Icebound Land Read Free Page B

was his job to enforce them. And Halt, like all Rangers, was bound to obey them.
    “You don’t need me!” Halt burst out. “I’m wasting time hunting these imitation Foldars all over the kingdom when I should be going after Will!”
    “The King has made Foldar our number-one priority,” Crowley reminded him. “Sooner or later, we’ll find the real one.”
    Halt made a dismissive gesture. “And you have forty-nine other Rangers to do the job!” he said. “For God’s sake, that should be enough.”
    “King Duncan wants the other forty-nine. And he wants you. He trusts you and depends on you. You’re the best we have.”
    “I’ve done my share,” Halt replied quietly, and Crowley knew how much it hurt the other man to say those words. He also knew that his best reply would be silence—silence that would force Halt further into the sort of rationalization that Crowley knew he hated.
    “The kingdom owes that boy,” Halt said, with a little more certainty in his tone.
    “The boy is a Ranger,” Crowley said coldly.
    “An apprentice,” Halt corrected him, and now Crowley stood, knocking his chair over with the violence of his movement.
    “A Ranger apprentice assumes the same duties as a Ranger. We always have, Halt. For every Ranger, the rule is the same: kingdom first. That’s our oath. You took it. I took it. And so did Will.”
    There was an angry silence between the two men, made all the uglier by the years they had lived as friends and comrades. Halt, Crowley realized, was possibly his closest friend in the world. Now here they were, trading bitter words and angry arguments. He reached behind him and straightened the fallen chair, then made a gesture of peace to Halt.
    “Look,” he said in a milder tone, “just help me clear up this Foldar business. Two months, maybe three, then you can go after Will, with my blessing.”
    Halt’s grizzled head was already shaking before he’d finished.
    “In two months he could be dead. Or sold on as a slave and lost forever. I need to go now while the trail is still warm. I promised him,” he added after a pause, his voice thick with misery.
    “No,” said Crowley, with a note of finality. Hearing it, Halt squared his shoulders.
    “Then I’ll see the King,” he said.
    Crowley looked down at his desk.
    “The King won’t see you,” he said flatly. He looked up and saw the surprise and betrayal in Halt’s eyes.
    “He won’t see me? He refuses me?” For over twenty years, Halt had been one of the King’s closest confidants, with constant, unquestioned access to the royal chambers.
    “He knows what you’ll ask, Halt. He doesn’t want to refuse you, so he refuses to see you.”
    Now the surprise and betrayal were gone from Halt’s eyes. In their place was anger. Bitter anger.
    “Then I’ll just have to change his mind,” he said quietly.

3
    A S THE WOLFSHIP ROUNDED THE POINT AND REACHED THE shelter of the bay, the heavy swell died away. Inside the small natural harbor, the tall, rocky headlands broke the force of both wind and swell so that the water was flat calm, its surface broken only by the spreading V of the wolfship’s wake.
    “Is this Skandia?” Evanlyn asked.
    Will shrugged uncertainly. It certainly didn’t look the way he had expected. There were only a few small, ramshackle huts on the shore, with no sign of a town. And no people.
    “It doesn’t seem big enough, does it?” he said.
    Svengal, coiling a rope nearby, laughed at their ignorance.
    “This isn’t Skandia,” he told them. “We’re barely halfway to Skandia. This is Skorghijl.” Seeing their puzzled looks, he explained further. “We can’t make the full crossing to Skandia now. That storm in the Narrow Sea delayed us so long that the Summer Gales have set in. We’ll shelter here until they’ve blown out. That’s what those huts are for.”
    Will looked dubiously at the weathered timber huts. They looked grim and uncomfortable.
    “How long will that take?” he