The relative calm might have lasted if not for a throng of civilians that ran back into the courtyard, a mob of roughly twenty men who were probably fleeing one gang of soldiers only to find themselves back where the fighting began. They had weapons, mostly improvised, and paused for only a second. Then they switched into offense, screaming unknowable curses and rushing for the quite visible crown on Robin’s head.
William was closest. A handful of soldiers stood nearby but only one had a weapon, which was probably why they hadn’t joined in the first swell of violence. William thought about the dozen swords that Robin swore would make no difference.
He rose to meet the oncoming line.
Breathe.
One man led, three behind him, the others behind that. William was safe at his flanks, but could not let the crowd get past him to Robin. Only thing to do was focus and react.
It’s the easiest thing in the world, killing a man.
All William saw was a collection of vital points, and all he had to do was get the tip of his blade to each of them. Prick a man just about anywhere and he bleeds, slice in the right place and his life, everything he was, simply slips away. Some men study swordplay, practice their footwork, train for tournaments and sport fencing. They learn to deflect and riposte, counter and target. Not these men. They didn’t know how to fight. They wouldn’t thrust or lunge at the right places. They were easy.
So while the soldier next to William met his first opponent with full energy, hacking at the man’s club, William had already side-stepped and jabbed, jabbed, sliced into the ribs of two men and across the belly of a third. He didn’t pause to see if they fell, he moved on, quick movements, just the tip, into just the right place, just enough to puncture and pull that hot spray of blood that held their every moment until now. The edge of his blade shattered the teeth of a man who thought screaming would help, then his hilt collapsed the temple of another who would have been saved by a helmet. William stepped shy of a wide swing coming from a man older than his father, and pricked him just hard enough at the top of the sternum to notice his neck go limp. None of these people would fight until their dying breaths. Each would drop, shocked, hold their wound, and curl up in the hopes of surviving, then surrender to the darkness.
But of course, it didn’t last long.
Bodies slammed into him, and they all tumbled down. Two against twenty were never winnable odds. But their weapons were useless in a dogpile, no room to pull back or swing, and William’s mail protected him. The hairy man on top of him struggled to leverage his sword, while William dug his thumb into the man’s neck, just under the jaw, hard enough to break the skin. The man rolled away into the legs of another who tumbled over and cracked his jaw against the stony ground. Then suddenly the swell of men was retreating, they turned from rage to panic. William stayed down, let them run, and watched a few catch crossbow bolts in their backs as they fled. Rolling up, he laughed out loud to see Robin, being carried away safely on the stretcher, aiming a crossbow at the fleeing men. Each successful shot brought forth a rally of cheers from his soldiers, and they held his stretcher dangerously high in salutation, breaking into an old victory song and carrying him up and out of the plaza and out of sight.
William climbed to his feet and took in the carnage. It was a fucking mess. Scrambling toward him was the boy Craton, though he wasn’t as young as William remembered.
“Call a return.”
“What?” Craton seemed to forget what the words meant.
“Return. Now.”
Craton nodded, unslung a horn, and blew the notes, loud, that were meant to bring the soldiers back to the line. Not a retreat, a return. Retreat may have caused them to panic, but return meant it was safe.
Slowly the soldiers arrived again in the plaza, trickling in from the alleyways of its perimeter. Their white tabards streaked with blood, swords still out and shining of gore. Every one of them grinning so wide their heads could have split the fuck off.
They walked through the center of the yard, stepping over bodies with no care. A chorus of stories rose, each one of the returning men telling a tale to a soldier who had stayed behind, most of them embellished to godlike prowess. William kept silent, looked down at the collection of dead civilians around them.
He counted which ones were his.
He counted again, in case he had missed one.
Nine lives, nine souls, still dripped off his sword. These weren’t soldiers. He doubled the number, that was how many parents would grieve. He tripled it, the number of siblings. And children. They suffered for no reason, caught up in a fight they didn’t understand, unnecessary casualties of someone else’s war.
It was the way William’s brothers had died.
Some still wriggled their last throes, and he couldn’t watch. He turned to catch up with Robin’s stretcher.
NINE
ROBIN OF LOCKSLEY
ACRE
CONSEQUENCES WERE STUPID THINGS.
Just as easily as the tip of a sword stripping a man of his life, the arrow through Robin’s leg changed everything. It had sliced right behind the bone, through the calf muscle. Robin braced himself from the quivering pain as the doctor dressed the wound, a thick tarry salve pressed into the open skin on both sides just before the muslin wrappings went on. It would be a hell of a recovery, and it wouldn’t take place here.
“Richard’s sending me home,” Robin told his friend.
“Thank God, I can’t stand you.” William cocked an eyebrow at the leg. “You can’t travel like that.”
“Not yet. In a few weeks. But I’ll be limping for months, so I won’t be much use as a body double like this.” He’d be likely to change the king’s moniker from Lionheart to Clubfoot.
“I think he may be done with the double-work,” William said gravely.
Robin had guessed the same thing. He had only allowed Robin to wear the crown at the surrender because the king had to be present, and Richard was too sick. “Because of the messenger?”
