Lord of the Forest

by Kay Berrisford

  "Don't be a fool." At Cal's voice, Robin turned. Cal seemed composed, his hair smoothed and tidied, his palms resting on his knees. "Odo didn't see me."

  "You can't be sure, and—"

  "I want to go," Cal interjected. "I'd rather be taken to the castle as your prisoner, thus proving I'm no outlaw, than be stuck with a price on my head for the rest of my days. That's no life."

  "But—"

  "It's settled, then," said Herne, stifling a yawn. "I'll journey through the night and deliver the message—and the traitor—to the castle soon after dawn."

  Robin raised a hand, warding Herne off. "What if they don't believe you?" he asked Cal.

  "You should know by now that I can be very convincing. I have my weapons." He laughed coolly, and Robin flinched. How he'd struggled to convince himself Cal was more than a honeyed trap. "And I don't just offer that, outlaw. After all, I'm in the service of the regent, the highest man in England save his majesty. I, too, can offer powerful alliances."

  Robin swallowed hard. He still didn't want Cal to go.

  "Don't look so shocked! I fooled you, oh mighty Robin of the Hood! Live with it." Cal pushed himself up and looked straight through Robin to Herne. "I'm ready, huntsman. Just get me out of this cursed place. Only a witless knave would spend his life hiding in a forest, dreaming about the dead."

  He quirked his endearing down-turned smile for Herne, then gasped as the huntsman grabbed him by the front of his tunic. In a single fluid movement, Herne threw Cal over the front of his horse's saddle and mounted behind his prisoner. When Cal struggled, trying to raise himself into a sitting position, Herne pressed him down before slapping his upturned arse hard enough to make him yelp. The huntsman's gritted teeth told Robin he took no pleasure in the task.

  Herne could kill him. He could snap his neck as soon as they're out of my sight.

  "Think back to Sherwood, Robin," murmured the Elfaene, drawing close behind. "Remember your real friends. Herne, like them, is a man of his word, and it's not in his interests to harm the wretch."

  The Elfaene had been right. The huntsman too. Cal was a snake, and Robin's common cause with the fair folk and Herne could transform the life of every poor Englishman, woman, and child.

  He let them go.

  *~*~*

  Crushed in front of the saddle of Herne's stallion, Cal soon quit protesting, let alone making vain attempts to get comfortable. Herne clamped a meaty hand on his back, and he threw all his efforts into breathing—and fighting back tears, though he doubted the beast would know those incriminating quivers from his tremors of rage.

  The huntsman chivvied his stallion through the forest, threading a passage surely reserved for spirits or demons—deep ravines and ancient woodlands even denser than those Cal had traversed with Robin. As night fell hard, the wolves closed in, echoing one another's howls as if in conversation, from all directions.

  Cal had plunged the low places of the earth before, had been threatened with death. But always before, he'd entered the darkest arenas alone. He'd not had a friend at his side.

  And he'd never been deserted. Not like this.

  He choked back another sob. For heaven's sake, what had come over him? He'd been as much a fool for Robin as Robin had been for him, and in the aftermath of their lovemaking, they'd both seen the light, which was fortuitous. Cal's long-term prospects would indeed be better if he arrived at Castle Brock as the enemy's hostage rather than an outlaw's avowed lover—so he hoped.

  His misgivings rioted in his mind as violently as the saddle jolting and gouging into his stomach and aggravating his shoulder. Convincing Odo and the barons would be the fight of his life, but at this rate his innards would be mashed before anybody turned him over to the torturer. He wriggled. There had to be a better position.

  Herne clouted him sharply on the backside again.

  "Agh!"

  "Keep still." The huntsman growled. "We pass through dangerous realms, and the riding is hard. If you fall, the wolves might chew your face off before I can raise my sword."

  Oh, this gets better and better. Or is he just trying to scare me?

  Twisting, Cal peeped at the great huntsman. The beast was handsome in an ironclad fashion, and despite feeling increasingly queasy, Cal had an idea. So the stories went, Herne hailed from an age long ago when the notion of men loving men was accepted among great warriors. Perhaps Cal should wriggle his backside a little more and stir the huntsman into a frenzy of need. Who knew what new bonds could be forged then.

