The dogs had gone on baying, their attention focussed on a lesser-used trail somewhat north of the small side-path to Tuck’s chapel from the main way to Nottingham. Tuck tried to look like a peace-loving man of God as he went toward the dogs; he tried not to scuttle as well. But his heart misgave him before he saw the troop of heavily armed men collecting around one man at the edge of his clearing. They fanned out, ignoring him, having identified him, looking for someone else who would be a greater threat: a war party, looking for war. Their leader ignored them as they ignored Tuck: a well-trained war party, with a leader who had confidence in them as did they in him.
This leader was a tall man, not so tall or broad as Little John or Will, but with heavy, strong bones visible in his face and in the width of his wrists; and there was no ounce of unnecessary flesh upon him anywhere. The tough, sinewy outlaws would look soft next to this man. And no ounce of unnecessary kindness lay in his heart, either, thought Tuck, looking into the narrow, level-eyed face. He was dressed in hard-worn but supple leather, and the mail-shirt that showed beneath the cloth surcoat was dark with use and careful oiling; neither leather creaked nor chain clashed as he moved.
“I am Guy of Gisbourne,” he said quietly, pitching his voice to carry across the noise of the. dogs; “and I seek a man who was wounded at Nottingham Fair yesterday.”
By an effort of will Friar Tuck raised his eyebrows. He said with cautious surprise, “I spoke to a troop of the sheriff’s men only this morning about such a man. I have not seen him.” He told his conscience, I have not seen him. The dogs, who knew all the tones of his voice, redoubled their barking; Beauty’s ruff stood up till she looked as large as a pony.
“If your dogs do not cease their caterwauling,” Guy of Gisbourne said calmly, “my men will shoot them.”
Friar Tuck’s mouth dropped open, in honest surprise this time; and then he swallowed convulsively and called his dogs. But his voice creaked as Guy of Gisbourne’s armour did not, and for the moment he could not make them mind. He saw one of the men nearest Guy turn to look at the dogs with interest, and feel toward the quiver that hung at his belt for an arrow. Desperately Tuck bellowed, “Beauty! Sweetheart! Brown-eyes! Come here; that’s enough of you.”
They came, reluctantly, muttering in their throats, and sat down around him. But Beauty stood up again almost at once, and paced up and down in front of him, growling and showing her great teeth, her ruff still fully erect.
“That will do,” said Guy of Gisbourne composedly. “They need not love me, but I require civility, from man or beast. I ask you again to tell me what you know of a wounded man who escaped Nottingham yesterday.”
Tuck said, his voice unpleasantly high in his own ears, “I have told you, I do not—”
He barely saw the gesture that Guy made, but the man who had been watching saw, and fitted an arrow in his bow as quickly as Robin’s outlaws used their longbows; and Beauty, pacing, dropped suddenly and soundlessly in her tracks, with an arrow buried in her throat. It happened so quickly and neatly that the other two dogs did not understand what had happened, and looked in puzzlement at the slightly twitching body of their sister. But Friar Tuck knew, and it steadied him, and a coldness came over him as icy as the heart of the man he faced.
There was a listening silence in the trees around him; he knew that those who listened paused only for fear of his one small life. He knew too that the men before him outnumbered the outlaws at best two to one, and that only if Much had gotten word quickly to all of them that were left in Sherwood. He was sorry for the first time in many years that he no longer kept a dagger strapped to the calf of his leg, for he was sure his life was shortly to be forfeit, and he would have liked to strike one blow first. He stared at Beauty, knowing that his face reflected the shock and sorrow that he felt, and that the sorrow would be read by Guy and his men as fear.
“Two men came through here late last night,” he said, raising his eyes, “bearing a third man in a litter; this man was sore wounded, by a blade taken a little way in the belly. An inch more and he would have been dead already.” Tuck was watching for it, and so saw the flicker in Guy of Gisbourne’s eyes when he said this. “They would not stay. I did what I could for the wounded man, but I would not be surprised if he did not live the night. I do not know if they came from Nottingham, but as they came that way,” and he nodded toward the trail Guy and his men had not taken, “they may well have done so.” He looked down at Beauty again, and tears shadowed his eyes, and when one tipped over the edge of his eyelid and fell down his cheek he did not raise a hand to brush it away.
