Shadow of the Wolf (36 page)

F
rom her hiding place Marian removed the three blow-pipes. She put the first of these to her lips and she spat the sticky liquid. Killen Skua screamed, clawing at his eyes.

Bishop Raths had already turned and was fleeing for the stairs. The two rangers were following his lead, bustling Jadder Payne to safety.

Marian stood. She walked past Killen Skua, writhing on the floor, and she followed the fleeing men onto the stairs. She put the second blowpipe to her mouth. The poison globule struck one of the rangers across the back of his neck. He gasped, slipped, grabbed onto Jadder Payne – they fell together into the stairwell, the soldier screaming, Jadder Payne disappearing without a sound.

The next glob of poison hissed harmlessly off the second soldier’s helm. He ran on, out of range. No matter – there would be no escape for these men. Bishop Raths and the surviving warden were reaching the bottom of the stairs and when they got there Marian heard noises that satisfied her. From elsewhere in the Garden of Angels came similar sounds: a muffled shout; a gurgled cry; a heavy crash and slump.

Marian continued to the ground. At the base of the tower she found the body of the ranger who had fallen. She looked
for Jadder Payne but found no sign of him.

Outside the tower Minnie Reaper and Ira Starr and Ena Agutter were waiting for her, gripping their hatchets and their stiletto blades, their smocks splattered with blood. At their feet were the twitching bodies of Bishop Raths and the second ranger who had fled.

‘The torturer,’ said Marian. ‘Did he get past you?’

‘We didn’t see him,’ said Minnie Reaper, frowning.

‘We’ll find him,’ Marian said. ‘He’s used up the last of his lives.’

Ira Starr held out a shortbow and a quiver of arrows. Marian took them and strode off through the gardens, the other three at her back. The fires had already been lit. The smell of smoke and the crackle of flames. Marian smashed an oil lamp and started another blaze.

A panicked warden fled across their path. Marian drew her bow as she walked. She missed with her first shot, nocked and drew again, hit the man in the thigh. The warden went to the ground and other girls appeared and fell on him with knives. At the sound of hammering from the tower, all the prisoners had gone to their hiding places and retrieved their smuggled weapons. Now they were busy killing with garrotte wire and poison dart and throwing dagger.

Another guard crossed Marian’s path and she went to one knee and unsheathed an arrow over her shoulder. She nocked, drew, let loose. The arrow tore a gash in the man’s arm. He cried out, stumbled, but managed to scramble out of sight before Marian could shoot again. It made little difference. These arrowheads – in common with all other steel wielded by the prisoners – had been doused in a poison made from wolfsbane. Any guard who escaped with a graze would only be saving himself for a death that lingered.

Marian moved on. She passed Aimee Clearwater. The
beautiful redhead had become a blood-soaked devil, a hatchet in each hand, still hacking down at the corpse of Gordon Sleth.

Thankfully most of the prisoners had remained more composed than Aimee. These girls had learned one skill above all else at the Garden of Angels: self-possession – how to remain pacific on the surface even when fury was raging within. Marian now saw that trait in abundance; most of the girls were going about their grim labour wearing the same neutral expression they wore while saying their prayers or doing their needlework.

‘Walk, don’t run,’ Ena Agutter said with a straight face, throwing her hatchet and catching a fleeing gaoler behind the knee.

‘What have you been told?’ said Minnie Reaper. ‘Lower your voices. Comport yourselves.’ She crouched to a shrieking warden and silenced him with her garrote.

‘Insolence will be punished,’ said Ira Starr, plunging her stiletto blade into another guard.

Marian moved through it all, feeling exhilarated, yes, but more than anything with a crushing sense of frustration. All this had come too soon: these events were not meant to unfold until she had received news of the Sheriff’s death. Even after today, their true freedom would have to wait.
But for now, forget all that. Get this finished, quickly, and lead them to safety
.

On the ground, amid smashed potted plants, Estrild Lunn and Elfen Goldacre were killing a guard with a chokewire. He was thrashing in his death throes, but the girls were patiently sticking to their task, shifting their positions and twisting the wire. Ena Agutter strode off to help Seren Child dispose of another recalcitrant guard.

Yes, they were performing admirably, Marian’s Destroying Angels. Even the girls she feared might be a problem were
proving resolute. Look at Petronilla Coldish. This willowy girl had only been here six months and had yet to develop a full loathing for her gaolers. Yet here she was, ferocious, joining a pack of girls to hunt down a warden. He was trying to crawl behind a statue of an archangel, the girls hacking at any exposed limb.

