The Tournament at Gorlan (7 page)

The rider rested his head against the horse for a few seconds while he regained his balance. Then, with Halt's assistance, he
climbed awkwardly into the saddle. He looked down at them, haughtily.

“You did well to assist me,” he said. “A dispatch rider is an important person. I'll see you're rewarded.”

And with that, he set his horse into a trot and rode slowly away from them. Halt and Crowley exchanged a grin.

“Since he doesn't know our names or where we come from, I imagine that'll be a little difficult,” Crowley said.

Halt nodded. “It's the thought that counts,” he replied.

T
HE
HOPEL
ESS
,
DESPAIRING
FEELI
NG
THAT
C
ROWLEY
HAD
experienced was gone now, replaced by a firm resolve. He spread out a map of the Kingdom on the ground and they knelt beside it, studying it.

“Castle Wildriver is here,” Crowley said, pointing with the tip of his saxe to a spot on the map.

“I take it the river is appropriately named?” Halt said.

Crowley nodded confirmation. “The castle is built on a long island that splits the river. As it narrows, the two arms begin to run with increasing speed. It makes the castle difficult to access. It's a very defensible position. We'll have to work out a way to get across the river and into the castle itself.”

“We'll come to that later. We've got nearly seven weeks before we have to set Duncan free. I think our first order of business is to find some reinforcements. Which of those renegade Rangers is the closest?” Halt smiled grimly. “I like the idea of renegade Rangers,” he said, more or less to himself. “It appeals to my natural sense of rebellion against authority.”

Crowley ignored the comment while he studied the list of names and fiefs, mentally sorting through them to determine the most efficient path. “Leander,” he said, after some seconds' deliberation. “He's in Dacton Fief, and that's in the northwest.”

“Of course,” said Halt, “we're assuming these men will have remained close to the fiefs where they'd been operating. They may have moved on.”

Crowley considered the point with his head cocked to one side. “Possibly,” he said. “But that letter from Morgarath seems
to indicate that they have only just been dismissed—or are about to be. I assume that's just one of many letters he sent out. There will have been messages to each of the barons in those fiefs, telling them that their local Ranger is to be replaced. Presumably, they'll have been sent out under the King's seal. He's the only one who can appoint or dismiss a Ranger.” He paused, then added dryly, “And we know how easy it is to forge a sealed message.”

Halt assumed a look of wide-eyed innocence.

Crowley eyed him for several seconds, then continued. “But even if those men have already been dismissed, odds are they won't have moved on too far. And in any case, our best chance of finding out where they've gone will be from people in the fiefs they were appointed to.”

“Very well,” said Halt, “our first stop is Dacton Fief. If we get started now, we should be there by tomorrow afternoon.”

Crowley nodded agreement and folded the map, placing it in one of his saddlebags. They re-saddled their horses, which had been unsaddled to let them rest and graze while the two men considered the situation. Within ten minutes, they were on the road.

Both of them were glad to put Gorlan, and the risk of being intercepted by Morgarath's men, behind them. After an hour of traveling on narrow back trails, they reached the high road to the west and set their horses to a slow lope. They traveled at what Crowley described as “Ranger pace,” cantering for twenty minutes, then walking the horses, leading them, for ten so that the animals could regain their strength. Every two hours, they stopped for ten minutes by the side of the road to rest and eat
and drink a little—hard rations like dried beef and fruit washed down by cold water.

By late afternoon, they were well on their way and they found a small clearing a hundred meters from the road, well screened by trees, where they set up camp. Halt spent some minutes scanning the road, watching for traffic passing in either direction. In that time, he saw one farmer, slowly leading a plow horse past them.

“I think we can risk a small fire,” he said. “That road doesn't seem to be very well traveled.”

During the day they had sighted plentiful wildlife along the road and had shot two fat plovers and a rabbit. Halt skinned and cleaned them while Crowley went looking for wild salad greens. He returned after twenty minutes with a broad smile. In addition to the bitter greens, he dumped half a dozen earth-covered lumps beside the fire.

“Potatoes,” he said triumphantly. “There's a small farm about half a kilometer in that direction”—he gestured to the trees behind them—“and they have a very convenient potato field planted right up next to the tree line.”

“Excellent,” Halt said. The thought of potatoes with the meat set his mouth watering. Salad greens were all very well, but potatoes added a sense of solidity to a meal, he thought. He was busy threading the plovers and the rabbit onto a green stick they could suspend over the fire. “Rub some of the dirt off them and we'll cook them in the coals.”

One of the small pleasures of traveling and camping, he decided, was that, to compensate for the nights spent in the rain with no hot food, there were occasions like this, when they could
take the time to enjoy a good meal. He placed the spitted rabbit and birds beside the fire, ready to rest the green branch on two forked sticks driven into the ground either side of the fireplace. Crowley passed him the potatoes, now with most of the earth removed, and he pushed them into the coals at the side of the fire, heaping the glowing charcoal over them. The rest of the dirt would come away with the skins when the potatoes were cooked.

