Shadow of the Wolf (37 page)

‘I
thought you were scared of me,’ Robin said. ‘I thought you were going to run.’

‘Silly goat, how could I be scared of you, of all the people in the world. You’re still you, underneath, I can see that much. I’ve had to change too, but you’re not scared of me, are you?’

They were the first words either of them had spoken since leaving the Garden of Angels. They had run, with the others behind them, through hushed villages and silent fields. The moon was bright, but sometimes lost behind clouds – Robin could tell when it was because the footsteps of the others slowed, and then he slowed too and guided their way, the girls holding hands and snaking single-file, Will Scarlett calling instructions up and down the line.

‘Did you hate me?’ Robin said. ‘After they took you from that village. Did you really think it was my fault?’

‘No, never. I was frightened, and being frightened makes me angry, you know that. But I could never blame you. One man is responsible for all that has happened. He alone did this to us.’

As she said this Robin felt his anger swell. He couldn’t help sending his awareness rippling back, retracing their steps, and back further, to the Garden of Angels. Examining the scene
through his forest-mind, he finds many men are arriving there, gathering at the crest of the wooded hill. There must be fifty soldiers, at least.

And there – the Sheriff himself is among them. He is staring down at the smoking remains of his convent prison. Robin experiences a moment of distortion: a deafening smell, a screaming taste. The cause, he knows, is the Sheriff’s anger: it is a monstrous, ravenous thing, howling through the night. It seems impossible Marian has not sensed this disturbance. But in fact Robin knows even the men closest to the Sheriff do not understand the full extent of his fury. Outwardly he is pacific, sitting still and silent, his knuckles white where they grip the pommel of his saddle.

And then the Sheriff turns his head, the workings of his neck twisting, and he stares in this direction. Robin is sure, even at this distance, that the Sheriff is watching him.

And he is staring too at Marian.

Robin’s anger howls, until it could almost drown the Sheriff’s own.

‘What is it?’ Marian said. ‘Why are you slowing down?’

Robin wanted to say:
We’re going the wrong way. He’s there, in the open. We could end this, tonight
. But he managed to hold his tongue, and to keep running. Marian was here, at his side; leading her back into danger would be lunacy.

‘What have you heard?’ Marian said.

‘It’s nothing. We need to keep moving.’

They ran on, the twelve other young women following behind, the mud squelching between their toes, running when the moon was bright, slowing and linking hands when the clouds bunched.

Will Scarlett was moving up the line. He reached Robin and Marian’s side. ‘We need to rest,’ Will said. ‘I’ve got two injured men – I need to see to their wounds.’

Robin thought of the Sheriff, and his mutant anger. ‘A little further,’ he said. ‘We can rest when we reach the wildwood.’

‘This ground is hard going on foot,’ Will said. ‘A few of those girls look ready to drop.’

Marian said nothing, but evidently she agreed. She led the way into a deserted village. ‘We’re not stopping long,’ she said. ‘But we need to dry our clothes. We didn’t break free just to die of fever. Minnie, Lyssa, Ena, look for furniture – everything out here is too sodden to burn.’

Some of Will’s outlaws also went into houses and they came back with tables and benches and soon there were two fires burning in the open mouth of a threshing barn.

‘Look what I found,’ said Ira Starr, returning with her arms full. ‘The smokehouse is stacked to the rafters. Here’s badger ham and pheasant.’

‘Where are all the people?’ said Ena Agutter. ‘Why did they leave all their food, and their belongings?’

‘I haven’t eaten for days,’ said Elfen Goldacre. ‘Too nervous.’

‘My mother used to make pheasant pie,’ said Seren Child. ‘It was famous, for miles around.’

All the young women were talking now, quietly, as if testing whether all this was real and they could really be heard. Only two of the girls remained silent: Sonskya Luz stood a little way apart, hugging herself, looking into the night; Alice White was chewing her bottom lip and staring at the moon. Marian went to bring Sonskya closer to the warmth.

One of Will Scarlett’s outlaws was approaching Robin. And when this man spoke his voice was a sharp stab from the past. ‘Robin, it’s me. Jack Champ … Bones. Remember me, old friend?’

Robin said nothing.

‘We … we were told you were dead.’

Robin turned and walked away.

‘I brought someone with me,’ Jack Champion called after him. ‘Ayala Baptiste. Remember him? He’s become a good man, and a great warrior. We’ll stand at your side.’

Robin moved some distance from the fires. He sat with his head bowed, the wolf hide gathered around him. The colour of it had changed, and the texture too: it was now a velvety grey, matching the moonlight through clouds. He felt Jack Champion still looking at him. He sensed too the young women glancing at him out of the corners of their eyes. It made him angry, this feeling of them all watching him – and even worse, of them trying
not
to watch him. He got up and went further off and sat in the shadows.

