Wolf's Head (The Forest Lord)

by Steven A McKay

  It was midnight.

  An hour later the guard, Gilbert, was asleep at his post.

  * * *

  “Ready?” Sir Richard-at-Lee rose from his bed and patted his ribs where he had concealed his dagger.

  Stephen grunted assent and stood up with his companion.

  They would need to move quickly and quietly through the house, so both men left off their plate mail, only wearing their gambesons for protection. They had, as was the custom, surrendered their swords at the gatehouse, but Stephen, like his lord, had concealed his dagger within his clothes. Besides, these were no common soldiers: Richard and his sergeant had fought alongside the elite Hospitaller and Templar knights during the Crusades. These two men were highly trained killers.

  Robin and his outlaws could have stumbled upon no better allies.

  “Let’s go.” Sir Richard quietly pulled open the door to their chamber and slipped out into the dimly lit hallway, followed silently by his grim-faced sergeant-at-arms.

  When they had arrived back at de Bray’s earlier in the evening, the fat lord had not been pleased to see them, although he had been courteous enough to allow them dinner – a thin, greasy, beef broth.

  “You again, Hospitaller?” the lord grimaced, spilling his soup down his chins. “What d’you want this time? You’ll be expecting me to put you up for the night eh, as well as feed you.”

  Richard-at-Lee knew his part well, though, and begged de Bray, again, for a loan to pay off his debts. “I’ll be ruined, John,” he wheedled. “Please, for the love of God, all I ask is fifty pounds. I’ll repay you, with interest.”

  John de Bray snorted derisively. “Listen, you’re never going to raise the money you owe the abbot, so you might as well give up now. I’ve been offered some of your lands for a very fair price too,” he grinned wickedly as the big Hospitaller clenched his fists in silent rage. “Once the abbot legally takes full control of your holdings, he’s promised to let me have some of them – the ones adjoining my lands, at Kirklees. I’ll need a bailiff to take care of them though. Maybe you would think of applying for the position? You know the area after all.”

  De Bray burst out laughing at that.

  “You’re a filthy piece of dog shit,” Sir Richard growled. “I should” –

  “Enough of this!” roared de Bray. “Make no threats against me in my own manor house, Hospitaller. Especially when you’re here expecting a bed for the night. Your Order demands that you surrender all your property to them when you join – yet you retained your old lands against those rules. You’re lucky I’m not sending a messenger to your Grand Prior telling him of your corruption.”

  He waved a hand dismissively.

  “Get out. You can take your soup with you. My steward will show you to your beds. Be grateful I’m not kicking you back out into the night.”

  Sir Richard and Stephen had stalked angrily from the room with their bowls of tepid broth.

  Now, in the dead of night, the Hospitaller and his man were going to teach Lord de Bray a lesson in humility.

  Voices came from the great hall. It sounded like a couple of men were having a late game of dice. Stephen and Sir Richard, who was gingerly carrying his bowl of cold soup with him, clung to the shadows as they crept along the hall silently. Their passing wasn’t noticed by the gamers.

  “Shouldn’t we deal with them just now?” Stephen whispered.

  Sir Richard shook his head. “Our priority is opening the gates for the outlaws. We can’t get sidetracked.”

  They crept along the corridor, moving silently between the shadows cast by the few dim torches de Bray allowed to be lit at night.

  Sir Richard held up a hand as they reached the front door. “This door creaks a little when opened, I noticed on the way in.” He poured his bowl of greasy soup onto the hinges. “Be ready to move fast. If the guard is alert he’ll have the whole place awake before we can silence him.”

  Stephen nodded and pulled his dagger out from the sheath hidden in his thick sock. Richard drew his own weapon and, as gently as he could, raised the wooden bar that held the doors locked.

  He pushed it open a touch and the two men cringed, half expecting a creaking noise to betray them, despite the lubricating broth smearing the hinges, but there was no sound from the door, and no cry of alarm from the gatehouse.

  Sir Richard slipped out in a crouch and edged towards the main door and the gently glowing light of the guardsman’s brazier.

  Stephen remained at the inner door, to prevent anyone locking them out and undoing the entire plan.

