Wolf's Head (The Forest Lord)

by Steven A McKay

  Before long their target came into sight. Sure enough, there was one rider, a small, weasel-faced man, finely dressed in colourful clothes and flanked by a couple of broad young mercenaries on foot either side of him.

  Robin took little notice of the little merchant, despite Harry’s orders, dismissing him out of hand and concentrating on the guards who looked much more threatening.

  Both were tall – almost as tall as Robin himself. They had decent quality light armour and weapons – one wore a sword, while the other had a wicked looking mace hanging at his side. The thought of such a brutal crushing weapon making contact with his head made Robin wince.

  Harry Half-hand waited until the travellers were a few paces along the road in front of him then stepped from behind the big oak, his sword drawn and brandishing his hook menacingly, knowing the sight of it often made men nervous.

  “Hold!” he commanded, as Arthur and Robin, longbows aimed at the group, stepped from their hiding places in front of the merchant’s party.

  The merchant looked shocked at the sight of the outlaws, the mercenaries just looked angry to have been ambushed so easily as they turned to face Harry.

  “You two – drop the weapons,” the outlaw ordered the guards. “Let’s make this nice and easy. If any of you make a wrong move, my pals there” – he gestured towards the grim faced Robin and Arthur – “will put a nice thick arrow in your guts.”

  The merchant glared at Harry. “You want my purse, I assume, wolf’s head?”

  The outlaw grinned. “Aye that I do, so toss it over here and you can be on your way, and no one gets my hook in their face. You two” – he gestured at the two mercenaries. “Drop your weapons and move on. I promise you, we won’t harm you and, let’s be honest, you don’t have many options anyway.”

  The guards looked at each other, and then the eldest shrugged and dropped his mace on the ground with a heavy thud. “They could have shot us already if they wanted us dead,” he told his companion, who nodded agreement and dropped his own weapon.

  As the two men walked warily off along the road, Harry nodded in satisfaction. “Now we just need your purse, merchant.”

  Arthur had kept his bow trained on the mercenaries as they moved further along the path. Robin could see the merchant had tears in his eyes and dismissed him as a weakling, training his bow again on the unarmed guardsmen who were, by now, a good thirty paces away.

  “Here!” From the corner of his eye Robin saw the merchant reach into his belt for his purse and relaxed his aim. This had been even easier than he’d expected. Adam would be pleased with them…hopefully the others had been as lucky in their robbery of the rich lady in Pontefract.

  Distracted, he saw Arthur’s eyes grow wide in horror, and turned to look at Harry Half-hand.

  The older man was lying in the dirt of the forest floor, blood bubbling from his mouth, a small dagger in his windpipe.

  Still, Robin didn’t see the merchant as a threat, his eyes searching the trees for the source of the dagger, until the horseman suddenly kicked his mount and bolted along the road towards the startled mercenaries.

  Arthur loosed his arrow, the shaft, as thick as a man’s thumb, slamming into the merchant’s back just under his neck, throwing the rider onto the ground. The horse ran on for a few seconds before it came to a halt and stood, head bowed, oblivious or uninterested in its master’s death.

  “What the hell?” Robin cried, his bow still trained on the confused mercenaries who continued to back away along the trail. “What happened?” he demanded, looking at Arthur.

  “You were supposed to be watching the merchant!” Arthur retorted. “Harry told you! The little bastard had a throwing dagger in his belt! He got Harry with it!”

  The two guardsmen, desperate just to get away from this alive, had reached a turn in the road and suddenly sprinted away, much to Robin’s relief.

  “Oh shit,” he gasped, rushing over to the downed outlaw. “He’s dead!”

  “Of course he’s fucking dead!” Arthur shouted. “He’s got a dagger in his throat – makes it hard to breathe! Come on.”

  The young man took the weapons from Harry’s corpse then jogged over to the merchant he’d shot.

  “Grab the horse,” he told Robin, who, dazed, moved to do as he was told while Arthur used his dagger to cut the merchant’s purse from his belt. “Right, let’s go.”

