The Hunters

  But Rikard had more than his bare hands. He pulled the blanket over himself and reached down inside his knee-high boot. A long, razor-sharp blade was concealed in a specially fashioned sheath, running down the inside of the boot and hidden by a flap of soft leather. On board, under constant scrutiny and with crew members always close by, he’d had no opportunity to access it.

  He smiled to himself. Now, things were different.

  Hal stooped to enter the small tent where Edvin was caring for Ingvar. The wounded boy was lying on his back, on a soft bed of pine boughs overlaid with a thick blanket. Another blanket covered him but, as Hal watched, the big boy muttered and tried to toss it to one side.

  Edvin was kneeling beside the prone figure, with a basin of cool water and several wet towels. He took hold of Ingvar’s arm and stopped him tossing the blanket aside. He was worried by the fact that he could this do so easily. Ingvar’s strength had become legendary among them, but now . . .

  Sensing Hal’s presence, Edvin looked up. ‘He’s as weak as a kitten,’ he said.

  Hal nodded and knelt on the opposite side of the bed. He reached out and laid his palm on Ingvar’s forehead. The heat coming from the big boy’s skin was frightening.

  ‘He seems to be worse,’ he said sadly. ‘Am I imagining it, or has the fever grown stronger?’

  Edvin shrugged. Then he dipped one of the towels in the water basin and began sponging Ingvar’s forehead, face and neck.

  ‘I’ve no real way of measuring it,’ he said, ‘but I think you’re right. He definitely seems to be reaching a crisis point.’

  Hal looked at the new bandage on Ingvar’s side, above the hip. ‘You’ve re-dressed the wound?’

  Edvin glanced at it and nodded. ‘Cleaned it and re-bandaged it. That’s all I can do.’

  Ingvar’s skin had dried again. The fleeting comfort of the water was gone and he tried to move restlessly on the bed. Gently, Edvin restrained him.

  ‘Settle down, Ingvar,’ he said softly. ‘Take it easy.’

  He took a fresh towel from the basin. Once again, the relief was almost instantaneous and Ingvar quieted under the cooling touch.

  Hal studied Edvin as he tended to Ingvar. He was small in stature and, like all of the Herons, he’d been something of a social outcast as he grew up in Hallasholm. But he was studious and highly intelligent, Hal knew, and when he took on a task, he stuck to it.

  As he had that thought, he realised that Edvin was close to exhaustion, with the emotional strain of his concern for Ingvar and the physical effort of his nonstop ministering to his shipmate. He reached out and took the damp towel from Edvin’s hand.

  ‘I’ll take a turn for a while,’ he said and, when Edvin looked up to remonstrate with him, he added firmly, ‘There’s nothing here that I can’t do. You need to rest. You need a break. Go and get something to eat. The others have had dinner but I told them to save some for you.’

  Edvin looked at him suspiciously. ‘They’ve had dinner? Who cooked?’

  ‘Stig,’ Hal told him.

  Edvin pulled a face. ‘Stig cooked?’ Among his various tasks, Edvin was the official crew cook and he had misgivings about the other boys’ abilities. When they’d first set out from Hallasholm, each of them had cooked in a roster, and the efforts of most of the others had been decidedly unpalatable. Edvin had finally taken on the role of cook, declaring that he had no wish to be poisoned.

  ‘He’s improved a great deal.’ Hal grinned. ‘Either that or he was foxing in the first place and didn’t want the job. In any event, he caught some nice snapper in the bay and he made a fish stew. Lydia found some wild onions in the forest, and he rummaged through your stock of spices and flavourings.’

  Edvin continued to look doubtful, so Hal played his trump card.

  ‘Thorn had a second helping,’ he said.

  Edvin raised his eyebrows in surprise. Thorn was a notoriously picky eater.

  ‘In that case, I’d better try it.’ He rose from his kneeling position beside Ingvar, watching as Hal continued to bathe the wounded boy with cold water.

  ‘Call me if there’s any problem,’ Edvin said.

  Hal nodded. ‘I will. Tell Lydia to come and take over from me in two hours. And get some sleep yourself.’

