Nottingham

by Nathan Makaryk

  Guy stared at the tracks, their only lead. “A carriage. Or an oxcart?”

  Eric snapped his fingers. “That’s why you’re the captain.”

  They were hours behind the outlaws, and Guy was responsible for every second of that gap. Each of his men blamed themselves, of course, which only added to Guy’s guilt. They had been ambushed twicefold—physically by the gang of thieves, and diplomatically by the Sheriff’s order to stay their blades. Guy couldn’t fault his men for panicking in such circumstances, but he himself should have been above that. His duty was first to each of them, and he failed. They had ridden half an hour, nerves on fire, before letting the company regroup. It was half an hour more before they came to the heavy conclusion that Jon Bassett was not coming. No one had seen him leave the castle.

  Guy had abandoned one of his men.

  It was guilt compounded upon guilt, turned into something there was no word for. He already felt to blame for his once-protégé’s fall from grace. Guy had raised the young man up too quickly, with too long a leash. That summer day when the servant girl Arable had revealed Jon Bassett as a conspirator against his fellow Guardsmen, Guy’s heart had both broken and shifted. He had trusted Bassett with the knowledge of how they recruited men from the gaols, and Bassett had betrayed that trust by telling others. They had planned to beat one of the gerolds bloody, as a warning, even though the gerolds had done nothing. Bassett openly admitted it when Guy confronted him, as if it were an obvious answer to their problems. That opinion was Guy’s shame.

  He should have taught Bassett better. He should have protected him.

  That guilt was the reason he kept Bassett in the Captain’s Regiment, rather than demote him to the Common Guard. His prospects for leadership were over, and that should have been punishment enough. But the world, apparently, was not satisfied.

  By the time they returned to Thieves Den, there was nothing but muddy trails to follow. Reginold and Bolt bickered over whether the thieves were crafty enough to mislead them with false tracks, while Eric triple-checked his findings. Eric had been a crown ranger once, rescued from a life of boredom into Guy’s regiment, exactly for situations such as this. But a mouth full of blood seemed to distract his tracker’s instincts.

  At the edge of the group, holding one arm in the other, was Devon of York—Guy’s penance for demoting Bassett. Bassett’s actions had forced Guy to spend a long time with his own thoughts, to face his own prejudices against the gerolds, to wonder how much his biases had influenced Bassett’s misguided thinking. Guy had met that fear face-first, by choosing to place a gerold in his private regiment. He needed Bassett—and the others, in time—to understand. Guy picked Devon of York partially because he was as physically unintimidating as a human could possibly be—his face looked like the sound a child makes when he sees a puppy. But more importantly, Devon had been an unwitting accomplice in the criminal world. He had become indebted to Locksley’s insurgency, pressured into an uprising he did not agree with. Fortunately for Devon, he’d been arrested the day Locksley martyred himself. Rather than join the rest of the forest bandits, he ended up in the prisons beneath Nottingham for Guy to find. Devon had a gut of regret for his part in the rebellion, and now was his opportunity to prove himself.

  “We’re leaving,” Guy said softly to Devon, away from the rest of the regiment. “If you have anything you can add, anything at all, now is the time. Any idea where they might go?” It was a plea, not a demand.

  The young, disheveled redhead was staring up at the broken hulk of the castle, his face haunted as if he could see the ghost of Lord Walter dominating his kingdom from beyond the grave. The traitor lord’s influence was still here, his heretic religion of treason had spread beyond the confines of death. Locksley had taken advantage of the poor, he paid their debts but bought their servitude. He had quietly grown an army, to which Devon had been a slave.

  “I don’t know, Captain,” was all he said, eyes locked on the charred ruins. Everything about his face screamed innocence, from his saucer eyes to the sunspots that peppered his nose. “I can tell you about some of the men we fought tonight. I don’t know it’ll be helpful.”

  Guy nodded. “It may be. Ride in the back with me.” The rest of the regiment mounted their horses, eager for the hunt. “They have Bassett. Any idea what they’ll do with him?”

