Shadow of the Wolf (32 page)

T
he storm passed and the soil sighed as it drank in the rain. Robin left his hillside shelter and went on his way, across open country, following the higher cart roads, avoiding the flooded paths of the lower slopes.

He kept his head bowed as he walked past a patrol of five soldiers. They had stopped at the roadside to repair a wagon wheel.

‘You, old man,’ one of the rangers called after Robin. ‘You shouldn’t be on this road. This is the King’s Cartway. You need a permit to travel here.’

‘Get down to the packways, where you belong,’ another soldier said.

Robin shuffled on and the men made no move to stop him. It had been a half-hearted challenge. Already the rangers had gone back to staring at the horizon, lost in their own thoughts.

Before leaving Winter Forest, Robin had gone to the cave and dug through the horde of items he had taken from the Sheriff’s men. He had chosen a horse shroud, big enough to cover himself head to toe. His unstrung bow, wrapped in an oiled cloth, he tapped on the ground in front of him, like a cripple’s cane, or a blind man’s stick. The quiver at his
back, bulging through the blanket, formed the hump of his crooked spine. Trailing this disguise, keeping it pulled low over his face, Robin was just one more wretch of the road, unremarkable to rangers who had more pressing concerns. Robin understood from their urgent talk that all the garrisons had been emptied – every soldier ordered back to the city. The Sheriff gathering his forces close.

‘So what happens if he dies?’ he heard one ranger say as his troop splashed through a swollen ford a little way ahead.

‘Another man steps into his boots,’ another ranger said. ‘We all carry on, just the same.’

‘That’s not it at all,’ a third man said. ‘I’m old enough to remember, not like you pups. Pandemonium, that’s what happens. Crime lords go to war, barons take the chance to settle old scores.’

‘It’s true,’ a fourth man said. ‘Hilltower has been in the far shires. He says even the peasants are forming militias. Whittling their dung forks into spears.’

‘God help them if they try that here.’

For now Robin was only vaguely interested in all this. He cared about only one thing: finding Marian. He wrapped his disguise close, tapped his bow on the ground, continued on his way.

As he roamed the roads in his rags Robin recalled a daydream he used to have. It was a vision of his future self: he was a knight of the realm, standing at the prow of a warship, fifty bannermen at his back. As he sailed into port he turned to the shore and there she was, Marian, watching him, seeing all he had become …

What had happened to that vision?

That dreamed-of future had dissolved, like mist in the morning sun, to be replaced by this – here Robin was, alone,
roaming these muddy tracks in a blanket crawling with ticks. A monster in an old man’s clothes.

What would Marian think of him, if he managed to find her? And how would
she
have changed, after all this time, after all she must have suffered?

He dragged his mind away from all this. He focused on searching for any hint as to where she might be. He sent his senses into the green, searching the land through its roots and burrows, its streams and its creatures.

In an instant he becomes part of it all – rippling through the bushes with the shield bugs, circling with a flock of doves, thumping through a field with a fleeing hare. A formation of starlings twists high above, like a single giant shadow, and Robin sweeps the land with them, seeing in his mind’s eye the shapes left behind by their acrobatics.

A peregrine arrows in and Robin shares the starlings’ flash of panic – in the same instant he is with the bird of prey, tasting its hunting joy and seeing the world through hawk-eyes and listening with a raptor’s sense of hearing. A dormouse stirs far below and through his hawk-sense Robin is aware of it. A cow coughs and a buzzard stamps its feet to bring worms to the surface and Robin feels every tremor and vibration.

But then—

He comes up against a void. A disconnection. If all this is a web, then here is a place where the strands are cut – where nothing grows and barely a worm moves in the soil. His forest-mind scuttles back to him, wounded.

What has happened here
?

He moved closer. He smelled scorched earth. He crossed fields devoid of even nettles. He realized this wasteland had once been a village. It had been put to sword and fire. The fields sewn with salt so nothing would grow here again.

He moved amid the charred remains of homes. He
examined it all with his fingers: a scattering of animal bones, something, that might be a human skull. The Trystel Tree was still standing but it was twisted, its skin blistered, like a dead hand thrust up from a shallow grave.

A little further on, he found another of these dead villages, just a husk remaining. And here was a third, destroyed utterly, pulled out at the root so it would never flourish again.
This is the Sheriff’s doing. Wherever that man walks he sows destruction. Why would he do this to his own land?

Above Robin now, tumbling down a hillside, was another deserted village. But this was of a different kind – here the houses stood intact. He approached the ghost village. A heady smell was overwhelming: vegetables left to rot in the fields.

