The Royal Ranger

Fifty-one

Rob had seen them first, from his slightly elevated position on Bumper’s back. But within a few seconds, they were visible to Maddie and Will and the other children.

For the moment they were just dark figures against the skyline. Maddie tried to count them but as they moved she lost count. There seemed to be almost a dozen of them and they were coming from the south, bunched together on the road.

One of them was slightly in the lead and he waved the others on. Even from a distance, Maddie fancied that he was pointing to the small group ahead of them.

Frightened cries rang out among the children. They had thought they were safe. Worse, they had been assured they were safe. Now they were in danger again and they looked at Will and Maddie with distrust. They had no doubt who was following them.

“It’s the Stealer!” one of them said and, as the words were spoken, the others whimpered in fear.

“You told us he was gone!” That was one of the older boys, and he shouted the words at Will.

The Ranger met his accusing eyes steadily.

“I thought he was,” he said evenly. “Apparently I was wrong.” He turned back to watch the pursuing men, frowning as he concentrated his gaze on the man leading them, recalling how he had been crouched, peering at the road, when they had first seen the slavers.

“Seems I was wrong about them having a tracker too,” he said in an aside to Maddie. “Looks like that fellow in the lead has been following our trail.”

Maddie looked at him, panic clutching at her throat. “What do we do?” she said. Her voice threatened to betray her and rise into a high-pitched quaver. She fought against it, forcing herself to remain calm. Will reached out and took her wrist, squeezing it firmly. The contact calmed her down. She drew in a deep breath and looked him in the eyes.

“I’m all right,” she said.

Will nodded. “Good. Now here’s what you do. You run. Get these kids running as fast as they can. I’ll stay here and hold off Ruhl and his thugs.”

She glanced fearfully around the open terrain that surrounded them.

“Here?” she said fearfully. “You can’t stop them here! You’ve got open ground on either side, with nothing to protect your flanks. They’ll outflank you and kill you!”

He nodded approvingly at her assessment of the situation. “Seems like you’ve learned a lot about judging terrain,” he said. “But I’m not going to try to stop them. And I’m not planning to let them outflank me. I just want to slow them down—although maybe I’ll be able to pick off a few of them. Then I’ll fall back and do the same thing over again. And I’ll keep doing it for as long as it takes for you to get away.”

As he was talking, he walked to where Tug was standing and unbuckled the arrow case hanging from his saddle. He took an extra dozen arrows and crammed them into his back quiver.

Tug snorted nervously. I don’t like this.

“I’ll be fine,” Will said softly. Maddie assumed he was talking to her to reassure her.

“Let me stay with you,” she said impulsively. “Together, maybe we can hold them off.”

He shook his head. “Together we’d still be outflanked. And it’d be twice as hard for two of us to slip away unseen. Besides, I need you to get the children to safety. If we leave them on their own, they’ll give up after a few kilometres. You’ll have to drive them, Maddie. Keep them running. Force them. Threaten them. Scream at them. But keep them running.”

He glanced up at the sky, noting the position of the sun, where it was beginning its slanting journey down in the west.

“It’s a few hours till dark. If you’re still ahead of them at sunset, look for a good hiding place off the road. Let them rest up for a while, then get them running again before daybreak.”

“But… what about their tracker? He’ll be able to find us,” she said.

Will raised an eyebrow. “When they get closer, he’s going to be the first one I look for,” he said.

She looked fearfully at the dark figures on the road behind them. Already, she could see they were getting closer.

“They’ll kill you,” she said miserably, tears welling in her eyes. Will shook his head.

“Nobody’s done that yet,” he said. “And a lot have tried. Now get going!”

He snapped the last three words at her, galvanising her into action. She reached out and touched his arm and he nodded to her. Then she turned away, yelling to the children.

“Come on! Run! Run for your lives!”

The children turned and began running. Inevitably, the oldest led the way, pulling away from the smaller children. Only one turned back. It was the small boy on Bumper’s back, in front of Rob. He seized the reins and held Bumper still for a moment.