  Devon pursed his lips, looking every bit the disappointment he must have felt.

  Guy patted his shoulder, hoping to ease his nerves. Devon’s temperament was even younger than his age. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to throw you back. But try to think. Even a small detail might save Bassett’s life. We’re not a band of thickskulls like they are—well, excepting Morg.” Devon chuckled at that, watching Morg fail for a second time to heave himself onto his horse. “You ride in my company now, so you’ll be using your brain as often as your blade. Both require regular sharpening. Or did you think it was your formidable swagger that caught my eye?”

  Devon kept his voice low. “I know why you picked me.”

  “Your history with these outlaws is coincidental. I picked you because you’re sharp, you see things others don’t. Men with mettle,” he tapped his temple, “the kind up here, beat the men with metal,” he tapped his sword, “every time. They’ve already beaten us, and they have a hostage. It won’t be muscles that win this.” It was only a slight shift in Devon’s face, but it made a difference. “You could have ended up, but by trick of fate, on the other side of this fight. So tell me how they think. That’s the only way we get Bassett back.”

  * * *

  THEY MADE HASTE, EVEN in the dark, even as the sky blotted spit at them. They would thunder furiously down the path for a while, then break only long enough for Eric to check the tracks. He could find evidence of the oxcart’s passing within seconds, while Guy only stared at meaningless terrain. He felt waves of uselessness, and tried to fight them off. He had been given good advice on the matter once from Ralph Murdac, the last real sheriff.

  “You’re sometimes much smarter than me, Gisbourne,” he’d say into his drink, as was his style. “But I’m the one smart enough to have you as captain. Your successes are my successes, too. But your failures, you don’t get to keep those. They’re mine, and mine alone.”

  It didn’t help. Recruiting Eric five years ago had been a success, but losing Bassett was more than a simple failure.

  At the next stop Eric waited longer than normal, glancing with irritation at the mottled clouds that obscured the moonlight. The infamous Eric of Felley boasted a deep patience—claiming he had once hunted a deer by lining up a perfect shot and then waiting for a tree limb to grow out of his way. But his lips were crusted in blood and he spat globules of it out, and Guy wondered how long he could keep up such focus.

  The spittle in the air turned to droplets, then to rain, and their stops became frequent. The trail was vanishing beneath them.

  “They must have come this way,” Bolt insisted with his usual urgency, looking to Reginold for support. “Why not keep going until we come to a fork?”

  “If they went off path,” Reginold explained, breathing warm air onto his hands, “we’ll lose them. And if they’re even halfway smart—which might be generous—that’s exactly what they did. So if the tracks are still here, we go forward. If they’re not, we’d be going in the entirely wrong direction. And losing more time.”

  Morg grunted his agreement, but it sounded much like his grunts of annoyance. The man liked to grunt.

  Guy stole what opportunities he could to listen to Devon’s memories of his time at Locksley, and the men they were chasing. They could only speak alone, as Guy had yet to divulge Devon’s past to the rest of his regiment. The day would come when de Lacy’s reckless policy became public knowledge, but that danger was best delayed as long as possible. Guy had threatened some truly terrible things to Bassett and his four co-conspirators in the Common Guard, should they ever loose their tongues on the subject. He had given them each a second
chance, but none of them could ever earn back his trust.

  Devon described the outlaws one by one. He had barely known the hunter girl and the knifeman and only identified them as the Scarlet Twins, though they were lovers and not siblings. He had more to say about the men, Arthur a Bland and Alan-a-Dale. Alan was apparently more of a follower than anything, but Arthur was a nasty one. More than a few times Devon had been on the receiving end of a beating from Arthur during mock sparring lessons. Then there was John Little, Lord Walter’s right hand, famous for intimidating those in the community who didn’t fall in line. Devon told a story of a time he botched a job skinning a hare and John snatched the knife from his hand. “There’s naught to you but skin and bone, so I don’t know why it’s so hard for you to pull your weight,” Devon recalled.

  “He made quick work of the hare, and could have gutted me just as quickly. Just as thoughtlessly.”

