‘Dry your tears now. I know it’s a horrible thing to face, but it was something you had to do. You had to do it or you would have been killed. Are we clear on that?’
She nodded, wiping the back of her hand across her face to dry her tears.
‘I so wanted to talk to you. I couldn’t tell anyone and I felt so . . . dreadful,’ she said in a small voice.
Will nodded at her, comforting her. ‘I shouldn’t have left you. If anyone is to blame for this, it’s me. But I want you to put this out of your mind now and don’t think any further on it, all right?’
‘All right. But it’s just –’
‘No. No more. Put the thoughts aside.’
‘But . . . he had a sheet of paper on him. I think it might be important.’
Will’s head snapped up at those words. ‘Paper? What is it?’
‘I’m not sure. It could be a map of some kind. It’s in my room.’
He took her hand and led her towards the inn. ‘Then let’s have a look at it.’
‘But . . . I’ve got work to do . . .’ she protested.
He shook his head. ‘Let Jerome and his wife do it. He said you should take a long break. So let’s take it.’
‘What did you find out in Boyletown?’ she asked as they headed for her room.
‘The Storyman was there all right – a couple of days before Peter Williscroft disappeared.’ Will paused, then added, ‘And the boy was being mistreated, just like the others.’
‘By his father?’
He shook his head. ‘An older brother. He used to bully him continually. Nobody was surprised when Peter went missing.’
They reached the top of the stairs and he pushed the door open, standing aside to let her enter the little room.
‘Now let’s see what’s on this paper you found.’
THEY STUDIED THE single sheet of paper, frowning as to its possible meaning. There was one word written on it: Pueblos.
And six crosses drawn, each one numbered. Will scratched his head. There was something about the arrangement of three of those crosses that looked familiar.
‘What does pueblos mean?’ he asked, more to himself than to Maddie.
But she answered. ‘I think it’s Iberian. I just can’t place it. Does it mean horsemen?’ She frowned. Her schooling at Castle Araluen had included a basic study of foreign languages including Gallican and Iberian. But she hadn’t paid a lot of attention to those lessons – or any other lessons she had been taught, for that matter.
‘The benefit of a classical education,’ Will muttered.
Maddie was still frowning, rubbing her forehead furiously as she strained for the elusive meaning of that word. It wasn’t horsemen. It was on the tip of her tongue. It was . . .
‘Villages!’ she said triumphantly. ‘Pueblo means village in Iberian!’
And suddenly, Will knew why the arrangement of three of those crosses was familiar. He scrabbled in his inner pocket for Liam’s map and spread it out beside the sheet from the intruder’s satchel.
He took a stick of charcoal from his belt wallet and quickly drew lines connecting the three villages of Danvers Crossing, Boyletown and Esseldon on Liam’s map. The lines formed a narrow, oblique triangle. Then he took the sheet that Maddie had found and connected the first three villages marked there. He found himself looking at the same triangle.
‘These are the villages where children disappeared,’ he said, leaning back.
Maddie pointed to the sheet she had taken from the stranger. ‘And there are three others,’ she said.
Will frowned and drew a line from village number three, which represented Boyletown, to the farthest village marked on the stranger’s chart. The line ran east of northeast. He measured the length with finger and thumb, then compared it to the distance between Esseldon and Boyletown, calculating quickly.
When Will had visited Castle Trelleth, he had obtained a detailed map of the fief. He took it out now and unfolded it, running his finger in an east-north-east direction until he came to a village that corresponded roughly with the one on the chart Maddie had found in the intruder’s satchel.
‘Willow Vale,’ he said.
Maddie craned over his shoulder to see the map. ‘Why that one? Why not four or five?’ she asked.
‘Because it’s number six. So it’s the last one they plan to visit. Maybe they haven’t been there yet. It’s a day’s ride from here,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘Or a night’s ride,’ she put in. ‘After all, we don’t know how much time we’ve got.’
