Shadow of the Wolf

by Tim Hall

  And now other soldiers were coming at Robin, their cudgels raised.

  Shouting, and a war horn, and more men running.

  Robin spun and met his nearest assailant, stabbed the man in the side, finding a gap in his half mail. He turned the man, using him as a shield while he pulled the knife free. He slashed another ranger across the nose; he crashed his knee into a third man’s groin.

  He moved in a half crouch, feinting right and left, keeping his opponents off balance, using the knife-fighting techniques he learned with Sir Bors. At the same time he was a redraw scrapper again, brawling with Narris Felstone and Swet Woolward and the rest, kicking and punching and butting heads.

  But today neither measured skill nor berserker fury would be enough. He was surrounded by a circle of armed men. Every time he struck with his knife a soldier backed away and a man behind him advanced to swing his club.

  A heavy thud in Robin’s back—he staggered, winded. He retaliated but his attacker had already retreated to a safe distance. A glancing blow to the side of Robin’s head, sending a blinding flash through his eyes. Another hard hit from the side.

  He made a lunge at Edric Krul but he scuttled backward once more, out of striking range. He was grinning, this young soldier, keeping his distance and grinning …

  A shooting pain in Robin’s ear, his vision blurred.

  And then, unbelievably, his knife dropped from his fingers. It tumbled, very slowly, and stuck upright in the earth. Robin stooped to pick it up, and missed. He tried again, and failed. Either the ground kept getting farther away or Robin’s arm had become too short.

  He watched red spots fall great distances. A wet throbbing at the back of his head.

  The world turned, lurched, dropped out of sight.

  Blackness.

  And when the blackness cleared Robin found he was on his back, looking up. He tried to stand but he couldn’t move. There were four soldiers each using a knee and all their weight to pin his arms and his legs.

  Standing above him was Edric Krul. He had lost his skull-helm and his orange hair was wild and there was blood running from beneath his bandage and coating his scarred cheeks. He gripped a spiked mace. Leering, he raised it above his head.

  “Leave him.”

  This was the older soldier called Will Scarlett. He took hold of Edric’s mace and pulled it from him and shoved the younger ranger away.

  Will Scarlett hung his head. “Haven’t we done enough here?” he said.

  And then Robin, still blinking rapidly, was looking up at another face. Ruined, weeping skin, exposed tendons in the neck. The Sheriff had walked his horse across, and he was now staring down at Will Scarlett.

  “Why the delay?” the Sheriff said. “This young man attacked officers of the Sheriff’s Guard, which is tantamount to attacking the Sheriff himself. The prescribed punishment is death.”

  Without looking at the Sheriff, Will Scarlett said: “He’s not much more than a boy. We have what we came for. We could afford to show some leniency.”

  The Sheriff tipped his head, the left side of his face grinning, and he looked directly at Robin for the first time. As he did so his expression changed. His intact eyebrow raised, just a fraction. There was a look in his clean right eye that was something like recognition.

  An expression that seemed to say: I know you.

  “What have we here?” the Sheriff said, so quietly he could be talking to himself. “Perhaps we have been more fortunate than we realized. Perhaps we caught this one just in time.”

  He glanced at Marian in the cage, before staring once more at Robin.

  “You think the boy should be spared, Chief Rider? It would be remiss of me to ignore your advice, today of all days. Yes, you are quite right, this is a time for clemency.”

  Will Scarlett was looking up at the Sheriff now.

  “I am minded to be merciful,” the Sheriff said. “Let the boy live.” And the Sheriff was turning away, pressing his reddened handkerchief to the ravaged side of his face, walking his mare back across the common ground.

  Robin struggled to stand, but the soldiers kept him pinned.

  The Sheriff passed the thin, gray-faced man. He did not look at the man and he did not look back at Robin. He only spoke in a quiet, dispassionate tone.

  “Jadder Payne,” the Sheriff said. “Exact a lesser punishment. Bring me the boy’s eyes.”