  “All men can be harsh,” Guy said. “But are they killers? If Bassett doesn’t give them a fight, would they kill him in cold blood?”

  Devon gave it serious consideration. “They would.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “They’ve killed before. People who were a threat.” He swallowed to prepare for a story. “Before the fire, I had taken to eating on my own in the field. Away from the big dinners Lord Walter held in the dining hall. Away from the crowd, that’s where I met the skeleton man. He wasn’t there tonight, but he’s part of them. Never learned his real name. I didn’t know who he was at first, thought might be his reasons for eating alone were the same as mine. But he wasn’t like me. One night he led me out, away from the castle, farther than seemed safe in the dark, until we came to … a corpse, a man, face down in the dirt. The skeleton man said he’d caught the man days earlier, tied him to the tree. Said he’d been stealing food. Said he didn’t know what to do with him, but in the end he let him go. And then strange things. He said … said he was responsible for giving the man his life back, which meant it was his to take again. So he did. I wanted to run. He took his knife out. Said Lord Walter gave me my life. Asked me if I was grateful for it. Then left me with the corpse, in the woods.”

  Devon shook his head, and the rest of his story seemed to slip away.

  Guy didn’t know how to react. His thoughts tainted black with images of Jon Bassett trapped with savages such as these. “They like leaving messages. Could be they’ll use Bassett to make one.”

  “They didn’t come this way,” Eric called out, coughing blood. “We have to double back.”

  This earned an array of curses from Reginold and Bolt, and a grunt from Morg, but Guy just closed his eyes. Devon sank in his frame.

  There weren’t going to find him.

  But they would push on nonetheless.

  * * *

  TIME WAS TOO CRUEL to let them guess the hour when they finally rediscovered the tracks. Eric chastised himself for missing it earlier, showing where the gullet of the wheels drove sharply off the road into the birkland. “None of the rest of us saw it either,” Reginold defended him. “We wouldn’t be on their tail at all if not for you. Don’t beat yourself up on this.”

  Bolt winced, and nudged his friend. “You’re making it worse.”

  “Exactly,” Eric said, his shoulders slumped. “It’s on me to follow them. That’s what I’m supposed to be good at.”

  The idea that Eric thought he was not doing enough spoke volumes about Guy’s own share. The discovery invigorated them, but only until the new path petered into a deer run that cut back and forth too harshly for a cart to navigate. It was a truth too dangerous to speak aloud.

  One by one they broke off, hoping to catch any new glimpse of a lead, but it was gone. There were no more tracks to follow, no path, nothing. If it were daylight, or if the weather were kinder, they might have fared better. But they had ruined it now, tromping through the forest’s understory, switching back and second-guessing themselves. Guy pulled Devon aside and lowered his voice.

  “At this point, we just have to guess at a direction and stick to it. North, south, doesn’t matter. I just need a destination. The odds are against us, but making the decision matters, it’ll give the boys a goal. So give me something, Devon. Anything. Where would John Little go to hide? It doesn’t have to be right, it can be an instinct. But your instinct will at least be informed, while mine will be a blind stab.”

  “Hathersage?” Devon tried, with little confidence. “John Little came from Hathersage. I don’t know if he still has any ties there, but he would know the area.”

  “It’s better than nothing,” Guy nodded. “Thank you.”

  Better than nothing—at this moment, Guy was the nothing. He had lost control of the situation earlier in the evening, and now could contribute nothing but guesses. This gerold was better than him. Better than nothing.

  The morning sun was three fingers over the horizon when they finally settled for rest, halfway to Hathersage. Guy’s legs and back burned from riding, and his eyelids were even heavier than his arms. He bought his men a few rooms at a decent-looking waypoint called The Third Pig, even after its innkeeper offered to house them for free. They had stopped at every village and hovel along the way, waking as many people as they could, hoping for stories of a group of riders making their way in the night. They were desperate for any confirmation they were headed in the right direction, as every step they traveled was potentially putting them farther from their target. Every hour made the rescue less likely.

