Wolf's Head (The Forest Lord)

by Steven A McKay

  “You know where that young savage Hood is hiding?” de Faucumberg asked, leaning forward and eyeing Gurdon thoughtfully.

  “I do. What’s more, in return for pardon and a chance to serve in your guard, I’ll lead you straight to Hood and the rest of his gang. Seventeen outlaws, my lord, in one fell swoop.”

  The sheriff crossed his legs and stroked his chin in an almost theatrical manner, as he pondered the implications of Gurdon’s proposal. While it was in his power to pardon the outlaw, he knew the disgraced former lords of Stamford Gilbert ad Pontem and John Chapman. When they had been imprisoned they had sent word to de Faucumberg offering to pay for any information he might have that would help them ruin Adam Gurdon. He had gladly told them Gurdon had once been a Templar knight – de Faucumberg had been disgusted by his former bailiff’s behaviour in Stamford and it galled him to know the man was walking the streets a free man after ruining so many people’s lives.

  Besides, ad Pontem and Chapman had paid him well for the information.

  But they had been released from prison by now, de Faucumberg knew, and had been restored to positions of relative power and influence. They would not look too kindly on the man who pardoned Adam Gurdon.

  Still, it was his duty as sheriff to uphold the king’s law, no matter who it upset.

  “This Robin Hood must be brought to justice,” de Faucumberg stated firmly. “He killed a bailiff for God’s sake. If you can deliver him and his friends to me it’ll send a powerful signal to the rest of the outlaws around here. It might also shut up that nagging prior from Lewes. I’m sick of his whining letters.” The sheriff shook his head in disgust. “You will have your pardon.”

  Gurdon smiled widely and thanked the sheriff with a bow. “You will not regret it, my lord.”

  De Faucumberg stared at him and nodded. “I hope not. Now, before you lead my men into the forest, you must meet Sir Ranulph de Craon. Normally, a man of your particular military skill would find employ as the captain of my guard. But Sir Ranulph already holds that position. You will serve under him.”

  A bearded, haughty-looking bear of a man stepped forward from behind the sheriff’s chair and gazed at Gurdon, who felt a little dismayed as he realised he wouldn’t be walking into quite as powerful a position as he had hoped.

  “Of course, lord sheriff. I will serve in whatever capacity you deem fit.”

  “Good. De Craon will take you to the quartermaster and have you kitted out although you look surprisingly well fed for one who’s been scratching an existence in the forest for years.” The sheriff stared again straight at Adam, his eyes questioning. “How do you know so much about these outlaws anyway, Gurdon? While I can believe you had to live with those criminal scum, I cannot believe you allowed any of them to tell you what to do. In fact…now that I think on it, that particular area of the Yorkshire forest has been plagued by a particularly well-organised outlaw band for…well, years. About the same length of time as you were there, probably.”

  Gurdon opened his mouth to reply – he had expected questions like this and had concocted an elaborate story to explain how he had served under an English former noble called Adam Bell, but the sheriff raised his hand.

  “Never mind. I’ve heard all about this Adam Bell, I expect you took orders from him.”

  Gurdon nodded in relief, sensing the danger pass.

  “You do seem to match Adam Bell’s description very closely though. You even share his Christian name…”

  Sir Ranulph de Craon looked questioningly at de Faucumberg and placed a wary hand on his sword hilt, not sure where this was leading, but the sheriff gave a humourless laugh. “Ah well, that can be a story for another day, eh? Sir Ranulph, take our new sergeant and see he is kitted out. Then take thirty men into Barnsdale Forest and destroy Robin Hood and his friends.”

  “My lord.” De Craon gave a shallow bow, and gestured Gurdon to follow him out of the hall.

  “I take it you have a plan how to do this, Adam,” de Faucumberg asked as the pair walked from the room. “I mean, without my men being wiped out by those blasted longbows the outlaws favour?”

  Gurdon smiled grimly. “Don’t worry Sir Henry. I know how the outlaws live. Thirty of your men will be more than enough to destroy these vermin once and for all.”

  * * *

  “Wake up, Matt! Allan, get up! We have to move – everyone, up!”

