Rangers of Linwood (The Five Kingdoms Book 1) Read online

  “Aye, I finished off that sweet roll Arya gave me last night and had a bit of porridge,” Tesni said.

  “Good girl, now go on. If yer goin’ to go to th’ Rangers, ye best get yer stuff and get goin’. Ye’ll learn all sorts of stuff with them that the lads and I could never teach ye.”

  Tesni hugged Knives tightly. “I won’t be forgettin’ yeh, Knives, or any of the lads. Tell them goodbye for me, aye?”

  “Aye, ‘twill be done. We’ll be missin’ ye, Wits, but Tesni Redleaf has a future beyond the Thieves Guild, and I believe the Rangers can provide it, especially Arya Summerbreeze. If yer lucky, she’ll mentor ye, herself.”

  Tesni nodded, grabbed the small satchel that contained everything she owned, and ran out the door. She wouldn’t whistle so close to the cave, of course. She didn’t wish to alert the Rangers as to the actual whereabouts of the Guild headquarters. Instead, she ran deep into the woods, until she wasn’t quite sure where she was anymore, and she let out a loud, long whistle.

  Almost immediately, a Ranger dropped down. Like Arya, he wore green pants and matching jacket with gold braid and crest, but his tunic was tucked in and he wore a leather belt. Where Arya had carried bow and arrows at her back, this one, his blonde hair only slightly darker than Tesni’s, had a sword at his, and a dagger at his hip. “Hello there, miss. I’m Ryder. How can I help you?”

  “’Ello, Ryder. I’m Tesni. I be lookin’ fer Arya Summerbreeze.”

  “Ah, Arya said you might be coming to join us. She didn’t say you were a bit younger than we usually take.”

  “Aye, I’m only eight, but Arya said I ought to come to join the Rangers an’ leave bein’ a thief behind.”

  Ryder smiled. “That’s alright. If Arya says you’re cut out for our life, then you’re cut out for it. We’re really not that far from camp.” He led her a little ways further down what Tesni could now see was a path. “Come, join our fire.”

  “Thank ye,” Tesni said, smiling. The smile left as she looked around. Inside the large wooden fence that marked the parameter, she could see several tents on platforms in rows on one side. There was a large wooden building at the other end, and she could see a couple of much smaller buildings on one side of the larger one. In front of it was a platform. On the side opposite the tents, she saw stables, a small archery range, an area to practice sparring, and a forge. She also saw three rectangular buildings closer to the gates. In the center, there was a large fire pit, but…“Uh, what fire?”

  Ryder laughed. “It’s a Ranger greeting. It means you’re welcome amongst us as a friend, and we will show you hospitality while you’re here.”

  “And the first thing she needs to learn is how to speak correctly,” came a voice from behind them.

  Ryder and Tesni whirled around. “Hail, Ranger,” Ryder said, laughing again.

  “Hail, yourself, Ryder,” Arya said.

  “What’s wrong with th’ way I talk?” Tesni asked.

  Arya looked down at her. “First, I’m glad you decided to come and join us. Second, in general, nothing is wrong with it. However, we Rangers work with all levels of society, Tesni. You might have to work with anyone from your former mates to royalty.”

  “Former mates?” Tesni asked, one eyebrow raised. “Yeh didn’t say I’d have to give up me friendships with th’ lads.”

  Arya sighed. This was clearly going to be a long day, she realized as she massaged her temples. “Tesni, you are clearly a smart girl. You nearly had my purse, and I think you would have had it and been away if I hadn’t made up my mind so quickly. Do you really think the lads of the Thieves Guild will even acknowledge you after today? I can guarantee the secret knock has already been changed.”

  “Why wouldn’t they? They love me, especially Knives. He… He gave me ‘is own last name, he did. An’ he knows I’m ‘ere. He told me to come. He knows I didn’t just abandon ‘em.”

  Arya and Ryder gave each other a look. How were they supposed to explain the way of things to this young girl?

  “Tesni,” Ryder said, “maybe this will help you to understand the decision you’ve made. You are now legal. Everything you do is now to be within the confines of the law. However, the activities of the Thieves Guild are not legal.”

