by Sara Ansted
Without waiting for direction, Evey scrambled up the rope. After two weeks in the dungeon, the work was much harder than it should have been. Isaiah climbed behind her, and soon they reached the top of the wall.
"You're clear, John," Isaiah called in a carrying whisper.
The man nodded and put the hammer back into his belt before blending into the crowd out in the yard. Isaiah pulled the rope up and lowered it to the other side of the wall. Again, he had Evey go first, and they climbed down the far side.
"Well, your plan worked," she said, half in apology.
"Thankfully."
They stood awkwardly at the foot of the wall for a few seconds. Then Evey surprised herself by leaping for Isaiah and wrapping him in a tight hug. He was stunned as well, and took another several seconds to hug her back.
"You're such an idiot," she said. "You shouldn't have come."
Isaiah squeezed her a little tighter. "You know I had to."
For a moment, Evey got that feeling again. The one where everyone else knew something that she didn't. But that wasn't important.
"I'm alive."
Isaiah laughed, and stepped back. There was definite strain in his voice.
The two of them walked toward the tree line to the east. Evey didn't know what to say. Which was a first since that day they met. This time, though, it wasn't so much an awkward silence as a tense one. They had both been through so much. It was hard to put that into words.
"So..." she started. "How did you get the rope up there anyway?"
"John. He climbed the wall. He's very good at tricky stunts like that, especially for such a big guy."
"Speaking of tricky stunts, your shooting has gotten really good." She tried to infuse the compliment with a note of pride. After all, she had taught him everything he knew about archery.
He cleared his throat loudly.
"Uh... Not really. To tell the truth, I was aiming for the chair above the king's head. I only hit the scepter by accident."
Evey choked a little. "Oh."
"I know it was risky, but I had to do something. And they would never know. As long as I hit something, and I made the shots fast enough, I could play it off." He paused for a moment. "I wasn't lying, though."
"What, you secretly are Robin Hood?"
She chuckled at the thought.
He looked up at her with serious eyes. "The best archer in the country was in their presence. You."
"Oh, please."
"You could have made those shots on purpose."
Evey tipped her head back and chuckled.
"It's true," he insisted.
"The scepter? From a hundred yards away?"
"I've seen you do better."
"I doubt it," she replied.
Once she thought about it, though, she had made some incredibly difficult shots, not unlike the scepter hit. There was still no way she would call herself the best archer, though. Well, not in the country anyway. She'd settle for her county. The Sherwood region, too, maybe.
"There are some horses up here." Isaiah indicated a curve in the path ahead that lead straight into the forest. "Let's get clear of this place."
"Gladly."
They rode through the trees for a half an hour before Isaiah turned back to the north. Once they were out of immediate danger, they slowed and let their horses set the pace.
"Are you crazy?" she suddenly burst out. "That was the royal castle! I'm amazed that we're both still alive!"
"Both of us wouldn't be if I didn't come back for you," he pointed out.
"So risking a double execution was a good idea? What good would that have done anyone? And your family works for the king! What if your father saw you?"
"I didn't see him there."
Evey rubbed her temples. "Couldn't you tell it was all a trap? It's a miracle we made it out."
"I know."
"You knew!" She threw her arms into the air. "You knew it was a trap, and you came anyway? Do you use your brain at all?"
He paused, and then asked in a truly confused voice, "Didn't you want to be rescued?"
"Not at your expense."
Isaiah went silent. She began to feel guilty for yelling at him. He had just saved her life, after all.
"Look, I'm sorry," she said. "Obviously being executed at sixteen isn't exactly how I planned to go. I wasn't ready. But if you knew it was a trap, why did you do it? I'm not worth that."
"Yes you are."
Isaiah glanced at her, then shifted his eyes to a cut on his saddle. Now it was her turn to be stunned into silence.
"Think about it. You're the one that could have made those shots. You're the one that's taken a stand against the oppression for years. You're the one that can keep it going. Compared to you, I'm a nobody. I don't matter."
She whacked him gently on the back of the head. "Don't talk like that."
He just shrugged. "It's true."
"But Robin Hood? Really? What if he–"
"Stop playing games, Marion. It's been coming on for a while. After you were captured, suddenly I knew. It's you, Marion. It's been you all along. But Robin is what they wanted, and Robin is what I had to give them if my plan was going to work."
By this time they had stopped riding and faced each other.
"It was too risky. What if they had taken your deal?"
He shrugged again. "Then I'd have been hanged."
"No!"
Evey couldn't make sense of her feelings. She was confused, relieved, and under the weight of heavy responsibility all at the same time. She got down from the horse and walked him down the path. She could think best when she was moving. Isaiah copied her.
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
"I can't decide whether to hug you or punch you in the face," she answered. "And will you take that cloak off, please. It's getting weird."
"Right. You probably should too. These colors stick out in the forest."
She nodded and opened the fancy hooks at the neck. Her green cloak was still underneath, so she pulled the red one off, and immediately pulled up the hood on the other. During the moments that her face was free, Isaiah's changed. He stared at her for a second, but then shook his head and took the cloak from her.
