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The cold autumn wind danced among the dark branches, bending them just enough to make them sway, rustling the leaves but keeping them from bumping into each other. In the falling dusk, their individual lines became increasingly difficult to see, merging into a skimming wave amidst the many patches of blackness. The forest swayed above their heads, gently stirred by the touches of the wind, which, though pleasantly gentle here, was chasing shafts of dark, rainy clouds high in the sky. They obscured the stars but could not fully cover the moonlight.
Somewhere far away a bird was shrieking. The horses were quiet. Night was falling in a sleepy, unhurried but also inevitable way. The fire crackled somehow louder than the night before, or perhaps it only seemed that way to him, when he could not hear the hum of the trees swaying in an angry gale.
The first quiet night in a long time that hadn’t started with a downpour. Tucked under a rocky crease, the campfire warmed them, and a small smoke escaped between the cracks, spreading among the scrub. As it grew darker, the glowing bits of charred wood glowed red dots much more brightly until they went out completely. The low flames gnawed at more dry branches, which they didn’t manage to find much of.
Master Pritchard did not seem to worry about this. Through the torrential nights they didn’t light a fire, but they always lit one in the evenings, at least for a while, to make dinner. He stacked special piles of damp wood, somehow miraculously lighting them each time. Just as he always found game to hunt, even if there was no sign of hares anywhere around them on the marshy, cold ground, and they had not heard birds for hours. He would find streams tucked behind rocky crags and lead them along them, seeking shelter for the night in places where the chill of the increasingly rainy nights, ever closer to winter, did not creep in.
He cooked food, though he was never asked to do so, and though more than once he had to sit by the fire, despite finishing his own dinner. He sat listening to the night, gazing at his surroundings with pensive and yet so watchful eyes. Sometimes he talked about something and sometimes he said nothing. When he talked, he talked about people and animals, about the near and the far world. Sometimes he didn’t know some word in Hibernian and then, only then, he hesitated for a fraction of a moment, searching his thoughts to see if he might know a substitute.
Halt tried to tell him that it was okay if Master Pritchard preferred to speak in his native tongue, he would get used to it, but the mysterious man with the pensive eyes refused to give way to him. Just as he was adamant about sleeping and eating. He sat by the fire, sometimes observing his surroundings and sometimes pondering. Sometimes Halt felt watched by him, but he never caught the Ranger looking in his direction when he happened to glance nervously to one side.
Pritchard must have been watching him anyway. Just as he must have known a great many things that Halt had not yet told him. He knew because he always got up when Halt woke up in the middle of the night screaming. Without a word he would sit down by the fire and start preparing the coffee. Sometimes, when it was pouring particularly hard, he would call their horses closer to them both instead. For the first few weeks, he said nothing about it and didn’t let on that he was being watched.
Then, it was only after the first night, when Halt fell asleep again after waking up, Master Pritchard began to talk to him about it too. The first such night came on a past storm, which was either very long and lasted three nights, or clustered several smaller ones. The effect remained the same.
“Do you prefer the cold or the warmth?” Pritchard asked that night as the roar of the wind swept over their heads.
Hidden by the rocks, fenced off by the brush from the tall and old, crackling trees, they were relatively safe. Pritchard lit a tiny fire under their canopy, managing to make it so that it didn’t actually smoke, and the barely glowing branches gave warmth anyway.
He lifted a nervous, unfocused gaze, which immediately fled into the darkness beyond the rocky breach. Pritchard was looking at him this time, waiting for an answer.
Halt muttered too quietly to be heard amid the crackle of the trees and the howl of the wind. The rain sloshed a little quieter, or perhaps it was the rest of the world that was so loud. Even as he leaned back, burying his head in his arms, he could hear the ever-present roar that night.
Pritchard could not hear his words, and yet he understood the murmur. He couldn’t understand, and yet he never asked about the very many things that simply happened between them and the Ranger accepted them, even though they must have made life difficult for him.
“When you wake up, which is better, when you get cold and you can stay fully awake, or when you’re warm and you can hide under a blanket?”
During the first few weeks of them traveling together, Master Pritchard never once pointed out to him that the boy should not hunch over and look at him when he spoke to him. Nor did he get angry about the moments when Halt said nothing to him. And he always continued to sit by him, even if he had already eaten himself.
So he should not be indignant that Halt did not raise his eyes to him that night either. He sat for a long moment without a single thought in his head, stupefied from the rumble and tired from another disturbed night’s sleep, when he woke up with his heart beating loudly and his fists clenched, unable to catch his breath. The blanket, folded in disarray, lay by his side on the cold ground, against which the great drops of icy rain falling a few steps away from him rumbled. A shiver ran down the back of his neck at the thought of the terrible cold blowing from the rain-drenched forest.
“Don’t like cold,” he finally stated, quietly enough not to add the sound of his own voice to the roar around him.
Pritchard couldn’t hear him. He was still waiting.
He had never tried to speak to Halt at a time like this before. Why had he started that night? Had he been angry about it all along, but had simply only now lost patience? Halt regretted not having the strength to raise his eyes to him and try to look for signs of anger on his face. Pritchard’s voice was as devoid of colour as his own. There was no anger in it, no surprise. If there was something, Halt didn’t know what that something was.
“Can you show me…” Pritchard spoke up again. The moment of silence must have lasted too long. Longer than Halt had assumed, but that was nothing new. What was new was the rush in Pritchard’s voice as he broke the silence again. “With your fingers. First or second option. If you don’t want me to speak, raise your fist.”