He moved between the empty homes. The wind fretted in the thatch. A sow crunched at something inside an old barn. The waterwheel creaked. But there was not a whisper of human sound. And there were no dead bodies or bones of people: this place had not died of famine or disease.
What happened here? Why did they all leave their homes? And so suddenly?

This made him think of his own family. Where did they go, and why? Or were they dead? Was it the Sheriff’s doing, as Marian had said? Robin’s wrath shook itself and began to rise. Memories of Marian in the cage, and of the village burning around her, and of the Sheriff saying:
bring me the boy’s eyes
.

Rangers were approaching close behind, their wagon squelching through the mud.

‘Step aside, tinker man,’ one of the men called.

Robin’s fingers tightened into a claw, gripping his bow. The shadow veins crept up his arm. That slight splintering sound, like ice cracking.

‘He said move, gutter-trout. Lest you want your legs broke beneath these wheels.’

Robin kept his back turned and his head low. Beneath the horse shroud the black veins spread, running cold through his back and chest, seeping across his neck and face and around the dead sockets of his eyes.

‘What’s wrong with you? Are you a leper? Where are your bells?’

‘We’re talking to you. Turn to face us.’

The shadow shard bubbled up through his skin. Tendrils of it twisted and squirmed. He kept his left fist gripped in his right hand and he fought to keep his bow still.

‘Jesus, he stinks,’ a ranger said. ‘Disgusting, these road turds.’

‘He’s moon-touched. Look at him, shaking. Probably can’t even hear us. This will get his attention.’ This ranger uncoiled a whip and the sharp tip of it came flicking at Robin’s back.

Kittissh
.

‘Ought to hunt them down with dogs, like we do with other vermin.’

Kittissh. Kittissh.

The horse blanket and the wolf pelt absorbed the sting of the whip, but the sound of it twisted in Robin, made his wrath churn, and the laughing of the rangers made it worse. The black tendrils raged – snakes trapped in flames – he gripped his left fist and fought to hold it still.

Find Marian. Nothing else matters.

The ranger with the whip had seen no reaction from Robin; lost interest and coiled the weapon. The wagon squelched narrowly wide of Robin and the soldiers went on their way.

The shadow snakes unravelled, dissolved. The thumping of his heart slowed.

He walked on and continued with his search, spreading his senses into the web of green, widening his awareness.

And there, in the distance, is Nottingham. The Sheriff’s domain.

The city is a hulking presence. And it is a whirl of merging sensations: black sounds and screeching smells and a cold endless weight. Already Robin felt repulsed by this place. But he didn’t slow his progress. He knew this was where his path led. This was where he was likely to find Marian. And it was where he would face his nemesis.

Tapping his bow at his feet, keeping his disguise pulled close, he shuffled towards the city.

M
arian walked into her sleeping cell and the Sheriff was there. He was sitting at the foot of her cot, picking at his fingernails with a knife. At her entrance he looked up and a thin smile creased his lip.

Marian continued into her chamber and went to the Sheriff and sat cross-legged at his feet, her back to him, her spine straight. Two rangers left the cell and stood outside the entrance, pulling the door half closed.

The Sheriff sheathed his knife and reached inside his surcoat and took out an ivory comb. He began combing Marian’s hair, and as he did so he looked around the sleeping cell, at the tiny writing desk, clothes chest, the cornucopia of dried fruit and flowers.

‘I envy you your life here,’ he said. ‘This sanctuary. To find a place of silence. Is that not what all of us are searching for, in the end?’

He turned to the wall and began coughing. He took out a handkerchief and pushed it to his mouth and made muffled hacking sounds. ‘There is no such place of peace for me,’ he continued. ‘My visits here are as close as I will ever know to quietude. But even now I hear my enemies scratching at the door. The little people meet beneath their sacred trees
and they pray to their forest gods and afterwards they plot my downfall. They are encouraged and armed by the barons. They imagine I do not know all this. But I have eyes and ears everywhere.’

He broke into another coughing fit, more violent than before, causing candles to flicker in their alcoves, the cot creaking as his body shuddered. He stopped coughing and removed the handkerchief from his mouth.

‘And now arises this new power,’ he said. ‘The atavistic threat of which we were warned. A small part of that larger doom perhaps, but significant nonetheless. If it is allowed to spread, it will prove seductive. Even my own Chief Rider has been drawn to its fold.’

The comb hit a knot and he paused to tease apart the strands with his fingers. Then he said: ‘I understand the Chief Rider came to see you, in the oubliette. I would know what false words he spoke. And what you replied.’

Marian answered without hesitation. ‘He said he was going to set me free. I told him I hated him and never wanted to see him again.’

‘Was that all? There was no talk of me, or of the outlaw, Robin Hood? No talk of the winter-born?’

Marian shook her head.

