Wild Boy

by Nancy Springer

  Rook didn’t answer, because he didn’t know the answer. His mind squirreled, and he couldn’t think what he should do. He knew only that something was badly wrong, and he ran headlong down the crags toward the alarm signal. One of Robin Hood’s men, maybe, had been hurt or captured. Or, far worse, could it be Beau, or Lionel, or—

  No. He was a wild thing. He wouldn’t think it, or care, or feel his heart bursting with dread of—

  “Rook, wait!” cried Tod.

  That cry might not have halted him, but his own dread did. He turned to bark something at Tod, and saw the boy trying to run after him, his crutch flailing. Then its tip caught, and Tod pitched forward, fell, and kept on falling, crashing against stones as he tumbled down the tor, clutching at brush and rocks that ripped out of his hands. Rook saw blood even before Tod thumped to a stop against a boulder.

  The boy didn’t make a sound, and at first Rook thought he was dead. He ran toward him.

  But as Rook reached Tod, the boy sat up, bruised and scraped, with his lips pressed together. Rook had forgotten: The Sheriff’s son was brave.

  Heart thudding, Rook bent to help him up—but another hand reached down. Rook had not seen even a shadow, had not heard so much as the scrape of a footfall on stone or a pebble rattling, but there stood Robin Hood.

  “Tod, lad. Come, hurry. On my back.” Robin hoisted Tod and strode off.

  Rook grabbed up Tod’s crutch from the ground and trotted after them. “What has happened?” he growled at Robin.

  Robin did not answer. And glancing at Robin’s face, seeing his hard jaw and his shadowed eyes, Rook did not dare to speak again.

  Tod did, his voice small and scared. “Robin?”

  “Tod, lad.” Robin spoke to him gently, as always, but his voice was as taut as a stretched leather shield. “There’s been a change in plans. I’m going to have to exchange you as a hostage, lad.”

  Rook stared.

  Tod blurted, “Why? Who …”

  “Your father has captured Rowan.”

  Eleven

  At the edge of the forest near Nottingham, Robin Hood’s outlaw band had gathered, their lips tight, their hands tight on their bows, not speaking as their leader joined them.

  “Anything?” Robin asked. The high road to Nottingham curved near Sherwood at that point. As far as Rook could understand from what little Robin Hood had said, Rowan had been taken by a patrol on sortie to the north as she searched for herbs on the meadows at the forest’s edge. The patrol would pass here as they returned, triumphant, with their captive.

  “Soon. I hope.” Little John’s voice sounded so level and quiet that Rook started to shake. “But nothing yet. Only what yon foreigner said.” He pointed with his bearded chin.

  At first Rook thought he saw a slim, pale boy standing in the shadow—but no. It was Beau. He hadn’t recognized her without her smile.

  “What I said was the truth.” Trembling, her voice betrayed the slight accent of a Wanderer, an outcast without a country. “The Sheriff’s men surrounded us. They knew who she was; they called her Rowan Hood. They taunted her that they would take her alive to make best use of her.”

  A year ago Rowan would have passed as just another cowherd’s daughter or goose girl, but now … too much had happened. The man trap. Her legs, hurt so she couldn’t run and dodge as she used to. The bounty hunters, finding out who she was. And now, by the looks of things, somehow Nottingham had heard as well.

  Rowan, captured … Rook shook his head, trying to shake his hurtful thoughts away. He felt he was to blame. Because she’d been gathering herbs on account of him. Because, on account of him and Runkling, Tykell had not been there to guard her or protect her.

  Beau kept talking as if she could not help it, as if she had to keep telling and telling what had happened. “I—I couldn’t move, but Rowan got her bow strung. She sent elf-bolts into …” Beau swallowed hard at the memory. “Into three of them. They fell, and she shouted at me to run. She … she commanded me.”

  Robin Hood nodded, but his blue eyes looked faraway gray. He set Tod on his feet. On his one good foot, rather.

  Beau whispered, “There was nothing else I could do.”

  “I know, lass,” Robin said quietly. No one else answered her. Rook tried to give her a look and a nod, but he couldn’t. Terror for Rowan crouched like a hooded hawk in his belly, its knife-sharp claws gripping his innards.

