The Royal Ranger

Twenty-four

Maddie woke with a raging thirst. Her mouth was dry and there was a vile taste in it—a combination of the regurgitated food from the night before and the sour aftertaste of the wine she had drunk. She groaned and sat up in bed, and promptly wished she hadn’t.

The movement made her aware of a throbbing headache that pounded like a hammer against the inside of her skull. It seemed to be strongest behind her left eye, but the pain spread throughout the rest of her head as well, like a dark stain on a carpet.

She sank her head into her hands and moaned softly. Her eyes were dry and raspy, as if someone had thrown a handful of sand into them. Her stomach was empty and she had a queasy feeling—for a moment she thought she was going to throw up again. She fought the urge down and looked cautiously at her bedside table, where she normally kept a beaker of cold water. The beaker was empty, lying on its side on the floor. Vaguely, she recalled waking in the night and draining it, then falling back onto her pillow.

She needed water, cold water, desperately. She thought of the rainwater barrel that was set outside the cabin, by one of the downpipes from the roof. At this time of day, the water would be cold and fresh and delicious. And she would be able to plunge her head right into it, letting its cold, icy touch soothe her throbbing skull.

But first, she’d have to reach it.

She stood, carefully. Her head throbbed with the movement, then settled down to a steady, pounding ache. Her stomach heaved and she fought against the urge to throw up. Then, swaying uncertainly, she took a few steps to the door of her room. She leaned against the door jamb for several seconds, re-gathering her sense of balance, then opened the door and went into the small living room, walking gingerly, trying to minimise the impact of her feet on the ground. Every step reverberated through her frame and into her head.

Will was at the kitchen bench, with his back to her. He turned as he heard the door and frowned at her. She became aware that she was still wearing the same clothes she’d worn the night before, minus her cloak. Her tights were torn at the knee and matted with dried blood. There was a vomit stain on her left sleeve. What she couldn’t see was that her hair was wildly disordered, standing up in all directions like a misbegotten bird’s nest.

“Breakfast is nearly ready,” Will said. His voice was neither condemning or welcoming. His tone was completely neutral. She shook her head, then stopped quickly as the pain surged.

“Don’t think I could eat,” she said, her voice hoarse.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “I think you’d better. You’ll need to get something in that stomach.”

The thought of her stomach made her gag. She swayed uncertainly.

“Need a drink,” she said. “Water.”

He nodded slowly. “I’m sure you do.” He jerked his head towards the door and she turned and made her painful way to it. For some reason, it seemed more difficult than usual to tug it open. The squeak of its bottom edge against the floorboards made her wince, but she got it open and made her way along the porch, one hand against the cabin wall for balance.

The water butt was almost full. It had rained the previous afternoon and the water would be fresh and clean.

And cold. There was a slight frost on the ground. The temperature had obviously dropped close to zero during the early hours of the morning. She stepped gingerly down from the verandah. It was a step of about fifty centimetres and normally she would manage it with ease. Today, it felt like leaping off a small cliff and her head pounded again as her feet thudded down onto the wet grass.

She groaned. There was a dipper hanging beside the water butt and she seized it eagerly, scooping up cold water and bringing it to her lips, letting it run across her foul-tasting mouth and tongue and down her parched throat. She emptied the dipper in one continuous draught and paused, breathing heavily, heart pounding.

For a moment, the dreadful thirst was slaked. Then it seemed as if she hadn’t drunk at all and the awful-tasting dryness was back. She scooped up another dipper and drank, then another.

The cold water was delicious, but its soothing effect lasted barely thirty seconds. She looked at the water, then, setting her hands on either side of the barrel, she plunged her face into it.

The shock of cold was startling. But it seemed to clear her head and eyes. She reared back, throwing water in all directions, feeling it splash down inside her collar. She gasped and spluttered but she felt a little better.

For a few seconds.

Then the remorseless headache, the dryness and the surging, heaving stomach all made themselves felt again. She looked at the treeline, a few metres away from the cabin, and contemplated going into the trees to be sick in private. Maybe to lie down and sleep. She felt dreadfully tired.