After a while Marian joined him. ‘I knew you’d come for me,’ she said. ‘You were too late, as usual, slow goat, but I knew you’d come. In a way you were with me the entire time, just like before. I could feel you at my side, helping me through. I wouldn’t have made it without you.’

Robin remained silent. He couldn’t think of the right words – or he thought of too many words and they bunched up beneath his tongue. He sensed, in the far distance, the Sheriff, still staring in this direction. He battled that lure of vengeance, tugging at him, insisting he travel back there and confront his foe.

He stood. ‘We’ve rested long enough. Whoever is coming, they need to come now.’

Without waiting for a reply, or even waiting for Marian’s hand, he moved out of the village. And he heard his ragtag band of outlaws getting to their feet and falling into step, following silently and wearily behind.

R
obin’s forest-mind is everywhere at once: it is stalking through the castle on feline paws; soaring with the buzzards above the shires; patrolling the coast with the gulls.

He observes a realm gearing for war.

The Sheriff has returned to his castle and he is limping down stone steps into his arsenal, and he is ordering the construction of new infernal engines. And then he is journeying deeper, past even his deepest dungeons, and he is overseeing work of a different sort …

At the ports, mercenaries are already arriving. Hundreds of hired swords, drawn to the Sheriff and the gold he has promised. Robin senses these killers step ashore and he knows Edric Krul was as nothing compared to what now approaches …

Other fighters are flocking to Sherwood. A different type of army, ragged and makeshift, from boys no bigger than the axes they carry, to seasoned gangsters of the forest, they are all of them leaving their homes and their hideaways, lifting their blades and making their way here, to the wildwood …

A battlefield. A war roar. Robin’s outlaws and the Sheriff’s army are rushing to meet. They crash together in a thunder of hooves and scattered flesh and smashed steel. The sun is
darkened by a swarm of arrows and a great howl rolls across the hills and Robin knows his forest-mind is no longer showing him what
is
, nor even what
was
, but
what is to come.
He feels the earth shudder and he hears the forest erupt in blood and fire, the flames engulfing the world edge to edge, leaving nothing behind but charred bones amid the ashes of ancient oak …

His forest-mind, overwhelmed, crashing back to the present.

Someone standing over him. Cernunnos.

‘Was that real?’ Robin said. ‘Is that what I’ve unleashed? How can I sense things that haven’t yet happened?’

Cernunnos knelt with a stick and drew shapes in the mud. ‘Where the wind passes through grass, the bending of each blade depends on the movement of the last, and will help determine the movements that follow. The past is no different, nor the future.’

He drew one last shape. Robin examined it with his fingers: two snakes, curled head to tail.

‘You have barely begun to understand what you are,’ Cernunnos said. ‘You think you are the first to tread this path? You must learn to read the patterns, before you doom us all.’

The branches shook themselves; the old man was gone.

Robin moved through the forest, heading across the outlaws’ main camp. From above came the rasping of saws and the knocking of hammers: Fortress Sherwood rising amid the boughs.

Will Scarlett came striding across. ‘We’re setting mantraps at the perimeter, and digging spear pits. All this would be quicker if the White Crows hadn’t refused to work with Aks Arqua’s men. Baphomet’s Horde have taken off by themselves, who knows where. But we’re getting it done slowly. No one wants to be caught unprepared.’

Robin turned away without a word and continued through the broad clearing. He heard Ironside and Borston Black teaching a group of farmers the correct way to grip a spear. Much Millerson and his son were sparring with their fists. Jack Champion and Ayala Baptiste sat apart, talking. Robin felt their eyes on him as he passed.

And here, in a silent circle on their knees, were Marian’s Destroying Angels. Marian was moving between them, addressing each in turn, speaking strange words. She appeared to be making marks on some of their wrists, and it sounded as if she was giving them each a new name. ‘… Pitys … Dryope … Lotis … Syrinx …’

Robin left the clearing and he climbed to a higher glade, where a ring of boulders formed a secluded crown, like a natural hill fort. After a while Marian came to join him. Her hands went to his face, the same way they had before, her fingers searching his cheeks, his chin, his lips.

‘It really is you,’ she whispered. ‘I keep thinking I’m imagining all this. But it’s true, you’re really here and we’re together, at last.’

She put her face to his, pressed their cheeks together, then their noses, then their lips. She was kissing him and the feeling was like lying near a lake in the summer shade, the warm breeze shivering his skin, the languid day stretching away for ever …

Early autumn and Robin’s cloak was taking on tones of copper and gold and shimmering with silver fork moss. Marian pushed herself into this soft coat and suddenly she was crying, and they were holding onto one another, the same way they used to when they were living in the tower, when the wind would howl and carry nightmare sounds from Winter Forest. Marian cried and they held each other tight, children again for the final time, just a boy from the village and the lord’s
daughter. She sobbed until she was almost choking, until finally the last of her energy was gone and she fell asleep.

