Ranger Gathering

Maddie stood in the doorway and watched him for some time.

“You know,” she said at last, “there are people who pack as though they intend to find things again later.”

Will glanced over his shoulder. “And there are people who stand in doorways making unhelpful comments.”

“I’m being very helpful. I’m warning you that your bag is about to explode.”

“It’s not about to explode,” Will said, pushing down on the cloak with one hand while reaching for a pair of socks with the other. “It’s simply full.”

“It was full ten minutes ago.”

Will gave the satchel a final shove, then sat back and regarded his work with mild satisfaction. “There. Perfect.”

Maddie crossed the room, took one look inside, and made a small sound of disgust. Before Will could object, she began removing items and laying them in neat piles on the bed.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Saving you from yourself.”

“I don’t need saving from myself. I’ve packed for missions longer than you’ve been alive.”

“Yes,” Maddie said, folding one of his shirts, “and apparently nobody ever had the courage to tell you that you’re terrible at it.”

Will opened his mouth, then closed it again, because the shirt she had folded took up half the space it had before. She folded another, then another, fitting each piece of clothing neatly into the satchel until the bag, traitorously, began to look almost spacious.

Will watched in silence for a few moments.

Maddie didn’t look up. “You’re welcome.”

“I didn’t thank you.”

“You were about to.”

“I was not.”

“You were thinking it.”

Will considered denying this, but since he had in fact been thinking something uncomfortably close to gratitude, he decided to change the subject.

“Are you packed?”

Maddie gave him a look. “I’ve been packed since breakfast.”

“Overconfident,” Will said. “That’s dangerous.”

“Disorganized,” Maddie replied, pressing his spare socks into the side of the bag. “That’s embarrassing.”

Will took it from her, tested its weight, and found—annoyingly—that it sat more comfortably on his shoulder than it had before.

He nodded once. “Adequate.”

Maddie smiled. “That’s Ranger for thank you, isn’t it?”

“It’s Ranger for don’t push your luck.”

They left shortly after dawn.

The message from Gilan had arrived two days earlier, carried by a courier who had looked very relieved to be rid of it. That, Will had thought, was never a good sign. Gilan’s messages tended to be brief under ordinary circumstances, but this one had been especially irritating.

Strange lights reported at old border fortress. Locals refusing to approach after sunset. They suspect ghosts. Possible criminal activity. Investigate.

That was all.

There was no map beyond a rough marking of the fortress’s location, no description of the lights, no names of witnesses, and no indication of what “possible criminal activity” might mean. It was exactly the sort of message Gilan enjoyed sending: vague enough to be unhelpful, official enough to be unavoidable, and just interesting enough that Will couldn’t ignore it.

Maddie, naturally, had questions.

She began asking them before they had even cleared the trees surrounding the cabin.

“What kind of lights?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many locals saw them?”

“I don’t know.”

“How old is the fortress?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why was it abandoned?”

“Maddie.”

“What?”

Will turned in the saddle and looked at her. “I don’t know.”

She guided Bumper around a rut in the road, frowning. “You don’t have to say it like that.”

“You’ve asked me seven questions in five minutes, and the answer to all of them is the same. I thought I’d save us both some time.”

“Well, Gilan’s letter was useless.”

“Gilan’s letters often are.”

“Do you think he does that on purpose?”

“Almost certainly.”

Maddie considered this with the serious expression of someone adding another grievance to a growing list. “That seems irresponsible.”

“It’s educational.”

“That’s what people say when they’re being irresponsible.”

Will smiled faintly and let Tug choose his way along the forest path. The morning was cool and damp, with mist clinging to the lower ground and beads of moisture illuminating the grass. The road north wound through open woodland at first, then gradually narrowed as they approached the border country, where farms became fewer, and trees grew thicker.

By midday, Maddie had returned to the subject.

“So what do you think it is?”

“What do I think what is?”

“The lights.”

Will shifted in the saddle and shrugged. “Could be smugglers.”

