*Old fic that I began ages ago and wrote now. (Dated pre 25 July 2015)
So I have had so much great feedback since I put up my last chapter that this is awesome! (My English right?)
But anyway, I feel as though you all deserve another something (Even though everything I write at the moment is going to be filled with horrible spelling mistakes and typos [which are actually my spelling mistakes except for the fact that I am too embarrassed to actually admit to them]), so here it is.
Thank you everyone for the votes and favourite and kudos and what not. It has helped me to find my feet a little as I entered uni for the first time.
SWEARING WARNING FOR RANGER'S POTTY MOUTHS!
"Are you sure about this?" Halt asked looking at Will hesitantly. "Personally I wouldn't scale that for all the information about the most wanted person ever."
The two men looked at the wall. One was more hesitant than the other, however nothing would compare to when they finally admitted to their wives that they actually went through with this hair-brained plan. Will was planning, if he did survive this, to convince Halt that as he wasn't the one to do it, he should be the one to tell the wives. (1)
"Someone has to test it and considering that I am the person who so obviously pointed out the issue all of those years ago, I am assuming that it has to be me," Will replied and walked over to the wall.
The Baron of Redmont had finally agreed (after being pressured into it by more than one Ranger) to fix the crumbling walls of the castle. For many days there were workers tied from objects inside of windows and other people in order to repair the bricks. The first area they worked on was the area leading to the Baron's office, this was mainly so that he didn't have anyone attempting to steal his important official documents. Will found it strange whenever someone brought this up as every time it occurred they always looked at him.
It had taken six months to convince the Baron that he might need to repair the wall. There were many arguments and quite a few people who were needed, but eventually they won the battle. All it took was King Duncan turning around and giving Baron Arald a 'look'.
Will was now attempting to scale that very wall.
"Why do I have to do this again?" he asked.
"Because we need to test it and the theory is that if you can't then no one can."
"Why?"
Halt looked over and have Will a look. Then a sigh. "Are you doing it or not? If not, then I am going on a ride with Abelard. I am sure Tug would love to join me."
Will sucked it up pretty fast and started climbing. After about half an hour of careful placing of hands and feet, he reached the Baron's office and jumped inside. Once he was there he grabbed a blank piece of paper, just to prove that he was there and looked back out of the window. One thing he had never had to do was climb back down the walls, he always went up.
Going down was harder for Will, especially on an area like this. It was newly repaired and he had struggled to find the footholds to go up, this time he wouldn't be able to look for it and would have to rely on feel alone.
From the safety of the ground Halt suddenly felt his breath catch in his throat. Will's frown was a good sign for the walls but when it was a frown and he was half way coming down again it was bad.
"The breeze has picked up," Baron Arald muttered coming alongside Halt. It was a testament to how worried he was over Will's safety that he jumped. Crowley, standing on the other side sighed before walking forwards.
"If you can't do it safely, don't worry! Go back up!" he called up. There was a slight head shake no in response that they could make out then Will continued.
"Fucking stubborn apprentice," Halt muttered. Crowley and the Baron shared a look. No matter how old he was Halt always saw Will the same as he had been in the months post rescuing him from Skandia.
"Uh, Halt… I don't think he is an apprentice any more. After all, he is the one in charge of this fief, remember," Rodney said. Halt shook his head no.
"He will always be my apprentice. I don't care," Halt then stepped forwards to the wall. "GET MOVING OR CLIMB BACK UP!" he yelled sharply. Rodney winced.
"Do you want to teach the Battle school apprentices every now and then?" he asked Halt who didn't even bother replying.
"Is this how you train your apprentices? No wonder they only gave you two. That hurt my ears," Arald muttered.
"We only give him the most annoying of the apprentices," Crowley grinned. Halt muttered something back that isn't worth repeating.
As they all watched, Will ignored their advice and started back down the wall again. Every now and again he would pause and it was a slower decent than it had been ascent.
"One of these days he is going to kill himself doing this," Rodney muttered.
