Wise people avoided the fens. Only two groups knew the secret paths through them: the Rangers and the Skandians, who had been raiding along this coastline for as long as Halt could remember.
Surefooted as Ranger horses were, once Halt was truly into the tangle of tall grass and swampland, he dismounted and led Abelard. The signs of the safe path were minute and easy to miss and he needed to be close to the ground to follow them. He hadn't been traveling long when he began to see signs that a party had come before him and his spirits lifted. It had to be the rest of the Skandians, with Will and Evanlyn.
He quickened his pace and promptly paid the consequences for doing so, missing a path marker and ending chest-deep in a thick mass of bottomless mud. Fortunately, he still had a firm grip on Abelard's reins and, at a word of command, the stocky horse dragged him clear of the danger.
It was another good reason to continue leading the horse behind him, he realized.
He backtracked to the path, found his bearings and set out again. In spite of his seething impatience, he forced himself to go carefully. The marks left by the party in front of him were becoming more and more recent. He knew he was catching them. The question was whether he would catch them in time.
Mosquitoes and marsh flies hummed and whined around him. Without a breath of breeze, it was stiflingly hot in the marshes and he was sweating freely. His clothes were soaked and sodden with stinking mud and he'd lost one boot as Abelard had hauled him out of the quicksand. Nevertheless, he limped on, coming closer and closer to his quarry with every sodden step.
At the same time, he knew, he was coming closer and closer to the end of the fenlands. And that meant the beach where the Skandian ships lay at anchor. He had to find Will before the Skandians reached the beach. Once Will was on one of their wolfships, he would be gone forever, taken back across the Stormwhite Sea to the cold, snowbound land of the Skandians, where he would be sold as a slave, to lead a life of drudgery and unending labor.
Now, above the rotting smell of the marshes, he caught the fresh scent of salt air. The sea! He redoubled his efforts, throwing caution to the wind as he chanced everything to catch up with the Skandians before they reached the water.
The grass was thinning in front of him now and the ground beneath his feet became firmer with every step. He was running, the horse trotting behind him, and he burst clear onto the windswept length of the beach.
A small ridge in the dunes in front of him blocked the sea from his sight and he swung up into Abelard's saddle on the run and set the horse to a gallop. They swept over the ridge, the Ranger leaning forward, low on his horse's neck, urging him to greater speed.
There was a wolfship anchored offshore. At the water's edge, a group of people were boarding a small boat and, even at this distance, Halt recognized the small figure in the middle as his apprentice.
"Will!" he shouted, but the sea wind snatched the words away. With hands and knees, he urged Abelard onward.
It was the drumming of hooves that alerted them. Erak, waist-deep in water as he and Horak shoved the boat into deeper water, looked over his shoulder and saw the green-and-gray-clad figure on the shaggy horse.
"Hergel's beard!" he shouted. "Get moving!"
Will, seated beside Evanlyn in the center of the boat, turned as Erak spoke and saw Halt, barely two hundred meters away. He stood, precariously trying to keep his balance in the heaving boat.
"Halt!" he yelled, and instantly Svengal's backhanded blow sent him sprawling into the bottom of the little craft.
"Stay down!" he ordered, as Erak and Horak vaulted into the boat and the rowers sent it surging into the first line of waves.
The wind, which had stopped them from hearing Halt's cry, carried the boy's thin shout to Halt's ears. Abelard heard it too and found a few more yards of pace, his muscles gathering underneath him and sending him along in huge bounds. Halt was riding without reins now as he unslung the longbow and laid an arrow on the string.
At a full gallop, he sighted and released.
The bow oarsman gave a grunt of surprise and lurched sideways over the gunwale of the boat as Halt's heavy arrow slammed into him, transfixing his upper arm. The boat began to crab sideways and Erak dashed forward, shoved the man aside and took over the oar.
"Pull like hell!" he ordered them. "If he gets to close range, we're all dead men."
Now Halt guided Abelard with his knees, swinging the horse into the sea itself and thrusting forward to try to catch the boat. He fired again, but the range was extreme and the target was heaving and tossing on the waves. Added to that was the fact that Halt couldn't shoot near the center of the boat, for fear of hitting Will or Evanlyn. His best chance was to get close enough for easy shooting and pick off the oarsmen one at a time.
He fired again. The arrow bit deep into the timbers of the boat, barely an inch from Horak's hand, in the stern. He jerked his hand away as if he'd been burned.
"Gorlog's teeth!" he yelped in surprise, then flinched as a third arrow hissed into the water behind the boat, not a foot away.
But now the boat was gaining, as Abelard, breast-deep in the waves, could no longer maintain his speed. The little horse thrust valiantly against the water, but the boat was drawing alongside the wolfship and was now over a hundred meters away. Halt urged the horse a few meters closer, then stopped, defeated, as he saw the figures being hauled up from the boat.
The two smallest passengers were dragged toward the stern steering position. The Skandian crew lined the sides of the ship, standing on the rail to shout their defiance at the small figure who was almost obscured by the rolling gray waves.
On the wolfship, Erak yelled at them, diving for cover behind the solid bulwark.
"Get down, you fools! That's a Ranger!"
He'd seen Halt's bow coming up, then saw his hands move at incredible speed. His remaining nine arrows were arcing high in the air before the first one struck.
Within the space of two seconds, three of the Skandians lining the rail went down under the arrow storm. Two of them lay groaning in pain. The other was ominously still. The rest of the crew flung themselves flat on the deck as arrows hissed and thudded around them.
Cautiously, Erak raised his head above the bulwark, making sure that Halt was out of arrows.
"Get under way," he ordered, and took the steering oar. Will, temporarily forgotten, moved to the rail. It was less than two hundred meters and nobody was watching him. He could swim that far, he knew, and he began to reach for the railing. Then he hesitated, thinking of Evanlyn. He knew he couldn't abandon her. Even as he had the thought, Horak's big hand closed over the collar of his jacket and the chance was gone.
As the ship began to gather way, Will stared at the mounted figure in the surf, buffeted by the waves. Halt was so near and yet now so impossibly out of reach. His eyes stung with tears and, faintly, he heard Halt's voice.
"Will! Stay alive! Don't give up! I'll find you wherever they take you!"
Choking on tears, the boy raised his arm in farewell to his friend and mentor.
"Halt!" he croaked, but he knew the Ranger would never hear him. He heard the voice again, carrying over the sounds of wind and sea.
"I'll find you, Will!"
Then the wind filled the big, square sail of the wolfship and she heeled away from the shore, moving faster and faster toward the northeast.
For a long time after she'd dropped below the horizon, the sodden figure sat there, his horse chest-deep in the rolling waves, staring after the ship.
And his lips still moved, in a silent promise only he could hear.