Then she realised there would be nothing in her stomach but water, and the thought of the unproductive retching that would result was too much to bear. Her head would split apart, she thought.

“Come and eat something.”

Will was standing at the open door. She looked blearily at him. There was still no sympathy in his voice, but she could sense no condemnation either. She shook her head slowly.

“Couldn’t,” she croaked. But he beckoned her inside.

“You need to,” he said. “Trust me.”

She looked at the edge of the porch. Normally, she would bound up with a light-stepping movement. Today, her legs were like lead and the thought of bounding anywhere made her quail. Head down, she trudged along to the steps and climbed heavily onto the porch.

Will had set out a simple breakfast for her. He had toasted two pieces of flat bread and covered them with butter and fruit jam. There was a beaker of milk beside them.

She sat, letting her head rest in her hands for a minute or so. She sensed Will standing behind her chair. He leaned past her and pushed the plate of toasted bread closer to her.

“Go ahead,” he said. “The sugar in the jam will help. And the milk should settle your stomach.”

She took a sip of the milk. It had been left on the window ledge overnight and it was cold and soothing. She looked at the toast and jam and was struck by conflicting feelings. On the one hand, she was ravenous. On the other, the thought of putting anything into her rebellious, uncertain stomach seemed too much of a risk. Then the milk made its way through her system and she felt the uneasy heaving sensation in her stomach lessen.

Tentatively, she took a bite of toast. The jam was made from berries and its sweet sharpness filled her mouth, fighting the vile sour taste that lingered there. She took another bite, then another sip of milk. Will was right. The food and drink was calming her stomach, and dispelling the bitter taste in her mouth.

It did nothing for the headache, of course. That continued to pound away. Now it had moved its focal point to her temples and they throbbed painfully. She realised she had begun to sweat heavily as well. She looked up at Will with bleary eyes. He was watching her, but still he retained his neutral expression.

“Why do people do this?” she said. Her voice was still a croak, in spite of the palliative effects of the milk.

“Because they’re stupid,” he replied shortly. Then he turned away, satisfied that she was going to survive.

“Hurry up and eat,” he said over his shoulder. “Then you need to change and bathe. Your clothes stink.”

She lifted one sleeve to her nose and sniffed cautiously. He was right. Her clothes reeked of stale woodsmoke and roasted meat, overlaid by the sour smell of vomit and spilled wine.

“Ugh,” she murmured. She finished the toast and milk. Feeling a little better, she collected fresh clothes and a towel from her bedroom and made her way to the bathhouse behind the cabin. She looked hopefully at the little stove that was used to heat bath and shower water, but it was unlit. It was going to be a cold shower bath this morning, she thought miserably.

Eating and bathing, albeit in cold water, did a lot to improve her condition. But she was still a long way from feeling better. Her head still pounded and she was sweating heavily. Plus her arms and legs ached, for some unknown reason, and her jaw was sore as well.

Must have slept tensed up, she thought, as she made her way back to the cabin, where Will was waiting impatiently on the porch.

“Archery practice,” he said briefly, pointing to the path that led to their archery range. Maddie groaned. The thought of concentrating on a target while she heaved back against the fifty-pound pull of her recurve bow was not a pleasant one. Then she shrugged mentally. She hadn’t really expected Will to give her an easy day, just because she was feeling poorly.

She shot dreadfully. Her hands trembled as she tried to nock the arrows to the string, and she found it almost impossible to focus her vision and maintain a good sighting picture. She released prematurely, snatching at the bowstring as she did so, trying to will her shot into the centre without using any of the technique she had learned to make it happen.

Arrows glanced off the edge of the target, flying at random angles into the trees. After fifty shots, she hadn’t managed to hit the centre of the target once. Her arrows bristled accusingly at the very edge of the target. Only three of them had managed to get into the circle outside the centre. Will snorted in disgust.

“I think you need a task that requires a little less skill,” he said. “Follow me.”

He led the way back to the small open space before the cabin. Off to one side was a large stack of logs and an axe.

“Those logs are too wide for our stove,” he told her. “Split them into smaller pieces.”

