Laura Strickland - The Guardians of Sherwood Trilogy

by Champion of Sherwood

  He comes!

  He is here.

  The champion of Sherwood.

  Linnet’s heart leaped painfully. She sat up, her senses alive and quivering.

  Not far away, Lark and Falcon lay sleeping, tangled together like two hound pups. Lark’s head rested on Falcon’s chest and his arms encircled her the way a tree’s roots hold the deep soil of Sherwood.

  Beloved.

  Linnet’s head turned sharply. She saw nothing save the flicker of moonlight, yet her heart opened, the pain loosening for the first time. She knew she heard his voice in her mind. If he came only in spirit, that was better than not at all.

  She got to her feet and stood quivering. She strained to hear him again.

  “Linnet? Are you unwell?”

  Her sudden movement must have roused Falcon from his sleep. He put Lark from him with great care, slid from her grasp, and got to his feet, awash with moonlight. She felt his concern wrap around her even before he reached her side.

  “I awoke,” she said helplessly. “I heard his voice.”

  Falcon hesitated and then touched her shoulder. “I have thought I heard my father’s voice many times since his death. They are all here with us, Lin. Is that not what makes Sherwood worth our blood and our allegiance?”

  Linnet sought his eyes in the magical, silver light. “They are all here? Even an accursed Norman?”

  An odd look came to Falcon’s face. Linnet knew that for Fal’s father, Martin Scarlet, life had been black or white, right or wrong. But try as he might, this man before her was no Martin Scarlet. He was capable of seeing as many shades of color as Sherwood had to offer.

  Slowly he shook his head. “I cannot say.”

  “You faced him, Fal, with a sword in your hands. You fought him. Could you not feel what he was? He chose that combat, arranged for it, in order to free you from that dungeon. He sacrificed himself so the three of us could go on together. His love did that, for me.”

  “I faced him, aye, Lin, and I fought him. But I know not what I felt.” Moonlight flickered in Falcon’s eyes. “From the first I met the man he wanted naught more than to face me with a sword in his hands. How do I know he did not just arrange for that chance?”

  “Because I tell you so, and you should believe me, if you are to believe anyone. You are a fine man with a sword, Fal, even better with a bow. But do you truly suppose you could best a trained knight?”

  “He had already faced many before me, so Lark says, and he underestimated my skill.” Falcon drew a breath. “Does it matter now, Lin, with him dead? The three of us must go on, as was always meant.”

  “Aye, it matters.” Tears filled Linnet’s eyes and she pressed her hands to her belly. “I carry his child, Fal, a child conceived here in Sherwood. You know what that means.”

  “I do,” Falcon acknowledged. Children begotten in this place were special, even sacred. Had not the three of them been conceived here also?

  He reached out and captured her hands in his warm ones. “I will welcome the child, Lin, if that is what you ask. No blame for its father. The three of us will raise it together in the knowledge it will need.” Deliberately, he added, “It shall never hear an evil word from my lips about its sire.”

  “Thank you. You are a good man, Falcon Scarlet.”

  “I am what my father would call soft.” He tossed his wild head in a rueful gesture. “But as we take up the burden of the triad, we must find our own way with it. So long as we keep the magic safe, I do not believe those who came before us can dictate how.”

  “And Lark, do you think she will offer this same kindness?”

  He cast another rueful glance at the place where Lark lay still sleeping. “Who can measure Lark’s heart? She is all passion and mercy tangled up together, is she not? To think I never knew her, even though I knew her all my life.” His voice grew hoarse with emotion. “When I lay in Nottingham, helpless and hurting, she came to me. She upheld and saved me. I need to be with her, Lin. It does not mean I love you any less.”

  “I know.” Just as Linnet’s eternal love for Gareth did not mean she loved Falcon less.

  His hands squeezed hers still more tightly. “She is inside me now, in a way I cannot even begin to explain. I need her fierceness and her strength—they complete me.”

  That, too, Linnet understood: the need answered, and the heart finding its one home. “She has loved you long.”

