So sorry for not updating for a longtime. My broken arm prevented me from using keys like ",!,(,),? etc... So I needed to wait for someone to hold shift while I type or try searching for them on the internet, which takes quite long.
Chapter 7
One day, while having breakfast in her cabin, she heard a knock on the cabin door. She sighed, putting down her mug of coffee that she was sipping and went to open the door. Before she got to the door she took her cloak from the hanging peg and pulled out her saxe knife. Bumper hadn't given a warning, so it was likely that whoever knocked was no threat. But it never hurt to be careful. Maddie threw the door open with her left hand, the suddenness of it was meant to throw off anyone lurking out of sight.
The first thing that she noticed was that there was a woman maybe around the age of her mom, standing in front of her. She was quite lean, and had obvious signs that she had worked very hard in her life but she didn't look underfed either. She wore a simple plain dress .The woman jumped back at the sight of the knife-wielding Ranger. "I'm sorry, I must have got the wrong place." She apologised. Maddie leaned a bit to the right and saw a horse munching on a wildflower.
"Wrong place?"
"Well," the woman said. "You see, I was looking for the Ranger. Would you know where he lives?"
"You're looking at her. I'm Ranger Maddie of Gorlan fief." Maddie leaned against the doorframe. She couldn't really blame the woman for not knowing, Maddie had only just earned her silver oakleaf two months ago and there had never been a female Ranger before her.
"You're… a Ranger?" The woman was obviously surprised. "But you're a girl."
"Oh, really? I've never noticed." Maddie feigned surprise.
The woman, realising that this Ranger was like any other Rangers, only female, apologised profusely. Maddie stopped her from her continuous lines of 'sorry' and 'please forgive me'. "So why did you come here?" Maddie asked, after the woman had stopped. She saw the woman took a deep breath, a sign that it was going to be a long, dragged out story. "Spare me the long version, I don't want to be kept here until I'm ninety years old."
The woman thought for a sometime, thinking about how she could make it short. Then she finally said, "My husband was hunting deer in the forest, you see. He had permission from the Baron to hunt the bigger animals, of course. When he was chasing a doe that he'd wounded, something big charged out from behind him and hit him so hard it broke three of his ribs. Fortunately, he managed to run away with his injury." Maddie listened patiently to the 'shortened story', which was still pretty long.
"So he wanted me to investigate this creature?" Maddie asked and the woman nodded. It might be a bear or some large creatures similar to one. Maddie thought. If that was the case, then the bear might need to be hunted lest it harms any more people.
"I can bring you to our farm if you want, my husband would know where he encountered the beast." The woman offered. Maddie declined. Maddie had a pretty good grasp of Gorlan's geography and was confident she could reach the farm by itself. The women then gave Maddie the direction to the farm. "Leave through the high street, go straight for ten kilometres or so, then turn left when you see a gnarled tree that's bigger than all the others. Keep going straight again for five kilometres and when you see a small river, follow it downstream for another five kilometres or so until you reach the crest of the first hill you see, our farm can be seen there. His name is Rake Shovel by the way." The woman, knowing she had done everything she needed to, mounted her pack mule and rode back to her farm. When the woman disappeared out of the tree line, Maddie bursted out laughing like crazy. A farmer named Rake Shovel!
After finishing her interrupted breakfast, Maddie was packing lightly to travel to the woman's farm when she remembered one of the term of conditions that she had agreed with her mom before being assigned her own fief. Whenever she's planning to journey more than ten kilometres (6.2 miles), she has to alert her designated bodyguard and bring him with her. Guess I have to bring Tim with me. She thought. She didn't mind that Tim would have to accompany her, he was good company for the road and when she track this creature, he would be able to have her back.
Maddie finished packing her things into her saddle bag, grabbed bow, stringed it and slung it over her shoulders. Then she went down to Bumper in the stable and saddle him up. "Come on, boy, we're going. Tim's coming with us. Remember him?"
Of course I remember him, dummy. Bumper replied as Maddie let him walk out of the stable by himself. Maddie mounted him and rode to castle Gorlan.
Tim was spectating a sparring match between two final-years apprentices from a distance under the shade of a tree. He frowned as he analysed one of the boy's technique. His movements were stiff and his blows easy to predict. His only saving grace was that his defence was practically impenetrable. His opponent was raining blow upon blow, yet he always blocked them in time.