  Clutching at a tree for support, Tod gazed up at Robin, then turned to Rook with eyes like those of a hunted deer. After a moment Rook felt the crutch still in his grasp and handed it to the boy.

  “Where’s Lionel?” asked Robin hoarsely. “Just when we need his strength the most …”

  “Hsst,” breathed Little John. “Hearken. Look.”

  Every outlaw froze, peering. Rook could see it too, a puff of dust in the distance, growing nearer. Then he heard the trampling of horses, and the harsh voices of the men-at-arms. And amid the dust he saw glints of bronze. Brazen helms. And the Sheriff’s ornate breastplate. On a heavy-headed charger, Nottingham rode in the fore.

  Then Rook saw Rowan, and his stomach clenched like a fist. They rode horseback, but they made her go afoot, tethered by a rope long enough to put her behind their horses’ tails, in the thick of their dust. Trotting to keep up, she panted, coughing, sweat streaking the dirt on her face. Blood stained her mouth. They had struck her. Rook felt as if he had himself been struck. But what hurt his heart was the way she held her head high even as she struggled along. Chin up, defiant, she looked like a true outlaw. Like her father.

  “Lady have mercy,” he breathed. Would they hang her? Tod might expect to be beaten when he returned home, but what would they do to Rowan?

  “Lad?” Robin looked down at Tod.

  Staring at Rowan, the boy swallowed hard, then nodded and crutched forward. Weaponless, Robin walked with him. Rook stood with the others, his dagger lifted in his trembling hand; it was his only weapon. He’d been too much a lone wolf to learn to shoot the bow like the others.

  Tod stood in the middle of the road with Robin Hood by his side. They waited.

  Nottingham rounded the curve—and saw them.

  Hand on Tod’s shoulder, Robin called, “Sir Sheriff!”

  It was the signal. The outlaws stepped forward, just out of their leafy cover, presenting a score of arrows nocked to fly. Nottingham yanked his charger to a halt, his armor jangling, and his patrol stopped behind him.

  “An exchange of prisoners, Sir Sheriff, if you please,” said Robin Hood.

  Staring at Tod, the Sheriff barely blinked.

  “Your son,” said Robin.

  “For your daughter?” At first the Sheriff’s meaty face creased; then he roared with raging laughter. “You think I want my wretched runt of a son? That horse thief? Do you think I care what you do to him?”

  Rook heard a strange, choked sound he could not at first understand. Had it come from Tod? Yes. The Sheriff’s son, he who had not whimpered in the man trap—now he cried out in pain.

  And his father seemed not to notice at all, his narrow glittering stare on Robin Hood. “No, there’s only one head I want for your daughter’s,” he said, one hard word at a time between grinning teeth. “Or along with it. Yours!” He lifted a gauntleted hand in sudden angry command. “Kill him! Slay the wolf’s head!”

  Robin lunged for the forest, taking Tod with him, crutch and all, shielding the boy with his body as the men-at-arms drew their bows. But a volley of gray goose-fletched arrows from the outlaws flew first.

  “Don’t hit Rowan!” Rook tried to shout. His voice came out more like a frog’s croak. But as he spoke, Rowan ran forward to shield herself amid the horses. Or—no, she was weaving between them, winding her tether around their hocks, setting them to bucking. A man-at-arms grabbed her from behind. She twisted out of his grasp and stepped right under his horse to pop up on the other side. With a rope slithering against its belly, the horse reared, dumping the rider. Even with her arms bou
nd tight to her sides, Rowan was keeping her head.

  Rook’s terror for her gave him strength to run forward, dagger drawn, with no thought except to cut that rope away from her.

  But already he knew he would never reach her. He was too small amid dust and yells and the pounding of his own heart and hooves pounding toward him and someone’s great heavy sword swishing down on him. He would die—

  With a roar like that of a maddened bull, something massive charged between him and the sword, knocking it skyward and him onto the ground as it hurtled toward Rowan.

  “Lionel! It’s Lionel! Save her,” someone yelled like a lunatic—Rook barely recognized the voice as his own. Struggling up, he saw an arrow thwok into the back of Lionel’s shoulder. It appeared to only annoy Lionel. His roar rose to a scream of rage. The mounted guardsman grasping Rowan’s tether confronted him with leveled spear, but Lionel brushed the weapon aside and ran the man down, attacking barehanded like a lion, a bear, a boar, knocking the horse off its feet as he wrenched the rope free. He didn’t give the flattened horse and rider another glance. Wasting no time, he picked up Rowan, rope and all, hugged her to his great chest and barreled off with her, leaping like an elk into Sherwood Forest.

