Chapter 8

Halt made it to the small cove around mid-afternoon and was in a bad mood. He had nothing to do until the Skandians that had murdered his apprentice walked into his ambush. Adding to his rather formidable temper was the fact that he had left his food, coffee and flint stone back with Abelard on the other side of the fens. He had decided that the two horses would only slow them down because of the risky footing in the fens, so they had left them in a clearing out of sight of the main army before the battle with the Skandians.

Halt hoped that Gilan would make sure that Abelard was looked after and that nothing unexpected had thrown victory back in Morgarath's favor. Halt trusted Gilan with his life, and he shouldn't have encountered any problems getting back and implementing the plan, but he couldn't help worrying about his former apprentice. What if he lost Gilan too?

Resolutely, Halt pushed away the fear and looked down at the massive forms of the wolfships below him. The ships were bobbing up and down in the tide and they could be heard creaking and groaning upon the crashing waves. Halt snorted at the oversized figureheads and looking at the ships now, he was struck with a sudden flash of malicious inspiration.

Ships were rather breakable when left at port, especially when they were unattended. A wicked grin crossed his face; he had never liked ships. They smelled like tar, salt and sweat, and they lurched alarmingly every time they rode over a wave. Wolfships were the worst.

The Ranger glanced wistfully back in the direction of the fens and cursed himself loudly for his thoughtlessness in leaving his pack behind. He would have loved nothing more than to set the whole fleet ablaze, but without his flint that would be almost impossible to do, even if he could spare the time. Halt sighed. He would just have to settle for a little mindless destruction and sabotage. After all, he had to do something until the Skandians arrived, and Halt doubted that they would be here for another few days at least. With a strange glint in his eyes and an uncharacteristic smile on his face, Halt set off in the direction of the closest ship.

Halt grunted as he pulled the last board free and looked around at the ship he was currently decimating. He had been using his saxe to split crucial boards, cut rigging and sails, and pry free rudders. Oars were floating in the water around the vessels and Halt had helped himself to the stores of dried food. What he hadn't wanted had been thrown overboard.

It had taken him a few hours and the sun was starting to set but he had managed to put four of the ships out of action.

As Halt moved to disembark, he heard a shout of surprise from the fens, and he turned quickly towards the trees, in shock. Skandians were here! Halt hadn't expected the crew that had murdered his apprentice to arrive for another few days, but this rather disordered group had to be them; to his knowledge, there were no other wolfship crews left after the battle in the fens, and even if a crew had managed to escape, they would have already left. This crew, the crew that had killed Will, must have deserted Morgarath and headed straight for the ships.

Halt cursed as he crouched down below the railing, trying to think past the part of him that was calling for bloodlust on behalf of Will. He should have noticed them before, but he had been too focused on his destruction of the ships, sure in his assumption that the crew would have stayed to fight with Morgarath.

In order to take out the crew, he had been relying heavily on the element of surprise and the fact that he would be under a covered position from which to shoot the Skandians when they arrived, but now he was nothing but a sitting duck because of a single assumption and a destructive desire born of grief.

As Halt had gone to jump over the railing of the ship, he had outlined himself clearly against the sky and had made himself a target to Erak and his crew. His element of surprise was gone and there was nowhere for him to retreat to, only having the tide against his back.

Moving swiftly and with a long practiced hand, Halt pulled his bowstring out of an inner pocket of his jerkin and strung his bow, being careful to stay below the skyline provided by the railing of the ship. Skandian wolfships were messy things, covered in sand, salt, mud and tar, and to protect his bowstring from the harmful grit he had left the bow sitting unstrung on the deck. Being as far from the plains of Uthal as he was Halt had thought that he was safe enough and would have enough time to prepare before his targets arrived. Only Halt's natural instincts had made him keep carting the bow with him from ship to ship. An ordinary archer would have just left it sitting on the beach.

Taking a deep breath, Halt fitted an arrow to the string and moved to the bow of the ship, thinking that the Skandians would expect him to stay where they had first spotted him. It wasn't much of an advantage, but at this point, he would take what he could get. He listened for a moment to the movement of the crew against the rocky beach of the cove before he rapidly stood and fired at the closest Skandian.

The reaction of the crew was almost instantaneous. As soon as they saw the bow, the men dove for the sparse cover that littered the beach. Their movement was still too late for the man that Halt had targeted though, and he fell to the ground with a black shafted arrow buried in his chest.

Noticing their practiced movements, Halt released a torrent of well chosen swear words even as he loosed a wave of arrows. They were obviously experienced in fighting against archers and while Halt had the high ground, he was outnumbered thirty-to-one. He was also swaying slightly from the movement of the boat. It wouldn't put off his aim overly much but it would be annoying. If anything can go wrong, it will. Halt remembered the old proverb with a heavy heart; it was one that he had repeated often to Will, and he realized that he had forgotten it in his haste to get revenge on the Skandians.

As he remembered the smiling face of his apprentice, Halt sighted on the closest Skandian, drew, and released the arrow faster than the eye could follow. As the man fell to the ground with the arrow in his leg Halt nocked another arrow and waited for the next man to get into range. He had purposefully hit the Skandian in the leg. Halt knew that another man would try to run out and pull the injured man to safety and when he did, he would find himself hit as well.

