Mark of the Black Arrow (31 page)

Little John reached down, grasping the crossbar in one hand and lifting it to his shoulder. Much had to pull his mouth closed at the sight of it. He knew exactly how much those bags weighed—nearly as much as he did. To see a man lift them as if they were empty shocked him. Silhouetted by the setting sun, Little John looked like a carving of Ogimos, god of strength and eloquence.

Suddenly there was silence, and a tension cut the air, drawing Much’s eyes leftward to Old Soldier. The man’s face had closed like a fist and his hand lay across the hilt of the dagger shoved into his belt, fingertips almost casually wrapped round it. His voice darted out, low and quick.

“See to, Little John. Stop acting a fool.”

The giant looked down, and the grin plastered on his face cracked and broke and crumbled into his beard. He and Old Soldier both peered in the same direction. Much turned to look where they did.

Down the road came a company of mounted men, thirty strong. His eyes picked out the line of swords on all their hips, and many carried halberds or lances—even a poleax or two. As they drew near he recognized Lord Locksley at the head of the retinue, wearing his bright blue tabard over gold brazed mail. The men directly behind him were other nobles, and behind them rode a contingent of guards.

“What is this?” Little John said, watching them draw near. He looked at Old Soldier. “Do you think this is from the other day?”

Old Soldier leaned close to Much, so close he could feel the old man’s breath on his face.

“Can you run?”

Much nodded.

“Then fly over that field and tell Lord Longstride that company is coming.” He spat on the ground. “Bad company.”

*  *  *

The door rattled in its frame, wood jarring against wood and sounding like thunder. The noise rolled through the house.

Glynna Longstride stepped into the great room, drying her hands from washing vegetables for the evening dinner. A thin, salmon-colored shift clung to her chest and stomach, sucking close to her skin with the water from the washing. She had been daydreaming, absentmindedly performing her task as she thought about the Sheriff. She accepted the sensation of wet linen against her skin, enjoying it and adding it into the texture of her reverie.

There was no servant to get the door—all of the house staff were out in the field. She pushed down the surge of annoyance that threatened to fill her chest.

The door rattled again as her hand fell on the latch. She jerked back, startled, the sound vibrating the air around her.

“Who knocks so fiercely on my door?” she cried.

A voice came through the door, muffled but familiar. “A duly appointed vassal to the king.”

Through the wood she felt someone with whom she was familiar. She gripped and lifted the heavy bolt, sliding it from the iron ring in the doorframe and back into its oiled housing. Swinging the door open she spoke.

“Merl? What is the meaning of…?” Her voice died as she saw the armed retinue of men lined up behind Locksley. His face softened as he saw her.

“We are here to collect the taxes for your household,” he said, and he looked down at her collarbone, unable to hold her gaze. Then his eyes dropped even lower.

“We already gave to the war effort,” she said. She pulled her shoulders back, standing proud without covering up. “My husband, a large portion of our belongings, and most of our people.”

His voice dropped, low enough to not be heard by the other men at the front of the porch.

“This is different,
Gealbhan
.”

“
Do not
call me that.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not your sparrow.”

Red rushed to his face as he met those stormy eyes. He stared at her for a long moment, clearly admiring the line of her jaw, the curve of her neck. It was as if she could read his every thought—not that he was going to any great lengths to hide them from her.

Without turning, he spoke to the men behind him. “Search it all, take one third of anything with value, and remember to look for any books.”

The men moved forward, pressing in. Glynna stumbled back. As they approached the door, some of the men stared at her, raw lust washing over their faces, turning their sneers into leers. And in that moment she understood all too well.

They will take everything.

Everything but what she held most dear. She trusted in the wards to hold on her room. She felt a slight moment of fear at the mention of the book. It couldn’t be hers, could it? No one knew she had it, not even the Sheriff. Something inside her held it back from him, though she felt no guilt.

Lila. Lila might know about the book from the days when it had belonged to Glynna’s mother. White-hot anger flared through her at the thought that a servant would have the audacity to betray her. Then she tucked the thought away.

