Oakleaf Bearers

2

T HE TWO RIDERS EMERGED FROM THE TREES AND INTO A CLEAR meadow. Down here in the foothills of Teutlandt, the coming spring was more apparent than in the high mountains that reared ahead of them. The meadow grasses were already showing green and there were only isolated patches of snow, in spots that usually remained shaded for the greater part of the day.

A casual onlooker might have been interested to notice the horses that followed behind the two mounted men. They might even have mistaken the men, at a distance, for traders who were hoping to take advantage of the first opportunity to cross through the mountain passes into Skandia, and so benefit from the high prices that the season's first trade goods would enjoy.

But a closer inspection would have shown that these men were not traders. They were armed warriors. The smaller of the two, a bearded man clad in a strange gray and green dappled cloak that seemed to shift and waver as he moved, had a longbow slung over his shoulders and a quiver of arrows at his saddle bow.

His companion was a larger, younger man. He wore a simple brown cloak, but the early spring sunshine glinted off the chain mail armor at his neck and arms, and the scabbard of a long sword showed under the hem of the cloak. Completing the picture, a round buckler was slung over his back, emblazoned with a slightly crude effigy of an oakleaf.

Their horses were as mismatched as the men themselves. The younger man sat astride a tall bay-long-legged, with powerful haunches and shoulders, it was the epitome of a battlehorse. A second battlehorse, this one a black, trotted behind him on a lead rope. His companion's mount was considerably smaller, a shaggy barrel-chested horse, more a pony really. But it was sturdy, and had a look of endurance to it. Another horse, similar to the first, trotted behind, lightly laden with the bare essentials for camping and traveling. There was no lead rein on this horse. It followed obediently and willingly.

Horace craned his neck up at the tallest of the mountains towering above them. His eyes squinted slightly in the glare of the snow that still lay thickly on the mountain's upper half and now reflected the light of the sun.

"You mean to tell me we're going over that?" he asked, his eyes widening.

Halt looked sidelong at him, with the barest suggestion of a smile. Horace, however, intent on studying the massive mountain formations facing them, failed to see it.

"Not over," said the Ranger. "Through."

Horace frowned thoughtfully at that. "Is there a tunnel of some kind?"

"A pass," Halt told him. "A narrow defile that twists and winds through the lower reaches of the mountains and brings us into Skandia itself."

Horace digested that piece of information for a moment or two. Then Halt saw his shoulders rise to an intake of breath and knew that the movement presaged yet another question. He closed his eyes, remembering a time that seemed years ago when he was alone and when life was not an endless series of questions.

Then he admitted to himself that, strangely, he preferred things the way they were now. However, he must have made some unintentional noise as he awaited the question, for he noticed that Horace had sealed his lips firmly and determinedly. Obviously, Horace had sensed the reaction and had decided that he would not bother Halt with another question. Not yet, anyway.

Which left Halt in a strange quandary. Because now that the question was unasked, he couldn't help wondering what it would have been. All of a sudden, there was a nagging sense of incompletion about the morning. He tried to ignore the feeling but it would not be pushed aside. And for once, Horace seemed to have conquered his almost irresistible need to ask the question that had occurred to him.

Halt waited a minute or two but there was no sound except for the jingling of harness and the creaking of leather from their saddles. Finally, the former Ranger could bear it no longer.

"What?"

The question seemed to explode out of him, with a greater degree of violence than he had intended. Taken by surprise, Horace's bay shied in fright and danced several paces sideways.

Horace turned an aggrieved look on his mentor as he calmed the horse and brought it back under control.

"What?" he asked Halt, and the smaller man made a gesture of exasperation.

"That's what I want to know," he said irritably. " What?"

Horace peered at him. The look was all too obviously the sort of look that you give to someone who seems to have taken leave of his senses. It did little to improve Halt's rapidly rising temper.

"What?" said Horace, now totally puzzled.

"Don't keep parroting at me!" Halt fumed. "Stop repeating what I say! I asked you 'what,' so don't ask me 'what' back, understand?"

Horace considered the question for a second or two, then, in his deliberate way, he replied: "No."

Halt took a deep breath, his eyebrows contracted into a deep V, and beneath them his eyes sparked with anger. But before he could speak, Horace forestalled him.

"What 'what' are you asking me?" he said. Then, thinking how to make his question clearer, he added, "Or to put it another way, why are you asking 'what'?"

Controlling himself with enormous restraint, and making no secret of the fact, Halt said, very precisely: "You were about to ask a question."

Horace frowned. "I was?"

Halt nodded. "You were. I saw you take a breath to ask it."

"I see," said Horace. "And what was it about?"

For just a second or two, Halt was speechless. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then finally found the strength to speak.

"That is what I was asking you," he said. "When I said 'what,' I was asking you what you were about to ask me."

"I wasn't about to ask you 'what,'" Horace replied, and Halt glared at him suspiciously. It occurred to him that Horace could be indulging himself in a gigantic leg pull, that he was secretly laughing at Halt. This, Halt could have told him, was not a good career move. Rangers were not people who took kindly to being laughed at. He studied the boy's open face and guileless blue eyes and decided that his suspicion was ill-founded.

"Then what, if I may use that word once more, were you about to ask me?"

Horace drew breath once more, then hesitated. "I forget," he said. "What were we talking about?"

"Never mind," Halt muttered, and nudged Abelard into a canter for a few strides to draw ahead of his companion.

Sometimes the Ranger could be confusing, and Horace thought it best to forget the whole conversation. Yet, as happens so often, the moment he stopped trying to consciously remember the thought that had prompted his question, it popped back into his mind again.

"Are there many passes?" he called to Halt.

The Ranger twisted in his saddle to look back at him. "What?" he asked.

Horace wisely chose to ignore the fact that they were heading for dangerous territory with that word again. He gestured to the mountains frowning down upon them.

"Through the mountains. Are there many passes into Skandia through the mountains?"

Halt checked Abelard's stride momentarily, allowing the bay to catch up with them, then resumed his pace.

"Three or four," he said.

"Then don't the Skandians guard them?" Horace asked. It seemed logical to him that they would.

"Of course they do," Halt replied. "The mountains form their principal line of defense."

"So how did you plan for us to get past them?"

The Ranger hesitated. It was a question that had been taxing his mind since they had taken the road from Chateau Montsombre. If he were by himself, he would have no trouble slipping past unseen. With Horace in company, and riding a big, spirited battlehorse, it might be a more difficult matter. He had a few ideas but had yet to settle on any one of them.

"I'll think of something," he temporized, and Horace nodded wisely, satisfied that Halt would indeed think of something. In Horace's world, that was what Rangers did best, and the best thing a warrior apprentice could do was let the Ranger get on with thinking while a warrior took care of walloping anyone who needed to be walloped along the way. He settled back in his saddle, contented with his lot in life.