“Because of the messenger,” William confirmed. Ever since Saladin had shown his hand, Richard had grown increasingly suspicious of those around him. Perhaps that was exactly what Saladin wanted. “But the army will be here for a month, at least. Why not recover here?”
“Oh, I don’t get to ‘recover’ at all. He wants me to investigate what happened to the missing supplies,” Robin answered, echoing what Richard had told him.
“They’re probably at the bottom of the sea with the last ones,” William humphed.
“Probably. But Richard wants to be certain. Worried that someone at home may be trying to sabotage him.” It didn’t feel right. At first, the order had struck Robin as sharply as the arrow. Returning to England early felt like he was being dismissed, that he was abandoning his duties while there was still tremendous work and danger in front of them. But Richard would not be persuaded. Fear told Robin he was being used, sent off to die the way Richard had tried to send Ferrers. Or perhaps this was just another of Richard’s spontaneous decisions that held little backing. Either way, there was no arguing against the king once his mind was made.
Robin was bedridden for nearly a week before he could put weight on his leg at all. Much of that time was spent in the same room as Richard, recuperating from whatever sickness had taken him. Arnaldia was its name according to the doctor, a haunted man who spoke his own opinion too freely. Arnaldia—God’s curse. After Richard’s recovery, Robin had made a point to ask the doctor, “If the sickness was God’s curse, does this mean Richard is stronger than God?”
“Every man,” the doctor had sighed deeply, “is stronger than God.”
During that week of recovery, Robin and Richard spoke of many things—including the oddity of commanding a war without being able to see it. The opulence of the tower room was at odds with the poverty outside. It was hard to marry the stories of death with the luxury of their makeshift hospital. Every so often, the barons said, another pocket of insurgents would strike somewhere in the city. R
ichard listened to the casualties with little reaction. “They say a king is responsible for everyone in his kingdom. The care for every man, every woman, every child, should weigh on the king as if they were his kin. Have you heard this?”
“I have,” Robin coughed.
“They say it. Who is they? Which great king said this? Which of the mighty Roman philosophers passed along this truth down through the centuries to me? How many generations of men have carried it on their tongues in the hope of it someday reaching my ears, that I would be made a better man and king for knowing it? And do you suppose it changed at all in that time? Perhaps women were not included until a mother added it. Has it changed languages, do you suppose? I would think it must have. Some languages have a hundred different words for family, and half of them are insults. And I am to treat all my people as my own family. My kin. What is kin? Which word was this bastardized from?”
“Does it matter?” Robin answered.
The king’s eyes sharpened with alarming precision. “I’ll tell you why it matters, because it was never spoken by a king. It came from men who would never rule, and never could. To be truly responsible for every last person, it would drive a man mad. It’s not a possible thing. How many men died here today? In the last month? Would I send my own family to their death in such a way? Of course not.”
“You’d send John,” Robin smiled, knowing the caustic relationship the king had with his youngest brother.
“Yes!” Richard laughed sharply, fighting through a cough to stand. “I would send John. But only because it would do him some good.”
Robin considered Richard’s words, and the difference between a king’s family and anyone else’s. It was no wonder he took offense to the phrase. Richard and his brothers—Geoffrey, Henry, and John—had all loved their dear father so much they tried to kill him. Their father eventually died without any help at all from his children, and Geoffrey and Henry had also been killed off in one creative manner or another. In a royal family, kin meant threat. If Richard were to treat every one of his vassals as family, then … well, then that would actually explain quite a bit of his behavior.
But frankly, Robin agreed with Richard. He certainly didn’t want to be held responsible for his own family, either. It was senseless to be bound to another person, to be obliged by their mistakes, for the mere coincidence of being related. True bonds, such as the one he shared with William, were earned.
A week after being able to walk again, Robin was well enough to travel. He had desperately hoped Richard would change his mind, but been disappointed as usual. Robin would leave the war as a cripple chasing a diplomatic waste of time. There was, however, one bright bit of news.
“I’m coming with you,” William de Wendenal said with a grin, pulling his pack onto his shoulders.
“Bullshit,” was all Robin could say. “Why? You’re not injured.”
“King’s orders.”
“Why send us both?” Robin couldn’t understand it. “There are any of a dozen lords he’d happily be rid of, but we’re valuable to him.”
“Those lords would be happy to go back.” William shrugged. “Perhaps he’s sending us because he knows we don’t want to go. Or perhaps to keep each other honest.”
“Well damn,” Robin said. “That means we’re going to have to actually investigate the missing supplies.”
William snorted. “Did you have something else in mind?”
“Ride a mile north, set up camp for a month, then ride back and say we couldn’t find anything?”
“That sounds helpful.”
“We’re helpful here,” Robin said, more seriously. “But something tells me you’re going to insist that we actually see this one through.”
“You’re right as always.” William slapped his back. “Richard needs someone he can trust to fix this. Whether I care to admit it or not, you and I are the smartest people here. Which means we can make short work of it, and get back here before they march for Jerusalem.”
Having his closest friend as a companion would make the journey far better, but Robin still felt uneasy at the mission. It would likely be months before they returned to Richard’s side.
But those were the consequences.