  “What about Harry?” Robin asked.

  “Unless you want to carry him – or dig him a grave” – Arthur growled – “leave him for the wildlife. And next time you’re told to watch someone – bloody watch them!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Robert the Bruce? Fuck off!”

  “I’m telling you,” Friar Tuck nodded his tonsured head solemnly, despite Will Scarlet’s disbelieving laughter. “That’s what people are saying: the earl of Lancaster has been seeking an alliance with the Scots.”

  It was a warm, humid night in the second week of June. The forest was pitch black and silent for miles around apart from the sounds of insects and laughing outlaws. Harry Half-hand’s death was mostly forgotten by everyone except Robin already. Life was cheap when you were an outlaw.

  Robin knew the man’s death was his fault though – his lack of experience had made him focus on the two mercenaries, rather than seeing everyone as a threat, even the apparently harmless merchant. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  The campfire blazed merrily in the middle of the small clearing, for light rather than heat, and Adam Bell shrugged his shoulders, looking at Tuck seriously.

  “I wouldn’t blame him if he’s been talking to the Bruce.”

  Scarlet leaned forward on tree stump he was sitting on, his laughter replaced by indignation. “You wouldn’t blame him? He’s supposed to be defending our people from those bastard Scots, not forming alliances with them!”

  Robin watched as Adam took a drink from his ale. He was surprised to see his leader glaring at Will – one of his most trusted confidants – with a look of utter disdain, but the expression only lasted a moment before it was replaced with a smooth smile, and no one else seemed to notice.

  “Perhaps,” Adam grunted, “the earl of Lancaster thought enlisting the aid of the Scots an acceptable price to pay in order to remove England’s worthless King? Sometimes a leader has to work with people he knows are beneath him.”

  Robin was watching closely again as Bell’s eyes lingered on Will scornfully, but Friar Tuck’s booming voice drew everyone’s eyes to him.

  “That sounds like Prior de Monte Martini trusting me with his wagon,” he laughed, “the good lord knows he saw me as being far beneath him.”

  “He was right an’ all,” Little John grinned.

  Robin and the rest of the outlaws smiled at that as Tuck continued.

  “I wonder what happened when those two guards got back down to Lewes and told the bastard his cart had been stolen.”

  * * *

  After the raid on the prior’s money cart the two surviving guards decided it might be safer if they returned to where they started their journey, in York, rather than going on , empty handed, to de Monte Martini away down in Lewes with the bad news. So, it took some time before news reached the prior of the theft. When he discovered it was Adam Bell and his gang who had stolen all his money he was enraged even further.

  “Adam Bell! Bell has my money! Do you know how much money there was in that cart?” de Monte Martini roared at his bottler, Ralph, throwing the letter from York onto his desk. “Two hundred marks! That’s how much!” He began pacing the chamber furiously, wringing his hands as he did so.

  Ralph was astonished at the figure. Two hundred marks was a substantial amount of money, even by the prior’s standards. He simply nodded dumbly, trying his best not to irritate the irate de Monte Martini.

  Ever since the prior had been attacked by Robin, he had felt a burning, and thoroughly un-Christian desire, for revenge. It had taken weeks for his shattered nose to heal well enoug
h for him to breathe properly, and even now, he knew he would bear the disfigurement for the rest of his life.

  “Do you know what makes it worse, Ralph? When that bastard Robin Hood disappeared, the rumours in Wakefield said he had joined Adam Bell’s gang. So that young piece of scum breaks my nose, then escapes justice and now he’s sitting enjoying my money!” The prior picked up a silver goblet, which Ralph had just filled with wine for him, and smashed it against the wall. “Summon that bailiff from Wakefield! If he won’t put in the effort to catch those outlaws on his own, maybe I should offer him a reward to do it!”

  The bottler needed no more persuading to flee the room.

  * * *

  The weather grew even hotter as summer fully settled on Barnsdale, the trees and bushes becoming thick with foliage and flowers to hide in, and many ripe, juicy berries to eat.