  Arya nodded. “Tesni, what was the thing you were afraid I was going to do when I caught you with your hand on my purse strings?”

  Tesni bit her lower lip. “I was afraid tha’ ye were goin’ to hand me over to th’ guards, but ye didn’t.”

  “No, I didn’t, because you’re just a child and I want to save you. But there’s my point. You’re on the other side of the law, now. What, in their mind, is there to keep you from turning each and every one of them in? What’s going to stop you from going to the authorities and telling them exactly where to find them?”

  “Loyalty,” Tesni said. “Yeh don’t understand, Arya. If Knives thought ‘e ‘ad any reason to fear I might turn ‘em all in, or lead th’ guards straight to th’ cave, he would never ‘ave let me come, and not only did he let me, he told me to.”

  “Tesni, I know more than you think about loyalty.” Arya knelt down, placing her hands on Tesni’s shoulders. Whether she needed to steady the girl or keep her from running, she wasn’t sure. “We Rangers are a family. Your skills will continue to be sharpened with us, and you will never have to worry about whether or not a secret knock has been changed or what will happen if you get captured.”

  Ryder knelt down next to Arya. “I think what Arya’s trying to tell you is that you need to think about your future. Arya told me last night that you’re successful because you’re small and clever. You might never lose that cleverness, but you are going to get taller. You’ll grow in other ways, too, but that will be something for you to learn later. What is going to happen when you’re less agile, when you become clumsy as you enter your early adulthood because your body is changing and you don’t know what to do about it?”

  “I… I didn’t think about it,” Tesni admitted. “I told Knives I’d come up with new tricks.”

  “Or you could have been abandoned, become useless, and ended up in a brothel or as a tavern wench,” Arya snapped.

  Ryder gave Arya a sharp look. “Was that really necessary?”

  The woman just shrugged. “She has to know all of the possible outcomes. It’s better she learn the facts of life sooner rather than later so she can toughen up.”

  “They would never abandon me,” Tesni said. “They wouldn’t. Knives wouldn’t let ‘em.”

  With that, the girl took off through the woods again. She ran hard and fast, until she found her way back to the cave. She gave the knock, but received no answer. To her surprise, she found that the door opened easily anyway. She ran into the cave, calling for Knives and the lads, but still found no answer.

  Nobody was there. Nothing was there. In the short time that Tesni had been gone, Knives and the lads had packed up everything and gone to a new hideout.

  In tears, Tesni walked out of the cave, only to find herself right in Arya’s arms.

  “I tried to tell you,” Arya whispered, stroking Tesni’s hair gently, trying to sooth her. “I guess sometimes you just have to learn the hard way.”

  “I… I thought…thought they…loved me…” Tesni sobbed. “I thought…maybe…they trusted me… that they cared about me…”

  “I know, Tesni, I, I know, but they also had to do what was safe,” Arya said, “and they chose their safety over giving you the ability to come back. But a Ranger? We never leave our own behind. Ever.”

  “Yeh…ye’ll never abandon me?”

  “Never,” Arya confirmed. She brought her thumbs up, wiping away Tesni’s tears. “Now come on home to the camp. You can share a tent with me until you’re old enough for one of your own.”

  “Alright.”

  “She had to see for herself?” Ryder asked when they got back.

  “Aye,” Arya said. She pointed out her tent. “I knew you’d come, so I’ve already had an ex
tra cot set up and a trunk put together for you. You’ll find everything that you need to set up your area of the tent the way you like it. It’s not much, but it’s home.”

  “Thank you,” Tesni whispered.

  As soon as Tesni darted into the tent, Arya turned to Ryder. “It wasn’t easy for her to accept. You should have seen the tears.”

  “I saw how red her eyes were,” Ryder said. “I’m glad she came back instead of running back into town to wait for one of them to come in after a mark.”

  “It’s better for her this way, no matter how hard it may have been,” Arya said. “I just wonder who’s going to end up mentoring the little firebrand.”

