Oakleaf Bearers

9

D EEP IN THE SHELTER OF THE PINE TREE, WRAPPED IN THE inadequate warmth of the two blankets, Will spent a fitful night, dozing for short periods, then being woken by the cold and his racing thoughts.

Foremost in his mind was his sense of utter inadequacy. Faced with the need to rescue Evanlyn from her captors, he had absolutely no idea how he might accomplish the task. They were six men, well armed and capable-looking. He was a boy, armed only with a small hunting bow and a short dagger. His arrows were good only for small game-with points made by hardening the end of the wood in a fire and then sharpening them. They were nothing like the razor-sharp broadheads that he had carried in his quiver as an apprentice Ranger. "A Ranger wears the lives of two dozen men on his belt," went the old Araluen saying.

He racked his brain again and again throughout the long periods of sleeplessness. He thought bitterly that he was supposed to have a reputation as a thinker and a planner. He felt that he was letting Evanlyn down with his inability to come up with an idea. And letting down others too. In his mind's eye, half asleep and dozing, he saw Halt's bearded face, smiling at him and urging him to come up with a plan. Then the smile would fade, first to a look of anger, then, finally, of disappointment. He thought of Horace, his companion on the journey through Celtica to Morgarath's bridge. The heavily built warrior apprentice had always been content to let Will do the thinking for the two of them. Will sighed unhappily as he thought how misplaced that trust had become. Perhaps it was an aftereffect of the warmweed to which he had been addicted. Perhaps the drug rotted a user's brain, making him incapable of original thought.

Time and again through that unhappy night, he asked himself the question, "What would Halt do?" But the device, so useful in the past for providing an answer to his problems, was ineffectual. He heard no answering voice deep within his subconscious, bringing him counsel and advice.

The truth was, of course, that given the situation and the circumstance, there was no practical action that Will could take. Virtually unarmed, outnumbered, on unfamiliar ground and sadly out of condition, all he could do would be to keep watching the strangers' encampment and hope for some change in the circumstances, some eventuality that might provide him with an opportunity to reach Evanlyn and get her away into the trees.

Finally abandoning the attempt to rest, he crawled out from under the pine tree and gathered his meager equipment together. The position of the stars in the heavens told him that it was a little over an hour before he could expect to see the first light of dawn filtering through the treetops.

"At least that's one skill I've remembered," he said miserably, speaking the words aloud, as had become his custom during the night.

He hesitated, then came to a decision and moved off through the trees toward the campsite. There was always a chance that something might have changed. The sentry might have fallen asleep or gone off into the forest to investigate a suspicious noise, leaving the way clear to rescue Evanlyn.

It wasn't likely but it was possible. And if such an opportunity arose, it was essential that Will be present to take advantage of it. At least it was a definite course of action for him to follow, so he moved as quietly as possible, keeping one of the blankets draped around his shoulders as a cloak.

It took him ten minutes to find his way back to the small camp. When he did, his hopes were dashed. There was still a sentry patrolling and, as Will observed, the watch had changed, with a fresh man taking over the post, wide-awake and rested. He moved around the perimeter of the camp on a regular patrol, coming within twenty meters of the spot where the boy crouched hidden behind a tree. There was no sign of slackness or inattention. The man kept his point of vision moving, continually searching the surrounding forest for any sign of unusual movement.

Will looked enviously at the recurve bow slung, ready strung, over the man's right shoulder. It was very similar to the one Halt had given him when he had first taken up his apprenticeship with the grim-faced Ranger. Vaguely, he recalled Halt had said something about learning how to make such a bow from the warriors of the Eastern Steppes. He wondered now if these men were some of those warriors.

The sentry's bow was a real weapon, he thought, unlike the virtual toy that he carried. Now, if he had a bow like that in his hands, and a few of the arrows that showed their feathered tips in the sentry's back quiver, he might be able to accomplish something. For a while, he played with the idea of overpowering the sentry and taking his bow, but he was forced to reject the idea.

There was no way he would get within reach of the man without being seen or heard. And, even if he could accomplish that, there was little chance of his being able to overpower an armed warrior. Pitting the small dagger he carried against the man's saber would be suicide. He could chance a throw of the knife, of course, but it was a poorly balanced weapon and ill suited for throwing, without sufficient weight in the hilt to drive the blade home into the target.

And so he huddled in the snow at the base of the tree, watching and waiting for an opportunity that never came. He could see Evanlyn's crumpled shape to one side of the camp. The tree she was tied to was surrounded by clear space. There was no way he could approach her without the sentry seeing him. It all seemed hopeless.

He must have dozed off, lulled by the cold and by the restless night he had spent, for he was awoken by the sound of voices.

It was just after dawn and the early morning light struck obliquely through the gaps in the trees, throwing long shadows across the clearing. Two of the group of warriors were standing, a little apart from the others, arguing. The words were indecipherable to Will, but the subject of their debate was obvious, as one of them kept gesturing toward Evanlyn, still tied to the tree, huddled in the blanket she had been given, and now wide-awake and watchful.

As the discussion progressed, the men became increasingly angrier, their voices louder. Finally, the older man seemed goaded beyond restraint. He slapped the other man, sending him staggering. He nodded once, as if satisfied, then turned toward Evanlyn, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword.

For a moment, Will remained frozen. The warrior's manner was so casual as he drew the sword and approached the girl that it seemed impossible to believe that he meant her any harm. There was a callousness about the entire scenario that seemed to belie any hostile intent. Yet it was that same callousness and casualness that created a growing sense of horror in Will. The man raised the sword above the girl. Evanlyn's mouth opened but no sound came and Will realized that killing her meant nothing, absolutely nothing at all, to the small, bowlegged warrior.