"I would personally prefer if he didn't. He's lined up for admin roles later on in the corps," Crowley replied for a moment ignoring who he was talking to.
"Wait. The rangers have admins and everything?" Arald said shocked. This time Halt did turn around and gave a glare at Crowley before his eyes did snap back to watching the safety of his ex-apprentice.
"Do we need to get a healer out just in case?" Crowley asked, attempting to change the subject of the conversation.
"No. I want to hear more about the corps. And were you the one who only seconds before was proclaiming his confidence in Will?" said Arald.
"We have me and a few advisers that's it," Crowley quickly said then walked off, probably to get the healer just in case.
"I have always noticed how the way he swishes off in that cape gives him a feminine air," said Arald with a completely straight face. He was surprised as Halt let out a bark of laughter.
"I am so going to use that on him next time he mentions the travelling hoopla dancer incident," Halt replied.
"So long as I remain anonymous I don't mind," Arald replied and Rodney watched with an open mouth.
Will however was unaware of the joking that was happening on the ground. He had noticed that the wind was starting to pick up and more often he was finding himself having to flatten his body against the wall to prevent falling off. The repairs in the walls meant that he wasn't able to see the footholds any more and feeling wasn't helping that much as his fingers and toes became numb. With a sigh he realised that he was going to have to go back up and comfort himself in the fact that he had managed to climb up. After all, that's what they wanted to check right? Quickly he looked out over to his left at the clouds building on the horizon. They hadn't been there before and were moving in fast.
"Well that would be the cause of the sudden wind," he said out loud to himself. There was a pause as he caught his breath and then looked slightly above himself to begin going back up.
"Three out of four."
"Three out of four."
On the ground Halt, the only one who was really paying attention to Will climbing and not holding a mock argument, noticed that Will had begun to go up rather than down.
"He gave up," Halt muttered in shock.
"I refuse to tell you more about the corps and the anual gathering!" Crowley cried indignantly.
"But you just did. You just said it was anual. I had no clue until just then," Arald pointed out.
The healer stood there like a stunned mullet.
"WILL!" Halt cried, causing them all to spin to look at the ranger high up.
"That was not three out of four!" they could all hear Will faintly cry out over the wind.
"Three out of four?" Crowley asked Halt.
"Beats me if I know," Halt replied with a frown. He was going to ask Will about it when he reached ground level again, if that was by stairs, crawling or a failed bird impression he didn't know.
Up on the tower Will was panicking internally. For a split moment he had been hanging by his left hand and foot, swinging in the wind. It was no longer a breeze, it had upgraded in Will's mind. The clouds he had noticed earlier were definitely upon him now. In the pause as he regained control over his heart he glanced down and then up again. With a pause he noticed something that had slipped him before.
Someone on the repair team had left small markers to climb the tower themselves. They were unnoticeable unless you were nearly on top of them and the small impressions that were there to any normal person unused to climbing would look as though the building had been repaired.
Will really hated to assume things like this, particularly when he was stuck halfway up a tower with a storm rolling in fast, but it looked as though someone was planning either an assassination or a way to gain access to the Baron's paperwork at the very least.
He swore.
The next thing he went about doing was transferring himself to the markers before using them to climb down again. Now he knew what to look for he could tell that it would be easy to climb the place, in fact easier than it was the first time he had done so all of those years before on the night he had become apprenticed to Halt. On that thought, Halt must think he was insane suddenly changing direction like that.
On the ground Halt did think something along those lines but he also knew Will rather well. He turned to Crowley.
"Something has either happened or he has noticed something major," he informed his commander.
"Why?" Crowley asked, thinking that Will had just chosen an easier path.
"He wouldn't change like that. The wall is meant to be the same the whole way around remember? One section would be the same as another. That and he has started coming down again.
Baron Arald frown and held his eye on Will's form. The young man was moving a lot faster than normal now and the difficulty level suddenly dropped by 3.
"No, I have to agree. This rate is not normal."