  Will Scarlett used his cloak to wipe the sweat from his face. He walked away, hanging his head. Robin struggled harder, but he was held fast.

  The skeletal man climbed down from his horse. He opened his cloak and underneath was a holster full of surgical blades, each one containing a miniature reflection of the village in flames. From the holster he took a lancing knife. A soldier handed him a burning brand and Jadder Payne held the knife over the flame and began to heat the steel.

  The cart carrying the cage was lurching into motion. Robin caught a final look into Marian’s eyes. He couldn’t read her expression, but he remembered her last words: You led them to me!

  And now she was moving away. The Sheriff and his escort too were leaving. Injured soldiers were having their wounds tended before being helped onto the spare cart.

  Robin watching all this in a daze. Feeling no fear now, only confusion—all this too unreal for him to be afraid.

  This is just another nightmare. Any moment now this will end. I’ll wake with Bones shaking my shoulder, telling me I’ve been shouting in my sleep.

  Yes, in a heartbeat he will wake, and the sun will be shining and the crowd will be cheering and it will be the first day of the squire’s tourney. Everything since has been one long fever dream.

  But then the skeletal man is looming over Robin, and he is crouching on one knee and holding Robin’s chin in a grip that is stone cold and all too real. And in the man’s other hand is the hot blade, moving toward Robin’s face, and the rest is pain and darkness.

  Narris Felstone didn’t want to kill Robin Loxley. He hated the idea.

  But he knew they were going to make him do it. He knew he would have no choice. Anyway, wasn’t it more cruel to leave Robin alive?

  Yes, think of it as a mercy, Narris told himself. Think of the runt of the litter, too weak to compete for food. Put it out of its misery. Think of it that way.

  * * *

  It had started when a lone soldier walked into the village, leading his horse by the reins. This was not one of the vicious boys from before, but an older man, and clearly a soldier of high rank. Lying across his horse, apparently lifeless, was Robin. The soldier stopped near the common green, lowered Robin to the ground. The ranger hung his head, climbed into his saddle, and did not look back.

  Robin made a pitiful figure huddled on the ground: his fine clothes were tattered and smoke-blackened; a cloth pack and hunting bow were still strapped across his back. His hood was raised, but underneath Narris could just make out those dreadful wounds, puffy and weeping.

  The villagers formed a circle around him. It seemed to Narris the circle was growing tighter, a crush of bodies shuffling inward. But then Narris’s mother was there and she was pushing through the crowd and with her good hand she was helping Robin to his feet and she was leading him away. Narris followed his mother and Robin back up Herne Hill, while the other villagers watched them, silently.

  His mother sat Robin in a corner of the central chamber of the house. And that’s where he had stayed, ever since. Narris led him twice a day to the latrine, and Robin ate the meals placed in his hands, but other than that he didn’t flinch. He didn’t speak. As if he were made of stone.

  To look at him made Narris shiver. Those cauterized crosses where his eyes used to be. You couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep, sitting upright against the wall. Nighttime would come and the firelight would flicker across his face, and then the flames would die and Narris would go to his bed, and still Robin sat there in the darkness, just the same, silent and still.

  Every few days they would get visitors to
the house. Narris stayed out of sight but he heard what they were saying. Agnes Poley or Eva Topcroft would say: “You heard what Old Ma warned, all those years ago: Such a child would bring disaster. The forest wants him. Twice it has been denied. Look around you, Mabel, see what he’s caused.”

  And Narris’s mother would reply: “Listen to yourselves. This village isn’t dying because of a curse. It’s dying from shame.”

  “He keeps returning, like the pox,” another of the villagers would say. “Loxley should never have interfered.”

  And Narris’s mother would say: “Robert Loxley was worth ten of any one of us. You all know what you did. What you didn’t do. Shame on you. Shame on us all! Hasn’t this poor boy been through enough?”

  But as the weeks passed it seemed to Narris his mother’s arguments were growing less fierce. Were the villagers wearing her down? Or could she stand to look at Robin no longer? Could she no longer bear the accusing look in that dead stare?