The boy's opponent was a tall, fair-skinned boy with bleach blond hair. The boy's steps were lithe and sure-footed, like a predator and his attacks were certainly so. Each blow of his seemed like it could've came from a wild bear, and the sound of each blow landing sounded like it was hailing giant ice cubes on a wooden surface. Just by watching the fight for half a minute or so, Tim could judge that the tall boy would win. It was continuing defence versus offense, no longer how good the defence is, it's never infallible.
"Who's winning?" A feminine voice asked from above Tim. Wait, above? He looked up just in time for Maddie to land in front of him from where she was previously perched on one of the branch of the tree he was under, scaring him half out of his wits.
"Ahhh!" He screamed, taking a step back and tripping over a rock sticking out of the ground. Tim clumsily tried to recover but still landed hard on his butt.
"Surprised to see me?" Maddie asked, grinning. She went over to Tim and offered him a hand.
"Surprised!" He exclaimed in indignation. "You nearly gave me a heart-attack! That was uncalled for."
"Well… you were wide open." She said innocently, twiddling her thumbs. Tim got up by himself, rubbing his probably bruised bum.
"At least what you've come to me for?" Tim grimaced as he felt that bruise, it wasn't going anywhere soon.
"I'm going to this farm to hunt down this wild animal that injured a man. The problem is, it's quite far away so…" Maddie started.
"You have to bring me to accompany you, right?" Tim had read the terms that Maddie had to follow and knew where she was getting at.
"Yep." Maddie smiled. "You only need to pack lightly. It won't be a very dangerous or long trip." Tim made his way to castle Gorlan to get his stuffs, still rubbing his buttocks.
Ten minutes later, Tim emerged from castle Gorlan, wearing half armour, armed with his sword and shield, a small pack of supplies in his saddlebag and also leading a sturdy white battlehorse. Maddie waited for him on Bumper just outside the castle walls. Seeing her, he walked his battlehorse over the Ranger. She rose an eyebrow at his battlehorse.
"Is it really necessary to bring him? I mean, we're going to a farm, not a battlefield."
"Of course it is. I wouldn't trust any other horse except for Sprinter." He patted the battlehorse affectionately on the neck. Maddi nodded, accepting his reasoning. The relationship between him and his horse was probably similar to the relationship between a Ranger and his horse.
Or her. Bumper neighed.
"Wait, how did you?" Maddie was about to ask how Bumper knew what she was thinking if she never voiced it vocally but she realised that Tim was right next to her so she stopped herself from going any further. Best to not creep out one of her only friends in the fief.
"I guess we it's time for us to go now." Maddie suggested. Tim agreed. He mounted his horse and they head out.
"Are we there yet?" Tim asked, perhaps for the millionth time that hour.
"No."
"Are we there now?"
"No."
"What about now?"
"No." Maddie felt annoyance building up within her. This must be what Will felt like when I was his apprentice. She thought. Maddie made a mental note to apologise Will to the five years of torture that he went through trying to make a Ranger out of her.
"How about we tell stories about ourselves to pass the time." Tim suggested. Maddie enthusiastically agreed. Anything for Tim to stop asking whether they were there or not.
Tim started talking about his time at Battleschool as an apprentice. Maddie was listening intently because it sounded pretty interesting. On Tim's first week at Battleschool, the drill instructor made his class run ten kilometres through a forest, a river and a swamp. The instructor had made Tim lead the way for the class after showing him a map of the track. The problem was, Tim didn't know how the scaling distance on the map worked and was too shy to ask. So he led his class through a fifty kilometres run where they got lost and separated multiple times, only to arrive at castle Gorlan at midnight, dirty, hungry and miserable. To make things worse, they were sent to bed straight away without being given food and had to do the run again in the next morning. But at least they weren't expelled.
"I bet your class never trusted you to lead them on runs again." Maddie found herself laughing to the story.
"Actually, they never trusted me with anything involving distances ever again." Tim also laughed.
Soon they found themselves trading humorous stories about their time as apprentices. Maddie talked about how Will made her sleep in a dark, wet cave when she changed his favourite song 'Greybeard Halt' into 'Greybeard Will', even going as far as adding several more lines to the song. Tim told her about how he nearly fell asleep during his graduation ceremony when a senior knight delivered a speech as entertaining as watching paint dry. As they talked, Maddie found herself opening up to the young knight more.