  He wet the towel in the basin, wrung it out again and continued to bathe Ingvar. It was frightening to see how quickly the thin film of water seemed to dry on his overheated skin. Satisfied that Ingvar was in good hands, Edvin turned and left. Hal heard his soft groan of relief as he straightened up once he was outside.

  It was just before dawn. Hal became aware of the birdsong in the trees lining the beach as the birds sensed the coming sunrise and began their daily chorus. He’d resumed caring for Ingvar, taking over from Lydia sometime after midnight.

  He’d nodded off several times as he watched over the big boy. Each time, he had been roused by Ingvar’s muttering as the waves of fever ran over him. He continued the seemingly hopeless task of cooling his friend’s body with the towels. The water bucket was almost empty, he realised. He’d have to refill it.

  Ingvar seemed to improve at one stage. His calm periods lasted longer between the bouts of muttering and tossing. For a while, Hal felt a ray of hope, thinking that he might have turned the corner and begun to recover. Then he deteriorated once more, so that the water barely eased his discomfort. The fever was bad enough in itself, Hal thought. But it was also draining Ingvar’s strength. His body couldn’t relax as it fought off the floods of burning heat that raced through it. And as his strength became further and further depleted, he had fewer reserves to fight the sickness and it took a firmer hold on him. It was a vicious cycle.

  He heard a soft footfall outside the tent and looked up as Thorn entered.

  The old sea wolf studied his young friend, seeing his red-rimmed eyes and haggard expression.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ he asked.

  Hal shook his head uncertainly. The daylight outside the tent was growing stronger.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. His voice was thick with fatigue. ‘A few hours, I guess.’

  Thorn knelt and took the damp towel he was holding from his unresisting grasp.

  ‘You’re not going to do him any good if you end up collapsing yourself,’ he said.

  Hal turned an unhappy look on him. ‘I’m not doing him any good anyway,’ he said. ‘It’s hopeless, Thorn. We’re losing him.’

  Ingvar stirred, muttering and moaning softly. Thorn wet the towel and applied it to his forehead.

  ‘Nothing’s ever hopeless,’ he said firmly. ‘And he’s not lost yet. We keep going and we keep trying as long as we can. That’s what being in a brotherband is about. We don’t give up on our brothers. We give them every possible chance.’

  Hal’s shoulders sagged and he sighed deeply.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It just seems so futile.’

  ‘And it’ll seem that way right up to the point where the fever breaks,’ Thorn told him. ‘But we’ve got to stay positive. We’ve got to give Ingvar all the time and care he needs to recover.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’ Hal asked.

  It tore Thorn’s heart to see his young friend so despondent. He knew Hal was feeling responsible for Ingvar’s condition and he knew he was too young to cope with that sort of guilt.

  ‘If he doesn’t,’ he said firmly, ‘then at least we’ll know we did everything we could. Everything,’ he repeated. He watched carefully, seeing the boy’s shoulders begin to rise again as he took a deep breath and regained control of himself.

  ‘You’re right,’ Hal said. ‘Thanks, Thorn.’

  He reached out to take the towel again but Thorn shrugged him away.

  ‘I’ll look after him for a while,’ he said. ‘You go get some sleep. You look worse than he does.’

  Hal gave him a tired smile and rose from his kneeling position beside Ingvar. He walked in a crouch to the doorway, stood upright in the open air outside, and rubbed t
he stiffness out of the small of his back with both hands. He yawned and stretched. Then he glanced across the camp site and was instantly awake. There was a crumpled blanket lying beside the pine tree.

  Rikard was gone.

  All thoughts of fatigue left Hal as he pounded across the clearing, shouting to alert the others. Thorn was the first to react, erupting from the small tent and following the young skirl to where the blanket and chain lay discarded beside the pine tree.

  Ulf was on sentry duty and he was the next to arrive. His axe was thrust through a loop on his belt and it banged awkwardly against his hip as he ran from the beach to join them. Lydia wasn’t far behind him.

  ‘He must have had a knife hidden somewhere,’ Hal said bitterly. He looked up at Thorn, who was scanning the trees, looking for some sign of the missing prisoner. ‘Did anyone bother to search him?’

  Thorn met his gaze and shook his head. ‘I took him out of the town jail, remember? It didn’t occur to me that he might be armed. I assumed they would have searched him.’