‘In which case, we don’t have any time to waste.’
They retrieved their bows, quivers and cloaks from where they were hidden in the handcart. Maddie went into one of the empty stalls and changed from her patched old dress back into her breeches, shirt and jerkin. She tossed aside the thin-soled sandals she’d been wearing and hauled on her soft leather boots.
When she finally donned her cloak once more, she heaved a sigh of satisfaction. It was good to feel like a Ranger again.
Staying in the shadows, they made their way out of the village. Nobody saw them or challenged them and, once away from the open space of the main street, they settled into a steady jog towards the clearing where they had left their horses.
‘Will Tug be up to the trip?’ she asked as they paused for breath. ‘After all, you’ve been riding him all day.’
‘He’s a Ranger horse,’ Will replied. ‘He could keep going for another two days if I asked him to.’
They set off again, reaching the clearing five minutes later. Tug and Bumper heard them coming, recognised them and whinnied a welcome. They quickly saddled the horses and mounted, then Will touched Tug with his heels and headed out onto the road, Maddie and Bumper close behind them. They settled into a smooth canter, side by side. The only sound was the rhythmic drumming of their horses’ hooves on the packed earth surface of the road. Behind them, a small cloud of dust rose and drifted in the shafts of moonlight that broke through the trees. Eventually, it settled until there was no sign that they had passed.
After half an hour, they slowed the horses and dismounted. They gave them a quick drink of water from the canteens they carried, pouring it into a folding leather bucket. Then they began leading the horses, walking beside them for ten minutes to let them rest. They would continue this pattern throughout the night, alternately riding at the mile-eating lope the Ranger horses were trained to, then walking to rest them.
It was easier to talk now that they weren’t cantering.
‘What I don’t understand,’ Maddie said, ‘is why these people are stealing the children. There have been no ransom demands. And in any event, the parents are poor for the most part and could hardly afford to pay much. So what’s the point?’
It had been bothering her for some time. One thing Will had taught her was to always look for a reason behind a crime. The question to ask was ‘who benefits?’. In this case, she could see no advantage for anyone – unless the Stealer and his group were simply doing this for the sake of evil itself.
‘I don’t think the idea is to ransom the children,’ Will said now. He had been giving the matter considerable thought and there were several clues now apparent.
‘I think we’re looking at a slave ring.’
‘A slave ring?’ Maddie stopped in surprise and Bumper, caught unawares, lived up to his name and bumped into her.
‘Think about it,’ Will said. ‘You said the man who broke into your room was foreign. He had a chart with an Iberian word on it and those quattros are an Iberian weapon.’
‘Is that significant?’ Maddie asked.
‘It is when you consider that there’s a very active slave trade in Iberion,’ Will told her. ‘And children in their early teens are particularly sought after.’
‘I didn’t know the Iberians kept slaves,’ Maddie said. But then, she thought, she didn’t know much about Iberion and its people anyway. She just had a general, vague impression that slavery was a thin
g of the past on the main continent.
‘They don’t. The Iberian king has outlawed the practice. Apparently his religion forbids keeping slaves. But it doesn’t say anything about trading in them, so he permits his people to capture slaves and sell them on to others. There’s a small but active fleet of slave ships operating out of Magala harbour in south Iberion.’
‘Who buys them?’ Maddie asked.
‘Generally, they’re sold in the market in Socorro.’ He looked at her and she returned the gaze blankly. ‘Have you never studied geography?’ he asked her. ‘What do they teach kids these days?’
He paused. The words struck a strange chord of memory in him. He seemed to recall Halt saying something similar to him when he was first apprenticed to his old mentor. He shook his head to clear the thought. It seemed that the older he became, the more words and events began to repeat themselves.
‘I learned a lot of needlepoint,’ Maddie said acidly. It had always been a sore point with her that she was told to embroider when what she really wanted to do was go hunting in the forest.
