Nottingham

  Guy, on the other hand, knew how to hide his own injuries and project others instead. He feigned a limp in his left knee, and waited for Robin to take note of it. That was all Guy needed.

  They moved forward, together, fluid, in a dance. Their blades dipped in unison, sweeping in the same lines, returning and rejoining. They only barely even made contact, the two swords but kissing as they breathed through the air. Each man read the other’s move as it was made, sliding their feet in exact calculation, using the energy of each swing to feed into the next. They did not dodge each attack so much as slide out of its path, they did not parry an attack but rather suggest it go elsewhere.

  Guy made his moves when Robin was slightly off balance or nursing his cheek, and Robin took a desperate lunge that sought to take advantage of Guy’s false limp. Guy riposted against Robin’s rhythm, and it worked. Robin panicked, the grace of his training wasting away. His swings became harder, born from anger rather than experience. Their swords stopped kissing. They clashed down upon each other, occasionally drawing a spark. At the perfect rare chance, Guy backhanded Robin across the face and came swinging down into him again, and Robin dropped to his knees to block. The strength of the blow was massive, and Robin’s sword smashed down and out of his hands.

  It was, impossibly, over.

  “Is this what you wanted?” Guy shouted, his voice gone, betraying his grief, low and grave. “There was no reason for anyone to die here. What have we done, what have you accomplished with this?”

  “Don’t act as if you care,” Robin said, still at his knees. “You mean to burn down the forest.”

  “You…” Guy stared him down, “… mean to burn down the country.”

  Around him, shapes rose from the earth. Guardsmen. He recognized the faces of a few of his men, weary but mercifully alive. Silas, Quillen Peveril. Even Jacelyn was there. He did not see Simon, and prayed the Scotsman still breathed. He did not waste the same thought on FitzOdo or his men, who were nowhere in sight. The finest men Guy knew held no knighthood, they were those that lay now in the dirt, who had faced down the outlaws in the forest and—

  “You don’t get to blather on,” Robin hissed, and Guy realized he had been speaking aloud, “about what is right. You don’t know the first thing about it. All you know is the power you have and the power you want.”

  “You’re the definition of hypocrisy,” Guy called out. “Silas, you have anything to bind his hands?”

  Silas nodded and limped forward. Robin flinched, but Guy elevated his sword’s tip toward his face. “You stay on your knees.”

  “No argument there,” Robin moaned. “You’re not the sort of man I’d ever stand up for.”

  That’s what it all came down to for men such as this. Recognition. Wendenals and Locksleys hated the world because it wasn’t theirs. Guy shook his head. It was time to lead from a place of unity, not vanity. “I don’t need your respect,” he sighed. “Everyone else will stand for the man who stopped Robin Hood.”

  In retrospect, he should have heard her approach.

  He should have noticed the gasps on his men’s faces the moment before she struck.

  Guy felt mail break in his lower back, barely punctured; a single shard of metal link stabbed the flesh in his already bruised ribs. The pain was no worse than the rest of his body, but it jolted Guy forward. Robin rose and plucked the longsword from his hands in that one moment of disadvantage. No amount of skill or valor or decency mattered in the instant of her craven attack from behind.

  Arable was just fucking lucky.

  “That’s a coward that does that,” he breathed.

  Their positions had quickly reversed. Guy now kneeled before Robin, who clutched Guy’s sword in both hands, one on each knee as he buckled over to catch his breath. Arable held her stolen sword out in front of her, her heavy cloak whipping behind her, as though she were the greatest hero that ever walked the earth.

  His men scattered. Some ran into the woods. Others were quickly surrounded and disarmed. “Fine then, don’t hurt them. You won. But damn you for it. Damn you for how you did it. You lied, you cheated.” Guy’s thoughts fluttered to the White Hand, stabbing Guardsmen in the back. Possibly he’d been the one to rally the villagers from Bernesdale. “You snuck one of your own amongst us. But you could only do that because we’re better than you. Because we trust one another. And we saw how your kind treat each other tonight, with suspicion. Poison. Murder. Remember what your friend said, the one you poisoned. I’d rather die with my people than live with yours.”

  Robin didn’t answer him.

  “We didn’t come out here to do violence upon your people, Robin, and you know it. We came peacefully, you answered with arrows.” Guy felt blood trickle to his lips. “We could have killed Will Scarlet and Elena Gamwell, could have taken our revenge for the men they murdered, but we didn’t. Not because we didn’t want to, but because it wouldn’t have been right. If you were ever once a man of conscience, I wonder what you’d say to that.”

  “You think it was right to send Elena to poison me?” Robin said at last. “You think your hands are clean, you bastard?”

  If it had gone well, it would have been a mercy. Robin couldn’t understand that.

  “What does it matter, Robin? You can’t kill me. If you kill me, the forest burns tomorrow. So what, then? We go our separate ways for now, just to do this again later? And again and again? How many more of my men have to die, how many of yours will you sacrifice before I inevitably catch you?”

  Robin’s breaths were shallow, his eyes dead set on Guy. He didn’t move. He did not so much as blink.