“Can I stay and watch Will Treaty kill the Stealer?” he asked.

“No! Now get going!” Maddie yelled at him. “Run, Bumper! Run!”

Reluctantly, the boy released the reins and Bumper turned, trotting along the road, overtaking the children who had begun running already.

“At least someone’s got faith in me,” Will said, with the ghost of a smile. He looked back to see Ruhl’s men beginning to spread out in a long line, either side of the road. He nodded to himself. Maddie had been right. With open ground on either side, they would try to outflank him, and there was little he could do about it.

He counted them. There were eleven men in the line. Most of them were now waist-deep in the long grass. Two remained on the road itself. That would be Jory Ruhl and the tracker, he thought, wondering idly where the tracker had come from. Those two were still fully exposed on the road and for a moment he was tempted to try a long shot at Ruhl. After all, the slaver had no idea who he was facing and he wouldn’t be expecting the sort of uncanny accuracy with which a Ranger could launch his arrows.

Then, reluctantly, he discarded the notion. His first order of business was to get rid of the tracker, to give Maddie and the children a better chance of escaping. His own personal revenge would have to wait—although not too long.

Calmly, unhurriedly, he drew an arrow from the quiver. He inspected it for flaws, although he knew there would be none, and nocked it to the string.

He turned side on, the massive longbow ready, but as yet undrawn, as he watched the small figures approaching on the road. The men on either side were making heavier weather of it, pushing through the waist-high grass, and Ruhl and his tracker had unintentionally got ahead of them. They were within long bowshot now, but Will waited a little longer. He rarely missed but he wanted to make sure of this shot. Mentally, he reviewed his actions. Draw, sight, release. Then, when he knew the shot was going to hit its target—and he could usually tell within the first few seconds—he would loose a second arrow at Ruhl.

“Come on,” he muttered. “Just a few more metres.”

And then he was ready. The bow came up to the shooting position. He saw the sighting picture, which included the bow’s elevation, the line of the arrow and the tiny target, hundreds of metres away. He felt his forefinger touch against the corner of his mouth as he drew back against the eighty-five-pound pull of the yew wood, felt the intense pressure of the thick string against the reinforced tips of his gloved fingers.

With a separate part of his mind, he saw the figure on the road stop, as if he sensed imminent danger. Too late.

He released and the arrow shot away from the bow. In the moment after releasing, he knew it was a good shot. His hand automatically found another arrow, nocked it. The bow came up and he switched his aim to Jory Ruhl, sighted and released again.

Ruhl became aware that he was ahead of the line of advancing men. He hesitated, calling to Enrico to stop. As he did, he heard a hissing sound, then an ugly thud.

Enrico cried out in surprise and pain and threw out both arms, staggering back under the impact of the speeding shaft. Then he crashed over on his back, his sightless eyes staring up at the sky.

In that split second, Ruhl realised that only one kind of archer could have pulled off that shot and he recognised the significance of the dark, cowled cloak the archer wore.

“A Ranger!” he yelled. And simultaneously, he realised that he would be the next target. He threw himself flat on the road, feeling and hearing the hiss of the arrow that passed just overhead to slam into the hard-packed surface behind him.

Clutching the crossbow to his body, he rolled down the camber of the road, into the long grass.

Will saw Ruhl drop flat to the road a split second before the arrow cleaved the air where he had been standing. He cursed bitterly. Ruhl had rolled off the road into the grass. There was no sign of him. But Will knew the shot had missed.

He looked out to the right. The men at the far end of the line were working their way out to get behind him, moving in a long arc that kept them at extreme bowshot range. On the left, the same thing was happening.

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. If he could put an arrow into one of them, that would lower the odds. Even if he missed and the arrow went close, it would slow the man down.

He drew, sighted and shot. The arrow arced away. A few seconds later, the slaver dropped into the waist-high grass and disappeared. Will had no idea whether or not he had hit him. He thought not. But now the man had to move on hands and knees, and he was unsighted. That should slow him down.

