She wasn’t very good at holding grudges, and she’d never been good at holding onto her anger with Rob. He was too good at apologizing—mostly because when he did bother to apologize, he truly meant it, and put his entire heart into it, plain in his eyes for everyone to see.
So it was surely inevitable that they’d end up on the bank wrapped as close for comfort as a litter of milk-glutted pups. Only this time Marion was the one with arms wrapped about her, holding tight against anything that would hurt them. This time it was Rob doing the insistence, imparting a strength she just didn’t have right now and it was Rob, not Marion, who was trying to make the case that, maybe, hope wasn’t so impossible.
He wasn’t just her little brother anymore. The arms about her were wiry, but strong enough to huff the breath from her when he squeezed—just that much too much, he wasn’t yet aware how strong he was. His voice rumbled beneath her cheek, more a soft baritone burr than the clear, high bell of boyhood.
And more hairy, she chuckled, as he smooshed her nose against his chest.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was just considering,” she said against his breastbone, “how you’ve somehow grown a wolf’s pelt when I wasna looking.”
“Um.” Suddenly her baby brother was there again as he loosed her with a look of chagrin on his face. “Sorry.”
Marion reached forward, flicked the forelock from his eyes. “Our Hob-Robyn has grown up all tall and fetching; could have any lass he wanted did he crook his finger. Aye, any lad, too,” she added as he rolled his eyes at her. “Since you’d rather act a tosser than take a wife.”
“I dinna think I’m made for a wife,” he said, slow and considering. “P’rhaps better so. Horns sit uneasy in a marriage bed.”
“Only if the one you wed ent willing to be your Maiden. Look at Da and Mam.”
“I do. Da and Mam are… special, but still. What the Horned Lord and the Lady would have them be sets them against each other sometimes. I mean, even Cernun… when he was Hunter, he never wed any Maiden who came to him upon the Bel-fires. I only hope that when it comes to me, I’ll be able….” He trailed off, eyes darting to her uneasily.
“When the blood-rut sets upon you, often it doesn’t matter what rises you,” she told him. “You’ve had the agaric for the Seeking, but you’ve never drained a Blessing cup. Anyway.” She shrugged. “Da and Mam aren’t old. They may never be too old.”
Aye, still her baby brother; he wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “Do you have to say things like that?”
“I think it’s comforting, to know that even if your bits get wrinkly—”
Rob started whistling, tuneless and loud.
“—they still work!” she continued, just as loud and next to his right ear.
He made a face, put a finger in his ear and wriggled it. “Well, you’ve made it so my ears waint work now, let alone when they’re wrinkly. You can take that Blessing cup business and welcome. Have yourself some big, muscular fellow with fair hair and a whopping great… bow.” He smirked. “Assuming he likes lasses with tempers to match their hair instead of skinny archer lads, and I don’t steal him from you.”
Marion flicked her finger at his nose this time. Returning his smirk with one of her own as he yipped, she leaned back against him. Rob’s arms crept around her, his chin nesting into her hair.
Silence, but not comfortable. There was too much lying underneath it, and she finally had to speak of it, bid it surface.
“Da’s at Nottingham by now,” she said. “He and George.”
Rob gave a sound between a groan and a sigh. “It’s got to be killing Da, what he’s having to do.” His voice went hard. “It’s wrong.”
“What else could he have done?” Marion protested.
“And it’s more wrong, that he’s so helpless.” Still hard, that smooth, new-made baritone could have cut steel. “They’ve no right.”
“They’ve every right—”
“They don’t!” It burst from Rob. “I’ve lost my friend, you’ve lost one who might have been a lover, we’ve lost a man who was as uncle to us.” His voice broke, wavered then came back, a little harder, a little older. “We’ve lost our da. He rode away from us several days ago, and we waint see that man again, you and I. He’s our da, Mari, and they’re hacking bits from him like he’s nowt. He’s the Horned One. But what good has his power, his Sight done him? His tynged was there, before him: life-giver, t’ hold peace, protect his people… and it’s all gone wrong.” The arms around her were shaking, fingers clutching at her skirts, and his breath was thick, clotted with unshed tears. “He’ll never be the same, and I don’t know whether to love him or hate him for it.”
