"Halt." He spoke firmly, feeling every eye in the room upon him.
"Former King's Ranger to the Redmont Fief, I hereby, as lord of this realm of Araluen, declare you to be banished from all my lands and holdings."
Again, there was that small intake of breath throughout the room as the listeners felt the relief of knowing that the sentence was not to be death. Not, he realized, that any of those present would have expected it to be. But now came the part they weren't expecting.
"You are forbidden, under pain of death, to set foot in this kingdom again:" He hesitated, seeing now the sadness in Halt's eyes, the pain that the graying Ranger could no longer hide. Then he completed his statement: ":for the period of one year from this day."
Instantly, there was uproar in the throne room. Lord Anthony started forward, the shock evident on his face.
"Your Majesty! I must protest! You can't do this!"
Duncan kept his face solemn. Others in the room were not quite so controlled. Baron Arald's face, he saw, was creased in a broad smile, while Crowley was doing his best to hide a grin in the gray cowl of his Ranger's cloak. Duncan noted with a grim sense of satisfaction that, for the first time this morning, Halt was somewhat startled by the turn of events. But not nearly so much as the loudly protesting Lord Anthony. The King looked at the Chamberlain, his eyebrows raised in question.
"Can't, Lord Anthony?" he queried, with great dignity. Anthony hurriedly retracted the statement, realizing that it was not his part to issue orders to the King.
"I mean, Your Majesty:banishment is:well, it's banishment," he concluded lamely.
Duncan nodded gravely.
"Quite so," he replied. "And, as you told me yourself, it's one of only two choices that I can make."
"But, Your Majesty, banishment is:it's total! It's for life!"
Anthony protested. His face was red with embarrassment. He bore Halt no ill feeling. In fact, up until the Ranger had been arrested for scandalizing the King's reputation, Anthony had felt a distinct admiration for him. But it was his job, after all, to advise the King on matters of law and propriety.
"The law stipulates that specifically, does it?" Duncan asked now, and Anthony shook his head and made a helpless gesture with his hands, very nearly losing his grip on his staff of office in the process.
"Well, not specifically, no. It doesn't need to. Banishment has always been for life. It's traditional!" he added, finding the words he was looking for.
"Exactly," replied Duncan. "And tradition is not law."
"But:," Anthony began, then found himself wondering why he was protesting so much. Duncan had, after all, found a way to punish Halt, but at the same time to leaven that punishment with mercy.
The King saw the hesitation and took the initiative.
"The matter is settled. Banished, prisoner, for twelve months. You have forty-eight hours to leave the borders of Araluen."
Duncan's gaze met Halt's one last time. The Ranger's head inclined slightly, in a mark of respect and gratitude to his king. Duncan sighed. He had no idea why Halt had forced this situation upon them all. Perhaps, sometime after the next year had passed, he might find out. Suddenly he felt a welling up of distaste for the whole matter.
He shoved the scabbarded sword through his belt.
"This matter is completed," he told those assembled. "This court is closed."
He turned and left the throne room, exiting through a small anteroom on the left. Anthony surveyed those assembled and shrugged his shoulders.
"The King has spoken," he said, his tone suggesting how overwhelmed he was by the whole thing. "The prisoner is banished for a twelvemonth. Escort, take him away."
And so saying, he followed the King out of the throne room.
7
E VANLYN WATCHED WITH GROWING IRRITATION AS W ILL completed another lap of the beach, then dropped to the ground and performed a rapid ten push-ups. She couldn't understand why he persisted with this ridiculous exercise program. If it were simply a matter of keeping fit, she might have accepted it-after all, there was little enough to do on Skorghijl and it was one way of keeping busy. But she sensed it was tied to a deeper reason. In spite of their conversation some days earlier, she was sure he still had plans to escape.
"Stubborn, pigheaded idiot," she muttered. It was just like a boy, she thought. He couldn't seem to accept that she, a girl, could take charge of things and arrange their return to Araluen. She frowned. It wasn't the way Will had behaved in Celtica. When they were planning the destruction of Morgarath's massive bridge, he seemed to welcome her input and ideas. She wondered why he had changed.
As she watched, Will moved down the beach to the water's edge, where Svengal was rowing the wolfship's skiff back to shore. The Skandian second in command was a keen fisherman. He took the skiff out most mornings, weather permitting, and the fresh cod and sea bass that he caught in Skorghijl Harbor's deep, cold waters made a welcome change to their diet of salted meat and fish and stringy vegetables.
She watched with a small pang of jealousy as Will spoke to the Skandian. She didn't have Will's easy manner with people, she knew. He had an open, friendly attitude that made it easy for him to strike up a conversation with anyone he met. People seemed instinctively to like him. She, on the other hand, often felt awkward and ill at ease with strangers and they seemed to sense it. It didn't occur to her that this might be a result of her upbringing as a princess. And because she was in a mood to resent Will this morning, the sight of him helping Svengal haul the little skiff up past the high-tide mark simply increased her annoyance.
She kicked angrily at a rock on the beach, swore when it turned out to be bigger and more solidly anchored than she had expected and limped off to the lean-to, where she would be spared the sight of Will and his new friend.
"Any luck?" Will asked, posing the question that every fisherman in history has been asked. Svengal jerked his head at the pile of fish in the bottom of the boat.
"Got one beauty there," he said. There was a large cod among eight or nine smaller but still respectable fish. Will nodded, impressed.
"He's a beauty, all right," he said. "Need a hand cleaning them?"
The odds were that he would be told to clean the fish anyway. He and Evanlyn were tasked with all the housekeeping, cooking and serving duties. But he wanted to strike up a conversation with Svengal and this way, he thought, the Skandian might stay and chat while Will worked. Skandians were great chatters, he had noticed, particularly when someone else was busy.
"Help yourself," the big Skandian said easily, tossing a small fish knife onto the pile of fish. He sat on the bulwark of the skiff as Will lifted the fish out and began the messy work of scaling, gutting and cleaning. Will had known Svengal would stay. He knew that the Skandian would want to carry the huge cod to the hut himself.
Fishermen loved praise.
"Svengal," Will said, concentrating on scaling a bass and making sure his voice sounded casual, "why don't you go fishing at the same time each day?"
"The tide, boy," Svengal replied. "I like to fish the tide when it's rising. It brings the fish into the harbor, you see."
"The tide? What's that?" Will asked. Svengal shook his head at the Araluen boy's ignorance of natural things.