He paused and the others nodded wordlessly. They had felt the same thing when Crowley had approached them.
“As I say,” Egon continued, “I don’t know the rest of you too well. But I doubt any of you could have convinced me so completely or so quickly. If for no other reason than that, I think Crowley should be our leader.”
There was a murmur of agreement from the others. Crowley, embarrassed, looked down at his feet.
Halt nudged him with an elbow. “Isn’t it nice to be loved?” He grinned evilly. Crowley glared at him but before he could speak, Halt raised his voice. “Let’s vote on it! Crowley for leader. All in favor?”
“Aye!” the others chorused. Crowley opened his mouth to say nay, realized there was no point to it and closed it again.
Halt nodded. “And I say aye as well.” He slapped Crowley on the shoulder. “Congratulations. Looks like you’re our new commander.”
21
THEY RODE ON THE NEXT MORNING. CROWLEY HAD OVERCOME his resistance to being elected their leader. It was a bright, sunny day and the air was crisp and fresh. He whistled softly as he rode, a jaunty little tune about a blacksmith and his ladylove.
He and Halt were riding side by side. Berrigan and Leander rode behind them and Egon brought up the rear, riding some fifty meters back, keeping a watchful eye on the trail behind them. From time to time, one of the others would take a turn at being the rear guard. There was little likelihood of trouble, but there was no harm in being ready.
Halt glared at his friend as the whistling continued. “I had hoped that your new sense of responsibility would put an end to that painful shrieking noise you make between your lips,” he said.
Crowley smiled. It was a beautiful day and he was feeling at peace with the world. And that meant he was more than ready to tease Halt. “It’s a jaunty song.”
“What’s jaunty about it?” Halt asked, grim faced. Crowley made an uncertain gesture as he sought for an answer to that question.
“I suppose it’s the subject matter,” he said eventually. “It’s a very cheerful song. Would you like me to sing it for you?”
“N—” Halt began but he was too late, as Crowley began to sing. He had a pleasant tenor voice, in fact, and his rendering of the song was quite good. But to Halt it was as attractive as a rusty barn door squeaking.
“A blacksmith from Palladio, he met a lovely lady-o . . .”
“Whoa! Whoa!” Halt said and, as Abelard obligingly came to a stop, he nudged the horse in the ribs. “Not you. Him,” he said, pointing to Crowley.
In the future, be more specific, Abelard’s withering glance seemed to say. I’m a horse, not a mind reader. Halt ignored him. Crowley was looking at him, eyebrows raised in interrogation.
“‘He met a lovely lady-o’?” Halt repeated sarcastically. “What in the name of all that’s holy is a lady-o?”
“It’s a lady,” Crowley told him patiently.
“Then why not sing ‘he met a lovely lady’?” Halt wanted to know.
Crowley frowned as if the answer was blatantly obvious. “Because he’s from Palladio, as the song says. It’s a city on the continent, in the southern part of Toscana.”
“And people there have lady-o’s, instead of ladies?” asked Halt.
“No. They have ladies, like everyone else. But lady doesn’t rhyme with Palladio, does it? I could hardly sing, ‘A blacksmith from Palladio, he met his lovely lady,’ could I?”
“It would make more sense if you did,” Halt insisted.
“But it wouldn’t rhyme,” Crowley told him.
“Would that be so bad?”
“Yes! A song has to rhyme or it isn’t a proper song. It has to be lady-o. It’s called poetic license.”
“It’s poetic license to make up a word that doesn’t exist and that, by the way, sounds extremely silly?” Halt asked.
Crowley shook his head. “No. It’s poetic license to make sure that the two lines rhyme with each other.”
Halt thought for a few seconds, his eyebrows knitted close together. Then inspiration struck him.
“Well then, couldn’t you sing, ‘A blacksmith from Palladio, he met a lovely lady, so . . .’?”
“So what?” Crowley challenged. In truth, he was more than a little surprised that Halt had come up with an alternative rhyme so quickly—and one that seemed to open up further opportunities for the story.