If it hadn’t been for the rumble, the cold and the fatigue, Halt would have looked at him, surprised at the very idea that such communication would have a point and a chance to exist. He would have looked for the amusement in the Ranger’s eyes, the rising corners of his mouth, the strangely pleased look on his face. That or anger. Then maybe the rush would make sense.
But he didn’t have enough strength. That night he had no strength for anything. A sickeningly cold, loud rain was pouring down from the sky, which rumbled with the crackle of trees hitting each other and crumbling under the gusts of wind. He was cold, he was tired, he did not have the strength to look or even speak.
He forced himself to pull one hand away from his knees, pulled up to his chin. He lifted two fingers, unsure if Pritchard would see it in the darkness around them. He did see it. That night, he was able to add this yet-unexpected Ranger’s ability to several others he had already noticed.
“Can I speak to you? Open hand means yes, fist means no.”
He opened his hand before he could muster enough strength to at least think about it. Pritchard’s voice was another noise in the area, but it wasn’t as loud or harsh, and it didn’t sound unexpected. He didn’t make much difference.
“Are you going to cover yourself with a blanket, or can I do it?”
His open hand closed into a fist without any thought. This time he twitched, pulling himself out of his stupor. He tried to raise his head to look at Master Pritchard. Although his angry voice had not yet sounded, Halt knew it would happen in the next moment. His neck ached, whether from cold or fatigue, Halt wasn’t sure himself anymore.
“Sorry…” he began, but the rain and the wind drowned him out so much that he couldn’t hear himself.
Or perhaps he was too tired to hear anything but the rumble around. He did, however, hear Pritchard’s voice again.
“All right. Thank you for telling me, boy. Cover yourself with a blanket and wait a while. I’ll light a bigger fire, okay?” Another moment’s hesitation preceded the equally hastily added words. “Fist and open palm. Let’s stay with that. A bigger bonfire, how about that?”
He opened his hand again. He lowered his head when it occurred to him that, despite his sincerest intentions, he would not manage to look at Master Pritchard. He concentrated his remaining strength to pick up the blanket from the ground and throw it over his shoulders. Then he bent down again and hunched over, resting his forehead against his hands entwined in his lap. His neck hurt a little less, although it was bend. He could only see the darkness in front of him, even when he opened his eyes. The rumble was still too close, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Master Pritchard had made a bigger fire, stacking two large logs on top of each other. He had prepared them earlier in the evening when he found an old tree between the stones. He knew they would be needed. Just as he knew Halt would not raise his eyes at him that night. He didn’t ask about it then, or for many more weeks.
That night he simply sat down opposite him by the fire and began to talk, as he had did many times before, about things completely unrelated to the fact that here it was, the middle of a cold, rainy night, and they were both awake. The horses, hidden from the rain, stood only a few steps away from them. They must have been cold too. Pritchard checked how they were several times that night.
All this time he was also saying something, but Halt honestly did not listen to him at all. The calm, deep voice was lost between the rustling and crackling, between the howling of the wind and the rumbling of the raindrops, and still the beating of his own heart, which was gradually calming down. The words merged in his head into a long, unintelligible caterpillar of a single murmuring sound that circled somewhere in front of him, neither rising nor falling, steady and calm.
The fire gradually warmed him enough to allow him to concentrate on that too. The noise continued to be incessant and hard to bear, but at least the cold was gone. That night he did not sleep again and greeted the next day with fatigue.
The next night, however, was calmer. The downpours had stopped. The cold autumn wind rocked the trees so that they hummed but did not bump against each other. The fire seemed to crackle louder than before, or perhaps it was the night that was quieter, and he finally heard it.
Similarly quieter, mellow was Pritchard’s voice as he broke another of his earlier habits that evening.
“You need to eat…”
Halt twitched, hearing such an unexpected shattering of the calm that was spread by the deepening darkness. Only their campfire argued with the darkness, the campfire and the moon peeking out from behind the dark clouds from time to time. Only the hum of the trees ensured that there was not complete silence. The noise of the trees and Pritchard.
He looked at him cautiously, turning his head to see if Pritchard was looking at him. He wasn’t. He was looking at the trees above their heads, suspended above the rocks under which they had hidden for the night. In the darkness his grey beard was more visible than his face.
“If not this, then something else. You’ll have to tell me what you’re going to eat,” he spoke up again because he hadn’t received an answer, and he hadn’t received one because he hadn’t asked any question. Even if he had, Halt would not have known what to tell him. Pritchard must have understood that since he understood so much. “You don’t have to explain anything to me if you don’t want to… or you can’t. But you do have to eat. Tell me what you’re going to eat, then I’ll know what to do.”
Telling the Ranger that there was no need to do anything differently to what he had done before might have angered him. Similarly, it might have done the same for Halt’s silence, as well as saying that there was no problem and nothing to worry about. In fact, anything he may or may not have done could have provoked an angry reaction.
Halt had yet to see Pritchard angry. He didn’t know what he could expect from him. In fact, he wasn’t sure what states of him he had seen so far. Most of the time he was too tired to think about it. As long as Pritchard wasn’t angry, he could be whatever he wanted.
At the moment he wasn’t angry, though the silence continued.
“Halt?” he tried again. “You don’t want to answer me, you don’t know it yourself, or you can’t speak at the moment? One finger, two fingers, three fingers, show me…”
“The second one.” That evening the rumble was almost gone, and although he was tired, he still had enough strength to speak. Staring into the darkness, pleasantly calm, Halt could talk to him. “I don’t know… but you don’t have to…”
“I don’t have to what?” Pritchard took up when Halt interrupted.
