Chapter Text
"I have recently received reliable intel that the Kalkara are hunting. And I have reason to believe they're going after Lorriac next."
Crowley just stared for a prolonged moment. Then he closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "Shit."
The room went that sort of quiet where everyone's thoughts are weighted, dragging down the air around them. It was Crowley who broke it, rubbing a hand over his face and muttering again, "Shit."
He didn't bother asking if the intel truly was reliable; he didn't bother asking if Halt were certain. He had known and worked with Halt long enough not to do such things. Instead, he asked, "Both of them?"
"As far as I know, yes."
Leaning back in his chair, Crowley closed his eyes again and pinched the bridge of his nose. Inhaling, he slowly opened his eyes. The moment they met Halt's, his expression set like stone falling into a groove.
"It's a tenday's ride to Edinsdale, and Lorriac has a three day head start. You'll have to ride hard to catch him."
Halt nodded. That was obvious.
"I can't give you any knights. They would never be able to keep up with you. I can send Isaiah with you, though. His silent movement may still leave something to be desired, but he's as good a shot as any Ranger."
"With his crossbow as well, I should hope," said Halt. "I told you to make sure he keeps in practice."
Crowley rolled his eyes. "Am I the Commandant, or are you?"
"Well, if you'd like an answer..."
Crowley glared at him, then waved a hand dismissively. "I'll get someone to fetch him immediately. Will, was it?"
Will startled. "Um— yes! Yes, that's my name. I—" he reddened, abruptly wishing he had not opened his mouth at all. Fuck, how old was he again? Because he was certainly acting like he was still fifteen.
Crowley raised his eyebrows, trading a look with Halt before turning back to Will. "I'm assuming you're competent enough to find somebody and give them a message?"
"I should hope any apprentice of mine would at least be able to do that," Halt muttered.
"Gilan?"
"...his first year doesn't count."
Fighting back a smile at this unflattering portrayal of Gilan (oh, did Will have to hear the story behind that), Will nodded. "Where might I find him?"
"I can tell you where he might be," said Crowley, amused, "but that doesn't mean you'll find him there."
For a moment, Will cocked his head in confusion. Then he understood. "Just because I might not see him doesn't mean he's not there."
Crowley gave him an approving look. "Well, Halt, at least you've taught the boy something. I suppose he'll do. Isaiah'll probably be out in the training grounds by now. He's taken it upon himself to improve the King's archers, God help him. Of course, he doesn't have any official approval for it, so he makes himself scarce anytime the actual commanders are about."
Halt clicked his tongue. "The last thing we need right now is more tension between the Royal Archers and the Rangers."
Crowley flicked a wrist. "I doubt it'll come to that. Isaiah's friends with one of the main commanders. They seem to see it as a game of sorts. If I'd thought it would do any real harm, I would've stopped it long ago."
Halt grunted, but seemed satisfied enough to not push any further. Instead, he raised an eyebrow at Will. "What are you standing around for? We haven't got all day, you know."
Will lifted his hands in surrender, turned to go, then stopped. "Um...where exactly are the training grounds?"
Crowley instructed him on how to get there. With that done, Will took his leave and shut the door behind himself.
He soon made his way down the stairs and through the doors into the courtyards surrounding the castle. It took perhaps a tad longer than needed, not due to Will getting lost, but rather his awe at his grand surroundings. The sheer grandiosity made him feel minuscule in comparison, nothing but a poor country boy. If Halt hadn't taken him as an apprentice, he would have lived and died a peasant, most likely never even leaving Redmont. How could that one action have changed Will's trajectory to this extent?
Slipping into the chill rain leached some of those thoughts away. He always felt better outside — one reason why he was well-suited for the job, he supposed. The rain, miserable as it had been to ride in, was a welcome reprieve from the stuffy air of the kitchens he had passed through right before. Although the gardens were still much grander and more elegant than what he'd seen before, filled with ornamental flowers and plants rather than ones of any actual use, in Will's mind, plants were plants. In his opinion, the clearing about four kilometers from Halt's house filled with primroses and foxglove was just as beautiful as any of the cultured gardens here.
Passing through the gardens, Will strode in the direction Crowley had told him until the grass wore down into straw and dirt and an array of training dummies filled the view. Groups of men sprawled about the area, bows in their laps and on the ground beside them as they ate lunch. Their hunched backs and sullen murmurs showed them to be just as miserable training out in these conditions as Will and Halt had been riding in them. Will couldn't help but commiserate. He remembered having to work the paddles in Skandia in weather much worse than this. He still felt the chill in his bones — no matter that these bones had never felt it.
Will stopped at the edge of the grounds, unobtrusively blending in with a bit of shade from one of the few trees around this area of the castle grounds. A first glance yielded no Ranger-like figure, but that was unsurprising. He kept scanning, moving his eyes as Halt had taught, and finally thought he saw what he was looking for.