Marian suspected her berserker’s draught had played its part with Petronilla. The same potion she had tested on Lyssa Brekehart she later distributed to some of the more timid girls and told them to drink the moment they heard the fighting start. Perhaps the draught was working a little too well, in fact. Alice White went flying past, her lips curled back from her teeth, a blade raised above her head, the epitome of vengeful fury, but pursuing nobody as far as Marian could see.

‘Minnie,’ Marian said over her shoulder. ‘Follow Alice. She’s chasing shadows. Get her to the front gates. I’ll meet you there.’

Minnie Reaper flitted away, her raven hair flying. The flames now were visible on every side, crawling up buildings and along rafters. The rain becoming steam before it reached the ground. Marian and Ira Starr stalked the corridors, looking for survivors. Marian found one pathetic specimen clawing at the door of a chapel, as if he might find salvation inside. This one’s name was William Blayde, and he had done Marian no particular indignity, apart from patronizing her with a fatherly smile every time he locked her in her sleeping cell. She supposed this one deserved to die quickly: she discharged an arrow into his heart.

The arcades were collapsing, fire eating through the timber frames, heat peeling the paint from the faces of angels. A statue fell and smashed.
Time to leave
, Marian thought.
Fire will finish the job we’ve started.

But then she came across Sonskya Luz. Sonskya was the
youngest and quietest girl in the Garden of Angels. A slight, almost skinny frame, with large blue eyes and skin so pale it was practically translucent. She was standing in a prayer garden, gripping a roundel dagger in both hands, the tip of it shaking.

‘She won’t do it,’ said Lyssa Brekehart. ‘She won’t play her part.’

‘Sonskya was here first,’ said Avelina Sharpe. ‘He was hers. We helped her, but she refuses.’

Harold Toor – a big guard and sadistic – slouched half-dead against a fountain. Sonskya was standing well clear of the warden, holding the blade at arm’s length.

‘I, I … can’t.’

‘Did you drink it?’ Marian said. ‘The berserker draught?’

Sonskya shook her head very slightly.

Marian sighed. ‘That would have made this easier. I told you it would. Now you’ll have to do it without.’

‘I … I …
can’t
!’

‘Then you’ve condemned us all. We’re not leaving without you, and nobody is carried for free.’

Sonskya’s blade quivered. In the wide whites of her eyes tiny reflections of fire had appeared.

‘It’s all up to you now,’ Marian said.

The other girls were glancing around them at the fire.

‘Come
on
,’ hissed Avelina Sharpe. ‘Are you one of us or not?’

Sonskya took a step towards the guard, and then another. The tip of her blade came to rest on his chest.

‘It’s us or him,’ Marian said. ‘Your friends, and all we have done for you, or this man, and everything he did.’

The other girls coughing. An arcade crashing, close by.

Sonskya’s eyes now full of reflected fire. ‘I can’t do it,’ she said. ‘Please, I can’t. I—’

Lyssa Brekehart put her shoulder to Sonskya’s back and shoved. Sonskya fell forward onto the broad hilt of the dagger. The pyramidal blade was designed to puncture plate armour and it slid easily into the warden’s chest, making little more noise than Sonskya’s gasp. Harold Toor’s eyes opened wide and stayed that way.

‘Good enough,’ Marian said. ‘Avelina, bring Sonskya.’

Marian strode through the smoke-filled convent. Girls finished what they were doing and fell into step. The crash of a cloister collapsing. A whoosh of sparks rushing into the air. Marian headed for the main gates, sweeping up the last of the girls in her wake.

Minnie Reaper and Alice White and some of the others were there at the exit, sentries sprawled at their feet.

All thirteen former prisoners emerged from the Garden of Angels together, an inferno at their backs. Marian led them a safe distance away and then took a moment to count heads. They were all here. Every one, safe.

‘We have to get clear, and quickly,’ Marian said. ‘Avelina, keep hold of Sonskya. Minnie and Seren, follow at the rear, make sure nobody falls behind.’

Marian scanned the hillside. Clouds were obscuring the full moon, and the smoke too was thickening the darkness. That would help provide cover, but it would also make their progress across country slower. They must begin at once.

She turned, preparing to lead the girls away.

And it was then she saw him.

He was little more than a faint shape, half crouching in the dark, hundreds of paces away. Yet she knew it was him.

Robin
.

She put her hand to the amulet at her neck, oblivious to the heat at her back, and she stood and she stared.

The closer Robin had run to Marian’s prison, the more he felt like he was tumbling through the dark. He ran on and the dizziness grew worse. But he didn’t pause. He stumbled towards the prison guards. He drew his bow, tried to steady his arm, took aim.

