Chapter Forty-Two

“Competition will continue among these candidates for the place of steward,” Mason Montfort intoned, “until all but one has been eliminated. Begin!”

Curlew drew a hard breath. Last to join the line, he would also be last to shoot, a difficult enough position. He knew himself surrounded by a trio of past guardians, and he could feel Anwyn’s presence somewhere in the crowd, along with others from Sherwood who stood out in his consciousness like shards of light. And he could feel power simmering, balanced among Wren, Sparrow, and Martin.

The rest, he knew, teetered not on his skill but, as Martin said, on his endurance.

He looked at the targets—six of them—each with five concentric rings and a center of black, small yet relatively easy to hit at this distance. But the distance, he well knew, would increase with every round and extend clear across the sward.

“Each competitor,” Montfort concluded, “must hit in the black, or he is eliminated.”

Martin snorted rudely. They call that a competition?

Hush, Wren scolded. They begin.

So they did. Montfort nodded to the man from Normandy, first in line. “Monsieur Le Blanc.”

Le Blanc raised his bow and sighted in one elegant movement. He shot quickly, and his arrow clove the black at the center of the target.

Amid applause, the next man, called Doucette, followed. A breeze came up as he released his shot; his arrow landed barely within the black, but was allowed.

Nerves, that, Sparrow muttered.

The next three, Masters Etienne, de Langarde, and de Rouen, followed suit. Curlew raised his yew bow and sighted.

Curlew—Curl-yew, his mother’s voice, full of love, tumbled into his ear. You are in that bow, lad, as you are in everything.

He drew and pain—far worse than he expected—blossomed in his chest and bit hard. Had his wound torn open? Surely not so soon.

But his arrow found its mark true. Hastily, the targets were moved back some fifty paces. Still an easy shot for him.

The second round passed without any elimination, and the targets hurtled back again. Curlew, fearing his wound had indeed opened, thought only of keeping it from distracting him. Two of the competitors were very highly skilled—the fellow from Normandy and the man beside Curlew, called de Rouen. He, the eldest among them, had a hard eye and wore a cruel sneer.

No fit master for Sherwood, as Sparrow opined.

There is but one master for Sherwood, Wren pronounced. We have all worked tirelessly for this moment. My lord Curlew, shoot!

Shoot he did, when his turn came—aim still true, but now he could feel blood well up against his bandages and begin to trickle down his chest. No matter: Doucette, the man prey to his nerves, was eliminated.

One down.

Pain speared deeper when he drew and released his next shot. His arrow hit, but barely within the mark; Montfort gave him a concerned look and de Rouen, beside him, made a rude sound.

Curlew barely noticed. The pain now possessed his chest and reached for his lung; he could hear the wheeze in his own breath. Pray no one else could.

When he shot next, his fifth round, the pain nearly blinded him. But his arrow still found its mark, which was more than could be said for Etienne’s.

Two down.

The targets were now distant, indeed. The wind, cold as the kiss of winter, gusted over the field and snapped the pennants on the pavilion. Curlew’s eyes could no longer perceive the black at the center of his target. He would need to rely on another ability and sense for it.

Anwyn’s voice bloomed in his mind. How bad is it, love? I feel your pain.

Peace, he told her even as his strength wavered.

Lean on me, take my strength, she bade. From nowhere, a rush of warmth came to buoy him up. He steadied where he stood.

“Shoot!” Montfort cried.

The Norman, curse him, made his mark. De Langarde’s shot was spoiled as a barely-visible blur of magic shook his arm.

Three down.

Curlew could now feel blood soaking the sark beneath his leather tunic. The breath rasped in his lungs and de Rouen, only an arm’s reach away, looked at him askance. “This becomes perhaps too difficult for you, Master Longbow?”

Curlew shook his head and drew still more heavily on Anwyn’s strength. Where was she? Truly, it did not matter, for she was always inside him.

As was Sherwood.

De Rouen missed his next shot. He protested it even while Curlew stood swaying slightly on his feet. De Rouen, Montfort, and the men toting the butts all inspected the target before the man agreed to retire.

Four down, and the targets—only two of them now—moved back again and blurred before Curlew’s eyes.

It is about faith, Martin Scarlet said. You do not need to see the target.

Aye, for he must become the arrow even as he was the yew tree, and the fire in the heart of the stag who fell, and the water that beat in the blood, the breeze that caressed all, and the mighty, enduring rock of this place called England. He was the arrow, the bow, and the target as well.

Le Blanc, his only remaining competitor, shot at a target now so distant no one save the men who toted the butts could see the mark. They hollered—the arrow had hit.