Marion wanted to turn, cuddle him close like she had the child who’d had one too many nightmares, or eaten himself into a huge bellyache. But she also didn’t want to; she wanted to be the one comforted and hugged close. Nor did Rob want comfort, not now—she kenned it as surely as she’d kenned Will’s heart in the mirror of the lake water. Rob wanted to stand up, to find strength, somehow, and honor, and a place for those in a world where the only place truly open to him was on his knees, crawling.
“I almost envy Will.” Fierce, angry.
Marion jerked around, twisted a finger full of that patch of chest hair, and yanked. Hard.
“Ow!”
Glaring at him, she held up her prize—not a scalp’s worth, but enough to make her warrior ancestors nod encouragement.
“Bloody damn, Marion, what are y—?”
“Don’t you ever say that again.” She shoved her face close into his, saw his pupils, only discernible from ebon iris by a thin inner ring of indigo, contract. “Do you hear me?”
He looked down and to the side, mouth tightening.
“Answer me, by th’ Lady, or I’ll take my bow and ram it up your fair backside!”
He hunched up slightly, gave a snort that sounded too much like humor for her liking.
“Hob-Robyn, I swear I’ll—”
And suddenly another snort from him, and it was laughter, she knew it.
“Ah, Mari,” he said, rocking back to lie on his elbows in the grass, giving her full range to wallop him did she so choose—and she might, if he was laughing at her. “Don’t you know better than to offer something like that to a boy who does with boys?”
It was absolutely preposterous—and not funny—but suddenly Marion was sniggering into his tunic, and Rob was falling back on the bank and chuckling, and then they were both laughing until they cried.
“So you’re saying,” Marion shoved herself up on her elbows, resting her forearms on Rob’s chest, “that you prefer a longbow.”
“Better long than short,” he quipped, then grimaced and rubbed at his chest. “By damn, woman, I think I’m bleeding.”
“Serve you right.”
He shrugged, rolled out from under her, and sat up.
“Rob?”
She could see the tendons in his neck twitching.
“Will left a sign in the old place.”
“Rob!”
“I know. He took a risk. But he….” He paused. “He needs my help, to know that not everyone’s abandoned him. He needs to know what’s… happening. He knew I’d tell no one. Except you. He probably knew I’d tell you.”
“The risk is yours too, Rob, if anyone catches you—”
“They waint. No one knows the Wode like I do—”
“Except Da.”
Rob hesitated, then said, “Even more than Da, now.”
“Bloody cheek!” Marion reached forward, knotted her fingers in his hair, and tugged. “You’re getting too big for your boots, you are!”
When he turned to her, his eyes weren’t lit with the normal brazen spark that usually accompanied such a boast. In fact, his face was somber, a bit too pale; he wasn’t boasting at all. “Lass,” he said, all too soft, “I think the only one who could come close to knowing the Wode as well as I must is you. And I have to beg you to stay
home, this time.”
“Rob—”
“I mean it. You’re in this too deep, Mari, pet, and you know it. You canna think straight. Too much frustration, trouble, and should’ve/would’ve lie between you and Charming William.”
Any protests she was girding up died a-borning. He was right. He was right, and risking entirely too much to have a liability along.
As always, he read her like one of the books she so loved and he so scorned. “Aye, you’d likely trip me up in this. And I’ve only recently got past tripping over my big feet. In my too-small boots,” he added, with a smirk. But it was forced.
She sat back, rather helplessly. “Oh, Rob.”
He leaned forward, kissed the top of her head. “I know. But I have to do it.”
ROB HAD everything ready: an old shortbow that was still more than serviceable but that he no longer used, some furs, some victuals in his pack—enough to go on until he found out what Will needed—and a sack of good mead. The last would dull the pain a bit even if it didn’t give its normal cheer. He disguised the sorting and cadging beneath a tidy-up of the barn. The first time his mother headed his way, he was busy organizing tack and bedding stalls.