  There was no note of apology in his voice. Perhaps he had made a mistake, but it was an understandable one. And there was no sense in beating his breast about it now. Rikard had been carrying a knife. He had cut through his bonds. And now he was gone. Instead of bemoaning the fact, Thorn was determined to get him back.

  ‘Where do you think he’s got to?’ Ulf said. He started towards the treeline but a curt order from Lydia stopped him before he had gone two paces.

  ‘Don’t go there!’ she snapped. When he looked at her, eyebrows raised, she continued in a more conciliatory tone. ‘Sorry, Ulf. I had to stop you before you went blundering in there. I don’t want you covering up any tracks he may have left.’

  ‘I don’t blunder, I’ll have you know,’ Ulf said, with some dignity. ‘I’m a very light treader.’

  ‘I stand corrected,’ Lydia said. ‘In that case, don’t go treading lightly in there, if you don’t mind.’

  Honour satisfied, Ulf nodded agreement. ‘Well, if you put it that way . . .’

  Stig, Jesper and Edvin had joined them by this stage.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Jesper asked. The answer was obvious. But it was a perfectly natural reaction, Hal thought.

  ‘Rikard escaped during the night,’ Lydia told him. Jesper drew breath for another question but Thorn forestalled him.

  ‘He had a knife. He cut through the leather cuffs.’

  ‘That would have taken a while,’ Stig said. ‘Those cuffs were boiled, toughened leather – they were nearly as hard as wood.’

  ‘He had all night to do it,’ Hal told him. He knelt down and picked up the cuffs, examining them. One had been severed in a series of short, jagged cuts. The other was cut in a much cleaner, straighter line.

  ‘He must have done this one first,’ he said, pointing to the ragged edge. ‘It would have been more awkward with his hands fastened. He wouldn’t have been able to get a comfortable position or much purchase.’ He mimed the awkward movements of a man with his hands bound together, trying to work on an imaginary cuff. ‘He must have been at it for hours.’

  ‘He was still here when you relieved me, Hal,’ Lydia said thoughtfully. ‘I remember noticing him just before I waved to Jesper.’ She turned to the former thief. ‘Do you remember seeing him when you went off watch?’ she asked.

  Jesper frowned, thinking. ‘I’m pretty sure I did,’ he said. ‘Yes. He was here then, I’m sure of it.’

  Then he hesitated. ‘At least, I think so. Maybe he was still here then.’ He frowned. ‘I’m not sure. I wasn’t really looking for him.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Ulf put in and Lydia looked quickly at him.

  ‘If we know when he got away, it’ll give us an idea of how far he might have gone,’ she said and he nodded, appreciating the point.

  Stig was about to say something when they were distracted by a feeble cry from the small tent. Edvin looked around the group gathered by the discarded chains. Only Stefan and Wulf were absent and they were notoriously heavy sleepers.

  ‘Is anyone with Ingvar?’ he asked and they all exchanged guilty looks. In the confusion following the discovery that Rikard had escaped, they had all forgotten their wounded friend.

  ‘Sorry, Edvin . . .’ Hal began, but Edvin was already running towards the tent.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s my job, after all,’ he called back to them. There was an awkward pause, then Thorn called their attention back to the matter at hand.

  ‘All right, so we can assume he was here until at least an hour after midnight. Then Stig took over from Jesper. My guess is that he would wait another hour for Stig to get tired and bored.’

  Stig drew himself upright. ‘I don’t get tired and bored when I’m on sentry-go,’ he protested.

  Thorn met his gaze unwaveringly. ‘Everybody gets tired and bored on sentry-go.’

  Stig subsided. ‘Yeah. I guess so. Maybe I got a little tired – and even a little bored.’

  Thorn glanced at the eastern horizon, gauging the time. There was a grey light flooding the sky but the sun was yet to appear.

  ‘So let’s say he has a four-hour start on us,’ he said.

  ‘On us?’ Hal said.

  Thorn shrugged. ‘On me, then,’ he said, correcting himself. ‘I’m going after him.’

  ‘And just where are you planning to look?’ Lydia asked him. He paused, then raised an eyebrow at her.

  ‘Well, I rather thought I’d start in the forest,’ he said.

