Laura Strickland - The Guardians of Sherwood Trilogy

by Champion of Sherwood

  From the time Linnet could remember, she had been taught that Sherwood was less a place than a living entity, a deeply magical being. Spirits dwelt there, ancient and powerful, including that of Linnet’s grandfather, Robin Hood. Her mother had met and spoken with him. She had even carried his spirit with her at times.

  When Linnet and Lark were very young, they lived with their parents deep in the forest, raised on a curious blend of their father’s deep love, their mother’s practical wisdom, and the presence of Sherwood itself. Linnet recalled strange things from that time, companions who came and went and played with her, including a diminutive woman called Lil and a great bear of a man with a bristly beard who wished her to call him Grandpa.

  Wren Little was a shaman and a priestess, purveyor of magic. She could speak to Linnet’s father without moving her lips, mind to mind. She taught her small daughters reverence for the forest and the healing arts. But by the time they reached the age of six years, she began to entertain the possibility that isolation made no fit life for them.

  So they had left the forest hermitage for the village of Oakham. For a time they had all lived there together, and Linnet’s parents had striven to fit the life. But the forest and their roles as guardians called them too strongly. At last, after much discussion with the third member of the triad that guarded Sherwood—Martin Scarlet—and his wife, Sally, it had been decided the twin girls would reside with the Scarlets and Wren and Sparrow would once more retire to their hermitage.

  At first Linnet and Lark had seen their parents often, either journeying into the forest or receiving them at Oakham. But as the years passed, those visits grew less frequent. The girls had a life in Oakham; their parents did not. Simple, Linnet thought, eyeing the well-loved faces, and so terribly complex.

  They sat all together now in the home Linnet thought of as her own, sharing a meal prepared by her hands. Outside, night fell softly. A party bearing an ultimatum for the Sheriff of Nottingham had departed for the castle some time ago. The prisoner still remained pegged out like an animal—a sacrificial goat, perhaps—at the center of the village.

  Linnet strove mightily not to think of him hurting, thirsty, hungry—but she failed.

  “So,” said Lark, who invariably became voluble when in the presence of her parents, “why have you come? We did not expect you here for Midsummer. Indeed, I thought we should have to venture into the forest to see you.”

  Wren and Sparrow exchanged glances. Linnet wondered if they were communicating between their minds. Sometimes, when younger, she could catch the echo of their thoughts, but never the words themselves.

  “I was given warning,” Wren said, “that something was afoot.”

  Lark’s golden eyes, so like her mother’s, glowed. “Was it a vision?” For time out of mind, Lark had been fascinated with the flashes of knowing and images that came to her mother. She often lamented that she could not, herself, see visions. “How am I to be a guardian of Sherwood someday,” she sometimes complained, “if I have not the Sight?”

  Now Wren shook her head. “A message was delivered to me by your grandfather.”

  “Which grandfather?” Lark asked eagerly. Both were dead.

  Wren smiled. When she did, her normally grave face glowed and became beautiful. “My father, Robin.”

  “Ah.” Lark propped her chin on her hand and gazed at her parents; she thrived on talk of magic and mystery. It sometimes made Linnet wonder if Lark were not the one, of the three of them, destined to live at Sherwood’s heart, channeling its magic into strength with which to fight.

  Which would leave Linnet to wed Falcon. Her thoughts darted again to the man tied out in the center of the village, suffering. Barely understood longing pierced her heart.

  Wren turned her head toward Linnet sharply, almost as if she could sense Linnet’s thoughts. “There is danger at hand,” Wren said, “wide and deep.”

  “Danger?” Linnet repeated. “To whom?”

  Again her parents exchanged glances. Her father, usually so calm and serene, looked uneasy. His eyes—nearly identical to Linnet’s—caressed her.

  But it was her mother who spoke. “Death, and peril to the circle.”

  Lark’s lips parted. She looked the way she had long ago when Pa told her tales of the old ones who dwelt in the forest.

  “But,” Lark protested, “that cannot be. The triad stands strong; the magic of Sherwood is safer than ever. We have years yet before we three need worry about taking your places.”

