The Last Arrow RH3 (58 page)

"Moonlight? Not a bloodred moon, by any chance?"

Robin searched for the answer to the grim smile that spread across Griffyn's lips and swore softly. "Solange de Sancerre?"

"Not even the vestal robes of a virgin could conceal the way she walks when she has an audience of lusty men following her every footstep."

"What are we going to do?" Brenna asked.

Griffyn stared thoughtfully at the longbow slung over her shoulder. "Let them know we have changed our minds."

He took the bow and drew an arrow from her quiver, careful to keep his actions concealed until the arrow was nocked in the string.

"Surely you are not going to shoot the woman?" Robin exclaimed in an anxious whisper. Despite who and what she was and the infinite agonies she had caused in her torture chamber, the thought of cutting down a woman in cold blood appalled him.

But Griffyn's attention was not focused on Solange de Sancerre. It was on the line of knights behind her, on one figure in particular who was doubtless watching the proceedings with smug satisfaction.

Brenna read his intent. "You will waste the shot. It is too far. And I only have two arrows left," she added in an urgent whisper.

But he did not take his eyes off the target, he only murmured a quiet, "Centaur. Stand."

The stallion, who was battle-trained to respond to his master's every command, lifted his tapered head and seemed to turn to stone. Griffyn raised the bow and eased the fletching back to his chin, then to his ear, adjusting the angle of flight to allow for the distance to the trees. He drew farther still, bending the mighty bow almost beyond its limits before he released and sent the ashwood shaft whooshing across the expansive sweep of grass.

Both Malagane and Gisbourne heard the distinct twang of the bowstring and whirled around in time to see Griffyn straighten. Their heads swiveled again and they saw, nearly three hundred yards away, Fulgrin jerking up and falling back in his saddle, his hands clutching at the arrow where it had punched through his chest. The knights on either side of him skittered out of the way, men and beasts alike startled by the sound of Fulgrin's scream—a scream that came echoing back across the field in a thin, watery wail of incredible pain.

Malagane roared and spurred his horse back across the meadow, thundering past a stunned Solange de Sancerre.

Gisbourne passed a moment of shared incredulity with Robin and Brenna as all three turned slowly to stare at Griffyn Renaud.

"Not one man in a thousand could have made that shot," he gasped.

Griffyn acknowledged the compliment by calmly nocking another arrow and aiming it between Gisbourne's eyes. "I can guarantee this one would pose no difficulty either."

The sheriff stiffened and called out to the five guards who had accompanied him onto the field. When there was no response, he glanced quickly over his shoulder only to find they were already halfway back to the trees, spurring their horses into a gallop to catch up with some of the others who were making haste to put a thick shield of trees between them and the knight wearing the gold falcon.

"Robin?" Griffyn's voice sounded almost casual. "Perhaps you have some new terms you would like to discuss with Sir Guy?"

A slow, wide grin spread across Robin's face. "Personally, I couldn't care less if you shoot the bastard here and now

... but I am sure we have some friends who would be most eager to offer the lord sheriff their hospitality while matters of mutual concern are discussed."

Gisbourne's face glowed red. "This is an outrage! I will see you both hang before this day is through!"

He pulled up on his reins intending to wheel his horse around, but before he could complete the command, the arrow was loosed and sliced hotly past his ear, taking away the fleshy pad of his lobe. He screamed and clapped a gloved hand to his neck, and when he removed it and stared at the blood-smeared leather, he screamed again.

Brenna was quick to hand her last arrow to Griffyn, who was equally quick to bring it to bear on Gisbourne again.

"As I understand it," he murmured, "you have not many such useless appendages of flesh left to spare, Sir Guy.

Would it not be prudent, therefore, to come with us as a whole guest rather than leaving parts of you scattered behind you on the field?"

"You will not get away with this!"

"I think we have already. Kindly wave the rest of your men off while they are still of a mind to obey your orders."

Gisbourne stared at the blood pooled in his palm, then raised his arm and jerked it once to order his men to remain in the wood. Robin brought Sir Tristan trotting forward and leaned over the sheriff, relieving him of his reins.

The dark, ferret eyes flicked past his shoulder and scanned the amazed line of foresters who were still murmuring among themselves over Griffyn's shot and were beginning to suspect something even more amazing was about to happen.

"I am a noble, an earl, a baron for pity's sake," he hissed. "You cannot simply hand me over to those peasants and outlaws!"

"Whereas I," Griffyn said evenly, "am Rowen Hode of Locksley, twelfth Earl of Huntington, and those peasants you speak of are my loyal tenants and villeins whom I absolve completely of any charges of outlawry. You would be wise to hold your tongue whilst you are among them, lest you find yourself missing it."

"Locksley!" Gisbourne gasped. He looked pointedly at the longbow and something flickered behind his eyes a moment before the dark centers rolled up into the back of his head and he slumped forward in a dead faint over the pommel of his saddle.

Robin caught him by the sleeve before he slid off into the mud and peered narrowly at Griffyn as the latter smiled the smile of an indulgent Lucifer.

"Something else you have not told us?" he inquired dryly.

"A trifling incident from my youth." Griffyn shrugged. "But if you care to count his fingers, you will see he only has nine."

Robin's grin was cut short by another scream and the sound of pounding hoofbeats coming up fast behind them. It was Bertrand Malagane. He had donned a conical steel helm and drawn his sword, and he was streaking back with vengeance on his lips and loathing blazing in his eyes.

