About the Author
----------------
JOHN FLANAGAN grew up in Sydney, Australia, hoping
to be an author, and after a successful career in advertising and
television, he began writing a series of short stories for his
son, Michael, in order to encourage him to read. Those stories
would eventually become The Ruins of Gorlan, Book 1 of the
Ranger's Apprentice epic. Now with his companion series,
Brotand, the novels of John Flanagan have sold millions of
copies and made readers out of kids the world over. Mr. Flanagan
lives in the suburb of Mosman, Australia, with his wife. In
addition to their son, they have two grown daughters and four
grandsons. You can visit John Flanagan at
www.WorldofJohnFlanagan.com
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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Dimon, former commander of the palace guard and now
the leader of the rebellious Red Fox Clan, leaned on a
windowsill, looked upward, and scowled. He was in a room on the
top floor of the Castle Araluen keep. The south tower loomed
above him, several floors higher.
He came here regularly, to stare up at the ninth floor of the
south tower, where Princess Cassandra, King Duncan and their men
had taken refuge. Occasionally, Dimon would see movement on the
balcony that surrounded the ninth floor and once he had
recognized Cassandra herself peering over into the courtyard
below.
He cursed bitterly when he saw her, but she was unaware of his
presence. The people on the balcony rarely seemed to look in his
direction. They were more interested in the courtyard, and
Cassandra’s archers had already taken a savage toll on anyone who
moved incautiously down there, straying too far from the shelter
of the keep walls.
Under Dimon’s leadership, the castle had been taken by soldiers
of the Red Fox Clan. He had chanced upon the Red Fox Clan some
years before. They were a disorganized, poorly motivated group of
malcontents who protested against the law that allowed a woman to
succeed to the throne. The law had been put in place by
Cassandra’s grandher, and it meant that Cassandra would
eventually become Queen of Araluen in her own right. The Red Fox
Clan clung stubbornly to the old tradition that only a male heir
could succeed to the throne—a position Dimon heartily endorsed,
as he was distantly related to Cassandra and, so far as he knew,
the only possible male heir.
Under a false name, he had joined the Clan and quietly worked
his way to the top echelons of power within it. The Clan was big
on angry talk and short on action. Dimon, on the other hand, was
an expert orator, capable of rousing the passions of an audience
and swaying them to his point of view. He had a powerful and
charismatic personality and an inborn ability to make people like
and respect him. He rose rapidly in the Clan, until he was
appointed as their overall leader. He organized them and
motivated them until they had become a potent and efficient
secret army. He pandered to their beliefs and, most important, he
gave them an agenda and a goal—rebellion against the Crown. His
cause was aided by the fact that King Duncan had been an invalid
for some time and Cassandra, his daughter, was acting as Regent
in his place, providing an obvious example of the result of the
law change.
Dimon used the Red Fox Clan as a tool to further his own ends.
He planned to usurp the throne and have himself crowned king. He
saw the Red Fox Clan as the vehicle by which he would achieve
this ambition.
His chief obstacle, he believed, was Cassandra’s husband, Sir
Horace—the para knight of Araluen and the commander of the
army. Horace was a highly skilled warrior and an expert
strategist and tactician. He was assisted in his leadership role
by the Ranger Gilan, Commandant of the redoubtable Ranger Corps
and Horace’s longtime friend. For Dimon to succeed, these two had
to be lured away from Castle Araluen and, preferably, killed.
Accordingly, he had devised a plan whereby Horace and Gilan set
out to the north to quell a rebellion raised by a small force of
the Red Fox Clan, taking most of the castle’s garrison with them.
They were intercepted along the way by a much larger force of
Sonderland mercenaries and Red Fox Clan members. Outnumbered
three or four to one, Horace’s men had staged a fighting retreat
to an ancient hill fort. Although they were currently besieged
there by their ambushers, Dimon knew that a leader of Horace’s
ability wouldn’t stay contained for long. It was vital that Dimon
should act quickly to seize the throne.
Initially, all had gone well. Dimon had tricked his way past
Castle Araluen’s impregnable walls and massive drawbridge with a
force of Red Fox Clan troops and came within an inch of capturing
Cassandra and her her.
But then Maikeru, Cassandra’s Nihon-Jan master sman, had
interfered, holding Dimon and his men at bay long enough for
Cassandra and Duncan to retreat to the upper levels of the south
tower with a small force of loyal palace guards and archers.
The eighth and ninth floors of the south tower had been built as
a last refuge in the event that the castle was captured. A
section of the spiral stairway, just below the eighth floor,
could be removed, leaving attackers with no access to the upper
two floors—while the defenders could move between the eighth and
ninth floors via an internal flight of timber stairs. The refuge
was stocked with food and weapons, and large rainwater cisterns
in the roof above the ninth floor provided water for the
defenders.
So far, Cassandra had resisted his attempts to force his way
into the eighth floor of the tower. But now, he had an idea that
might just prove to be her undoing.
He turned as he heard a tentative knock at the door.
“Lord Dimon? Are you there?”
He recognized the voice. It was Ronald, the leader of his small
force of engineers and siege spets. “Come in,” Dimon
called.
The door opened to admit the engineer. Like many of his kind, he
was an older man, his gray hair denoting years of experience in
his craft. He hesitated, deferentially. All of Dimon’s men knew
that their leader was in a foul mood since the Nihon-Jan
sman had foiled his plan for a quick result.
“What is it?” Dimon said testily, unreasonably annoyed by the
man’s nervousness.
“The materials have arrived for your device, my lord,” the
engineer told him. “We can begin building it immediately.”
For the first time in several days, a smile crossed Dimon’s
face. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
“Excellent,” he said. “Now we can make things extremely
unpleasant for my cousin Cassandra. Extremely unpleasant.”
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