But the second time, he didn’t hear her. He merely looked up to see her in the doorway, hat tied to her ebon hair and her simples basket on one arm, watching him silently as he bent, sorting in earnest.
Rob froze in place, a frantic wondering in the back of his mind insisting he could explain, somehow. Maybe.
Eluned came forward and knelt beside him, her basket in her lap. “You’ll need this,” she said gently, handing him a small tincture bottle. “And this one. And perhaps a bit of this would not go amiss….”
She handed two bottles to Rob after the first, and several sachets and small doeskin bags. Then she reached out and closed his mouth. He hadn’t even realized it was hanging open. “You’ll catch flies, son. If he can wait until tonight, you can bring him a crock of our supper. In the meantime, I have some things to gather, to make up a few more simples. And you can find out what he needs for his journey. Because you waint know until he tells you.”
He sat there, palms full of medicaments, could only say, helplessly, “Mam.”
“I hope I needn’t tell you to take care.” Eluned kissed his cheek, then rose, shook out her kirtles, and strode out the door.
Rob sat there for some time, looking after her and wanting to bawl like a bairn.
Instead he bent back to his task.
The load had to be lightened twice: the first time when he’d decided traveling afoot would be more circumspect than being mounted, the second when he realized that his mother was right: he truly didn’t know what Will needed.
This was no lark, no boyhood camping venture. This was literally the line between living and dying.
He would go, anon. Take a few things, find out what Will truly needed and go back under cover of darkness.
Then Gamelyn came riding up just as Rob finished lunch with his sister and was speeding down the front stair.
And every careful plan Rob had made went flying out his ears.
It wasn’t just because Gamelyn suddenly looked akin to something out of an ancient tale, more centaur than mere rider upon that great gray stallion, in a cape with the sheen and color of dried blood and fair hair flicking across his face with the wind. It wasn’t because this time he had an escort riding at Diamant’s tail, a mailed and helmeted soldier that made Rob’s mouth go dry with several seconds of honest fear, then his hackles rise in just-as-honest fury. It wasn’t just because the likelihood of Rob leaving for any clandestine meeting with a wolfshead was likely swolloped now that a nobleman’s son was in residence. Or that Gamelyn was as sure a liability for Rob as Will was for Marion—worse, for more reasons than Rob wanted to count.
It was, somehow, all of those things and none of them, because topping them all was the sense of a warning, a dangerous breath down his neck, time canting sideways and sending itself forward into tens of unknowns.
If he couldn’t even trust his own feelings to not turn and gut him, then who could he trust?
Even if he wanted to.
“Rob!”
The broad smile made Rob’s heart jerk then shudder heat against his breastbone, and all he could think was, And what evil sprite gave you both that lovely smile and such lovely rotten timing? Gamelyn dismounted in one graceful, powerful move, took the rein in one gloved hand, and walked forward. One hand on his sword’s pommel, there was a proper swordsman’s swagger to him that surely, surely he’d not had the last time Rob had seen him… had it truly been only a se’nnight ago, that eager pup in the barn?
And how was it, again, that Gamelyn should look like every mortal sin his Church could conjure up, while Rob looked like something from the rubbish tip, all sweat, dirt, and dander from mucking out a stable.
And if he had straw in his hair, he’d not even had the mouth job to go with it this time.
The smile on Gamelyn’s face slipped, a little, as Rob merely nodded. Rob truly didn’t trust his voice. A slight frown quirking his brow, Gamelyn gave Diamant a pat, dug a treat from his purse and spoke the horse’s name—ah, so that was how he’d managed to get the nappy bugger’s attention.
And that throaty caress of language—directed toward a horse!—only made Rob’s heart give another lurch and bump.
And he was bloody pathetic.
“Sir Gamelyn!”
And why should Marion sound all… happy? As if she’d nowt on her mind that a visit from His Lordship wouldn’t sweep away like dried-out cobwebs. She came flying down the stairs and pounced on Gamelyn, gave him a great buss on the cheek then a hug that made Diamant cock a wary ear and might’ve broken a rib or two if Gamelyn hadn’t been wearing a chainmail tunic under his surcoat.