  Robin moved quickly around the outlaw’s camp, shaking, shouting and gently kicking everyone awake.

  Little John had finally, after talking to Friar Tuck and hearing what he had to say, agreed to lead the men to a new campsite – just in case Robin’s theory was right. John had sought out Will to discuss it with him, but Scarlet was lying near the fire, curled under his blanket, staring at nothing, and simply waved the big man away with an angry growl when he tried to talk.

  John knew they were safe during the night – only a fool would lead armed men into Barnsdale in the dark hunting outlaws, and Adam was no fool. So he had decided to let the men rest until first light, then they would pack up and be on their way.

  The sun was only just beginning to crest the horizon so the outlaws had little light to see what they were doing under the thick foliage around their camp, and the thick morning dew lent the air a chilly atmosphere.

  “I don’t understand what the bloody hurry is.” Matt Groves was in a foul mood, and didn’t appreciate being told to get up and ready to move when no one had explained to him what was going on. “Has someone found us? Are there foresters about?”

  “We’ll explain it all once we’re on the move,” Robin replied, loud enough for the other men to hear, so he didn’t have to keep repeating himself. “Just help us get all the gear together ready to go.”

  “Just because Adam ain’t here, doesn’t mean you’re the leader now, Hood!” Groves spat, moving towards the young man “Don’t you start ordering me about!”

  Luckily Little John came to Robin’s aid, grabbing Matt by the arm with a fierce look that warned of further argument. “Look, it doesn’t matter right now why we’re moving. Just get your stuff together and move. Or stay here if you like, maybe this is all a waste of time and we’re leading you out of a nice comfortable campsite for nothing. Your choice, Matt, but the rest of us are going.”

  “You bought into it then,” Will shook his head at Little John. “This is a wild goose chase.”

  “If you’d let me talk to you last night instead of having a tantrum you’d have heard what Robin – and Tuck – had to say,” John retorted angrily. “If this is a waste of time, so be it. I’d rather waste a little time moving camp than hanging around and getting a forester’s sword up my arse.”

  In an extreme emergency the outlaws could escape the camp in a few minutes, and fade away into the trees so anyone hunting them would have little chance of finding them. Robin was sure they had enough time to collect together all their belongings before Gurdon and the sheriff’s men were upon them, so, although they were in a hurry, nothing was left behind and they were on the move within half an hour, with little trace left to show they had ever been there. Another half an hour later, the outlaw band had travelled a fair distance to the west, along the road to Kirklees, in the opposite direction to Nottingham, where Robin knew Adam Gurdon would come from.

  “Right, Hood – that’s us left our nice comfy camp behind us.” Matt looked at Little John. “Where are we going? And what about Adam?”

  “Adam is the reason we’ve had to leave the camp. He’s betrayed us.” Robin expected some extreme reaction to this news from the volatile Groves – anger, fury, threats of violence and vengeance maybe. He hadn’t expected him to laugh.

  “Adam’s betrayed us? We left the camp because you say Adam’s betrayed us? Why would he do that?”

  Matt had stopped walking and, as his initial amused disbelief at Robin’s claim wore off, he began to get annoyed again. The rest of the outlaws halted as well and every eye turned to Robin to hear what he had to say about
their missing leader.

  “He’s betrayed us to the sheriff: to be pardoned. Where do you think he’s been the past couple of days?”

  “I don’t believe I’m hearing this. Are you listening to this shit, John? You know Adam – he’d never betray us. And now this…boy, tells us Adam’s turned us all in?” He looked back at Robin, “If Adam’s not around any more, we’ll be needing a new leader, eh? I expect you think that’ll be you? If you think I’m taking orders from you…”

  “Will you give it a rest for a fucking minute?” Little John rounded on Groves, his face like thunder. “Give Robin a chance to speak!”

  For all Robin’s leadership instincts, and Matt’s accusations that he wanted to take control of the gang, Robin wasn’t used to addressing all the outlaws at once. He felt his cheeks flush as he looked around at the people he had spent the last few months living and fighting alongside.