"What?"
"I... I don't know."
She raised her eyebrow. "Where'd you get these, anyway?"
"They were my mother's."
"Oh." For some reason, that made her feel awkward.
He replaced his own hood, then handed her a strip of black cloth with two holes in it. He tied his own mask back on.
"We'd better wear these. Especially so close to the castle."
She took the mask from him. "Thanks."
"We're almost there. John and Will should be in the clearing just ahead."
CHAPTER TWENTY
The instant they reached camp, Evey set up a hammock and slept for hours. It was late afternoon when she finally woke. Down on the ground, Isaiah sat near a fire with two men. The big one she recognized as John. The little one had to be Will. They were already silent, but when she joined them, it got even more awkward.
The four of them sat around the fire, all staring at each other with obvious suspicion. John and Will focused most of their doubtful glances on her, and she didn't really blame them. They had just risked their lives for her and probably had no idea why. Despite what Isaiah had said earlier, she was still trying to figure that out herself.
Will, especially, fixed Evey with a nasty glare. Unwilling to be the center of such unpleasant attention, she cleared her throat and spoke.
"Well, I think each of us has a piece of this story. Let's get on with it. You go first, Robin. I want to know what went through that thick head of yours when you decided to swoop in and stir up this hornet's nest."
For the first time, the two other men shifted their attention to Isaiah, who cleared his throat.
"First of all, there's something
you two men need to know. It will explain quite a lot about the escape. This girl, Marion," he said in the same tone that she had used, "is the power behind everything we do. I understand your concerns. You've heard a lot of fanciful stuff about Robin Hood and his band. Most of it is almost true, but it's about her, not me. I've just been labeled as the troublemaker because no one in their right mind would ever believe that a small, innocent looking girl could cause so much mischief. But believe me when I say that she would make a much more dangerous enemy than I ever could."
"This girl?" John asked. "What's she gonna do, make tapestries of us?"
"Give me a bow," she said through gritted teeth. "Now! A bow!"
Isaiah had already unwrapped a staff of wood, as though he knew what would happen. Good lad. At least one person trusted her. She took the bow, and shot a stinging look at both newcomers. Once she had it strung, she nocked an arrow.
"What shall it be?" she asked, keeping the arrow carefully pointed right at Will.
He flushed as red as his hair, and John answered instead.
"How about that tree there? The sycamore maple, fifty yards out."
Evey rolled her eyes. "Any peon can hit a tree at fifty yards. Which part of the tree?"
"Uh..." he stuttered.
"Never mind. Lowest branch on the left, just where it connects to the trunk." A moment later an arrow thudded right where she had said. "Or maybe that wasn't the branch you were thinking of. Second from the bottom on the right, in the darkened knothole."
Again, a moment after she called it, the arrow hit its mark perfectly. Three more times she called a target, each one more difficult than the next, and three more times she hit exactly what she meant to. Both Will and John gaped at her in awe, rather than disgust.
"What did I tell you?" Isaiah said to stave off another volley of arrows. "And that isn't the half of it. Marion, why don't you go get your arrows out of those trees."
She started to tell him where he could put the arrows once he got them himself, but he winked at her. Suddenly she understood what he had in mind. She nodded and started casually toward the first tree. Isaiah drew the men's attention for a moment, and while he did, she easily slipped away.
"Where'd she go?" John asked with a tremor in his voice.
"I won't have any dealings with ghosts," Will added.
Isaiah laughed heartily and reassured them. She used the noise to her best advantage and crossed a particularly dry, leaf strewn patch of the wood. Moving silently was much slower than walking normally, so it took her almost ten minutes before she had gathered all five arrows, but she enjoyed the scene immensely. Even from eighty yards away, she could hear the muttering of the two men as they kept trying to spot her.
After another five or six minutes, she perched easily in a tree, directly above their heads. They were still scanning the forest, unwilling to leave the matter until they were sure that she really wasn't a ghost. Isaiah kept up the pretense of talking to them about the successful rescue. She knew for sure that it was only a pretense when he glanced up and winked at her. The very last of her sour mood dissipated with that wink. She'd taught the boy well.
Right on cue, she leapt from the low bough and landed gracefully only three feet from Will's boots. Will jumped and cursed fluently. John had his hammer half-drawn before he realized who it was that stood there.
"Blast it, girl. Nearly scared me outta my skin," he blustered.
Isaiah looked sternly at both men. "I rest my case."
No further argument came from either.
"Alright. Enough of that," Evey said, as she sat back in her place. "If you'll recall, I was locked in an underground dungeon for two weeks. I haven't the foggiest idea what went on while I was down there. And also, I'm starving."
Isaiah had the decency to look ashamed, and hastily pulled out bread and cheese. Evey didn't wait for him to slice it. She grabbed the bread and bit straight in as Isaiah spoke.
"Well, my escape was pretty easy. No one up top heard the fighting in the dungeon, so when I climbed the stairs, everyone was just going about their business. I picked up a random basket and just walked through the courtyard like I was supposed to be there."