He didn’t look at him and Halt made sure of that with another quick glance. The Ranger’s gaze was still fixed on the blackness of the branches on which swayed the last yellowed leaves rotting from the constant rain even before they fell to the ground. Still, they didn’t bother as much as the cold and the crackling of the branches.
“You don’t have to… ask.”
“You need to eat,” Pritchard repeated, as if he hadn’t heard or understood what Halt was trying to tell him. Or maybe he didn’t want to take it as an answer. “Not once in a while, not once every two-three days, but every day, several times a day. Sometimes you eat, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you sleep, sometimes you don’t. We have to do something about it. Do you agree?”
He still had the strength to speak, but he didn’t want to hear how full of nothing his own voice was. He should be worried, he should be angry, or maybe he should be sad. He wasn’t sure. But he should feel something.
He felt tired. He found it hard to think, harder and harder over the last few days. He would fall asleep exhausted and wake up terrified, and not fall sleep again. And he hadn’t eaten most days, though he’d tried, and though Pritchard had sat by him, watching him, or maybe not trusting him not to throw meat into the fire when he turned away, or maybe he was worried, or maybe angry. It didn’t matter. He sat and waited. And Halt sometimes was able to eat a bit of his dinner, and sometimes he sat and stared into the void for a long time, until night. Sometimes he would fall asleep like that, too tired to leave the campfire. Sometimes he was so tired that his hands would shake when he tried to lift them to rest his head on them, because it would wobble the side out of fatigue.
Yes, something had to be done about it.
He raised his open hand. Pritchard must have been watching out of the corner of his eye because he nodded. Halt was looking at him out of the corner of his eye, so he noticed it.
“All right then. We’ll look for a village soon, buy some food to stock up. In the meantime… remember the first meal you ate at my hut?” Pritchard spoke slowly, as if he didn’t know if he wanted to say it. Cautiously.
Halt raised his open hand again.
“I’ve got some flour left over for a rainy day. I don’t want to foretell gloomy events, but it’s possible that there won’t be a rainier one. Will you try to eat it if I prepare it now? Or later? In an hour? You must eat something before you fall asleep.”
He wasn’t sure how many days had passed since he had last managed to eat the whole meal. That might have explained why Pritchard was pushing so hard for it. Halt had neither the right nor the reason to argue with him. He raised his hand, then one finger, and then nodded some more at the same time.
“All right, thank you,” Pritchard replied again, though he was not looking at him.
Halt, on the other hand, did not look at the Ranger as he searched his travel pouch for a bag of flour.
“Can you find a large, flat stone?” a calm voice snapped him out of his stillness.
If he had been more tired, he would not have had the strength to do so. He felt tired, yes, but not that tired. Since he didn’t have to speak, he could also take care of something. He nodded, wordlessly moving between the rocky outcrops.
“Just don’t go anywhere far! The horses will panic if you disappear,” Pritchard called out after him.
His voice, even raised, contained no anger. There was nothing in it that Halt knew how to name. Still, he doubted Pritchard was serious. Declan paid little attention to Halt, and Pritchard’s horse was fearless and attached to him above all else. They would not have cared if Halt had disappeared into the darkness of the woods and never returned to them again.
It is possible, however, that it would have worried Pritchard.
When that thought became worth anything, Halt didn’t know either. Not knowing Pritchard’s anger, he began to fear his worry more. How he felt about that, he didn’t know. But he returned to the campfire as soon as he found the right stone. A few moments later he also tried to eat the first of the scones that Pritchard was skilfully baking over the small fire.
Before he ever saw his anger, he first saw a deep, undisguised relief. It was just like when he had first eaten with him, sitting in the darkest corner of his hut, not yet able to look him in the eye. Pritchard nodded with a smile and thanked him as Halt ate the first small scone. Just as then he immediately handed him another, with a movement of his head encouraging him to eat until his hunger was satisfied.
And just as then he waited with all his questions until the right day or night came to ask them. He watched with relief as, naturally with increasing certainty, the hungry child in his care finally began to eat what he had given him.
“And what did we learn from that?” he asked with a smile as Halt ate his fourth scone, already beginning to eat more slowly than the previous ones, when he realised that he was finally able to eat something.
He glanced at Ranger hesitantly, because to him it only meant that he had been able to eat it and that the still warm, soft scones even with no taste at all were probably the best food in the world. And then there was the fact that so far he hadn’t realised how hungry he was until he started eating.
It must have said more to Pritchard because he nodded, satisfied. He still had half a sack of flour in reserve and tucked it away so he would have a way to make the boy some dinner another day. Then they should reach the village. He’ll buy more flour and some bread, maybe some groats. He’ll try it slowly, in addition to the scones. As long as Halt eats something. Somehow they’ll manage to make it gradually something more and more nutritious.
“We’ll manage…” he muttered under his breath and Halt glanced at him again.
He understood this as a conclusion of Pritchard’s thoughts about what that night had taught them. Pritchard, in turn, calmed down, seeing that the boy was not trying to argue with him. He baked another scone and smiled when Halt this time didn’t flee from him with his gaze so abruptly, just lowered it a little to the darkness behind the Ranger’s back.
Step by step. There will be days worse and better, nights torrential and quiet. And some rainy ones as well. But somehow, in the end, they will manage it all.
He received the answer to his wish, hope and conclusion all in one. Halt raised an open hand and nodded briefly. Pritchard responded with a smile.