“Could be bandits?”

“Possibly.”

“Could be soldiers from across the border?”

“Unlikely, but not impossible.”

“Could be ghosts?”

Will didn’t answer immediately, which was a mistake, because Maddie noticed.

“You hesitated.”

“I was deciding whether that question deserved a serious answer.”

“That means you considered it.”

“It means I considered ignoring it.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Maddie.”

She leaned slightly forward in her saddle, eyes bright with the sort of curiosity that was admirable in an apprentice and exhausting in a traveling companion. “The villagers think it’s ghosts, don’t they?”

“Villagers often think things are ghosts when they don’t want to walk somewhere after dark. And ghosts are almost easier to understand than criminals.”

“That isn’t the same as saying you don’t believe in them.”

Will glanced at her then, and something in her tone told him she wasn’t merely teasing anymore.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Will?”

The question settled between them more heavily than he expected.

For a while, the only sound was the steady rhythm of the horses’ hooves. Tug lowered his head as they passed under a canopy of oak, and patches of pale sunlight slid over Will’s cloak, then vanished as the branches moved in the breeze.

Before Alyss died, he would have laughed at it and answered without hesitation. No, of course not. Ghosts belonged to frightened children, lonely shepherds, and travelers who had spent too many nights sleeping badly in unfamiliar places. Rangers dealt in tracks, signs, patterns, evidence. A light in a ruined tower was a lantern. A whisper in the dark was wind through stone. A shadow at the edge of sight was only a shadow.

Afterward, things had become less simple.

He had never truly believed he saw her. He knew that. He was not a fool, and grief had not robbed him of sense, no matter how close it had come.

The blonde woman turning a corner in a crowded marketplace was never Alyss. The pale figure at the edge of the trees near the cabin vanished because it had never been there at all. The voice he thought he heard sometimes, soft and amused and heartbreakingly familiar, was only memory moving through silence.

He knew all of that.

But knowing a thing and feeling it were not always the same.

There had been mornings when he woke from dreams so vivid that for several seconds he expected to find her by the fire. There had been evenings when the cabin seemed to hold the shape of her absence so clearly that he almost turned to speak to her. And there had been one night, not long after her death, when he had stood outside beneath the stars because he could have sworn--could have sworn--he heard her laugh from the trees.

He had dismissed it afterward, of course.

He had dismissed all of it.

The trouble was that dismissal did not make memory any less powerful.

At length, he said, “I think if ghosts exist, they probably have better things to do than rattle around old fortresses frightening farmers.”

Maddie stared at him. “That is the most annoying answer you could possibly have given.”

Will shrugged and kept his eyes on the path ahead.

They reached the village late in the afternoon, and it took less than an hour to discover that the locals were perfectly willing to talk about the fortress, provided they were safely inside a warm room with the doors locked. The innkeeper described blue-white lights moving along the ruined walls. A farmer claimed to have seen a figure standing in the broken tower with no lantern in hand, glowing faintly against the night sky.

An elderly woman told them that the fortress had been cursed since the old border wars, which she described in great detail until Will gently pointed out that those wars had ended nearly two hundred years ago.

“Curses can be patient,” she informed him.

Will didn't know how to answer that.

By sunset they were approaching the ruins.

The fortress stood on a low ridge overlooking a narrow valley that once must have been an important crossing point. Time had not been kind to it. One wall had collapsed almost entirely, spilling stones down the slope like the bones of some long-dead animal. Ivy climbed the remaining tower, and young trees had rooted themselves in cracks along the battlements. The gatehouse had lost its doors, and the empty archway gaped black in the fading light.

It was an excellent place for ghosts, Will had to admit.

It was also an excellent place for smugglers.

They made camp well away from the ridge, hidden among pines with a clear view of the fortress. Will allowed no fire, which Maddie accepted with only mild grumbling, and they ate cold bread, cheese, and dried meat while the last light drained from the sky.

For the first few hours, nothing happened.