“That is better, but not good enough,” said Guy of Gisbourne. “Or not if you wish to escape your dog’s fate. Did you tell of these men to the sheriff’s soldiers?”
Tuck shook his head and tried to look truculent. “No. I did not know if this was the man they sought, and they—did not linger.”
“Did not offer any persuasion, you mean,” said Guy of Gisbourne. “I know that you help the outlaws of Sherwood; perhaps”—and his face closed further as he said this—“you even call their leader friend. How were these three men you saw last night dressed?”
Tuck shut his eyes as if to concentrate, or to shut out the sight of Beauty, sprawled at his feet. “One was very large and wore no shirt; one was just a lad, and wore the remains of what had been an elegant coat. They both looked as if they had been in a brawl; they were bruised and filthy. The wounded man was dressed in plain homespun with a leather tunic over.”
Guy grunted. The man who had shot Beauty stood alertly, another arrow loosely in one hand. Tuck looked around, to see what Guy’s men were about, remembering to look small and alone and fearful, which came easy, trying not to display any interest in what might be going on immediately behind any trees beyond the clearing, which was not so easy. Although his brain still functioned calmly, he found that he had some difficulty breathing; from one moment to the next he expected …
He had turned a little as he looked around, and did not at once notice that Sweetheart had left his side; he recalled his dogs when he heard Sweetheart’s growl.
He heard it fractionally before anyone else did, and he spun round, yelling, “Sweetheart, no!” as the dog, who had been gently nosing Beauty’s body, crouched and sprang for Guy’s throat. Then a number of things happened at once.
Tuck dived for his dog, and got just the end of his tail; they both fell hard, and Tuck heard one arrow whistle past his ear and one more at a little distance, that he could guess had been meant for Sweetheart. Brown-eyes, catching on at last, leaped for the man who had shot Beauty and missed Tuck, and who was now redrawing hastily—not hastily enough, and he went down with a scream. Guy, briefly startled by Sweetheart’s lunge, had taken one step backward—enough to save his life, for an arrow hummed past his nose so nearly that he blinked against a feeling that the feathers would brush his eyes.
At once he shouted to his men, rallying them against the new attack; not that they needed much rallying; they would not be in his command if they were not accustomed to such sport as this, and Guy had been sure that Robin’s men would be near the old friar’s hovel. Where else could they have gone with their wounded master? Which meant their master was also near at hand.… Guy’s teeth gleamed as he drew his sword.
The friar was still rolling inanely upon the forest floor; Guy thought to cut his throat as he walked past, but he stayed his hand against the possibility that some of his band might need the friar’s leechcraft when this business was over. A friar would not be tiresome about tending mercenaries, as laymen sometimes were. These outlaws were a bit more challenging than crushing a village; and they had their master’s wound to make them angry—and foolhardy. The next hour or so might prove amusing. He had no doubt of the outcome.
Tuck rolled up onto his knees as soon as he had seen Guy’s feet pass by; Sweetheart was already gone into the fray, after one briefest glance of reproach at his master: reproach I deserve, thought Tuck; if there was any chance that he might have succeeded in tearing that man’s throat out I should be hung from one of these trees.… It may come to that yet, or near enough as makes no difference. He began circumspectly to make his way toward his cottage; for his long-unused dagger was there.
It was hard to see what was going on, or what was to be avoided; there were thumps and crunches echoing from all directions, but the trees absorbed some of the sound, and reflected the rest confusingly, and Tuck could as well hear the faint burble of running water. The occasional arrow flew, but he noticed that the ones he saw were the shorter kind, that belonged to Guy’s men—the ones that are missing their marks, he thought hopefully.
