(A/N)

Yay, a chapter about Gilan again! It will be some time though before he gets to see Verita again. I felt so mean while I wrote this that I could actually picture myself as a little dictator with an evil lair and minions and everything.

Thanks for the reviews, and I'm indeed Dutch, you guessed correctly AriannaTheRanger.

Anyway, I still don't own any RA stuff, and enjoy the new chapter!

Chapter 7 – Gilan at the Gathering

Gilan hadn't bothered mentioning to Halt that he was probably acquainted with the mysterious female cloak-maker who now worked for the ranger corps. He was pretty sure it was Verita though. Really, just how many young girls from Caraway fief were poachers and experts at needlework? It had to be her.

He had however, as mentioned before, not bothered notifying Halt of the fact. That was due to the steady stream of sarcastic girlfriend comments that the old ranger made. They ranged from 'Watch out for that fire, I doubt your girlfriend would appreciate you burning that cloak she worked for so long on' to 'If you intend to woo that girl with good table manners, she'd sooner fall for a Skandian'. Gilan shuddered to think what Halt would do if he knew of his friendship with Verita. Halt said that information was power, so Gilan would closely guard this bit.

Nevertheless, he did hope to see her at the gathering.

"Watch it now!", Halt suddenly whispered urgently, as he rode alongside Gilan through the silent forest.

"What is it, Halt?", the apprentice asked curiously.

"Remember what I told you about ambushes?", Halt asked rhetorically.

"Yes.", Gilan answered anyway. A bad, bad idea.

"Of course you do! If you couldn't remember something as simple as that I'd have long since sent you back to your father to become a swordwhacker like him. Really, I bet even your girlfriend is less dense than you."

"Hey, no insulting my non-existent girlfriend!", Gilan retorted, wisely choosing to ignore the rest of Halt's speech. "Now what is the point?"

"The point is,", Halt began, scanning the trees on either side of the path while he spoke, "that we have good reason to expect such an ambush soon. Keep watching."

"Shouldn't one of us concentrate on watching, and the other on listening?", Gilan wondered, repeating one of the tactics Halt had taught him.

"Not in this case. Keep watching."

"Why?" The young apprentice was genuinely curious now.

"Because it'll be Crowley who's after us, and he's the best silent mover in the corps. Listening is futile in his case, if you catch him at all it'll be by seeing him."

"Oh, I remember him now. Anything else I should know of?" Gilan tried to remember Crowley from the man's brief visit last winter. He had been on the return journey from some mission when he made a stop at Redmont to see Halt. Gilan and the man hadn't exchanged more words than the customary introductions, because Halt had sent Gilan off to do archery practice while he and Crowley discussed some confidential matter.

"Yes, Crowley is known for his elaborate hideouts, and for setting up traps." Gilan didn't like the sound of that at all.

"Why will it be Crowley?"

"Because he's my closest friend. We've had a friendly rivalry going since we joined the corps, and now that I have an apprentice I'm sure he'd just love to catch you."

That spiked Gilan's curiosity all right. He knew of course that Halt was close friends with his father, sir David, but the idea of Halt having friends still seemed odd to him, he couldn't really picture it.

"Wow, that's one long, long rivalry.", Gilan whistled. Halt stopped his horse, distracted for the moment.

"Are you calling me OLD, boy?", he asked dangerously, looking his apprentice square in the eye. This in turn distracted Gilan, which the boy came to regret very soon. Indeed, the aforementioned Crowley took advantage of the situation. Gilan didn't even get a chance to reply to Halt, though that might be for the better.

'WHOOOSH!' was the noise that could faintly be heard when a rope suddenly appeared around Gilan and pulled him off his horse.

"AAARGH", was the noise which Gilan made in return. He quickly pulled out his saxe knife and cut the rope loose. He had to drop the knife though, when he had to catch himself as he fell to the ground. He didn't even get the chance to regain his breath before another rope appeared, which pulled him sideways this time. He managed to sever the rope by hitting it sideways with his throwing knife, but now he was out of knives and he had walked into yet another trap.

This trap was different from the other two, it was a big net which pulled him up in the air upside down. A man in his early thirties, presumably Crowley, looked on contentedly as all the arrows slid out of the quiver on the upturned boys back and clattered on the ground. The boy no longer had his knives or sharp arrowheads to cut himself loose, and the net was too constricting for him to use his strikers against Crowley.

"You know Halt, I think I fancy some apprentice roulade for supper tonight.", he said, studying the tight net once more before turning to face his old friend.

"You get more creative every year.", Halt remarked, knowing he'd need to keep a conversation going to cover the noise Gilan would have to make.

"No, I had great help this time around. Our new poacher slash cloak-maker friend knows a lot of knots to make such rope traps. She designed these particular ones to catch deer, big but quick on their feet, just like your apprentice."

Halt nodded in acknowledgement, but then spoke: "It seems that despite your fancy equipment, you still managed to oversee something."

"Like what?", Crowley asked with a cocky smile. Halt, didn't answer, he simply raised an eyebrow. Crowley, now worried, turned around, only to come face to face with the business end of a cavalry sword. Gilan's sword of course.

The sword had remained hidden under his ranger cloak while Gilan was caught, so Crowley hadn't noticed it before. Once the men started talking, Gilan had carefully dislodged it from its scabbard, cut a hole in the net, silently moved over to Crowley, and positioned it an inch or two away from Crowley's throat. Crowley would normally have heard the boy, but he already considered the battle won, and Halt distracted him, so he didn't pay attention.

Crowley looked from Gilan to Halt and then asked the latter: "Where on earth did the boy get a sword?"

Halt just raised his eyebrow again. "At the blacksmith's I imagine.", he replied sarcastically, but then elaborated: "His father is a battlemaster, so naturally he'd already had some training with the sword before he became my apprentice. He's good at it, so I figured it may be a nice ace up his sleeve to keep using one. In fact, he'll be training with a swordmaster for a month or two after the gathering."

Crowley didn't reply, he merely looked dejected and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "Beaten by a common swordwhacker and an apprentice at that.".

Gilan suddenly remembered Halt's advice not to gloat about his victory and to pay the beaten opponent a compliment. "Still, it's great how you put up those traps. I mean, I know they were made by a girl, but it surely can't have been easy to hide them so well?" The last bit came out as a question.

Halt had to fight the sudden impulse to slap his own forehead. If he had known his apprentice would screw up his advice in such a spectacular way, he wouldn't have given it at all. In a desperate attempt to change the subject before Crowley could react, and to embarrass Gilan as much as the boy embarrassed him, Halt decided to mention the boy's 'non-existent girlfriend', as Gilan himself had put it.

"By the way, Crowley, did you bring that girl?"

Crowley shook his head in denial. "I finally managed to talk her into coming with me, but then she fell really ill. She's in a bad state, unable to travel. Luckily she was on the mend when I left, so I'll take her to Araluen to meet the commandant right after the gathering."

"I'm sure your absence will do wonders for her health.", Halt remarked dryly with his famous eyebrow raised as he steered his horse back on the path to the familiar gathering grounds. A worried, disappointed apprentice followed him.