The Battle for Skandia Read Free

could speak, Horace forestalled him.
    â€œWhat ‘what’ are you asking me?” he said. Then, thinking how to make his question clearer, he added, “Or to put it another way, why are you asking ‘what’?”
    Controlling himself with enormous restraint, and making no secret of the fact, Halt said, very precisely: “You were about to ask a question.”
    Horace frowned. “I was?”
    Halt nodded. “You were. I saw you take a breath to ask it.”
    â€œI see,” said Horace. “And what was it about?”
    For just a second or two, Halt was speechless. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then finally found the strength to speak.
    â€œThat is what I was asking you,” he said. “When I said ‘what,’ I was asking you what you were about to ask me.”
    â€œI wasn’t about to ask you ‘what,’” Horace replied, and Halt glared at him suspiciously. It occurred to him that Horace could be indulging himself in a gigantic leg pull, that he was secretly laughing at Halt. This, Halt could have told him, was not a good career move. Rangers were not people who took kindly to being laughed at. He studied the boy’s open face and guileless blue eyes and decided that his suspicion was ill-founded.
    â€œThen what, if I may use that word once more, were you about to ask me?”
    Horace drew breath once more, then hesitated. “I forget,” he said. “What were we talking about?”
    â€œNever mind,” Halt muttered, and nudged Abelard into a canter for a few strides to draw ahead of his companion.
    Sometimes the Ranger could be confusing, and Horace thought it best to forget the whole conversation. Yet, as happens so often, the moment he stopped trying to consciously remember the thought that had prompted his question, it popped back into his mind again.
    â€œAre there many passes?” he called to Halt.
    The Ranger twisted in his saddle to look back at him. “What?” he asked.
    Horace wisely chose to ignore the fact that they were heading for dangerous territory with that word again. He gestured to the mountains frowning down upon them.
    â€œThrough the mountains. Are there many passes into Skandia through the mountains?”
    Halt checked Abelard’s stride momentarily, allowing the bay to catch up with them, then resumed his pace.
    â€œThree or four,” he said.
    â€œThen don’t the Skandians guard them?” Horace asked. It seemed logical to him that they would.
    â€œOf course they do,” Halt replied. “The mountains form their principal line of defense.”
    â€œSo how did you plan for us to get past them?”
    The Ranger hesitated. It was a question that had been taxing his mind since they had taken the road from Chateau Montsombre. If he were by himself, he would have no trouble slipping past unseen. With Horace in company, and riding a big, spirited battlehorse, it might be a more difficult matter. He had a few ideas but had yet to settle on any one of them.
    â€œI’ll think of something,” he temporized, and Horace nodded wisely, satisfied that Halt would indeed think of something. In Horace’s world, that was what Rangers did best, and the best thing a warrior apprentice could do was let the Ranger get on with thinking while a warrior took care of walloping anyone who needed to be walloped along the way. He settled back in his saddle, contented with his lot in life.

3
    ERAK STARFOLLOWER, WOLFSHIP CAPTAIN AND ONE OF THE senior war jarls of the Skandians, made his way through the low-ceilinged, wood-paneled lodge to the Great Hall. His face was marked with a frown as he went. He had plenty to do, with the spring raiding season coming on. His ship needed repairs and refitting. Most of all, it needed the fine-tuning that only a few days at sea could bring.
    Now this summons from Ragnak boded ill for his plans. Particularly since the summons had come through the