Acting under their own volition, Will's hands had drawn and nocked an arrow as the warrior dropped his hand to the sword hilt. The curved blade went up and Evanlyn crouched in the snow, one hand raised in a futile attempt to ward off the killing stroke. Will stepped out clear of the tree, bringing the bow to full draw as his mind rapidly weighed the situation.

His arrow wouldn't kill. It was little more than a pointed stick, even though that point had been hardened in a fire. The chances were that, if he aimed at the warrior's body, the thick furs and leather jerkin that he wore would stop the arrow before it even broke the skin. There was only one vulnerable point where the man was unprotected and that was, coincidentally, one that gave Will's shot the best chance of stopping the sword stroke. The man's wrist was exposed as his arm went up, the bare flesh showing at the end of the thick fur sleeve. All of this Will registered in the time it took him to bring the arrow's crude fletching back to touch his cheek. His aim shifted smoothly to the man's wrist, the tip of the arrow rising slightly to allow for drop. He checked his breath automatically, then released.

The bow gave a slight twang and the light arrow leapt away, arcing swiftly across the intervening space and burying its point into the soft flesh of the warrior's wrist.

Will heard the strangled shout of pain as his hands moved in the well-remembered sequence, nocking another arrow and sending it after the first. The sword had dropped from the man's grasp, falling noiselessly into the thick snow and causing Evanlyn to shrink back as its razor-sharp blade just missed her arm. The second arrow slapped against the man's thick sleeve and hung there harmlessly as he grasped his right wrist, blood pouring down over his hand.

Shocked and caught unaware as he was, the man had still turned instinctively in the direction from which the arrow had come and now, seeing the movement as Will fired the second time, he made out the small figure across the clearing. With a snarl of anger, he released his injured wrist and clawed a long dagger from his belt with his left hand. For a moment, Evanlyn was forgotten as he pointed in Will's direction to his men, shouting for them to follow him, then began to run toward his attacker.

Will's third arrow slowed the man down as it flashed past his face, causing him to jerk to one side to avoid it. But then he was coming again and two of his men were following. At the same time, Will saw a fourth man heading toward Evanlyn and his heart sank as he realized he had failed. He sent another shaft zipping toward him, knowing the effort was in vain. Turning to face the oncoming warrior, Will dropped the useless bow and reached for the knife in his own belt.

And then he heard a sound from the past, a sound eerily familiar from hours spent in the forest around Castle Redmont.

A deep thrum came from somewhere behind him, then the air-splitting hiss of a heavy shaft traveling at incredible speed, with enormous force behind it. Finally, Will heard the solid smack as it struck home.

The arrow, black-shafted, gray-feathered, seemed to appear in the center of the approaching warrior's chest. He fell backward in the snow. Another thrum-hiss-smack and the second man went down as well. The third turned and ran for the horses tethered on the far side of the camp. Galloping hoofbeats told Will that the remaining two men had already made their escape, unwilling to face the uncanny accuracy of the longbow.

Will hesitated, his mind in a turmoil. Instinctively, he knew what had happened. Logically, he had no idea how it had come about. He turned and saw the barely visible, gray-cloaked figure some thirty meters behind him, the huge longbow still held at the ready, another arrow already drawn.

"Halt?" he cried, his voice breaking. He started to run toward the figure, then remembered. Evanlyn! She was still in danger. As he turned, he heard the scrape of steel on steel and saw that she had managed to grab the fallen saber and ward off the first attack.

But it could only be a momentary respite as her hands were still tied in front of her and she was tethered firmly to the tree. He pointed toward her and yelled inarticulately, desperately urging Halt to shoot, then realized that the Ranger's view of the scene was blocked by the trees.

Then another figure was bounding toward the struggling girl and her attacker. A tall, well-built figure who looked strangely familiar, wearing chain mail and a white surcoat with a strange emblem that resembled a stylized oakleaf.

His long, straight sword intercepted the curved blade as it swung down. Then he had interposed himself between Evanlyn and the man who was trying to kill her and, in a series of flashing sword strokes that bewildered the eye, he drove the other man back away from the girl. He obviously had the better of the exchange and his opponent retreated before him, his parries and strokes growing more desperate as he realized that he was totally outmatched. The man lunged clumsily with his curved blade and it was deflected easily so that his momentum carried him forward, off balance, wide open to the retaliatory backhanded cut that was already on its way-

"Don't kill him!" Halt shouted, just in time, and Horace twisted his wrist so that the flat of his blade, not the razor edge, slammed into the side of the man's head. The man's eyes rolled up and he sagged to the ground, unconscious.

And very lucky.

"We want a prisoner," the Ranger finished mildly. Then he was driven back by the impact of a small body running headlong into him, and a pair of arms that wrapped around his waist, and Will was sobbing and babbling mindlessly as he embraced his teacher and mentor and friend. Halt patted his shoulder gently, and was surprised to find a single tear sliding down his own cheek.

Horace sliced through Evanlyn's bonds with the edge of his sword and gently assisted her to her feet.

"Are you all right?" he asked anxiously, then, satisfied that she was, he couldn't help a huge grin of relief breaking out across his face.

"Oh, Horace, thank God you're here!" the girl sobbed, and throwing her arms around his neck, she buried her face in his chest. For a moment, Horace was nonplussed. He went to embrace her in return, realized he was still holding his sword, and hesitated awkwardly. Then, coming to a decision, he planted it firmly, point first in the ground, and put his arms around her, feeling the softness of her and smelling the fragrance of her hair and skin.

His grin grew wider, which he wouldn't have thought was possible. He decided there were definite advantages to being a hero.