She stowed her bow and quiver, now short half a dozen arrows that she hadn’t been able to find. She knew she’d spend the next few nights making replacements. Then she made her way back to the yard. Will was sitting in a canvas chair on the porch, reading reports sent in by Gilan. She paused as she came level with him. Idly, she noticed that there was no sign of the leather folder.

“How did you know I was gone last night?” she asked.

He glanced up from the report he was studying.

“If you plan to sneak out,” he told her in a cold voice, “try to remember not to take your cloak.”

Her mouth opened in a soundless O. She remembered taking the cloak off its peg as she left the cabin. It was second nature to don it whenever she left the cabin.

“Sneaking out was foolish and disobedient,” Will continued. “Taking your cloak was just plain stupid. I don’t know which I found more disappointing.”

She hung her head in shame. She hated it when he was like this—cold and dispassionate. In the time she had been with him, she had felt him warming a little to her, becoming more encouraging as she strived to learn the skills a Ranger needed. Now, it seemed, she was back where they had started, all because of one foolish incident.

She guessed that was all it took to destroy trust.

“Those logs aren’t going to split themselves,” Will said, looking back to his report.

She trudged across to the woodpile and began to split logs. It seemed her throbbing head was splitting along with them. But she continued doggedly, fighting the waves of nausea that assailed her, groaning softly as the impact of the axe resounded through her body with each blow. Will watched her from under lowered brows. He nodded once as he saw her fighting the pain and the nausea to keep going. She had discarded her cloak and her jerkin. Her linen shirt was dark with sweat.

After forty minutes, he called a halt. She lowered the axe and sank gratefully onto the tree stump she was using as a chopping block.

“All right,” he said briskly. “One quick pass through the obstacle course and you can take a break—after you’ve done your laundry, that is.”

She looked at him in horror. The obstacle course was a fitness training area Will had built. It included, among other things, high log walls that one had to scale and drop down the other side, narrow logs over pits filled with mud, and worse, rope swings across the stream and a net set thirty centimetres from the ground under which she would have to crawl. And it was all done against a timer, so that “one quick pass’ was a misnomer. If she didn’t finish before the timer ran out, she would have to do it all again.

The thought of it made her ill. The reality, when she came to it, was even worse. She fell from the narrow log across the mud pit and had to crawl out of the vile-smelling, glutinous mud, her clothes now heavy with it. Consequently, she was short on the rope swing and fell into the waist-deep water. The sand in the timer had long run out before she finished, and Will gestured wordlessly to the start once more. She staggered back to it and began again. She didn’t notice that, this time, he turned the sandglass on its side to stop the grains trickling through from top to bottom.

She lurched and floundered through the course and finally staggered up to him, covering the last ten metres on her hands and knees after she fell, seeing with relief that there were a few grains remaining in the upper half of the sandglass. She slumped full length on the ground.

“Up,” Will said briefly and she groaned as she dragged herself to her feet.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked piteously.

He regarded her for several seconds before he answered. “I’m not doing this to you, Maddie. The wine is. Bear it in mind.”

She stood, exhausted, hands on her hips, head hanging low. “I’m never going to drink wine again,” she said.

He continued to study her. “Let’s hope not.” Then he turned towards the cabin, gesturing for her to follow. She trudged behind him, head aching, stomach roiling once more. The dreadful taste was back in her mouth.

As they stepped up into the cabin, she became aware of a familiar smell. Familiar, but now strangely attractive. It was the rich aroma of fresh coffee. While she had completed the course, Will had returned to the cabin and brewed a pot. He sat her down now and poured a cup, placing it before her.

“I don’t drink coffee,” she said automatically. But the enticing smell was filling her nostrils and she wondered if maybe she was mistaken. Will added milk and several spoonfuls of dark honey, stirred it and handed it to her.

“Drink it,” he ordered and she wondered briefly if this was a further part of her punishment. Then she sipped at the hot, sweet drink, feeling it course through her weary body, easing her throbbing head, revitalising her, refreshing her with its wonderful, restorative aroma and rich taste. She sipped again, deeper this time, then put her head back and sighed appreciatively.

“Maybe I could get used to this,” she said.

Will raised one eyebrow. “There might be hope for you yet,” he said.