  Temptation murmured, but he found he'd no appetite for the game. He was too damned scared Herne would sprout those fearsome antlers again and fuck him closer to death than paradise—if the huntsman didn't wring his neck for the asking. Besides, Robin saturated Cal's thoughts, sapping any desire to give pleasure to another.

  "Fuck you," he muttered, then tensed. The huntsman snorted.

  Oh God, he was in for it now.

  The anticipated punishment never came. When a flash of silvery moonlight afforded him his next glimpse of Herne, the huntsman's expression seemed distant and grave, far from predatory. At length, sheer exhaustion dragged him into a fitful slumber, where he dreamed of Wild Men emerging from green mists, of fairies with eyes like cartwheels, and of Robin, who hated him.

  When he awoke, it was with a start. It took him a few moments to orientate himself, his heart plummeting as he realized the sturdy limb wrapped around him wasn't Robin's. At least he was no longer slumped over the saddle. Herne had taken pity and moved him to a more comfortable position sitting in front and leaning back against the huntsman's chest.

  Cal wiped the moisture from his cheeks and swallowed hard before glancing up at Herne.

  "Bad dreams?" The question took him by surprise. Herne's features remained as granite.

  "I've had worse." He didn't recall much of the latest, probably a small mercy. He scrubbed the downy stubble on his chin.

  "Nights aren't restful for the guilty," said Herne.

  Cal hitched his lip in an incredulous sneer and discarded any notion of thanking Herne for letting him sit. For pity's sake, did Herne hate blonds or something? This man—at least his notorious Wild Hunt—was indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands. Cal couldn't even bring himself to cut the throat of a damned fairy.

  He could still go down in the chronicles as the man who betrayed Robin Hood, but in truth, he'd not a notion what he was going to do.

  The horse broke through the treeline into open meadows. Morning brightness dazzled him, the sun low in a watery sky, and his fears burgeoned once more. About half a league before them, a grey stone keep sat atop a mound, which rose so high that the fortress scraped the clouds. A wall crawled like a reddish caterpillar across the scrub, encompassing the motte and bailey, plus the small town surrounding them. A gate provided the sole entrance, flanked by two square towers—no doubt heavily guarded. Above, an array of heraldic banners whipped in the breeze, including the cross and stars of Baron Brock and the chained bear emblem of Baron Odo.

  "God's teeth, I'm relieved to see this place," said Cal. For once in his life, he nearly choked on his lie.

  Chapter Eleven

  Herne withdrew his arm from about Cal and climbed down from the stallion. Cal verged on sliding down after when the huntsman grabbed him and deposited him on his feet at the edge of the track.

  "Don't move."

  Cal parted his lips to inquire what was happening.

  "And don't speak." Herne snarled. "You walk the rest of the way."

  While Herne tended his horse, Cal hugged himself about his middle, wishing his night's sleep had fortified him for the day ahead. Any succour he'd gleaned from Herne's warmth vanished.

  "So I get to go alone?" he asked after a short while. "As much as I'd love to see you captured when I holler out your name, I'm assuming you'd rather not risk it."

  "No man could take me." Herne reached under his cloak, brought out the charter, and handed it to Cal. "So yes, you go ahead."<
br />
  The huntsman must have read the glint of hope in Cal's eyes. He scrunched his fist in the front of Cal's tunic and dragged him up so their noses touched and Cal's toes dangled.

  "Don't even think of trying to slip away before you've told the guards why you're here." He growled. "You as much as look in the wrong direction, and I'll deliver you to this castle in the fashion King Stephen once threatened to deliver your master."

  Cal knew that tale all too well. William Marshal spoke lightly about the story now—as he'd laughed as a lad nearly seventy years prior when he'd been hoisted into the load basket of a catapult during the siege of his father's castle.

  The situation had been desperate. William's father, John, had given his son over to the enemy outside the walls, the troops of King Stephen, as token of a promise that he'd persuade his mistress, Queen Matilda, to surrender. It was all sham. John Marshal sacrificed his child to play for time, then reneged on his vow.

  Even as King Stephen's men prepped to smash young William into the thick curtain wall, the boy had thought it a game. Then his father hollered from the battlements, "I still have the hammer and the anvil with which to forge more and better sons!"