He began to realise that much of the crashing he was hearing was of Guy’s men searching for their attackers: as he watched, one man of Guy’s troop paused, panting and at a loss, at the edge of the clearing, looking wildly around; as he turned to make his way farther back into the concealing shadows, a long slender shaft whistled from nowhere and buried itself in his chest; he fell first to his knees, swayed, and slowly toppled to one side. Tuck abruptly realised that the trees were not such good concealment for men dressed as Guy’s men were dressed, with the bright wink of sword-blade and occasional band of colour in a surcoat over the mail-shirts, as for the outlaws. The outlaws wore no mail; but chain did not protect Guy’s men from the longbow arrows of Robin’s invisible archers.
Tuck picked up the hem of his gown and scurried for his hut. He yanked the door open; one of the leather hinges gave, as it had been threatening to do for some time, under this rough treatment, and the door nearly brained him. He squeezed by it, and felt, with trembling hands, for the dagger in its hiding place: a crack cut into the underside of the table.
There was a shout from outside—a desperate shout. Tuck fumbled his way past the door again with it ringing in his ears.
Guy’s men had made an appalling discovery. One of their fellows had died with an arrow in his back, clutching at the underbrush as he fell face down, and carrying it with him as he slid to the ground. The underbrush he held happened to be that disguising the entrance to Marian’s haven.
There were two men clearing the earthwork when Tuck heard the cry; one of them was falling with an arrow in his throat, and the other was turning to look where the cry—and the arrow—had come from. Tuck saw Cecil—Cecily—leap out from behind a tree just ahead of an arrow from another of Guy’s men, who now rushed up through the trees behind her. Tuck had his mouth open to give a shout of his own, when she turned, dagger in hand, ducked—mostly—under his sword-stroke, and slashed him across the thigh. He was the worse hampered by the branches because of the length of his blade; but both were wounded and each staggered back from the other’s blow.
The man by the earthwork was fitting an arrow to his string when Tuck’s dagger caught him under the ear; he had not thought to pay attention to the stumbling approach of the fat little friar. Cecily’s opponent paused, perhaps astonished at the sight of the terrified friar of a few minutes ago waving a dagger wet with his companion’s blood, and Cecily reeled forward for the final blow. Her left arm was red from the shoulder, and hung limp.
The man fell where he stood when she struck him. She stood swaying on her feet, looking down at the man who would have killed her if he had got his second blow in first; and behind her the leaves erupted and another of Guy’s men appeared. Tuck lurched forward, weeping; but from just by where Cecily stood helpless, a large man in a shirt that did not fit him appeared as silently as a ghost; his arrow passed clear through the throat of the running man and hung quivering in the bole of a tree some little distance away, almost before the dead man had finished falling.
Little John caught Cecily as her knees buckled, and Tuck came up to them. Little John was staring into her face with a haunted, hungry expression, as if most of Guy’s men were not still seeking them, and liable to find anyone who stayed in one place for more than a moment. Tuck tore Cecily’s shirt a little clear of her shoulder and said, “It is not mortal.”
Little John said, “It is likely to prove so yet if we cannot hide her.” But he said it looking at Cecily, not at Tuck, and he moved not a foot.
Tuck looked frantically around; perhaps they could put her in with Marian. The entrance must be covered up again in all events, and Cecily’s shoulder must be tied up or she could bleed to death. And Little John stood like a stone.
Cecily stirred a little in his arms, and her eyes flickered open. Tuck saw the colour rush into her face as she saw who held her. “If we—stand here, they will pick us off—with those foolish little excuses—they have for—bows,” she said. “Put me down—ow,” as she tried to straighten up, and she was quiet a fraction of a minute, and a little blood appeared on her lip where she had bitten it as she tried not to think about her shoulder. Gently, Little John set her feet upon the ground, and she leaned against him, panting. She looked toward the earthwork. “Must—cover that,” she said.
“We’ll put you in first,” said Little John, but Cecily shook her head. “Tie up my arm, Tuck,” she said. “If someone will give me a back to step on, I can get up in a tree and at least cry warning.”
“And get shot for your trouble,” began Little John; and then Will materialized at his elbow. “Cecily—”
“Just—my shoulder,” she said, and made an attempt at a smile. “Why are you—standing there?”
