froze where they were.
“Next man to move, I’ll shoot,” Crowley continued. He heard a muted clatter of hooves behind him and realized that the other three archers had joined them. That made things a lot easier, he thought. The numbers were more even now.
“Throw down your weapons,” he ordered. The bandits hesitated, and without warning, Crowley shot again, putting an arrow through the arm of one of the men who looked most reluctant to obey. Like his leader, the bandit was hurled sideways and lost his seat on his horse. He crashed to the ground with a cry of pain, dropping the heavy spear he had been holding in the process.
Almost before the bandits could register that Crowley had shot, he had another arrow nocked, and his gaze moved across them, seeking his next target, the arrowhead following the direction of his eyes.
There was a loud clatter as a shower of spears, axes, swords and daggers were tossed to the road.
“Now dismount and lie facedown,” Crowley ordered.
The outlaws didn’t hesitate. They were covered now by six longbows and they had seen that these men hit what they aimed at—particularly the one in the gray cloak, who didn’t seem to need to aim at all.
Crowley urged Cropper forward, crabbing the horse so he could keep the bandits covered. The five archers followed suit. They were experienced warriors and they fanned out, making sure that each of them had room to shoot and a clear line of sight to the bandits. The small group stopped a few meters from the would-be ambushers.
“Move again, green cap,” Crowley warned, “and I’ll put an arrow through your backside.”
One of the bandits, on the fringe of the group, had been moving surreptitiously toward the shallow ditch at the side of the road. Now he hastily dropped his nose into the dirt and remained still.
“Donald, William, take the horses’ bridles and let the horses loose,” Crowley ordered, and the two archers slid from their saddles and hurried to obey. Within a few minutes, the horses, urged on by hearty slaps on their rumps and shouts from the two warriors, were cantering off down the road.
Crowley now urged his horse toward a group of four bandits.
“Sit up,” he ordered and the men warily rolled over and sat in the dust. “Now strip.”
“Strip?” one of them said, and the arrow moved to train itself on his face.
“Strip. Lose your clothes. I want you naked as the day you were born,” the Ranger told them. When they had complied, he nodded to the two dismounted archers. “Tie them up,” he said. “Use the bridles and tie them back to back.”
Grinning, the archers followed his orders. The former bandits were cowed under the threat of four longbows, and the certainty that if the Ranger shot, one of them would be dead.
Then Crowley repeated the order with another seven of the bandits, stripping them and lashing them back to back in two big circles on the side of the road. The rest of the band didn’t need tying. They were already beyond escape. When that was done, he had his men gather up the weapons that littered the road, and the bandits’ boots.
“Go and bring up the carriage now,” he told William and, as the young archer turned away, he added, “Tell our passenger to roll down the window blind. This lot don’t make a pret
ty sight.”
13
THEY ATE BEFORE THE DAYLIGHT HAD FADED COMPLETELY. Norman built a small fire of tinder-dry wood that was virtually smokeless, waited till the flames died down and heated an iron pot of rabbit stew over the coals.
The food was delicious, although Halt found himself wishing that Norman had access to some salt. But the rabbit joints and turnips and greens were hot and nourishing. When they had eaten, Halt produced his small sack of coffee beans and offered some to the hermit.
Norman shook his head suspiciously. “Water is fine.”
Halt shrugged, filled the kettle with the pure water from the spring in the wall and set it in the coals to boil. “Your loss,” he said.
He made a small pot of coffee and sat back, resting his back against a convenient boulder, legs stretched out to the glowing coals of the fire, and sipped contentedly. They sat in silence for some minutes, then Norman began to fidget and move restlessly. Halt watched him calmly. The older man had something on his mind. Eventually, he gathered his resolve and spoke.
“Been thinkin’,” he said. “T’ain’t fair to let you blunder around the plateau on your own. You’ll be spotted, sure as life.”
Halt said nothing. He was confident in his own ability to move about without being seen. He had been doing so for years, after all. Norman, despite his bravado, was a different matter, he thought. He knew the land intimately and could lose any pursuit in the twisted, unmarked trails and tunnels among the rocks. But as for remaining unseen in the first place, Halt believed Norman was overestimating his own ability. After all, Halt had spotted him easily earlier that day, when Norman had been trailing him. The older man didn’t seem to grasp one of the absolute fundamentals of remaining unseen—stillness. He had moved when Halt turned to look in his direction and that movement had given him away.
Halt suspected that the hermit was often seen by Morgarath and his henchmen as he moved among the rocks. But he presented no danger to them, and for the moment they had decided not to bother with him. Occasionally, a patrol of Wargals might come upon him and pursue him. And then, his intimate knowledge of the land stood him in good stead, allowing him to shake off any pursuit.
But if he were as skilled at remaining unseen as he thought he was, there would have been no need to evade pursuit in the first place.
“What’s changed your mind?” Halt asked. Norman had been adamant that he wouldn’t help when they had discussed the matter earlier.
The gray-haired man shifted uncomfortably. Then he replied.
“You go blundering about out there and they’re likely to see you,” he said. “The Black Lord has patrols out all the time.”
“They never spot you,” Halt said, although he doubted that was accurate.
Norman nodded agreement. “I know how to move,” he said. “I know how to keep hidden.” Halt couldn’t stop one eyebrow from rising incredulously. He was tempted to remind the man that he hadn’t seen Halt while the Ranger had doubled back behind him, stalked him and knocked him out. But he didn’t want to insult him. He could use his help. Halt had no way of backtracking through the bewildering maze of tunnels and gullies they had passed through to get to the cave. Without Norman’s guidance, he’d have to return to the edge of the escarpment and retrace his original route from there to the drill field.