She’d deal with Lila later.

There was a rush of sound behind her. Before a single invading foot could cross the threshold Robin was simply there. He appeared from nowhere, just suddenly moving past her. He twisted, kicking out with a muddy boot. The door slammed shut and someone outside howled, their fingers too slow to prevent being crushed by the impact. Leaning against the rough planks, he threw the bolt.

The door shook as fists pounded from the outside.

He turned, gripping her arms. His hands left smears on her smock. His eyes blazed in their sockets, teeth showing white in his dirt-covered face.

“That won’t hold them long,” he said urgently. “Gather the girls and anyone else who is here and go out the back before they get there. Don’t return until after the sun rises again.”

She nodded, taking in his words, understanding them. Yet she didn’t move to comply, wrestling inside herself. Did she have enough power to stop these men?

Not without preparation. Not without ritual.

He shook her. “Go! It won’t take them long to begin circling the house. Get your children to safety.”

She nodded, blonde hair falling around her face.

Robin looked past her. “Go with her and help her.”

She turned and saw the miller’s son standing at the doorway to the hall. He didn’t speak, just nodded vigorously. Moving forward he reached out and took her arm. His hands were far stronger than she would have expected.

“It’ll be alright, milady,” the boy said. “He’ll take care of this.” He didn’t look at her when he spoke, though, tugging on her arm.

One thought ran through her head.

I always thought he was slow.

Looking at her son one last time, she allowed herself to be led around the corner.

*  *  *

Robin moved to the mantle of the fireplace. His fingers slipped across his bow on its pegs. Its yew seemed to grow warm as it called to him, an old faithful friend.

Reluctantly he pulled away from it and reached past, his hand closing on the leather-wrapped handle of an ancient hurley bat. It had been in his family for generations, passed down from father to son. The wood had cracked but never split, the ash grain worn smooth from hundreds of clashes on the field of a sport that was a cross between a child’s game and murder.

He pulled it from its place.

*  *  *

“We cannot get through. The door is too stout!”

Locksley glared at the man, a landowner from the edge of the kingdom. He was like his holding, small and barren of any true value. His property had passed to him simply by dint of the fact that no one else wanted it. He was just a freeman with aspirations and a plot of rocky soil.

The other men stood back. One of the guards began to hack away with a poleax. Chips of wood fell into a pile at his feet, but because each swing caused the haft to strike the planks of the porch under his feet, he wasn’t able to wield the long weapon effectively.

“Circle the house,” Locksley said. “Find another way in.”

The small noble nodded. He moved off to begin relaying Locksley’s order. The remaining men turned and shuffled, moving off the porch and spreading to either side of the stone structure. Their feet stomped through flowers and herbs planted in shallow beds, trampling them and crushing the petals into the soil. Being shut out had turned their mood black.

Locksley watched them closely.

I should take command, rein in their anger before they destroy this house.
His mind went back to a summer night, long ago in his childhood. A night he’d left his home and traveled across the county to see a flaxen-haired maiden. He’d been smitten, and neither the distance nor the late hour had dissuaded him. Her father was overbearing in his watchfulness, but a sound sleeper. Middle of the night rendezvous had been the way of their courtship.

He’d pulled his horse short of the field of clover where they would meet, wanting to slip quietly through the wood and surprise her in the moonlight. When he arrived, he found her in the arms of another. The two of them were like liquid moonlight made human, their fair hair and pale skin gleaming in the night.

He said nothing then, and he said nothing now. The men under his command stopped moving around the house with a clash of metal on metal, jerking him from his reverie. He stretched to see what was happening.

The men were being pushed back by a few farm hands and servants. A motley crew, they’d come around the side of the house, rushing toward his men with locked shields. The shields themselves were a mangled lot, dented and rusted, any paint long ago chopped away. The styles ranged a century at least, from one made of thick wood planks to a bronze scutum left behind by some Roman legionnaire to a few rough kite shields of hammered steel.

