The Lost Stories (39 page)

“I think you should turn him loose.”

THE VOICE WAS DEEP AND CONFIDENT, WITH A DISTINCTIVE Hibernian accent. Crowley swiveled his eyes in the speaker's direction. The stranger from the back of the room had risen from his table and moved toward them. In his hands was an enormous longbow, similar to the one that had been stripped from Crowley. There was an arrow on the string. So far, the stranger hadn't drawn it back, but he held the weapon with such easy familiarity that Crowley guessed he could draw, sight and shoot in the space of a heartbeat.

The knife was withdrawn from Crowley's face and the soldier turned in a crouch toward the Hibernian. Instantly, the bow came up and there was a slight rasp of wood on wood as the arrow went back to full draw. The soldier found himself staring at instant, razor-edged death.

“You don't want to shoot me,” he said. All his former sarcasm and anger had gone and now his voice had a telltale quaver in it. The bowman raised an eyebrow quizzically. The other two soldiers were spread out to either side of their leader. Their swords were drawn. Crowley could tell they were trying to gauge their chances of reaching the man and cutting him down before he could shoot.

“And why's that, would you tell me?” The words were delivered with that Hibernian lilt. There was a sense of amused mockery behind it.

“I'm one of Baron Morgarath's men-at-arms, on official duty . . .”

“You mean it's your official duty to get drunk and annoy people in taverns?” the stranger asked sardonically.

The soldier frowned, not sure how to answer that question. After a brief moment's hesitation, he blustered on. “If you kill me, you'll be flogged and flayed and hung.”

The stranger pursed his lips thoughtfully. Crowley had been assessing the bow as the two men talked. Its draw weight had to be at least eighty pounds, he thought. Yet the dark-haired Hibernian had been holding it at full draw for some moments now, with never a sign of wavering or shaking. Crowley wondered how long he could sustain this stalemate.

“And what's the penalty if I just hurt you a great deal?” the stranger asked.

The soldier's eyes came together in a puzzled frown. “What—?” he began. But at that instant, the stranger lowered his point of aim and shot him through the left calf.

The man let out a high-pitched scream of shock and pain as agony lanced through his leg. He looked down in horror to see that the arrow had gone clean through the muscle and the leaf-shaped broadhead was protruding out the other side. His leg gave out under him and he collapsed to the floor.

His companions stood in stunned surprise for a moment. Then they surged forward. The stranger tossed his bow behind him and drew what appeared to be a short, heavy-bladed sword from beneath his cloak. With a start of surprise, Crowley recognized it as a saxe knife—identical to the one he wore at his waist. The first soldier slashed at the stranger, but with the low ceiling of the inn, it was a cramped, ineffectual blow, with little power behind it. The stranger flicked it aside easily, and as the soldier met no solid resistance and stumbled forward, he slammed a left hook into his jaw, sending him reeling back into his companion, the sword dropping from his grasp.

The second man cursed and shoved his comrade aside, then moved forward, swinging a horizontal stroke at the Hibernian.

Steel rang on steel as the Hibernian blocked the stroke. At the same time, Crowley felt his own saxe knife sliding from its scabbard. He looked around to see that the girl had drawn it and was cutting through the rope that bound his hands.

Again, the two blades rang and screeched together. Crowley nodded his thanks to the girl and took the bung starter from her unresisting hand.

“Thanks,” he said. He stepped up behind the soldier who was preparing another stroke at the Hibernian. The dark-haired man watched his opponent with a look of amused disdain. Seeing the soldier's clumsy sword work, Crowley realized that the Hibernian could have simply moved in and driven his saxe into the man's body as he deflected the blade.

He wasted no further time thinking about it but swung the bung starter overhand and slammed it against the back of the soldier's skull. The soldier gave a faint cry and his knees sagged. He crashed, senseless, facedown into the sawdust that was spread on the floor.

Crowley looked up and met the stranger's dark eyes.

“Thank you,” the Hibernian said, returning the saxe knife to its scabbard. He nodded at the unconscious man on the floor between them. “I wasn't sure what I was going to do with him.”

