Chapter Text
Crowley Meratyn had always wanted to be a Ranger. Other boys in the village all looked up to soldiers and knights, swinging around with sticks and riding pigs to imaginary battles. Their fathers turned a blind eye, sometimes helping with picking a stick or whittling it into a wooden sword. Back in the day they had wanted to be knights too. As had Crowley’s father.
Well, except that Bran Meratyn had ended up like one—a nameless corpse on a nameless battlefield. Only his pay had ever returned home. Or so Crowley’s mother always told him. He was too young to remember any coin at home.
Crowley had no father to make wooden swords for him, but there was more to his fascination with Rangers. That battle—the skirmish that took Bran Meratynʼs life—had been ended by a single Ranger. Knights died trampled by the march of history, but the Kingʼs Rangers shaped it, and so Crowley yearned to be one of them.
Some days this dream was all he had. Dreams did not succumb easily to the cold, did not they run dry like provisions two months into the winter. Dreams fed on hunger and laughed in the face of misery. Not even dreams could keep him warm through a winter night in Culway Fief, nothing could, but at least they kept him going.
Snow crunched softly beneath his feet as he dashed from the shade of one tree to another, his breath steaming in the cold air, his mottled cloak wrapped tight around his shoulders.
If someone were to look closely they would see that the cloak was not, in fact, mottled, but simply streaked with dirt. His dashing involved disproportionally much stumbling, his feet awkward in boots many sizes too large, and the bow in his hands could do more harm when thrown that shot. But there was no one to see, and Crowley’s imagination made do.
In his mind, he was a Ranger traversing the baron’s woods in the night, hunting poachers. Except that Crowley was the poacher, and not even the most successful one.
It was his second night with an empty stomach.
Momentarily safe in a nook of a large tree, Crowley took a moment to steady his breathing. Chewing bark kept the worst of the hunger at bay, but it could not chase away the heaviness from his limbs and the dark spots from his vision. He wiped the moisture off his lips with his sleeve and went on the way, sticking to shadows.
He had to stay focused. He was a Ranger on a mission; failure was not an option.
If he failed, Mum would— No, he couldnʼt think like that. A Ranger had trust in his skills. A Ranger never gave up.
But the first two of his traps proved empty and the third was broken, having caught something too strong for its frail hinge. Crowley reset the first pair and abandoned the last one. His fingers trembled too much for the fine work, and then there was the prickling at the nape of his neck warning him not to linger, that it wasnʼt safe in the woods tonight. He knew it was right. He knew, but he could not afford to turn back again.
Crowley had three more traps to check before he tried his chances with the bow. Two lay in the bed of a shallow stream, quite successful but very risky. Even frozen, the stream attracted predators much bigger than a preteen boy. Mostly the two-legged kind, who stuck to it so as not to get lost.
He headed for the meadow instead. Clearing might have been a better name — it was roughly the size of the house he lived in with his mother, just big enough for the moonlight to shine down on it undisturbed by tree branches.
Crowley banked left even before it came into sight, moving in a wide circle around its perimeter, his eyes trained on the ground in search of tracks.
This habit had saved him two days ago. The tracks had been faint, only visible because the snow had been fresh, but unmistakably human.
Human tracks wasnʼt a good thing. Here in the baronʼs woods, they usually belonged to the baronʼs men. The poachers they caught, the baron flayed the skin off their backs in the main square.
But today, the snow was undisturbed. The woods were cold and quiet, the soughing of the wind barely enough to lift small puffs of frost. Crowley crept towards the meadow, heart beating hard in his chest.
Despite the precautions heʼd taken, every instinct in him screamed. It said that the baronʼs woodsmen were onto him. That this was no night to test his luck. It said that the meadow was too exposed, and that he was no Ranger to think he could outsmart grown men.
But then he glimpsed a movement in the snow. A small animal — a squirrel, perhaps a starved rabbit — struggled in his trap, and just like that, Crowley was off, running towards it without a care in the world.
It was his second night with an empty stomach, and it made him careless.
“I wouldn’t do that,” a voice drawled from above as he stumbled and skidded towards his catch on his knees, his freezing hands reaching, reaching out—
Crowleyʼs fingers stilled millimetres from the rabbitʼs fur. His fingertips warmed from the vestigial heat radiating from the animal, but his core was chilled, his stomach full of ice.
He knew this voice that had spoken, and it didn’t belong to one of the baron’s woodsmen. He’d only heard it speak once before, but he’d remembered. Of course he’d remembered.
This was no woodsman that had caught him. Sitting in the tree at the verge of the meadow, his bow aimed at Crowley with practised ease, was none other than the local Ranger, Pritchard.