By early afternoon, they crested the first hill they saw and true to the directions given to Maddie, there laid a large farm some two hundred metres away. Approaching the farm, Maddie noted that it had four cows, a herd of sheep, dozens of chickens, pigs, a stable and several well-tended fields. Evidently, the farm was a very wealthy one. Its surrounding fences were well built and recently painted. The farmhouse was two story- a rarity for farmhouses- and made of sturdy stones. From their position, Maddie could spot several people working on the fields.
When they got close to the farmstead, a person walked towards them. One was a man nearing his fifties but moved with the dexterity of people half his age even though his torso was wrapped in bandages. He must be the injured husband of the woman who requested her help.
As they come closer, the man said "Hullo there, Ranger. Greetings there kind Sir." His tone was friendly as he welcomed Maddie and Tim.
Maddie dismounted, Tim followed her lead and did the same. She faced the man and asked "You're Rake Shovel, correct?" Tim looked like he was about to burst out laughing until Maddie elbowed him lightly in the stomach. Tim's facial expression seemed to say. A farmer named Rake Shovel! Are you kidding me?
"The only one with that ridiculous name. And you're the Ranger, I presume by your cloak." The man replied. The man seems to know that Maddie would be a female, seems like his wife had told him about her.
"Ranger Maddie of Gorlan fief, at your service. This is my friend, Tim, one of the knights in castle Gorlan." She gestured at her friend. "Your wife told me you were injured by a beast while hunting."
"Aye, broke three of my ribs with one stroke, it did." As the farmer said, he rubbed his injury gingerly.
"Can you describe it for me?" Rake's eyes misted over for a second when Maddie asked.
"It's… it's like no creature I've ever hunted," The man's voice came out shaky, as if he's gone through something very traumatising. "It looks much like a bear, but it moves like an ape. I shot it when I was running away, but my arrow just bounced right off like it was nothing. The most terrifying thing about it is that while running away, I made eye contact with the beast and my body was nearly paralysed. It took all my effort to take one step to run. Those eyes of the creature, it shows you all of your nightmares, all of your biggest fears. I was so lucky to have gotten away."
Tim stood there silently listening to Rake. How could a creature stop you with a stare like that? And the fact that the creature was unharmed by a shot from a bow makes it sound neigh invulnerable. Tim looked at Maddie, hoping to see if she showed some signs of recognition of this creature, and saw that she had a thoughtful look on her face, as if the description of the beast was familiar.
"What do you think this animal might be?" Tim asked her.
"I've no idea, though the description of it is a tad bit familiar, I think I've heard it in a story or something like that." She replied. She turned to Rake. "Can you lead us to where you were attacked?" He shook his head.
"The way there is a bit treacherous, my injury won't allow me to go there. But my son can lead you there, sometimes he hunts with me there." He called over for one of the people working on the field to come over. That person turned out to be a boy around fourteen years old, with some features similar to Rake. He was lean with a mop of haphazard black hair, his arms had fine muscle due to working on the fields year round.
"This is my son, Plough." Maddie elbowed Tim again to keep him from laughing out loud. The boy looked at the strangers and turned to his father for some explanation. "Son, this is Sir Tim and the Ranger." Rake gestured at Maddie. Plough look suspiciously at her.
"You're not a Ranger. Girls aren't Ranger." The boy regretted what he said instantly, as his father immediately whacked the boy on the head for his rudeness and forced him to apologise to Maddie.
"That's what you said to me when I rescued you." Maddie whispered softly to Tim. He blushed when he thought about how ungrateful he had been then, calling his saviour a fake. Rake then told his son to lead the two of them to where the attack happened. Plough ran to the stable and led back a saddled bay horse after a couple of minutes.
"Follow me." He said to them as the horse trotted to where the two of them were. Then he accelerate his horse to a run and rode to the east. Maddie and Tim directed their horse to follow him.
After nearly ten minutes of riding, they arrived at the edge of a thick forest, when they looked the east of the forest, the saw the site of a destroyed castle, one that must have been magnificent before being reduced to rubble. They knew what the destroyed castle was, of course, the former castle of the dead Baron Morgarath- the ruins of Gorlan. A thin trail ran into the forest and Plough followed it.
The trail was far from straight and stable, it often zigzags and curve extravagantly, and it was bumpy and slippery at the same time. Soon they arrived at a small meadow with green lustrous grass and a small stream running through it. This would be the ideal place for thirsty animals to come to.