The ruins stood silent beneath the stars. An owl called from somewhere behind them, and once a fox barked sharply in the valley, making Maddie turn her head with sudden interest. Otherwise, the night was pretty calm.

Then, shortly after midnight, a light appeared in the broken tower.

It was small at first, no brighter than a candle cupped in someone’s hand. Then it moved sideways, vanished, and reappeared lower down near the collapsed wall.

Maddie’s hand went to her bow. “You saw that.”

“I did.”

“It’s moving.”

“Yes.”

“That’s unsettling.”

“Only if you were hoping for ghosts.”

She glanced at him. “You’re sure it isn’t?”

Will continued watching the light as it bobbed briefly, disappeared behind a broken stretch of stone, then emerged again near the base of the tower.

“Ghosts,” he said, “rarely carry lanterns.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m willing to make an educated guess.”

They waited another half hour, long enough to see two more lights appear and vanish within the ruins. Then Will rose, settling his cloak around him.

“Stay close. Step where I step. And if I signal you to stop, stop.”

Maddie gave him a look that said she had heard this particular instruction before, possibly several hundred times.

“I know.”

They moved toward the fortress through the long grass. The wind shifted along the ridge, carrying with it the smell of damp stone, wet leaves, and something else beneath it: smoke, very faint, and something that smelled of animal sweat.

Will paused, crouching beside a fallen section of wall. Maddie dropped beside him.

“Not ghosts?” she whispered.

“Not unless they’ve started keeping pack animals.”

Finding the entrance took longer. Whoever was using the fortress knew enough to avoid the obvious archways and broken gates. Will circled the outer wall twice before he found the scrape marks near a bramble-choked section of collapsed stone. The marks were faint, but fresh: boots, more than one pair, and the drag of something heavy.

He parted the brambles carefully.

Behind them, half-hidden under fallen masonry, was a narrow opening leading down into darkness.

Maddie leaned closer, her voice barely audible, and very visibly excited. “Secret tunnel.”

“Old drainage passage, probably.”

“That’s less fun.”

“Most true things are.”

They slipped inside.

The passage sloped downward beneath the fortress, and the air changed immediately. Aboveground, the night had been cool and clean. Here it was stale, damp, and carrying the mineral smell of old stone and earth. Will led the way with one hand brushing the wall, moving slowly enough that loose gravel would not betray them. Behind him, Maddie was silent, and despite himself, he felt a small flicker of pride. There had been a time when she would have bumped into something within the first dozen steps and then looked offended that the darkness had dared to exist to inconvenience her.

Voices reached them after several minutes.

Men’s voices.

Maddie leaned close to his shoulder. “Definitely ghosts.”

Will’s mouth twitched. “Very talkative ones.”

The tunnel widened ahead into a storage chamber beneath the fortress. Three men were there, seated around a small hooded lantern, with crates stacked behind them against the wall. One was sharpening a knife with theatrical concentration. Another was counting coins. The third had his boots off and appeared to be asleep.

Smugglers, then.

Will signaled Maddie left, then pointed to himself and the man with the knife. She nodded once.

It should have been simple.

And for the first ten seconds, it was.

Will moved first, striking the knife from the man’s hand and bringing his saxe knife hilt down hard against the side of his head. Maddie crossed the chamber in the same instant, catching the coin-counter off guard as she slammed a knee to his gut, then a punch under his chin as he folded forward with a startled grunt. The sleeping man woke just in time to see Will standing over him with an arrow nocked and pointed very steadily at his chest.

“Don’t,” Will advised.

The man didn’t.

Unfortunately, someone in the next chamber did.

A shout rang out, followed by the scrape of boots and the unmistakable sound of steel being drawn.

Will sighed. “I dislike it when people shout.”

The next few minutes were confused, loud, and deeply inconvenient.

More smugglers than Will had expected poured from the adjoining tunnel. Six at least, perhaps seven, armed with short swords, clubs, and the frantic confidence of men who had been surprised and were trying to turn fear into aggression.