  “And I too blind to see the great gift she offered. But, Lin, the three of us together must find a balance. We need to take up Robin’s fight and advance our people’s lot. It is no longer enough merely to survive and steal sustenance from our overlords, or win a few running battles. We must win a legitimate place. I thought much on this, also, when I lay in Nottingham. We must win rights, rather than just battles. Things in Sherwood, and in England, need to change.”

  Linnet felt it then, the force gathering above and around them as if all the spirits of Sherwood drew near to listen and hear Falcon’s words. The trees tossed in an invisible wind, magic trailed and skittered across Linnet’s skin and, where she lay, Lark stirred and came half awake.

  Everything responded to the call Falcon made, and Linnet’s awareness heightened almost unbearably.

  “We need,” Falcon declared forcefully, “a means to claim our God-given rights, not as Saxon peasants but as free Englishmen.”

  And a voice spoke out of the stirred and enlivened darkness. “Perhaps you will allow me to help with that.”

  Chapter Forty

  “My love!”

  Linnet spoke the words with both her lips and her mind. Gareth heard, and knew them the way an infant knows its mother’s voice. Gladness arose to enfold him, wild in his breast. He had come to her through the forest, blind in all his senses but one. As never before, he had followed his heart.

  She and Falcon stood with their hands linked, a dim glow of radiance around them. Both had turned startled faces to him when he spoke, and their eyes widened like those of two children beholding a miracle.

  After a single glance, Gareth dismissed Falcon from his awareness and focused on Linnet. “I come,” he told her softly, “even as I promised, as Sherwood assures. I return to you.”

  She gasped, drew her fingers from Falcon’s and extended them to him. The radiance he saw around her brightened and changed color, streaming pure gold. Gareth knew if he could reach that radiance, if it flowed into him, he could exist for eternity.

  He could not feel his feet against the ground. An unknown force seemed to buoy and uphold him. If he touched her hands, would he be able to feel her? Reality seemed to have bypassed him, all sense of time flown. For he had floated rather than walked through the trees, straining always for her. Aye, and if he touched her now, could she anchor him?

  He reached out for her and saw that a dim glow also surrounded his hands: silver it was, the pure color of moonlight.

  “Linnet—” Falcon said hoarsely.

  She ignored him. All gladness, now, she leaped forward and grasped Gareth’s hands the way a drowning woman might grasp for land.

  And oh, he could feel her! His fingers met hers in a rush of golden-silver sparks that fused fast in an elemental bond. Everything within him rejoiced and cried aloud, a wealth of gladness. Sherwood demanded much, aye, but it gave so very much...

  Bliss enfolded him, and a sense of total belonging. He drew Linnet hard against him, into his arms, and his spirit exulted riotously.

  “You are alive, alive, alive—” She poured the words into his mind even as she spoke them aloud, and her hands explored the reality of the assertion. Her fingers caressed his naked chest, slid across the skin of his shoulders. One of them came to rest against the slash at the side of his neck. “How can it be?” She wept now, tears of pure joy. “I believed you dead; I thought you lay slain.”

  “There is no such thing as death,” he told her with absolute certainty. “Surely you know that. And”—above her head his eyes met Falcon’s—“my opponent pulle
d his stroke. He delivered no death blow.”

  Falcon stood quietly and said nothing.

  “And so,” Gareth concluded, “I come to offer my services, the King’s man no longer but a champion of Sherwood.”

  Falcon hesitated and then inclined his head, a liege lord accepting a vow of fealty. Gareth looked into Linnet’s dark eyes and saw there every hope for his future.

  “You, here? How can it be?”

  Gareth and Linnet spun together, as one. Lark stood on her feet, trembling, one of her many weapons—a knife—clutched in her hand.

  “Love brought me,” Gareth told her. “Go ahead, Small Fury—attack me and do as you will. I shall not be parted from her again.”

  “You are supposed to be dead.” Lark’s nostrils quivered, and she threw a look at Falcon. “I thought you finished it.”

  “It is finished, Lark—or, rather, I suspect it is just beginning anew. She loves him, even as I love you.”