Halt saw movement out of the corner of his eye. One of the Skandians closest to the water was running from cover to cover off to his right, slowly making his way towards his position at the bow of the ship. Halt continued to watch him out of the corner of his eye as he kept his main focus on the Skandians directly in front of him. The lone Skandian was only armed with a battleaxe, and while the man could throw it, he had quite a way to come before he got close enough to be any danger to Halt.

Suddenly, in response to an unseen signal some Skandians surged forward from various directions heading towards the hurt man Halt was using as bait. At the same time, the rest of the men ran straight for his position in an obvious attempt to distract him. What the Skandians hadn't counted on though was Halt's extraordinary speed. He sent three deadly arrows towards the rescue party in the space of a few seconds before turning his attention to the yelling men running toward his position.

Despite his methodical shooting, Halt felt an increasing sense of panic as his only escape route was cut off by the approaching attackers. With a flash of guilt for failing in his attempt to avenge Will, Halt turned and vaulted over the right side of the ship, landing thigh deep in water. With only a glance at the attacking Skandians, he let lose a burst of speed and sprinted from the salty water and up the beach.

It was only when Halt saw a flicker of movement to his right that he realized his mistake. He dropped to the ground just as a battleaxe swung through the space he had occupied just a moment before; he had forgotten about the lone Skandian.

Halt used the momentum of his sudden drop to roll into a kneeling stance, one foot to the ground for balance, and swung his longbow like a quarterstaff at his attacker. The trusty bow connected solidly with the man's lower ribs, before shattering with a loud crack.

As the sea pirate was knocked back, Halt quickly jumped to his feet, drew his saxe and throwing knife, and moved into a fighting stance. With a grim smile, the Ranger faced his opponent; if he was going to die here, he was going to make sure that he took as many of the Skandians with him as possible.

To the approaching Erak, the scene was eerily reminiscent of a few days earlier with the young apprentice. The man was armed only with a pair of small knives, and the weapons would be next to useless against Svengal's battleaxe. The Jarl quickly surveyed the scene on the beach behind him before gesturing to his men to head towards Wolfwind.

By a stroke of bad luck Wolfwind was one of the few ships that Halt had left so far untouched. Erak shouted to the men to begin boarding the ship and to ready her to cast off.

Suddenly, the Ranger froze from where he had been circling and dodging his second in command, and Erak, acting on instinct, threw himself to the ground. He couldn't have said why he had done it, but the movement had almost certainly saved his life. Erak heard the saxe as it hissed dangerously past his left ear and he felt something sharp collide with his left upper arm. The smaller throwing knife had caught Erak as he had dropped and had become deeply lodged in his bicep. He gave a grunt of pain as Svengal swung his battleaxe at his now unarmed opponent with a roar of rage for his injured Jarl.

The Ranger was too quick though; the light-footed man was already fleeing into the shelter of the fens.

Standing up, Erak called to his men. "He's gone. He won't come back. He has no more weapons. Don't bother chasing him; I won't have my men become assassins of an unarmed man. Get everyone to the ship and cast off. We're getting out of this damned country.

The Jarl watched with hardened eyes as his men carried their injured crewmates onto Wolfwind. He didn't know who the man was or why he had been waiting at the cove but he had recognized that he had been a Ranger. Erak suspected that he had been there because of the boy, Will.

It did not take long to get all the men onboard Wolfwind and to cast off. As the wolfship slowly drifted away from the shore, Erak pushed off the man who was trying to tend to the wound in his arm and turned back to face the beach. He saw a ghostly figure in a grey and green cloak standing on the sand at the edge of the fens and shivered. He didn't know what the Ranger wanted, but he knew that he would not rest until he got it.

As he had been facing off with the large Skandian, Halt had heard another Skandian that was yelling orders behind him. Evanlyn had told him that the man that had murdered his apprentice had been the Jarl, Erak, so Halt presumed that the man shouting was the man he wanted; in a split second decision, he spun and threw both of his knives towards the large Jarl.

It was a calculated decision; turning his back on the man he was currently fighting and throwing away his only weapons would probably mean that he would die on that beach, but Halt wasn't going to run while the man who had murdered his apprentice still lived.

As soon as the weapons had left his hands, the grim Ranger had turned and sprinted towards the shadows of the trees. It wasn't until he had reached cover and chanced looking behind him that Halt discover that he had missed. The Jarl was on board the ship and the crew was casting off. It was too late.

Halt stood silently staring into the horizon until long after the wolfship had sailed out of sight and the sun had set. He made no move to wipe away the salty tears that tracked down his face. He had failed Will. The Skandian had gotten away with no more than a slight wound. As his grief slowly subsided, Halt picked his saxe up off the sand and walked slowly back into the fens. It would be dangerous attempting to maneuver through the swamp in the dark, but he didn't want to stay on the beach for even a minute longer. He was needed back at the plains, but as soon as he could, he would leave for Skandia. This wasn't over yet.

A/N

Urgh, the document thingy just deleated my first A/N...

I hope that you like this chapter, and is was one of my favourites and was so much fun to write! Sorry for the break in updates, Real life got in the way, but I'm back now!

Please review.

Ali