Will shook his head. “We’ve killed ten—fifteen,” he said, looking around him. “Maybe one or two more; the rest of them are skittish, and not so easy as they were. Robin’s regrouping—I was to find you. We did not expect—” He was looking at the earthwork.
“Sit down,” said Cecily, and did so, dropping so suddenly out of Little John’s grasp that he missed easing her down and she hit the ground with a thump that made her give a little cry. “I didn’t know,” she said, her voice wobbly, “that little things like shoulders could hurt so much.”
“Not little,” said Tuck, kneeling beside her. “This should be stitched.” He looked at Will. “May I risk fetching needle and thread?”
Will said, “Robin’s been drawing them deeper into the forest—farther from Marian—and you too, Tuck. Perhaps—”
Little John said, “We’ll move back a little way, where we’ll not be as easily seen. Will—you could move some brush back over that entrance.”
Will opened his mouth to protest; he was, after all, her brother. But he noticed the protective way Little John’s arm cradled her good side, and closed his mouth again, looking thoughtful. “Give her some of this, then,” he said, dropping a small leather flask at their feet. “The last of the sheriff’s brandy. It was not his best, I fear, but ’twill do for the need, and ’twas all Greentree’s stores had to offer.”
He and Tuck left and returned without incident. “This will hurt,” said Tuck.
“It can’t hurt more,” said Cecily.
“Yes, it can,” said Little John.
She looked up at him. “Then I hope I faint,” she said. “Because if I do not, I will scream.”
She fainted. Little John’s forehead was wet by the time Tuck was finished, but Tuck’s hand was steady and quick, and of this Cecily would take no harm. “How are the rest of us?” Little John asked Will.
“Two more flesh wounds,” said Will; “but this is the worst I’ve seen. You might still bring your trussing gear, Tuck.”
“I shall,” said the friar, and began to roll the tiny satchel together again. The three of them heard the shout, not too far distant; and Cecily opened her eyes.
“Up that tree,” said Little John sharply; Cecily came to her feet as best she could, ignoring his hand. Tuck hung the brandy flask around her neck. “If you feel faint, sip a little—just a little.”
Cecily managed a smile. “I shall try not to fall out of my tree from either faintness or drunkenness,” she said. And then, as Little John knelt for her foot, she said, “Wait—” They had come some little distance from the second mercenary she had killed, and her dagger had fallen beside him. She went back, picked it up, carefully not looking at him, wiped the blade on the leaves without ever quite looking at it either, and stuffed it back down her boot-top. Then she stepped on Will’s and Little John’s cupped hands, and was raised over their heads so that she could step directly on a branch and grab with her one good hand. They left her climbing slowly higher and turned toward the noise of renewed fighting.
Will was the last of them to leave the neighbourhood of the little clearing and the earthwork; he would rather have put his sister inside the latter, although he knew the time it would take to rearrange the turf and the brush over the entrance would be dangerously long. He had felt his shoulder-blades prickling with dreadful anticipation while he had only had a little disarranged brush to attend to. But still he hesitated; and then stooped, and picked up the sword belonging to the man whom Cecily had killed—the sword still red with Cecily’s blood. It was a little light for him, but the balance of it was good, and the hilt felt strong and familiar in his hand. And he was running out of arrows. They must all be running out of arrows—and he was the only one of them who knew how to handle a sword. He turned to follow Little John and Tuck.
