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

CONTAINING HIS ANNOYANCE AS BEST HE COULD, GATT LED them to the spot where he found Liam’s body. It was on a narrow but well-defined track, fringed on either side by scattered, low bushes. The ground was soft and easy underfoot, but not so much that it might cause a horse to stumble or lose his footing. Will swung down and studied the ground.

“Had any rain lately?” he asked.

Gatt shook his head. “Not since I found the body. But the ground is usually soft in these parts, except in high summer, when it tends to dry out.”

“Not high summer now,” Will said to himself, moving along the trail. It ran in a straight line here. There seemed to be no reason why Liam should have fallen from his horse.

“Where exactly did you find the body?” he asked.

Gatt walked his horse forward several meters. “Here. On the side of the trail. Just past those two trees.”

There were two sizable trees standing out from the general vegetation of bushes and shrubs in the area. They were about five meters apart, standing one on either side of the track. Will glanced at them. There were no low, overhanging branches that might sweep an incautious rider from his saddle.

“Figure he fell off his horse and broke his neck,” Gatt said.

Will pursed his lips. “Unlikely,” he said. All Rangers were excellent riders.

Gatt shrugged at the uncompromising reply. “Maybe his horse stumbled . . . ,” he essayed.

Tug, standing a little apart, shook his mane violently. Ranger horses don’t

stumble.

“Or maybe he’d been drinking,” Gatt added.

Will turned a cold gaze on him. “Liam didn’t drink,” he said and Gatt shrugged.

“If you say. It was just a suggestion.”

Will didn’t answer. He was pacing back along the trail from where Liam’s body had been found, checking the horse’s tracks. With no rain in recent days and with the soft condition of the ground, they were still clear to see. Maddie had dismounted and was kneeling beside one of the trees, studying its trunk low to the ground.

Will turned to Gatt abruptly. “Thanks for your time, Farmer Gatt. We’ll trouble you no longer. You can get back to your work.”

Gatt looked surprised, and his bad mood lifted a little. He’d expected the Ranger to keep him here for hours, asking pointless questions. Now he found himself free to go about his business. But perversely, his curiosity was piqued. He’d noticed the way Will had been studying the tracks.

“So have you found something?” he asked. “Any clue as to what happened?”

Will shook his head. “Probably as you said. His horse stumbled and he fell. Just an accident.”

“Oh . . . well then . . .” Gatt still hesitated. He didn’t want to be left out if there was something significant to be known.

Will nodded to him. “We won’t bother you further,” he said.

“Right. I’ll be off then,” Gatt said. He turned his horse away and set it into a lumbering trot, heading back to his farm. As he rode away, he turned in his saddle several times to look at them. Will waved to him as he did. Finally, when he had rounded a bend in the track and was lost to view, Maddie spoke.

“So did you find something?”

Will nodded and gestured for her to join him. They walked back down the track for ten meters and he pointed to the ground. “Look at the tracks Acorn left.”

“Acorn?” Maddie asked.

“Liam’s horse. See here, as they lead up to these trees, his gait is smooth and even. From the length of his stride and the depth of the hoofprints, I’d say he was at a full gallop. But as he passes the trees, the tracks are all over the place. He’s lost his balance and he definitely stumbled.”

Tug snorted and Will looked quickly at him. “It happens,” he said.

Maddie was down on one knee, studying the tracks, and didn’t see that he’d addressed the comment to the horse. Instead, she rose and turned toward the nearest of the two trees.

“I noticed something on one of the trees,” she said. “It may be nothing but you should see it.”

“Or it may be something,” Will said. He followed her and looked where she was pointing. There was a faint scar in the bark of the tree, about half a meter above the ground.

“Something cut the bark here,” she pointed out.

Will raised his eyebrows. “Well spotted.”

She glanced up at him. “I didn’t think anything of it until you mentioned that Acorn seemed to lose his footing.” She turned quickly and walked to the opposite tree. “Let’s see if there’s a corresponding mark on this one.”

There was but it was very faint. If they hadn’t known to look for it, they might never have seen it. Will reached forward to touch it. There was a small piece of thin white thread sticking to the bark. He plucked it free.

“Could be fiber from a rope,” he said. He looked up and down the track, then at the tree opposite them. “So let’s say Liam is galloping along this track full tilt . . .”

“Chasing someone perhaps,” Maddie suggested and he nodded.

“That’s not unreasonable. And let’s say someone else has stretched a rope across the track between these two trees. Acorn hits it and stumbles, only just retaining his footing.”