He swung smoothly to the left, drawing and nocking an arrow as he did so.

His target there was running, hoping that his speed and the distance between them would put Will’s aim off. Will’s lip curled slightly. He drew and shot. The two actions were almost casual, as if he had hardly taken aim. But as the arrow sped on its way, he knew it would hit its mark.

He lost sight of it eventually, then heard a brief cry and saw the slaver on the left of the line clutch both hands to his throat, then fall.

“That’s two gone,” he said to himself. Then he saw movement on the right in his peripheral vision. The slaver there was up and running. But by the time Will had nocked another arrow, he had dropped prone in the grass again, disappearing from view.

Will frowned. The long grass was making shooting difficult. If they had been on clear ground, with the slaver hidden behind a log or a boulder, he could have tried a clout shot—aiming high into the sky to let the arrow plunge down almost vertically onto the target. But the featureless grass made it difficult to judge distance. And he’d never see the eventual spot that the arrow hit.

Some sixth sense warned him of danger and he turned back to the centre of the line, where three men were advancing at a run.

He snapped off an arrow, missed as the man he had targeted sidestepped unexpectedly. Almost immediately, he had another shaft on the way. This time there was a cry and the man stumbled back as the heavy arrow hit him. But then he rose again and came on. The shot had wounded him, no more.

There was no time to try again. The man out on the right was up and running and already he had bypassed Will’s position. Will hesitated, glanced left and saw another had taken the left flanker’s place. He too was running, then he dropped into the grass and was lost to sight.

“Time I wasn’t here,” Will muttered. He looked north. Maddie and the children were disappearing over the distant skyline. They were several kilometres away, which gave him a little room to move.

He turned and ran full speed down the road, stopping after a hundred and fifty metres to play the game out again. He had a sinking feeling that it was a losing game, but he planned to spin it out as long as he could. And if he could infuriate Ruhl sufficiently, perhaps the slaver might forget about recapturing the children. His thirst for vengeance over Will might let them escape.

He stopped and turned to face the enemy. Three shots. One left, one right, one slightly left of middle.

The first two did no more than scare the out-flankers, sending them diving for cover once more. The third hit Ruhl’s dark-cloaked henchman squarely in the neck. He stared wide eyed at the feathered shaft that protruded below his chin, looked at Ruhl, cowering in the long grass, and tried to speak.

The only sound he could make was a choking gurgle. Then his legs collapsed under him and he crashed to the earth.

Will saw him fall.

I’m improving the odds, he thought. But I’m not doing it fast enough.

They were running left and right now, but before he could react, they had gone to ground in the long grass again. The men in the middle of the line were advancing more slowly, staying low and under cover. But things were getting out of hand as the men on either end of the extended line moved past Will’s position. He had to pin them down. His hand brushed the feathered ends of the arrows in his quiver as he assessed how many he had left. There were about a dozen, maybe one or two more.

He decided it might be time to sacrifice accuracy for volume. The left flankers were up again and he loosed three arrows at them in rapid succession. Then he spun on his heel and let another three go in the general direction of the men on the right flank. By chance, one of them came to his feet just as the first arrow thudded into the ground, several metres from him. He promptly dropped back into cover, shouting a warning to his companions. Will checked the left flank again. The sudden rapid volley had had the desired effect. The men there were nervous about committing themselves again too soon.

He nodded, satisfied. “Time to move,” he said and took off running down the road again.

Cowering in the long grass at the side of the road, Jory Ruhl looked at the still body of his henchman. They had been together for two years now, and if Ruhl could be said to have a friend, this man had been one. Looking at the grey-shafted arrow lodged in his throat, Ruhl tried to remember how many the Ranger had shot so far. He had been shooting at a prodigious rate. Sooner or later, he must run out of arrows.

Staying down and out of sight, he yelled to those around him.

“I want that man alive! Don’t kill him. Take him alive!”