  William had survived because of Stephen's pity, then spent years as a hostage.

  "My father taught me what it was to be a man that day," he'd once told Cal.

  Survive. Win. Show no mercy.

  Cal tried. Lord, he tried.

  Herne shook him so hard his brains hurt, and while Herne didn't have a man-size slingshot, the brute possessed the strength to shatter his every bone.

  When Herne dropped him, Cal tottered giddily. He started off as fast as he could all the same, following the road through bare fields where ragged folk grubbed for roots, and then some tumbledown shacks. Herne trailed him, keeping a distance of a good dozen yards. Thank heaven Cal would probably never see the beast again, nor return to that cursed forest to lay eyes on Robin Hood.

  He paused to stare down at the pitted clay. Would the huntsman really kill him if he declined to take the charter? For a moment, he wished to go back, even if he risked Herne's wrath.

  He spat in the muck.

  Damn them all. He needed to think.

  It would be advantageous if he could get the charter to Brock without encountering Baron Odo. Unlike Odo, who knew all, Brock had never seen Cal before, and Cal might win some favour before Odo identified him. Better still, the guard at the first gate might let him pass without question. Then he could hide in the town, safe from Herne, and plot with more care.

  He flexed back his shoulders, refusing to tremble at the pain from his half-healed wound, and strode across the drawbridge. The guard stepped out to block his path. Cal fixed him with a sneering countenance intended to warn the man of his high birth.

  "Soldier. I bring a message for Baron Brock."

  "You have a message for my lord?" The man lifted his visor to reveal a complexion so ruddy and pitted he must have seen more sunny days than most Englishmen or lost many nights in the grip of liquor. He grinned and swung his spear toward Cal's chest. "Whose livery is that, then? The lord of the shit house?"

  Cal struggled not to quail at the proximity of the razor-sharp point to his galloping heart. "I met with some trouble en route. If you don't let me in… Sacrebleu! I'll see you swing, knave."

  The flash of the Norman tongue hit home. The guard called for a companion, a roguishly attractive fellow with a thatch of sandy hair, who emerged from the gate tower rubbing eyes bleary with sleep.

  "This runt of the litter can't be Robin Hood." The second man laughed down at Cal, whose worry outweighed his indignation. So the guards had been told to look out for the outlaw. He shouldn't be surprised, but he loathed the thought of Robin being taken.

  Then again, there would be no reason for Robin to pass through this gate. It wasn't as if Robin would come after him.

  "Take him to the great hall," said the first guard. "He says he has a message, and if he doesn't, the master will slit his tongue. Let me know if he chokes on the blood."

  The sandy-haired man took Cal by the wrist, then pulled him under the portcullis and through the thick walls into the town.

  *~*~*

  After Herne and Cal had left, Robin desired above all things to be alone.

  He parted from the fairies with a promise to return, then trudged through the night in a direction the Elfaene assured him would lead out—at last—to the open lands. He tried not to dwell on what had just passed. When his empty stomach demanded attention, he chewed on slippery bark and stared up to the stars and a near full moon. After murmuring a prayer to the Goddess, he let his thoughts wander back to Sherwood. Far from consoling, the memories made his sadness worse.

  What a tragic fool he'd become, so desperate he'd fallen for an enemy spy.

  Dawn had broken by the time weariness got the better of him. He lay down beneath his blanket, focusing on the springy turf couching his body, the play of chill air on his face. Sleep descended fast but brought no respite from the miseries of the Greenwood. He dreamed he was with Cal, who kept following him. Robin raved like a madman, cursing and tearing his hair.

  He couldn't seem to control himself. He punched through the night in anger, cracking the ridge of Cal's cheek. Cal fell away, leaving Robin thunderstruck. He'd never beaten another unprovoked, on no account would nor could. Yet it had happened, and self-loathing unknown since that summer they'd lost Daniel seized him, then barrelled through him a hundredfold worse when he caught a glimpse of the figure scrambling up and running from him.

  Cal.

  Or was it?