* * *
“Is that enough?” he asked himself, looking anxiously at the bowl that still had some warm milk left in it.
It was possible that he had said it out loud. Concerned, he paid no attention to what was happening around him. Only one element of his surroundings was worth focusing on. It even demanded this focus. For the baby was not sending any signals that could be understood in an unambiguous way.
He was currently staring at Halt with increasingly smaller eyes. His eyelids drooped more and more until finally the child fell asleep completely, held in his arms. Maybe he was warm from the fireplace, maybe he had eaten enough and therefore fell asleep, or maybe he was already so weak that he fell asleep because he had no strength to do anything.
Halt didn’t know. He had no idea.
There was still milk left in the bowl, but after all, he did not know how much to pour. He wouldn’t have known at all that he was supposed to do it, or how, if it hadn’t been for Crowley telling him how he had fed the tiny Princess Cassandra when he drove her to the castle. A clean cloth and warm milk in a bowl. Halt remembered this and it saved the baby, whom he rocked nervously in his arms.
What he didn’t know was exactly how much that milk should be. How often. How warm. How to check if the baby had drunk enough of it. Whether falling asleep was a good sign or the opposite. Which cry was from hunger, which was from longing for his mother, and which was just like that, because after all, how else would the baby let him know that something was going on.
He couldn’t put the baby down. This much he had decided for himself, this much he believed he remembered, or maybe it just occurred to him in his head that he remembered some such wisdom from years ago when Caitlyn was tiny and cried terribly whenever she was put down in the cradle. Regardless of where he got this belief from, he didn’t put Will down for a moment since he came back to the hut.
He walked around the room with him, making sure he was warm. He had given him milk and now he sat, continuing to hold the baby close, his arm propped up as he remembered carrying the child by the nurses or mothers he had once seen. Close to the fire, but not too close.
How close was too close?
Will was asleep. He was breathing, Halt was sure of it, as, holding him with one arm, he rested his other hand on top of the bundle of blankets and nappy he’d tucked him into when he’d changed him. He was asleep, breathing. Every now and then his heartbeat would escape Halt’s fingers. Maybe it was his own fatigue setting in, maybe he was panicking, or maybe it was actually happening. He would then slide the top of his finger carefully under the infant’s nose until he felt his breath. Will was asleep. His heart continued to beat, and always after such a sudden, nervous search for his breath, Halt would immediately find it beating again under his hand.
And he sat on, by the fire, in the warmth and darkness that was only disturbed by the fire in the hearth. Whether he had been sitting like this for a dozen hours or for a few dozens, he was not sure. Surely the day was over, the day after the fight, the night had just come to an end… or perhaps it too had already ended, another day had passed, and another night had come?
He couldn’t be sure. He measured time by looking for the sleeping child’s breathing, feeding him warm milk and changing him. Even walking around the room with him, he did not count his steps. He covered the windows of the hut to make it safer and so that the baby could sleep peacefully. And he walked with him, sat with him, fed him, rocked him, watched to see if he was breathing.
Was he breathing properly? Did he eat enough? Did he sleep well enough? Did he cry too often?
There was no one around whom he could ask any of these things. At least not yet.
The night was going on, he didn’t know which one, but the sun had certainly not yet risen when the familiar sound of the horse’s hooves sounded outside the hut. Halt sprang to his feet.
If soldiers had arrived, he would have heard shouting, the clacking of iron, the neighing of several horses. He heard none of these things. Not a single voice. Maybe someone was saying something after all, he was just too tired, too sleep-deprived to hear it.
The wound on his head might also have made it more difficult for him. He realised it belatedly. He forgot about it. It almost didn’t hurt. He didn’t know if that was a good sign. It probably should hurt.
And the baby should be crying… and that, at the moment, worried him far more than his own wounds and fatigue.
Will wasn’t crying, which could have been because he’d had his fill and was warm and comfortable and was just sleeping, but it could also have been a sign that he was losing strength because he hadn’t eaten enough, because he missed his mother too much to survive without her. He might have had no strength left to cry. Halt knew it was possible.
He didn’t have the strength to speak even when he heard a familiar voice, quiet and nervous, just outside the closed door.
“Halt…?”
The baby in his arms was tiny enough that he could only put one arm around Will and push aside the barricade of chair, stool and small cupboard with which he blocked the entrance to the hut. As soon as he had done this, he immediately rested his hand on Will again so that he could feel his heart beating.
He had no free hand, so he kicked the door three times. He had no strength to call out. Fortunately, the message had arrived anyway.
With a quiet creak the door swung open. In the greys of the ending night, Halt saw a familiar figure in a green cloak slip slowly into the hut, looking carefully around.
“Halt?” Pritchard repeated anxiously as, in the middle of a dark room in a cottage in a village where he had never been before, in a fiefdom where Halt should not have been, he saw his former apprentice, who had been missing for days.
Halt looked at him with tired, deeply worried eyes. The bandages on his head were old, soaked with blood. He kept rocking his arms in such a monotonous, fluid motion that at first Pritchard assumed it was happening out of nervousness.
“It’s all right, my boy… all is fine now. I’m here and whatever’s-” Pritchard paused, mastering his own agitation, though at the same time very much wanting to barrage him with questions about what the hell had happened, of which he had hundreds and hundreds for two days now.
The messenger found him when he nervously searched the field hospitals on the battlefield. He found Halt in none, and it became clear why when the tired young man explained that Ranger Halt was sending a message asking his master to go to the indicated village where he would find him. Pritchard found the right hut only by having his horse find Abelard.
