Men of Sherwood (A Rogue's Tale Book 1)

by Sarah Luddington

  “Where?” I asked after I sipped the bitter liquid.

  “Their camp,” Robin said, making it clear they were still the enemy.

  “I need to see to your leg,” Tuck said.

  “No, I’ll do it,” Robin insisted, pushing Tuck’s hands away.

  I struggled to sit up, my head spinning like a mad leaf on the wind. “Robin, I’m fine, really.”

  “Forgive me, Will, but you aren’t. I carried you in here and you are not fine.” He stuffed a saddle behind me so I could sit up and I tried to blink away the disorientation. I noticed my thigh and struggled to swallow, the amount of blood staining my leg and still oozing made the dizziness return. Robin took hold of my hand forcing me to look at him. “You’ve lost too much blood. The head wound isn’t bad but the bump is serious enough to make me want to keep you wake now you are back with us, the wound in your leg needs to be stitched and I need to clean out whatever foul goo these people think of as medicine.”

  “It smelled alright when she applied it,” I said.

  “It was animal lard and I have no idea if it was rendered correctly. Forgive me, Will, but I’ll need to scrape it out, wash the wound with clean water, boiled well in a clean copper pot, and then we’ll make a good poultice for you.”

  “Robin, these people aren’t going to have a clean copper pot for you to use,” I said. The rushing in my ears didn’t feel right at all and my words seemed to be sliding off the edge of the world.

  “Tuck, we have to hurry.” Robin rose. “Come and help me find what we need.”

  Tuck looked at me with a slight helplessness to him. The smile I managed to drag up for my brother didn’t reassure him. I patted his hand. “Do as Robin says, Tuck. He has knowledge that surpasses even yours in the healing arts. Please trust him but try to stop him getting himself killed when he begins ordering people about.”

  Tuck huffed. “That’s the bit that worries me,” he muttered, rising to join Robin. “He seems to forget he isn’t lord of the manor any longer…” The muttered cursing continued as they left the small space we occupied.

  I now had the time to take in our new surroundings.

  Two sections of large living tree trunks, beech by my reckoning, formed two corners of the small space, low walls of wattle and daub, leaves and moss filling small gaps, joined the trees and made the four walls, with thick hazel forming the other corners. It was a neat design and a small doorway let in light, a hide cover keeping out the worst of the weather. The floor had a thick layer of leaves over the mud and I sat on another hide rug. The roof consisted of woven hazel staves and more leaves, this time of bracken. They’d need to find something new soon because it was drying and turning brittle. The space could only be used for sleeping, no more than three, and there was no room for a fire pit or for belongings. A temporary structure but reasonably secure until the first real storm hit the forest.

  I lay back against the saddle and tried to follow Robin’s advice about staying awake. It wasn’t that hard, I could hear him arguing with someone over the herbs and their quality. It sounded like the big man and Tuck were trying to calm his possessive nature, so far, only something I’d managed to do. I opted to let him have at them, they’d put a hole in me, so right now I didn’t feel very sympathetic.

  “I don’t give a damn about how good you think that shit is you put in the wound, I want it gone!” he bellowed. “And this tansy is worthless, how bloody old is it?”

  “You don’t get to tell me my tansy is worthless. I know what I’m doing. He’d be worse off for your foreign ways,” said a woman. I guessed it was the young woman who’d stuffed the goo in my leg. I didn’t know who to fear for most, Robin or the young hedge witch.

  “If you listened you might just learn something,” Robin snarled.

  “Pfftt, you don’t know nothing.” I heard more cursing, her accent so thick I barely understood. “My knowledge is old, handed down, mother to daughter.”

  “You saying you’re a witch?” Tuck asked.

  Oh, shit.

  I struggled to turn in the small hut and almost dragged myself out into the open. The cold wind slapped me hard and my head turned to water, my bones to jelly. “Tuck,” I called. “Please, come help me.” He needed distracting before he said something stupid and we all died.

  Robin’s anger they could tolerate, but if Tuck started to invoke the wrath of God because he believed witches were in league with the Devil we were all going to suffer. The girl especially and her eyes had been kind when she’d applied the salve.