  “I understand that.” Lark’s fingers clutched the hilt of her knife still harder. “And I regretted her sorrow at the loss of him, when I believed him dead. But does that mean we are supposed to accept his presence amongst us, even at this most holy place?”

  Gareth answered her before Falcon could. “It is Sherwood brought me here, Sherwood that led me.”

  She glanced around at the trees and the stirred, living darkness. She must be able to feel the magic gathered, that shed from Falcon and Linnet, and even from Gareth’s own skin. Now that he looked, he could see a faint haze of it surrounding her, as well, in a blush of crimson.

  “That may be so,” Lark said with a hard toss of her head. “But to suppose you belong here at the very root of all we are—”

  “He belongs.” Linnet tightened her grip upon Gareth. “If I do, then so does he. One does not refuse a miracle, Lark, and it is a miracle that he lives.”

  “So it is,” Lark acknowledged, “and that he has found us—if he actually lives at all and we do not behold a spirit.”

  And in those words, Gareth realized, lay the essence of Lark Little. All battle and fight, she nevertheless possessed such an affinity for the magic of this place she did not doubt she might be standing and speaking with a spirit. And aye, before his hands had met Linnet’s, had he, himself, not doubted?

  Gravely, he told Lark, “I promised Linnet I would come to her, alive or dead, and so I have done. But I am living. Let me prove it to you.” He reached out for her, but she shrank back, staring.

  “I see magic around you. But I also saw the blow that felled you. How can you be other than spirit?”

  “Let him prove it.” Falcon gave Gareth a long look. “As he gave me a chance to fight for my life in Nottingham, now I will give him a chance to win his place at Linnet’s side. Are you up for it, Champion?”

  Gareth met Falcon’s stare steadily. “Swords?” he asked.

  Falcon shook his head. “Ah, no. We have done that. This time the combat will be on my terms.”

  ****

  The longbow felt awkward in Gareth’s hands. He had trained long and hard with the sword and for the lists, but rarely with the bow. Under the best of conditions, he might be a passable shot.

  This could never be described as the best of conditions. Too many things beat at him—his own exhaustion, the debilitation from his wound, the awareness coming from those who surrounded him and from the forest itself. Magic moved everywhere, a potent distraction.

  But Linnet filled him. Even when he stepped away from her, he could feel her love holding him, vital and unflagging.

  “You have only to best me,” Falcon gave him a smile that contained a hint of mischief.

  “And do so fairly,” Lark chimed in immediately. She had taken the place beside Falcon and now virtually jumped up and down with the intensity of her emotions. She darted a look at her man. “You are not to let him win.”

  “To be sure, not,” Falcon agreed. “If he is to own his place, he must do so fairly.”

  “I always deal fairly,” Gareth told Lark. “It is something you will learn of me.”

  Her eyes narrowed at him. “Other than my father, Falcon is the best archer Sherwood has to offer.”

  Gareth believed it. Falcon had the grace of an archer born, and Gareth remembered the skill with which he and Sparrow had brought down game when he was with them in the forest.

  “He deserves his chance,” Falcon declared, “even as he offered me. But no favors. Look you there, Norman—do you see that tall ash tree some hundred paces off?”

  Gareth peered where bidden. He could not be sure what he saw in the uncertain light that flitted through the trees.

  “And see the beech beyond that, almost in a straight line? And the broad oak past it?”

  Helplessly, Gareth shook his head.

  “Those are your targets. Three”—Falcon grinned—“to match the magic of Sherwood.”

  “I need something at which to aim,” Gareth protested. “Some marker.”

  “Only listen to the dog whine.” Lark tossed her head. “Let me.” She drew something from her pack and then hared off. Gareth watched in amazement as she swarmed up the first of the trees and fastened a square of fabric in place.

  Linnet took Gareth’s hand in both of hers. “You do not need to do this. My love does not rest on their approval.”

  “I know that full well, Linnet. But my place at your side does,” he told her softly, “and that I am no longer willing to yield.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  “There, Norman.” Lark came racing back from setting the target, not a bit breathless. “Is that good enough for you?”