  Like the flora, Robin had also grown and matured during his weeks in the greenwood.

  The time he spent every day, sparring with John, Will and the other men, and firing the great longbow at straw targets hung from trees had changed Robin in ways he had never foreseen. Physically, his body had become a hard, fighting machine: he had enormously powerful arms and shoulders from a young age, thanks to his practice with the bow, but now the rest of his body had filled out with muscle too, yet he retained the grace and speed he had always been blessed with. He could outfight, and outshoot, most of the other outlaws in practice now.

  He had also taken to questioning Adam about military tactics. It was never mentioned explicitly, but Adam accepted that the outlaws knew he had been a soldier at some point in his past, and he was open to discussing the strategic aspects of it with any who had an interest. Until Robin had joined the group, only Will had really had the desire, or aptitude, to understand cavalry formations, use of terrain, siege warfare or any number of other martial topics. While Will had been a mercenary previously, so already had an idea of things like how to use higher ground, Robin had never thought about such things until he’d become an outlaw.

  Adam took Will Scarlet aside one warm afternoon as the men were practising. Robin was sparring with Little John, both men using wooden swords, and Bell watched with interest.

  “What do you make of our new recruit?”

  Will looked in Robin’s direction, as the young man expertly deflected a thrust from John and stepped inside the bigger man’s guard with a “killing” blow of his own.

  “He’s improved a lot since he joined us a few weeks ago,” Will shrugged. “But you could see from the day he first came here that he had something about him none of these other lads have.”

  Bell nodded agreement. “And yet, don’t you find it remarkable just how much he’s improved in such a short space of time?”

  The sounds of Robin and John sparring ferociously, the grunting of exertion and the clicking and thumping of wood upon wood filled the air. Most of the other outlaws had stopped their own practising to watch, as the giant and the newcomer traded blow after blow, neither managing to land a clean strike for a long time.

  “What are you getting at?” Will wondered. “You think he’s not the innocent little villager he says he is?”

  Bell crossed his arms, fascinated by the sparring match before them. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “His story checks out, as far as I can tell. And yet . . . give him a few months and he’ll be a better swordsman, or archer, than anyone else in this group.”

  There was a loud cheer as Little John, tiring, suddenly dropped his practice sword and rushed forward, grinning madly, to grab Robin in a great bear hug.

  “Yield!” the giant roared with breathless laughter, as his opponent’s face turned crimson and he gasped in surrender.

  “You alright, there, Hood?” Matt Groves cackled, looking around at the laughing outlaws. “Maybe we should start calling you Scarlet, instead of Will. Your face looks like it’s about to explode!”

  Robin collapsed onto the grass beside John, panting like a thirsty dog. “Fuck…off…Groves…!”

  “Aye, fuck off Matt,” Little John roared with a massive grin, slapping Robin on the back defensively. “You sour faced little twat.”

  Will looked at Adam with a small smile. “Who knows? Maybe he’s King Arthur reincarnated and that’s why he’s got all this potential. I’ll tell you something though: he’s not just going to be a good fighter – he’s going to be a leader one day too. The men have all taken to him like an old friend.”

  “All except Matt,” Adam grunted, gesturing towards the surly Groves as the men lost interest and returned to their own sparring matches.

  Will nodded agreement. “Aye . . . but Matt doesn’t like anyone.”

  “Time I reminded them all who’s in charge then, eh?” Bell grunted and walked over to Groves, taking his wooden sword from him and turning to face Robin who still lay on the ground catching his breath with a smile on his face.

  Adam Bell never sparred with the other men, instead practising in private with Will or John. Robin assumed this was so no one could ever publicly best Adam, which would perhaps undermine his authority.

  “Right, Robin, time I tested you myself. Grab your weapon, lad.”

  Robin looked up in surprise, before scrambling to his feet and lifting his heavy practice sword from the grass. He had started sparring with a wooden sword that was nearly double the weight of his steel sword. Will had shown him this trick, telling him the invading Roman legionaries used to train with similar weapons a thousand years ago. Once your body got used to using such a heavy sword in practice, fighting with a lighter steel sword in the heat of a real battle was much easier.