  Robin stilled, rooted to the spot yards from a boy of no more than twelve summers. Rubbing his sore cheek, the child hurried in pursuit of a man whose fine dress and gorgeous, dark complexion marked him as an emissary from faraway shores. A palace's arcade with high arches and windows soared above them. Cal—yes, it was indeed him—was pretty as an angel, his skin coloured with the merest blush, the pink of the sycamore beneath winter frost. His mass of golden hair flowed past his shoulders as he craned to whisper into the foreigner's ear.

  The emissary looked surprised and shook his head. An uncomfortable smile played across his lips while Cal fondled the fur trimming on his gown. He didn't notice when Cal slipped a thin hand beneath the folds of his garb and whipped out something shiny. Was it a brooch? A seal?

  Cal walked away, gazing straight through Robin, who winced at the purple bruise marring the boy's skin. Cal concealed his plunder beneath his frayed, overlong sleeve.

  "One day those bastards won't dare hit me. They'll bow down to me, curse them!"

  Despite his angry words, the child worried his bottom lip as he scurried between the pillars. He seemed small and horribly alone. When Robin reached for him, he faded away.

  Robin stirred from slumber rolling and sweating, startled from his quagmire of self-pity. The remembrance of grown-up Cal's angry words blasted him.

  "Damn trust… All I desired was for you to want me back. You can beat me, throttle me, stick your fist in me—I don't care."

  What the hell had he done?

  Cal's lies and harsh defensive words be damned. Now that the shock had passed, Robin couldn't blame him for them. Cal had been schooled to hate and deceive, had been cruelly treated and betrayed himself while only a child. Then he'd pushed a lifetime of experience aside and chosen to save Robin's life after a mere day in his company.

  Cal hadn't needed, nor ever been given, seasons of brotherhood and faith. Hell, Robin had been holding Cal prisoner when his decision to save Robin had been made. Yet at the first awkward call, Robin had turned his back.

  He had to fetch him. He couldn't risk Odo claiming the life of a friend. Not again.

  He forced his eyes open, wide awake in an instant. His determination would have borne him straight onto his feet, had a blast of preternaturally heavy air not slammed him back into the moss.

  His focus blurred, and it took a few moments to make sense of t
he creature that towered above him. He faced an oak, its trunk split in two at the base, its roots matting and then spreading into what resembled giant human feet. Two ebony eyes stared out of a face of bark, from which sprouted a beard of shiny new oak leaves.

  This oak-man had visited Robin's dreams before, offering comfort when he needed it. In the time since Robin had left his friends in Sherwood, this creature had been the warmest, friendliest presence he'd known.

  This was the Green Man. The soldier of the fair Greenwood spirits. He leaned over Robin, folding his arms and tapping twiggy fingers, his brows levelled in a frown.

  Though the spirit appeared stark as daylight, Robin couldn't be sure if this open play of magic was real. In the Greenwood, who knew? He felt unafraid. Whether his senses tricked him or not, his vision of Cal and the spirit's anger underlined facts he'd guessed already but had let other pressing matters obscure. Cal had a good heart and would be a steadfast friend, if Robin took the time to show him how. He pulled a guilty face.

  "Yes, I know," he muttered. "I couldn't see the truth for the trees, but I'm going after Cal. I'm going to make it right."

  *~*~*

  Once inside the wall, the guard marched Cal through the marketplace and up a busy street between two lines of tottering half-timbered houses. The stench and press of human life bewildered him. Crowds parted to let them through—women with baskets sloshing along the wet, potholed track, men with carts laden with grain or fleeces, and a portly monk rolling a barrel. Several looked his way, pointing and laughing, and his face heated.

  Oh God, this was so unfair. The populace no doubt expected to see him twisting on the gallows later or screaming as his limbs were mangled beneath the executioner's hammer. A dog barked, and a black cat shot between his ankles, nearly tripping him and setting his guard cursing. The puss vanished up a dark alley beside a tavern, just as Cal ducked to avoid an inflated pig's bladder kicked in his direction by a mean-looking juvenile.

  With a glare in the boy's direction, Cal drew his hand across his throat, mimicking the slice of a knife. The youngster looked faintly cowed, scampering to retrieve the toy before it rolled into a stream of yellowy-brown water. Though he'd no intention of carrying out the threat, he felt better for it and managed to curse Robin Hood to the devil. But he had too much to worry about to keep hating for long.