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

BUMPER’S LOW RUMBLE BROUGHT MADDIE AWAKE.

She had slept for two hours—a deep, satisfying sleep—and she felt refreshed and revitalized. But the warning sound from Bumper reached through the veils of sleep and alerted her conscious mind. She came awake with a start, feeling a sudden rush of alarm.

Bumper and Tug were both facing toward the narrow entrance to the cave.

Their ears were pricked, and Bumper’s chest and shoulder muscles were trembling in warning spasms. They had heard or sensed something.

She rose, patted them both and whispered to them to relax. Then she moved to the entrance and peered carefully round the edge. She could see or hear nobody nearby. Emboldened, she slipped outside and moved toward a large rock, dropping behind it as she surveyed the surrounding terrain.

There were two men on the road. They were a little past the spot where she had led the children off the highway and toward the caves, so they had obviously seen no sign that she had done so. She blessed her sudden instinct to have the children spread out. Even a non-tracker would have seen the deep swath they would have cut through the grass if they’d moved in a tight-knit group.

She had no doubt who the men might be and her heart sank. If they had come this far, it meant that Will had been taken. He never would have let them pass otherwise. He was probably lying dead somewhere back along the road. Her eyes filled with tears but she shook them away, angrily. If that were the case, she wanted to know. She wanted to be sure. And if he were dead, she would take her revenge on Ruhl and his gang—starting with the two on

the road.

They had paused uncertainly, looking up the road to the north, seeing no sign of the fugitives. She could just hear the dim mutter of their voices. They looked around the surrounding area and she forced herself to remain still.

Movement could give away her position. As it was, she was just another dark mound among the rocks.

The men’s voices were raised as they began to argue. She still couldn’t make out the words but the gestures and body language were unmistakable.

One of them kept gesturing to the north. Obviously, he thought they should continue. The other threw up his arms in disgust and turned back to the south, beginning to retrace his steps.

His companion shouted angrily at him. Then, with a shrug of resignation, he followed suit. They were still arguing as they headed back toward Hawkshead Bay.

Maddie waited until they were out of sight, then hurried back inside the cave. She hesitated, weighing her choices. All her instincts were telling her to go after Will, to see if he was alive and if he needed help. But if she did, she would be deserting the children.

She paced the sand floor of the cave for several minutes, torn by indecision. She knew Will would tell her that her responsibility lay with the children. But she couldn’t bring herself to agree. This was Will, her godfather, her mentor. She thought about the hours they had spent together in the woods around Redmont, the hours of calm, patient instruction and his quiet pleasure when she succeeded in a task he had set her. And she knew she couldn’t desert him. Even if he were dead, she had to know what had become of him—and if she abandoned him now, she might never find out.

Her decision made, she looked around for Tim Stoker and saw him sleeping soundly by the wall of the cave. She moved to him, dropped to one knee and shook his shoulder gently. His eyes flew wide-open and she could see the instant alarm in them.

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s Maddie.”

The panic in him died down and he knuckled his eyes drowsily.

“What time is it?” he asked.

Maddie shrugged. She had no idea of the exact time.

“It’s still night,” she said. “I want you to take charge here. I’m going back to find Will.”

“What’s happened to him?” he asked. The tension was back in his body

and it was evident in his voice.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. He may have been taken by the Stealer.” She didn’t say he may have been killed. She feared that saying it might make it real.

Tim looked around at the sleeping children. The cave was dim and quiet, with only the occasional murmuring of one of the former captives as they tossed in their sleep.

“Should I wake them up?” he asked but again she shook her head.

“Let them sleep. Go back to sleep yourself. You’re safe here. I’ll be back for you tomorrow, when I’ve found Will.”

He nodded uncertainly. He felt safe and protected while she was around.

Without her, he knew they were all vulnerable.

She patted his shoulder encouragingly. “Just relax. You’ll be fine.”

“If you say so,” he replied. But his voice told her that he didn’t really believe it.