Halt made an uncertain gesture with his hands as he sought more inspiration. Then he replied. “He met a lovely lady, so . . . he asked her for her hand and gave her a leg of lamb.”
“‘A leg of lamb’? Why would she want a leg of lamb?” Crowley demanded.
Halt shrugged. “Maybe she was hungry.”
“In any event,” Crowley said, becoming more and more irritated by this conversation, “hand and lamb don’t rhyme with each other.”
“They assonate,” said Berrigan, who had been listening with some interest to this discussion. “They have a similar sound. That’s quite common in songs, you know.”
Berrigan, of course, was a musician and could be considered to be something of an authority when it came to song lyrics. Crowley, feeling as if he were being backed into a corner, turned to him.
“Well, even if they do aspirate—”
“Assonate. The word is assonate,” Berrigan corrected him, making it all too obvious that he was hiding a grin.
“Whatever! Even if they do . . . that . . . why would he give her a leg of lamb? He’s a blacksmith, not a butcher.”
“Maybe,” Leander said slowly, “he gave her a cattle brand. That rhymes with hand, after all. He asked her for her hand, and gave her a cattle brand. That works,” he added, looking at Berrigan.
“Works for me,” Berrigan murmured.
“A cattle brand? Why would he give her a cattle brand?” Crowley had once seen a bear being attacked from three different directions by hunting dogs. He began to feel a great deal of sympathy for that bear. But Leander wasn’t cowed by the scorn in his voice.
“Because he’s a blacksmith, isn’t he? And blacksmiths make things like cattle brands—you know, branding irons. So maybe she’d asked him for one so she could brand her cattle and he gave her one.”
“That is idiotic!” Crowley snapped.
But Leander merely shrugged. “It’s no sillier than calling her a lady-o. After all, we don’t call ourselves Ranger-o’s, do we?”
“And we don’t ride horsey-o’s,” Halt said, rejoining the discussion with some relish. It wasn’t often that he was able to get the better of Crowley in one of these arguments. Crowley had a quicksilver brain and tongue and Halt was enjoying this rare moment of ascendancy.
Crowley reined in Cropper and glared around at his three companions, who were all smiling fondly at him and obviously enjoying themselves far too much.
“Very well,” he said sharply, “remember last night when you all elected me commander?”
He paused and they all nodded. “Because you said”—he looked severely at Halt—“there might come a time when we couldn’t agree on something and I’d have to make a decision?”
Halt nodded. That wasn’t exactly what he’d said but it was close enough to, he thought.
“In that case,” Crowley said, “I choose to invoke that authority now. As your elected leader, I make this decree. He didn’t give her a leg of lamb or a cattle brand or even a slice of ham—”
“Oh, that’s not bad,” Berrigan interrupted but Crowley’s withering glare silenced him almost as soon as he spoke.
“As leader of this group, I say she was a lady-o. Clear?”
The others exchanged a glance, wondering if they could keep this going a little longer.
Crowley raised his voice. “I said, is that clear?”
Halt, Berrigan and Leander all nodded.
“So this disc
ussion is now officially closed. I declare it so in my position as your elected leader—who must be obeyed. Is anyone unhappy with that?”
“No, Crowley,” they all said, eyes downcast like guilty schoolboys. Although he noticed that their shoulders were shaking with mirth. He took a breath, preparing to berate them further, when Egon spoke. He had ridden up to join them when they stopped in the middle of the track to debate song lyrics. There was a mild note of condemnation in his voice.
“Has it escaped your collective notice,” he asked, “that there’s a rider waiting for us?”
They all looked up in surprise. Egon was right. There was a rider sitting in the middle of the track, some thirty meters away. He was mounted on a shaggy black horse, wore a camouflaged cloak and had a longbow held across his thighs. Obviously, he was a Ranger. Halt and Crowley exchanged a guilty look. They had been so intent on their ridiculous discussion that they had failed to notice the rider. Perhaps, Halt thought hopefully, he had been concealed in the trees until a few minutes ago and had only just ridden out onto the track.