“Thing is,” Norman said, finally deciding to come clean, “if they see you, you’ll probably lead them back to my cave here, and I can’t have that.”
“Ah,” Halt said, understanding. Norman’s decision was based on self-interest and self-preservation, not on a newfound desire to help his uninvited guest.
“In that case, I’d welcome your assistance. And I’ll try not to be too noticeable.” He added the last few words with a hint of a smile. Norman, however, failed to notice. Irony wasn’t his strong suit, Halt decided.
“What can you tell me about the Wargals?” he asked.
Norman frowned as he considered his answer. “They’re simple creatures, and once they get set on a course of action, they’ll carry it through regardless of what gets in the way. The Black Lord has turned them into ruthless killers. Nothing will stop them. Or rather, they won’t stop no matter what. If the Black Lord wants them to, they’ll just keep attacking and attacking, no matter how many of them are killed. They are utterly fearless.”
“How does he control them?” Halt asked. He hadn’t heard any orders being issued while the Wargals were drilling earlier in the day.
Norman shook his head. “That’s the strange part,” he said. “Seems they can read his mind—and he can read theirs.”
“How do you know this?” Halt asked.
“I heard two of his men talking about it. I was hunting one day and they nearly spotted me. I just had time to hide behind some rocks while they settled down for a rest on the other side. They were saying how eerie it was that he could just think what he wanted them to do and they’d do it.” Norman shuddered at the thought. It seemed almost supernatural to him. “They were also talking about how the Wargals are unstoppable once he gives them a task.”
Halt stroked his beard thoughtfully. In his travels, he’d seen many mountebanks and charlatans in fairs, who claimed to be able to read minds and send mental messages. The vast majority could be exposed as fakes and tricksters. But there was a small percentage where the feat couldn’t be explained. Maybe some people did have that ability, he thought. If Norman was right and Morgarath really did have the power to control his Wargals this way, it was startling news. Then a thought occurred to him.
“While we were watching today, I thought I . . . felt something—as if someone was trying to speak to me.”
“Ah, you felt it, did you? I used to feel that all the time. It’s Morgarath. He’s sending them a message and you can sense it. These days, I hardly notice it anymore. I’ve taught myself to ignore it.”
“How many Wargals does he have?” Halt asked.
Norman considered the question. “Must be eight or nine hundred.”
Halt whistled softy. Eight or nine hundred of these fearless, implacable monsters. That would be a dangerous army to face. And of course, Morgarath also had between one and two hundred human troops.
Duncan’s small standing army, by comparison, barely numbered two hundred and fifty. Of course, there were levies that he could bring in from the fiefs to swell the numbers in the short term. But they were farmers and yeomen for the most part, not trained soldiers. And he couldn’t hold on to them indefinitely. There were crops to sow and harvest. The time they would spend in his army was a short one.
“I think I need to get a closer look at these monsters,” he said. “We’ll do it in the morning.” The sooner he could gather intelligence on Morgarath’s army, the sooner he, Duncan and Crowley could begin figuring out a way to beat them.
• • •
Midmorning the following day found them crouched among the rocks at the edge of the cleared drill field once more.
Several companies of Wargals were drilling in a different part of the field. Some engaged in mock combat, using wooden staffs to replace their vicious, short spears. The crack of wood on wood rang across the field.
Others practiced a steady advance to within a hundred meters of their objective, crouching low behind their shields as some of Morgarath’s men peppered them with arrows. At the set moment, the Wargals rose from their crouched position and charged. They were clumsy and heavily built but they moved with deceptive speed. Halt noticed that they often used their long arms and hands to keep their balance on the ground.
He also noticed that, the minute they charged, the archers quickly withdrew to one side. Perhaps, he thought, they didn’t totally trust their inhuman allies.
All in all, it was a disquieting sight. The Wargals were powerful and fast moving. And they were disciplined, moving together in formation, each one working in conjunction with th
ose on either side of him.
They had been observing for twenty minutes when Norman’s hand closed over his forearm and he pointed to one side.
A black-clad figure on a dead-white horse was trotting slowly onto the drill field, flanked by two other riders.
“The Black Lord,” Norman whispered.
Halt’s eyes narrowed as he watched that hated figure. Visions of Pritchard lying still and pale at the entrance to the tunnel from Castle Gorlan filled his mind. He wanted to send an arrow speeding across the drill field and into the former Baron’s heart, and his hand actually dropped to the quiver at his belt.
But the range was too great. And then the moment was gone as Morgarath turned his horse and cantered back into the compound at the foot of the cliffs. His two companions remained on the drill field, observing the Wargals and riding in a large circle around the edge of the open ground.
As they neared one group, the iron discipline of the Wargals faltered and they edged closer together, moving away from the two riders.
Norman pointed. “See that? They don’t like horses.”
Halt frowned. That was interesting. “Why not?”
The hermit shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe something happened in the past. Maybe it’s because they haven’t seen too many horses before. But they always shy away when the horses get close. I’ve seen the Black Lord try to drill that out of them, but so far, he hasn’t managed completely. Time was they’d break and run if a horse got anywhere near ’em. That’s why he has his men ride around them when they’re drilling.”
Halt watched, fascinated, as the Wargals slowly regained their discipline. The two riders, their task completed, edged their horses away from the first group and cantered toward the line of rocks where Halt and Norman were hiding. Apparently, they would ride in a long circle around the parade ground, approaching individual groups of Wargals to let them overcome their distaste for the strange four-legged creatures.
He felt Norman stir beside him and looked round to see the shabby hermit was rising from a crouch and turning away. He grabbed Norman’s arm. The riders were only thirty meters away and they were bound to see any movement. His earlier doubts about Norman’s skills were confirmed in a rush.