Running inside, he was already on the verge of panic. Now, seeing Halt alive, wounded but standing on his own, he calmed down enough to assure him in a slow, gentle tone.
“Whatever’s going on, we’ll get through it somehow. Can you talk?”
Halt shook his head. He was exhausted, of course. Pritchard nodded.
“All right. Slowly, sit down, okay? You need to sit down…” He took a step closer, wanting to take him by the arm and help him sit down, as Halt continued to rock his arms, which looked increasingly worrying.
The way Halt defensively put one arm out in front of him immediately stopped him.
And it was only then, in the darkness, that he noticed that Halt’s other arm was rocking a bit all the time, even as he warded off someone as close to him as Pritchard. The old Ranger’s gaze managed to find the bundle in his arms in the gloom, and the shock that painted itself on his face broke through Halt’s stunned and exhausted mind.
He gasped for air loudly, so loudly that Pritchard looked at his face, concerned.
He saw a worried, focused look in which panic was creeping in.
“How much do babies eat?” Halt asked him in a whisper that was hoarse and barely intelligible and contained so much fear that Pritchard failed to answer him immediately, shattered. “And why isn’t he crying? Why isn’t he crying? Babies should cry!”
A cry full of grief answered him even before the Ranger managed to do so.
Pritchard was already opening his mouth to say something, but fell silent again, struck by the sight he saw.
Halt immediately tore his gaze away from him and focused entirely on the baby held in his arms. With the gentlest gesture Pritchard had ever seen in him, he lifted the baby a little higher so that he rested with his head at the level of Halt’s sternum. He put an arm around the baby, the other supporting and stabilising the grip. He rocked his shoulders gently and set off to wander the dark room, whispering something under his breath in Hibernian, too quiet to be understood by anyone, probably even by himself.
Pritchard slowly closed the door to the hut fully behind him. Without taking his eyes off Halt, he even slower breathed deeply once, then a second time. The initial shock had worn off to the point where he finally managed to say anything making sense.
“It’s all right. Come here… show me the baby, and we’re about to find out…”
“Hands,” Halt stopped him again, shaking his head quite confident for someone so exhausted that he didn’t fall asleep only because being so fixated on the task.
“What?” Pritchard hesitated.
“Go, wash your hands first,” Halt instructed more than asked and then immediately looked at him with concern. “He’s stopped crying! Again! Why?”
The infant had indeed calmed down, snuggled into the caring embrace of his rocking arms. Pritchard smiled gently and very slowly pointed at Halt with a motion of his hand.
“Because you’re holding him. He feels safe. Don’t be nervous, and he’ll be calm too… sit down. I’ll wash my hands at the pump, and we’ll take care of everything right away, okay?”
Halt nodded, processing what he had heard. He tried to calm down and partially succeeded. Enough to look at his master more carefully than before.
“Thank you…” he whispered.
Pritchard nodded to him with a smile, as he saw no need to answer anything. Besides, at the moment he had more questions than answers. Which was new to him, he had to admit.
* * *
Will had a disarming habit of laughing with his eyes wide open when he was no longer able to smile any wider, and, out of breath, couldn’t catch enough air to laugh. The first time he laughed like that, he toppled over onto the bed, started wiggling his legs and turned all red in the face. Crowley panicked and himself only began to breathe when the loud, uncontrollable laughter of the then year-old Will rolled around the room.
For a moment, everyone thought something had happened to him. Especially Halt, who for the first weeks and then months and years reacted with exactly the same poignancy to absolutely every first thing Will did, said or even tried to do. Pritchard hadn’t laughed as much in all the years of his life as he had during Will’s first week of learning to walk, when the Ranger’s cabin was secured by blankets laying everywhere and became a battleground of a grand strategy, a chase and a triumph at the same time.
And a few everlasting moments when, regarded in general opinion as a devourer of the joys of innocent humans’ hearts, Halt would catch the boy at the last moment before he could fall to the ground and, lest he associate that moment with fear, would lift him high into the air, spinning him in his arms. Will was laughing loudly and talking just as loudly. Loud, fast and a lot. So loud, so fast and so much that at times he seemed to be a glowing flame of pure enthusiasm trapped in human form and therefore unable to find any outlet in its power, sparking and rolling around, flickering from side to side.
“It’s your fault,” Halt once told Crowley with such a stony face that he even lived to see a slight expression of remorse from his friend. “He picked it up from you.”
To these words Crowley had already responded with a smile. With a face full of proud dignity, he turned on his heel, taking Will with him. The boy who was sitting on his shoulders, because he was bored of being short and wanted to see the world from above.
At least that was his excuse for getting higher up, from where he could hunt for Halt’s hood. Keeping a cheeky and loyal comradeship with him, Crowley would snuck up behind Halt’s back as they walked through the woods, close enough for Will to manage to rip his hood off his head, much to the delight of both. And though both were thundered with menacing stares, neither felt guilty. Not then, nor on many other days.
Will, likewise, somehow didn’t seem to care much about how theatrically Halt sighed, listening to his elaborate explanations as the poor stray doggie was in absolute need of their help, sitting kindly under the Ranger’s feet just as he entered the room.
What’s more, Will tried once or twice to imitate that heavy sigh and it worked out pretty well. So well, in fact, that hearing it for the first time Pritchard choked on his tea and coughed so hard for a moment that he feared he had torn something in his back. Even if he had, Halt’s face was worth it.