And one of Guy’s men almost ran into him. The man’s quiver was empty, and his sword was out, and his eyes were wild. He attacked at once; and Will was glad to find that he still remembered what to do with a sword, borrowed as this one was. His attacker was dismayed to find that his opponent not only carried a sword but knew how to wield it; and during the first exchange of blows Will believed he would win out soon. But a branch caught fiendishly at his elbow, and he had to give way, blocking with the enemy sword that had cut his sister’s shoulder open just minutes before, while another enemy sword engaged him, and threw him back another step. Will was tired, and the man facing him had the strength of desperation, for he knew that no ordinary folk could defeat Guy of Gisbourne and so this Robin Hood must be a demon, and his company demons too. Who ever had heard of a common outlaw who knew how to use a sword? This man fought like an aristocrat—and it was Thomas’ blade he carried, which told him what had become of Thomas.…
Will stepped backward again as the man thrashed forward, for he had not regained his initial balance—and then stepped on an unseen knob of root, thrusting treacherously upward through the soft leaf-mould; and he stumbled. He might have recovered from the stumble, and he hurled his sword clumsily sideways in a gesture his old teacher would have spanked him with the flat of it for, and blocked his attacker—barely—once again. But as he straightened and turned, a green branch, half-broken by the violence of some other contest this day, whipped free of the ivy that had caught it, and slashed Will across the eyes.
He knew then that his time was up, for he could not see where the next sword-stroke might come from; only that it would come and, because he could not defend himself, that it would kill him.
But his sore and weeping eyes instead saw a small explosion from the undergrowth to his left. His opponent saw it too—but too late; and Marjorie’s short staff caught the man under the chin. Good stroke! thought Will, amazed. Who’s been teaching her? The man crashed into a tree, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he crumpled. Marjorie stood over him, shivering.
“Thank you,” said Will.
“I—you are welcome,” said Marjorie. “Have I—have I killed him?”
“No,” said Will.
“I took the staff from the hoard, you know,” said Marjorie. “Eva has shown me—a little—how to use one. I think—I think we must all be here now. Bartlemey and I were the last.” She looked around a little wildly. “All here somewhere. There are”—she took a deep breath—“several bodies in the chapel clearing.”
“But none of them ours,” said Will encouragingly.
Marjorie almost smiled. “No, none of them ours.” She glanced down at the man at her feet and then jerked her eyes up again. “Has anyone sent for Sir Richard?”
Will looked surprised. “Sir Richard? No, I should think not.”
“Well, someone should,” said Marjorie. “You great idiots, by how many do Guy’s men outnumber us? I am no good for this work. I thought—as I had already thought no one else would have—that I would go for him.” She gave a little grunt that was not quite a chuckle. “I even know the way from here.”
Will looked at her with respect. “Godspeed to you, lady.”
Marjorie recognised both the surprise and the respect, and said with a sharpness that surprised Will even more, “Try to keep a few of us alive till I get back, will you?”
“I will try,” said Will; and he waited several minutes, till she was well away, before he ran his sword through the heart of the man she had prevented from killing him.
Tuck jogged uncomfortably in Little John’s long-legged wake. He heard Sweetheart bay, and a lump rose in his throat in the unexpected happiness of knowing that one of his dogs yet lived, and in fear for what might happen at any moment; but he shook his head as he jogged on. There were too many of his two-legged friends to worry about. Why had he come so far anyway? His place was at his chapel. He was no good at fighting—and the noise, ever nearer, told him that it was not yet time for his little satchel and his skills.
One of Guy’s men fell at their feet with a dagger in his belly. Simon leaped after to retrieve it; the man screamed. Tuck closed his eyes and tried to remember how to pray. It seemed a very long time since he had said his morning prayers.
“Guy—Robin,” panted Simon.
“He is no demon, you fools,” snarled Guy’s voice, very near at hand. “He merely was not the winner of the archery contest at Nottingham Fair yesterday.”
But Guy’s remaining men had had their nerve badly shaken by the events of the last half hour, and while they still outnumbered the outlaws—barely—they were inclined to stay huddled behind their leader, with their heads pulled down and their shoulders hunched up. Guy roared at them: “What do you fear? You have swords, have you not? And have the arrows stopped flying? Are their quivers not empty?”
This was true. Despite the skill of Robin’s folk, they had wasted or lost many arrows; and, perhaps, considering the terrain and the comparative numbers of the opposing force, it was not shaming that the outlaws had spent their arrows for a tally of only eighteen of Guy’s men as result. But the tide of battle, with Guy to lash his men into rallying, was likely yet to swing to his side. Their numbers were almost even, but Guy’s men now had the reach; for the outlaws carried only daggers. The mercenaries’ swords were not so long as to be hopeless in a wood; nor were the woods here the tangle that the heart of Sherwood, and Greentree, was. For here were the ways that the foresters walked.