Day gave way to dusk. The sawing and the hammering stopped. The outlaws broke into separate camps, each around their own fire, each telling their own stories and sharing their own jokes. Marian woke and detached herself from Robin, crawling out from under his cloak.

‘It feels strange, being back in this place.’ She said.

‘You don’t need to fear it,’ Robin said. ‘You’re safe with me.’

‘That’s what I mean, it’s the weirdest thing, but I’m not scared, not in the slightest. There are always darker places, I suppose. But it’s more than that. It’s a feeling almost like … coming home.’

Robin remained silent, strange possibilities rising in his mind. He set about building a fire.

After a while, Marian said: ‘I knew you’d come for me. I knew you’d stop at nothing. It’s like I told you before: all the stories are coming true. Remember, in the tower, I used to read you the story of Sir Orfeo, whose wife was stolen away? He spent years wandering in the wild, sleeping on the bare earth, until he learned where his wife was being held, and he travelled to the Underworld, to bring her back. We’ve both been to the depths, haven’t we?’

Robin sat back from the crackling fire. Marian curled herself against him. ‘We still have some distance to travel,’ she said. ‘But we’ll make it, together. Once we destroy our enemy, then we’ll truly be free.’

Robin thought for a moment. ‘Those stories. Sir Orfeo. Orpheus. Lot. They all end the same way, don’t they? They all say: “Don’t look back or you’ll lose everything you’ve got left.” We don’t need to go any further down that dark path.’

‘Yes we do. We’ve got to follow it to the end – that’s the only way back to the light.’

‘I’ve seen what revenge costs. It will swallow us.’

An idea came to him. He got up and went to the cave and found his backpack. He returned holding Sir Bors’ scroll, mouldy now to the touch.

Marian hesitated, then took the scroll and unrolled it. She began to read and behind her words Robin heard the voice of Sir Bors: ‘Robin, there are no absolute truths in this world. That is one of the things we will endeavour to show you, during your time with us. One man’s scripture is another man’s legend, and a third man’s lies. I want you to hold that in mind, when you read the following lines. They are from a divination called The Dream of the Wyrdwood. Its complete contents are buried beyond my reaching, but over the years I have unearthed this much in full:

‘I shall not dictate how you should interpret these words,’ Sir Bors’ scroll continued. ‘I have made such mistakes in the past and the consequences haunt me still. Suffice to say this: there are powerful men in this realm who hold this script sacrosanct. It is the wellspring of all the harm they do. Each of us, Robin, when it comes time to face our enemy, can go armed with more than sword and shield. We can
attempt to grasp our enemy’s truths, and in doing so hope to guard ourselves against the worst of their hatred, and their malice.’

Marian stopped reading.

‘What else?’ Robin said.

‘Nothing. It ended there.’

‘There must be more. He was going to tell me why he made me his ward. He was going to tell me what happened to my parents.’

‘I told you what happened to them,’ Marian said. ‘Who do you trust, me or Sir Bors?’ As she spoke she rolled the scroll, placed it in the fire. The flames hissed as the mouldy vellum began to burn.

‘I told you …’ Marian said. ‘Your parents are dead. The villagers sent word to the Sheriff, telling him about you – how you were found in the wildwood – one of the winter-born. When Robert Loxley learned the Sheriff was on his way to Wodenhurst, he thought there was only one place you’d be safe. He took you into the wildwood and he left you there. He took the heart of a buck back to the village, told the Sheriff he had killed you himself – granted you a quick death. The Sheriff tortured him, regardless. Your brothers fought back and died for it. Your mother too. This is the truth. It is a part of you. You cannot hide from it, cannot run from it. You can only fight and fight until it’s put right.’

Robin listened to the scroll sigh as it curled in the heat, the unanswered questions twisting in his mind. Why did the Sheriff want to destroy the winter-born? What was that horror he kept chained beneath his castle? Who were Robin’s real parents?

A line of the scroll came back to him.

Mother divine, mortal sire.

An awful idea took shape.

He thought of the goddess of the forest, and her words to him.

You’re not the first. Others will come. For now you’re my only. My lover, my son.

His forest-mind searching for her …

Here she is, exhausted and pale, walking towards the forest edge, a crying infant in her arms.

We’ve planted the seed, now it must grow.

Marian pushed herself against him, but this time he barely felt her touch. He was thinking of his family now – of how deeply he still missed them, and of all they had endured.

The Sheriff tortured him, regardless … fought back and died for it …

The shadow shard was running cold through his bones, bleeding deeper than ever, leaking to his heart, hardening around it and blackening it, like an oak scourged by wildfire. And as it did so an old promise returned to his mind, burning bright and fierce.

A man with a ruined face.

Robin’s arrow buried in his chest.

to be continued …