  Narris thought he knew what was coming, and he loathed the idea.

  One evening, as he was returning from the fields, he stood outside the house, listening. His mother sighed, and said: “And who would do it? You?”

  Edith Younger said: “Your son and Robin hated each other. Narris would do it with pleasure.”

  * * *

  It was November. The blood month. The time when the valleys shriek with pigs being slaughtered for winter stocks, while in the wild old toothless creatures sense they won’t live to see another spring.

  November, the month when everything dies …

  Narris had been meeting with the village elders beneath the Trystel Tree. They had been deciding what to do about Robin Loxley’s horse. They could no longer afford to feed such a beast. And nobody was willing to brave the road to take it to market. In any case, the larders were practically empty. There was really no choice to be made. The horse would be slaughtered, and its meat would provide a lifeline during the year ahead.

  Narris returned home to find his mother staring across the room at Robin. She raised her good hand, beckoned Narris close.

  “Winter is coming,” she whispered. “Stocks are low. The others are right: We must feed the strong. Take Robin to the forest and leave him there.”

  * * *

  Narris led Robin up Herne Hill and out of the village. Robin stumbled occasionally but he held onto Narris’s arm and followed without question. They reached Woden’s Ride, the wildwood towering black and fierce ahead. Without allowing himself to pause, feeling his heart quicken, Narris hurried across the spirit fence and pushed into Winter Forest. It was broad daylight, and weeks before a full moon, but still it made Narris’s skin crawl to be here and he ventured less than a hundred paces before he dared go no farther. He sat Robin between two beech trees. Fallen leaves had soaked the ground crimson, as if Narris had already done the deed.

  Leave him there.

  Narris knew what that meant. He hefted the woodsman’s ax, felt the weight of it, watched the light run along its cutting edge.

  This was deeply unjust. Why did he have to do it? Certainly, he and Robin used to fight. But fighting with someone is very different from killing them. Besides, what harm was Robin to anyone now? How old was he? Fifteen? Crossing into manhood, yet look at him, helpless as a baby. Perhaps the villagers were right: Better to put him out of his misery.

  Narris gripped the ax, raised it above his head. Steadied it with his stump.

  Robin’s head was bowed, his neck exposed. One clean strike and it would be over …

  But what if the strike wasn’t clean? What if Robin shook and kicked and bled yet refused to die, the way that runt pig had done the time Narris missed the vital spot? He remembered chasing after the spurting, slippery runt and finally finishing it off with a knife.

  What if?

  He lowered the ax.

  He had suspected this would happen. He pulled a sheepskin from his pack and wrapped it around Robin’s shoulders. He laid a small packet of food at Robin’s feet and made sure he could find it with his fingers. Narris took the ax and went back home.

  * * *

  He returned to Robin’s camp every few days with a small amount of food. Sometimes he would sit with Robin for a while.

  “It’s getting colder,” Narris said. “You’re going to have to make your own fire. I remember you were a fine woodsman, when we were younger. I’ll wager you can learn it all again by touch. Here, I found your strike-a-light so you’ve always got a spark.”

  This is ridiculous, he thought. What am I doing? A blind boy can’t live out here by himself. What if the snows are heavy and I can’t reach him with food? What happens when he runs out of dry firewood?

  Winter was coming, and winter would kill Robin just as surely as a blade. The difference was that winter would allow his death to linger.

  Kinder to end it now.

  Narris raised the ax, felt it shaking, steadied it with his stumped arm. He studied the vital spot on Robin’s neck.

  One clean strike. Perhaps he wouldn’t even feel it …

  “I will kill him.” Robin’s voice was cracked through disuse.

  “What?” Narris said, lowering the ax.

  “I am going to kill him,” Robin said. “The man who took Marian, and did this to me, and whose men hurt your mother. The Sheriff. Next time you come, bring my bow.”