“But the stumble is enough to throw Liam clear of the saddle and he pitches onto the ground up here . . .” Maddie walked quickly to where Gatt had told them he found Liam’s body. “And he’s killed in the fall.”

“That would explain the marks on the trees,” Will said thoughtfully. “As Acorn hit the rope, it would have cut into the bark with the impact.”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then Will spoke.

“Someone wanted Liam dead,” he said quietly.

Maddie pursed her lips. “They couldn’t be sure the fall would kill him,”

she said.

“True. But he would have been incapacitated—knocked out or winded by the fall. And they would have been ready to finish him off.”

“Of course we can’t be sure,” Maddie said. “It’s just a few jumbled hoofprints and a faint mark on a tree. That could have been caused by anything.”

“We need to have a close look at Acorn. If he hit that rope at any sort of speed, there’ll be bruising or cuts on his legs,” Will said.

“Where would he be now?” Maddie asked.

“Most likely in the stables at Castle Trelleth,” Will said. “The horsemaster would have taken him in to care for him after Liam’s death.” He leaned back, stretching his back muscles, cramped from so much stooping and kneeling.

“Time we paid a call on Baron Scully,” he said.

In the event he visited the castle alone, leaving Maddie at the small Ranger cabin set in the woods below the castle.

“Don’t know this Scully person,” he said. “But there’s always the chance that he’s been at Castle Araluen and he might recognize you. If that’s so, then he’ll want to entertain you at the castle. And then the whole countryside will know about your presence here in the next twenty-four hours.”

Maddie nodded, understanding. “And that would make it difficult for us to investigate,” she said.

“Very difficult. It’s better if we can keep a low profile. Plus I don’t want too many people knowing who you really are. It’s a matter of your safety.”

“That’s fine by me,” Maddie said. She was becoming weary of the way people stared at her when they realized she was a girl—and an apprentice Ranger. If the fact that she was a princess was added in, the curiosity would get out of hand. “I’ll stay in the cabin.”

“Take a look through Liam’s papers while you’re here,” Will told her.

“There might be some clue as to what he was on to.”

Ranger cabins were all built to two basic designs. Liam’s was almost identical to the one Maddie shared with Will, and she felt comfortable there.

As Will had instructed, she went through the papers on Liam’s small desk to see if there was any clue as to the reason for his death. But she found nothing.

It was almost dusk when she heard Bumper whinny from the stable behind the cabin. Then Tug answered and a few minutes later Will rode up through the trees.

“Well, we’ve got our answer,” he said. “Acorn was limping when they recovered him. He had a cut on his right foreleg. The horsemaster said he assumed Acorn had stumbled and injured himself, throwing Liam off. But it could have been caused by his hitting a rope.”

“So Liam’s death was definitely no accident,” she said.

“It would appear not. Now all we have to do is find out why someone would want to kill him. He must have chanced upon something. Must have

seen something going on.”

“Should we tell Gilan?” she asked and he nodded.

“I’ll send a message pigeon from the castle tomorrow. But I know what he’ll say. He’ll want us to nose around and find out what’s going on. No sense in having crowds of people coming in here to investigate. That’ll just tip our hand to whoever killed Liam. Better for us to do it quietly.”

He paused, and then a thought struck him as his gaze fell on the desk and the papers crowded there.

“Anything in his papers?” he asked.

Maddie shook her head. “Nothing I could see.”

“Hardly surprising. If he was on the trail of something, he wouldn’t leave his paperwork in full view. He’d have it well hidden.”

Maddie glanced round the little living room. There seemed to be nowhere that would serve as a hiding place.

“Where would he do that?” she asked.

In answer, Will rose and paced along the center of the living room floor, his eyes down, studying the boards on either side. He stopped, staring at one point off to the left. Then he stepped toward it, went down on one knee and drew his saxe knife.

He rapped on the boards with the hilt, working in a semicircle. On the fourth rap, the boards sounded hollow and he gave a small grunt of satisfaction. Then he inserted the tip of the saxe into a narrow join between two boards and levered.

There was a groan of wood rubbing on wood, and a small trapdoor was levered open, exposing a hidden cavity below the floor. He looked up at Maddie.

“All our cabins have one,” he said by way of explanation. “It’s just a matter of spotting where it is.”

He reached into the cavity and produced a thin sheaf of papers, enclosed in a folder and wrapped with a green ribbon.

“Now what do we have here?” he said.