Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 02] (36 page)

The pace was too steady. There was no hesitation, no slowing, no outcries to halt or turn aside. Marian felt safe in working her way carefully, quietly, through the trees, nearly to the verge between forest and road. Much came with her, and Tuck, melting into shadows, until they could see through a gauze of green fern.

Soldiers.

Tuck waited until they were gone, only dust marking their passing. Then he knelt ponderously beside Marian, who crouched in the brush. “Bound for Ravenskeep,” he said quietly. “ ’Tis a good thing we stayed here in Sherwood.”

Marian stared after the sifting dust. “Gisbourne wasn’t with them.”

Tuck shifted beside her, crackling brush. “Little John said Gisbourne was dividing up his men. Some to Locksley, some into the forest, some to Ravenskeep. Gisbourne either went to Locksley, or into Sherwood.”

“There is no one at Locksley,” she murmured, “and no one at Ravenskeep. Gisbourne and his troop will never expect to be
robbed
by the others; they’ll be searching for men in hiding.”

“Aye, lady. Should make it a simple thing for Robin and the others to take them one by one when the forest separates them. Likely they’ll take the horses, too, so the soldiers are afoot.”

“Slow them down.” She nodded. “Keep them from going for help immediately.” She sighed, glanced at the monk, then found a more comfortable position. “We’ll wait here for these men to return from Ravenskeep. And then I shall go there.”

“To Ravenskeep?” Tuck was shocked. “But, lady, what if—”

“What if they leave men behind?” She shrugged. “Robin said I was not trained for stealth, but I daresay I could sneak back undetected. I am somewhat familiar with my own home! We need food, Tuck, and blankets. Our goal was to rescue Much, but there is more to it than that. Now we must find a way to survive in the forest.”

“But ’tis dangerous—”

“I will go,” she said firmly. “I want to see if they have destroyed the hall again. I want to let Joan and the others know we are all right, that Much is rescued. I want to make certain the outlaws I count as friends have food and blankets, so they need not poach quite yet.”$ She smiled to see the concern in his face. “I promise you, I shall be careful. I have no wish to be a hero.”

“Me,” Much said.

“
You
wish to be a hero?” Marian asked, amused.

“I go with you,” he said. “To get in. Get out. No one will see.”

“Robin will not be pleased,” Tuck warned her. “He wanted you to stay here.”

She found that oddly amusing. “Ah, well. I do not ask Robin’s permission for my actions any more than he asks mine for his. Because if he did, I would never have let him go to rob Gisbourne.” She smiled at Much. “I shall be glad of the comp any.”

Arrow nocked, Robin stood very still behind a fat-bolled tree, screened by vine and hip-high fern. The lone soldier’s horse crashed on by him, flushing birds in a whirring of wings and very helpfully shredding limbs and greenery that might otherwise ruin his shot.
Gisbourne,
Robin noted with amusement.
How appropriate.
Then he slid out of the shadows, drew the bowstring, and pitched his voice to carry over the sound of the horse’s passage.

“Were I you,” he called, “I should halt. Because from here I could put a clothyard arrow completely through your spine and out the other side. In fact, if there were another man before you, I daresay the same arrow would kill him as well.”

He read Gisbourne easily, even from behind. The tension in the line of shoulders, the stiffening of his spine, spoke of incipient motion, not compliance. He meant to set spurs to the horse and leap out of range. Accordingly, Robin sped the arrow into the tree within a foot of Gisbourne’s head.

“
Now
do you believe me?” He grinned; the tension in Gisbourne was abruptly entirely different. Brittle stillness had replaced intent to move. “Dismount,” Robin commanded, nocking another arrow. “Come here toward me. Don’t fret about the horse; we’ll send him home presently.”

Gisbourne stepped down from his horse, but he did not move toward Robin. Instead, he yanked at the reins and attempted to swing the horse sideways, shielding himself behind the animal. But Robin, not in the least surprised, lowered the angle of the arrow and loosed. The shaft flew true beneath the horse’s belly and planted itself in the ground immediately next to Gisbourne’s foot.

“Do try me,” Robin invited. “Next time I shall not be so discriminating with my aim. The sheriff lost his horse to an arrow; shall you lose yours?”

Gisbourne, at last recognizing his assailant, cried out in incoherent fury. The loose horse, nonplussed by the arrow and shouting, crabbed away, intending to run, until its trailing reins caught on a tree limb and brought it up short.

“I did warn you.” With elegant economy of motion, Robin drew a third arrow from the quiver over his shoulder and nocked it. “Now,” he said, “unsheath your sword and throw it—carefully!—toward me.” He gestured. “Here.”

“You shall hang for this!” Gisbourne cried, white-faced in outrage.

“Only if you catch me. And just now, I have caught
you.
” Robin jerked his chin sideways. “Your sword.”

Gisbourne cursed him in Norman French until he ran out of breath, but complied. The two-handed broadsword, flung stiffly, landed with a heavy thump one pace away from Robin.