But rout was not yet. The outlaws had no swords; but they did carry staves. Robin stood lightly before Guy of Gisbourne, his bow and empty quiver discarded, his staff at half-ready, to flick up against any blow Guy might offer. Robin’s longbows had caused the folk who knew of them to think only of the archery of the outlaws; and Little John’s pre-eminence with the staff had cast a little in shadow Robin’s own expertise—that, and Robin’s stubborn insistence on his not being particularly good at any sort of fighting, which, as such insistence will, became its own prophecy. But Robin was smiling. His good staff would turn any sword cut but the most unlucky; and he was already choosing the place on Guy’s face where brow and nose met, where he planned to drive the hardened end of his staff.
There was a scrambling at the rear of Guy’s uneasy men, and then they spread out in some semblance of their former tight order, and the fighting became general. Dear God, prayed Friar Tuck. Dear God … What can I ask for? A bolt of lightning?
Robin gave back as Guy came on. The sword whistled through the air with a whine as deadly as any arrow, but Robin struck it aside. He gave back again, hoping to make Guy unwarily eager for a killing blow. He struck the sword aside a second time; thrice—but at the third meeting Robin caught the blade at slightly the wrong angle and a chip sprang away, its underside the pallor of raw wood. Guy grinned, but Robin caught the next stroke on one of the iron bands round his staff, and the force behind the blow was so great that the sword reeled back with its edge notched.
Robin almost finished it then. He dived forward, presenting the end of his staff as Guy recoiled to regain his grip; but one of Guy’s men flung himself sideways, away from Jocelin, whom Robin caught a glimpse of at the edge of his sight; or against his master’s enemy; Robin never knew. But the man fell on him, and bore the two of them to the ground. Guy made a sound of pure anger, and almost slashed his own man where he lay—and Jocelin, who had no staff, had time to leap clear. Robin shook himself free and took a descending sweep from Guy’s sword with his staff over his head. He took a chance and rapped Guy’s knees, but the blow was wrong; Guy staggered but did not fall, and Robin, recovering, had to duck and jump aside, off balance as he was, and if a convenient branch had not spoiled Guy’s aim, that would have been the end of it. The other man did not move so quickly, and as Guy re-engaged Robin, Jocelin darted in behind, his dagger in his hand.
Tuck had drawn back behind a tree. There was no safe place as the men milled awkwardly around, striking and ducking away as they could; while the outlaws better knew the terrain, the swords were very fearsome even when their wielders could not get a clear swing. Tuck tried to see if any of Robin’s folk were down; and he remembered that Will had said that there were at least two wounds that needed to be attended to. But if the wounded men were secreted anywhere, he did not know where—and he did not know where Will was to ask. He saw Robin fall, and held his breath—and saw him roll upright again; and closed his eyes when Jocelin’s dagger descended.
He clung to the tree he stood behind, for his knees shook under him. He could feel the stiff cold length of his own dagger against the skin of his leg, but he would do no good if he drew it now. He could not even remember strapping it on—after he had cut the throat of the man uncovering the earthwork’s entrance. He rested his forehead against the bark of his tree and thought of nothing; but something struck his ribs and he staggered aside, biting back a cry. “Look out, man!” said Will, who had struck him with the hilt of his sword. “Do you think you are invisible? Do you trust that Guy’s men will not strike you where you stand because you are a friar?” And then he moved quickly around another tree after the silvery twinkle of another sword gleaming in the green shadows, and Tuck lost him but for the noise of his passage.
Again he felt like a bit of flotsam in a storm, for the sound of battle went on all around him and while his heart beat fast in fear, he could see nothing to run from—or toward. He thought, this is just as it was half an hour ago—has it been half an hour, a day, a year?—perhaps this hour never happened, or has happened many times; perhaps we must go on killing Guy’s men, and they us, for all eternity.… He thought of Marian, and wondered what she might be guessing in her darkness; he wondered about Cecily, clinging to her tree; and he wondered about his dogs.