Robin had his hands full keeping Gisbourne upright in the saddle, and it was with no small gleam of pleasure in his own eyes that Griffyn wheeled around. He tossed the longbow to Brenna and spurred Centaur on to meet the ravening Count of Saintonge, drawing his sword as the two destriers closed the distance with deadly purpose. As Griffyn raised his blade, a stray beam of light caught the steel and flared blue-white along its length, causing the burnished metal to glow like a fiery beacon. The blade slashed downward, the arc smooth and graceful, striking Saintonge with explosive force. The count's sword shattered in two. His wrist snapped in a spray of blood and splintered bone, but even that could not deflect the power of the blow.

There was a look of utter disbelief in Saintonge's eyes as he crashed to the ground. Centaur danced around for another pass, but it was not needed. The count rose halfway to his knees, his hands clasped over the bloodied front of his tunic, but the effort cost him his last wailing breath and he collapsed facedown in the grass, his life pulsing into the grass beneath him.

That left only one screaming threat on the meadow, and Brenna, who was not bound by the same chivalric codes as the men, nocked, drew, and fired the last arrow.

The abbey of Kirklees sat upon the crest of a gentle hill, with meadows and orchards spreading out from the base of its gray stone walls to the verge of trees that marked the boundary of Sherwood. It was not large and had no fortified barbicans to guard against uninvited entry, but it had protected the sanctuary of the meadow for over one hundred fifty years, its inhabitants cloistered against the turmoils of the outside world.

The small group of knights and foresters was admitted through the low postern gate where the mother abbess, flanked by several sisters of the order, was waiting. Two of the foresters carried the litter bearing a half-conscious Henry de Clare through the ivy-covered arch. He had seemed to be more dead than alive when they had left the meadow, but at the first touch of the mother abbess's hands, his eyes opened and he managed to whisper something that only the abbess heard and was able to muster a smile over. The beating he had suffered that morning had all but finished what a month in Gisbourne's donjons could not, and Robin, watching solemnly from the shadows as the abbess ran her hands tenderly over the swollen, bruised, torn, and ravaged parts of his body, spared a moment to give thanks that in this instance, at least, her blindness was a blessing.

It was almost full dark in the courtyard and the nuns had only two hooded candles between them, so Robin had to rely a good deal on his memory of Eleanor of Brittany's face to distinguish any of her features. Once regarded as being unquestionably the greatest beauty in Christendom, the years had been kind. Despite the raw ugliness of the scars that marred the sockets where her eyes used to be, her skin was still smooth and unblemished. There were lines on either side of her mouth and a certain looseness beneath her chin, but these inevitable signs of aging only added a kind of dignity not found on the faces of women desperate to cling to their youth. Marienne had said her once silver-blonde hair was pure white now beneath the nun's cowl, and had been since the night she had given birth to young Eduard. She had always been slender and delicate of form, but her wrists, where they peeped out from her sleeves, were beyond fragile; they looked as if the slightest pressure would snap them. Surely, the strength of Henry's grip, when he first opened his eyes and saw where he was and who was tending him, should have crushed her fingers at the least.

"For eleven years he has defied all of God's efforts to remove him from this earth," she said when his men had followed the nuns inside with the litter. "I warrant he will survive this just to prove his stubbornness."

Robin moved forward, the metallic clink of his hauberk seeming to desecrate the peace of the garden as he went down on one knee before her.

"Highness. It was good of God to keep you so well over the years."

She urged him to stand again. "It was graciously good of God to bring you here safely, Robert, and for him to bless my ... to bless Henry with such loyal and steadfast friends. Your family is well? Lord Randwulf, and your mother?"

"They are very well, Highness. I thank you for asking."

"And Eduard? We heard he was injured in Maine."

Her voice carried the soft concern of a lifelong friendship and Robin reassured her. "Lady Ariel has him securely bound, hand and foot, or he would have come himself. He is much like Lord Henry. Too stubborn by far to leave this world just yet. But you will see that for yourself when we return to Amboise."

"Return to Amboise? No. No, dearest Robin, I will not be returning. This is my home now, I have no wish to leave it."

"But, Highness—"

"Please." She smiled and pressed a finger over her lips. "Do not address me thus. To the sisters, I am but a humble daughter of the church. And thus I will remain until I have served out my time here on earth. Here, Robin, at Kirklees, where I have found peace and happiness."

"The king—"

"Is a broken man. He is ill and desperate and he knows his kingdom is in jeopardy. He fears the barons because they grow stronger every day and he knows his army of mercenaries and misfits cannot hope to defeat a host of zealots calling for change. He also knows I am no threat to him. In truth, he even visited me here once, begging my forgiveness."

"He knows you are here?" Robin was shocked.

"He has known almost from the beginning and has never breathed a word of it, not even to his confessor. Guilt, I think. My brother's murder weighs heavier on his mind than he would ever admit, and I must believe he has difficulty at night washing the stain of royal blood off his hands."

"Well," Robin said with raised eyebrows. "Then it will just be Marienne and the boy returning with us?"

She nodded and clasped her hands solemnly together. "You have seen Marienne?"

"Yes, most happily. And the child," he added carefully. "A handsome, clever boy. Courageous too. He wanted to fight with us today."

She reached out to touch Robin's arm. "You did not allow it, I trust. Oh!" Her fingers found the wetness on his sleeve and traced it up to the gash in his armor. "You are hurt!"

" 'Tis but a cut, nothing more."

"Nonetheless, you must let Sister Goneril see to it. Are there other wounded among you?"

"Most have gone back to the camp in Sherwood. I myself cannot linger, for we have a guest of some importance waiting for us there, and the foresters may grow impatient to heat the pitch and pluck the feathers." "A guest?"

"Aye. Sir Guy of Gisbourne was invited to come along and listen to some of the foresters' grievances."

Her eyebrows arched slightly in surprise. "He did this willingly?"

"Willingly enough. I gave my word he would be returned to Nottingham unharmed. A little ruffled, perhaps, but unharmed."