The Royal Ranger

Forty-two

Dawn was four hours away and Will decided they should get a few hours’ sleep before they set out after Ruhl and his gang.

“We can’t track them in the dark and we’ve been up for hours keeping watch the past two nights. We might as well get some sleep while we can,” he said. “They won’t be moving too fast. Ruhl said they were going to collect the other children they’ve abducted. That’ll slow them down.”

Maddie yawned. She didn’t disagree with his assessment of the situation.

They returned to the clearing where they had hidden the horses and rolled out their blankets on the soft, springy grass. Maddie was asleep almost as soon as she closed her eyes. The tension of the nights spent on watch, and the events of the previous few days, had left her emotionally and physically exhausted.

She awoke to what she now considered to be the delightful smell of fresh coffee brewing. She sat up and saw Will sitting beside a small fire, the map of Trelleth Fief spread out on the ground beside him. He heard her moving and looked up, gesturing to the coffee pot in the coals at the edge of the fire.

“Get yourself some coffee,” he said. “And there’s bread there to toast as well. No sense setting out on an empty stomach.”

She propped a slab of bread up on a stick close to the heat of the coals, then poured a cup of coffee. They had no milk but by now she could drink it black, so long as it was sweetened with plenty of honey. She sipped it appreciatively, turned the toast as it was on the point of burning and hunkered down opposite him.

“Did you find Hawkshead Bay?” she asked.

He nodded, jabbing a finger at the chart.

“A little south of here,” he said. “I can see why they called it Hawkshead Bay.”

She peered at it, frowning. “Doesn’t look like a hawk’s head to me,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

Will raised an eyebrow in her direction. “That could be because you’re looking at it upside down,” he said patiently. “By the way, your toast’s burning.”

She grabbed at the toast and burnt her fingers, dropping the slightly blackened slice of bread onto the grass. She muttered a very unladylike oath. That sent both of Will’s eyebrows soaring.

“Not the sort of language one expects from a princess,” he said. “Where did you hear that particular expression?”

“From my mother,” she replied shortly.

Will nodded. “That would explain it.”

“Besides, I’m not a princess any more, as you’ve pointed out.”

He glanced quickly at her. He was pleased to note that there was no bitterness in her tone and she seemed to be merely stating a fact, not complaining about it.

She actually prefers this to her former life, he thought, mildly surprised by the realisation. Then he thought, why not? At least these days there was a sense of purpose to her life, and a sense of accomplishment that had been lacking in her time at Castle Araluen.

She retrieved the toast and spread butter on it, crunching into it with gusto. There were a few blades of grass clinging to it but she picked them out of her mouth, craning her head around to view the chart from Will’s perspective.

“Hmmmph,” she admitted reluctantly. “I suppose it’s a little like a hawk’s head now I look at it this way. How far away is it?”

“It’s about a day’s ride on the main road,” Will said. “The kidnappers will probably take longer. A day and a half, maybe two days. They’ll be moving on foot and they’ll have to avoid other travellers. Be a little hard to explain how you happen to be travelling with a group of young prisoners. By the same token, the highway runs through half a dozen towns and villages and they’ll have to bypass them.”

He pointed to a track marked on the map. “There’s a track here, running south. It’s a little bit of a diversion, but it links up with another road that runs east—and that road is a direct route, while the highway winds and twists and loops around to take in those other villages.”

“Wouldn’t it make sense for the kidnappers to take that path?” she asked.

But Will shook his head. “They were heading east when they left the village. That would indicate they’re taking the highway. As for this track, it may not even be on their maps. The Castle Trelleth cartographer is pretty painstaking. He puts in a lot of detail that other people would leave out.”

“So if we take that path, we should make it to the coast before they do?” Maddie said.

“Yes. That way we can scout the area and see what’s what. There must be some sort of camp there and there may be other members of his gang waiting. Plus I heard him say he was expecting an Iberian slave ship in a few days. Always a good idea to get a look at the scene of the battle beforehand.”

She glanced up at him. “Is there going to be a battle?”

Will’s face was grim as he replied. “Oh, I think there might be.”

They finished their breakfast, rolled their blankets and tied them behind the saddles. Tug and Bumper were both restless and excited. They were keen to get moving again after days of enforced inactivity.

It was good to be in the saddle again and Maddie enjoyed the feeling of Bumper’s enthusiastic gambolling beneath her. Tug eyed the younger horse with a superior smirk.

“You’re just as excited as he is,” Will said softly. Tug tossed his head. In fact, both horses, sensitive to their riders’ mood, recognised the fact that whatever Will and Maddie had been searching for over the previous week, they seemed to have found it. Accordingly, they reacted to their riders’ new sense of purpose. They sensed that action lay ahead of them—and Ranger horses were bred for action.

They cantered south and a little west until, an hour before noon, they reached the road that led east to the sea. Will stepped down from the saddle to inspect the ground, checking to make sure nobody had passed this way recently. It was one thing to assume that Ruhl and his men wouldn’t take this path. But it was wise to make sure.

“A cow and a cowherd went through here,” he said. “Maybe two days ago. Since then, there appears to be nothing.”

“You didn’t think Ruhl would come this way,” Maddie pointed out.