“Good morning,” Crowley called. The newcomer touched his heels to his horse’s flanks and walked slowly forward until he was only a few meters away.
“Good morning,” he said. He flicked his cowl back from his head and twitched his cloak back over his shoulders. Crowley caught a quick gleam of silver at the man’s throat—the silver oakleaf, symbol of a Ranger. The man had blond-white hair and a neat, carefully trimmed beard. His face was pale and his eyes were a piercing blue. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties—older than Crowley, younger than Egon.
“Can we help you?” Crowley asked and the man shifted in his saddle.
“Perhaps,” he said. “I’m Norris, former Ranger of Holsworth Fief. I’ve heard rumors about a small group of other Rangers like myself, recruiting members to face Baron Morgarath of Gorlan Fief. I thought you might be them.”
“And so we are,” Crowley said, smiling a welcome. But the smile faded with Norris’s next words.
“As I said, I thought you might be them—until I heard the utter tommyrot you’ve just been discussing.”
“Oh,” said Crowley, a little embarrassed. “I think you caught us at a bad time.”
“I think so,” Norris said. Obviously, a lively sense of humor wasn’t one of his qualities.
“Crowley was just exercising his new authority as leader of the group,” Halt put in, with a smile.
Norris turned his gaze to the Hibernian. “He’s your leader?”
Halt nodded. “Elected him last night,” he said.
Norris studied Crowley for some time and pursed his lips. “Was that a wise choice, do you think?”
Halt took a deep breath. In addition to having no sense of humor, Norris apparently had no sense of tact, either.
“Tell me,” Halt said eventually, “do you understand the concept of a joke?”
Norris sat up straighter in the saddle, looking a trifle affronted by the question. “Of course I do!” he said. “I have an excellent sense of humor.”
Halt’s eyebrow shot up before he could stop himself. In his experience, people who claimed to have an excellent sense of humor usually had none at all.
“Well, what you heard was a joke. We—were—joking,” he said, enunciating the last three words slowly and distinctly.
Norris looked doubtful. “Didn’t sound very funny to me.”
Halt shrugged. “You had to be there to appreciate it,” he said.
“I was. I was right here!” Norris protested.
Halt shook his head slowly. “My point exactly. You were here. You had to be there.”
Now Norris looked confused, so Halt decided to explain.
“That was another joke,” he said.
“It wasn’t very funny.”
Crowley decided it was time he stepped in and smoothed things over. “So, Norris, tell us about yourself,” he said in a friendly tone.
Norris, still frowning over Halt’s professed joke, turned back to Crowley.
“I’ve been a Ranger for eight years,” he said. “Served the last five at Holsworth Fief, close to here. Then a few weeks ago, I received a letter dismissing me from the Corps. It was delivered by a puffed-up twerp who had been sent to replace me. Said he was acting under Lord Morgarath’s authority.”
“Apparently Morgarath has decided to come out into the open and usurp the King’s authority,” Crowley replied. “Up until now, he’s made it look as if those letters of dismissal have come from the King. Morgarath’s next move will be to claim the crown for himself, I should think. We plan to stop him.” He paused, then voiced a thought that had been running through his mind. “You said you’d heard about us?”
Norris shrugged. “Just general rumors. Word gets around, you know?”
Halt and Crowley exchanged a look. “We’d better pick up the pace,” Halt said. “It won’t be long before word about what we’re doing gets back to Morgarath.”
“True.” The redheaded Ranger turned back to Norris. “So, Norris, can you put up with Halt’s bad jokes long enough to join us?”
Halt snorted indignantly. “My bad jokes?” he said under his breath.
But Norris didn’t hear him. He nodded, his face very serious. “I suppose so. If it’ll give me a chance to get a shot at Morgarath.” He touched the longbow lying across his knees.
Crowley held out his hand. “Welcome to our band.”