‘And Robin Hood,’ the Sheriff said. ‘This … man who attacked me. What is your opinion of him?’

‘I hate him most of all.’

The Sheriff sat back, tucked the comb inside his surcoat. ‘And if you were given means to prove it … a way you could help trap the wildwood terror … what would you say?’

Before Marian could answer there was a knocking at the door and Killen Skua appeared at its edge. The Prime Warden’s face was dark red and he was short of breath. ‘Sire, I was told you were here. I came as soon as I heard.’ He crept a
little further into the room, but didn’t loosen his grip on the door. ‘The Inquisitor. Has he … has he come to see you?’

‘Not in recent days,’ the Sheriff said. ‘Bishop Raths is engaged in a task of utmost importance. He is not to be interrupted.’

‘Yes, as I understand. He was here, in fact, this morning. But I got the impression … I think he might be looking for you, as we speak.’

‘In which case, I am sure he will find me in due course.’

‘Yes, but … the things he was saying. It sounded urgent. I don’t think … I’m not sure he would want—’

The Sheriff’s weight shifted and the cot creaked. ‘If that was all,’ he said, ‘you may leave us.’

Killen Skua hung there at the door’s edge, staring at Marian. His moustache was beaded with sweat; he lifted a sleeve to wipe it dry. He mouth opened, closed again. ‘Yes, sire,’ he said finally, and shuffled back through the door and was gone.

The Sheriff inhaled a long breath, which became ragged towards its end. He coughed so violently he was jerked to his feet. The room’s two candles were extinguished. He continued coughing, a rasping rising from his lungs. Eventually the fit subsided. He steadied himself and adjusted his clothing, before moving towards the door, hobbling from the arrow wound in his leg. ‘I must leave you,’ he said. ‘This malady demands attention.’

‘Wait,’ Marian said, rising to her knees. ‘A gift.’ She reached beneath her cot and pulled out a pair of kidskin gloves. ‘Those are sapphires, in the knuckles,’ she said. ‘The most effective gem for health. They will help you get well.’

The Sheriff took the gloves and examined them. He placed a hand on Marian’s head. ‘All the girls here are jewels,’ he said. ‘But you, Marian Delbosque, you I treasure above all.
One day, you and I … well, all that must wait. Other matters, regrettably, take precedence. But soon I will return … and you and I shall talk of dreams.’

He spluttered again into his handkerchief as he passed into the corridor, dragging his wounded leg. His footsteps and those of his guards became faint.

Marian remained there on her knees, staring at the half-open door, and she was still there, unmoving, long after the last light of day had faded from her cell.

S
ir Bors watched his men-at-arms struggling to subdue the boy’s mother, he listened to the woman’s wails, and he steeled his heart against that which must be done.
You have no choice,
he told himself.
What is one woman’s pain, against all that is threatened?

The mother was wailing: ‘Leave him alone! He is my son, born and raised. You would take a child from his mother. Monsters! Help me. Won’t any of you help me? Don’t let them do this. Please.’

‘See sense, Bearta,’ another villager shouted. ‘He is no more your son than that duck is my daughter. He has cast a spell upon you, and cursed the rest of us.’

‘He doesn’t belong here,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘You should have left him to the forest.’

‘Keep your nose out, Hogge,’ said someone else. ‘One more word and I’ll—’ There were more raised voices, and a separate scuffle.

The boy himself stood apart, silent, his hood raised. He ap-peared resigned to leaving his home, as his kind usually were. He was perhaps twelve, and for every day of his life he had most likely suffered the mistrust and vitriol of these villagers. He was now fully ready to leave this place, no matter the cost.

His mother, however –
his adopted mother
, Sir Bors reminded himself – was determined to fight to the end. She had broken free and had picked up a mattock and was swinging it around her head, screeching. A few other peasants were coming to her aid. One man appeared from a hut holding a clay pot. He smashed it over the head of Joscelin Tarcel. The chamber knight was wearing a skull-helm, but still the blow made him stumble to one knee. He regained his footing and lashed out with his fist, sending the farmer sprawling.

Sir Bors took a deep breath. He stepped his horse forward and he bellowed: ‘Enough!’

The mother froze. Another woman dropped a threshing flail. The entire village fell quiet; even the geese and the ducks stopped their chatter. From his belt Sir Bors took a purse. The coins clinked as they landed at the mother’s feet.

‘If the Sheriff had come here, in my stead, he would be taking more than the boy,’ said Sir Bors. ‘And he would not be leaving gold. Today is hard for you, but understand this: it might have been far worse. Hawkwood, Warbrittle, get the boy onto a horse. I want this over with.’

