Icebound Land Read Free

plunging motion ceased, and once again the ship rode smoothly across the face of the rollers.
    Erak, his beard and hair rimed with salt, hauled tiredly on the sweep, bringing the ship around in a smooth curve to face north once more.
    “Let’s head for Cape Shelter,” he told his crew.

2
    H ALT STOOD MOTIONLESS AGAINST THE MASSIVE TRUNK OF an oak tree as the bandits swarmed out of the forest to surround the carriage. He was in full view but nobody saw him. In part this was due to the fact that the robbers were totally intent on their prey, a wealthy merchant and his wife. For their part, they were equally distracted, staring with horror at the armed men who now surrounded their carriage in the clearing.
    But in the main, it was due to the camouflage cloak that Halt wore, its cowl pulled up over his head to leave his face in shadow, and the fact that he stood absolutely stock-still. Like all Rangers, Halt knew that the secret of merging into the background lay with the ability to remain unmoving, even when people seemed to be looking straight at him. Believe you are unseen, went the Ranger saying, and it will be so.
    A burly figure, clad entirely in black, now emerged from the trees and approached the carriage. Halt’s eyes narrowed for a second, then he sighed silently. Another wild-goose chase, he thought.
    The figure bore a slight resemblance to Foldar, the man Halt had been pursuing since the end of the war with Morgarath. Foldar had been Morgarath’s senior lieutenant. He had managed to escape capture when his leader died and his army of subhuman Wargals faded away.
    But Foldar was no mindless beast. He was a thinking, planning human being—and a totally warped and evil one. The son of a noble Araluen family, he had murdered both his parents after an argument over a horse. He was barely a teenager at the time and he had escaped by fleeing into the Mountains of Rain and Night, where Morgarath recognized a kindred spirit and enlisted him. Now he was the sole surviving member of Morgarath’s band and King Duncan had made his capture and imprisonment a number-one priority for the kingdom’s armed forces.
    The problem was, Foldar impersonators were springing up everywhere—usually in the form of everyday bandits like this one. They used the man’s name and savage reputation to strike fear into their victims, making it easier to rob them. And as each one sprang up, Halt and his colleagues had to waste time tracking them down. He felt a slow burning of anger at the time he was wasting on these minor nuisances. Halt had other matters to attend to. He had a promise to keep and fools like this were preventing him from doing so. The fake Foldar had stopped by the carriage now. The black cloak with its high collar was somewhat similar to the one Foldar wore. But Foldar was a dandy and his cloak was immaculate black velvet and satin, whereas this was simple wool, badly dyed and patched in several places, with a collar of crudely tanned black leather.
    The man’s bonnet was unkempt and badly creased as well, while the black swan’s feather that adorned it was bent in the middle, probably where some careless bandit had sat on it. Now the man spoke, and his attempt to imitate Foldar’s lisping, sarcastic tones was spoiled by his thick rural accent and clumsy grammar.
    “Step down from the carriage, good sor and mad’m,” he said, sweeping a clumsy bow. “And fear not, good lady, the noble Foldar ne’er harms one as fair as thee art.” He attempted a sardonic, evil laugh. It came out more as a thin cackle.
    The “good lady” was anything but fair. She was middle-aged, overweight and plain in the extreme. But that was no reason why she should be subjected to this sort of terror, Halt thought grimly. She held back, whimpering with fear at the sight of the black figure before her. “Foldar” took a pace forward, his voice harsher, his tone more threatening.
    “Get down, missus!” he shouted. “Or I’ll hand you