22
MORGARATH WAS IN HIS STUDY IN CASTLE GORLAN, WITH an enormous, leather-bound book on the table in front of him.
The book was quite ancient and had been hand-copied by scribes. In addition to the text, there were illustrations in fine black ink. One such illustration was on the page facing the text he had been reading. It showed a heavy-bodied, ugly creature about the size of a bear. It was covered in thick, shaggy hair and had a low brow over small, slitlike eyes. The muzzle was long, and the open, snarling lips revealed long fangs like a wolf’s.
The forelegs ended in humanoid hands—but instead of fingernails, they were equipped with thick, curved claws. The claws were sharp and dangerous looking, but not long enough to impede the creature gripping with the thick, stubby fingers.
The hind legs were squat and muscular, but longer than a bear’s, with a pronounced angle at the elbow. It would appear that the creature could cover ground in a series of long, leaping bounds. According to the text, they could also walk with a strange, rolling, shuffling gait.
There was a light tap at the door and he looked up, frowning at being interrupted in his studies.
“What is it?” he said, his ill temper evident in the tone of his voice.
“It’s Teezal, my lord. I have news from Dacton Fief.”
Morgarath sighed. Teezal, he knew, wouldn’t interrupt him unless the news was important. He pushed the book to one side and studied a sheet of parchment that had been underneath it. Dacton Fief. The name rang a bell. Then he saw it, in the list of twelve fiefs whose Rangers had recently been dismissed.
“Very well,” he said. “Come in.”
But this had better be important, the tone of his voice said clearly. Teezal entered, peering round the door before coming farther into the room. He was an obsequious dolt, Morgarath thought, although he was a pitiless killer and a skilled torturer, both qualities that Morgarath prized in a subordinate.
Teezal hesitated, turning his feathered bonnet in his hands, several meters back from the large table Morgarath used as a desk. The Baron of Gorlan made a bad-tempered gesture, summoning him closer.
“Oh, come forward! Don’t shilly-shally there like a nervous bride! You’ve broken my train of thought now, so you might as well get on with it.”
Teezal forced a smile onto his features. In his own right, he was a man who inspired fear and loathing in others. He was cruel and vicious and would kill without
hesitation. Yet even a blackhearted monster like him harbored a deep-seated fear of his lord. Morgarath could fly off the handle without notice if he heard news he didn’t like. More than one of his minions had paid with their lives for his terrible, unpredictable temper. He shuffled forward a few steps, making sure to stop while he was out of the tall, blond-haired man’s reach. He glanced behind him, marking the escape route to the door.
None of this went unnoticed by Morgarath but he said nothing to ease Teezal’s nervousness. He ruled by fear and he wanted his men to be frightened and uncertain in his presence. He held Teezal’s eyes with an unblinking gaze. He saw the other man swallow nervously a few times. Teezal, uncertain as to whether he should speak, opened his mouth and realized his lips were dry. He moistened them, took a breath, hesitated.
“Were you planning on standing there all day gawking at me?” Morgarath said. His voice was deep and beautifully modulated. But the beauty was like that of a venomous snake. It held its own sense of threat.
“It’s from . . . Dacton Fief.” Teezal managed to force the words out. Again, Morgarath maintained a long silence, while Teezal’s fingers gripped and ungripped the bonnet he held before his chest.
“Did you want me to guess what it is?” Morgarath said finally.
Teezal shook his head, then found his voice. “The Ranger . . . the former Ranger,” he corrected himself, “has gone.”
Morgarath glanced down at the list on his desk. “That would be Leander?”
Teezal nodded several times. “Yes, my lord. Leander it is. Or was,” he added nervously.
“I seem to recall he was making life . . . difficult for his replacement—refusing to give up the Ranger cabin he had been living in.”
“Exactly, Lord Morgarath. Not that the new man wanted to live in the cabin anyway. But Leander was unsettling things in the village attached to the castle. The people there weren’t sure who the Ranger actually was.”