by Anna Burke
“Do you have it?” Pain tightened Yvette’s voice.
“I can hold it if you don’t make any sudden movements.”
Yvette began to laugh. The hair on the back of Marian’s neck stood up at the sound.
“Run back to your father then, girl,” Yvette said.
“Shut up.” The dog backed her up with a snarl. “I’m not going back to him. Is this the way out?”
Yvette nodded, still laughing.
“Then let’s move.” She stepped toward the brigand and waited. The dog vibrated beneath her hand. Yvette let out one more choking burst of laughter, then set off at a limping crouch with Marian and the alaunt at her heels. She paused in the shadows at the tunnel’s mouth.
“We don’t know who could be out there,” Yvette said. In the brighter light, Marian could see the blood soaking the leather of her jerkin and running down the sleeve of her tunic.
“Stay by me.”
Yvette glanced up at her in surprise. Marian didn’t blame her. Why am I helping her? Yvette had been nothing but cruel to Marian in the days she’d helped Siward hold her captive. Still, she couldn’t forget that it had been Yvette who had counseled Siward to hold off his men, warning him that Marian’s value would decrease if they despoiled her. And even if Yvette hadn’t offered her that small mercy, she couldn’t leave Yvette for the dogs. No one deserved that fate. Taking a deep breath, she crawled out into the sunlight with her hand firmly clasped around the hound’s collar. The sharp brightness of the shady woods assaulted her eyes and she shielded them with her other hand, nearly slicing her forehead with the knife.
Movement above her startled the dog. It whirled and lifted its lips to reveal wicked teeth, jerking her with it.
“Marian?”
She looked up into Willa’s eyes. Sweat and dirt streaked her friend’s face, but that red hair was unmistakable. Alanna emerged from a bank of ferns behind her with knives in hand.
“Hold,” Marian said quickly to the overeager dog.
“God’s nails.” Willa took in the alaunt with wide eyes. Marian didn’t blame her. Blood slicked its white fur and mingled with the dark detritus of the caves. It looked like a creature out of a nightmare, and she clung to its neck, not sure of her ability to prevent it from lunging if it chose to snap.
“Are you all right?” Alanna asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
Blood did indeed stain her shift. “It’s not mine,” she said. “It’s hers.”
Yvette straightened from her pained crouch. Her shoulder sat strangely in its socket, and the brigand’s face had turned the pale unhealthy color of the mushrooms growing at their feet.
“You.” Willa slid from the fallen trunk and bared her sword. “Get away from—”
“We don’t have time for this,” said Marian. “Where’s Robyn?”
“Looking for you. We’ll meet her later,” Willa said. “Alanna told me about your dowry. Does your father know?”
“Yes. I’m not going back.”
“Then we need to move. Your father’s men are all over these woods. It’s only a matter of time before the lymers pick up your scent.”
Lymer hounds. Of course. He wouldn’t have brought only alaunts. Her heart beat faster. Losing the scent hounds would be nearly impossible on foot.
“You need a horse,” Yvette said, echoing her thoughts. She pulled open the laces of her jerkin as she spoke and eased leather and cloth over her shoulder. Puncture wounds and bruising mangled the flesh, and the angle of the bone made Marian queasy. Yvette set her jaw.
“Hold my arm,” she said. Alanna stepped forward to obey. Yvette grimaced, took a breath, and twisted. The joint popped. Alanna steadied Yvette as she staggered. When she righted herself, however, her shoulder sat normally in the socket, and her pale face was rigid with determination. “As I said. You need a horse.”
Willa sheathed her sword with reluctance and looked around the woods. “Plenty of riders. Too bad they’re all in mail.”
“Doesn’t matter. We need to get away from the cave.” Shouts from the caverns punctuated Yvette’s words.
“What do you want to do with her?” Alanna asked Marian.
Marian met Yvette’s cold gaze. “You’d leave me behind if our places were switched, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
Somehow, the fact that Yvette didn’t bother lying made Marian’s decision more difficult.