The mother resumed her wailing; the peasants took up their fighting, but soon enough the boy was sitting in the saddle behind Ralph Hawkwood. As Sir Bors led the way out of the village, he spared a glance back: the boy had lowered his hood and was watching his adoptive mother, a single tear on his cheek.

The boy turned to look at Sir Bors with a hard stare. Yes, he was one of them. There had been no mistake. Something in their eyes always gave them away. Sir Bors spurred his horse. At some distance he could still hear the mother’s screech of pain.

You had no choice
, he told himself again.
What is one person’s suffering, when so much stands at stake?

For many miles Sir Bors spoke to no one, lost in his own thoughts. He remembered that mother’s anguish. He thought of Robin Loxley, and the other boy he had failed …

He half turned in his saddle. Behind him his men-at-arms were resplendent, their silver cloaks gleaming in the sun, the emblem of the golden arrow bold on their chests. He raised a hand, beckoned. Jack Champion rode forward and walked his horse at Sir Bors’ side.

‘That cloak fits you well, Sir Jack,’ the overlord said. ‘There were those who believed we would never see it on your shoulders. Sir Derrick once urged me to cast you out of my academy. Were you aware of that? He said you stirred mischief, and provoked sloth in others. He said we would never, in a thousand lifetimes, forge you into a fighting knight.’

Jack Champion said nothing; he only twisted fingers through his blond chin-beard.

‘Then came the day Robin Loxley disappeared,’ continued Sir Bors. ‘I told you he was dead. It was dishonourable, that lie, and there were times I regretted saying it. But it had one positive effect, at least. Robin’s rash act, and our falsehood, destroyed all traces of the fool in you. You became, overnight, dedicated to your studies, indomitable on the training field. On your first campaign, last summer, you were peerless. And so we see how our actions, and the actions of others, can send unexpected ripples through our lives. The lowest deed can spark greatness, an intended kindness can bring misery – all such consequences impossible to predict.’

Sir Bors manoeuvred his horse so that one hoof came down upon an anthill, scattering soil and insects. ‘How do you imagine the ants conceived of that event? Are they at this moment inventing stories to account for it? Or are they simply labouring to repair their nest, and to guard, as best they might,
against future catastrophe? We are not so different to the ants, Sir Jack. There are forces operating upon us that far surpass our understanding. You began to glimpse the truth of this, I’m certain, the day you were promoted to the Household Guard – the day I told you of your origins, and those of the other winter-born. I asked you that day to trust me, even when the wisdom of my commands seems opaque.’

He paused while he and Jack Champion splashed through a shallow ford. Further up the bank a fox froze, a gosling hanging in its jaws.

‘I need to ask of you a hard task,’ Sir Bors continued. ‘I hear reports of a host, gathering in the wildwood. Will Scarlett, formerly Chief Rider of the Sheriff’s Guard, is recruiting bandits and peasants and itinerant swords of every sort. I want you to join them. Pledge yourself to Robin Hood’s cause. Take one other knight with you – the man you trust most in the world.’

‘You want Robin to defeat the Sheriff?’ said Jack Champion. ‘Then why send just two? This time of year we could spare a score of men, couldn’t we?’

‘Something you must understand,’ said Sir Bors. ‘This war will not be as others. When Robin Hood and the Sheriff clash, fully, I am convinced there will be nothing so quaint as winning or losing. Nothing left to be called victory. You will not be there to fight, except for the sake of appearances. Your primary objective is to watch and to listen, to report back to me everything you learn.’

Jack Champion stared straight ahead, twisting his beard.

‘This … war,’ said Sir Bors. ‘I hold myself responsible, to no small degree. They were both of them, at separate times, in my care, under my guidance.’

‘Both?’ said Jack Champion. ‘The Sheriff was your ward?’

‘He was not always the monster he is today,’ said Sir Bors.
‘He was once a noble young man, and the best and brightest pupil I have ever known.’

‘Was he … like us? One of the winter-born?’

Sir Bors nodded. ‘That is why I fear what is coming. At my age, I have seen history repeat itself too many times. I cannot watch this approach and stand aside. But be warned, once you have joined the outlaws, I may ask worse of you than spying. In which case you must trust me, and know I act for the greater good. You must understand too that what I told you once has come true, in a way: your friend Robin Loxley is dead. Someone else – something else – has taken his place.’

He dismissed Jack Champion and the knight returned to take his place in the line. Sir Bors went back to his silence, and his thoughts. He saw landmarks that told him he was close to home. He looked around him at the rolling hills, the sparkling streams, the wooded valleys. This land that had raised him, that welcomed him home like a mother every time he returned from campaign. He studied this land now as if seeing it for the first and last time, and he felt a shiver of doom, and he steeled his heart once more against all that must be done.