  She looked at the trees, then back at him. ‘It’s a big forest. Which direction were you planning on looking? Bear in mind, he could have gone any way but north.’

  The sea lay to the north. It was the one direction Rikard could not have taken.

  ‘Do you know how to track?’ she continued. ‘How to look for signs and follow them?’

  Thorn hesitated. He had spoken in the heat of the moment. He was quietly furious with Rikard. He didn’t like to be bested by anyone and he counted the pirate as a very low-life specimen indeed. He realised now that Lydia was right. But, being Thorn, he didn’t want to admit it straight away.

  ‘I figure he’ll be heading for Pragha. That’s east of here. That’s where I was planning on heading.’

  ‘That’s if he’s silly enough to head there straight away,’ Lydia countered. ‘After all, he knows you know he wants to go there. He’d be a fool if he just went straight in that direction.’

  ‘He is a fool,’ Thorn said angrily, then wished he hadn’t.

  ‘He was smart enough to keep his knife hidden. And smart enough to get away.’

  ‘What are you getting at, Lydia?’ Hal put in. ‘We’re wasting time here.’

  She looked at him and nodded. ‘Exactly. We’re wasting time. And we’ll waste more if we go tramping aimlessly about the forest looking for him. I’m suggesting that I go after him. I can track him. That’s what I do, after all. You can come with me, Thorn,’ she added and he performed an exaggerated bow in her direction.

  ‘Oh, well, thank you very much. Tell me, why didn’t you just come out and say that in the first place?’

  ‘Because I know what you would have said. No. I work better alone. This is no job for a girl. I’ll be looking for Rikard with one eye and looking after you with the other one. That sort of claptrap. Am I right?’

  Thorn instinctively went to deny it, but then stopped and grinned, a little sheepishly.

  ‘Pretty much,’ he admitted. ‘All right. You’ve made your point. Let’s get our things together and go after him.’

  ‘Is it really necessary, Thorn?’ Hal said. ‘He’s told us where Zavac is headed.’

  The old sea wolf nodded fiercely. ‘Yes, it is. He may have lied to us. Once we know the Raven is really heading down the Dan, I’ll happily let him go. I’ll help him over the side with my boot, in fact. But until we’re sure, we may still need him.’

  Hal nodded, satisfied. ‘That makes sense. You’d better get going then.’

&n
bsp; ‘I’m coming too,’ Stig said, but Lydia shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Three of us will make more noise. It’ll be bad enough having Thorn blundering along with me . . .’

  ‘You know, any more of these compliments and my head won’t fit in my helmet,’ Thorn said mildly.

  She glanced at him, unsmiling. In truth, she knew Thorn could move in almost total silence. She’d seen him do so on more than one occasion. But Stig didn’t have the same skill and she’d said it to spare his feelings.

  Stig opened his mouth to object but Hal forestalled him. ‘She’s right. Lydia and Thorn will be more than a match for Rikard. You’ll stay here, Stig.’

  Stig flushed, about to make an angry rejoinder. Then he took several deep breaths and forced his anger down.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘If you say so.’

  Interesting, Thorn thought to himself. There was a time, not too long ago, when Stig would have argued and bickered about Hal’s order. They’re all growing up, Thorn thought, and faster than I can keep up with.

  Lydia nodded her gratitude to Hal. As the group broke up and headed back across the clearing to the camp site, she contrived to get beside Stig. She touched his arm and he turned to her, so that they fell behind the others.

  ‘I didn’t want to say it in front of him,’ she said softly. ‘But Hal’s going to need you here – in case things don’t go so well with Ingvar.’

  She saw understanding dawn in his eyes. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said. He patted her on the shoulder. ‘Good luck. Make sure you bring that snake in the grass back with you.’

  She smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll find him. Thorn will bring him back.’

  It took less than five minutes for Thorn and Lydia to make themselves ready. They took a blanket each. Thorn rolled his in a small tarpaulin that would serve as a tent if the weather turned, then filled a water skin and slung it over his shoulder. Lydia strapped on her heavy leather belt, with the dirk and atlatl hanging from it, quickly checked the darts in her quiver, then passed the strap over her head. The atlatl was a throwing stick with a hooked end that she used to impart extra power to the darts when she threw them.