  Narris didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. This pitiful figure—this man-boy who wouldn’t even be able to find his way back to the village—he was going to kill the Sheriff! He put down the ax and rubbed at his eyes and cleared his throat.

  “I can’t stay long,” he said. “Mother’s not well. But it’s getting colder. We have to build you a better shelter. You tell me how and we’ll do it together. So, how do we start?”

  * * *

  Every time Narris visited without the shortbow, Robin reminded him to bring it next time. Eventually Narris took the bow and a quiver of arrows and he placed them in Robin’s hands and that seemed to satisfy him.

  Robin also asked for his backpack so Narris found that in the house and brought it to his camp. Narris had already searched the pack. It contained tallow candles and a drawstring pouch containing some silver coins. Narris had taken those things for himself. They were no use to Robin now. The backpack also contained a scroll, its broken seal in the shape of two spears, crossed below an armored boar. Narris found himself taking this parchment and tucking it inside his tunic. He would take it back to the village, ask Robert Wyser what the writing said. But then he looked over at Robin, crouched over scraps of moss and kindling, trying to ignite his fire, and he felt an odd pang of guilt. He put the scroll back where he found it.

  Now Robin was shuffling around on hands and knees, running his hands through the leaves. He had dropped the flint from his strike-a-light—Narris could see it clearly against the graying litter. He picked it up. He tossed the flint and caught it while he watched Robin search.

  Eventually Narris said: “Here. I found it. Give me the firesteel. I’m going to tie them together and I’ll tie both to your belt. So you don’t drop them again.”

  “I could have done it,” Robin said. “I would have found it.”

  “I know you would. But there, it’s done now.”

  He looked around him at the forest. Berries had been huge this autumn; ash leaves had fallen early: sure signs that this winter was going to be harsh. Narris had only two options, and he could not shake the feeling it was more cruel to leave Robin alive.

  * * *

  It had snowed for the first time overnight. The snow wasn’t deep, but it was enough to make up Narris’s mind. At dawn he followed the path toward Robin’s shelter. Droppings were bright against the snow and steam rose from holes in the ground, marking where animals snored in their burrows. The cold bit sharply in the stump of Narris’s left arm.

  He carried with him no food; only the ax. He would do it this time. Without pause or question. The villagers were right: This was the only w
ay. I’ll be doing him a mercy, Narris thought. Putting him out of his misery.

  Death was on its way. Better the swift blade than the creeping cold.

  He reached Robin’s camp between the beech trees.

  But Robin wasn’t there.

  His little shelter had been crushed and the embers from his fire had been scattered. A chill went through Narris. Had something been here, and taken Robin? Or scared him deeper into the wildwood? He stared into the shadowy depths of the forest; he listened to its uncanny cackles and shrieks and wails.

  Well then, that was that. It was out of his hands. Whatever had happened to Robin—whether he was already dead, or dying in the wildwood—that was the end of it. With sadness and relief, Narris folded the sheepskin. He tucked the ax under his arm and he hurried out of the forest.

  In Robin’s new black world a single image appears, over and over: a lancing knife, descending toward his face, drawing closer and closer, not stopping even when the hot point of the blade disappears inside the jelly of his eye. The blade digs deeper, he relives the searing pain. It stops and there is a moment of relief. Then the cycle begins again.

  Something else repeats in his mind, equally torturous. The voice of a young woman: They did follow you! You led them to me!

  Since the fight with the soldiers, a year could have passed, or a day. This moment it could be midnight, or midday. Time no longer moved. Why would it? There was no future for it to move toward. True, Robin heard certain temporal clues: the tolling of the bell in the village; the rhythmic creaking of the waterwheel; the clink-clink of Gord Moore hammering in his forge. But these things no longer marked the passage of time; they were mere echoes of a past life. Spirits sent to taunt him over all he had lost.

  The waterwheel moaned: She’s. Gone. Too. She’s. Not. Coming. Back. Gord Moore’s hammer spat: It. Was. Your. Fault.