The Silver Sun Read Free

you are no longer angry with me, I would like to ask your help. I have shot a deer. Half is for you. And I would like to trade a haunch and the hide for bread and eggs and such, if you will tell me where."
    “Ye shot a deer! But I see no bow, nor did we find the remains of a kill."
    “Here is the bow,” said Hal, drawing it out of a bag. It was less than half the length of the outlaws’ bows, very thick and powerfully curved. Ket the Red whistled. “It takes a strong arm to draw that,” he said, and eyed Hal narrowly, with mingled suspicion and respect. “But where is the deer, and how did ye hide the offal?"
    Hal laughed. “I cannot give away the secrets of Craig the Grim, even to you,” he said. “Let us say that it was well hidden. But as for the deer, it is here.” He parted the bushes to reveal the hanging carcass.
    There followed some argument. Ket maintained that it would be too dangerous for Hal to go to the village, because of the affair of the previous day, “and also,” he added kindly, “because ye're far too young, for all that ye're of man's height, lad.” He offered to go, or send one of his men. Hal would hear nothing of it.
    “You are all well known in these parts, especially you, with your flaming hair,” he retorted. “Every time you appear, you are in great danger. But who is likely to recognize me from any description our husky friend may have given? Since I must be a lad today,”—Hal took a significant pause—“I'll be just another farm lad. I shall leave the horse in the Forest, and walk. Only tell me where to knock."
    “For the matter of that,” asked the outlaw, mildly, “where is the horse?"
    Alan knew by now that Hal's steed grazed loose. Hal whistled, a single low note. There were no hoofbeats to be heard, and the outlaws exchanged amused glances. But suddenly the horse was there, as if he had materialized from the gray trunks of the trees. Silently and gracefully he moved to Hal's side, an alert, questioning look in his fine eyes.
    Hal smiled, and spoke to the horse in a low voice; Alan could not catch the words. “He thought something was wrong,” Hal explained, turning.
    Impulsively, Alan reached out to pat the beautiful creature, but the steed drew back with a snort.
    “You have not yet been introduced,” Hal said. “Give me your hand.” He spoke to the stallion in strange words, and placed Alan's hand on the horse's neck. “He is trained to let no hand touch him except mine,” Hal explained. “Otherwise he would have been stolen from me many a time."
    Alan felt odd and at a loss for words. He was used to horses that did as he told them, not to great gray beasts that roamed at will and required introductions. “What is his name?” he managed to ask.
    “Arundel. Arun for short."
    It was not a familiar name. “Does it mean something?” Alan ventured. Names might have meanings, he thought, to Hal.
    “It means ‘dweller in the Eagle Valley.’”
    Alan stroked the highly arched neck and looked into the deep eyes of the proud beast which looked down on him. He wondered what strange turn his life was taking. Ket broke in on his thoughts.
    “We did not see that horse, or hear him, on our way here. Did he seek to avoid us?” the outlaw demanded.
    “Ay. He is trained to do so."
    Ket shook his head helplessly, then spoke with a countryman's slow, grave courtesy. “By my troth, now, I dare say that one who has entered my Forest without my knowing it—and who has shot a deer under my very nose with a bow the size of my forearm—and whose very horse goes with the stealth of a ghost in the night—might trade for a few victuals and stay clear of the gallows."
    “I thank you,” said Hal, grinning, “for your ‘daresay.’”
    Ket gave Hal instructions on how best to approach the village and where to go with the meat. Such meat was forbidden, since the Forest game was supposed to be preserved for noble sport. So Hal had to be careful on more than one account.