Crowley gulped down his fear, retracting his hand. He set them both on his thighs, palms down. A surrender.
He saw things so clearly then. He would die here, in this pathetic little clearing, or shortly thereafter. But somehow it was alright. It was perhaps not good, but fine. Acceptable. In a parting gift from life, he had been offered a glimpse of his dream.
Crowley Meratyn would never be a Kingʼs Ranger, but he could get the second best thing. He could die at the hands of one. He lifted his head and looked up at the arrowhead.
But the Ranger did not loose, not yet. One leg casually dangling, the other bent and resting on the branch for balance, he gave the impression that he could stay like this forever, a patch of sharper darkness in the forest.
Crowley was afraid, of course he was. Who would not be? His hands were trembling. His heart thrummed in his chest as if it wanted to break free and run, the silly thing. Nothing and no one escaped a Ranger in the forest. He wished it could still and let him take a good look. Memorise.
Then there were tears welling in his eyes, slowly but inexorably taking even this much away from him. Crowley brushed them away furiously, embarrassed with himself. His mother always said crying made you feel better, but while everyone was glad to see the ice melt, no one liked the damp, muddy days of the thaw.
The Ranger lowered his bow.
“Well?” he said. “Iʼm waiting for an explanation. Itʼd better be good.”
Despite the situation, the tears and cold and the rattling of his teeth, Crowley found himself grinning. “None, sir,” he replied.
The Ranger lifted his bow and loosed. So fast! By the time Crowley flinched, the arrow had already glided harmlessly over his shoulder. At the other end of the clearing, something small and scuttling died instead of him.
Crowley watched in befuddlement as the Ranger slid off the branch, dropping down with easy grace. His soft boots made almost no sound on impact, and none at all as he walked past Crowley towards his catch.
“Take it,” he said, dropping the bird at the boyʼs feet. A black grouse! Meat enough for a week. Crowley touched the red spots on its head in awe. To catch one was a dream, and also strictly illegal.
“Isn’t the punishment for a grouse five lashes?” he asked reverently.
“Smart-mouth.” The Ranger waggled his finger at him. “It’s not poaching when I’m the one doing it.”
Crowley didnʼt understand. Not a breath of it.
The Ranger, meanwhile, produced a money pouch from somewhere in his cloak and set it down next to the grouse. “That too. You need it.”
It was too much for Crowley. “Sir?” he mumbled. A small word to hold all the questions, but it made do.
The Ranger crouched down so that their faces were level. “I was asked to deal with the poacher,” he explained. “It’s my problem how I do it. So, let’s get this clear. Will you poach again, boy?”
“Um.” Crowley looked down at the pouch. He had no idea how much money it held, but money never lasted.
The Ranger pinched the bridge of his nose, looking him up and down. “Then get yourself a proper bow, at least. Snares are easily found.” His gaze slid down, growing darker. “And proper boots.”
Crowley tucked them beneath his legs, suddenly self-conscious. “And a cloak?” he dared.
The Ranger — Pritchard, that was his name — smiled gently and shook his head. “Only this,” he said, pulling the fallen cowl of Crowleyʼs cloak back up. “Now, thatʼs perfect. The cloak is meant to hide us, you know.”
Abruptly he stood and set off, just like that, leaving Crowley with his life and a pile of undeserved gifts. Only as he melted back into the woods, a shadow amid shadows, he added over his shoulder, “And I could swear I’ve never seen you here!”
“He found out where I lived, somehow. Every two months, he returned to make sure we were faring well. He corrected my archery— I always made a point to be practising, completely accidentally of course, when he was in the village.”
Halt chuckled softly. Just a quicker exhale, really. Crowley felt it more than he heard it, slumped as he sat against his chest.
“He brought us money and provisions. Every two months, for three years.
“Everything was so good. After a year, Mother found work as a barmaid in the city and we moved. I had food, my own bed and a hope that I could become a Ranger one day. Everything was so good,” he repeated, as if saying it could hold the memory intact a bit longer.
Halt drew Crowley closer into the hug, sensing how much he didnʼt want to say what came next.
But compared to Haltʼs story, it wasnʼt much. The ordinary sort. The sort of a story that should never happen but that happened too often, so often that the thirteen-years-old Crowley hadnʼt even been surprised.
Crowley swallowed and made himself continue. “Then my mother married again, a wealthy widower from the upper city. He already had three children of his own, so obviously he didn’t want me there. He made sure I knew it.”
The blows were falling one by one. No matter how Crowley tried to shrink away from the worst, they always landed. He could not tell where the next one would come from, only that it would. It always would.
Another kick. Shouted words that he could no longer distinguish and didnʼt wish to. Curled on the bare floor, he brought his hands up to cover his ears. Stupid. There were more important body parts to protect than his ears. His hands were shitty protection anyway.