Plough pointed at the stream and said. "This was where pa saw the doe, he tried to kill it with one shot but missed, so the doe ran to the east and he had to chase after it." Maddie and Tim nodded in acknowledgement. They rode east slowly, crossing the stream after letting the horses have a short drink.
As they follow Plough, Maddie felt a bit worried for some reason, as if something was nagging her at the back of her mind. And then she looked up, through the tree canopy, and saw why. And were heading towards the ruins of Gorlan, from here she could see one of its partially destroyed towers. The ruins seems to be affecting the horses too, Maddie patted Bumper several times when he sniffed the air and let out an anxious neighing, Sprinter- Tim's battlehorse-, however, made a move to turn back but Tim reined him in.
"Weird, he never acted like this before." He said.
They continued to go east until Plough reined in, he dismounted and crouched down to inspect something on the ground. Maddie did the same and saw that he was inspecting a broken arrowhead. "This is pa's arrowhead." He said. "The place is right here."
"Good work, Plough, you can go back to your father now." Maddie dismissed him.
"But I…" He started to object.
"Want to see us hunt the beast, don't you?"
"Yeah, of course!" He replied eagerly. He has heard from people that Rangers practiced magic and would love to see one in action.
"No. Go back to your father, if we don't return the next day, contact the baron and request him to send ten knights here." Maddie said coldly, truth is, she didn't want this boy to get hurt. If this beast can break a full grown man's bones in one hit, and if what Rake said was true, then she wanted Plough to be far away as soon as possible.
"Uh, okay." The boy said, clearly disappointed, he wanted to see sorcery. He mounted his horse and rode back to the farm.
"So, what now?" Tim asked.
"We investigate." Maddie replied. She leaned down as she saw an indentation in the ground. It was a footprint, she realised, and quite the large one too. It seems like the owner of the footprint would be huge, bigger than a bear, probably. This footprint seems very similar, something that Will had taught her about before, something about how she would be the unluckiest person in the world if she were to find these and its owner was close by. He also said something about how the chance of encountering this particular track would be impossible, as it was the footprint of an extinct animal.
"Maddie, look." The call came from Tim, who was staring at the trunk of a tree. She came over to him and saw he was looking at a huge claw mark, maybe sixty centimetres (2 feet) in length and as deep as the length of a thumb. "What do you think did this?"
Then a piercing roar ripped through the forest, upsetting many birds from the perches. Their heads snapped towards the direction of the roar, towards the ruins of Gorlan.
"Well…" Tim was the one who spoke, "What do think that was?" He unsheathed his sword and readied his shield.
"Whatever it is, it's probably what we're looking for." Maddie swallowed the fear that's beginning to creep into her voice. "We won't be taking it head on." She tested her double knife scabbard, took out her sling and loaded a lead shot.
"You've got a plan?"
"Of course I do. What type of Ranger would I be without a plan?"
"I don't know. A very bad one?" Tim guessed. Just as he said it, they heard a rhythmic beating like something landing on dirt coming from the east.
"You hear that, right?" Maddie asked. Fear was evident in her voice now, as much as she tried to hide it.
"Yep." Tim got into a fighting stance, gripping his sword tightly. The sound was getting closer now, it started to sound like…footsteps.
"Okay, Tim, try to distract it, whatever it is. I'll climb a tree and shoot it from there." Maddie made a move towards a tall oak tree.
As she made her move, a dark shape charged from the trees with amazing speed, right into Tim with his shield held up. It ran into him without slowing down, knocking him back into a tree three metres (10 feet) away, winding him. The beast was huge, it stood more than two metres and a half tall, supported by its hind leg and its knuckles. It looked like a cross between an ape and a bear, covered in sticky, matted fur. It had wicked long claws the length of a saxe knife, sharp enough to cut through flesh like cheese.
Now Maddie knew why the description of the animal had sounded so familiar to her. It had been recited to her dozens of times through the recalling of Halt and her mentor Will. The beast that could paralyse you in fear with one look. The beast that took the strength of three knights to be taken down. The species f beast that Baron Arald, Sir Rodney, Halt and Will had supposedly killed the last of.
Though they apparently did not.
For standing in front of Maddie, ready to strike her down, was the fearsome Kalkara.
Seriously, it was pretty obvious that the Kalkara was going to come back. The only other character that in book 1 that I considered was Baron Morgarath himself. But it would be pretty crazy if Morgarath had just came back to life and it wouldn't be the style of RA so I switched it to the Kalkaras instead.