The Hibernian is a story from Ranger's Apprentice: The Lost Stories
Summary[]
In this tale, the story tells of how Halt and Crowley first came to meet. Crowley's mentor was Pritchard who had recently been banished for a trumped-up charge of treason against the king. Crowley is in a tavern in the fief of Gorlan where he is confronted by Lord Morgarath's soldiers. They bully Crowley, the tavern owner, and Glyniss (the waitress, who is a young girl) when Halt steps out of the shadows and shoots one of the soldiers in the calf and the pair of them take out the rest.
Crowley later finds out that Pritchard was Halt's mentor also while he was in Hibernia. Halt had come to Araluen to find the Ranger Corps Pritchard had told him about. The Corps at this time was in ruins. All you had to do to enter was pay a commission, all the remaining true rangers were being picked off one by one. Duncan at the time was prince and was isolated in a remote fief. King Oswald was sick and senile and had been convinced by his advisers that he couldn't trust Duncan.
The pair of them take the soldiers to Morgarath to punish but Morgarath does nothing. Morgarath asks Halt what his last name is and that is where he gets his alias. He called himself Arratay. Arratay is Halts pronunciation of arretez, which means Halt in Gallican. So he was mocking Morgarath with his name, Halt Halt. Later Morgarath offered Halt a job with him, but knowing Morgarath was a corrupt baron, Halt succinctly declined.
Halt decides to leave for Gallica. Just after leaving he realizes he left something with Crowley and needs it back; he chases Crowley and finds him being ambushed by the soldiers from the tavern. The pair of them quickly take out all of the soldiers and decide on a plan. They would find Duncan and get royal permission to rebuild the Corps and remove Morgarath and his evil barons from their seat of power.
Characters[]
Trivia[]
- Crowley sees his nose as handsome and hawklike, and some have called it equine. However, after a comment from Halt, Crowley realizes that his nose may in fact simply be very big.
- Crowley is said to have fiery red hair, and Pritchard always said that was where Crowley got his fiery personality.
- When Crowley first sees Halt, he sees that Halt has a plain cloak instead of a mottled Ranger's one, and instead of a distinctive Ranger double scabbard, has two separate scabbards, just pushed together to look like one.
- Crowley borrows a tool from Halt that holds one's arrow will one is fixing it so that he/she doesn't have to hold the arrow awkwardly
- The two initially parted ways after the meeting with Baron Morgarath, but Halt remembers that he left his tool with Crowley, but when he got back to him, Crowley was being attacked by the Baron Morgarath's soldiers, one of them the one Halt had shot in the leg at the tavern.
- It is because Crowley never returned Halt's fletching tool that Halt turned back to find Crowley again, and Crowley invited him to the Ranger Corps for a second time.
- The last line of the story is Crowley telling Halt "Welcome to the Corps."