by Angus Donald
‘May I see your bow now?’ Robin was holding out a hand to the Welshman. Owain looked wary suddenly. He took a step back, and lifted the point of the arrow.
‘I mean you no harm,’ said Robin. ‘I would only admire that handsome weapon. Is that yew? May I have your leave to hold it? I swear I will harm neither it nor you.’
‘I think not. You just listen carefully if you want to know how to get to the caves, and then I’ll go and rejoin my friends . . .’
‘How about this,’ said Robin. ‘If you will kindly lend me your bow, a spare string and half a dozen arrows, I will make you the captain of my bowmen when I come into my own. I shall rise to be a lord of men one day, do not doubt it, perhaps an earl with an army of my own to command, and if you will but lend me your bow, you shall have a hundred men under you.’
Slowly, Owain’s face turned a deep, dark, beetroot red; his eyes closed, screwed up tight as rosebuds, and his helpless laughter echoed around the dusky clearing, frightening half a dozen roosting birds into rocketing flight.
Robin smiled indulgently at the roaring Welshman, who was now clutching at his belly, almost unable to stand for mirth.
‘What do you have to lose?’ the young man said. ‘I might be a deluded fool who will be dead before Christmastide – in which case your circumstances are quite unchanged – or I might be a man destined for greatness and, if so, one day you will be a captain of archers, a powerful man in my household. Either way, I’ll return the bow and shafts when I bring Hussa’s tribute at full moon. You cannot lose.’
***
The young fallow deer was a fine animal in its second year of life, lithe, bright-eyed, with a handsome brown and grey dappled coat and two slim, sharp horns about eight inches long that had the potential to grow into a fine set of proud antlers.
Robin watched the pricket from behind the solid bulk of a mature beech tree, Owain’s yew bow in his right hand. The deer was unaware of his presence, he was fairly sure, and he had taken great care and more than an hour to move into his current position downwind of his prey and no more than fifty yards distant from it.
It was four days after the visit from Hussa, and Robin and John had spent most of that time in practising with the bow. After four days of drawing the powerful weapon and loosing arrows at a mark set up on the far side of the clearing by the hollow oak, Robin’s back and shoulders ached as much as if he had been beaten black and blue, and the first three fingers of his right hand were red-raw from plucking the hempen string. But he found that now he could hit a man-sized mark nine times out of ten from a hundred paces. He was very far from proficient – indeed Owain, who had briefly demonstrated the use of the bow with huge good humour, had told him that to make a true archer took a dozen years of training. He himself had drawn his first light bow as a seven-year-old and the massive development of his chest and arms was proof that he had continued his training ever since and that he was able now to wield one of the man-killing war bows of the Welsh mountains.
The bow that Robin held – only a loan, Owain had firmly reminded him – was a lighter hunting bow with a draw weight of no more than fifty pounds. But Robin still found it took all of his strength to haul back the string and loose the shaft.
And he did so then, sending one of Owain’s yard-long arrows with a triangular barbed hunting point across fifty yards of woodland to bury itself deep into a spot just behind the pricket’s shoulder. The animal staggered under the punch of the shaft, then leapt in the air, its instinct to run unquenchable. But it was mortally wounded, the arrow point had sliced through skin and muscle and lung and lodged deep in its beating heart. The pricket’s two elastic bounds after the strike caused the wildly thumping heart to lacerate itself against the razor-like edge of the arrow head. Within twenty yards the deer had foundered and collapsed, folding its body almost gracefully on the green grass and, just as Robin and John sprinted up to the still animal, the last spark of life went out of its eyes.
‘A fine kill,’ John said approvingly. ‘It would make very fine eating, I have no doubt, after it has hung for a week or so.’
‘You know as well as I do, John, that this venison is not for our pot,’ said Robin, frowning at his friend. ‘This animal is to be given in tribute to that Hussa person, as we both agreed. We have an urgent debt of honour to settle with him.’
John grunted. ‘Yes, there is an unpaid debt between us, that’s for sure.’