Chainmail. Pretentious… nobleman.
And Gamelyn’s broad, lovely smile returned. He lifted Marion off her feet, gave Rob a glance that surely said, See, this is what a real greeting looks like, you pillock! then closed his eyes and returned Marion’s hug all the fiercer.
But all Rob could think of was how, did he have the chance, he’d show Sir Gamelyn a greeting, all right, one that would weaken his knees and pop his eyes from his head….
Save him, and he couldn’t even ask the Horned Lord for strength. Ask a fertility god with a knob as subtle as a pikestaff to help him deflate?
Aye, that was likely.
He’s another lad, Rob gave it a game try, nevertheless. Surely you’d rather I fancied a lass with huge breasts and nice wide hips, to make lots more little fawns to sing your name in the night.
No answer, but it took care of his inconvenient erection, right enough. Sent it, all nice and pliable, back where it belonged.
“What are you doing here, all….” Marion trailed off as she got a better look at Gamelyn’s companion, and Rob could sense the sudden fear in her, felt fury once more lick fire behind his eyes.
“Why is he here?” he growled, jerking his head to the soldier.
Oddly enough, the soldier didn’t look like the normal bully in mail; his broad shoulders were hunched, his gaze averted to the ground. Hiding something, sure enough.
Marion’s gaze flitted to his, warning, even as Gamelyn shrugged, his smile fading once again.
“My father’s orders.”
Marion pushed back slightly, once more shooting a wary glance in Rob’s direction. “Your… father?”
Rob felt the breath stutter in his chest. Casually he pretended to clasp his hands behind his back, one going for the dagger he always kept sheathed above his right buttock.
Gamelyn was smiling. “I’m here on legitimate business, this time.”
Rob’s fingers touched the dagger’s pommel, caressed their way into a grip.
“Off with you, then,” Gamelyn told the soldier, turning to him. “Find a place where you’ll be comfortable, and you’ll have done your duty.”
The soldier made a stiff, awkward bow, turne
d first to Marion then to Rob with somewhat deeper, but hastier bows, then mounted and wheeled his horse. It seemed that he couldn’t retreat fast enough.
Again, Marion shot a glance to her brother. “He’s… leaving.”
Rob had already fingered his dagger halfway to his shoulder blade, nearly free. He paused, uncertain.
Gamelyn was watching the soldier go. “Aye, he wasn’t happy about encroaching upon your place this far, believe me. But this way he can satisfy both his orders and his conscience.” Gamelyn shrugged, turned back to them. “We’ve come to an understanding, he and I, seeing as how he seems to be as….” He trailed off, seemed to notice Rob’s wary stance. “What?”
“Why are you here?” Rob said, quiet.
“I….” Gamelyn looked confused. “Well, I’m here to make sure you’re both all right. And this time, like I told you, my father sent me. He’s… well, he’s very sick and wants your mother’s help; he’s insistent that she come and attend to him. It was the perfect way to make sure that you were both all right.”
Silence, with only the retreating hoofbeats of the soldier disappearing over the near rise.
Marion smacked Gamelyn upside the head.
“Ow! Marion, what the—?”
“You great silly… git!” she burst out. “Coming in here all tarted up with a soldier on your tail… after what’s happened! Have you lost your bloody mind?”
Gamelyn’s mouth dropped. He closed it, put steepled hands to his face. “Oh.”
“You’d better do a sodding sight better than ‘oh’,” she retorted.
“I didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”
Rob flipped his dagger in the air and caught it, his gaze smacking into Gamelyn’s. “I was ready for him, lad. Don’t ever do that again.”
The green eyes were wide, stricken. “I didn’t—”
“Didna think,” Rob supplied, and stuck his dagger back in his belt. “Well enough, then. I’m away, Marion.”
Marion’s slender frame had tensed, again. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” he said, and started for the barn.
“Wait… wait!” Gamelyn took a few steps after him, halted as Rob turned on him and shot a look that was clearly warning. “But I… I just got here.”
Greenwode Page 17