He could not tell where the next blow would land. He could not get ready.
A kick connected with his spine and Crowley screamed, every nerve on fire. He screamed even though screaming was pointless because no one would come because only family was welcome past the door. Crowley wasn’t family and neither was anyone who wasn’t already there, teaching him a lesson or watching.
He shouldn’t have returned to the house.
The realisation must have shown, somehow, because the beating ended there, its purpose achieved. The two boys he should never have tried calling brothers hauled him up and dumped his aching body in the alley behind the house he should never have thought of as home.
The rain kept falling as he rolled over onto his back, droplets fat and heavy and cold on his skin. Such a tiny thing. Hard to believe, now, that they had bothered him so.
Hard to believe, with each painful breath, how much a single mistake could cost.
Get up, came the whisper of reason in the back of his head. You have to go.
“Go where?” he whispered back, blood and rain mixing on his lips.
Anywhere but here.
Crowley lifted his hand to the weeping sky, not to shield but to touch. The whisper was right, he knew, he just couldn’t muster the strength. The fight was bleeding out of him, washing away with the rain. Even the discomfort of his wet clothes faded into something kinder as they soaked through. Almost soothing, their weight as they dragged him down into the dark nowhere. He dropped his arm over his eyes.
“What are you doing?” Pritchard snapped at him, voice clear as it had been on the day he actually had.
“Staying where you put me,” he’d replied sulkily. He’d asked to be shown the move, but obviously he hadn’t meant on himself.
Pritchard was having none of it. His ghostly steps squelched in the rain as he approached and sat on the ground by Crowley’s side. The boy pressed his eyes shut. It could not block out the words, and even if it could, he had heard them already.
“Listen here, kid.” Kind voice, stern tone. “A lot of people will try to bring you down. A lot of people will succeed, no matter how good you get. Life is about getting up and moving on anyway.”
The rain kept falling, pooling in the corners of his eyes and flowing down his face. It wasnʼt cold anymore.
Get up, get up, get up—
Crowley waited a moment longer, but the man who had teasingly offered to carry him home that day wasnʼt really there. Pity. This time he would have accepted, if only to find out where home was.
Crowley grit his teeth, rolled over and pushed himself up to his elbows in one determined motion. It hadn’t hurt then and it hurt now, but he struggled on, up to his knees, then to his feet, supporting himself on the wall. His hair dripped water into his eyes. His bruises throbbed and his vision swam and his stomach roiled, bile rising up his throat. Ignoring it all, he lifted his foot and made that hardest first step.
“Momentum,” Pritchard instructed, walking him through the motions. “There will always be men bigger than you. This is how you bring them down.”
He shifted his feet and Crowley crashed to the ground. Elbow, hand, knee, he grit his teeth and got up again.
“Repetition.” Pritchardʼs hand settled on Crowleyʼs shoulder, correcting the draw. “No way around it.”
Nock, draw, release.
Step.
“Like this?”
“Fair enough.” That wry pause. “But you can do better.”
Everybody knew where the Ranger lived. It wasnʼt that far. Crowley had never been there, had no right to go there, but it was the closest thing to home he could imagine.
He made it out of the city before sundown, not that there was sun to be seen. The guards at the gate paid him no heed, deep into the cups and their own misery. It was such a day. He stumbled on, the road a river of mud swallowing his feet.
He’d break into a Ranger’s house. The thought seemed funny, there and then. What was the worst that could happen? Jail? At least it would be out of the rain. And if Pritchard was home and shot him on the spot, well, wasn’t it long overdue?
The world around him faded. There was only the pain in his chest, the pain in his head, the road below and the pain in his feet, the rain in his eyes and the list of directions on his lips.
“Left at the bridge, left at the crossroads. Straight through the forest, donʼt cross the creek. Left, left, straight...”
The creek was ahead of him, and as he wearily turned his head, there was the cabin, just across the meadow. Somewhere behind it, a horse whinnied.
Before Crowley could make another step, or even decide if he wanted to make it, the door banged open to reveal a very annoyed Ranger with his bow fully drawn.
It was simply such a day.
And despite everything, despite the hurt and the rain, Crowley grinned up at that arrow before collapsing into the mud.
“He took me in. I feared that in coming, I had wasted my chance, that he wouldnʼt want me for an apprentice anymore.” Crowley shook his head and laughed mirthlessly at his insecure younger self. “Sure, he was angry, but not with me. Never with me.”
“Never?” Halt accentuated, and it was Crowleyʼs turn to chuckle. He didn’t need to see his friendʼs face to picture that doubtful eyebrow arch.