“She’s not our problem,” said Willa.
“She knows Marian escaped, though,” Alanna countered.
Marian could still hear Yvette sniffing in the back of her mind, and she suspected that sound would haunt her dreams for weeks to come. She’d saved Yvette’s life, rescuing her from the dog. Any debt she owed Yvette for protecting her from Siward was paid. Yvette wouldn’t get far, though, with her wounds. The dogs would smell the blood, or one of her father’s men would ride her down.
Her father. A vicious pang shot through her chest. Had he known she was in the caves? And even if Siward had lied about her whereabouts, would he really have risked her life on a brigand’s word?
Yes. The answer came with aching clarity. She’d shamed him, disobeyed him, and stolen from him and, in so doing, decreased her own worth. Linley would not want her once he discovered what she’d done, and there was little hope of her father concealing her transgressions now.
“Can you stop the bleeding?” she asked Yvette. Betrayal thickened her voice. “We can’t afford a blood trail.”
“Give me some of your shift.”
Marian sliced a wide strip from the hem and handed it over.
“What are you doing?” Willa sked.
“We’re not leaving her.” Because I am not my father.
“She just admitted she would leave you.”
“Then that’s the difference between us. Let’s go. I need to talk to Robyn.” She held on to the dog as she stepped forward into the trees. If she wanted a new life, then she would have to take it, regardless of the cost.
“Marian,” Willa said, catching her by the arm. “Robyn will meet us later. What happened to your clothes?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Did they . . .” Willa trailed off, but the eyes that searched Marian’s face were full of worry. Marian shook her head as she realized what Willa was asking.
“No one touched me. I left the dress for the dogs. At Yvette’s suggestion.”
“Good thinking.” She dropped her hand. “We’ll head north and loop around to the priory. I saw a few riders heading that way, but most of your father’s men are in the other direction.”
“Where’s Robyn?”
“She’ll meet us there.”
Willa started walking, but Marian remained where she stood. “Willa.”
Her friend didn’t turn around.
“She went to kill my father. Didn’t she?”
Alanna shifted her feet and glanced at Willa, which confirmed Marian’s suspicions. She waited to feel something: betrayal, or maybe fear, or at least sadness. Instead she found herself at the center of a strange calm. There was no going home. She had known that when she took her dowry, but if Robyn killed her father—even if he had knowingly condemned Marian to death—neither of them would ever be free of him. Death only bred death.
“Marian—” Willa began.
“I have to stop her.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
“Shoot him,” John said over the sounds of screaming coming from the cave below.
Robyn fumbled for another arrow and strained her eyes for the sheriff’s horse. The clearing had erupted into chaos. Siward’s men fired arrows from the cave’s mouth, and some of the sheriff’s men had dismounted to pursue the dogs into the tunnel. A few fell beneath the brigands’ volley, but the sound of screaming soon won out over battle cries as the dogs savaged any outlaws who had lacked the good sense to flee immediately.
Five ragged men burst from the cave with swords raised. Th
e horsemen fell on them in a surge of pounding hooves and gleaming castle-forged steel, and Robyn, despite her search for the sheriff, watched in horror as blood spattered the mossy ground and the trunk of a nearby tree. Siward’s men should have been able to hold their position in the caves with relative ease. Darkness and topography were on their side, but the dogs had clearly broken their discipline, and now they scattered.
“I can’t find him,” she said, raising her voice over the melee.
“There.” John pointed. A contingent of riders broke away from the fight to ride north, and the sheriff rode at their head. Robyn released her arrow, but the distance and the angle of her shot worked against her. It struck his helm instead of his back, where it might have punctured the chain mail or at least bruised him, and spun harmlessly into the reeds.
“Seven hells,” she swore as she stood to get a better shot.
John tugged her away from the ledge. “He’s trying to cut them off. We need to move.”