  Chapter 3

  Over the course of her first week with the Rangers, Tesni established a new routine for herself with some help from Arya, who woke her just before dawn each morning. Wake up. Make the bed. Have breakfast. Go for a jog, which Arya assured her would help her with her discipline and would get easier over time.

  After the jog came some sort of chore. If Tesni hadn’t seen all of the other Rangers, including Arya herself, doing chores as well, she would have thought it was the only reason Arya had brought her here. It didn’t take long for Tesni to grow an affinity for the horses and for brushing them down to become no longer a chore but something she enjoyed.

  After morning chores came lunch, which was followed by any number of lessons. Arya had reiterated that Tesni was too young to officially begin training, but there was no such thing as too young to learn things like plant identification, cooking, and basic sewing. “After all,” Arya told her, “you never know when you’ll have to fix something on the road, and quickly. Some thread and a needle or two should always be in your pack.”

  Needles and thread were two items on a long list of things that Arya felt should always be in a Ranger’s pack. The list also included dried fruit, berries, nuts, and cooking herbs, medicinal herbs such as white willow bark, a change of clothes, an extra pair of boots, a small pot, a small pan, and a piece of flint for starting fires.

  “Why not just pack up a small tent as well?” Tesni asked sarcastically. “And a wash basin to keep clean?”

  Arya gave Tesni a look that the rest of the Rangers tended to cower away from. Not Tesni, though. Nothing seemed to scare the girl away from presenting a challenge of some sort at every opportunity. Half of the Rangers were betting that Tesni would eventually drive Arya insane. The other half were betting that Tesni would yet prove one of the greatest Rangers ever and end up proving herself at a very young age.

  Arya wasn’t sure, at the end of any given day, which way the bags of gold would be flying when the eventual result came to pass. Her guess was that it would be a mix, and that the smartest Rangers would be placing a bet that Tesni would do both. It was certainly where she had placed her money. “Building a shelter in any environment is something you’ll learn before you’re allowed to go on any missions,” she told Tesni. “Keep a bedroll and a cake of soap. A stream or lake is better than any wash basin, anyway.”

  Eat dinner. Do her evening chores. Go to bed. This rounded out Tesni’s day. By the end of the week, it has become clear that one could always find her in the stables after dinner, no matter how varied her morning chores might be. “Let her have something constant,” Arya said when the other Rangers commented on the girl’s behavior. “She’s young, still, and I did just take her away from the closest thing she’s ever had to normalcy.”

  On day eight, Arya took Tesni on a slightly longer run. After about a mile, she stopped, jogging in place. Tesni imitated her, looking at her guardian, confused.

  “I need to get back into my own jogging routine. I normally do five miles in the mornings,” Arya said. “Do you think you can find your way back to camp from here?”

  “Aye, I can do it. Same path we’ve always been takin’.”

  “Go on, then,” Arya said. She took off, then, and Tesni turned in the opposite direction to go back to camp. She never made it, though, and when Arya returned to camp to find that Tesni was nowhere in sight, she got angry. “Why didn’t anyone go out to find her? She should have been back nearly an hour ago!”

  “Easy, Arya,” Ryder said. “We saw her head out with you, so it was only natural to assume that she was still with you, that you were pushing her. We’ll find her.”

  “I left her by that big tree north of camp that looks like it grew from two trees intertwining. She should have come straight south,” Arya explained, giving her fellow Rangers a good idea about where to look. “Oh…why didn’t she call out or whistle for help?”

  Arya was actually worried about the girl, and Ryder knew it. For all that Arya had always sworn that she would never take a protégé so that she would never get attached, she had clearly become attached to Tesni, and Ryder had no doubt that by the time that Tesni was twelve, the bow mistress and the former thief would form not only a mentor-protégé bond, but a mother-daughter bond as well.

  More than two hours passed before one of the Rangers returned to camp carrying Tesni, and Arya could see immediately why the girl hadn’t called for help. She couldn’t. The blood matting Tesni’s hair indicated that she had hit her head on something hard. The fact that her left boot was off and her ankle bruised and swollen told Arya that Tesni’s ankle had been broken in the fall.