  Running in that wilderness, Lionel could outdistance any rider on horseback. Rowan was safe.

  “Rook, come on!” Someone grabbed his elbow; it was Beau. “Run!” She yanked him toward the forest.

  “Scatter!” Robin Hood shouted, and as if a covey of partridge had burst into flight, Sherwood Forest roiled with confusion. For a long time Rook ran alone and at random, panting, heartbeat pounding in his ears. Sore afraid, even though he knew the Sheriff’s men would not separate for fear of ambush, and could not pursue them all, and could not move amid the trees on horseback as quickly as a man on foot. As Rook ran, he could hear the Sheriff of Nottingham cursing—close behind him at first, then farther away. Rook dodged deep, deeper into the forest, running until he could run no farther, then pausing to pant as he looked around for someplace to hide.

  There. A thickly spreading oak with just enough knobbiness on its mighty trunk.

  Rook climbed, but it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. His brief burst of strength had passed. He hadn’t eaten in too long. He felt weak. Instead of scooting like a squirrel up the oak, the best he could do was crawl up, gripping like a badger. He hadn’t yet reached the concealment of the foliage when he heard men’s voices behind him.

  “I hear one of them!”

  “Where?”

  “Yonder!” They crashed toward Rook.

  Rook heaved himself to the first big branch, still in plain view, still an easy shot for someone’s arrow. Terror shook him worse than ever. Even a wild creature does not want to die. Hoofbeats sounded, brush crashed, and Rook could not help looking over his shoulder as four of Nottingham’s men burst into sight.

  But not one of them glanced up to see him. They all gawked straight past the trunk of his tree, and one of them gave a hoarse yell: “Wolves!” They hauled on their reins, stopping their horses.

  What wolves? Where? Rook had not seen any. But the men-at-arms snatched for their bows to shoot a hasty spate of arrows. Rook heard the swish of brush, a yelp of pain. The men relaxed.

  “That sent them running.”

  “It was wolves you heard, dolt.”

  “Somebody got one.”

  “Leave it. It’s outlaws we’re after. Come on!”

  Without pausing to reclaim their spent arrows, they cantered off.

  Rook clung to his tree, panting with weariness and relief, as they rode away. He heard something whimper, and at first he thought it was him. Then he saw the wolf trying to drag itself to cover. It crawled only a short way before it collapsed on the roots of his tree, head flat on the ground, its ribs heaving, a yellow-feathered arrow jutting waspish between them.

  Rook had never seen a wolf so plainly before, although he had seen the pigs they killed, sometimes right in the pigsty. Since he had become an outlaw, a few times he had seen gray shadows flitting. Mostly he had heard fearsome howls in the night. But this wolf didn’t look fearsome. With its ears flattened in pain, it seemed like a long-legged gray dog lying there.

  He heard a whine, and a smaller, darker wolf trotted to the dying one and bent to lick its face. A mate? Or a half-grown pup, a daughter, a son?

  Brush rattled, branches snapped, and three big red deer bounded past—frightened from their thickets by Nottingham’s men, most likely. The dark wolf did not even give the deer a glance. It stood for a moment with its proud head bowed. Then it curled up close against the other one, licking its eyes and ears.

  Rook bit his lip. He remembered wiping sweat from his father’s face as his father lay in the man trap. He remembered some of the sounds his father had made, dying. And some of the sounds he, Runkling, Jack’s son, had made.

  The wounded wolf shuddered and stopped breathing. The arrow’s yellow tuft of feathers grew still.

  Rook didn’t want to watch anymore. He turned his face upward and climbed. The first wolf had gone silent, but the dark wolf whimpered as if it were weeping.

  Twelve

  Rook crawled up the tree and settled himself in a muscular, comfortable crook of bough. Far above the ground, blanketed with foliage, he lay at ease as the tree held him like a mother cradling a baby.

  Or like a father.

  Far below, the dark wolf howled, grieving. Could the dead one be its father?

  Stop it. Think no more of fathers.

