The Royal Ranger: A New Beginning: 1 (Ranger’s Apprentice: The Royal Ranger)

WILL AWOKE THE FOLLOWING MORNING TO THE SMELL OF bacon frying.

He frowned, sniffed the air experimentally and confirmed the fact. That was definitely bacon frying. His empty stomach rumbled in anticipation. He swung his legs out of bed, dressed hurriedly and opened the door into the main room of the cabin.

Maddie was standing expectantly by the stove, a frying pan in one hand and a large fork in the other. She smiled as he entered, rubbing the drowsiness from his eyes, smoothing his disheveled hair.

“I made breakfast,” she announced. “I didn’t know how to scramble the eggs, so I fried them.” She waved him to a seat at the table.

“Well, this is a surprise,” he said, and she placed a laden plate before him.

The surprise increased as he looked at the bacon, fried to within an inch of its life and reduced to flint-hard strips.

The eggs were not much better—she had burned the bottoms and the yolks were hard and dried out. He looked at them uncertainly, then picked up his knife and fork, determined to eat them.

She had tried, he thought. She might not have succeeded but she had tried, and he saw the sentiment behind the gesture. It was her way of apologizing, and a more meaningful way—if a not completely edible way—than simply uttering the words.

He put his fork into one of the strips of bacon, and it promptly disintegrated into a mass of sharp little shards. Maddie was watching carefully, so he picked up several of them and put them in his mouth, sucking on them to soften them.

“Is it all right?” she asked. “I’ve never cooked bacon before.”

“Remarkable,” he mumbled, past the splinters of bacon that filled his mouth. “A very commendable first effort.”

He swallowed the bacon with some difficulty, then tried the hard, crisp-bottomed eggs. The flavor of burned egg white filled his mouth. He chewed and swallowed.

“I wasn’t sure about those black bits on the bottom,” she said anxiously.

“They add flavor,” Will told her. He saw that she’d already collected the day’s fresh loaf from the bakery. He hurriedly tore off a piece, slapped butter on it and wolfed it down. He put more butter on the hard egg yolks. At least that would soften them a little.

Maddie took a seat opposite him and he looked enviously at the plate of fruit before her—an apple and some plump, juicy strawberries. She also had a thick slice of buttered bread and jam. She took a deep draft of milk and a bite of bread and jam. He realized his own mouth was dry and clogged with the taste of burned food.

He looked around for the water jug and a glass, but as he reached for it, she forestalled him.

“I made coffee,” she said.

Now that was a surprise. He’d detected no trace of the rich, fragrant aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. Although now she mentioned it, he was aware of a faint scent in the kitchen.

His old coffeepot was sitting on the stove hot plate, steam wisping from its spout. She picked it up, protecting her hand from the hot handle with a kitchen cloth, placed a mug before him and poured.

A thin stream of slightly discolored hot water emanated from the pot into his mug. They both stared at it. Whatever it was, Will thought, it wasn’t coffee. Maddie frowned as she realized the same thing.

“That doesn’t look right,” she said doubtfully. “I’m sure I did it correctly.”

“What did you do?” he asked, picking up the cup and inspecting the faintly brown liquid inside it. He sniffed it. There was a definite scent of coffee there. It was faint. But it was there.

“I filled the pot with cold water, set it to boil on the stove plate. Then, when it was boiling, I spooned in the coffee—three big spoonfuls. I thought that would be enough.”

“It should have been,” he said absently. Three spoonfuls should have

produced a rich, dark brew. Not this insipid coffee impostor that confronted him. A thought struck him.

“Where did you get the coffee from?” he asked, thinking she might have reused old grounds. But she gestured to the pottery jar on the top shelf in the kitchen where he kept his coffee beans.

“From there. Where I’ve seen you get it.”

Realization was beginning to dawn on Will. “And you just . . . put three spoonfuls into the pot?”

She nodded.

“You didn’t think to grind it first?” he asked gently.

Maddie frowned, not comprehending what he was saying. “Grind it?”

“Grind it. Usually I grind the beans into powder. That releases the coffee flavor, you see.”

She was still holding the pot. He took it from her and hinged the lid back, peering inside. Once the initial cloud of steam had dissipated, he could see a raft of little round brown shapes floating on top of the water.

He started to laugh. He couldn’t help it and, the moment he started, he knew it was a mistake. He forced himself to stop, but the damage was done.

Maddie watched him, her face stricken, as she realized how badly she’d failed. She had wanted to cook him a good breakfast by way of saying “let’s start again.” But all she’d succeeded in doing was ruining his coffee. She now began to suspect that the bacon and eggs weren’t exactly right either.

Will covered his mouth, forcing the laughter back.

“I’m sorry,” he said contritely, although he could see the disappointment in her face. He could see the way her chin was set and her lips were pressed together as she willed herself not to cry.

“I ruined it, didn’t I?” she said. “Not just the coffee, but the rest of it as well.”

“Let me put it this way. . . . It’s not the best. Eating the bacon is a little like chewing shards of pottery. And the eggs deserved a better fate.”

She dropped her gaze, totally crestfallen. She hated to fail.

