John Flanagan - Oakleaf bearers

"Abandon Hallasholm to them?" asked Ragnak.

Halt shrugged. "If necessary. You can always rebuild."

But now all the Skandians were shaking their heads and he knew what was behind it.

"Abandon everything in Hallasholm to them?" Ragnak persisted. This time Halt made no answer. He waited for the inevitable.

"Our booty-the results of hundreds of years of raiding-leave that to them?" Ragnak asked.

And that, Halt knew, was the crux of the matter. No Skandian would ever abandon the loot he had stored up over the years-the gold, the armor, the tapestries, the chandeliers, the thousand and one items that they hoarded and kept and gloated over in their storehouses. He caught Will's eye and shrugged slightly. He'd tried. Halt moved to the map once more and indicated the flatlands outside Hallasholm with his knife point.

"Alternatively," he said, "we stop them here, where the coastal plain contracts to its narrowest point."

The Skandians craned to look again. They nodded cautious approval, now that Halt had withdrawn the suggestion that they should abandon Hallasholm and its contents to the invaders.

"This way, they can't attack on a wide front. They'll be cramped. And we can conceal men in the trees here-and even in the outbuildings along the shore."

Lorak, older of the two jarls, frowned at the suggestion. "Won't that weaken our shield wall?"

Halt shook his head. "Not noticeably. We'll have more than enough men to form a solid defensive position here where the land is narrowest. Then, when the Temujai try their trick of falling back and bringing our men along with them, we'll appear to go along with it."

Erak moved forward to inspect the narrow neck of land that Halt was indicating.

"You mean we'll do as they want?" he asked. Halt pushed out his bottom lip and cocked his head to one side.

"We'll appear to," he admitted. "But once they stop withdrawing to counterattack, we'll bring our ambush forces out of hiding and hit them from behind. If we time it correctly, we could make life very unpleasant for them."

The Skandians stood, staring down at the map. Borsa, Lorak and Ulfak had blank looks as they tried to visualize the movement. Erak and Ragnak, Halt was glad to see, were slowly nodding as they understood the idea.

"Our best chance," he continued, "is to force them into the sort of engagement that suits your men best-close quarters, hand to hand, every man for himself. If we can catch them that way, your axmen will take a heavy toll on them. The Temujai rely on speed and movement for protection. They're only lightly armed and armored. If we had even a small force of archers, it could make an enormous difference," he added. "But I suppose we can't have everything." Halt knew that the bow wasn't a Skandian weapon. It was no use wishing for things that couldn't be. But in his mind's eye, he could see the devastation that an organized party of bowmen could cause. He shrugged, pushing the thought aside.

Erak looked up at the gray-cloaked Ranger. He's small, he thought, but by the gods, he's a warrior to reckon with.

"We have to depend on our men keeping their heads," he said. "Then we have to time it just right when we spring our trap-otherwise the men coming from the forest and the outbuildings will be exposed themselves. It's a risk."

Halt shrugged. "It's war," he replied. "The trick is to know which risks to take."

"And how do you know that?" Borsa asked him, sensing that the small, bearded foreigner had gained the trust and the acceptance of the Oberjarl and his War Council. Halt smiled wolfishly at him.

"You wait till it's over and see who's won," he said. "Then you know those were the right risks to take."

"H ALT," W ILL SAID THOUGHTFULLY AS HE WALKED AWAY FROM the council with Halt and Erak. "What did you mean when you said that about archers?"

Halt looked sideways at his apprentice and sighed. "It could make a big difference to the outcome," he said. "The Temujai are archers themselves. But they rarely have to face an enemy with any particular skill with the bow."

Will nodded. The longbow was traditionally an Araluen weapon. Perhaps because of the island kingdom's isolation from the countries on the eastern landmass, it had remained peculiar to Araluen. Other nationalities might use bows for hunting or even sport. But only in the armies of the Araluens would you find the massed groups of archers that could provide a devastating rain of arrows on an attacking force.

"They understand the value of the bow as a strategic weapon," he said. "But they've never had to cope with facing it themselves. I got some inkling of that when Erak and I were running from them near the border. Once I'd put a few arrows close to them, they were decidedly reluctant to come dashing around any blind corners."

The jarl laughed quietly at the memory. "That's true enough," he agreed. "Once you'd emptied a few saddles, they slowed down remarkably."

"You know, I've been thinking:," said the boy, and hesitated. Halt grinned quietly to himself.

"Always a dangerous pastime," he said gently.

But Will continued: "Maybe we should try to put together a force of archers. Even a hundred or so could make a difference, couldn't they?"

Halt shook his head. "We haven't the time, Will," he replied. "They'll be on us within two weeks. You can't train archers in that short a time. After all, the Skandians have no skill with the bow to begin with. You'd have to teach them the very basics-nocking, drawing, releasing. That takes weeks, as you know."

"There are plenty of slaves here," Will persisted. "Some of them would know the basics. Then all we'd have to do is control their range."

Halt looked at his apprentice again. The boy was deadly serious, he could see. A small frown creased Will's forehead as he thought through the problem.

"And how would you do that?" the Ranger asked. The frown deepened for a few seconds as Will gathered his thoughts.

"It was something Evanlyn asked me that suggested it," he said. "She was watching me shoot and she was asking how I knew how much elevation to give to a particular shot and I told her it was just experience. Then I thought maybe I could show her and I was thinking, if you created-say-four basic positions:"

He stopped walking and raised his left arm as if it were holding a bow, then moved it through four positions-beginning horizontally and ultimately raising it to a maximum forty-five degree angle. "One, two, three, four, like that," he continued. "You could drill a group of archers to assume those positions while someone else judged the range and told them which one to go to. They wouldn't need to be very good shots as long as the person controlling them could judge range," he finished.

"And deflection," Halt said thoughtfully. "If you knew that at the second position your shafts would travel, say, two hundred meters, you could time your release so that the approaching enemy would reach that spot just as the arrow storm did."

"Well, yes," Will admitted. "I hadn't taken it that far. I was just thinking of setting the range and having everyone release at the same time. They needn't aim for individual targets. They could just fire away into the mass."

"You'd need to anticipate," Halt said.

"Yes. But essentially, it would be the same as if I were firing one arrow myself. It's just that, as I released, I could call a hundred others to do the same."

Halt rubbed his beard. He glanced at the Skandian. "What do you think, Erak?"

The jarl merely shrugged his massive shoulders. "I haven't understood a word you've been saying," he admitted cheerfully. "Range, defraction:"

"Deflection," Will corrected him, and Erak shrugged.

"Whatever. It's all a puzzle to me. But if the boy thinks it might be possible, well, I'd tend to think he might be right."