The chamber was too narrow for proper archery, so Will fired once, dropped one man with a shaft through the shoulder, then slung his bow and drew his saxe knife and throwing knife in one smooth motion.

Maddie fought at his left; she had improved more than she realized in recent months. There was less wasted movement now, fewer dramatic flourishes, more practicality in her stance.

Will had time to think that Halt would have approved.

Then a smuggler came at him from the right, and approval became less important than not being stabbed.

He ducked under the first slash, caught the man’s wrist, and drove his knee upward. The smuggler doubled over with a strangled sound. Will shoved him backward into another attacker, but the movement took him half a step too far to the side.

His boot found nothing beneath it.

For one brief, deeply unpleasant moment, Will had just enough time to realize that the floor beneath the old fortress was not nearly as dependable as he had assumed. Then the darkness below him opened like a mouth, and he dropped.

He hit the side of the shaft first, shoulder glancing off rough stone with a burst of pain that stole the breath from his lungs. A heartbeat later he struck the bottom hard enough to make the world flash white behind his eyes.

For several seconds, he lay still, stunned by the abrupt silence after the chaos above. Somewhere overhead, men were shouting. He heard Maddie’s strikers crack against something with a sound that was almost musical, followed by a cry of pain that was not hers.

That, Will decided dimly, was encouraging.

He tried to draw breath and discovered that his ribs objected strongly to the idea. His shoulder objected as well, and his hip had apparently decided to join the discussion. He lay on his back and stared up at the square of dim light overhead, forcing himself to breathe.

In.

Out.

And again.

His vision steadied by degrees just as a head appeared over the edge of the opening.

“Maddie?” he called, though his voice came out weaker than he liked.

“No,” she said, breathless. “A ghost.”

Despite everything, he smiled. “That’s unfortunate. I was hoping for someone useful.”

“You fell into a hole,” she said.

“I noticed.”

“That was pretty dumb.”

“I thought it might be useful to inspect it.”

Maddie disappeared for a moment, and after a bit of shuffling, a rope dropped down beside him a moment later. Will took hold of it with his good hand, then paused as pain ran through his shoulder like fire.

Above him, Maddie’s voice softened. “Can you climb?”

He could hear what she was trying not to say. Can you climb, or do I need to come down and get you?

Pride suggested he should say yes immediately, sense and comfort suggested otherwise.

Unfortunately, sense had been speaking in Halt’s voice more often lately, which made it especially irritating.

“Not quickly,” Will said.

“Then don’t,” Maddie replied. “Tie it around yourself.”

It took longer than he liked, but eventually the rope was secure beneath his arms. Maddie braced herself above, and with a combination of her pulling, his pushing, and a considerable amount of muttered commentary from both of them, Will emerged from the shaft and rolled onto solid stone.

For a moment he lay there, breathing hard.

Maddie crouched beside him. “You look terrible.”

“Thank you.”

She looked him over quickly, hands efficient as she checked for bleeding, broken bones, and other consequences of falling through neglected architecture. Will allowed it because he didn't have the energy to protest.

The remaining smugglers had fled deeper into the tunnels.

Maddie helped Will to his feet, though he insisted on calling it “steadying” rather than helping. Together they moved after the smugglers, slower now but still silent enough to surprise two of them as they tried to force open a concealed exit beyond the storage chamber.

Maddie took the first down with an arrow to the man's calf. Will, whose body was aching in a way that promised a miserable morning and a probable infirmary visit, contented himself with placing the point of his saxe knife against the second man’s throat.

“I’m having a difficult night,” he said pleasantly. “Please don’t improve it by making me chase you.”

The man surrendered pretty quickly after that.

By dawn, the fortress no longer seemed haunted, merely damp, broken, and chock-full of illegal goods. The lights, as they suspected, had come from hooded lanterns carried through the old passageways. The strange wails that had frightened the villagers were nothing more supernatural than wind passing through cracks in the stone, helped along, Will suspected, by men who knew that frightened locals were less likely to investigate.