“Will and Alanna,” said Robyn, realizing the reason for the set of his jaw. The sheriff was riding right toward them, and if he somehow knew about the other exit, they would be cornered.
John sprinted through the tangled vines and shrubs growing on top of the limestone ridge. A misstep here could send them plummeting, but they needed every second haste could buy them.
A trail so narrow Robyn thought she imagined it wound along the ridge. She saw it in glimpses, no more than patches of bare earth beneath a blur of green, and she willed her feet to find it, relying on instinct instead of her eyes to tell her where to place each fleeting footfall. Alanna and Will stood no chance against a mounted party, but that was not the only panicked thought clawing for purchase in her mind: Marian was in these caves. Marian and a pack of dogs, and the sheriff was headed for Robyn’s best chance of getting in to find her. As I should have done in the first place, damn their logic and damn my cowardice. Marian, to Robyn’s knowledge, had no weapon, and even if she did, what hope did she have against a dog bred to bring down wolf and boar, alone in the dark? What did revenge matter if Marian lay ripped to ribbons?
Ahead of her, John leapt over a chasm nearly as wide as Robyn stood tall. She sped up and flung herself over the vine-choked rift to land, her arms windmilling, on the far side. John paused just long enough to make sure she’d made the leap before continuing. Blood was running down her face and hands from brambles and whipping branches by the time he skidded to a halt along a natural chimney.
“Way down,” he said, panting.
Water dripped along the steep slant. What Robyn would have hesitated to call steps on her most generous day periodically interrupted the drop, but short of trusting to one of the flimsy vines trailing over the sheer expanse of limestone in full view of any onlookers, this was their only choice.
Robyn didn’t wait for John. She braced her hands on the slick walls and slid, heedless of her gathering speed, using the steps only to prevent herself from falling outright. A screen of leaves shielded the base of the chimney from view. Robyn rolled right through it and landed in a crouch, already nocking an arrow to her bowstring. John broke cover seconds later. Robyn was grateful for his presence, even as a part of her wished he’d had the sense to remain behind, hidden in the crevice.
Before her, mounted on his foam-flecked stallion and surrounded by his soldiers, rode the sheriff of Nottingham.
“So kind of you to join us, Robyn Hood.”
She held her arrow steady while she struggled to control her breath. The run had winded her, and she wanted nothing more than to take a moment to regain the ability to breathe. John shifted behind her, also panting, and she knew he had just raised his staff.
Not that it would do them much good.
The sheriff made no move atop his horse, but the other three riders all had crossbows trained on her and John. Her eyes darted around them. Death on horseback, come to claim her.
Cedric looked back.
Pain and recognition filled his eyes. She saw his lips form her name before he clenched them together, but she did not care. It hardly mattered now if the sheriff knew her true identity. Both she and John would die here.
She turned her gaze back to the sheriff.
“My lord,” she said, buying herself time to think with words. She could take him out before he gave the command for his men to shoot her, of that she was sure, but if there was any chance that either she or John could make it out of this alive, she had to try to find it.
“I should have known you were behind this,” said the sheriff. “Tell me, what did you promise my daughter? What poison did you put in her head?”
“Nothing that was not already there. As for promises, she makes her own choices. I did not promise her anything.” Except that I would not kill you.
“Where is she?”
“In the caves.” Robyn’s voice broke on the words. The sheriff flinched, and his horse tossed its head. Had he not known? Truly? What had he thought then? That this was all some ploy, driven by greed and vengeance? She looked into his face and tried to imagine what it must be like to be this man. As she looked, as she watched confusion turn to fear and grief, she understood. He had thought this was a bluff. How could he think otherwise, when greed and ambition ruled his world? How could he understand how other minds worked when his was so far down the path of corruption that rot bloomed in his footsteps? Almost, she pitied him.