  “So we thought.” Wren shook her head. “Yet I cannot doubt the message, nor the messenger.”

  Real fear stirred in Linnet’s heart. She could not bear the thought of losing any of them—not her father with his deep gentleness that was somehow also deep strength, not her mother with her quick-changing fierceness, and not Martin with his undefeatable will for justice. They meant the world to her and, like the power of Sherwood which she breathed, had made her the woman she was.

  To be sure, Linnet had heard tales of the last two triads. The first had been comprised of Robin Hood himself, his wife, Marian—Wren’s parents—and the Green Man, spirit of Sherwood. When Robin fell, Marian succumbed to her grief and withdrew to a nunnery. Three others had stepped up to hold the triad and keep Sherwood strong: the healer, Lil, who had raised Wren after Marian abandoned her, Geofrey, then headman of Oakham, and the holy hermit, Alric, who had taken the Green Man’s part.

  Aye, Linnet knew the tale, how Geofrey, Lil, and Alric had died one by one and been replaced by Martin Scarlet, Wren, and Sparrow Little who, bonded together, had gone to ground at Sherwood’s heart.

  Someday Linnet, Lark, and Falcon would, in turn, take their places. Two of them would bond even as Linnet’s parents and grandparents, as Lil and Geofrey had. The other would in essence wed with the forest itself. Such was the tradition, though Wren had altered it some. Linnet knew her fate, but...

  “Not yet,” she said aloud. “It is much too soon.”

  “It is always too soon.” Wren spoke with her customary alacrity. “But the truth remains—two of us cannot stand without the third. We can try.” Her hand reached for that of her husband and clutched it tight. “We have seen it attempted in the past. We will fail. The power lies in three. It will take only one of us to fall.”

  The blood drained from Linnet’s face. “Which—?”

  “Which of us?” Wren, unsparing, took up the question Linnet could not bring herself to voice. “We have not been given that knowledge.”

  Lark, stricken silent by dismay, looked at her sister.

  And Linnet, spurred by sudden terror, said, “But you should not have come. You should have stayed safe in Sherwood, where nothing can touch you.”

  “That is just it, Lin,” her father said in his deep voice, like the rumble of thunder through the trees. “When something touches one of us, it touches all, wherever we be. We cannot hide from this. And your mother thought it important to bring warning.”

  Lark cursed and then asked, “Have you told Martin?”

  “Of course.” Wren spoke evenly, though Linnet could now feel her agitation, like a ripple on water.

  “Yet,” Linnet said softly, “he has gone off with the party to deliver the ransom demand in Nottingham.” Martin and Falcon both had gone, with a party of four other men.

  “I could not dissuade him,” Wren said. “No one ever dissuaded Martin Scarlet from anything.”

  “Does Fal know?” Lark asked.

  Wren shook her head. “Martin refused to tell him.” Her expression grew troubled. “I cannot but think that a mistake. We never kept anything from you.”

  Fiercely, Lark told her parents, “You should go at once back into Sherwood.”

  “So,” Wren lifted a brow, “you would sacrifice Fal’s father, would you?”

  Lark’s eyes burned fiercely. “Martin is like a second father to us. I would defend any of you with my life.” She said it so simply Linnet could not doubt its truth. “But the two of you, Ma
and Pa, guard Sherwood’s heart.”

  “So do we all,” said Sparrow gravely. “And the three of you must stand ready to take your places after us, however this thing comes to pass.” He fixed his daughters with his dark, compelling stare. “For whatever happens, Sherwood’s magic cannot be allowed to fail.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Here, quickly! Here, to me!”

  The cry, sharp as the blade of a honed knife, broke the stillness of early morning. Even before Linnet opened her eyes, her heart leaped into her throat and began to pound like a crazed blacksmith.

  Around her the other occupants of the cottage stirred. She had given her parents the pallets by the fire, a place of honor, and they slept twined together, nearly one. Lark, eternally on guard, had stationed herself near the door. Linnet saw her lift her head and then scramble up and reach for her bow in one movement.