The smugglers were bound together in the lower chamber, their goods identified and counted as best as Will could manage with one arm working poorly.

There were bolts of stolen expensive cloth, casks of untaxed brandy, and several crates of expensive metal. The tunnels connected the ruined fortress to a concealed exit in a ravine beyond the ridge, allowing the men to move goods unseen while the villagers avoided the place out of fear of supernatural curses.

Will had to admit it was a very clever arrangement.

He would have admired it more if his shoulder and ribs had hurt less.

“Ghosts are better funded than I expected,” Maddie said, her eyebrows raised.

Will, sitting on a fallen block of stone while one of the captured smugglers glared at him, adjusted the sling Maddie had made for his arm.

“Smuggling is a lucrative afterlife, apparently.”

She smiled despite herself, then looked toward the shaft again, the humor faded as her smile dropped.

“You really could have died, ya know...”

Will followed her gaze. In daylight, the hole looked even more unpleasant than it had in the lantern glow the previous night. Deep enough to kill a man if he landed badly. Deep enough to make Maddie’s fear pretty damn rational.

He glanced at her and saw that she was waiting for him to make light of it.

So he did.

“I suppose I came rather close to becoming one of your ghosts.”

Maddie rolled her eyes, but some of the tension left her shoulders. “You would make an awful ghost.”

“I disagree. I think I’d be excellent at it.”

“You’d be unbearable.”

“Exactly. I’d haunt you specifically.”

“Why me?”

“Because it'd be fun.”

He continued, "You'd be doing the mission reports because I'd be too dead to do them myself, and I'd appear over your shoulder and point out spelling mistakes."

“You already do that alive.”

“Yes, but as a ghost I could do it at all hours.”

For a second, Maddie tried very hard not to laugh. Will could see the effort in her face, which made it worse. Then she gave in, and he found himself laughing too, though it hurt his ribs and he had to stop almost immediately.

It was a strange habit Rangers had, laughing after literal near-death experiences. Will had noticed it years ago in Halt and had thought, at the time, that it was merely one more sign of his mentor’s deeply questionable character.

Now he understood it better. There were only so many ways to tell the body that danger had passed. Sometimes laughter did the work better than words.

The village constable arrived shortly after sunrise with six men and a cart. The smugglers were handed over. The goods were counted. The tunnel entrances were marked for sealing.

The villagers, who only hours earlier had been speaking of curses and spirits, now spoke very confidently about how they had suspected smugglers all along.

Maddie listened to this with a raised eyebrow.

They remained long enough to make sure the prisoners were secure, then began the ride home late that morning. Will’s shoulder had stiffened by then, and every jolt of Tug’s gait sent a fresh ache through his ribs. Maddie watched him from the corner of her eye for the first hour.

Eventually, he said, “If you keep looking at me like that, I’ll assume you’re concerned.”

“I’m making sure you don’t fall off your horse.”

“That sounds like concern.”

“I'm looking out for myself, I don't want to find a new mentor if you fall off and crack your head open.”

“I see.”

“You’re welcome.”

Will looked ahead, smiling faintly. “Adequate.”

Maddie groaned. “That is not going to become a thing.”

“I think it already has.”

They reached Castle Araluen two days later; it was closer to where they were than Redmont was after all. Will figured he'd save them both the time of writing and sending off a report and just do it in person. Plus, it had been a long while since he had seen his old friends at Araluen, and he figured Maddie could use a day or so with her parents after that surprisingly difficult mission.

Will allowed them exactly one evening of rest before they reported to the Commandant.

Gilan received them in his office with the expression of a man who had expected trouble and was pleased to find that it had at least been interesting. He listened as Will gave the verbal account, interrupting occasionally with questions and once with a poorly concealed smile when Maddie described the shaft beneath the tunnel.

“You fell into it?” Gilan asked, his voice quivering slightly as he tried to suppress the laughter building in his chest.