  “I’m telling you, it’s the truth, I’m sure of it. Adam Bell wasn’t who he claimed to be. He was a disgraced knight or something, not some peasant folk hero.”

  Friar Tuck held up a hand as some of the men began to jeer and laugh at this. “He’s right.” His powerful orator’s voice cut through the hubbub, and he told them all what he had heard when the sheriff’s soldiers, with their Norman captain, had attacked their camp.

  Will, who of all the outlaws had been closest to Adam Bell, couldn’t or simply didn’t want to, accept what he was hearing. “If you knew Bell was really some kind of noble why the hell didn’t you tell the rest of us?” he shouted.

  “Would you have believed us?” Tuck asked gently.

  “No!” Will dropped his belongings on the forest floor and grabbed Robin’s cloak, pinning him against a tree. “And I don’t believe you now either! I’ve been part of this gang for three years and Adam’s done right by us all that time. I don’t give a fuck what you have to say about him – he wouldn’t betray us! We’re brothers, we look after each other – Adam more than anyone.”

  It was true; Adam Bell had been a good enough leader. Not exactly a friend to any of the outlaws, not even Will. Bell had always seemed aloof – superior to everyone else. But he had kept them safe from the law and kept their bellies full even in the horrendously harsh winters of recent years, when so many people all over Europe had starved.

  Adam may not have been well liked by the men of the gang, but he was highly respected and, perhaps more importantly, trusted by them. Many of them had seen how he reacted on the couple of occasions over the years when former members had tried to betray them to the law – Adam had hunted those turncoats down and killed them without mercy.

  Bell had always appeared to live by a violent code of honour that made it so hard to believe he could betray them all to the very people they had been hiding from for so long.

  Robin could see the outlaws would never accept what he was telling them – in fact, their disbelief would soon turn to distrust and his position within the group would become untenable. He had to prove what he said was true.

  “Damn it! I wanted us to get as far away from him as possible, but if you insist on seeing for yourselves, fine. Let’s make a temporary camp here, and then we can go and watch our great leader bringing his new friends to butcher us.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Adam Gurdon and Sir Ranulph de Craon had left Nottingham Castle at dawn that morning, with thirty men. All were mounted on warhorses, although these weren’t armoured since they were purely for transportation to and from the forest, and would not be used in any fighting. The men themselves were all seasoned fighting men, clad in good quality chain mail which would keep them fairly manoeuvrable in the tight confines of Barnsdale Forest.

  In a straight fight, twenty or so lightly armoured outlaws would stand little chance against such a force. And Gurdon expected this to be far from a straight fight – this was to be a massacre. Adam would take care of the lookouts at the outlaws’ camp himself – he would know roughly where they would be, since he himself had organised the protocols for choosing the positions of such lookout posts. The lookouts themselves would not see any danger in the form of “Adam Bell” approaching, making it easy for the pardoned soldier to dispatch them.

  It would then be a simple matter for the sheriff’s men to walk into the unsuspecting outlaws’ camp and massacre every one of them before they had a chance to fight back.

  It was a straightforward plan, but one that seemed infallible. Gurdon was convinced it would work, and de Craon, while not overeager to commit to a possible rival’s plan, was content to see how things went. Even if the outlaws sprung the trap, there seemed little danger to de Craon’s men. They were simply too well armed, too well trained, and too battle-hardened. De Craon was also no fool, and understood the outlaws had probably been made leaderless with the defection of “Adam Bell”.

  “You were a Templar, Gurdon?”

  It was still quite dark, the thick trees running along the side of the road blocking much of the slowly rising sun’s light.

  Adam, hunched over his horse, cloak wrapped around him to ward off the chill glanced warily over at his new captain. “I was. For years I fought the Saracens in Armenia and Syria. I decided to come home when we lost Tortosa – it was clear to me the order was dying.”

  De Craon growled angrily. “They were a fine Order – it was a disgrace what happened to them.”

  Adam grunted agreement but didn’t particularly feel like discussing something that could still see him arrested.

  “How did you come to meet the sheriff?”