Crowley smiled. “I'm sure you'd have thought of something,” he said. “But the bung starter was conveniently at hand.”

The Hibernian looked at the heavy wooden mallet.

“A bung starter, eh? It certainly stopped our friend here.” He said it without any hint of a smile. Then he glanced to where his first attacker was slowly recovering, dragging himself on hands and knees to where his sword had fallen by one of the tables. He held out his hand. “May I?”

Crowley handed him the mallet and the stranger stepped over the unconscious man to where the second soldier had just taken hold of his sword. The stranger put his foot on the blade, jamming the soldier's fingers between the hilt and the floor. As the man yelped with pain, the Hibernian thumped him on the head with the bung starter. Crowley winced at the impact as the man crashed unconscious to the floor.

“Was that really necessary?” he asked. The Hibernian looked up at him. Again, there was no hint of a smile in those dark eyes.

“No. But it was really satisfying.” The Hibernian held the bung starter out to the startled serving girl, who had watched proceedings in wide-eyed disbelief.

“I think we could use that ale now, Glyniss,” he said. She nodded wordlessly, then turned away and headed for the cellar, looking back over her shoulder at him as she went. He made a gentle shooing motion to hurry her along.

Crowley held out his right hand. “Thanks for lending a hand,” he said. “I'm rather fond of this nose.”

“There's a lot to be fond of,” the stranger replied, still deadpan. Crowley squinted down the feature in question. He liked to think of his nose as noble and hawk-shaped. Aquiline, someone had once suggested. In more honest moments, he admitted that it was a little on the large side. He realized that he was standing, cross-eyed, inspecting his nose while the other man watched him with a steady gaze. He recovered his composure and held out his hand.

“Anyway, thanks,” he said. “I'm Crowley Meratyn, Ranger of Hogarth Fief.”

The stranger took his hand and shook it.

“Halt O'Ca . . . ,” he began, then corrected himself. “Halt. My name is Halt. I'm traveling through.”

Crowley gave no sign that he had noticed the hesitation. He smiled. “I take it you're from Hibernia?” he asked, and the stranger nodded.

“Clonmel,” he said.“I decided it was time to widen my horizons.” A weak voice from the floor interrupted them. “Please, Ranger, this leg is hurting awful bad.”

It was the overweight soldier who had started all the trouble. He had drawn himself into a sitting position against one of the table legs and was trying to staunch the flow of blood from the arrow wound in his leg.

“I imagine it is,” Crowley said. He knelt beside the man, examining the wound, then looked up at Halt. “Did you want to reuse this arrow?”

“Not the shaft. Break it off. I'll reuse the head and the fletching.”

The easiest way to remove a through-and-through shot like this was to break the arrow off close to the entry wound and pull the shortened shaft through. The barb on the broadhead meant that it couldn't be withdrawn backward, of course.

Quickly, Crowley snapped off the shaft and pulled it free. He ignored the man's whimpering as he did so. Once the arrow was out, blood flowed steadily from both entry and exit wounds and he hurriedly dressed them, cleaning them with hot water the innkeeper brought from a kettle hanging over the fire. He bandaged the leg firmly, then washed his hands in the bowl of hot water and stood up.

“That should hold him for a while,” he said. He glanced at the man's two unconscious companions, then busied himself fastening their hands behind their backs with thumb cuffs. Halt looked on with interest.

“They're a handy idea,” he said. He helped Crowley drag the two men into a sitting position, leaning against one of the long benches.

“I've been wondering . . . ,” Crowley said as they worked. “I watched the way you handled yourself. You could have killed these two without a lot of trouble. And Weeping Beauty over there as well.” He gestured to the injured soldier, sitting hunched and whimpering with pain over his bandaged leg.

Halt shrugged. “I'm new in the country,” he said. “Thought it might be awkward to explain two or three dead bodies to their baron. Barons can be very short-tempered about that sort of thing, I've found.”

“That's true. Still, I'll see what he has to say when I take these three back to him with my report.”