In addition to sighing, Will also tried to roll his eyes which didn’t really work out for him, as he usually shook his whole head when doing so. He couldn’t maintain his stony seriousness either, but he tried. He even practised regularly. Sitting right in front of Halt, he watched his face closely as the Ranger worked on the reports. Will would crinkle his eyebrows and mumble his own words under his breath in imitation of those he had heard, causing Pritchard to impose an absolute ban on swearing in front of the boy until he would turn ten.
Will also had passionate, drawn-out chats with Abelard for hours whenever they went somewhere. He had a big fluffy dog sewn especially for him, a little green cloak and over fifty uncles around the kingdom.
He had a few favourites among them, including Crowley. And Halt suffered terribly and rather unconvincingly from this, as Pritchard had already told him a couple of times.
All he got was an outright protest at being asked to talk with his master about it. A man willing to go on lonely missions to identify an army of the traitorous lord’s monstrous animals, lead a charge in the middle of a battle and several other breakneck actions, dug in his heals when Pritchard once tried to gently let him know that it was at least amusing that he was so insistent on playing dumb on several points.
By virtue of raising the world’s most talkative child at the moment, Halt has been given a concessionary fare by Pritchard. For the time being.
Crowley, on the other hand, could not count on special treatment, and it was probably for this reason that ever since that one long conversation with him, Pritchard had this strange feeling that his unannounced visits to Araluen Castle were met with more panic than if he had turned up there to announce the next minor riot or the idea of forming an illegal troop. But it could only seem that way to him.
Other things he was sure of, such as the changes that had taken place in their lives since Will showed up. It didn’t even take Halt a week to completely lose himself in caring for this boy.
According to Pritchard, the matter was already a foregone conclusion when he found them then in that village, in a hut with curtained windows, next to which was one fresh grave.
The idea of handing the boy over to someone to raise him appeared and disappeared during a few minutes. The three of them returned to Redmont. Pritchard had sent the appropriate letter and before the week ended he was officially retired. The reasons why he had chosen Redmont as the site of his new home should have been of no concern to anyone.
Just as no one should care that Ranger Halt was raising a child. However, some people were fascinated by the subject, so much so that even the menacing stares and generally mysterious persona of said Ranger were of little use. Stories began to circulate about little Will, saying that he might has been a child prodigy born at the end of the war with Morgarath and so the Rangers decided to raise him as a future defender of the realm. They were saying some other things too, but Pritchard made sure they went quiet fast enough, so they didn’t get to Halt. Even without that, he was already concerned with everything about Will.
The first smile, the first tooth, the first steps. The first ‘dada’ out of his mouth. The first shattered knee. The first dog found on a walk with Grandpa Pritchard, badly in need of a bandage for its poor paw. Somehow it happened to stay with them until spring, and eventually it stayed for good. Then Will found his puppy some friends, and seeing Halt’s resigned face, Pritchard suggested the idea of making the dogs cool collars with an oak leaf sign. And that was the end of the discussion.
It was also, in a way, the end of Halt’s reputation, who may still have had a menacing face, but at the Gathering he would turn up with a laughing child holding his hand and a pack of three dogs trying to chew his shoes or drooling on his trousers.
At least the material one was quiet and calm. Crowley gave them such an optimistic conclusion and didn’t care when he was glared. Somehow it didn’t bother him at all, recently even more than before. The other Rangers had the perfect excuse for taking their Commander as an example, should anyone ask why their attitude to Halt had changed as well. In Pritchard’s opinion, these were very good changes.
Almost four years old, Will already knew more words than many adults, and sometimes it seemed as if he was trying to prove this fact to the world by talking as fast and as much as he could. When he was using long and clever words, a Hibernian accent could be heard in his voice, which he picked up from Halt. In such a tone, for example, he informed people that they were s menace to general security.
Hearing this in response to their jokingly throwing a rag ball at each other, Berrigan and Crowley almost burst into tears from laughter. Not a moment had passed when the story was already known to everyone gathered around. Pritchard admired the speed with which information spread here.
For example, little Will’s desire to learn to shoot circulated the Gathering with lightning speed and before Pritchard had even looked up, six daredevils had approached him, asking to borrow his grandson to test the boy’s strength so they could choose a suitable little bow for him. Their faces went pale when Pritchard sent them back to Halt for permission for such ideas.
Will, however, looked at Pritchard askance and, of all the hundreds of words he knew, said the one magic word that made the old Ranger unstoppable in fight for giving the boy what he wanted.
“Grandpa…?”
He could laugh at Halt all he wanted, but he was no better himself.
The first time Will called him that was during a game, when he was already talking pretty well. They chased each other between the trees and, already tired of constantly running away from that really energetic child, Pritchard went as far as cheating. He blurred into a shadow plan, disappearing from Will’s sight for barely a fraction of a moment. This was enough for the boy to stand in the middle of the clearing, look around and, with a great sorrow in his voice, call out for his grandpa to come out, wherever he was hiding.
Pritchard secretly suspected that this was Halt’s idea. He didn’t ask, but the smile on his former pupil’s face confirmed that theory for him. And that was another change that had occurred, though they honestly hadn’t expected it.
“You’re Daddy’s daddy?” Will asked him when his questioning phase finally reached human relations.
He then posed a great many very precise questions to both Halt and Pritchard. Some were amusing and some filled them with sadness. Some they did not know how to answer him. For some answers he was still too young.
To that question, however, Pritchard answered him. They sat together on Will’s bed then, the boy already tucked under his blanket, ready for sleep. He listened to the tale of the talking soup spoon who wanted to make friends with a carrot, yawned widely, cuddled all the dogs and asked Pritchard something of little importance to him, but of great importance to the Ranger.