  Tuck’s eyes widened when they saw me, and Robin almost fell over in his rush to reach my side. Strong arms lifted me clean off the ground. “What are you playing at?” Robin asked, burying his nose in my hair.

  “Nothing, I’m just trying to stop you two starting a war,” I muttered, stroking his face as if to calm a restive horse.

  “Foolish boy,” he murmured.

  “Put him down,” Tuck hissed. “Do you want everyone to know what you are? I don’t need my brother –”

  “No one will ever hurt your brother again,” Robin snapped.

  Oh good, another argument.

  “Can you two just stow it for a moment? Robin, do we have everything you want to use to make a poultice?”

  “Barely.”

  “Well, that’s good enough for me,” I said. “Tuck, can you agree to help him without arguing again?”

  Tuck glared at me, the girl forgotten for the moment. “Yes.”

  “Right, can we please end this bickering and get on with stitching me up before I either die of boredom or blood loss?” I asked. Almost everyone in the extensive woodland camp stared at me being held in Robin’s arms like a child. I had to say, I felt like one in that moment.

  Robin returned me to the small shelter and almost bent double to lay me on the ground as if I was made of the finest glass. He stroked back my hair, one of his favourite and possessive gestures and I smiled up at him. “I’m alright, really.”

  “You don’t look it,” he said, frowning.

  “Well, maybe you could fix me up and I’ll be alright soon,” I said, capturing his hand and kissing his fingers.

  He huffed and puffed, like an old bear but smiled and a faint stain of colour touched his cheeks above the rough beard he currently sported. Through some alchemy of love I’d slipped between the cracks of his scarred heart and I was turning waste ground into a wild meadow we could explore together. I didn’t understand how this beast of a man could care for someone like me, but he did and I welcomed every gesture of ownership.

  “Come on then,” Tuck said. “We need to get him clean to start with.”

  “Go and find some boiling water at least,” Robin said.

  Tuck nodded and left without argument. The two of them were often at loggerheads but when they worked together they were a force to be reckoned with, I just wished they’d do it a bit more often.

  Robin unlaced my hose from my breech girdle and loosened it around my braies. Next he unlaced my short boots, the soft untanned leather sliding off my naked feet. “I wish I was doing this in a room with a soft bed.”

  “Me too, a soft bed, a fire in the hearth, warm blankets and some fine wine. Some meat and cheeses with soft fruits I can stain your skin with as I lick them off,” I said.

  Robin’s eyes, the bluest flame I’d ever seen, rose to mine. The heat from him suddenly scorched my skin as he poured his need to devour me into his study of my face. “I would like that,” he whispered. “I want to lick wine off you, pour honey on you and lap it off while you writhe under my mouth.” His hand slid up my inner thigh from where it rested and he palmed my balls. I drew in a sharp breath, my cock rising to attention. A small stain of fluid appeared on my braies and I whimpered in need. Robin rolled my balls in his hand watching my desire in my face. I licked my lips and his mouth dropped open, his breathing hot and heavy.

  “I want you,” I murmured.

  His gaze slid down to my cock and I felt the blu
e fire wrap around it, tug hard and demand more. Robin’s large hand moved from my balls to the last of the lacing for my undergarments and he began undoing them with deliberate care. I couldn’t breathe for the need to feel his hand on me, engulfing and controlling my desire.

  Right up until Tuck yelled at someone.

  Robin’s hand stopped moving and he looked at me with a savage desperation. I chuckled. “Looks like we’re going to have to be good.”

  “I’m going to kill him, Will. I swear to God, I’m going to kill him.”

  “How do you think I feel, my balls are aching already,” I muttered, trying to force my erection to vanish.

  “Once I stitch you up the last thing you’ll be thinking about is sex,” Robin said, forever helpful.

  Tuck decided to put in an appearance and the two men washed their hands, then set about cleaning my leg. I wish I could say it felt pleasant having hot water poured into the wound so they could flush out whatever the young woman had stuck in there but it really did turn out to be one of the worst experiences of my life.