Curlew raised his bow, blind now to everything save the pain. The bright, cold afternoon wavered around him and a mist floated before his eyes. Anwyn’s strength, inside him, pounded like his heartbeat and magic whispered, it whispered—

Green leaves, golden light, the presence of the god and men who worshipped, all one.

He released his shot in a shower of pure magic. It glowed around him, obscuring everything else, even the pain, and he flew. He was the arrow, and the wind rushed past him, ruffled his fletchings even as certainty burned in his heart like the light of Sherwood that could never die.

And reaching the target he became that also, and thudded into its heart.

The circle that was the wheel of existence shuddered on its axis, flamed with brightness, and turned ever more swiftly. Curlew found himself back on his feet with the two men from the butts running toward him, and Anwyn at his side. How did she come to be at his side? Aye, but so she had always been.

And Montfort, also there, shook his hand.

“Have I won? Did Le Blanc not make his mark?” he asked Anwyn’s father.

Satisfaction filled Montfort’s eyes. “He touched the black, but your arrow is dead center. They are displaying the targets now. Congratulations, Master Champion, you have earned your place.”

Earned it, aye. Suddenly, despite his pain, Curlew wanted to shout with joy. He had not earned this prize alone—rather had it been won through the sacrifice of many, through loss and blood and agony.

Sherwood gives, he whispered to all of them, and Sherwood does not always take.

“Master Champion?” de Asselacton stood suddenly before him, acceptance in his face. “I hear your father hailed from the north—Leeds, is it?—of a good Norman family.”

“Aye, my lord, so he did.”

“He would be proud of you, I do not doubt. That was some of the finest marksmanship I have ever seen. I trust you will prove just as skilled and steadfast a steward to Sherwood, look after our interests there, and see to the welfare of all.”

Curlew felt the weight that had rested always on his back lighten until it made no burden at all. “Upon that, my lord, you can rely.”

****

“’Twill be a sacrifice, you know,” Anwyn murmured. “We will no longer be able to live in Sherwood. Da says we are to have a house of our own near Oakham, just as soon as it may be built.”

“I deem that no sacrifice,” Curlew replied.

They found themselves alone at last at the end of this day that had brought him so much, and outside the walls of Nottingham. There they had paused at Anwyn’s insistence so she might change his bandaging before heading back to the forest. Only a few more nights would be spent there, yet he felt no lack, for Sherwood dwelt always inside him.

Anwyn refastened his tunic and looked into his face. He got to his feet, and her hands slid tenderly up his chest to lodge in his hair. “It is as I feared, my husband; you have injured yourself much.”

“And gained much. Sherwood now rests in my hands—something of which my grandmother Wren, those who fought at her side, and all those since could but dream.”

Gladness flared in Anwyn’s eyes. “’Twas a shot in a thousand—nay, in ten thousand, my lord. And I felt the magic of it. You were not alone.”

He shook his head. “I flew in that arrow and all of them with me.”

“Do you think you will heal quickly enough to take up this wondrous position?”

He smiled gently. She had nearly wept when she saw the mess beneath his tunic. “’Tis naught Sherwood cannot heal.”

“Then, my lord, are you able to kiss me?”

“My lady, I am.”

He bent his head and her sweetness rushed at him like magic, like light, curled through him and flowed in a stream of warmth to his ravaged flesh. Ah, and it would not take Sherwood, for her love made him whole.

He drank from her until the breath came more easily in his lungs, until the pain faded and joy filled him, making him heady with it. Only then did she release his lips and give him her matchless smile.

“It is well, my lord. I need you whole and hale, not only as steward of Sherwood, but for the coming of our child.”

“Child?” Sudden gladness arose and shouted inside him, along with a sense of rightness, strong and deep. Another chance this was, another turn of the wheel, and an arrow shot into the future.

He cradled her between his hands, the most precious light of his world. “There is no mistake? You are certain?”

“Oh, aye, I am very certain.” His Marianwyn tossed her head. “Just as I am sure to my heart this child will be a girl—another blessed daughter of Sherwood.”

A word about the author...

Born and raised in western New York, Laura Strickland has been an avid reader and writer since childhood. Embracing her mother's heritage, she has pursued a lifelong interest in Celtic lore, legend, and music, all reflected in her writing.

She has made pilgrimages to both Newfoundland and Scotland in the company of her daughter, but is usually happiest at home, not far from Lake Ontario, with her husband and her "fur" child, a rescue dog. She practices gratitude every day.