“My thanks,” he said gravely, bending to pick it up. He rattled the arrow back home in its quiver and settled the bow slantwise across shoulder and chest. Then he unhooked the reins of the trapped horse, knotted them high on the animal’s neck, and brought the flat of the blade down in a noisy slap across the wide rump. Given its leave in so rude a fashion, the horse promptly bolted. “And now,” Robin said, “you are to reach under your surcoat and untie the purse attached to your belt.”

Gisbourne blurted another vile oath. “You stole my horse, and now you steal my purse?”

“Be accurate, Gisbourne: I stole your horse a number of days ago, yes, but not
this
horse. And why the shock? Am I not living down to your expectations? You and the sheriff have determined I am an outlaw, subject to punishment. Including, you say, hanging.”

Gisbourne was livid. “You have in the past few weeks stolen two horses—now three!—delayed a royal messenger, taken a boy from the sheriff’s lawful custody, and now you
rob
me? What else are we to do with you? Thank you?”

Robin laughed, giving him that. “But it seems I have no choice now but to be what you have made me. I am disinherited, have no roof-tree above my head, no means for earning a living, and the pardon is revoked. What else would you have me be?”

“A prisoner,” Gisbourne spat. “In the dungeon!”

“Ah. Well, I should prefer otherwise. Now, your purse.” But Gisbourne didn’t move. “Come, come,” Robin said in mild rebuke, then explained in elaborate detail how he had learned various creative ways of torturing a man from the Infidel Turks themselves. That earned him a blanch of Gisbourne’s saturnine face, who knew Robin had indeed cohabited with Turks, and a purse tossed at his feet. “Better.” He retrieved and tucked the purse behind his belt.

“What do you mean to do with me?” Gisbourne demanded.

“Well,” Robin said lightly, “we are not friends, so I doubt I shall invite you for a meal and a cup of wine.” He pondered it a moment. “Kneel.”

It startled him. “Kneel?”

“Pretend to pray.”

Slowly, stiffly, Gisbourne lowered himself to his knees, head slightly inclined.

“Remove your helm.”

Gisbourne did so with shaking hands, eyes furious. Robin moved until he stood behind the kneeling man. Then he struck a blow at the base of Gisbourne’s skull with the wheel-pommel of the sword.

Robin gazed down upon the unconscious man, aware that he had committed himself utterly—and possibly irrevocably—to an entirely different future than he had ever envisioned. But it was done. And the campaign against William deLacey was begun in earnest.

Robin saluted the prone Gisbourne, then balanced the blade atop his right shoulder as it were a prime pole intended for fishing, and took himself away into the forest.

 

As the sun sank down to spend itself in a haze of gold and gilt along the darkening, tree-fringed horizon, the soldiers came back along the road from Ravenskeep, bound now, Marian assumed, for Nottingham. She and Much skirted the road, crossed it, came in across the sheep meadow along the stone wall, and slipped through a postern gate near the kitchens. She did not see any soldiers stationed to keep watch, but dared not make assumptions. Instead, she and Much made it into the barn and hid there in the shadows.

“If we wait a bit,” she said very quietly, “Hal will come to feed the horses.”

And so Hal did, who was surprised nearly unto death when he discovered Marian and Much. Once he had recovered sufficiently to speak again without wheezing in shock, he expressed his relief at finding them whole. Particularly Much.

Then he looked at Marian. “Soldiers were here.”

“I know. That is why we did not simply walk in. Did they leave a man here?”

Hal shook his head. “But they may have made him wait elsewhere along the road, so we wouldn’t know.”

Marian contemplated that, realizing they would have to be very careful on the way back. Hal, we need food and blankets. Can you go up to the house and have Joan pack us whatever she can?”

He was startled. “You’re not coming back?”

“Not tonight,” she said, refusing to admit aloud that the others might not come back at all. “We’ll stay in Sherwood until we’re certain it is safe. Oh—and Much has something for you.”

On cue, the boy presented the older man with the hammer and chisel. Hal evinced surprise. “
You
had them! I thought I had gone mad, lady—couldn’t find them earlier.”

“We needed them for Much,” she explained. “For the shackles. Alan came and got them.” She looked beyond Hal to the open barn door. “Take Much with you—here, Much, put this on—” She slipped out of the hooded capelet and helped him into it; if anyone was watching, Much would not be immediately recognizable. “Go tell Joan we’re here, then bring back whatever you can. We need to go before it is too dark to find our way back.”

But Hal did not go just yet. “Lady Marian, you will come home? Soon?”

She told him the precise truth. “As soon as I may.”

That sufficed. He gestured at Much, and the two of them went out into the sunset.

Marian, left alone, converted barn to oratory. “Dear God,” she prayed aloud, “let none of us be killed in this. Let all of us survive, so we may come home.”

 

William deLacey was ensconced in his private solar with his castellan, Philip de la Barre, when Gisbourne shouted a request for entry and, without waiting for permission, unlatched the door and crashed it open against the wall. The man stomped in, somewhat disheveled and entirely out of sorts. “We must kill him,” he announced without preamble, then winced and felt at the back of his head.