  Robin gave me the leather belt to bite on as he probed the hole with his thick fingers and I tried hard to think about how amazing those thick fingers would be somewhere more intimate but it didn’t distract me enough. The sweat started to pool under my back and every muscle twitched in protest and I fought my natural need to escape the pain. Once they’d decided the wound was clean Tuck prepared the poultice of honey, lavender, the much maligned tansy, and thick moss my brother carried for just such emergencies. Both men worked well and mostly in silence, the light fading fast outside.

  By the time Robin said, “All done.” I wept silent tears in an effort not to scream. “Time to rest, Will.” He began stroking my hair again and Tuck washed my face, neck and hands. He handed the cloth to Robin and without words or censure, he left our small hut. Robin lifted me with great care into a sitting position, his shoulder taking my weight as he worked my cote and undershirt off. When he managed to free me of my clothing, he washed my back before laying me down, then slowly dragged the rough woollen cloth over my chest.

  The care with which he tended to me wrapped around my heart like honeysuckle and clung just as tight. I wanted to surrender, the words pushing on my tongue to be heard but I dared not speak. I told him with small gasps and my steady gaze, of the secret depths of that heart. His ministrations circled over my belly and I felt my pulse beating and fluttering in my guts as it followed his slow and deliberate movements. My braies tented, but the shift from pain to pleasure and the blood loss left me wondering if I could sustain the erection long enough to reach a happy completion.

  Robin’s hand drifted lower, making small circles on the flesh between my protruding hipbones. With desire controlling all of my thoughts I pushed up into his hand, unable to prevent the silent plea for more. Robin chuckled.

  “You’re a greedy lover, Will,” he teased.

  I moaned. “It’s your fault,” I said on a gasp as his wrist knocked my cockhead.

  The hand and wash cloth circled lower still, now under the linen of my braies. He swept it through the black hair, the combined roughness a delicious tension over the sensitised nerves. He pushed the cloth through the fold created by my thigh meeting my groin and circled farther back, nudging my buttock. I groaned.

  “You need to be quiet.” His instruction came from the near darkness we now occupied. I couldn’t see his face but the heat from his gaze remained.

  “How can I be quiet?” I almost sobbed I needed him to touch me so badly. My hand grabbed his knee and squeezed before straying higher.

  “No, Will. No touching. No kissing. No noise.” His orders were controlling and touched something deep inside me.

  “Robin…”

  “No, Will. I want to feel you surrender to my control. I want you to trust me.” Over the last few weeks we’d been together as lovers he’d done this more often. Forcing me to submit without violence or bonds of any kind, but total surrender to his dominance.

  “Why?” I asked, while his hand continued to tease over my quivering skin.

  “I need you to trust me, Will. I want your complete trust and I have to earn it. This is how I earn it. Giving you pleasure, only pleasure, while maintaining control over you.” He bent down, his mass another layer of darkness in the small space. I felt his breath on my cheek and I turned, managing to brush my lips against his before he pulled away. “Naughty,” he whispered in my ear. Fingers found my left nipple and pinched hard, and I yelped. “Make more noise like that and I’ll pinch harder,” he warned in a throaty growl.

  The next pinch was hard but I remained silent except for my breath hitching.

  “Good, boy,” he whispered, licking my neck and gripping my cock with the wash cloth. I struggled to stifle a mewling noise of pleasure. “When you surrender to my every command like this I know it is almost time to make you truly mine. I will not take you, I will not drive into your body, until I know I have earned your trust, Will Scarlett. There will be no pain, no panic, no fear. We will join together in trust or not at all.”

  I wanted to tell him the trust he wanted already existed within me, along with love and that it was time for us to join together, but I also heard the fear inside my heart. The quake and quail of terror learned young and branded onto my soul.

  Robin nosed my neck, nipped my ear, and threw the rough cloth away, my sensitised cock unable to take the pressure, his rough hand far more welcome. “Come for me, Will.”