“Nothing like a brace of murphies to set off a meal,” he said contentedly.

Crowley frowned at him. “Murphies?”

“It's what we call them in Hibernia,” Halt replied.

Crowley shook his head. “Strange people, Hibernians,” he said to himself.

In spite of the mouthwatering smell of the roasting meat, and the fact that they were both ravenous after a long day, they didn't hurry the cooking. There was a temptation to simply char the meat over the flames of the fire and eat it half raw, but experienced campers as they were, they resisted the impulse, letting the flames die down to a solid bed of red-hot coals, then cooking the spitted meat over the fierce, steady heat they emitted, turning the spit regularly to ensure the meat cooked evenly.

As a result, it took another forty minutes for the meal to be ready. But they both agreed, through mouthfuls of delicious meat, bitter salad and creamy potato flesh smeared with melted butter, that the wait was worthwhile.

When they had finished eating, Crowley made coffee and poured them both a large mug. He watched quizzically while Halt scooped two large spoonfuls of wild honey into his. He'd noticed this strange habit before.

“Why do you do that?” Crowley asked.

Halt looked up, not understanding, and Crowley gestured to the small pot of honey that Halt kept in his cooking kit.

“Oh. I always do it,” Halt said.

“I know,” said Crowley. “But why? It seems to me you're just ruining the taste of good coffee.”

“On the contrary,” Halt replied, “I'm enhancing the taste of good honey.”

Crowley shook his head. “Strange people, Hibernians.”

They breakfasted early the next morning, before the sun was truly up. Halt had left a flour-and-water dough in the coals overnight and it had baked into a golden-crusted damper bread. They ate it with cold meat from the plovers and another pot of coffee to wash it down. Then they broke camp and took to the high road once more.

“I was wondering,” said Crowley, with a sly little smile at the corner of his mouth, “why don't you put honey on your meat?”

Halt turned in his saddle to look at his companion. “Are you seriously asking that question?”

Crowley shrugged. “Well, yes. After all, you put it in coffee, which has a perfectly acceptable taste on its own. Why not put it on grilled plover? Or rabbit?”

Halt studied him for a long minute, then kicked his horse into a trot, pulling away from the grinning, redheaded Ranger.

“You're an idiot,” he declared, throwing the statement back over his shoulder.

“Maybe,” said Crowley in a lowered tone, “but I don't put honey in my coffee.”

“Heard that,” Halt said shortly.

Crowley grinned after his friend. “You were meant to,” he
said, and tapped his own horse to catch up. Life was good, he thought. They had eaten well. They had a firm plan of action, and he had a traveling companion whom he could tease anytime he liked.

Castle Dacton was an ugly, utilitarian building. Squat and slab sided, it was sited on a hill, as most castles were, which made it easier to defend as attackers would have to struggle up the slope for the last few hundred meters. The ground in front of the castle walls had been cleared. Again, this was the custom, as it allowed no cover for attackers, and lessened the chance of the castle being taken by surprise.

There was no mistaking its purpose. It was a building designed for defense, designed for battle. Unlike Gorlan, no attempt had been made to beautify the castle. Even Halt's old home in Hibernia, built from grim, uncompromising granite blocks, had a certain purity of line that gave it a simple attractiveness. This looked like a mass of stone plopped down on top of the hill, dominating the landscape, gloomy and threatening in appearance.

“Nice place,” he said.

Crowley smiled. “It's not too stylish, is it?” he said. “But in over a hundred years, it's never been taken by attackers.”

Halt glanced around. “Who'd attack here?”

Crowley gestured toward the glittering gray line of the sea, just visible to the west. “Skandians. And Sonderlanders from time to time. They were very big on raiding some twenty years ago. Got a bloody nose here at Dacton, however.”

“So do we ride up, knock on the drawbridge and ask for Ranger Leander?” Halt asked, gesturing to the castle. But
Crowley shook his head.

“Rangers don't live in the fief castles. We like to keep the barons at arm's length. It doesn't do to get too cozy with them.”

“But you serve the barons, surely?” Halt said, and again, Crowley made a negative gesture.

“We serve the King. We answer to him and him alone. And sometimes, that can be a little awkward for a baron. In a way, we outrank them—but we never push the fact.”

Halt nodded. The concept was a sound one, he thought. As he had said the day before, he had an innate suspicion of authority. “So where do we find Leander?” he asked.

Crowley indicated the small village that sprawled at the foot of the hill, overlooked by the massive castle. “We'll ask there. Leander will have a small cabin in the woods somewhere beyond the village. That's the way we do things.”

They bypassed the squat, massive castle and rode into the village. In times of danger, Halt knew, the villagers would seek protection inside the castle walls. But in more normal times, the village gave accommodation for the workers who tended the surrounding farms, and provided the basic services that the
villagers and castle inhabitants needed from day to day. A clear little stream ran beside the village and a mill was set on its banks, the running water being used to turn its massive mill wheels. There was the inevitable tavern and inn combined and a cluster of the usual thatched cottages around it.