Will regarded him coolly. “Temporarily.”

Gilan’s smile widened. “That’s a new term for falling.”

Maddie looked between them, clearly enjoying herself far more than was respectful.

When the account was finished, Gilan leaned back in his chair and nodded. “Good work. I’ll send word to the border fief. The baron there will want to inspect the goods himself.”

Maddie shifted slightly, clearly hoping that meant they were dismissed.

Gilan smiled.

It was not a reassuring smile.

“And I’ll need the written report, of course, by tomorrow before you head home.”

Maddie nodded, knowing his assignment didn't include her. She was switching her weight from one foot to the other, anxious for a hot meal and a good night's sleep.

And Will felt a warm and entirely unreasonable glow of satisfaction before he spoke his next words.

“Maddie will write it,” he said.

She turned to him. “What?”

“Excellent,” Gilan said, far too quickly. “Good practice.”

“What?!” Maddie repeated, this time including both of them in her disbelief.

Will adjusted his cloak around his injured shoulder with an exaggerated flinch. “I would do it myself, naturally, but my arm is wounded.”

“You injured your left shoulder, not your right hand.”

“The pain travels.”

“It does not.”

“It might.”

Gilan’s eyes gleamed. “Best not to risk it.”

Maddie stared at them both as the horrible truth dawned on her. “You planned this.”

“I fell into a hole,” Will said. “Show some respect.”

It was, he had to admit, deeply satisfying. Halt had made him write reports after missions, usually when Will was tired, hungry, injured, or some combination of the three. At the time, Will had considered it unnecessary cruelty disguised as discipline.

But later on, in their quarters at Araluen, watching Maddie scratch out half a line and mutter something uncomplimentary about old tunnels, Will now began to see the wisdom in his old mentor's unorthodox teaching methods.

Maddie looked up suddenly. “You’re enjoying this.”

“A little.”

“A lot.”

Will took a sip of coffee. “Possibly.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re making me write this because Halt used to make you write reports, didn't he?”

“Now that would just be petty.”

“It is petty.”

“It is educational.”

Maddie stared at him after hearing that world one too many times in the last two days.

Educational.

Will lowered his mug slowly.

He had heard that tone before. Worse, he had used that expression before: the calm, mildly infuriating certainty of a mentor who had already decided that mild discomfort was good for an apprentice. He thought of Halt sitting by a fire, offering dry comments while Will struggled through some unpleasant but supposedly character-building task. He thought of the raised eyebrow, the folded arms, the maddening ability to make silence feel like criticism.

Then he thought of himself, sitting by the fire, drinking coffee, making Maddie write the report.

The realization was sudden and deeply unsettling.

Maddie saw it happen. Her expression shifted from annoyance to triumph.

“Oh,” she said.

Will said nothing.

“Oh, that’s bad.”

“What is?”

“You’re turning into Halt.”

Will opened his mouth at once, because the accusation was outrageous and clearly required a firm denial.

Unfortunately, no denial came.

He sat there with his mouth slightly open, one hand around his coffee cup, and realized that he could not think of a single convincing argument against her.

Maddie leaned back in her chair, smiling now. “You even did the eyebrow thing.”

“I did not.”

“You absolutely did.”

“I have my own eyebrow thing.”

“That’s exactly what Halt would say.”

Will looked into the fire, where the flames shifted and cracked softly over the logs. For a moment, he imagined Halt’s voice, dry and amused, telling him that there were worse fates than becoming like one’s mentor. Will suspected that it was true.

He also knew he would never admit it aloud.

Across the table, Maddie dipped her pen again and returned to the report, though she was still smiling.

Will settled back in his chair.

“Make sure you include the part where I heroically survived falling into a pit,” he said.

Maddie did not look up. “I’m writing that you fell through rotten wood.”

“Same thing.”

“It is not.”

“History is only written by the victors.” He quoted.

“And victors so often lie.”

Will smiled into his coffee.