The noise around him was moving a little away—moving back toward the clearing by the earthwork and the chapel. He hesitantly let go of his tree, for he had paid little attention to Will after all, and had only crept a little way round the tree he was clutching; and moved to follow. There was a thrashing, low down to one side, and he looked fearfully there and saw one of Guy’s men, his breath bubbling pink; Tuck turned away, for there was nothing he could do for him. Even had it been one of Robin’s folk he could have done nothing; he knew what he saw in the man’s face, and in the spittle upon his lips.
He almost tripped over Simon. He lay motionless, and Tuck knelt despairingly beside him, guessing what he would find. Simon’s eyes opened slowly, and his breath whistled between his teeth. “My—staff,” he said, and moved one red arm. Tuck thought he wanted to hold it, and groped a little way among the leaves to find it, but when he laid it against Simon’s fingers, the fingers curled away. “No,” he said. “You—take it.” He smiled a ghostly smile. “If you hit someone on the back of the head with it, he will fall down, even if he carries a sword.” His voice was so faint Tuck had to lean close to hear him; when his eyes closed again, Tuck saw that the whole of his tunic was stained red, and the leaves upon which he lay.
Tuck picked up the staff and went on.
Sibyl was barely a sword’s-length away when Eva fell, but she came too late; she killed the man who had killed her friend, and then she wept, heedless of who might find her still living, with Eva in her arms. But Fate is a curious thing, and no one did find her, though she heard the crashing of other fighting near the place where she knelt, and wiped her friend’s damp face with her own dirty sleeve. It took Eva some little time to die, and she wandered in her mind. Sibyl said, “Hush; you will be stronger soon, and I have told Robin to send others for our spell of duty, that you might rest and I might take care of you.”
“Thank you,” murmured Eva; “It is good to have you here.” And Sibyl stayed till the end.
Fate also set Alan-a-dale and Much to fighting side by side. Alan knew the rudiments of sword-play, for he had been a lord’s son before he was a bard; and when the last of Robin’s outlaws had arrived at the chapel and found the bodies of three dead mercenaries and nothing else, Alan had paused long enough to pick up one of the swords, and thrust it through his belt. Harald and Gilbert ran on ahead, notching their arrows, toward the confused sounds of battle, while Alan was making sure that the blade was not going to cut into his own side by accident, and biting his lip. He knew nothing of battle but the many verses of many ballads, all composed after it was over; he had learnt to shoot, because Robin insisted, but he had rarely shot anything for the cooking fire; the bow over his shoulder felt almost as strange as the sword. He had never struck a man in anger in his life; the one time he had come close, Robin had stopped him, and he knew that Robin had been right, and that he would have died.… He thought of Marjorie, back at Greentree with Bartlemey, whose wound was still sore, and who could not walk far or quickly; and he hoped that he was going to see her again soon.
He ran too, holding the blade a little to one side; and ran almost into Much, who had just felled a mercenary with his staff. “I’m glad to see you,” panted Much, and there was no sarcasm in his voice; but there was no time for conversation, for two more of Guy’s men were upon them, and Much took a sword through his thigh. He fell with a gasp, but his dagger was in his hand, and then in the other man’s belly, before that other man could make the final stroke. Alan had pulled his stolen sword free just in time to slice into the second man’s shoulder. The man dropped his sword and clutched his shoulder, screaming, falling to his knees, and Alan stared, appalled. “God,” said Much, hauling himself upright on one leg and against a tree. He snatched the sword out of Alan’s nerveless hand and finished the wounded man.
Alan, taking a deep, shuddering breath, turned to Much, who was going white, and started to say, “Your leg—here, we must tie it up for you at once”—when a third mercenary came upon them. He struck first at Alan, who could not reach an arrow in time; Alan ducked and, without thinking, threw up an arm to protect his face—and felt the blade sink into the palm of his hand. Much, faint and wavering on his one good leg, and with no idea what to do with a sword, took a wild swipe at the man, and managed to catch him under the arm, where his chain-shirt did not protect him; and fell down upon his enemy as he drove the point home.