  Looking for something else to rest his mind upon, Rook glanced around him—but then he saw the rowan. Close to where he curled in the tree’s embrace, far above the ground, a rowan seed had taken root on the oak, and now a rowan sapling grew right out of the massive tree’s broad shoulders. White blossoms were beginning to froth on the rowan’s feathery boughs, so that it stood like a dove, feet on the oak and head high in the sky. Every rowan was goodly, but this one seemed almost magical. A flying rowan, the country folk would have called it.

  Rowan Hood, Rook thought, and Robin’s the oak.

  Robin Hood. Her father.

  Fair, kind, mighty. A father worthy of any child’s dream.

  I had such a father. Jack-o-Shoats, Jack Pigkeep, Jack Woodsby, gentle and brave. Until the Sheriff of Nottingham doomed him to die.

  But Tod … Tod’s father was the Sheriff.

  Which of us is worse off?

  Was it perhaps better to have a kindly father, dead, than a cruel one, alive?

  All that day Rook hid in the oak. Twice more he heard the rattle and swish of frightened deer running through the forest. And twice more horseback riders passed beneath him. Nottingham’s men. The first time, he heard their shouts as the dark wolf ran away from them. The second time he heard only their hoofbeats, the creaking of their saddles and the jingle of their armor. He did not bother to look down. He knew he could not see them and they could not see him. He was not afraid.

  Except of the strange ideas in his mind. Some of his own thoughts made him cold with fear.

  When twilight had deepened to dusk and promised nightfall, Rook slipped back down to the ground, avoiding the stiff body of the dead wolf. He stood just looking at it for a moment, wanting to back away, yet at the same time wanting to kneel and caress the gray fur.

  Wolves, in stark daylight? What had they been doing here, just in time to keep Nottingham’s men from spotting him?

  Likely they had been frightened from their daytime hiding place, just like the deer. Yet Rook felt a warm shudder, a sense of presence, as if some spirit of Sherwood Forest had put an invisible arm around his shoulder.

  “You saved my life,” he whispered.

  The wolf’s dead eyes looked at him yet through him, past him, staring and empty. Soon the flies would come buzzing around them.

  “Thank you,” Rook murmured.

  The wolf lay as flat as forever, with its mouth open, its tongue hanging slack between its fangs. How many people had it kill
ed with those fangs?

  “Bah,” Rook muttered, turning away. “Scare stories,” he grumbled. False tales folk told, like the ones they told about outlaws. He could not imagine that the dead wolf had ever hurt anyone. No more than Tod—

  “Bah!”

  Fleeing his own thoughts, Rook strode into the forest.

  He tried to walk quickly and found he could not. Too weak. His pace kept slowing. He needed to eat. But the clotted feeling in his belly had swollen until it hurt, and he walked on without foraging, because he knew he would not be able to eat until he had seen Rowan. Until he knew she was alive and well. She and the others.

  He had to find them.

  But he had no idea where they might be, whether at Robin Hood’s oak dingle or the rowan hollow or the hemlock grove or some other place.

  And it scarcely mattered, for he had no idea where in vast Sherwood Forest he was himself.

  He walked on, wobbly on his feet. Perhaps if he kept moving, he would stumble across something, some landmark he knew….

  If he could see it. Which seemed unlikely. Night had fallen.

  Dark. The whole world.

  But then, far off in the darkness Rook heard a distant sound. Once, then again, then a third time, clear silver notes shining like a star to guide him.

  He raised his head, took a deep breath, blinked water from his eyes and turned toward the music of Robin Hood’s horn.

  For a long, weary time he stumbled through the forest, banging his bare toes against hard things and scraping his bare shoulders against rough ones while thorns scratched his bare arms and legs until they bled. No matter; a creature of the wild didn’t mind thorns.

  But I do mind, whispered a traitor thought deep within Rook.

  No. No, such thoughts were not allowed. A wild boy didn’t care about thorns, or the pain of hunger, or the pain of wondering whether his friends were all right.

  But I do care.

  Rook remembered the dark wolf’s whimper, the dark wolf’s howl. He remembered the blood he had seen on Rowan’s face, the arrow jutting from Lionel’s shoulder, Beau’s pale face as she tugged him away from danger. He remembered the way Tod had cried out—