  As the big Hospitaller crept towards the gatehouse the sound of gentle snoring reached him and he shook his head. Falling asleep while on duty was a heinous crime – one that could lead to the deaths of everyone you were supposed to be helping protect. Richard smiled grimly at his own good fortune though, as he peered into the gatehouse and saw the red-haired guard slumped against the wall, completely relaxed and oblivious to the doom that was coming for him.

  Sir Richard hadn’t expected the man to be asleep, and, as he slid towards the snoring figure, he wondered if he could simply tie him up rather than killing him. The Hospitaller must have made a sound then, though, or perhaps Gilbert the guard finally sensed something amiss, as his eyes flickered open wildly, and he gasped in shock at the sight of the armed man right in front of him.

  Sir Richard’s dagger slammed straight into the slim white throat of the young guard, crimson spraying wildly, and a low, tortured gurgling filled the small gatehouse.

  Richard dropped the body on the floor, and wiped his dagger on Gilbert’s sleeve. “God forgive me,” he murmured sorrowfully, thinking of his own murdered son, then he quickly lifted the bar on the main doors and swung them wide open.

  A moment later the outlaws, all ten of them, appeared like wraiths from the gloom of the night.

  “Good work!” Little John, looking even more massive and terrifying in the darkness, clapped Sir Richard on the arm.

  “Any trouble?” Robin wondered, as the party moved inside. They pulled the doors closed behind them, although they left them unbarred in case they needed to escape quickly.

  Sir Richard shook his head. “One guard. Sleeping, the stupid bastard. I would have spared him, but he woke up and left me no choice. Stephen’s inside watching for us.” He moved back into the gatehouse as they passed, emerging a moment later with his and Stephen’s surrendered swords.

  “Let’s find de Bray,” he growled.

  Will grabbed him by the arm. “You leave him alive, Hospitaller!” he warned. “Whatever that bastard’s done to you is nothing – nothing – compared to the scores I’ve got to settle with him. We leave him alive – his time will come soon enough.”

  Richard, the shame of his earlier meeting with de Bray still burning in him, opened his mouth to argue, but the intensity in Will Scarlet’s green eyes made him pause.

  “Fair enough,” he shrugged, eventually, before his wide face broke into an evil grin. “Let’s go and clean the fucker out!”

  Two of the outlaws remained at the gatehouse to prevent anyone escaping into the village and raising the hue and cry. The rest of the men split into three small groups – one group for each of the storeys in the manor house.

  Sir Richard and Stephen tied linen round the lower part of their faces so no one would recognise them, and went with Robin and Little John to the upper level, where the lord and his family’s quarters were.

  Will Scarlet took Matt Groves and the brawny young lad from Bichill, Arthur, to the middle floor, while Friar Tuck, Much and Allan-a-Dale headed for the undercroft and the servant’s area.

  “Remember,” Robin cautioned quietly. “The guards are probably skilled enough, and they’ll be decently armoured, so be careful.”

  “Aye,” Little John nodded. “And try not to kill any of the servants!”

  The house appeared silent, and was only very dimly lit by the occasional flickering torch on the grey stone walls. To the outlaws,
unused to being indoors, the place gave them an eerie feeling, and enhanced the sense of danger as they all moved into the building, weapons drawn, alert to any threats.

  “No talking from here on,” Sir Richard told John and Robin, automatically assuming command of his small group. The two outlaws were happy to accept his guidance – he did, after all, know a lot more about manor houses and, indeed, leadership of soldiers. They nodded in agreement and the two Hospitallers led the way silently upstairs.

  As they reached the landing, Robin, the lightest on his feet of the four, placed a hand on Sir Richard’s arm and moved past him into the long hallway from which the bedrooms led off. The other three waited as the young outlaw leader scouted ahead, taking note of the glow from the occasional guttering torch to make sure he remained hidden by the shadows.

  “Huh?” a deep voice grunted in surprise and the sound of a man getting to his feet came to Robin as he passed a dim alcove. The outlaw spun back to his right and slammed the pommel of his dagger into the guard’s face. The noise of bone and cartilage breaking seemed deafeningly loud, and the man gave a squeal as Robin moved in and battered the weapon against his temple, knocking him to the floor, blood beginning to cake his broken nose and face. Robin bent down and, taking out some rope, hurriedly tied the unconscious guard’s hands and feet together.