  He looked her in the eye. “My name is Gareth. I hope when this is done you will pay me the honor of using it.” He knew to the roots of his soul just how important these two were to the woman he loved. The three of them stood linked by the magic of this place that he had only begun to understand.

  “Use my bow,” Falcon bade, and caught it up. “Lark’s will be too light for you, and we are almost of a height. We will take it in turns—does that sound fair?”

  “Aye, but I pray you shoot first.” Maybe if he followed the flight of Falcon’s arrow with his eyes, he might have some hope of finding the target. He did not doubt Falcon would hit the first, and probably all three of them.

  Falcon snagged an arrow from the quiver that lay on the ground and posed himself. For an instant he stood so, breathing deep, and Gareth saw the magic gather round him, pure green-blue. Falcon inhaled it like air and then made his shot.

  The arrow flew with exquisite grace, arced through the near darkness, and embedded itself in the tall, ghostly form of a tree.

  “Ah.” The sound came from Lark’s throat, a sigh of pure satisfaction.

  Falcon turned and handed Gareth the bow. Gareth glanced into Linnet’s face, aglow with faith in him, and wished desperately he had the skill needed to accomplish this—for her sake, if not his own.

  All is given, for love.

  The words sounded in his head clear as a bell, a voice he knew. Stand, son. As you give yourself now to Sherwood, so shall Sherwood give itself to you.

  A flare of magic surrounded him. He heard Linnet’s breath catch, saw Lark stare, and saw Falcon smile.

  A spirit not his own lifted the bow and notched an arrow. Eyes not quite his sighted, hands not his corrected the aim, the precise and barely definable amount needed for the distance.

  The shot loosed and flew true in a shower of pure white sparks. The arrow entered the target so near Falcon’s the two were indistinguishable from where Gareth stood. Once more Lark went racing off to see, and returned as swiftly with a curious expression in her eyes.

  “Both in the very center of the target.”

  Falcon slanted Gareth a look. “The next, then, if you wish to continue?”

  Gareth nodded, no longer sure what voice might issue from his lips, should he dare to speak.

  “I have secured the next target,” Lark dared him. “Let us see, Sir C
hampion.”

  Not yet his name, but no epithet either. Gareth gave Falcon the bow.

  So acute had Gareth’s senses now become, he could feel Linnet holding her breath, could feel the air flowing through the trees in a veil of power. And he could feel the spirit waiting inside him, strong and patient.

  Virtue survives death, it whispered with a hint of humor. And virtue recognizes its own, even in the guise of a Norman.

  Gareth replied, But I cannot see the target.

  No worry, son. I can!

  Falcon shot in another shower of aquamarine sparks. Lark, whose eyes must be much keener than Gareth’s, crowed in delight.

  Aye, he is good, said Robin inside Gareth’s head, even as Falcon returned the bow. But I am better.

  He raised the bow and shot. This time Gareth felt the full power of it, the rush of strength and certainty. His heart bounded.

  Lark, apparently tireless, ran off again. She came back scowling. “Both arrows beside each other once again. I have placed the last target but—it lies in the deepest darkness. Fal, I do not know that even you can find it.”

  “That,” Falcon told her, “is what makes it a challenge.” Almost respectfully now, he took the bow from Gareth’s hands and notched his final arrow. “This one flies by faith.”

  Falcon raised the bow, notched the arrow, and sighted long. He shot and his arrow disappeared, even its trail of magic swallowed by the darkness.

  Lark went after it more slowly this time. When she returned, she shook her head sorrowfully.

  “I am sorry, Fal—your arrow missed. But he will not be able to make the shot, either.”

  Falcon handed Gareth the bow. “He will.”

  “How can you say so?”

  “Look at him, Lark. Do you not see who that is?”

  Giving her no chance to respond, the spirit within Gareth raised the bow. High above, in the darkness, the trees stirred. Magic came flowing, streaming down in great rafts like moonlight. It surrounded the arrow and enfolded Gareth’s hands when they released the shot.