Taking care to keep hidden, Will started towards the still shape, flitting from shadow to shadow. The overcast sky helped in providing ample concealment. He crept in a broad semicircle, moving around the figure and behind him—
"I can see you, you know."
A bare meter away, Will stopped. Damn. Caught out like a first-year apprentice.
The shape moved, coalescing into a person and slipping off his hood. In the dim, rain-spattered light, Will saw an angular face with a dark, close-shaven beard and a straight line of a nose. The man's hair was black and long, pulled back from his face and skimming his shoulders. Keen eyes — a Ranger's eyes, Will thought immediately — examined Will.
"An apprentice," the man said, then gave a short chuckle. "And a new one, too. Don't even have your bronze yet, do you?"
Before Will could respond, the man had tilted his head, frowning in consideration. The frown abruptly turned into a laugh. "Hah! Don't tell me — you're Halt's, aren't you?"
Startled, Will could only examine him back for a few seconds. He was young, not much older than Will — he couldn't have been out of training for more than a year or two at most. That would explain why he was here, rather than at his own fief. Newly-fledged Rangers were often assigned to Castle Araluen until a fief opened up. Yet, despite his youth, he seemed to already have settled into himself. His posture held an unspoken self-assurance that Will, for all that he had been through and done, still had not managed to grasp.
"I am apprenticed to Halt," Will said finally, not liking the man's comment about being Halt's. "How'd you know?"
The Ranger curved a grin at him like the throw of a discus. "I didn't, really. But there's only two other first-year apprentices this year. One of them is far off in Hogarth Fief — can't imagine why they'd come all the way to Castle Araluen this close to the Gathering. The other's apprenticed to an idiot. We'll all be surprised if he makes it through the exam, but then, no one expected his master to make it through, either. Anyway, there's no way he could've gotten that close to me without being noticed."
Used as he was to Halt's sparing praise, Will decided he would take that as a compliment. "You're Isaiah, right? Crowley sent me to fetch you."
"Well, consider me fetched," the Ranger said with a bit more of that unsettling grin, straightening up and stretching out like a cat. "Look at how lucky I am, catching a first glimpse of Halt's newest apprentice before the Gathering. You've been the talk of the whole Corps."
Will's shoulders tensed. He believed him. That was one of the things Gilan had taught him on the journey to Celtica: what it meant to be an apprentice of Halt. It meant expectations, a shadow nine meters long falling across them, and boots to fill that were far bigger than either of their own feet. Will had managed to avoid that reality for a long time, off in Skandia as he had been, but finally, it was here right in front of him and he had no choice but to face up to it.
"And what will you say, when you talk with them?" Will held the man's gaze, refusing to back down. The man looked back for a long moment, before the grin was back.
"Only that I caught him trying to sneak up on me, like any good Ranger would try." He stuck out his hand, then, the motion swift and sudden. "Call me Isa. Crowley's the only one who calls me Isaiah anymore and that's just because he's an asshole."
Will blinked at him, nonplussed and entirely lost on how to respond to his Commandant being so casually insulted. "Um..."
Isa laughed again, short and sharp. "You firsties are too easy. Come, let's go. Too long and we'll find the two of them in the middle of bickering about the merits of taking coffee with or without honey, and we wouldn't want that, would we?"
Pausing a moment to take in the fact that Isa had assumed, correctly, that Halt was there with Crowley, Will nodded slowly. Isa brushed past him, slipping on his hood once more and instantly blurring into his surroundings. Will scrambled after him. Just like with Halt, he struggled to keep up.
"That Will of yours," Crowley remarked casually, "he certainly seems to know you well."
Halt's hand tightened around the quill he was holding, stopping mid-sentence on the missive he was drafting. Crowley hadn't looked up from his own work, seemingly determined to appear as nonchalant as possible. If he had, he would've seen Halt's expression darken in annoyance.
Despite Crowley's attempts at appearing casual, Halt knew quite well that his words had been entirely intentional. Crowley hadn't said that Halt knew Will well. That was to be expected from anyone Halt was around. Nor had Crowley said that Will and Halt were close. While that of itself would perhaps have startled him a little, knowing how reluctant Halt was to form attachment, it would not have been truly surprising. Halt had done it before, with Gilan, and just about as quickly.
No, Crowley had chosen his words well. He had said that Will knew Halt.
"Does he, now?" Halt asked, unconcernedly, to buy himself some time.
Halt was not entirely sure where Crowley had gained the idea, which of course only made Halt more annoyed. He swiftly flipped through the events of the past two hours — Will's first meeting with Crowley, his return with Isaiah in tow (or, more accurately, Isaiah's arrival with Will in tow), the half-hour of discussion they had held before sending Will and Isaiah away so Crowley and Halt could confer on their own. They would certainly have seemed familiar with each other, accustomed to the others' mannerisms and habits, but that was surely nothing strange. Gilan would have known as much, seven months into his own apprenticeship.
