Chapter Two

"Why on earth did you have to hit him so damn hard?" Svengal bellowed, his voice echoing through the clearing.

"You try hitting 'softly' with a great whacking battle axe! Especially when your target's not even half as big as you! What the bloody hell was he thinking, lunging at me like that?" Erak roared, even louder than Svengal. There was a slight frown on his face as he puzzled over why the young ranger would start a fight when he was so clearly outmatched.

The two men were quiet for a moment as they stared angrily at each other, before something occurred to Erak. "Who the bloody hell do you think you are to question me, Svengal? I'm Jarl here!" Erak gave a smug grin as he thought he won the argument, showing off yellowing teeth in the process.

Svengal knew it would be unwise to continue to argue, but he couldn't help himself. "The boy is probably going to die now and even if he doesn't, he's bloody useless! Ragnak will never buy him as a slave now!"

Svengal opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, but before he got the chance, a giant fist collided with his head and sent him flying backwards into the dirt. Erak stood ominously above his second in command and considered adding in a kick for good measure. Skandians weren't the most even-tempered of people and they largely disliked verbal arguments.

Fortunately for Svengal, Will choose that moment to let out a low groan of pain. As Erak felt his rage edging away, he reached out a hand to help Svengal back to his feet. After all, Erak had a great respect for his crew, and he thought it was time to explain to his second in command a way they could still get a reasonable profit from this fiasco.

"I take it you noticed the bronze amulet the boy was wearing, Svengal? And how neatly he dropped those Wargals with that bow of his?" Erak questioned.

"What does that matter? So the lad can shoot and has an odd taste in jewellery? It doesn't mean anything." Despite Svengal's carefree tone, he was curiously looking at his shipmaster. Erak wouldn't have brought up the matter if he didn't think that it was important.

"The boy is a ranger." Erak said. "Remember a few years back when we were raiding in Seacliff? It was a ranger that took out Gorad and Thorfin as we were getting away. Admittedly, the boy is only an apprentice, but he's a ranger none the less. Morgarath will pay well for him regardless of what condition he is in. We'll get more for selling him to Morgarath than we would have got selling both him and the girl as slaves."

Svengal looked questioningly towards Erak, sure that there was more to his reasoning. Money was the only topic Skandians were happy to discuss calmly and at great length. "If Morgarath values rangers so highly, why weren't we going to sell him to the great bat originally, instead of as a last resort? The boy could die by the time we get him to Morgarath, and surely an angry, bruised, and tied up ranger is worth more than a half dead one?"

Erak glanced at the young ranger lying on a stretcher off to the side of the clearing. "I may be a battle hardened sea wolf, but I'm not cruel, Svengal. If I sell the boy to Morgarath, he is unlikely to last a week. Even life as a yard slave would be better than that. With the other booty gained in a battle like this, I would have been happy to get the smaller profit from selling him as a slave, but with the way things are going now, I don't think we're going to get enough that I can justify selling the boy for a lower price."

Svengal thought for a moment as he stared at the young ranger they were discussing, before turning to look Erak in the eye as he slowly nodded. He wasn't going to begrudge his Jarl for putting his men before his morals, no matter how badly he felt for the boy.

Evanlyn, or Cassandra as she was rightly called, was hungry and exhausted. She felt like she had been running for days even though in reality it had only been around four hours. She had passed a party of Wargals about an hour earlier, and though the beasts terrified her, she knew that she would have to pass many more before she reached her father's camp.

She had dropped the small parcel of food, blankets, and water when she had seen Will struck down, and was now kicking herself for her momentary lapse of common sense. It would be another couple of days until she reached the Plains of Uthal, and she was already starving and shivering with cold. Her cloak had been taken along with Wills, and her clothes were torn and dirty from her desperate run through the trees.

Moving around the countryside was infuriating. The closer she got to the Plains, the less cover there was. Cassandra was forced to sprint dangerously from one scarce patch of cover to the next in order to avoid being spotted by wandering Wargals.

