John Flanagan - Oakleaf bearers

"The truth of the matter is," Halt told them all, "you mean nothing to them either. The Temujai consider themselves a superior race. They'd kill you out of hand because you can do nothing for them-but left behind their backs, you could constitute a threat."

A nervous silence settled over the crowd now. Halt let them digest what he had said, then he spoke again.

"Believe me, I've seen what these people are like." He looked into the faces of the crowd. "I can see there are some Araluens among you. I'll give you my word as a Ranger that I'm not bluffing. Your best chance of survival is to fight with the Skandians against these Temujai. I'll leave you for half an hour to consider what I've said. You Araluens might tell the others what a Ranger's word means," he added. Then, beckoning for Will to follow, he turned on his heel and walked some distance away, out of earshot.

"We're going to have to offer them more," he said when the others couldn't hear him. "Reluctant recruits will be almost useless to us. A man's got to have something worth fighting for if he's going to do his best. And that's what we're going to need from this bunch-their best effort."

"So what are you going to do?" Will asked, almost jogging to keep pace with his teacher's urgent stride.

"We're going to see Ragnak," Halt told him. "He's going to have to promise to free every slave who fights for Hallasholm."

Will shook his head doubtfully. "He won't like that," he said. Halt turned and looked at him, a faint grin touching the corner of his mouth.

"He'll hate it," he agreed.

"Freedom?" Ragnak exploded. "Give them their freedom? A hundred slaves?"

Halt shrugged disdainfully. "Probably closer to three hundred," he replied. "A lot of them will have women and children they'll want to take with them."

The Oberjarl gave an enormous snort of incredulous laughter. "Are you mad?" he asked the Ranger. "If I give three hundred slaves their freedom, we'll have virtually no slaves left. What will I do then?"

"If you don't, you may find you have no country left," Halt replied. "As to what you would do next, you could try paying them. Make them servants instead of slaves."

"Pay them? To do the work they're doing now?" Ragnak spluttered indignantly.

"Why not? The gods know you can afford it well enough. And you might find they do a better job if they've got something more than a beating to look forward to at the end of the day."

"To hell with them!" Ragnak said. "And to hell with you, Ranger. I agreed to listen to you, but this is ridiculous. You'll turn me into a beggar if I let you have your way. First you want me to abandon Hallasholm to this rabble of horsemen. Now you want me to send all my slaves off back to where they came from. To hell with you, I say."

He glared at the Ranger for a few seconds, then, with a contemptuous wave of his hand, he turned away, refusing even to make eye contact. Halt waited a few seconds, then spoke to Erak, who was standing by his Oberjarl, an uncomfortable look on his face.

"I'm telling you, we need these men," he said forcefully. "Even with them, we can still lose. But with them fighting willingly for us, we'll have a chance." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the Oberjarl. "Tell him," he said finally, then turned on his heel and left the council room, Will hurrying behind him as he went.

As they left the hall, Halt said, almost to himself, but loud enough for Will to hear, "I wonder if it occurs to them that if the slaves agree unwillingly to fight for them, and if, by some mad mischance, we do win, there's nothing to stop the slaves from turning their weapons on the Skandians." That thought had occurred to Will. He nodded agreement. "That's why," Halt continued, "we've got to give them something worth fighting for."

They waited at the training field for over an hour. The slaves had come to a decision, agreeing to fight against the Temujai. However, a few shifty eyes among the group told Halt and Will that, once the battle was over, the newly armed men were not going to return meekly into slavery.

There was a buzz of expectation as Erak arrived. He walked up to Halt and Will, who were standing a little apart from the archers.

"Ragnak agrees," he said quietly. "If they fight, he'll free them."

Halt nodded his head gratefully. He knew where the real impetus for Ragnak's decision had come from.

"Thank you," he said simply to Erak. The Skandian shrugged and Halt turned to Will. "They'll be your men. They need to get used to taking orders from you. You tell them."

Will hesitated, surprised. He had assumed that Halt would do the talking. Then, at an encouraging nod from his master, he stepped forward, raising his voice.

"Men!" he called, and the low murmur of conversation among the group died instantly. He waited a second or two to make sure he had their full attention, then continued.

"Ragnak has decided. If you fight for Skandia, he'll set you free."

There was a moment of stunned silence. Some of these men had been slaves for ten years or more. Now, here was this slightly built youth telling them that the end to their suffering was in sight. Then a mighty roar of triumph and jubilation swept through them, at first wordless and inchoate, but rapidly settling into a rhythmic chant of one word from one hundred throats:

"Free-dom! Free-dom! Free-dom!"

Will let them celebrate for a while longer. Then he climbed onto a tree stump where he could be seen by all of them and waved his arms for silence. Gradually, the chant died away and they crowded closer around him, eager to hear what else he had to tell them.

"That's all very well," he said when they had quieted down. "But first, there's the small matter of beating the Temujai. Let's get to work."

Halt and Erak watched as Will supervised the issuing of arrows to the men. Unconsciously, both men nodded their approval of the boy. Then Erak turned to Halt.

"I nearly forgot, Ragnak had a further message for you. He said if we lose this battle and he loses his slaves as well, he's going to kill you for it," he said cheerfully.

Halt smiled grimly. "If we lose this battle, he may have to get in line to do it. There'll be a few thousand Temujai cavalrymen in front of him."

W ILL CALLED THE LAST GROUP OF TEN MEN FORWARD TO THE firing line. The preceding group moved to the rear of the waiting ranks and sat down to watch. He was working the men in small groups at this stage. That gave him a manageable group to work with as he tested their ability to follow his orders and shoot at a predetermined elevation.

"Ready!" he called. Each man took an arrow from the bin in front of him and nocked it to the string. They stood ready, their heads turned toward him, waiting for his next order.

"Remember," he said, "don't try to judge the shot yourself. Just go to the position I call, make a full draw and a smooth release when I call it."

The men nodded. Initially, they hadn't liked the idea of having their shooting controlled by someone as young as Will. Then, after Halt had encouraged his apprentice to give a demonstration of high-speed pinpoint shooting, they had reluctantly agreed to the system Will had devised.

Will took a deep breath, then called firmly: "Position three! Draw!"

Ten arms holding bows rose to a position approximately forty degrees from the horizontal. Will quickly glanced down the line to see that each man had remembered the correct position. He'd been drilling the four different elevations into them all day. Satisfied, and before the strain of holding the bows at full draw became too great, he called:

"Shoot!"

Almost as one, there was a rapid slither of released bowstrings and a concerted hiss of arrows arcing through the air.

Will watched the small flight of shafts as they arced upward, then nosed over and plunged down to bury themselves up to half their length in the turf. Again he called to the waiting line of men: "Position three, ready!"