Although...would he, though?
Halt had experienced it for himself, how jarring Will's knowledge of him was. It was certainly not the knowledge Gilan had had, seven months in. It was not the knowledge Gilan had had a year in, or two years in, or even three. Sometimes, Halt would stare at Will and silently, with a tinge of surprised horror, think that Will knew things about him that Gilan didn't even know now.
Those times, the same question would always bob up to the surface. Just who was Will, to that other me?
He had a feeling he already knew the answer.
"That story he mentioned, about Pritchard?" Crowley's eyebrow was raised, knowingly. "I can't imagine you'd've told Gilan that in his first year."
Halt closed his eyes. No. He would not have. He had not. He still had not. The damned thing was, he hadn't told Will that, either. Halt almost never spoke of his past. He couldn't imagine what the situation had been for him to do so, but he was finding more and more with Will that things he would never have imagined doing had already been done. Only in a different lifetime than this one.
"You try putting up with his questions for half an hour and see what you'd be inclined to tell him," Halt said sharply. "The boy has no idea when to shut up."
"Gilan didn't either," said Crowley, not losing the knowing look. Halt could think of at least six different ways to get rid of that look, but unfortunately none of them were legal.
"It was...a mistake," Halt said, despite knowing that it would not have been. The Halt who had told Will that story would have done so with full intent and no regrets. Then, pointed, "I didn't think you were the sort to hound a man about his mistakes."
"I don't believe that for one second."
"Believe what you will, then," Halt said, standing up. His work wasn't done, but he couldn't bear being inside the tiny office for any longer. He started to collect the papers, the inkwell, the quill.
Crowley gave a loud sigh. "Oh, sit back down, will you? You're acting like I'm trying to interrogate you."
"Are you trying to pretend that you're not?"
"I didn't think it'd be such a sore spot," Crowley said. He put his hands up in surrender. "Lord, have you gotten crotchety in your old age."
Halt raised his eyebrows, but sat back down. "Are you forgetting the time I asked you about—"
"Alright, alright, I see your point. Let's call a truce then. I won't ask about Will, and you won't ask about Charlotte."
Halt hmph'ed. "I still think you should try—"
"And I think you should embrace what's happening with Will, but it looks like neither of our opinions are wanted at the moment," Crowley said a bit sharply. Halt took the hint to back off. As easy-going as Crowley generally was, Halt had pushed too hard enough times to know when to quit.
"Well, enough of that then, I suppose." Halt set his papers back down and found the place he'd left off. "While we're in the business of giving unwanted opinions, I noticed that Isaiah seems...different."
Crowley sighed. This one was less exasperated, more heavy. "Is it that obvious?"
"Not extremely. There's an edge to him now, though, that I don't remember seeing before."
Crowley just nodded, eyes cast down to his papers without a hint of his earlier nonchalance. Halt eyed him, felt that he saw the edges of guilt, or shame, or pain, and said, a little gentler,
"It's not all bad. He has a sort of confidence I hadn't seen in him before, with none of the lazy arrogance of that former master of his. That is certainly a change to be welcomed."
"If that were all it was, perhaps I would."
Halt said nothing for a moment, considering how to respond. Isaiah's newfound sharpness had seemed, if a little jarring, not alarming or at all dangerous. The subtle insouciance in his treatment of Crowley had been explainable by the amount of time the two Rangers must spend together. But, given Crowley's reaction...something must have happened. Halt gave a moment to consider if he should attempt to help, but quickly discarded the idea. He did not have nearly enough of the pieces to understand what he'd be getting himself into, and he had much bigger things to worry about. Right then, there was really only one thing he needed to know.
"Is he stable enough to trust with this mission?"
Crowley nodded. "Yes. I can promise that. In fact, getting away from the castle will be good for him. He's...a bit rough, now, and a tad bit reckless, but if anything, that recklessness will be an asset in chasing down two Kalkara. No man with a head screwed on straight would be brave enough to face down those beasts unafraid."
"I don't need a man who'll take stupid risks. It'll only endanger the rest of us."
"He won't. Isaiah has no desire to risk your or Will's lives, I can assure you. He's just a little bit more willing to risk his."
Halt's lips pursed. He didn't necessarily like that, but if Crowley was telling him that Isaiah could keep himself under control, Halt would trust him on that. "Fine. I'll take your word for it."
Crowley met his eyes for a moment, then nodded. "Alright, back to work. These missives won't write themselves."
Halt gave a long, heartfelt sigh, gazing back down at the hours of work ahead of him.
"Damn paperwork."