Tuck, holding Simon’s staff awkwardly, went on, back toward the chapel, following the sounds of cries and blows. In a little while he heard two muffled cries: one that sounded like victory and one that sounded like loss. He looked around a shoulder of rock and saw one of Guy’s men raising his sword for the final stroke as Rafe dropped the two bits of his broken staff. But the man let his delivery linger a little too long, to enjoy his success; and Tuck brought the smooth knob end of Simon’s staff down upon the tender place where the neck’s tendons cradle the skull; and he saw the bright blood flower around the staff like petals around a stem, in the moment before the man fell. He and Rafe stared at one another a moment, and Rafe croaked, “Thank you.”
“Here—you’ll have more use for this,” said Tuck, and thrust the sticky knob at Rafe.
“You’re doing all right,” Rafe said, with a bleak smile that reminded Tuck of Simon’s, but he took it anyway. He shifted it from hand to hand for a moment for the feel, and said, not looking at Tuck, “Whose was it?”
“Simon’s,” said Tuck. Rafe paused a moment longer, and then turned and left Tuck standing.
Tuck averted his eyes from the body of the man he had killed, and reluctantly he followed the way Rafe had gone.
He arrived at the edge of the chapel clearing in time to see the few outlaws that were left on their feet straggling out of the trees to a halt, trying to look as if they had any strength left. Guy and Robin were still fighting, but their steps dragged, and their blows had the stiff, mechanical pace of the practise field. Tuck looked around; four outlaws he saw, but neither Will nor Little John; and he saw none of Guy’s men.
And at that moment Robin was a little too clumsy in turning away one of Guy’s lagging blows, or perhaps the sword found a weak place at last—the place, perhaps, where it had gouged out a chip earlier—for Robin’s staff burst apart with a noise like the end of the world.
Robin made to duck and tumble away, but Guy was too quick for him: victory gave him a last burst of strength, and he seemed to tower over the slight young man he had been hired to kill. The sword drew a line of blood along Robin’s jaw till it came neatly to its resting place in the hollow of his throat. Robin straightened up slowly.
“If any one of you takes a step closer,” said Guy clearly, “your master dies instantly.”
Silence fell. The blood drummed in Tuck’s ears; but he was sure that no birds sang anywhere in these trees, and he would not have been surprised if he had found that the stream had stopped running. None of Robin’s folk breathed.
“Kneel,” said Guy. Robin did not move, and Guy pressed the point of his sword a little harder into Robin’s throat. Tuck could see him open his mouth a little to try to get his breath. “Kneel,” said Guy, but Robin only rocked back on his heels.
And then, like the bolt of lightning Tuck had not been able to pray for, a dagger came flashing through the leaves—flashing down, where Guy could not see it, standing as he stood with his back to one particular tree at the edge of the clearing.
It was not a very good throw. Cecily had had a grisly and painful and terrifying time in the last few seconds, trying to get herself into any position that would give her any shot at all; and then her whole body throbbed so miserably that it was hard to put even her good shoulder into the throw. But throw she did.
And it did what it needed to do. The blade struck Guy’s upper arm, below the mail, as he stood with that arm stretched out, and his sword-point pressed into Robin’s throat. The force of the blow knocked the point aside, gouging Robin’s flesh a little, and Guy was more tired than he knew, for he dropped his sword, which he should not have done for so little a thing as a minor flesh wound. He looked, amazed, at the dagger, as it fell to his feet, red with his blood—it was the first blood he had shed this day.
He had only a moment for such thoughts, for Robin’s hand slapped up his dagger from its sheath; and Guy of Gisbourne fell with Robin’s dagger buried in the place Robin had felt Guy’s sword. That little wound leaked blood down Robin’s chest to mix with the other dirt and cuts, for it was not the first blood he had lost; and he stood a moment, head bowed and legs braced, staring at his fallen enemy; and he realised his hands were trembling.