“Yes,” he replied after a brief hesitation, because that shouldn’t be a question a man hesitates over.
There were also some things whose simplest explanation was at the same time the one the adults insisted on not understanding, and which were obvious to the children.
“Wy he’s not calling you dad?”
That was something Pritchard has already had to think about for a while.
“Because I haven’t always been his dad and he’s used to calling me by my name.”
“Not always… when?” Will looked at him with smaller and smaller, sleepily closing eyes, in which immense curiosity matched the power of his smile.
“It’s been many, many years already…” Pritchard smiled, smoothed the blanket and was not surprised when a tiny hand stopped him and held his finger for a moment. “I found him in the woods and took him home,” he added more quietly, not to Will but to himself.
“Cool,” Will replied sleepily and that evening was the end of questions.
At least for him. Pritchard still had many of them, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to answer them for himself.
It was still a new and slightly scary feeling, not knowing all the answers in the world, as he was used to having them. They all were used to it, both this boy and that one, who had grown up and who had come home late that night, straight from a mission at the edge of the fiefdom. Pritchard was waiting for him in the kitchen, with a mug of cold, undrinked tea. He was snapped out of his reverie by the familiar neighing of a horse.
Though it had seemed impossible a moment before, he knew the answers to his questions the moment he saw Halt on the doorstep.
He was tired, and he knew he had every right to act tired around his master, so he just waved a hand at him in the meaningful way long established between them.
‘Fine. Tired. Talk. Thank you.’
Pritchard closed the door to the room where Will slept just enough not to wake the boy with conversation. He also lowered his voice just enough so that the sound of it wouldn’t tire the already exhausted Halt.
“Will you eat something?” he asked, once he had assured him that Will was fine and they had been doing well for the past four days, the boy was healthy and strong, and he was still talking as much as he had when Halt had left on his assignment.
After a brief hesitation, Halt responded by raising an open hand. Pritchard was also allowed to talk on. Sitting opposite him, in the half-light of a few candles, he could see clearly how tired Halt was. He didn’t watch him closely so as not to tire him, and neither did he receive a one bit of apology for Halt not looking him straight in the face.
It had been several years since he had apologised to him for that.
He knew they would talk in the morning. Halt would get some rest. Will most likely will wake up before dawn and run to see if his dad was back. And this time he’ll find him, and gleefully make the whole house, two Rangers, two horses, three real dogs and the material one aware of it. Halt will tuck his head under the blanket, mumbling something about the inhuman wake-up time, but he’ll move over so that the boy can climb onto his bunk and cuddle up to him.
And Pritchard won’t even try to hide a smile when he sees this and over breakfast he’ll listen to Will’s monologues and watch Halt watch him with a smile in his eyes, while gradually giving in to the idea of preventing Will from spreading honey over half the table. Another day would come, maybe they would see another new thing Will had learned, or maybe this time it would be Halt who would surprise him.
Pritchard, although he hadn’t seen the first things in Halt’s life, had been his dad long enough to experience some of it with him. The first smile in one of Hibernia’s dense forests. Their first conversation with Halt using gestures. The first time when the boy, shaken after a nightmare, let the Ranger hug him and cover him with a blanket. The first killing and the first saving of a life, the first ‘run’ and the first ‘stay’. All first moments that a parent would bury at the bottom of his heart, watching the child go further and further with each passing day, not remembering their own first steps. Halt may have remembered; he may not have paid as much attention. Pritchard, however, remembered everything.
“Daddy promised to come back to watch the stars..” Will looked at him with concentration.
“He’ll be back, don’t worry,” Pritchard assured and indicated the tent in the middle of the encampment with a movement of his head. “There’s still a meeting going on. Uncle Crowley has orders for the Rangers, and dad’s helping him.”
Will nodded with a serious expression, watching as in the falling darkness the large, dark tent looked more and more majestic, its shape breaking out of the trees around the clearing.
“Very secret orders!” Will asserted with all the seriousness a four-year-old could achieve.
Pritchard smiled both at him and at his own thoughts.
In his humble opinion, the meeting was already over, as most of the Rangers had already left the Commandant’s tent. Halt, however, was still absent. Perhaps they had more to talk about amongst themselves. Pritchard decided not to be nosy and wait until they both joined them so he could send them a meaningful look instead of asking questions. Usually their faces were enough for him to get an answer.
Some questions he also knew the answers to, but he asked them anyway.
“Baked potato or pancake?” he asked matter-of-factly, and Will’s attention immediately shifted to one of the large fires they were sitting around.
The tall flames shot sparks towards the dark sky, where the first stars were already appearing. The salty scent of the sea carried to them, drawn by the gentle, cool breeze. It promised to be a bright night, perfect for Will’s promised drawing of a map from the stars above their heads.
“Pancake!” Will didn't need to hesitate.
“With honey?” he made sure, though he didn’t anticipate any other answer to that either.
Once Crowley had dared to smear Will’s pancake with jam instead of honey. The look he received was so hurt that no one ever made that mistake again. For that, Halt teased them all a bit about that somehow his eating habits were still resented. And this position was also not presented by him in a sufficiently convincing way.
In a very unconvincing way, he also responded with a stony face when Pritchard, moments later, greeted both of his former apprentices with a raised eyebrow when they decided to finally join them around the campfire. They both looked incredibly serious and professional and so he didn’t believe them a slightest bit.