"It's faster than him climbing into the kitchens or the time he let two rabbits go in mating season," Halt replied.
Arald groaned. "You had to mention that?" Halt looked at him.
"Yes."
Less than five minutes later Will was back safely on the ground again, having jumped off the wall with two more feet to climb. At once Halt rushed over and checked his health. Arald having started forwards to do the same moved back and watched, realising he was getting an insight to the dynamics of not only the relationship between Halt and Will, but within the corps as well when Crowley moved forwards.
"Are you alright?" Halt said gruffly.
"No," Will replied shaking out his arms and legs, dead exhausted. "I need to check something however."
Halt was only seconds too late as he reached out to grab Will's arm to prevent him from walking over to the wall again and beginning to climb. The first three meters was slow going but all of a sudden Will scaled the next 15 fast before coming back down again in the same manner.
"He's placing his hands and feet in the same place every time," Crowley noticed. Halt grunted and walked over to the wall.
"GET DOWN YOU IDIOT," he called out. Two minutes later Will was back on the ground.
The exhaustion from having to maintain a constant concentration on the wall and the fact that he had just spent over two hours climbing what was at first one of the hardest walls he had ever climbed, was beginning to get to him and Will stumbled right into Halt, who this time managed to catch him. Halt grew worried at Will was now leaning heavilly on him. They weren't going to get anything out of the ranger until after he had regained some energy, he realised.
"Report," Crowley snapped, hating having to do this but knowing all the same that the ranger training would cause any ranger to look past their exhaustion and mention what they had noticed.
"Someone's planning something. There are small, nearly unnoticeable marks that make the climbing easier and would ensure you escaped the guards attention the whole way up," Will said.
"Fuck."
"Crowley, is that appropriate language to use in the presence of the people around you?" Halt mocked. Crowley looked at him sharply then turned to face Will. He looked at the younger ranger for a moment then nodded.
Watching from behind Arald and Rodney were confused. They knew that rangers were basically another breed of human compared to everyone else, but having a closer knowledge of them than most meant that they were used to the odd peculiarities that a few of them possessed, after all Gilan was David's son and he had started off normal and still seemed fairly normal.
This however was something else. The instinctual reply to the words snapped at them and the knowledge that after the nod they were able to relax as Will had, was bizarre.
"With your permission I'll take him to my quarters to rest?" Halt asked Crowley. This was another thing that made Arald's head snap up. Halt never asked anything of anyone generally, it was the first time he had seen this.
"Sure. He deserves it," Crowley muttered back, already thinking of how he was going to solve this next problem.
"One riot. One Ranger," Will said suddenly at him completely serious and appearing to gain more energy.
Crowley nodded with a knowing smile. "Yes. One riot. One Ranger. Amazing that we have three in the area then."
(1) my mind blanked…
*25 Sept 2015
When I got to this again there were 263 words (about the size of this AN) and no vague plot line at all. It was going to be a small cute fic.
Ugly but interesting.
NOW there is a plot and well over 2500 words. I think I did well here.
I always see it as that the Barons have no clue as to how the corps work but understand the people aren't aliens or something along those lines. Arald however, he's special. I feel as though he has always had a bit more understanding of rangers but of course not the complete idea. In this way I wanted to have him see a bit more in the interaction between rangers because if you think about it, that's what no one ever sees. The rangers are solitary people who only get together once a year so for anyone to see how they all respond together and the dynamics of their group. And the Baron got to see the general swearings that the rangers like to employ at particular moments.
I don't know. It was meant to be cute.
But then it rained outside.
And it has been so windy for the past few days.
And Will just climbing up and down again is boring.
And I'm not meant to be out in the dark but it's already dark and I'm only at the city and have another hour (maybe more) left to travel ;)
And then I had to walk home in the rain with pitch black sky/streets for 45 mins.
Shh. I won't tell if you don't!
But in parting:
In foramine terrae habitabat hobbitus (in a hole in the ground lived a hobbit).
Alyss Mainwaring