  “I saved his life,” Gurdon replied. “I’d come home to Stamford and couldn’t find a decent job. I was in the local alehouse when a fight broke out and a man attacked de Faucumberg with a dagger. I smashed a chair over the man’s head. De Faucumberg offered me employment as his bailiff.”

  De Craon rode on in thoughtful silence for a while before turning to Gurdon again.

  “You’ve lived with these fugitives for years. Yet here you are leading a force of men to destroy them. Did you form no friendships with any of these outlaws?”

  Gurdon snorted. “Friendships? No. How could I ever empathise enough with a bunch of simple peasants to the extent I’d form friendships? We were simply too different, although I managed to play my part well enough to fool them into thinking I was just another yeoman fallen on hard times.” He looked frankly at de Craon. “I formed no friendships, because I’m not the type. I’m too self-centred to have made many friends in my life, never mind any of those outlaw scum. I admit I did develop a grudging respect and admiration for some of them though.”

  The sun started to appear above the treetops, throwing soft shadows on the old Roman road behind the armoured horsemen, and, as birdsong and the almost hypnotic, rhythmic drumming of hooves filled the cool morning air, the forest seemed a wonderfully peaceful place.

  “Tell me, then. Who of these wolf’s heads impressed you?” De Craon seemed genuinely interested in Gurdon’s opinion of the outlaws, perhaps planning ahead in case anything went wrong with the morning’s work.

  “There’s a friar, he joined the group not long ago. An overweight, jolly-looking man, but he’s incredibly strong, and can use a sword or quarterstaff almost as well as any man I’ve ever met. You should have a couple of your men take care of him as soon as possible – he could cause problems otherwise.”

  “Go on,” de Craon prompted.

  “My . . .” Gurdon looked hurriedly at Sir Ranulph, realising he had given away his role as leader of the outlaw band with one careless word. But the damage was done, and he understood de Craon probably knew all about his former role as Adam Bell anyway, so he carried on, “. . . the . . . second in command, was William Scaflock, or Will Scarlet as you probably know him. Although I was closer to him than any of the other outlaws, he would skin me alive if he knew I’d betrayed him. He’s a good fighter, nothing particularly special normally, but he’s filled with so much rage and hatred that I sometimes feared he would even tur
n on us, his companions, during the night. I believe his mind has snapped to some extent – he barely holds himself together. All he seems to live for is to kill nobles and any lawmen who might try to stop him. Of all the outlaws, you should take him down first, before he’s aware of what’s happening. There’ll be no reasoning with him.”

  Sir Ranulph de Craon looked thoughtful as his horse picked its way around a fallen tree, glancing all around himself, constantly alert for danger, hand on his sword hilt. “What about this Robin Hood, the one we’re here for? What’s so special about him?”

  Gurdon’s horse carefully followed the route de Craon’s horse had taken, scattering old, partially rotted orange and brown leaves left over from the previous autumn. Gurdon felt a shiver down his spine, yet couldn’t have said why. He shrugged. “I’m not sure. He’s young and seems guileless in his dealings with the rest of the men. To all appearances he’s just another yeoman with a temper that got him into trouble. Certainly, that’s how he sees himself. Yet . . .” Gurdon shrugged. “There’s more to him, but I was never sure what. He can fight with a sword far better than the training we gave him warrants. He shoots with incredible accuracy, better than any man I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen some master marksmen, believe me. He has instinctual knowledge of battlefield tactics, without knowing himself where his understanding comes from…And he has a sixth sense for approaching danger.”

  Sir Ranulph looked over sharply at Gurdon, who shrugged. “He’s no soothsayer. Don’t worry, he won’t see our approach in his crystal ball, he just seemed to sometimes have an uncanny edge over his opponents.” Gurdon paused, lost in thought for a few minutes. “Given a few years, Hood could become a fighter of unsurpassed skill, and a leader to match it. He almost beat me not too long ago . . .”

  Gurdon’s reputation as a swordsman had preceded him, and de Craon knew his new sergeant was utterly deadly with a blade, so the admission that such a young yeoman wolf’s head had almost bested him was surprisingly honest.