She donned her cloak and checked her weapons, then led both horses out through the narrow opening. She left them unsaddled. It was easier for them to negotiate the narrow split in the rock face that way. Once in the open, she saddled them both.

She knotted Tug’s reins around his neck so they wouldn’t hang down to trip him, then swung up into Bumper’s saddle.

“Follow, Tug,” she ordered and the little gray tossed his head obediently.

She touched Bumper with her heels and cantered slowly across the open ground to the road. She rode up onto the raised surface and looked to the south. There was no sign of the two men but she didn’t want to come upon them unexpectedly so she held Bumper down to a walk, moving along in their tracks.

They had been moving for twenty minutes when she caught sight of moonlight glinting on something in the long grass by the side of the road. She dismounted and walked down the camber to check. It was Will’s bow. The stray beam had caught the waxed surface of the wood or she never would have seen it. Her spirits fell. Ruhl and his men had obviously caught up with him here. Probably, as she surmised earlier, he had exhausted his supply of arrows and tossed the bow to one side so that they wouldn’t have it. She picked it up, turning it over in her hands, sadly running her finger along the smooth surface of the wood. She looked around, but there was no sign of his body and she began to feel a ray of hope.

Perhaps they had taken him prisoner. Perhaps he was still alive.

She ran back to the horses, cramming Will’s bow into the arrow case behind Tug’s saddle, and mounted Bumper. She unslung her own bow and made sure the flap in her cloak that covered her arrows was open. She didn’t care now if she caught up to the two kidnappers on the road ahead of her. In fact, she found she was hoping that she would.

She nudged Bumper forward and he responded instantly, striding out in a full gallop so that he fairly flew along the road, his hooves barely seeming to make contact with the hard-packed surface. Tug, with no rider to burden him, kept pace easily, a couple of meters behind and to the side.

Overhead, the moon beamed its light down on them, so that the road seemed like a pale ribbon running through the grass. The two little horses pounded on, striding in perfect unison so that they sounded like one horse running, not two.

Five minutes later, she crested a small hill and saw the two slavers ahead of them.

The hill had masked the drumming hoofbeats but now the men heard them and turned in panic to face her. They were two hundred meters away and she urged Bumper to greater speed, dropping the reins on his neck and guiding him with her knees, reaching behind her for an arrow.

The man on the right had a crossbow. He raised it, aiming at her. She waited a second or two, letting his aim steady, then nudged Bumper, urging him left, then a second later, right again.

The double shift of direction did the trick. The man panicked, overcorrected and jerked at the trigger lever too quickly as he tried to keep her in his sights. She heard the quarrel buzz past on the left like an angry hornet. Then she rose in her stirrups, drawing back the arrow. She touched Bumper lightly with her right knee and he crabbed a little to the right, as he had been trained, leaving her with a clear shot straight ahead.

At eighty meters, she released, waiting for the split second when Bumper’s four feet were all clear of the ground. The bow thrummed and she saw the arrow speed away to its mark. The crossbowman was straining to recock his weapon when the arrow struck him. He dropped the crossbow and staggered a few paces, before falling facedown on the road.

His companion looked at him in horror. Then he began to run toward her, his arm drawing back the throwing spear that he carried.

Calmly, without haste, she reloaded and shot again. Her bow was lighter

than Will’s and didn’t have the same staggering hitting power. But the man dropped the spear and stopped in his tracks, staring in horror at the arrow in his side. He clutched the wound and fell to his knees, doubled over. He was sobbing in pain as Maddie swept past him at full gallop, leaving him behind in a swirl of dust.

She didn’t draw rein until she was three hundred meters from the cliff tops at Hawkshead Bay. Then she eased the horses down to a trot, edging off the road so their hoofbeats were muffled by the thick grass. At a hundred meters’ distance, she swung down from the saddle while Bumper was still moving. Signaling to the two horses to stand fast, she crouched low and ran to the edge of the cliff, dropping to hands and knees in the last few meters, creeping forward, fearful of what she might see.