  Linnet followed; her parents rose as she passed them. In the doorway, which Lark had left open, she paused.

  The air outside was still gray; dawn had barely come, but she had no need to see who had called out to identify him. Falcon, it was—and now she heard other voices raised, and a scream of anguish that closed her throat.

  Someone roared like an animal in pain.

  She hurried in Lark’s wake, stumbling over the hem of her sleeping gown. She saw figures at the center of the village not far from where the prisoner was tied, and still more gathering.

  “Martin,” said her father, just behind her, and her mother pushed past. Sparrow took Linnet’s arm and they went forward also. By the time they reached the place, Wren was already on her knees at the side of a figure stretched hard on the ground. Falcon knelt across from her.

  Another roar came from the fallen man: Martin Scarlet, indeed. He lived, then. Linnet’s breath came again. It was not so bad as it might be.

  She paused at her mother’s shoulder. Fal looked up into her eyes and raised both hands, red with blood. “Save him. You must save him.”

  Linnet did not move. Her mother possessed far greater ability as a healer than she. Linnet had skill, true, but Wren’s hands held magic.

  “What is it?” Lark voiced the question in the mind of everyone gathered. “What has happened to him?”

  “We met with a party of soldiers on our way to Nottingham,” Falcon said bitterly. “They gave us fight, and it went badly. We spent all night dodging them in the forest and never got the ransom demand to the castle.”

  Martin roared again. Linnet had heard a hart make that kind of bellow in its death throes. The agony of it froze her where she stood.

  “It is grave.” Already Wren’s hands were upon him, and stained red. “Be still, Martin. You do yourself no good.”

  He groaned and then quieted.

  Wren’s head snapped round to Linnet. “Run get supplies—all you can carry.”

  “What—?”

  “It is a sword thrust. I think it touched his heart.”

  Dismay drove all the breath from Linnet again.

  Lark barked at her, “Go!”

  She ran. Not until she reached her own hearthside did she realize her father had come with her.

  “Tell me what,” he said, “and I will carry.”

  “Naught can mend a strike to the heart.”

  “Do not say that. Your mother can do remarkable things. I have seen her bring men back to life.”

  “But the warning—”

  “It brought her here, where she is needed.”

  “You think that is all?” Desperate, Linnet reached for any reassurance. Martin Scarlet had been there all her life. And, the next triad was not ready to take this one’s place. She was not ready.

  She thrust items into her father’s hands and caught up more herself. When they returned outside, the dawn had strengthened enough that she could see...

  Martin lay sprawled on the ground like a man already slain, but she knew his heart still beat. For one thing, his eyes were wide open, too wide. For another, the blood pumped out of him, making a black pool of his chest.

  Linnet went to her knees beside her mother with a sob.

  “Steady, lass,” Wren said. She—or perhaps Fal—had already cut Martin’s tunic away, exposing the terrible wound. Wren’s hands, like Fal’s, were now red past the wrists.

  Folk stood silent and still as the trees. Only a child whimpered somewhere in the distance.

  “Bandaging, a thick pad of it,” Wren requested. Linnet placed it in her mother’s slimy hand. Her stomach heaved.

  “More.”

  They all watched as Wren packed the wound in an attempt to stanch the bleeding. The blood welled up around the cloth, persistent as the life still in Martin Scarlet’s eyes.

  Beneath her breath, Wren muttered a prayer, or more likely an invocation.

  Linnet felt the power come.

  It rose up out of the soil at her mother’s bidding, materialized from the air of the dawning, streamed down from the trees, and poured through Wren the way water pours through a funnel, into her hands and into Martin.

  He groaned again. He gritted his teeth as against pain of great intensity. Light flickered around Wren’s hands, pinpricks of shed gold. Martin’s body arched and his head strained back. Wren continued to speak under her breath, low and steady.

  On his father’s other side Falcon still knelt, anguish in his eyes. His hands covered his father’s and gripped tight.

  Wren cast a look at Sparrow. “Help me. I cannot hold him.”