  I heard people moving around, heard their laughter as they prepared for the evening meal in the darkness of their forest refuge. I heard my brother offering to hear confession for those who wished to have His forgiveness. I heard the forest, in the distance, the call of the wild things, of owls, foxes and wolves that still clung to the land. I heard the music of the trees, their low song a drift of sound, the oldest of the Earth’s living bounty. The music flowed, arched, tumbled into the rivers and streams of Sherwood. It raced and babbled, becoming something new, a sweet chime in the mesmerising dance to which all living things connected whether they knew it or not. I flew on the soft wings of the owl. Cavorted in the dark with the bat. Raced, with nose to the ground, alongside the fox. Played with the badger cubs and snuffled with the boar.

  I raced through the world that surrounded my body and that of my lover as he drove me higher, farther, stretched me thin, almost to breaking point, where I would shatter forever to become a part of all I touched in that moment. But, when I reached the screaming heights, when I thought I could touch the music of the heavens, he clutched me to his strong, earthbound body and stopped me shattering. He held me, cradled me, reformed me in his arms, turned the music from outside to inside and I learned how to breathe again, how to think as a man, not a fox, not a badger, not a bat. I was a man and I lay in the arms of another and even though we shared no words, his love held me safe and another piece of my fractured soul mended.

  18

  ROBIN LAY HALF OVER me, keeping the cold at bay. “Are you back?” he murmured.

  I clung to his woollen cote and nodded.

  “Speak to me, Will,” he whispered.

  “I’m back.” The words felt strange, they should have been a bat’s squeak or an owl’s screech.

  Robin chuckled, a deep seismic rumble. “Well, some of you is back at least.”

  I wondered at his words. Did he know how his love of me sent me flying through the world? Did he know it made me reach for the stars?

  “Snuggle down, Will. I’m going to find us something to eat.” Robin slid away from me but replaced his missing heat with one of our blankets. He turned my face and kissed me, a deep searching kiss, perhaps a quest to feel where I had gone.

  He left the small haven we’d been cocooned in and returned to the world. I did snuggle and the next awareness I had was of his long broad body pressed to my back where he curled around me, his hand holding my beating heart safe in his palm. I returned to sleep.

  When I woke the fol
lowing morning my leg throbbed and I ached from falling off the horse. Robin snored quietly behind me and I needed to piss. The romance of the previous night had left a sticky trail on my guts and I grimaced. Time to be practical.

  I wriggled out of the small hut, sliding into my braies, grabbing my belt and boots in the process, so I was at least half dressed to meet the world. Dawn still lay some way off, each day taking longer and longer to appear as if the sun had exhausted herself during the long summer days and now needed to rest, but the sky had started to lighten and the moon sat large just above the trees.

  The pain in my leg forced me to favour my strong side but I found the simple latrines and made certain to cover my waste with soil once done. By now the chill of the morning had made my skin cold and the dawn mists were growing through the trees. I stood and listened to the silence of the camp, enjoying the pre-dawn quiet, the moment of stillness between worlds.

  A figure separated from the shadows, a huge man and a soft grumble reached me. “It’s early for a minstrel to be wandering about.”

  I stilled. The big man, the red man, the bear of a man, came towards me. He carried his staff and I shivered, my imagination filling my mind with the thousand ways a weapon like that could break my bones.

  “I could say the same of you,” I said, taking a step back when he reached attacking distance. He stopped moving forwards and his whiskered face seemed to smile, though it was hard to tell under all the hair.

  He nodded towards the hut I’d shared with Robin. “He still asleep?”

  “Only until he hears me scream,” I said.

  The man laughed. “I’m not going to make you scream, Will Scarlett.” He cocked his head to the side for a moment. “Well, I’ll only make you scream if I sing to you.”

  Humour. Fine, I could play nice. “In that case it might be wise to leave the singing to me.”

  He nodded. “A wise choice indeed. Come, you must be cold and I’m rousing the fire to break our fast for the night. Give me a hand.”

  I returned to the hut briefly to collect my undershirt, cote and gardcorp, but left my hose, throwing them on to prevent the bitter November morning from chilling my bones, and limped to join the big man at the fire.