“Weeell,” he conceded, stretching the vowel to the point of breaking. “He never held it against me, but, yes, I suppose I did make him see red a few times over the years.”
“It wasnʼt even that hard,” Halt observed. To him, disappointing Pritchard had always seemed the worse of the two imaginary scenarios. “He wasnʼt one to rage, but if you knew what to look for—”
“Oh?” Crowley perked up, excited to pry the story out. Halt could be delightfully petty when he chose to. “What did you do?”
Halt considered, creating the impression that he had a whole catalogue of offences to pick from. Then he said, calmly, “I sent him paperwork.”
The Corps Commandant, a frequent victim of paperwork himself, gasped with outrage.
Undeterred or perhaps encouraged by his reaction, Halt continued. “He worked for the castle back then, so it was quite easy. Each time he got under my skin Iʼd have him report on the colour of moss or something. I had a whole ledger for holding these grudges.”
Crowley hid his face in the crook of his elbow in a bid to smother his laughter. “He— he actually wrote back?” he gasped between breaths.
“Oh, absolutely,” Halt replied with his muted equivalent of glee. “With whole litanies of insults between the lines. I wonder if he realised it was my doing. He never let on.” Crowleyʼs mirth grew almost too hard to contain. Then Halt added, somberly, “I wish I had thought to rescue some when I ran.” And that did it.
Crowley burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. His shoulders shook so badly that at some point Halt pushed him away, grumbling something about animals unable to control themselves. Crowley only laughed harder, kicking his legs and holding his midriff as tears of joy prickled in the corners of his eyes.
Even Halt couldnʼt help the smile that tugged at his lips.
It took them a few minutes to settle, but once they did, the quell of the corridor reasserted itself, falling over them like a dusty blanket.
“I think Iʼve only seen him truly enraged once, early on,” Crowley mused, eager to keep the words flowing, to keep the silence at bay. “That was when the corruption was truly starting to take root, and I had no money, no connections, nothing valuable to the commandment. I passed the assessment, but they still denied me the bronze oakleaf.”
Pritchard had assured him it didnʼt matter, that it would not change a thing, but heʼd cared even more than Crowley had. And he had been angry.
“There is an interesting tale circulating about how you got it in the end,” Halt put in.
“Mostly true, if weʼve heard the same version. Iʼve always meant to ask him how he arranged that. In the end, I never did.” Crowley looked away, blinking back the sudden pang of sadness that came with the admission. “I had only been apprenticed for six months then. I know I botched that shot, I just know it.”
Halt frowned. “Wait. Six months? Werenʼt you thirteen?”
Whoops. Crowley bit his lip. It was hardly the worst secret to leak today, just an embarrassing one. “Almost fourteen by then. But yes, I lied about it,” he admitted with a sheepish smile. “Nobody keeps birth records of us peasants. Just donʼt tell anyone.”
“Is that official? In the chronicles and all?”
Crowley confirmed. “Everywhere. One year off.”
Halt nodded solemnly. “Iʼll take your secret to the grave.”
Crowley squinted at his friend. His expression was the usual deadpan, but was this mischief he heard in Haltʼs voice? “Your grave?” he ensured.
Halt made a face. “No,” he said. “Actually, I planned to amend the date on yours.”
“Donʼt you dare.” Crowley wiggled his finger at him. “Or Iʼll crawl out and carve your old name onto yours.”
Halt grunted, and a brief companionable silence fell over them.
“He was a great man,” Crowley said eventually.
“That he was,” Halt agreed. “Did he also make you do all the housework?”
“He what?!” The mental image of His Highness Crown Prince of Clonmel doing the dishes in royal finery sent Crowley giggling uncontrollably. Again.
Halt graciously allowed him time to calm down. “Poor Will,” he then said without a tinge of remorse. “Iʼve passed down the wrong traditions.”
“And poor Gilan!”
“Oh no, Gilan deserved that. The brat was even worse than I was, and thatʼs saying something.”
They shared a subdued laugh at that. It died down soon, too soon. Haltʼs fingers found Crowleyʼs again. What were they seeking he could not tell, though perhaps he could guess. Validation. Courage.
In that moment, their thoughts ran parallel as they had so many times before, and they both felt it. Ominous and inevitable, the memory neither wanted to remember hung between them.
Halt acknowledged it first. “And in the end, I failed him.”
“We both did,” Crowley corrected, for the guilt was his to bear too, his debt to his mentor forever unpaid — though, knowing Pritchard, long ago forgiven. “But I think,” he said hesitantly. His voice cracked. He swallowed and tried again, “I think he would have been proud of who youʼve become.”
Halt squeezed his hand, this once forgoing a remark about thinking. There were tears running down his face too.
“Both,” he whispered back. “He would have been proud of both of us.”