‘Hmmph. Remind me to call on you when I rip my shirt,’ Will said. Then he continued with his lesson on the slave trade. ‘Socorro is a city-kingdom on the west coast of Arrida. It has a big slave market – one of the biggest on the Arridi continent. Slaves are bought and sold there and transported from there to all corners of the hinterland.’
‘And you think that’s what’s happening here?’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘It makes sense. The Stealer, the Storyman and their gang are operating in remote villages, where word of the children’s disappearance is unlikely to get out to the wider world. Who knows how many children they’ve abducted? They pick kids who are mistreated, and likely to run away. That deflects attention further. People assume that the kid has finally rebelled against the constant mistreatment and run off.’
‘But how do they know who those kids are?’ Maddie asked.
Will tapped his finger alongside his nose in a knowing gesture.
‘That’s where the Storyman comes in. He visits a town, gains the confidence of the children and spots a likely candidate. After all, it’s a sad fact that you can usually find a badly treated child in most villages. He then frightens the children into silence, so they say nothing about the questions he’s been asking. He leaves town and, some time later, the Stealer comes in and abducts the child the Storyman has singled out for him. The other kids say nothing, because they’ve been told if they do, they’ll be the Stealer’s next target. And the kidnapped child is so petrified by the Stealer’s terrible reputation – as described by the Storyman – that he or she goes along without protest. It’s quite an ingenious system when you look at it.’
‘That’s horrible,’ Maddie said, thinking over what he’d said.
‘That doesn’t make it any less ingenious,’ Will told her.
She turned to look at him. ‘That’s what’s so horrible about it. So what do you plan to do when we reach Willow Vale?’
‘I’ll find out if the Storyman has visited recently, and if there’s any child in the village who’s badly mistreated by his or her parents.’
‘How do you plan to do that?’ she asked.
Will’s expression turned bleak. ‘I have my ways,’ he said. ‘Come on. It’s time we got mounted again.’
FERNALD CREASY, THE owner of The Tubby Duck, Willow Vale’s small inn, rubbed his eyes and yawned. He had unwisely spent too much time keeping his customers company the previous night.
In other words, he had drunk far too much ale. As a result, he had staggered off to his bed without bothering to clear away the dirty platters and half-filled tankards that littered his tap room. Nor had he scrubbed out the cooking pots in the kitchen.
Of course, his kitchen hand should have done that. But he was a sly boy and once he saw Fernald happily raising his fifth tankard with a group at the central table, he had taken the opportunity to slip away. Now it was early morning, just after sunrise, and Fernald was faced with the task of cleaning up last night’s mess.
He piled a tray with dirty platters, knives, spoons and tankards and went back into the kitchen, yawning continuously. His head throbbed painfully and he vowed he would never drink again. He glanced around the kitchen with a look of distaste. The work table was littered with food scraps and more dirty plates and cooking pans. There was a lot of work to be done before he could return to his bed. And the tap room wasn’t halfway tidy yet, he thought morosely.
He muttered angrily to himself. There was no room on the wash bench for the tray he was carrying. The bench was already piled high with detritus from the previous night.
He turned to place the tray on the long kitchen table.
A cowled figure was standing less than a metre away from him, silent and sinister in the dim light of early morning.
Fernald dropped the tray in fright, sending its contents clattering and clashing on the floor. He was sure there had been nobody in the kitchen when he’d entered from the tap room. And he’d heard no sound of anyone arriving.
‘By the Black Troll of Balath!’ he exclaimed, putting his hand to his heart, which was working overtime with fright. ‘Where did you come from?’
‘An interesting curse,’ Will said. ‘Don’t think I’ve heard the Black Troll invoked in many a year. You must follow the old religion.’
Fernald rubbed his face with one hand as his heart rate gradually slowed to a gallop. He glanced down and saw a half-empty tankard of flat ale on the table. He picked it up and drained it, grimacing at the stale flavour.
‘I don’t hold with these new gods,’ he mumbled vaguely. Then, shaking off the distraction, he continued. ‘Who are you? And how did you get in here?’