But then he realized something: these sentries were not running to meet an intruder; they were running
away
from something else. They were gripping their spears only through fear as they fled into the night.

He relaxed his bow, let them go. As he moved closer to the prison he smelled smoke. The rain stopped abruptly and he felt waves of heat.

Fire. The prison was erupting in fire.

And out of the fire came Marian.

He stumbled to a halt.

She’s here. She’s safe.

She had run clear of the inferno and stopped. She seemed to be gesturing towards the horizon, and saying something – her words lost beneath the roar of the flames, the crash of cloisters collapsing.

She turned, saw Robin, froze.

She’s alive. She’s unhurt.

She made a movement – maybe pushing her hair out of her eyes. She was holding something – perhaps a hunting bow. After all this time, Robin was dismayed to find his sense of her was fuzzy at the edges. Was this merely the shock of being near her once more? Or was it the swirling inferno that was muddling his senses? But then again, hadn’t Robin’s impression of this place been confused from the start …? He knew he should be trying to explore this idea further, but he could think of nothing now except Marian.

She was here, at the bottom of this slope. He had found her, at last.

Several other young women were moving around Marian. Their smells were of sweat and smoke and blood. Blood on their hands and on their clothes and in their hair. But Robin’s impression of them was fading – everything else in this world drifting to nothing and leaving only Marian, burning in the dark.

And still she didn’t move.

Still she just stood there, staring.

Staring, the same way Will Scarlett had done when he first set eyes on Robin Hood. Staring, the same as those children on the edge of Winter Forest, before they fled for home.

Staring at the monster. Horrified.

And suddenly he knew: Marian was scared of him too. Any moment now she would turn and run. How could she stand to be near him, now? How could she even bear to
look
at what he had become? He felt stupid and angry for allowing himself to imagine they could one day be back together.

She was about to turn and leave him here, he was sure of it.

But then she made another movement – he thought she lifted a hand and gripped the jade amulet hanging at her chest. And when she took a step it was not away from Robin but towards him.

She edged closer, one foot slowly in front of the other, as if just learning to walk. She dropped her bow, both hands now clasping her amulet. Letting the rest of the world fade to black, Robin’s sense of her was growing clearer. He thought she glanced down, frowning, and she seemed to be stepping over an object lying on the ground. She stepped over something else – it was the corpse of a cat. And here was a dead bird.

A shiver ran down Robin’s spine. He realized what had happened here: carcasses had been carried from the city and
strewn all around these prison walls. That was why Robin’s senses had lost their edge.

This was another trap.

‘Marian, run!’

But it was too late. Circling the prison, bursting clear of the inferno, swimming fuzzily into Robin’s awareness, were a score of men, blades raised, descending on the young women.

And the man in the lead was rushing up behind Marian.

He was reaching his clawed hand around her neck.

And Robin smelled blood welling at her throat.

E
dric Krul held Marian at the throat, gripping so hard he had drawn blood. Marian shrieked and kicked but Edric twisted his claw and she became still.

Robin lurched towards them.

‘You will stay where you are,’ Edric said. ‘One more step and this pretty thing loses her head,
snip-snip
. You will place your bow on the ground.’ He laughed – a lunatic cackle. ‘I ordered you to do that once before, the first time we met, do you recall? You chose that day to disobey. Let us see, at long last, if you have learned your place.’

Marian gasped as Edric squeezed her throat tighter. Robin let his bow fall from his fingers. He shrugged off his quiver and cast it aside.

‘The same goes for the rest of you,’ Edric said. ‘If you would rather Marian stay in one piece, throw down your arms.’

Some of the young women had broken away, spun at their assailants with blades bared. But now as they looked at Marian they let their weapons fall.

‘Shievers, Scale,’ Edric said. ‘Come here to me. Hold Marian close. Scale, press your knife here, beneath her chin. She is hellfire, this one, but observe, she obeys the blade well enough.’

Two other men – half-naked and crazed like their leader – took hold of Marian.

‘I am going to talk with the outlaw, and to claim what is mine,’ Edric said. ‘If he should raise an arm against me – so much as a finger – Marian will be the first to know of it. Are we clear?’

He left them and came towards Robin. Edric Krul reeked of metal and blood: the metal was the grapnel hook where his right hand used to be, and the steel plate fixed to his skull; the blood came from these dead dogs and pigeons that lay scattered about – he had smeared his bare arms and chest with their innards.

These smells drew closer, closer, until Edric was standing against Robin, toe-to-toe. He leaned in and his breath also stank of blood. He moved his mouth close to Robin’s ear.