Halt raised an eyebrow. “You're going to take them back to this Baron, Morg . . .” He hesitated over the name.

“Morgarath,” Crowley corrected him. “Yes. He's arrogant and overbearing, but I think even he will have to take notice of an official report and complaint by a King's Ranger.”

“Well, if you don't mind, I might come along and help you keep an eye on these three. I'd be interested to see what sort of man this Morgarath is.”

“I could tell you,” Crowley said heavily, “but it's probably better you see for yourself. Come along by all means. Castle Gorlan is a day and half's ride from here and there are a few things I want to talk to you about.”

Halt nodded. “I'll look forward to it,” he said. Then he turned as he heard the cellar door scrape open on stiff hinges. “And here's Glyniss with our ale, right on time.”

THEY RODE ON LATER THAT AFTERNOON, AFTER CROWLEY HAD eaten. He removed the thumb cuffs from the two men and instead tied all three men's hands firmly in front of them so they could ride more easily. He roped their horses together and tethered a lead rope to one of them as well, just in case the men were tempted to try to escape.

His dark mood of the morning had left him now and he felt positively cheerful as they rode. Halt glanced up at him as he began to whistle a jaunty folk tune.

“What are you doing?” he asked, a dark frown forming on his brow.

Crowley shrugged and grinned at him. “I'm in a good mood,” he explained.

Halt's eyebrow went up. Crowley had noticed that the Hibernian seemed to use that facial reaction quite often. “So you're in a good mood. Why are you making that shrieking sound?”

“I'm whistling. I'm whistling a jaunty tune.”

“That's not whistling. It's shrieking. At best, it's shrilling,” Halt replied.

Crowley turned in the saddle to regard him with some dignity. “I'll have you know, my whistling has been widely praised in Hogarth Fief.”

“A dour place it must be if people consider that shrill noise to be musical.”

The overweight soldier with the leg wound began whining with pain, interrupting their discussion of what was and what was not considered good music. The three soldiers were riding in front of Crowley and Halt. Halt urged his horse forward a few paces to catch up with the man.

“First it's his shrilling, now it's your whining,” he said. “Will this noise never stop? What's your trouble?”

“My leg hurts,” the soldier whined.

“Of course it does,” Halt told him. “I put an arrow through it. Did you expect it not to hurt?”

The soldier was taken aback by this pragmatic answer. Crowley, listening, smiled to himself. From what he'd seen of Halt so far, if the soldier expected sympathy, he was talking to the wrong man entirely.

“I need to rest,” the man complained. “This riding is jolting my leg.”

“No,” Halt told him. “You need to shut up. But if you can't bring yourself to do that, I'll do something to take your mind off that leg of yours.”

The soldier looked at him fearfully. He was reasonably sure that Halt was not proposing to alleviate his pain. “What'll you do?” he asked.

“I'll shoot you through the other leg,” Halt told him. “That'll spread the pain around.”

“You'd shoot a helpless man?” The soldier cringed away in his saddle as far as he could without losing his balance and falling off.

Halt regarded him steadily before he replied. “Don't ever forget that you threatened to cut off my friend's nose while his hands were tied behind him. That's not likely to win you any sympathy from me.”

The soldier opened his mouth to reply, looked at Halt and shut it again with a slightly audible
clop
.

Halt, satisfied that he had got the message, nodded once and reined in his horse, falling back to ride beside Crowley once more.

The sandy-headed Ranger grinned cheerfully at him. “So I'm your friend, am I?” he asked.

Halt looked straight ahead for a few seconds before replying.

“As long as you don't start whistling again.”

 

They camped that evening in a small clearing beside a stream of fresh, cold water. While Halt disappeared into the woods with his bow, Crowley untied the prisoners one at a time, then refastened their hands behind their backs with thumb cuffs. He sat them beside one another, leaning against a fallen tree. In each of their saddlebags he found a blanket, and he draped these over the men.

“Aren't you going to give us something to eat?” one of them asked in an aggrieved tone.