Maddie made a move preparatory to swinging down from the saddle, but Will put out a hand to stop her.
“Wait till we’re invited,” he said quietly.
Maddie took note. As a princess, of course, she had never felt the need to be invited. She had always assumed she was welcome wherever she went. But now, she waited as Arnold and a woman who was obviously his wife emerged from the farmhouse.
“Welcome, Ranger, welcome. This here’s my wife, Aggie. Aggie, this is the Ranger, and Ranger Maddie.”
Aggie performed a slight curtsey, the action curtailed by years of hard work and an aching back. She was as thin as her husband and her hair was grey. Like Arnold, her face was lined by years of working hard and going short.
“Welcome, Rangers. Step down, please. Would you like tea? Summat to eat, perhaps?”
“Thank you, no, Mistress Aggie,” Will said. These people had little enough. He didn’t want to deprive them by sharing their meagre provisions. “Let’s take a look at this henhouse of yours.”
He and Maddie dismounted. As was their custom, they left the reins of their horses trailing. Ranger horses didn’t need to be tied up. They’d stay put as long as their riders were here.
Arnold and Aggie Clum led them to a sizeable enclosure set some fifteen metres away from the house. It was two and a half metres high and made of narrow willow wands, set vertically into the ground and intertwined with horizontal strands. Every two or three metres was a more substantial fence post. Inside it was a ramshackle roosting house, constructed of odd bits of timber and bark. An angled ramp ran up to it, allowing the hens access.
The structure was intended to contain the hens and keep them safe at night. Not that it had seemed to work, Maddie thought.
They entered the enclosure and Maddie stooped to peer inside the henhouse. There were rows of brooding boxes inside and she heard the faint cluck of hens as the sound of her movement disturbed them.
Arnold pointed to the fence farthest from the farmhouse.
“Comes up and over there, quick as you please. Nothing I can do to stop him.”
Will moved to the point the farmer had indicated. There was a water trough at that point and it wasn’t totally watertight. A slow trickle ran from it, wetting and softening the ground. He studied the tracks in the mud and beckoned to Maddie.
“Look at that. What do you think?”
She frowned. He had shown her dozens of tracks in the past months. She wasn’t sure.
“A weasel, maybe?” she said. She was half guessing, because she knew it was a predator of some sort and a fox could hardly have climbed that fence. Will drew his saxe and pointed to the tracks.
“See there? There are claw marks there at the front of the paws.”
She looked at him, wondering what he was getting at. He realised he hadn’t explained this to her before, so he continued patiently.
“It’s a pine marten,” he said. “Like a weasel or a mink. But with one difference. A marten’s claws only retract halfway. So you can see the marks of the claws in his tracks. Looks like a big one too.”
“He’s big, all right,” Aggie said with heartfelt venom in her voice. “And right quick too.”
“Well then, we’ll see if we can slow him down a little,” Will said.
They found a spot against the farmhouse where the top of the chicken-run fence would be silhouetted against the evening sky, and settled in to keep watch. They waited as the light faded. Arnold had told them that the marten had become increasingly bold over the past week, raiding the chicken house every day or two. It had been two days since he’d last appeared, so chances were good that they’d see him tonight.
Will had his bow. When Maddie went to fetch hers from the bow case beside her saddle, he shook his head.
“This time of year, he’ll have a good rich pelt,” he said. “An arrow broadhead will tear it up and ruin it. So use your sling. I’ll keep my bow ready in case you miss.”
Maddie glanced at him, her chin going up. “I don’t plan to miss,” she said.
Will shrugged. “Nobody ever does.”
It was chilly after the sun set and Maddie longed to wrap herself in the warm depths of her cloak. But Will shook his head.
“He may not be frightened of humans,” he said, “but Aggie and Arnold say he’s quick as a snake. We’ll only have seconds for you to hit him and we can’t afford to waste time untangling ourselves from our cloaks.”
Accordingly, she pushed the cloak back on either shoulder to free her arms and stood with a shot already loaded into the sling. Will kept an arrow nocked to his bow. Behind them, the dark bulk of the farmhouse would help conceal them from view.
The sun had dropped below the treetops but there was still light reflecting from the clouds when Will gently nudged her. A dark shape was scurrying out of the bushes and across the cleared ground of the farmyard. It was low to the ground and moving fast. Maddie touched his hand to let him know she had seen the predator. Then she watched as the marten scurried to the hen enclosure and swarmed up the fence. Inside the henhouse, she could hear the worried clucking of the hens as they sensed the arrival of their nemesis.
Maddie laid her right arm back, letting the shot dangle in the pouch of the sling.
The marten hesitated at the top of the fence, getting his balance on the swaying willow wands, as he prepared to transfer from climbing to descending. As he did so, Will made a gentle clicking sound with his tongue. The marten’s head came up as he searched for the source of that sound, and Maddie whipped the sling up and over, stepping into the shot as she released.
The light was poor and it was a small target. But Maddie had hurled hundreds, if not thousands, of shot over the past months, in all conditions: in bright sun, in semi-darkness, in pouring rain. The lead sphere smashed into the savage little predator and hurled it backwards off the top of the fence. It fell to the soft ground outside the enclosure with a dull thud. For a moment or two, its back legs quivered. But that was simply a muscular reaction. The marten was dead.
“Good shot,” Will said quietly. He was impressed. It had been a difficult shot and Maddie had managed it perfectly. He knew there was a big difference between practising with a lifeless target and being faced with a split second shot at a live, fast-moving quarry. In a louder voice, he called to the elderly couple in the farmhouse.
“She got him.”
The door opened and a shaft of light fell out across the farmyard as Aggie and Arnold emerged. Maddie was already moving towards the lifeless form at the base of the fence.
“Be careful,” Will called. “Make sure he’s dead. Those things can bite through your gauntlets.”
She waved a hand in acknowledgement and approached the animal more carefully. She drew her saxe and prodded it experimentally. But there was no reaction.
He was a big one, she saw, more like a small dog than a large cat. Obviously, the diet of chickens and eggs agreed with him. The pelt was thick and lustrous as well. She knelt beside the marten, re-sheathed her saxe and took out a small skinning knife from her belt pouch. Quickly, she skinned the animal, slicing the thick, shiny fur away from the body.
Will watched approvingly. Skinning was an art she had already been skilled in when she came to him.
She rose and walked back to where they were waiting for her, the pelt hanging from one hand. Then she held it out to the farmer’s wife.
“Here, Mistress Aggie. You can make this into a fine neck warmer or hat for the winter.”
“But it’s yours,” Arnold protested. “You killed him. The pelt is yours.” That was the rule of hunting, he knew. The successful hunter kept the pelt for himself. Or herself.
“And I’m free to do as I please with it.” Maddie smiled, holding the pelt out. Hesitantly, Aggie took it. “You’ll have to peg it out and salt it,” Maddie continued. “You know how to do that, don’t you?”