The damned consequences.
Robin had few goodbyes to give, but made certain to visit the Earl of Derby, William de Ferrers. He had not seen the man at all during his recovery, and wanted to visit him before departing—if only to comment on how lucky he had actually been to not officiate the surrender. But outside the home Ferrers had claimed, Robin was greeted by a group of French men-at-arms who had made themselves quite comfortable. They had been living there, they explained, ever since the ambush. It seemed smaller riots had broken out throughout the city that day, acts of opportunity really. The Frenchmen further explained that Ferrers, whose name they hadn’t even known, had been stabbed to death by a young beggar boy, whom they had subsequently cut down and thrown over the breakwall.
Robin closed his eyes and, in the interest of living with himself for the time being, was halfway successful in believing the boy in question wasn’t his little Stabhappy.
PART II
WITH ASH AS HIS INK
TEN
ROBIN OF LOCKSLEY
SHERWOOD FOREST, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
THURSDAY, 3RD DAY OF OCTOBER 1191
TO ROBIN’S DISMAY, IT even smelled more like home.
He’d never admit it aloud, but the Sherwood in Nottinghamshire had a comfortable feeling to it. There had been other forests during Robin’s time away—the steep prickly spears of Cyprus, or the massive columns in the Holy Land. But nothing like this. The Sherwood was a real forest. Its great oaks rose through the rolling flatlands, a gentle canopy of branches let the sunlight pour in, scattered into ever-changing shafts. Collections of white birch trees broke out in clumps, interspersed with hollies and looming hawthorns. The tall grass was easy to walk through and kind to bare skin. While greens were still visible here and there, the bright colors of autumn now made fiery tips to the sun’s fingers. The crisp crackle of fallen leaves underhoof was a welcoming noise. These were the woods Robin had played in as a boy, where he’d learned to hunt, and let girls chase him to steal kisses or more.
“Funny how easily a smell takes you back.”
“We’ll have plenty of time to smell it.”
Aside him on his own horse, William de Wendenal smiled. Their journey had been unnotable but for its length, and the number of times Robin thought he was dying. The wound in his leg refused to heal, at times bloating into oily red roses that dragged Robin into days of fever sleep. They’d sailed most of the way back on an empty cog, the Haligast, one of the many merchant vessels in Richard’s fleet that made nearly continuous trips back to England. Robin and his injury were as useless as a sack of mealy potatoes, but the Haligast’s crew was fortunately hungry for stories of war. Wendenal recounted the ambush in Acre, omitting their participation as doubles for Richard, and the sailors spat obscenities at the rebels and praise for their slaughter. Robin’s role was greatly dramatized in William’s retelling—he apparently took down a dozen men before the arrow even struck him, and the crossbow bolts he loosed from the stretcher went through one man’s neck and into another’s. The sailors punched each other as if the glory had been their own, they sang songs, and did not complain that Robin was unable to help on deck. When the winds were idle they rowed, though Robin was too weak to help there, either. He felt a waste of a man while the others worked mercilessly, but William’s help kept any scorn from coming his way.
William let his hair grow since they’d left Acre, already sporting the makings of a beard. But Robin continued to groom himself clean to best match Richard—partially out of habit, partially because he did not want to grow comfortable being away. For here he was amongst the yellow leaves of the Sherwood, his leg numb but healing, and the thought of dragging their mission out longer than necessary was no stranger to his mind. Perhaps Richard had sent William alon
g for this very reason. Easy enough to lie to oneself and turn deserter when no one would know, but admitting as much to a brother was to own one’s cowardice.
They said goodbye to the Haligast at Plymouth, then spent a few days hopping short rides from dock to dock speaking with harbor masters and sailors, investigating the shipments that had passed through in the recent weeks. Eventually their search took them all the way up to Grimsby, a city whose name matched its pleasantness. According to the caravan captain there, the main supplies from Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, and others were first amassed in Nottingham before traveling by the Sherwood Road to Grimsby. And so Nottingham became their destination, and Robin found himself in the forest of the life he’d left behind.
“If this investigation takes us further west, perhaps my family could be of help,” William offered. His father was a distinguished lord in Derbyshire, quite close to Nottingham. The Sherwood played its role in William’s past as well, and under slightly different circumstances he and Robin could have been childhood playmates. “Have you thought about dropping in on your father?”
“I’ve no need to see him,” Robin answered.
Would I could strip you of your name and the titles you have gained from its use, I would not hesitate, his father had written, in his most recent letter. No, there was nothing to be gained at Locksley Castle.
“You and Richard,” William chided. “Fathers aren’t supposed to be your friend, you know. They’re supposed to turn you into a decent person. Which, at risk of paying you a compliment, you are. Does it ever occur to you that your father might have had a hand in that?”
“I’d say I ended up who I am in spite of my father, not because of him.”
“Either way,” William tilted an odd smile toward him, “you might want to thank him for it.”
“If you’re going to judge a man by how well his children turn out…” Robin started, but did not finish the thought. William did not know about the violence that Edmond succumbed to, and the world could never be improved by that tale. “Let’s just say if that were the case, my father should be in prison.”
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