‘I’m a King’s Ranger, as you’ve possibly guessed. And that back door lock wouldn’t keep out a determined three-year-old. Now sit down. We need to talk.’
Will shoved Fernald towards a bench and the innkeeper sat down – aware that his knees were shaking still with the shock of the Ranger’s sudden appearance.
Why me, he thought. What have I done?
And the answer was, quite a lot, actually. Fernald was adept at giving his customers short measure in their food and drink. He wasn’t reluctant to water his ale from time to time. And on occasions, he had slipped unwary customers a few worthless lead discs among their change. He wondered how the Ranger knew about these things.
‘I need information,’ Will said. ‘First of all, have any children disappeared from the village recently?’
Fernald frowned, not grasping the question. ‘Disappeared? What do you mean?’
‘Gone missing. Run off. Haven’t been seen around.’
‘Oh . . .’ Fernald thought about that for several seconds, then he shook his head. ‘No. Can’t say I’ve heard of anything like that,’ he said finally. Will felt a quick surge of satisfaction. They had arrived in time. Unless . . . He hesitated before he asked the next question. It was crucial.
‘Can you think of any child who might run off – given the opportunity? Someone whose parents tend to mistreat them?’
Before he had finished, Fernald was nodded eagerly.
‘Oh, aye. Young Violet Carter. Nice young thing. Only thirteen years old. But her parents are always fighting and they take it out on Violet. Poor girl can’t seem to do a thing right sometimes. I’ve even let her stay here some nights, it gets so bad.’
Right, thought Will. It was all falling into place.
‘Where does she live?’ he asked.
Fernald made a vague gesture towards the high street outside. ‘Third-last house from the far end of the street. House with a blue door – although that could use a lick of paint. The yard behind is piled with old broken bits of carts – wheels, shafts and harness. Can’t miss it.’
‘You’re doing well, Fernald,’ Will told him.
How did he know my name, the innkeeper wondered, forgetting that it was painted on the sign hanging outside his front door.
/> ‘Now I’ve got one more question. Has there been a travelling spinner through Willow Vale in the last few days?’
‘You mean the Storyman?’ Fernald said, and Will’s own heart rate accelerated. ‘Rum cove in a blue cloak and red shoes? Yes, he was here. Left two days ago. Why? What has he done?’
Will ignored the question. He had a deep feeling of satisfaction that his hunch had paid off. Willow Vale was on the list. The Storyman had been here. But the Stealer was yet to come. And there was a likely candidate for abduction in the person of Violet Carter.
He’d taken a risk revealing his true identity and asking these questions so directly. But time was short and direct action was called for. Now he had to ensure that Fernald remained silent about this meeting for the next few days. He couldn’t hope for much beyond that. But by then, the Stealer may well have been and gone.
‘Fernald,’ he said, ‘you’ve told me what I need to know. But nobody else can know that I’ve been here. And nobody else needs to know what we’ve been discussing. Is that clear?’
Fernald nodded eagerly, sensing that this grim figure was about to leave him to his cleaning. What a tale this would make in the bar, he thought. Then the Ranger’s next words dispelled that thought.
‘I mean it. You will tell nobody that I have been here. You will tell nobody what we’ve talked about. Understand?’
‘Eh? Oh yes. Of course! Goes without saying!’
Will stepped a pace closer, holding Fernald’s eyes with his. Fernald instantly dropped his gaze away.
‘Don’t do that!’ Will snapped and Fernald jerked as if he had been stung. ‘Look at me. Look at my eyes.’
Fernald did. He didn’t like what he saw there. The brown eyes were dark, almost black. And they were boring into his without any sign of pity or compassion. They were dark, threatening holes.
‘If I find that you have breathed a word of this to anyone – even a hint to anyone at all – I will arrest you and put you in the deepest, wettest, worst-smelling dungeon in Castle Trelleth. Understand?’