***
The next morning, a little before noon, Robin and John walked into the encampment of the Lord of Sherwood. It was a strange settlement based around a number of caves of varying sizes set in a limestone cliff and with the addition of a scatter of crude huts fashioned from tree limbs and turfs, some thatched with coppery bracken.
It was a difficult place to find, despite Owain’s detailed instructions, and they had taken several wrong turns before finding themselves standing at the edge of a wide, empty circular space in front of the dozen or so caves. The area was filthy, and littered with refuse: old bones and rags and discarded broken clay ale pots, even little piles of faeces – animal and human – in plain sight. The place stank. It seemed Hussa had not bothered to mark out any area as the camp midden.
The incoming pair were unarmed, as Hussa had decreed, and the gralloched pricket was laid across John’s broad shoulders, while Robin carried nothing more than a long, thin bundle wrapped in an old piece of cloth. Nevertheless, their advance was halted by one of the tall, bodyguarding men-at-arms, who held up a flat palm and then insisted on checking that they carried no weapons. Robin called out cheerfully to Owain, who was standing a dozen yards away, but when the Welshman approached to take the cloth bundle, and receive a few profuse words of thanks from Robin, the young outlaw got no more than a restrained nod of recognition in return. The man-at-arms ordered Owain away and quite roughly patted both Robin and John all over their tunics and hose, looking inside belts, hoods and boot tops, to ensure that neither carried so much as a fruit knife.
When the man-at-arms had finished his labours, he nodded across the open space at the Lord of Sherwood, who was sat at a throne-like chair before a broad table, sipping from a vast drinking horn. In front of Hussa, on the table and only inches from his hand, lay the double-headed axe.
‘Best look inside the deer, eh?’ came the deep, gruff voice from behind the table. ‘Not sure these thieves are trustworthy – ha-ha!’
The bodyguard motioned for John to put down the carcass, and briefly rummaged inside its body cavity before pulling out his hand, red to the wrist, and giving his lord a brisk shake of his helmeted head.
At last, Robin and John were allowed to approach the Lord of the Wood. Robin smiled cheerfully, even engagingly, at the man who had slapped his face twice and stolen all his worldly wealth. But John had a face like chiselled granite, and when he slipped the pricket from his shoulders, he allowed it to drop on to the table before Hussa with a jarring thump.
At this small act of defiance, the two bodyguards took a step closer, but said nothing. Robin noticed a crowd of Hussa’s followers forming around the clearing, like courtiers, watching their meeting with dull eyes.
‘You’re a big, strapping fellow, eh?’ said Hussa, looking up at John with his cunning red eyes. ‘What name do you go by?’
John didn’t answer for such a long time that Robin had to do it for him: ‘He’s called John, my lord – and he sometimes can be a little shy in exalted company.’
Hussa beamed: ‘Like a child, eh? I think I shall call him Little John!’ and the fat man broke into a thundering laugh, his whole body given over to the shakes of merriment. The men-at-arms on either side of Robin and John chuckled dutifully. And all the watching folk also set up a raucous cackle in appreciation of their lord’s astounding wit.
John looked down at the axe on the table, expressionless.
Robin smiled even more broadly.
When the hilarity had finally died away, Hussa jerked his chin at the pricket lying before him. ‘Wh
at’s this, eh?’
‘Tribute,’ said Robin. ‘This is to be your reward.’
‘Good boy,’ rumbled Hussa.
‘Yes, I am, aren’t I. I try hard to give people their due. It is a fine beast, isn’t it.’
His hand casually stroked the furry skin between the animal’s long, straight horns. A more discerning eye than Hussa’s would have noticed something about the pricket’s right horn: a very faint black marking, just a fine line, around the base, where the sharp antler met the deer’s skull. If a man looked closely, he would notice that the horn had been sawn almost all the way though by a careful hand, and was attached by only a leaf-thin bridge of bone.
Hussa did not notice.
Robin’s hand closed around the base of the antler, and with a jerk, he snapped the long spike from the deer’s head, swung his arm in a short vicious loop and jammed the point straight into the right eye of the bodyguard next to him.