The men wielding them were just as mismatched. An old man, an impressive giant holding two of the shields, a handful of boys too young to have been taken to war, one woman stout enough to hold back two of his men, and a lone field hand hunched of spine but strapped with muscle from hard labor.

Only the old man held a weapon.

“What are you doing?” Locksley demanded loudly. His voice tore out of him, roaring out over the clash and the din. “Put them down, or I’ll have you all lashed! We are agents of the king’s authority.”

His nobles and soldiers lunged forward, driven by his command. One of them thrust a halberd between the shields and pried an opening that the rest shoved through, splitting the line. His men stumbled past, turning left and right as they drew their swords.

The back of his neck itched as air passed over it.

The planks shook under his feet. He threw himself sideways, shoulder hitting the boards as a hurley crossed the space where his skull had just been. He rolled, stopping in a crouch, sword halfway drawn from its scabbard.

Robin stood in front of the door, hurley in hand and swinging back for another try. The planks still vibrated where the boy had dropped from the roof of Longstride Manor. He was bare-chested, filthy from the waist up, his dark hair matted with dirt. He looked like an ancient Pict—dark, savage, and full of murder.

The club swung again as he growled like an animal.

“Never threaten my family!”

Locksley twisted away, rolling on his knee and up to his feet in one smooth motion. His sword came out in his hand. As he lifted it, the hurley clanged off the flat of the blade, jolting a shock of pain all the way to his elbow. He held onto the weapon, but just barely. Swinging from his shoulder instead of his numb arm, he flailed out, opening some distance between him and Robin.

“Stand down, boy,” he bellowed. “We’re just here for the taxes.”

Shoulders drawn tight, hands white-knuckled around the end of the club, so angry that his hair stood on end like a wild animal raising its hackles, Robin Longstride redoubled his efforts. He looked swollen, inhuman, his hatred driving his every movement.

Locksley took a step back.

He’s going to make me kill him.

Robin lunged, hurley back and over his head, ready to fall like a boulder and smash and crush and grind into dust.

Locksley drew back his sword.

A cry broke the tension like a stone through glass.

They both turned.

The defenders of Longstride manor had been subdued, taken by sheer numbers and force of arms. The cry had come from one of the lads who lay face down in the dirt, his arm twisted viciously up and behind him in an angle the Creator had not designed it to go. Five men held Little John to the earth. Four held the woman.

The only one left on his feet was the old man wearing mail. He hunched over, blood dripping from his mouth. His sword lay far from his reach behind a handful of soldiers who circled him. Still he moved, keeping them in sight, a wounded wolf more dangerous for his injury.

“If you keep fighting, we will kill them,” Locksley said.

Robin glared at him.

“I would be justified in ordering their deaths,” Locksley continued. “There would be no repercussion to me.”

The boy looked from him to his men and back again. He swallowed, and it sounded as if he were choking. His voice rattled out of him as if each word had been strangled as it passed his lips.

“If we stand down, no harm will come to them?”

“Lord Longstride, we will still fight for you,” the old man cried.

The giant struggled even more.

Locksley’s gaze never moved from Robin. “On my honor. Cease and desist and they may leave here unharmed.”

Robin’s body vibrated. The hurley dropped to the end of his arm, thudding against the porch. He waved his other hand.

“Do not fight any longer,” he said loudly. “Leave be.”

Locksley’s men looked to him for guidance. He nodded once, up and down. Slowly they stepped back, releasing Robin’s men. The woman and giant leapt to their feet, their faces matched in twin snarls, their hands up in fists. The boys scurried toward one another, the two comforting the one whose arm now hung limp from his shoulder.

The old man picked up his sword, holding it naked in his hand.

“What now, Lord Robin?”

Robin’s eyes blazed.

“Let them take what they want.”

“Your king appreciates your service,” Locksley said with a sneer on his face and his words drawn out. “Now piss off before I have you arrested for resisting the tax brigade.”