  Guy tumbled unconscious on his way down to the straw mat, knowing he’d see Bassett shortly, in whatever fitful dreams awaited him.

  Dreams of his mistakes.

  Dreams of the hole …

  * * *

  ONCE AS A YOUNG recruit, Guy had foolishly lost his company in unfamiliar woods, and then doubled-down on his idiocy by stumbling into a sunken muddy hole. It was only barely deeper than a man stood tall, but it was half-filled with a rank stale water and he rolled his ankle during the fall. Logic insisted it would be easy to climb out—but with every attempt the mud walls sloughed down on him, his ankle would hold less weight, and logic shrugged its shoulders and moved on to the next fool. Guy could neither stand with any comfort nor sit without his head submerging. Eventually panic took him, and it ruled his brain in a way he could later only marvel at. Guy might have spent hours there, always only one solid handgrip away from safety, fighting in the wet and the cold. As time slipped on, so did his mind. He watched the walls pulse and sway. He gazed into the water and felt a sympathetic urge to drown himself. Though he never admitted it to anyone, he heard voices—half whispers and non-words only he could understand.

  And the worst part was that none of it seemed unusual. He hadn’t known he was going mad.

  His company eventually backtracked to find him, and it only took one man’s hand to hoist him out. As if it were nothing. Only a few feet were all the difference it took for him to limp away and live the rest of his life. But the hole had revealed something to him—the importance of strength, of body and of mind, and the blood-turning ease with which either could be taken from a man. He had needed help then. Jon Bassett needed it now.

  * * *

  “GOOD NEWS, CAPTAIN.”

  He awoke to Reginold’s thick red moustache and self-satisfied smile. It took Guy a moment to recognize the room in The Third Pig, and what business it had being in Guy’s life.

  “You were right, they came this way.” Reginold smiled with unwarranted energy. Meanwhile, Guy’s muscles were silently protesting everything and petitioned to take the day off. “Got a surprise for you in the common room.”

  Barely a minute later Guy lurched into the inn’s musty main chamber, hoping his stiff legs might be mistaken as swagger. They were all met, but the cruel morning sun told Guy he must have only slept for an hour or so. Reginold was still spry on his feet, and might not have slept at all. Guy could have managed the same, but he had used up all his youth some years ago.

  A larg
e bald man sat in wait at the largest table, wolfing down something hot the innkeeper had made for breakfast. There was a wooden bowl for each of them.

  “Glad I found you,” the stranger said between mouthfuls, and he kicked a stool over to Guy. The others passed around the bowls of slop, which the stranger had apparently paid for. Bolt was already tipping his bowl back to finish whatever was in it.

  “I’m Guy of Gisbourne, Captain of the Nottingham Guard—”

  “I know,” the bald man’s voice was so low it scraped the ground.

  “I’ve filled him in,” Reginold said, twisting the corners of his moustache. “Care to repeat for my friends what you already told me?”

  “I think I saw who you’re looking for.” He was thick as a horse, and his baldness was not from age. Even sitting down eating breakfast, the man looked like he could kill any one of them just by flexing the right muscle. “I heard a mess of horses late last night, off the road near Hallam. Something more than suspicious about it. Went into town and asked around, and folks said you were hunting these boys down. I’ve been chasing after you for hours.”

  “That’s unusually kind of you,” Eric said, fishing for chunks of food with a knife. “Why exactly do you care?”

  Reginold grinned widely at the stranger. “My apologies. Some of us have forgotten what a knight even looks like.” Guy’s senses sharpened, and his men all jerked into somewhat more respectful positions. “Boys, this is Sir Robert FitzOdo of Tickhill Castle. Treat him with the respect he’s deserving.”

  “We’ve met,” Guy recalled, with some difficulty. The name was familiar. FitzOdo had played a role in the defense of Nottingham during Ferrers’s assault in the Kings’ War. But Tickhill Castle sat at the border of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, controlled by Baron Roger de Busli—who had selfishly kept his knights rather than send them to war. “You serve Red Roger now.”