The man screamed and clapped both hands to his face. But Robin was moving faster than a cut adder. He had a hand on the man’s sword hilt and a boot in his belly and, as the man sank to the ground, the jelly and gore spurting from his punctured eye-socket, Robin tore the sword free of its scabbard, whirled and struck the head clean off the second man-at-arms.
But Hussa did not merely sit idle while his men died. His hand dived for the leather-wrapped handle of the axe, and he had lifted it an inch from the table when John’s wide left palm slapped down very hard, flat, on the shiny double-head, trapping Hussa’s fat fingers painfully against the wood of the table.
Then John hit Hussa full in the face with his bunched right hand, a superb blow, perfectly timed and with his full strength behind it. Two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and bone, concentrated into four big knuckles and fuelled by five days of rage and frustration, connected with Hussa’s doughy face, crushing flesh, cartilage and bone and sending him backwards in his chair and over the high back of it; the Lord of Sherwood tumbling away towards the cave behind him like a kicked ball. When Hussa finally came to a halt, he lay deadly still.
John picked up the axe and made a tiny noise, mewing like a mother over her baby. Then he and Robin turned to face the crowd of raggedy men and woman surging towards them across the clearing, with cries of rage and fear issuing from every mouth. It was a wall of righteous anger, a furious mob, some forty souls strong, armed and ready to kill. These two incomers had entered their home and done bloody violence to their comrades.
They must be slaughtered.
Robin adjusted his stance and took a two-handed grip on his stolen sword; John hefted the double-headed axe . . .
‘Stand fast,’ said a lilting voice, a voice from the mountains in the West. ‘Stand fast, Robin, and do not hurt these poor people or I will loose! I swear it.’
Owain, standing a dozen yards away, a little apart from the advancing crowd of poorly armed Sherwood folk, had a bow in his hands once again, and once again a nocked arrow poised to pierce Robin’s breast.
‘Wait, wait, all of you,’ another voice cried, a woman this time. ‘Do not harm these two strangers.’ And a skinny figure in a filthy sackcloth dress with a Y-shaped amulet dangling from her neck emerged from the crowd and stood between Robin and John and the ill-looking mob that sought to tear them limb from limb.
‘This man here is the spirit of the woods – he has the wild spirit of Cernunnos, the Woodland God, within him!’ The woman jabbed a grubby finger at Robin. ‘See! He kills with the very horn of Cernunnos, plucked from the sacred animal’s brow. He commands the trees of the forest to do his bidding – and they obey. He orders them to fall, and they fall. I have seen this. You must not harm him. I forbid it! I put a curse on any man or woman who harms a hair of his head. He is sacred to me. He is sacred to these woods. He is sacred to Cernunnos. My curse protects him. Touch him and your private parts will shrivel and dry up, your bowels will be infested with seething black worms, your children will sicken and waste away; your animals will all die.’
Although the witch-woman’s words made no sense at all to Robin, he was relieved to see that the crowd had stopped in its tracks, and the people were muttering in a confused manner, many looking plainly terrified by her dire threats.
‘Stand aside, Brigid,’ said Owain. ‘There is no need for your curses. We must have justice. These men have come here and done bloody violence to our friends and to our lord. We have all witnessed this. They cannot be allowed to walk free.’
‘If it is justice that you want,’ said Robin, in a loud clear voice, ‘I am the man who can give it to you.’
The space grew suddenly quiet. Robin fixed the murmuring crowd with his silvery eyes and spoke directly into the silence.
‘I know about injustice. I know about desperation and hunger; I know about cruel masters and callous lords. I know what drives a man or a woman from their own hearth and home, to take up the life of an outlaw grubbing a meagre living in the wilderness. Hungry most of the time; chilled to the bone in winter, your children always sick. I know how you have suffered. And I can change all that.’
Robin paused, took a breath and smiled at the shabby crowd of Sherwood folk. He saw that they were all listening intently, almost greedily, to his words.
