The Battle for Skandia recap

Halt and Horace finally reach the mountain cabin where Evanlyn has nursed Will through warmweed withdrawal, but Temujai scouts, eastern horse warriors probing Skandia, seize Evanlyn first, and the three Araluens have to track the raiders and take her back. What they learn doing it is that a Temujai army is about to invade Skandia. Escaped slaves and enemies though they are, they carry the warning to Hallasholm, where Erak's backing and Halt's usefulness buy them a hearing from the Oberjarl Ragnak, while Evanlyn's royal identity stays hidden because of Ragnak's blood oath against her family. Skandians despise the bow, so Halt and Will train the Araluen slaves into an archery corps in exchange for their freedom, and Halt plans a battle around ground the Temujai cavalry cannot use. In the fighting Halt is wounded and Will commands the archers; the invasion is broken and Ragnak is killed. Evanlyn's identity emerges, the oath dies with him, and Skandia and Araluen make peace, free the slaves and send the Araluens home.

Previously: Will, an orphan ward of Castle Redmont, was apprenticed to the Ranger Halt and helped destroy the Kalkara sent by the rebel lord Morgarath. When Morgarath invaded Araluen, Will, his friend Horace and a girl called Evanlyn burned the bridge Morgarath's slaves had built to outflank the King's army. Horace escaped and Morgarath was killed in single combat by him, ending the war, but Will and Evanlyn were captured by the Skandian jarl Erak and carried north. Evanlyn turned out to be Cassandra, King Duncan's daughter and heir to Araluen, travelling under another name. Refused permission to go after his apprentice, Halt got himself banished for a year by publicly insulting the King, and travelled with Horace through lawless Gallica, where they were held by the warlord Deparnieux until Horace killed him in a formal challenge. In Skandia, Will and Evanlyn were made slaves at Hallasholm under the Oberjarl Ragnak, who has sworn a blood oath against Araluen's royal family. Will was sent to the labour yard and made dependent on warmweed, the drug used to keep the slaves docile. Erak helped the pair escape before winter, and Evanlyn took Will to a mountain cabin and forced him through withdrawal while Halt and Horace pressed north to find them.

Will is recovering in the mountain cabin, weak and shaky but himself again, when the isolation ends badly: a Temujai scouting party, eastern horsemen ranging through the Skandian mountains, takes Evanlyn. Halt and Horace, who have crossed Gallica and worked their way into Skandia searching, reach the cabin and find Will alone. The reunion is brief. With Will barely able to draw a bow and the raiders already moving, the three of them set out after the scouting party to get Evanlyn back, and Halt begins to gauge how far his apprentice has actually come back from what the yard did to him.

The three Araluens take Evanlyn back from the Temujai, using Halt's shooting and Horace's sword against a party that outnumbers them, and Will proves he can still do the work when it matters. What they learn from the encounter is more serious than the rescue: the scouts are not raiders but the leading edge of a Temujai army, and Skandia is being surveyed for invasion. The Skandians, who have no idea what is coming, fight as individual axemen and have never faced disciplined mounted archers. The four of them are escaped slaves and enemies of the country, but Halt concludes that they have to carry the warning to Hallasholm, and that the alternative is a massacre.

They reach Hallasholm and are taken by the Skandians, which is the easy part; getting the Oberjarl Ragnak to listen to a banished Araluen Ranger is not. Erak, who captured Will and Evanlyn in the first place and helped them escape, vouches for them, and Borsa the hilfmann grasps the logistics of what is coming. Ragnak, contemptuous but not stupid, accepts the warning and grudgingly accepts Halt's help with it. Evanlyn stays Evanlyn, since Ragnak's blood oath against the royal house of Araluen would oblige him to kill Cassandra on sight, and only a handful of people know how thin the disguise is.

Halt studies the problem and finds the Skandian army's flaw: superb close-quarters fighters with no missile arm at all, facing an enemy whose whole method is to shoot from horseback and never close until the enemy is broken. Skandians regard the bow as a coward's weapon, so Halt looks elsewhere for archers and finds them among the Araluen slaves, hundreds of countrymen with nothing to lose. He and Will train them into a disciplined corps in the time available, with freedom promised in exchange, while the Skandians prepare a defensive position in the pass above Hallasholm. The Temujai general Haz'kam, meanwhile, moves his army west, expecting the campaign to be short.

The first clashes go as Halt predicted: Temujai horse archers cut up Skandian formations that cannot reach them, and the invaders learn nothing to change their opinion of the defenders. That is deliberate. Halt's plan turns on the Temujai believing what they have seen, and on ground where cavalry cannot manoeuvre, with the Araluen archers concealed until the decisive moment. The Skandian jarls have to accept a battle plan built on a feigned retreat, which runs against everything their fighting tradition values, and Will takes practical command of the archer corps he has spent weeks training.

The main battle is fought in the pass. The Skandian line gives ground on cue, the Temujai commit to what looks like a rout, and the trap closes on ground that ruins their mobility. Halt is wounded during the fighting and Will is left to command the archers at the point where the plan either works or fails, giving the shooting orders that break the Temujai charge. The battle is savage and the Skandian losses are heavy, but the invasion is stopped rather than merely delayed, and the eastern army is forced to withdraw.

The Temujai retreat and Skandia survives, saved by a plan devised by a banished Araluen Ranger and executed in part by Araluen slaves. In the aftermath Evanlyn's real name comes out. The Vallasvow would bind Ragnak to kill her, but he is killed in the battle, and the leadership that follows, with Erak behind it, sets the oath aside. What is agreed instead is a treaty between Skandia and Araluen: peace, an alliance, and freedom for the Araluen slaves, including the men who fought as archers. King Duncan lifts Halt's banishment, which was only ever a device to let him leave, and the Araluens sail home with Cassandra restored to her father. Will, who arrived in Skandia as a drugged slave, leaves it having commanded an army's archers, and returns to Redmont to finish his apprenticeship.

The Temujai invasion is broken. Halt's plan holds: the Skandian line gives ground where it is meant to, the Temujai cavalry is drawn into ground it cannot use, and the Araluen archers, commanded by Will after Halt is wounded, break the charge that was supposed to end the battle. The eastern army withdraws, and Skandia survives as an independent country because two escaped Araluen slaves and a banished Ranger chose to warn it. In the aftermath Evanlyn's identity comes out. Ragnak's Vallasvow would bind him to kill her, but he does not survive the battle, and the Skandian leadership that follows, with Erak's weight behind it, sets the oath aside rather than begin a war it has just finished paying for. What is agreed instead is a treaty: peace between Skandia and Araluen, the freeing of the Araluen slaves, including the men who fought as Halt's archers, and an alliance between two countries that have spent a generation raiding one another. Halt's banishment, engineered so that he could leave, is lifted by King Duncan, who has his daughter and his Ranger back. The Araluens sail home. Will has come through addiction, slavery and a battle, and returns to finish an apprenticeship that now looks very different.