This most definitely was not something that she had been trained to do. When Cassandra was only young, she had played with all the sons and daughters of the nobility that had come to the castle. One of her favourite games was called Knights and Thieves, where one group of children—the 'thieves'—would try to sneak past the rest who were being 'knights'.

With a scowl, Cassandra remembered how one day shortly after her ninth birthday her father had cornered her after one such game. "You are going to be queen one day, Cassandra, and you need to start acting like it. These games must stop. You should be learning to be a proper lady, not how to run around the royal gardens bashing your friends with sticks!"

Well, mused Cassandra, I am certainly going to talk to my father about that when I get back! A fat lot of use knowing how to waltz is now isn't it!

"Dammit!" Cassandra swore as she was startled from her thoughts and tripped, falling heavily to the ground. For a moment, she considered just lying there and waiting for the Skandians to find her. I can't do this! Will could have done it! She felt her eyes fill with tears as she thought of her friend.

Struggling, the Crown Princess pulled herself to her feet. She was going to make it. She had to. Will had died to save her so she wasn't just going to give up.

Gritting her teeth, once more filled with purpose, Cassandra started forth once more.

It felt like his shoulder was on fire. Will slowly tried to piece together what had happened. He remembered running through the trees to lead the Skandians away from Evanlyn, running into the lone Skandian and taking his knife. He remembered his blinding panic as he saw Evanlyn so close to being caught; he remembered his mad leap towards Erak, knife raised in front of him. Then Pain; Blinding, white hot, Pain. And then… nothing.

Questions shot one after the other through his mind. Had Evanlyn escaped? Where was he? How long had he been unconscious? How bad was the injury to his shoulder? Would he still be able to shoot? And, most worrying of all, what was going to happen to him now?

It appeared that there was a bandage on his shoulder as he could feel it pressing on the wound. There was also a strong smell of warmweed salve that had most likely been applied to the wound as a painkiller and to stave off infection. Had Halt found him before Erak had managed to finish him off? Will felt a sharp sense of joy and relief before it occurred to him that if Halt had arrived in time to save him, he had also seen his mad attack on the Skandian. He groaned. Halt was so going to kill him.

Will opened his eyes, and when he saw nothing but trees above him, he slowly sat up, sure that Halt had saved him and that he was about to see his mentor sitting next to him, cradling a cup of coffee with Tug and Abelard snorting in the background. Even though he would probably be angry about Will's recent stupidity, it would be a great relief to see Halt again.

There was a figure sitting next to him and Will blinked to bring him into focus. It took him less than a second to realize that the figure was too large to be his mentor, and that thought was confirmed as the face of a Skandian suddenly loomed in front of him. There was no smell of freshly brewed coffee, no Tug and Abelard and no Halt. He was still a captive.

Terrified, Will tried to back away into the comforting shadows of the trees before he realised that he probably shouldn't move so fast with an injured shoulder. He barely had enough time to scream as the wound flared in protest, before he blacked out and sunk, mercifully, back into oblivion.

A/N

Thankyou to my absolutely brilliant beta, TwilightsCalling, who was able to get this done very fast as I cut it a bit close with sending this off to her before the update date.

I have now removed the origional The Black Castle Story, and removed 'Revised' from the title of this one. Hopefully that's not too confusing for people. With any luck I will have this story up to the same point the last one was in no time!

I am aware that this chapter is a bit shorter than the last one, and I promise that the chapters will get longer from here on in as I will have more time to edit them and to think up things to add.

I just got back from a science camp (which was really full on and exteemly exhausting) where I had no internet and got to set my hand on fire with acetone and use it to explode hydrogen filled balloons, which kind of made up for the no internet... (Hehehe, I'm not a pyro, what are you on about? *looks accusingly at readers*)

Please let me know what you think of this chapter! I love to hear from my readers! It makes me go all warm and fuzzy, grin like a maniac, and think 'suck on that, Mrs. Wright, I can write!' (Mrs. Wright was my english teacher the previous year. She is an idiot and completely killed my muse for months. GRRRRRRR... :/ )

Ali Ranger51