DeLacey, prepared to reprimand his steward for such crude behavior, withheld the vicious words in view of Gisbourne’s obvious fury. Gisbourne only rarely showed so much naked emotion. Interesting. “Kill whom?”

“Locksley,” Gisbourne declared. “
Robin Hood.
”

“Ah.”
Most
interesting; and Gisbourne was clearly in pain. “I take it you return here without his company?”

“Without his company, without my sword, my horse, and my purse,” Gisbourne elucidated, color high in his face. “He took them all.”

“All?”

“And not just I was treated so harshly . . . six more of my men as well.”

That brought deLacey to his feet. “Six others?
Seven
of you were accosted by Locksley?”

“Not all by him,” Gisbourne answered sullenly, as if sorry he could not blame everything on Robert of Locksley. “The others as well. Little John. Will Scarlet. Even the minstrel.”

“Minstrel,” deLacey echoed, at a loss.

“Alan of the Dales,” Gisbourne explained. “The man who violated Eleanor.”

That
minstrel. DeLacey had given him up years ago. “He is back?”

“Yes, my lord. I saw Locksley myself; the other descriptions match.” He closed his eyes a moment and swayed on his feet before collecting himself again. “I daresay the monk and the simpleton were involved, as well,” he said in more muted tones.

“Gisbourne—did you say these men
robbed
all of you? Seven of you?”

“Yes. My lord.”

DeLacey was baffled. Why would men seeking to escape soldiers show themselves and actually rob them? It made no sense.

“I want him killed,” Gisbourne repeated, though with much less vehemence. He was looking ill now, deLacey noted.

The sheriff seated himself again, thoughts working swiftly. For some strange reason the news did not make him angry. It was startling, puzzling, and annoying, but it did not make him angry. And it should.

But then the pieces began to come together, and he understood why he was not angry. This offense, embarrassing and infuriating as it was, actually provided an ideal opportunity.

“You may go,” he told Gisbourne.

The steward blinked. “Go?”

“Go. Elsewhere.” DeLacey waved his hand. “Rest, Gisbourne. Leave this to me.”

But Gisbourne did not dismiss so easily. “My lord, I am your seneschal—”

“And Philip, here, is my castellan. I am consulting him with regard to other measures we may take regarding Locksley and the others. Now, you may go.” He paused, marked the hue of Gisbourne’s face. “And I suggest you do it
before
you collapse at my feet in a pool of your own vomit.”

The imagery was enough. This time Gisbourne acquiesced and took his leave, calling for a servant as he wobbled out of the hall. DeLacey, pondering opportunity again, glanced across the table at the castellan. De la Barre had done him a service five years before, and repayment had been in the form of promotion. Now let the man earn his place again.

“I think,” deLacey said, “we have been given a sign.”

De la Barre, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and young for his position, raised his eyebrows. “A sign, my lord?”

“Robin Hood now robs with impunity. The roads are threatened, as are lives. It would be a miracle if a tax shipment could get through. Even one escorted by the infamous Mercardier.”

A glint in de la Barre’s eye told deLacey all he needed to know. The young man had always been a quick study, and willing to undertake any kind of service the sheriff might ask of him.

“You understand,” deLacey said, “that such a robbery would infuriate the king.”

“Indeed,” de la Barre murmured.

“And the man who recaptured the tax shipment from outlaws would be granted a royal boon, incurring the king’s trust and gratitude.”

“A most generous man, the king,” the castellan noted, smiling.

“See to it,” the sheriff said. “As I have described to you.”

Philip de la Barre inclined his head.

 

Robin, arriving not long before sundown at the clearing that had become an impromptu camp, was gratified to find Alan, Scarlet, and Little John already present, and safe. They were in high good spirits, intoxicated on success: a practiced bow and flourish from the minstrel indicated a pile of Norman swords. Grinning, Robin tossed his own contributions down to chime atop the blades; in addition to Gisbourne’s, he had liberated sword and purse from one other soldier.

“And?” Tuck asked archly, seated on the ground with a cassocked lap full of coin. “We must divide it all up, as agreed.”

In the act of drawing two purses from his belt, Robin froze. “Where is Marian?”

The monk’s expression altered. “She and Much went to Ravenskeep.”

“
Why?
I told them to remain here.”

Tuck began, “She said we—”

“—needed food and blankets,” Marian finished for him, slipping out of the shadows. She carried a basket hooked over one arm, and hugged a large bundle to her chest. Behind her, Much came in with a second bundle strapped to his back, and a third clutched in his arms. “And we do,” she said, dumping her bundle to the ground. “If someone will gather kindling and wood, I also have flint and steel.”

“Is that wise?” Alan asked. “The woodsmoke will give us away.”

Marian shook her head. “There are other outlaws scattered throughout Sherwood who light fires—we could see the haze along the treetops from Ravenskeep—and charcoal burners aplenty. Can’t you smell them? I doubt one more fire will make a difference.”