‘We are brothers, you and I,’ Edric whispered. ‘We have both of us been through the fire. And here we stand, enlightened, on the other side. We possess truths the innocents would never understand. Truths that would destroy their minds to even try! Even the Sheriff is groping in the dark. He wants your skin, but he would be lost within it. He has endured much, so I have learned, yet his insight is naught compared to ours. No, he shall not have the skin. And you have owned it long enough. It is time it came to me.’

He raised his sharpened hook and put it to Robin’s shoulder. He raked it downwards, tearing through the wolf pelt and Robin’s flesh.

‘Robin!’ Marian shouted. She shouted something else but her words were stifled by a hand clamped across her mouth.

Edric raised his claw to Robin’s other shoulder and drew it down once more, ploughing deep as the bone. Robin gritted his teeth and he managed not to fight back or to cry out.

‘Let Marian go,’ he said. ‘You have my word, I won’t fight
you. Do what you will with me … I’m beyond caring. Only set her free.’

In reply Edric only made a
tsk-tsk
sound with his tongue. He walked around Robin to stand behind him. The razor claw raked across Robin’s shoulder blades. The cold sensation of blood flowing – but the pain was oddly muted – the wolf pelt must be absorbing the worst of this torture. The cloak felt alive, writhing, constricting.

Edric laughed, but this time there was anger in the cackle. ‘You have worn the skin too long,’ he said. ‘It is stubbornly bound. Well then, I will have to dig deeper.’

He grunted with effort as he raised his arm high and brought it lashing down. The hook buried deep. Robin slumped to his knees. Edric wrestled with the claw and it sucked free. It went up and came down, driving deeper into Robin’s back.

He fell to his stomach. The blackness spinning around him, numbness spreading through his limbs. He thought he could hear Marian screaming, but only vaguely. All sounds had become distant echoes, as if they belonged to a different life.

Edric jerked the claw loose. He brought it up and back down, grunting like a farmer hoeing soil. Robin heard tearing, slicing, and a wet thud – he thought Edric was removing whole strips of the wolf pelt and casting them aside.

Robin’s world turning faster. Edric cackling.

The claw slashing, digging, tearing.

The ground giving way, Robin falling into the earth.

Hurtling further, and faster. Time beginning to fold.

He finds he is near a burning village; above him is a man with a ruined face.

Why the delay? The prescribed punishment is death.

Time folds further and he is a squire, riding away from a citadel, a warlord watching him go.

You’re dead to us now, Loxley.

He is a boy, lying near a campfire, his father stroking his hair.

Find you I promise.

He is everywhere else from his past lives, all in the same instant: he is in his childhood bed, his mother singing a tale of a journey home; he is huddled with Marian in their den, reading stories by lamplight, while a snowstorm swirls outside.

These echoes pile up, layer upon layer. Here are sounds from more recent times: the wet popping of arrows striking flesh; the
schling
of steel against steel. Bellows of pain and violence.

Although … these new sensations … so close, and clear. Memories of the past, or events unfolding now?

It seemed Edric Krul had paused in his torture. He was shouting and shaking his claw towards Marian and the burning prison. More of those noises: the
zip-zip
of arrows; the crack of bone beneath a sword; a piercing scream. Robin shifted his weight, managed to drag himself to his knees.

He understood what was happening: Will Scarlett was here. Will Scarlett and Borston Black and Ironside and Much Millerson and many other outlaws besides. They had slipped down the wooded slope and charged out of the dark and taken Edric’s minions by surprise. Edric’s men were defending themselves, but they had turned their backs on their captives and the young women had retrieved their bows and knives and were putting them to work.

All this came to Robin fuzzily, but it was enough to clear his head and bring him to his senses. He lurched to his feet. Feeling came back into his arms and legs. Surely by now he should be dead …? But he felt the wolf pelt warping, closing over his wounds, knitting his flesh.

He stumbled a few paces to his bow, picked it up. He staggered past Edric Krul, headed down the slope towards Marian. He trained his senses towards her, trying to pick out the two men who had been standing guard at her side. He could smell one of them lifeless on the ground. The other was wrestling with her, trying to plunge his knife into her throat.

Robin ran closer, still unsteady on his feet, disorientated. He drew his bow, trying to sense a clear shot.

Marian twisted, broke free. Her attacker went after her, raising his blade …

Robin let loose, his arrow fizzed, the man fell dead.

Robin stalked onwards, hissing between his teeth. There were many more of these lunatic killers – these men who meant Marian harm. His bow sang again – a second body slumped. Another man came at him, screaming, swinging a club. The force of Robin’s arrow lifted him off his feet.

Robin’s rage did not reduce, but grew fiercer. He released two arrows at once and they forked apart and each found a man in the heart. The shadow shard was twisting cold through his muscles and his bones. The shard shook and another man died.

