John Flanagan: The Icebound Land

"Is he watching?" Halt asked quietly, seeming to read Horace's thoughts. The Ranger had his back to the castle walls and couldn't see. But Horace, moving his eyes only and not his head, could make out the black silhouette at one of the castle's many terraces, hunched over the balustrade watching them-as he had done every time they had taken the field.

"Yes, Halt," he said now. "He's watching. But is it wise for us to do this where he can see?"

The very faintest trace of a smile seemed to touch the Ranger's lips.

"Possibly not," he replied. "But he'd make sure he saw us no matter where we practiced, wouldn't he?"

"Yes," Horace admitted reluctantly, "but surely you don't need to practice, do you?"

Halt shook his head sadly. "Spoken like a true apprentice," he said. "Practice never hurt anyone, young Horace. Bear that in mind when we get back to Castle Redmont."

Horace eyed Halt unhappily as he eased the two arrows free from the straw and leather padding that filled the inside of the helmet.

"There's something else," he began, and Halt held up a hand to stop him.

"I know, I know," he said. "Your precious rules of chivalry are bothering you again, aren't they?" Horace was forced to nod reluctant agreement. It was a bone of contention between the two of them, and had been ever since Halt had arranged to challenge Deparnieux to a duel.

At first, the warlord had been enraged, then sarcastically amused, that a commoner might assume to challenge him.

"I am a consecrated knight," he spat at Halt. "A nobleman! I cannot be challenged to combat by any ruffian from the forest!"

The Ranger's brows had darkened at that. His voice, when he spoke, was low and dangerous. Inadvertently, both Deparnieux and Horace had leaned forward to listen more carefully to his words.

"Guard your tongue, you lowborn cur!" Halt had replied. "You're speaking to a member of the royal house of Hibernia, sixth in line to the throne and with a lineage that was noble when you and yours were scouring the kennels for scraps to eat!"

And, as he had spoken, an unmistakable Hibernian burr had accented his words. Horace had looked at him in considerable surprise. He had never had the slightest idea that Halt was descended from a royal line. Deparnieux was equally taken aback by the news. He was right, of course. No knight was obliged to honor a challenge from one beneath him. But the grizzled archer's claim to royal blood put a different aspect on matters. His challenge must be treated seriously and with respect. Deparnieux could not ignore it-particularly as it had been issued in the presence of several of his men. To refuse the challenge would undermine his position seriously.

As a result, he had accepted and the combat was set down for a week from that day. Later, in their tower chambers, Horace had expressed his surprise about Halt's background.

"I had no idea you were descended from Hibernian royalty," he said. Halt snorted dismissively as he replied.

"I'm not," he said. "But our friend doesn't know that and there's no way he can prove I'm not. Therefore he has to take my challenge as binding."

And it was this disregard for the strict conventions of chivalry that had Horace so concerned, as much as the fact that Halt seemed to be letting his enemy know exactly what tactics he had for the combat, which was now only a day away. Training in the Battleschool placed great store upon the conventions and obligations of knighthood. They were, so Horace had been taught for the past eighteen months, binding and inflexible. They placed obligations on those who would be knights, and while they gave them great privileges, those privileges had to be earned. A knight had to observe the rules. To live by them and, if necessary, to die for them.

Among the most binding and inflexible of those conventions was that of a knight's recourse to trial by combat. It was a course that could be followed only by those who were followers of one of the various chivalrous orders. Even Horace, as an unknighted warrior, wasn't, strictly speaking, entitled to challenge Deparnieux. But Halt certainly wasn't and the Ranger's cavalier attitude to a system that Horace held in the highest esteem had shocked the boy-and continued to do so now.

"Look," said Halt, not unkindly, as he put an arm around Horace's brawny shoulders, "the rules of chivalry are a fine thing, I admit that. But only for those who abide by all the rules."

"But-" Horace began, but Halt stopped him by squeezing his shoulder.

"Deparnieux has used those rules to kill, to plunder and to murder for God knows how many years. He accepts those parts of the rules that suit him and discards the ones that don't. You've seen that already."

Horace nodded unhappily. "I know, Halt. It's just I've been taught that-"

Halt interrupted him again, but gently. "You've been taught by men who are noble," he said. "By men who uphold the rules of chivalry-all the rules-and live according to them. Let me tell you, I know no finer man than Sir Rodney, or Baron Arald, for that matter. Men like that are the embodiment of everything that is right about chivalry and knighthood."

He paused, looking intently at the boy's troubled face. Horace nodded agreement. Halt had chosen two of his role models in Rodney and the Baron. Seeing that he had made his point, Halt continued: "But a murdering, cowardly swine like Deparnieux cannot be allowed to claim the same standards as men like that. I have no compunction at all about lying to him as long as it helps me bring him to the point where I can fight him-and defeat him, with any luck."

And at that point, Horace turned to him, his face still troubled, but perhaps a little less so. "But how can you hope to defeat him when he knows exactly what you plan to do?" he asked miserably.

Halt shrugged and replied, without any trace of a smile: "Perhaps I'll get lucky."

T HE HUNTING BOW WAS AWKWARD IN E VANLYN'S GRIP. SHE fumbled as she tried to set one of the arrows on the string, almost dropping it into the snow at her feet as she tried to keep her eyes on the small animal moving slowly across the clearing before her.

Unthinkingly, she hissed her annoyance and instantly the rabbit sat up on its hind legs, its ears twitching this way and that to see if they could catch another hint of the foreign sound it had just picked up, and the nose twitching this way and that as it sampled the air for any trace of a foreign scent.

Evanlyn froze, waiting till the animal had reassured itself that there was no immediate danger, then went back to scrabble with its forepaws in the snow, scraping it away to expose the wet, stunted grass underneath. Scarcely daring to breathe, she watched as the rabbit began to graze again, then, looking down this time, slipped the arrow onto the string, just under the nock mark that the bow's original maker had placed there. At this point, the string had been built up in thickness, with a fine cord wound around and around it, so that the nock fitted snugly, holding the arrow in place without any need for her fingers to do so. It was a snug hold, but a light one nevertheless, and the force of the string's release would instantly break the grip and send the arrow on its way.

She brought the bow up now and began to draw back on the string with her right hand. She knew she wasn't doing this correctly. She'd seen enough archers in her time to know that this simply wasn't the way it was done. However, as she was beginning to appreciate, watching a trained archer and emulating his movements were two completely different matters. Will, she remembered, could nock and draw an arrow in one smooth, practiced and seemingly effortless movement. She could picture the movement now in her mind, but it was totally beyond her abilities to re-create it. Instead she held the bow upright and quivering, gripping the arrow's nock between her finger and thumb, and attempting to draw the string back with the strength of her fingers and arm alone. Doing it that way, she could barely manage to bring the arrow to half draw. She pursed her lips in anger. That would have to do. She closed one eye and squinted down the arrow, trying to aim it at the small creature, which was feeding contentedly and oblivious to the mortal danger lurking in the trees fringing the clearing. With more hope than conviction, she finally released her grip on the arrow.