  He waited, breathlessly, half expecting someone to raise the alarm, but the hallway remained silent.

  Robin moved quickly back to his waiting companions and motioned them forward.

  “The guard won’t bother us. Which room is de Bray’s?”

  Sir Richard pushed ahead and waved the others after him as he made his way to a door in the middle of the hallway. “You two,” the knight whispered, “deal with de Bray and his wife. Me and Stephen will deal with anyone that comes out of these rooms. Since we’re going to leave the bastard alive, it’d be best if he doesn’t see me, right?”

  Robin and John nodded as Richard extinguished all but one of the torches, making the hallway even more foreboding, but also harder for anyone to make out what was going on, should they stumble out of their room in alarm. Richard handed the final torch to Little John and moved off to the end of the hallway, while his sergeant took up a position at the opposite end of the hall.

  John placed his hand on de Bray’s chamber door and lifted the iron latch slowly, then pushed the door open. A horrendous creaking filled the hallway, and Robin hurried into the bedroom as John’s torch flooded the room with a hellish orange glow.

  Lord de Bray was a light sleeper and was half out of his luxurious bed when Robin’s fist slammed into his face. He roared in surprise but the young outlaw continued his attack, using his elbows and knees to bring de Bray to the ground, whimpering.

  Little John had followed his friend into the room and, as de Bray’s sour-faced wife opened her mouth to scream, John placed a giant hand round her throat and squeezed gently, cutting off the sound. He shook his head in warning and she shrank back into her pillow, eyes bulging in terror at the enormous bearded man carrying a flaming torch into her bedroom.

  Robin moved fast, quickly using the rope in his pack to tie and gag the lord and his wife. He and Little John looked out into the hallway to make sure Sir Richard and his sergeant had dealt with any other threats. All was well. The Hospitallers had quietly dealt with a couple of guests who had peered out of their doors to see what was happening.

  Now they began to move into each room to tie up whoever they found.

  “Help them,” Robin growled to Little John, before he headed to the stairs and made his way to the middle floor.

  Arthur stood nervously, fingering his dagger, but his eyes lit up when he saw Robin. The botched robbery with Harry Half-hand seemed a lifetime ago now – Robin had certainly learned a lot since then, Arthur realised.

  “Everything all right?” Hood asked.

  Arthur nodded. “Aye, fine. There was a guard, but Will took care of him. They’re clearing the other rooms now.”

  Robin smiled encouragingly at the young man and squeezed his shoulder. “Good work! You keep guard here until Will and Matt are done. De Bray’s tied up, the upper floor’s clear. I’ll check on the undercroft.” He flashed a grin and moved quickly back to the stairwell.

  As he headed down to the lower floor, Robin was dismayed to hear shouts and the clatter of weapons. They had expected the undercroft to be the easiest part of the building to subdue, it being occupied by servants. What the hell had gone wrong?

  He burst through the door into the undercroft and was met with the sight of his men trying to hold off an attack by a gang of servants wielding kitchen utensils. Much and Allan-a-Dale, marshalled by a sweating Friar Tuck, were using their staffs desperately, backs to the wall, clearly trying not to hurt anyone.

  Robin shook his head and drew his sword.

  “Enough!” he roared, and moved into the room.

  The servants warily stopped their attack, eyes moving to watch this new threat, while the three outlaws kept their staffs raised defensively.

  “Your lord is tied up, with his wife, in their bed chamber,” Robin shouted, glaring at the servants. “I’m Robin Hood. My men have taken the house; the upper floors are subdued. The only reason you people are still alive is the fact you’re peasants and yeomen, like us, and we don’t kill our own kind.” The outlaw leader pointed his sword at the biggest servant, a man almost as tall as Little John although nowhere near as brawny. “Now drop your fucking weapons and get into that storeroom there. All of you!”