His enemies’ fear and his own rage fed the shadow veins – he heard them sighing, like soil drinking in the rain. Each arrow flew faster, with a sharper killing edge. His next shot removed a leg. Another burst a head, like a berry squeezed between fingers. A third cleaved a man clean open, the way a child tears a leaf down the middle, leaving two halves shaking in the wind. Another man died in the far distance.

He became aware that all other fighting had stopped. Edric’s surviving men were running for their lives; the outlaws had lowered their blades and were standing in silence.

It was over. They had won.

Robin fought and he fought and he managed to still his arm. He forced his bow down and held it at his side.
It’s done. She’s safe.

He stood, and breathed, and the thunder in his heart began to ease. But then a noise behind him – Edric Krul, running down the slope, his claw raised.

‘… No! I will not allow it … Your purpose is to serve! I have seen to the heart of the world … I stand at the centre … You are
nothing
… Kneel at my feet, give up your skin …’

Robin set his feet, nocked an arrow. He let his mind go dark, sent all the power of the shadow shard into his arms and his chest. He drew, let loose, the arrow thundered through the night. It struck Edric Krul and destroyed him utterly, leaving only pieces scattered in the grass.

Robin’s fury surged, re-energized. He listened for more of these killers to slay. There must be more. Here’s one: a huge man with bloody knuckles. He’d do. This man reeked of blood too.

Robin drew, took aim at the man’s heart. The shadow shard snaked and raged. He almost,
almost
, let loose. He fought to control his arm, telling himself this was an ally. This was Much Millerson.

But what was the difference? Much was a killer now. A man of war.
All these people are bathed in blood.

Here, Will Scarlett, his curved blade dripping with gore; and Ironside and Borston Black, stinking of all they had done in the Sheriff’s name. And these other outlaws, all of them the same, reeking of death. Robin took aim at each of them, one by one, his fingers quivering.

The shadow shard shook and shuddered, ravenous for every one of these lives. Even these young women, bodies slumped at their feet, the taste of murder in their beautiful, silent mouths. The point of his arrow passed across one
heart, then another, and the next, the shadow shard raging, demanding he let loose …

Robin fighting, shuddering, gritting his teeth, battling the killing lust …

Finally, fraction by fraction, he managed to relax his arm. He lowered his bow and removed the arrow. The shadow shard gave a final awful spasm before unwinding and dissolving back into his palm.

The flames crackled. A dying man moaned.

The outlaws were silent, staring at Robin. All the young women too. And Marian. She hadn’t moved a muscle.

She was just staring.

If she wasn’t frightened of him before, surely she was now …

For certain this time she would turn and run and leave Robin here.

But when she took a step, and another, it was towards him. She moved nearer, her hands at her side, as if walking in a dream.

Only twenty paces away, then ten, then close enough to touch.

Robin opened his mouth to speak, but no words emerged, all the things he wanted to say building up beneath his tongue – just the same as last time they were reunited, a lifetime ago. Marian too was silent, and still. He listened to her heart, racing fast as a squirrel pup’s.

Finally she put two fingers to her lips, reached up and pressed the kiss to his forehead. Then her hand moved across his face, her fingers searching his cheek, his nose, his lips, as if she was the blind one. Her smell changed minutely and Robin knew there was a tear on her cheek.

‘I thought I was losing you,’ she said. ‘After all this time, you’d come back to me, and I thought he was killing you. I
could feel you slipping away. Everything I’ve endured, that was the worst.’ She wiped at her cheek. Then her fingers went back to searching Robin’s face, and down to probe at his right shoulder. Robin recoiled.

‘You must be hurt,’ she said. ‘Let me see, I can help.’

There was a dull pain in Robin’s back, but it merely felt like muscles hardening after heavy work. In truth, he had never felt stronger. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘It must have looked bad. Are you hurt?’

‘Just a scratch. I suppose we’ve both been through worse. And there’s more to come, if we don’t hurry. He won’t like what’s happened here. He’ll send an army.’

‘I know where we’ll be safe.’

‘Yes. Take us there.’

And she locked her fingers with his, and they were turning together and running side by side through the night.

Behind them Will Scarlett was calling instructions to the outlaws: ‘… Borston Black, in the vanguard with me … Blodwyn Kage, Ironside, watch the rear and round up stragglers …’ And Marian’s Destroying Angels were forming a procession, hand in hand. And all of them were following, away from the burning prison, back towards Winter Forest.

But to Robin all these other people were grey sounds, muffled smells. Because Marian was here, burning at his side, and nothing else mattered in this world.