  Sparrow placed his hands on her shoulders. The gold fire streaming from her fingers grew stronger and then, a moment later, streamed green.

  The color of fresh grass, the color of leaves at the height of summer, of the Green Man’s holy eyes...

  Linnet felt the backlash of that power in the pit of her stomach. She trembled and thought that, for an instant, the whole world paused.

  Or perhaps that was Sherwood.

  Wren gasped. Her head drooped abruptly, like that of a woman who has heard an answer.

  To Fal she said, “I am sorry, Falcon, lad, I cannot hold him.”

  Fal’s face crumpled like that of a child.

  Wren laid both her red-stained hands on Martin’s forehead and gazed into his eyes. “You know I love you.”

  “Wren—” He gasped.

  “Go to your Sally now. She waits for you. We shall see you anon.”

  “No!” The word came not from Martin, but his son. Falcon’s face was now devoid of color, and his eyes burned dark. All the compassion inside Linnet reached out to him.

  But it was Lark who provided comfort. She wrapped both her arms about his shoulders from behind and held on.

  “Son,” Martin gasped, “do your part well.”

  They proved his last words. His body eased as his spirit left it, and the green fire lessened under Wren’s hands, then faded away.

  For one long moment, trembling silence held. Then someone wailed. A child cried in response. A woman keened. Those gathered round the man who had led them a score of years mourned him fully, as a mother mourns a dearly loved son.

  Wren raised both bloodstained hands and buried her face in them. Grief tore through Linnet, another backlash of what her parents and Falcon felt.

  “I failed him,” Wren mourned.

  “No, I failed him,” Falcon cried. “I was there when the fight came upon us. I should have defended him.”

  “No one ever defended Martin Scarlet,” Sparrow said, in grief. “He fought always for himself.” He drew a breath and asked Fal intently, “Will they be coming, lad?”

  “Who?”

  “The soldiers who engaged you. Will they follow here?”

  Falcon lifted his shattered face. Linnet could feel him struggle to think. “Aye. Perhaps. We lost them for a time in the forest, but they will come searching.”

  “You cannot stay here. If you are found in this place, the village will pay.” He glanced toward the tethered prisoner. “He cannot be found here, either.”

  Fa
lcon leaped to his feet. The folk gathered round parted for him as he whirled and flew at the prisoner in a fury. “This is your fault, you and your accursed kind.” His first blow took Gareth de Vavasour in the head; the second knocked him sideways to the ground and was followed by a boot to the ribs. A number of village men converged upon Fal. Sparrow reached him first.

  “Nay, lad,” he said, and wrapped Falcon in his arms. “Do not.”

  Falcon twisted in Sparrow’s grip and stared into Gareth de Vavasour’s face. “You will pay,” he spat. “I promise! You and all your kind will pay.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Get up.”

  The words, spoken by the big man in the sheepskin cloak, roused Gareth from his day-long stupor. He looked up into the dark eyes of the speaker and wondered whether he could obey.

  He hurt all over and his head swam. No one had been near him since whatever happened earlier had happened and the wild-haired young man called Falcon flew at him. From all the shouting, wailing, and cries of mourning, Gareth suspected there had been a death, but he had been unable to see much with so many backs in the way. After the Saxon knocked him down, he thought someone had been borne away. He had not so much as glimpsed the healer, Linnet—daughter, so he recalled, of this man now standing over him.

  They had the same dark eyes, steady and sane. This did not look an angry man like the other, Falcon’s sire. Gareth’s mind struggled with it; could it be Falcon’s sire, Scarface, who had died?

  “Up with you,” the man said again. “I have cut your tether.”

  Gareth scrambled up, unable to suppress a grimace of agony. “What has happened?” he asked. Clearly, if Scarface was dead, his son blamed Gareth. Was he now to be slain in retaliation?

  But Linnet’s father merely said, “You cannot stay here. Come with me.”

  To Gareth’s humiliation, he staggered, almost too weak to walk. He could not remember the last time food had passed his lips. The day had been a warm one, and he had been afforded no water. His tongue felt swollen, and his mouth full of grit.