“She loved you,” she told the man she hated with every drop of blood that passed through her heart. “She begged me once not to kill you. If I had shot you on the road, she would have been free, instead of—” She couldn’t finish. Instead of bleeding out in the darkness, alone, betrayed at the last by all who claimed to love her. Marian, I should have run to you at once. I should have taken you with me on Midsummer as you asked. I should have read the danger all around us.
“You. You took her from me.” His face purpled as his fists clenched. “You took my daughter.” She heard the unspoken words that followed: and Gwyneth.
“I took nothing. You drove them both away. This is your harvest, my lord.”
He spurred his horse forward so that the stallion’s teeth clacked in Robyn’s face and green-flecked foam sprayed her cheeks.
“Let me go,” she said. Her arrow still aimed at the sheriff. This close, it would punch through his mail and end him, and he would fall from his horse to the ground like a sack of rye flour. She savored the image but did not shoot. If there was a chance, even a slim one, that he would let her find Marian—
“Why in God’s name would I do that?”
“Let me find your daughter. There is another entrance to the caves not far from here. I will go in, and I will find her, and you can kill me when I return. I swear it.”
“Your word means nothing.”
“Every second we waste here the dogs get closer to her—if they haven’t found her already.” She fought to keep from shouting. “Do you love her at all? At least let me show you to the cave so that you can send in your men.”
“My lord.” Cedric spoke in a voice that no longer cracked. “If there is a chance he speaks the truth, should we not listen?”
Robyn saw doubt in the sheriff’s eyes.
“This—” he spat at Robyn’s feet, “this creature plans to lead us into an ambush.”
“My lord—”
“The sheriff has no bow.” The whisper in her ear distracted her from the argument taking place between the sheriff and his men. Robyn stilled. The sheriff had a sword and mail, yes, but no long-range weapon. Cedric and the other two riders all bore crossbows, but at the moment they were focused on the sheriff, not Robyn and John. She understood John’s meaning. If they struck now and disabled the crossbowmen, they stood a chance.
Robyn spun, putting the sheriff’s horse between herself, Cedric, and the second rider, and took aim at the third. Her arrow sank into his unprotected throat and his horse sidestepped as he flailed. No time for regret, she told herself as she nocked her second arrow.
John’s staff moved in a blur beside her as he blocked the downward swing of the sheriff’s blade, shielding her from harm.
She aimed at the second rider as his crossbow bolt slammed into her thigh. Her hand released the bowstring in pain, but he had not been quick enough with his shot, and her arrow had been trained on his heart. He too fell.
John stood over her as she sank to the ground and nocked a third arrow. Her thigh shrieked with agony and black spots danced around her vision. The sheriff’s wordless bellow echoed in her ears, but John did not back down before the sheriff’s charge, and the end of his staff slammed into the horse’s nose. The stallion shied and reared.
Robyn’s fingers shook as she raised her bow and pointed the shaft of her arrow toward Cedric while the sheriff fought to control his wounded mount. “Drop your bow,” she told him.
Cedric hesitated. Please, Robyn begged him. Don’t make me shoot you, too. But Cedric’s face settled into bleak determination, and she knew he would give her no choice.
“Robyn,” said John. She heard it: hoofbeats pounded on the trail. Reinforcements. John hauled her to her feet as the sheriff’s horse reared again, bugling his pain. Cedric’s crossbow remained trained on her chest. He hasn’t shot yet, she told herself.
“Give me the bow and take my staff. You can’t walk on that leg and we need to go. I’ll take care of the boy and the sheriff,” said John.
“Hold.” A rider galloped into the clearing and wheeled his horse around in a spray of soil and leaves. Robyn was forced to lean into John as she stumbled backward, and the arrow Cedric loosed in her direction thudded harmlessly into a nearby hawthorn. Robyn looked up at the mailed and helmeted figure and felt the hope she’d harbored die. She’d never get to Marian now. It was over.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The mounted scout picked his way along the path. He had removed his helmet to get a better view of the forest, and sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead. The dog whined in recognition as Marian stepped out onto the path.