“We had to discuss one more thing…” As usual, Crowley was worse at withstanding the meaningful stares and was the first to explain himself, without even being asked anything directly. “Do you remember Gilan?” He waited for Pritchard to nod. “He wants to join Rangers and he's been inundating me with letters for the last few weeks… David’s been sending them.”
“And why aren’t you accepting him?” Pritchard hesitated.
Even if Sir David’s son was so unsuited to be a Ranger as to not even give him a chance, Crowley could arrange it himself. Halt’s help was unnecessary to him for that, to say the least. Not even Crowley would have come up with such an unconvincing excuse for the suspiciously long conversation between the two.
“He wants me for a mentor,” Halt replied quietly.
Although he must have spent a lot of time among other people that day, he didn’t look exhausted. Pritchard glanced at him more cautiously anyway. He did it blatantly enough for Halt to notice. He saw a thoughtful nod in response.
“He seems determined…”
“He is,” Crowley nodded. “I’ve been telling him the situation… briefly. That Halt has a little son, he also has other responsibilities, and that maybe it would be better if he let himself be assigned to someone else after all…”
“And?” Pritchard smiled in passing as Will looked reproachfully at his uncle, immediately protesting at being called ‘little’.
Crowley communicated with him instantly, as usual anyway, with just one impish smile. Will cheered up and bit into the honey-smeared scone again. His favourite uncle was too cool a playmate for Will to be angry with him.
“And I got an essay from him about how many cousins he had and how he would be completely unproblematic and happy to be friends with Will. He even wrote a letter to Will, in case Halt agreed to take him on as a pupil…”
Curious, the boy looked first at Crowley, then at Halt. Although he could not read too much yet, he was clever enough to expect others to tell him about the contents of this letter. Crowley hesitated, then indicated with a gesture that Halt’s opinion was much more important in this matter, and the latter accepted this discharge of responsibility without surprise. He nodded with understanding at Will’s curiosity.
“I’ll read it to you in the morning,” he decided. “It’s dark now and we’re supposed to be watching the stars.”
The explanation sounded sensible to Will. He nodded his head very seriously and settled himself more comfortably on the log so that, leaning his head against Halt’s shoulder, he could poke his head up and look at the sky without risking falling on his back into the grass.
“So you’ll take him eventually?” Pritchard hesitated, sending Halt a questioning look.
“I don’t know yet. But coming back we can pay a visit to Caraway… and we’ll see.”
The former uncertainty was gone from Halt’s voice even as he spoke quietly. With an equally calm, natural movement, he held Will to him, insuring him with his arm. Just in case, though there was no need.
Pritchard understood this perfectly.
Just as he understood the smile that flashed across Halt’s face as Will quickly put the earlier dilemmas of serious adults out of his mind.
“A map from the stars!” he demanded, reminding them of a promise he was given as soon as he’d finished his dinner.
The dozen or so Rangers in the vicinity poorly concealed their laughter when, moments later, a honey-stained Will was caught by surprise in the arms by Crowley, who undertook the responsible role of washing his hands and face until ash, earth and grasses stuck to Will. The boy shrieked with appropriate commitment, protesting at being so brazenly forced to dispose of the honey, which he happened not to mind having on his face and hands.
Crowley, on the other hand, was in no hurry to deliver him to the water bucket. Spinning on his axis, he held Will so that he could see the stars blurring into long, bright ribbons. The little boy’s merry squeal carried over the secret gathering of Rangers.
Pritchard once again noticed the tiny smile on Halt’s face. They both watched as Will made perfect use of the opportunity as Crowley got dizzy and he loosened his grip for a moment. Raising a larum that he would not be allowed to wash up, Will ran and hid between the Rangers assembled around bonfires. Somehow, no one seemed to rush to the aid of the pursuing Corps Commander.
Berrigan added the appropriate musical background for them, changing the slow ballad he played to suitably fast music. The laughter intensified; more people stopped pretending they had even a shred of seriousness left.
Halt shook his head with resignation. A snap of fingers caught his attention and he glanced sideways. Smiling, he nodded gratefully as Pritchard handed him a honey-smeared scone as well.
Years after, it was still one of his favourite foods.
“Five minutes and this whole band will start playing tag,” Pritchard stated in a tone he often used, sort of sullen, and a bit amused, so that he could not be accused of either making fun of people or being a prophet of impending disaster.
“Let’s hope you’re wrong for once, or we won’t get them under control by morning,” Halt muttered.
If it was going to come to that, Pritchard was planning a tactical retreat in the form of suddenly remembering that he was no spring chicken and confessing to everyone that his back hurt and he needed to go to bed early. Getting control of this horde was no longer his problem. He had one son and one grandson. The rest was Crowley’s flock.
“Wait… and what was I right about?” Pritchard hesitated as he traced an unexpected detail in Halt’s words.
He was answered with a highly unprofessional shrug of his shoulders. Halt maintained his seriousness with dignity, but the smirk on his face betrayed his real attitude.
“Surprisingly, in a lot of things…”
Another quiet night in their lives continued. They were coping. And Halt was just smiling, making fun of him and, out of the corner of his eye, anticipating Pritchard’s reaction.
Crowley, on the other hand, had this bewildered look on his face, as if half the marbles in his head had disappeared like that when they left the meeting tent. And Pritchard was almost certain that they had been holding hands for the first dozen or so steps.
Indeed, he was right about a lot of things.
Also in the assumption that, with the right words, he would elicit a quiet snort from Halt that equalled other people’s laughter.
“Surprisingly? What do you mean ‘surprisingly’? How dare you?” he hissed with theatrical indignation.
He was not wrong once again.