“But I shouldn’t have laughed,” he continued, in a gentler tone. “You tried and it was a nice thought. Nobody’s made me breakfast in months.”

“I’ll bet nobody has ever made you a breakfast like that,” she said, her eyes down.

“I can’t say they have. But how can I expect you to get it right the first time?”

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. In her mind, she had seen Will coming to the table, surprised and delighted, wolfing down the meal and sipping contentedly at his coffee. It was to have been her way of apologizing for her behavior with Jenny—behavior that even now made her cringe as she thought of it.

And now this . . . this unmitigated disaster. She felt Will’s hand on her shoulder and she looked up. His eyes were very warm and gentle—like those of the uncle Will she had known as a little girl.

“Maddie, you made the effort and that’s the main thing. And while you might not have given me the world’s best breakfast, you did something else for me—something far more important.”

She cocked her head to one side curiously. “What?”

“You made me laugh. And nobody’s done that in a long time.”

• • •

After breakfast—in Will’s case a hastily revised one of bread, some slices of a ham hanging in the larder and a cup of properly brewed coffee—they stepped out into the small clearing in front of the cabin for Maddie’s first session with the weapons she would be using for the next twelve months.

She watched eagerly as Will unrolled an oilskin to reveal them. He selected the double scabbard mounted on a thick leather belt first.

She had seen the peculiar double rig worn by Rangers before, of course.

But she’d never had occasion to inspect the two knives that it held.

The saxe was first. It was the larger of the two, almost the length of a short sword. She’d had a saxe for some years, of course, but it was lighter and shorter than this. This was a Ranger’s everyday weapon for close fighting

—heavy bladed and razor-sharp. She rested her forefinger lightly on the blade, testing the edge.

“It’s sharp,” Will said, watching approvingly as she treated the weapon with respect and care. “And it’ll be up to you to keep it that way. If I ever inspect it and find traces of rust or a dull edge, you’ll be running back and forth to Foxtail Creek for the rest of the week.”

She nodded dutifully. The saxe was a plain-looking weapon. It was unadorned and unornamented, made from plain steel and leather with a brass pommel and crosspiece. But as she held it, she felt the perfect balance in the weapon that made it feel light and easy to wield—in spite of the fact that the

thick blade gave it considerable weight. She sensed that it had been made by a master craftsman, and Will’s next words proved her right.

“Our saxes are specially made for us,” he said. “The steel is treated and worked so that it’s tremendously hard. Parry a sword stroke with one of these and you’ll leave a notch in the sword—while there’ll barely be a mark on the saxe. Except your father’s sword, of course,” he added.

She looked at him curiously, all the while working the blade of the saxe back and forth, getting the feel of it. “My dad’s sword? What about it?”

“It was crafted for him by the swordsmiths of Nihon-Ja. They use a similar technique to our weapon makers’. Horace’s sword is a masterpiece.

It’s harder and sharper than any blade in Araluen or the continent.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said. Her father never mentioned it to her.

Will dismissed the subject, gesturing for her to re-sheathe the saxe. She did so and he drew the smaller knife from its scabbard.

The blade was around twenty centimeters long. It was narrow where it joined the hilt, but widened rapidly, then angled in sharply to form a razor-sharp point. The tapering shape of the blade added weight at the point, which was balanced by the weight of the hilt—constructed of leather disks and with a small brass crosspiece. Again there was a brass pommel at the end of the hilt.

“You’ll be learning to throw this,” he told her.

She pursed her lips. “I’ve never thrown a knife,” she admitted.

Will shrugged. “The principle is simple enough. You throw it so that it spins in the air just enough for the point to be facing the target when it reaches it. The farther the target, the more times you spin it.”

He showed her how to vary the rate of spin by holding the blade farther up or closer to the tip.

“Close to the tip and it’s going to spin faster. Set your grip farther up the blade toward the hilt and it’ll turn more slowly through the air,” he said. She nodded, trying the different positions, miming throwing the knife. She could feel how the position close to the point would impart greater spin on the blade.

“That doesn’t sound too easy,” she said doubtfully, and he nodded at her.

“It’s not. I said the principle was simple. The practice is definitely something else. Like everything a Ranger does, it requires practice, practice and . . .” He paused, raising an eyebrow for her to complete the statement.

“More practice?” she asked.

“Got it in one. That’s the secret of most of our skills. When it comes down to it, throwing a knife is like cooking a perfect egg. The more you do it, the better you get—although the techniques are quite different.”

She replaced the throwing knife in its sheath. She weighed the double scabbard in her hand for a few moments, admiring the matched look of the two weapons and the plain, practical design. Deceptively plain, because, having examined them, she now knew that hours of painstaking, expert work had gone into their construction.

She set the knives down and looked expectantly at the oilskin wrap. There was another item hidden in its folds, a longer, slender item. And she thought she knew what it was.

“What’s next?” she asked. She tried to keep her voice neutral, but Will heard the tone of expectancy in it. She was enjoying this session. She was interested in weapons. That was no surprise, considering her penchant for hunting. But that interest was a good thing and it would serve her well in the months to come, during the constant, repetitive actions of practice. A person needed that core of interest to keep practicing and keep improving.

“What’s next is our principal weapon,” he said. “The bow.”