‘I can make you strong and well-fed; healthy and happy. And keep you that way. I can make sure that your children grow up with food on the table, and a warm hearth to eat it by . . . I can make you free from hunger and poverty, I can make you free from the oppression of sheriffs and lords, and I can do it here. In this wilderness. In this very place. These very caves. All I ask is that you allow me to lead you. If you will only follow my guidance, we can all live together in this place . . . and make it a paradise on Earth, as long as God grants us breath. We will steal from the rich, from bloated churchmen and cruel lords, we will take freely from those who have oppressed us, kill them when we must. And we shall be hidden here and safe from their reprisals. We will take their silver and it shall be shared out among us all. Under my leadership, every man will be the equal of his fellow; every woman and child will be under the care and protection of us all. There will discipline, yes, and I will take a small share of the spoils. But there will be justice for all—’
‘Kill them, kill them now,’ a rough, clogged voice broke into Robin’s words.
Robin looked to his left and saw the round bulk of Hussa standing and swaying slightly on the edge of the space. His face was a mass of blood, his beard clotted with his own gore, but he had a sword in one hand and a mace in the other, and he gestured with them to the crowd, urging them forward.
‘Kill these incomers, all of you, go on, take them. Kill them now, eh? Or I promise it will be the worse for all of you.’
Robin could see several of the crowd looking at Hussa, then back at himself and John. Their lives hung by a thread.
A bowstring thrummed. A shaft sped, a swift black line across the clearing, and thumped into Hussa. The engorged beast-man looked down at the arrow protruding from his chest. He blinked, fell to his knees, and looked over at Owain. A hole appeared in his blood-matted beard, and he seemed to be trying to ask the bowman a question. But his lungs were pierced, through and through. All that emerged was a shallow whisper that might have been the single word: ‘Why?’
Owain spoke: ‘It’s simple, really, boyo, I like this young fellow’s ideas a whole lot better than yours.’
Now read the opening chapter of
OUTLAW
The first book in Angus Donald’s breathtaking The Outlaw Chronicles
A thin, sour rain is falling on the orchard outside my window, but I thank God for it. In these lean times, it is enough to warrant a fire in my chamber, a small blaze to warm my bones as I scratch out these lines in the grey light of a chill November day. My daughter-in-law Marie, who governs this household, is mean with firewood. The manor is mine, and there would be a decent, if not lavish living to be had for us on these lands if there were a young man or two to work them. But since my son Rob di
ed last year of the bloody flux, a kind of weariness has settled upon me, robbing me of purpose. Though I am still hale and strong, thank the Lord, each morning it is a struggle to rise from my bed and begin the daily tasks. And since Rob’s death, Marie has become bitter, silent and thrifty. So, she has decreed, no chamber fires in daylight, unless it rains; meat but once a week; and daily prayers for his soul, morning and night. In my melancholy state, I cannot find the will to oppose her.
On Sundays, Marie doesn’t speak at all, just sits praying and contemplating the sufferings of Our Lord in the big, cold hall all day and then I rouse myself and take my grandson, my namesake Alan, out to the woods on the far edge of my land where he plays at being an outlaw and I sit and sing to him and tell him the stories of my youth: of my own carefree days outside the law, when I feared no King’s man, no sheriff nor forester, when I did as I pleased, took what I wanted, and followed the rule of none but my outlaw master: Robert Odo, the Lord of Sherwood.
I feel the cold now, at nearly three score years, more than I ever did as that young man, and the damp; and now my old wounds ache for most of the winter. As I watch the grey rain drifting down on to my fruit trees, I clutch my fur-lined robe tighter against the chill air and my left hand drifts up the sleeve, over the corded swordsman’s muscles and finds its way to a long, deep scar high on my right forearm. And stroking the tough, smooth furrow, I remember the terrible battle where I earned that mark.
I was on my back in a morass of blood and churned earth, half-blinded by sweat and my helmet, which had been knocked forward, my sword held pointing up at the sky in a hopeless gesture of defence as I gasped breathless on the ground. Above me, the huge, grey-mailed swordsman was slashing at my right arm. Time slowed to a crawl, I could see the slow sweep of his blade, I could see the bitter rage on his face, I could feel the bite of the metal through the padding of my sleeve into the flesh of my right arm, and then, out of nowhere, came Robin’s blocking sword-stroke, almost too late, but stopping the blade from slicing too deeply.