Will gave her a long look before replying. “And now I know he didn’t,” he said. He swung up into the saddle and they cantered along the path, occasionally being forced to lie low over their horses’ necks to avoid overhanging trees.

“Looks like not too many people use this track,” Maddie commented.

Will said nothing.

Eventually, the path emerged from the thick forestland that comprised nearly two-thirds of its length. They found themselves cantering in open fields and past farmsteads, with occasional stands of timber dotted around. And before long, Maddie smelt that heady salt smell once more that told her they were nearing the sea.

In the midafternoon, they reached the coastal highway. The road was raised slightly above the surrounding terrain, with drainage ditches on either side. Will gestured for Maddie to remain on the lower ground off the road, out of sight. He dismounted and climbed up to the road, looking north and then south.

“All clear both ways,” he said. Then he jerked his thumb south. “Hawkshead Bay is three kilometres that way. Let’s go.”

The countryside changed once more. The green pastures and carefully tended fields gave way to coarse heathland, where scrubby bushes grew barely waist high and trees were few and far between. Will grimaced as he surveyed the land.

“Not a lot of cover,” he remarked.

Maddie glanced at him. “So we’ll see them coming,” she pointed out.

“I’m more concerned that they’ll see us going,” he remarked. “Remember, it won’t just be us. We’ll have ten children with us. They’ll be a little hard to conceal.”

She pursed her lips. She hadn’t thought of that. She began to look from side to side, marking any places where there might be useful cover. Inland, about half a kilometre from the road, a row of low cliffs rose up from the heath. At their base, boulders were tumbled untidily. The cliffs were obviously unstable and prone to landslides from time to time. She could see several dark holes that could well mark the openings to caves. That meant it might be possible to find a useful hiding place.

In case they needed one. And she was beginning to think they might need one before too long.

The highway swung south to run close to the coastline. More cliffs here, she saw, falling away to the ocean below them. They were made mainly of clay and fell sheer to the water, looking as if they had been cut with a blade. The sea, running over a sandy bottom, was shallow and clear green.

“Pretty,” she said. Will followed her line of sight and grunted.

“Not if you were a sailor,” he said. “That water’s shallow for almost a kilometre out to sea. You’d need to wait for high tide to land.”

He had memorised a few landmarks from the map so he’d know when they were approaching Hawkshead Bay. Now, as they passed the final one, a small pond by an equally small copse of low trees, he called a halt.

“We’ll leave the horses here,” he said. “We’ll go ahead on foot to see what’s what.”

They left the horses concealed in the trees and made their way through the waist-high gorse to the next headland. Beyond that, according to the map, lay Hawkshead Bay.

As they came level with the edge of the cliff, Will moved his hand in a palm downward gesture. Maddie went into a crouch, then, following her mentor’s lead, she dropped to hands and knees, crawling forward through the coarse undergrowth.

If there were people in the cove, it would be asking for trouble to simply walk to the edge of the crest in full sight.

Will stopped and beckoned her forward. She crawled through the bushes, making as little noise as possible, until she was level with him. Hawkshead Bay was spread out before them.

The cliffs were lower here, around ten to fifteen metres high, and they sloped more than the knife-edged vertical cliffs they had been passing. Unlike those cliffs, which were basically clay, these were formed from rock and sand, interspersed with tufts of seagrass and bushes. At their base was a semi-circular beach of coarse sand.

The tide was running in and she could see it forming corrugated ripples in the shallow sand bottom. The water was shallow for at least a quarter of a kilometre out to sea.

In the centre of the beach, well above the high-water mark that was delineated by tangles of driftwood and seaweed, were four large tents. The canvas was weathered and grey and it was stretched over timber frames. They’d been here a while, she thought. This was a permanent camp.

There was a large fireplace ten metres away from the tents—far enough so that smoke from the fire wouldn’t be a problem—and a rough wooden table and benches set under a canvas roof supported by a timber frame. The four sides were open.

She counted two men moving about the camp site, although there could have been others concealed in the tents. Four tents would seem to indicate at least sixteen men in the camp, she thought. Then she reconsidered. The hostages would have to be kept somewhere.

As she had the thought, Will nudged her and pointed to the cliffs on the left-hand side of the bay. She peered in the direction he was indicating and made out a dark opening in the rock, at ground level. As she looked more closely, she could make out a barred timber door across the opening.

She revised her thinking. That was where the hostages were kept, she realised.

Will had told her about Ruhl’s statement—that they had taken ten prisoners. She wondered how many of them were already in the cave, and how many were on their way here with the Stealer and the Storyman.

Will leaned closer to her. “There’s a track leading down the cliff to the left of the cave. See it?”

Even though the nearest slaver was over a hundred metres away, and intent on bringing the dormant fire back to life, he barely breathed the words.

Maddie scanned the cliff and could make out the track. It ran down through the rocks at an angle, switchbacked several times, then ended at the beach, twenty metres from the dark opening that marked the cave. She raised a thumb to indicate that she had seen it.

“When we get the kids out, that’s where you’ll take them. Back up to the top of the cliff,” he told her.

She turned quickly to look at him. “That’s where I’ll take them? What’ll you be doing?”

He patted the smooth wood of his longbow, lying in the grass before him.

“I’ll be making sure nobody sees you leaving.”