  Not all of the outlaws practised with the heavy wooden swords though – Will and Adam were the only other two who bothered. Little John tended to stick to his enormous quarterstaff, young Gareth didn’t have the strength, and Tuck simply said it was too much effort since he was a man of peace with a group of strong outlaws around to defend him in a fight.

  Robin had struggled greatly with the heavy weapon at first, despite his thickly muscled arms, but Will assured him it would be worth it in the long run, so he persevered with it, suffering defeat after defeat in his bouts with the other men. Eventually, though, he became used to the heavy practice sword, wielding it almost as easily as he could one of normal weight.

  As their leader walked into the practice area, rolling his shoulders and swinging his arms to warm the muscles up, the other men looked at each other in surprise. Of all the people Adam could have sparred with, they didn’t expect him to pick Robin Hood – simply because they thought Robin might win.

  Will shrugged as Little John threw him a questioning look, while Robin, also looking perplexed, moved across, set his feet in a defensive stance and prepared to take on his captain.

  The young man knew that Adam was not using one of the heavier practice swords, as he was – Matt Groves never did. Robin was also out of breath and tired from his efforts of the past hour or so, while Bell was fresh. He realised Bell intended to send a message to the men here. At his expense.

  A light rain started to fall as the two combatants began to circle one another, Bell making the odd feint or lunge to warm his muscles up, while Robin was content to move and watch, trying to get the measure of his opponent, enjoying the cooling shower after his exertions sparring with John.

  Bell flicked his sword almost impossibly fast at Robin’s midriff, but, in a blur, Robin parried the blow, reversed his weapon and aimed his own, blocked, attack at Bell’s stomach and the two men fell apart, both breathing a little heavier.

  Although Adam had watched his young recruit’s progress, he found it disconcerting to finally come up against Robin’s astonishingly fast reflexes. He had hoped to gain a significant advantage by using the lighter sword, but all it seemed to do was even things up somewhat.

  Little John had often told Robin of Adam’s skill as a swordsman. The big man had been in countless battles beside his leader, seeing at first hand how fast, agile, strong
and utterly ruthless he was. But Robin could see the trepidation in Bell’s eyes – his first attack had been easily rebuffed and it had shaken the man.

  For a few minutes more they sparred, the anger growing in Adam’s eyes as he realised he might not be able to beat the young yeoman.

  Robin’s adrenaline was pumping, as he fended off Bell’s attacks, but he held himself in check. He felt like he could explode into a combination of moves his rival would have no defence against, but he knew beating the outlaw leader would be a huge mistake.

  He wanted Adam to respect him, value him – teach him his skills.

  He did not want Adam to fear him or feel Robin’s presence undermined him.

  His eyes took on a hunted, fearful look, as he wiped the rain from his forehead with his sleeve then, with a bellow, swung a wide blow at Bell’s left side, but his right foot suddenly slipped on the wet grass. Bell easily warded off the half-completed swing and stepped forward to hammer his sword against his hapless opponent’s ribs. Robin collapsed on the wet grass with a cry, his hand grasping feebly at his injured side – it felt like Bell had cracked a couple of his ribs.

  The outlaws cheered, and Bell smiled at them triumphantly. Little John clapped him on the shoulder in congratulation as he walked past to kneel by Robin.

  “You all right, lad? That sounded painful.”

  “It was painful!” Robin forced himself to his feet, still clutching his side, and looked at Bell. “You got me, Adam – too fast for me.” He grimaced in pain, and moved out of the practice area, grasping a jug of ale someone thrust at him.

  The other men began talking excitedly about the fight, recounting the best bits, embellishing things so it sounded like a much more exciting contest than it had actually been.

  Adam came over and sat beside Robin. A mug of ale had been handed to him too. “That was a good fight, lad. I almost thought you were going to be too good for me there.”