  Arya followed the other Ranger to the medical tent, where the medic moved immediately to cut away Tesni’s beautiful blond locks so that she could get to the wound on her head. Arya stood nervously by, watching the medic clean grit, dirt, and grass from the wound, stitch it up, and bandage it.

  “You won’t do her any good hovering over my shoulder, Arya,” The medic said as she moved on to Tesni’s ankle.

  “I won’t do her any ill, either, Enid.”

  “What I look forward to is hearing how she ended up in this condition,” Enid said. “Why did you let her finish a shorter run unsupervised?”

  “She’s been here a week,” Arya said. “I can’t watch her twenty-four hours a day. I have my own routines, and if I had gone much longer on the shorter runs, I would have lost my ability to go on my longer ones.”

  Enid shook her head. “Act as cold and as distant as you will, Arya. Everyone in camp knows you’ve started caring about Tesni, likely more than you’re willing to admit.”

  Arya snorted. “Of course I care about her. I care about everyone in this camp.”

  Enid laughed, wrapping Tesni’s ankle carefully. “Aye, but you’re working too hard to keep distant from her, to keep from getting too attached in case something bad happens, but you’re already attached, Arya Summerbreeze. You can’t fool me one bit.”

  Arya just sighed. The next four years were going to be long ones, and she knew it. And that was just the time before Tesni could officially begin training. Silently, Arya pitied whoever ended up the girl’s mentor. “She’ll be alright?” she asked.

  “It’s too early to tell,” Enid replied. She grabbed Arya’s hand and placed it on Tesni’s head. Arya hissed and pulled her hand away quickly.

  “You could cook eggs on her forehead,” she whispered.

  “It was enough time between injury and being brought to me for infection to set in,” Enid explained.

  “This wouldn’t have happened if I’d let her stay with the Thieves Guild,” Arya muttered.

  “Perhaps,” Enid said. “And perhaps she might have never been injured at all. Perhaps, though, she might have gotten worse. She could have tried to pick the wrong pocket and gotten killed right there in the street.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Just… Do everything you can for her, will you?”

  

  Arya spent the next three days in agony, just going through the motions of her daily routine. She told herself it was out of guilt for letting Tesni go partnerless for the rest of her run, breaking one of Arya’s own safety rules, but eventually even she had to admit she had developed a genuine affection for the girl. An almost maternal instinct had kicked in as
she spent nearly all her free time at Tesni’s side, which both amused and annoyed Enid.

  “You’re still not doing her any good hovering like you are.”

  “I’m still not doing her any harm, either,” Arya snapped.

  Enid just rolled her eyes. “You’ll be glad to hear that her fever broke this morning. I expect her to wake up soon.” Arya gave a sigh of relief. As if on cue, Tesni’s eyes fluttered open. Just as quickly, they shut again as the girl gave a whimper of pain. “Here, lass, sip on some of this,” Enid said, helping Tesni to sit up and giving her some white willow bark tea.

  “Thank you,” Tesni whispered. A wince crossed her features, merely speaking causing her pain. She wrinkled up her nose as she sipped the tea, and Enid laughed.

  “I know, I know, it doesn’t taste the best. Here,” she said. She stirred some honey into it.

  “That’s better,” Tesni said, taking another sip.

  “Tesni, do you remember what happened, how you got hurt?” Arya asked, kneeling down.

  Tesni just looked at Arya, her eyes holding more questions than answers. Very slowly, she shook her head, stopping as the pain returned.

  

  Who were these women? Tesni didn’t know. She wasn’t even sure of her name, just what the red-headed woman called her. The older woman, who still had some wisps of brown hair amongst the gray, was very kind. The red-head seemed to have concern for her. Were they family?

  Her head still hurt a little, but whatever was in this tea seemed to be helping a great deal. “Are you my mother?”

  

  Arya blinked. What in the world would make Tesni think she was her mother? “No, young one, I’m not your mother.”

  Enid laughed. “No, she just acts like it since you don’t have one,” she said, ignoring the look Arya shot her.

  “Oh,” Tesni said. “An aunt? You look too young to be my grandmother.”