"Just like that?" Evey asked.
"Yeah. No one knew the difference. Then, once I got out past the walls, I found a place to hide in the trees. At first I wanted to just go running about asking for... asking for help."
Obviously he had meant to say "asking for Robin Hood." He caught himself only just in time.
"I was of out of my head for most of that day," he continued. "I was worried, and frantic, and I didn't really know what I was doing. But on the evening of the second day, everything suddenly clicked for me. I understood the situation and knew what I had to do. I traveled to the village where Will and John live. I had seen them around, and I knew they were solid, trustworthy fellows.
"We started to make some kind of plan, but then we heard about the execution. I nearly ran in right then, ready to fight the whole guard. These two kept me out of the way until my head cooled off a little. After that, we talked to my contact in the castle, who warned us about the extra guards and gave us the layout of the place. When the time came, we executed the plan."
"Some plan," Evey noted. "Stand on a wall and offer to die. Don't you realize how much could have gone wrong? I'm still trying to figure out how it actually worked."
"That's exactly why it didn't go wrong. Because it was very simple. The more complicated and timed out a plan is, the more is likely to go wrong when the time comes."
Evey couldn't deny the logic.
"What about you?" Will asked. "How did you even come to be an archer like that?"
"There's not much to tell, really." She tore off a chunk of bread. "When I was younger, my family owed taxes that we didn't have. They would have killed everyone, or at least put them in prison. I didn't know very much about politics, then. I just knew right and wrong. Have and don't have. We didn't have the money, and it was wrong that they asked so much from us. So I fixed the situation. I cut off the tax wagon in the woods, grabbed a few bags of silver, and brought it back.
"We used some of it to pay our tax, and I spread some around to people who were in trouble, just like we were. You know the rest. For seven years, no one has cared about me, or what I do. And now, suddenly, they're up in arms, and ready to hang a teenage girl for it. I can't explain it. It just sort of... happened."
"Seven? What were you, six years old?" Will scoffed.
"Nine, actually. And I shoot even better now, than I did then." She touched the bow. "Or maybe you need another demonstration."
He waved his hands. "No. I believe you."
John cleared his throat. "Just like you, there ain't much to it. I'm a blacksmith by trade. Just living a normal, peaceful life with my wife and six children. Things got harder and harder. Eventually, we just couldn't pay no more. Six months ago the knights came, and I didn't have no money. They took my son..."
His voice cracked. He had to gather himself for a moment.
"They took him out front and beat him. I tried to stop them, but there was too many. One knight thought it'd be clever to poke my son with his pike, but the boy was so weak from the beating, he... he..." Another pause. "He took almost three days to die."
Evey suddenly felt selfish and guilty. She had never lost a son. She didn't have six children to feed. Or five, now. She didn't have to spend hours in front of a hot forge, pounding metal into shape, just to be able to care for those children. Compared to John's, her problems seemed incredibly simple.
She very awkwardly put a hand on his shoulder. He didn't shrug it off, but he did give her a stern look that seemed to say, "You had better be worth it, girl."
She wanted to tell him that she was worth it, but she wasn't sure if that were true. Who was she, anyway? Just a girl with a bow?
To avoid having to respond, she looked to Will for his part of the story. He shrugged.
> "Beaten and left for dead. Only just recovered. That's the long and the short of it." He looked from Evey to Isaiah. "So, what now? I mean, if we're really all there is to this famous band of Robin Hood, then what are we going to do? We can't exactly storm the castle."
"I say we recruit." John put in. "There ain't a man I know that wouldn't be proud to join Robin Hood, even if he ain't seven foot,"
"I'm afraid we can't do that either, John," Isaiah replied. "As Marion pointed out to me once, if there really were a gigantic band of outlaws living together in the forest at a huge self-sufficient camp, how long would it take Sir Guy and his minions to find out where it was and call the entire royal guard out?"
Evey nodded. "And for that matter, how long would it take to get infiltrated by someone working for the king? How would we distinguish the spy from anyone else?"
"Exactly," Isaiah agreed. "The smaller and simpler the better. After all, no matter how many men we recruited, we would never have the numbers or the means to fight Sir Guy's armed knights in pitched battle. We might as well stay out of sight."
"Well then, with all of the others who would gladly join you, why did you choose the two of us?" Will asked.
Isaiah ran a hand through his already-tousled hair. "To be completely honest, you were the first people I could think of in the village. But even after I started thinking clearly again, I knew you two would be right for the job. You both have skills that we can use, and honor as well. I know I can trust you. And you both have reason to be dissatisfied with the king."
"That reminds me of something," Evey interrupted. "I'm not sure our enemies are working for the king. I think we have a problem here that goes beyond a poor ruler."
"Why?" John asked.
Will's eyes widened. "Yes, I think I see what you mean. The king hadn't even heard of Robin Hood until today. Every man, woman, and child in the country has heard of him. How could the king have been oblivious?"
"He's been oblivious for years now. This ain't much different," John retorted.