  The servants all looked to the big man leading them, unsure what to do. They’d all heard of Robin Hood. He was a murderer. Merciless, the stories said, he’d killed the bailiff of Wakefield and half a dozen of his men without blinking. Yet here he was being merciful. Was it a trick? The young man seemed earnest enough.

  “What do we do, Harold?” one of the servants asked the big man Robin had addressed.

  Harold, adrenaline rushing through him, saw glory beckoning. If he could stop these raiders, Lord de Bray would surely reward him. Maybe promote him to the position of steward. He raised the thick wooden broom handle he carried and flew towards Robin, a maniacal grin on his face. “Kill them!” he screamed, swinging the pole down towards the outlaw with terrible force.

  Robin bent his knees and rolled to his left as the lanky servant flew past him, broom handle cracking off the stone floor and snapping in the middle.

  The other servants remained undecided, as they stood watching the confrontation. Robin knew he had to finish it quickly, before the rest found their courage, or there would be a bloodbath down here.

  He came up swinging his sword and felt it bite into the side of Harold’s knee. A terrible scream filled the cold, dimly lit room, and the servants shrank back in horror.

  Robin stepped forward, ready to smash the hilt of his sword into the servant’s temple, but the big man on the ground was desperate and his snapped wooden pole shot out desperately, slicing deeply into Robin’s thigh.

  The young outlaw gave a cry of rage and, instinctively, brought his sword down on the tall servant’s skull, cracking it wide open. Blood and brain matter spilled on the floor, as the watching servants cried out, and Robin dropped to one knee, his injured leg giving way beneath him.

  “Fucking deal with them, Tuck!” he roared, squeezing the wound on his leg.

  The big friar, with Much and Allan at his side, moved forward forbiddingly, shepherding the servants towards one of the store rooms. The servants were really frightened now – none of them had ever seen a man killed before, especially not so violently, and they moved willingly enough, most of them crying, or gagging at the sight of their broken comrade.

  Tuck slammed the door shut, dropping the heavy latch into place once the prisoners were all safely inside, and hurried over to Robin. Much and Allan piled some heavy sacks of food against the door to stop anyone escaping for a while.

  “Are you all right?” Tuck asked, checking the nasty wound on
his leader’s leg.

  Robin grunted. “Aye, it’s not that deep, but it hurts like hell. Help me up.”

  Much and Allan grasped an arm each and lifted Robin to his feet.

  Tuck found a piece of linen used for cleaning dishes and tied it round Robin’s thigh tightly. The friar had also found a few wineskins and he handed one to his young friend now.

  “Right, check the storerooms for anything valuable,” Robin ordered, taking a long pull of the strong wine. “And open the doors” – he grimaced, as the vinegary taste hit his throat – “so Wilfred can get his wagon in. It looks like we’ve had a successful night’s work, lads!”

  A muffled voice came from the locked storeroom where the servants were imprisoned. “You’d better get out of here, Hood! One of our men made a run for it when we saw your lot coming – he’ll be in Hathersage soon, bringing the tithing up here after you!”

  Robin swore colourfully. He had two men stationed at the gates to stop anyone escaping, so he knew any runaways wouldn’t be getting through to raise the hue and cry, but he hoped his men had managed to subdue the servant without killing him.

  “Damn it,” he grunted as he moved back to the stairwell. “Let’s move quickly now lads, before anyone else tries to be a hero.”

  He slowly climbed the stairs back up to the first floor, where Arthur was helping Will Scarlet and Matt Groves to pile valuables in the hall, ready to be carried downstairs to Wilfred’s waiting wagon.

  Robin nodded in satisfaction and made his way back up to the top floor. The pain in his wounded leg had lessened a little thanks to the tight bandage Tuck had applied, and the strong wine.

  As he hobbled back towards Lord de Bray’s bedroom he heard Little John’s great baritone voice raised threateningly. Sir Richard-at-Lee and his sergeant, Stephen, were, like Will and Matt a floor beneath, collecting any valuables they could find in the hallway.

  Robin limped into de Bray’s room. The lord’s wife was lying, bound hand and foot, on their bed. The fear had gone from her eyes and she looked at Robin contemptuously as he came through the door.