  “Just come with me, Robin. Your plans with Wendenal in Nottingham tomorrow are spoiled either way. We’ll find a peaceful way to settle this. If we don’t, we’ll keep on as we have. As animals. Butting our heads. We fought at Locksley Castle. We fought at Bernesdale. We fought here. We’ll fight at de Lacy’s funeral. We’ll fight at Lady Marion’s wedding, all for nothing.”

  A flick of his hand and Robin Hood slid the tip, just the tip of his sword through Guy’s neck.

  PART VIII

  TWO RIVERS

  FIFTY-THREE

  ARABLE DE BUREL

  SHERWOOD FOREST

  IT SHOULD HAVE FELT good to watch him die.

  Admittedly, it did feel good. But it should have felt better.

  Instead, it was unfulfilling. It wasn’t that she felt bad for him, his throat cut open in the middle of nowhere, half-crawling through his own gore as his body twitched lifeless, no. It was not pity in her bones, but rage. Rage for the things she would never get to yell at him, rage for the things for which he would never be punished. At the end of his life, Guy of Gisbourne would never know how terrible a person he was. He had used her, he had threatened her, he had made her believe he was going to rape her. And he died thinking that was alright. It wasn’t enough that she had stabbed him in the back, because he escaped her now by dying. The coward.

  She was only dimly aware of what else was happening. Robin Hood had not stopped with Gisbourne. He floated through the trees like a ghost, cutting down the remaining Guardsmen who were not fast enough to flee. One took Robin’s sword through the shoulder down to his heart. Another stumbled as he ran and was skewered from behind, Robin’s blade pierced his body like a potato. Arable could only watch with half her attention—the rest was memorizing Gisbourne’s final disappointing spasms.

  It was better than nothing, she conceded. He was dying alone, in the cold, in an unknown place. There was that, at least. There was that.

  Arable watched Robin Hood pull his weapon out of a young man in a tattered brown smock. She had seen more blood in the last ten minutes than in her entire life, and already it ceased to horrify her. Robin raised his sword again, this time at John Little. The only one who had defended her, his giant fatherly face was riven in grief. John held his hands out at Robin, cringing, “That’s enough, Robin! That’s it!”

  She’d heard the word bloodlust b
efore, but never thought it was real. Robin was gone from the world, like a drunkard. It took all of John Little’s efforts to bring him back down. Eventually he dropped his weapon and shuddered in shame—there was nothing of the light-hearted showman she had met a month earlier.

  She had bet everything on her hope to find a future with these people. She had begged their hospitality.

  John was holding Robin’s head, shivering tightly, mourning. Once he could, Robin looked upon what he’d done. Not at Gisbourne’s body but the final man he’d killed, the one in the brown smock. Arable didn’t understand at first, but eventually it hit her. That brown smock was no Guardsman’s tabard. Robin had killed an ally, defenseless, in blind rage. Probably one of the villagers from Bernesdale who had rallied to their aid. So many bodies, so many had lost their lives here. During the battle, nobody could be blamed. But this final death …

  “It’s alright,” John was whispering to Robin, though it wasn’t.

  Robin looked up to him, his lips quivered. “I saw red,” he whispered.

  “I saw red.”

  “I saw red.”

  John held Robin’s face to his chest. “I know. But you’re back.”

  It was a terrible thing, but it was only one more of a hundred terrible things that had happened in the last day. Arable’s emotions were closed off. She simply didn’t have the ability to care about any new problems. It was too hard to imagine these were real people, with entire lives of their own.

  “Is that it?” came an uncertain voice. “Is it over?”

  The survivors were regrouping. Already they were gathering the dead, or trying to bandage the wounded. Some had earned grievous injuries. The crowd thinned quickly by necessity, as the healthy helped carry the less fortunate away, hoping to get them to Bernesdale where they might find better assistance. Those who remained were a mix of furious and mortified. They fell instantly upon each other, arguing over what would happen next, and whether William’s edict to burn down the forest was anything but an empty threat.

  “He won’t go through with it,” Arable said. Nobody here knew William the way she did. Looking at the parchment, she recognized William’s signature at its bottom, but it had to be some ploy. “He’s not Gisbourne. He wouldn’t.”

  “He would,” Robin countered, his voice strained. “We’ve done it before. In Sicily, King Richard ordered us to catch a gang of bandits, so we burned them out of a forest. It took a month. War tactics. And William sees this as a war now.”

  “He’s not like that.” She struggled to wrap her mind around it.

  “Like what?” His voice was soaked in disappointment. “Driven? Dedicated? Single-minded?”

  She couldn’t say no.

  “I think perhaps you’ve only known him at his best, Arable.”

  A dull warning rumbled through her. If he could cast her aside as easily as he had, if he could break every promise and authorize something like this, what else might he do to protect his secrets?

  Would he come after her?

  “Then we have to stop him,” Will Scarlet coughed, massaging his ribs. “Not tomorrow. Tonight.”

  Despite everything, those words terrified her. If they meant to stop him the same way they stopped de Lacy …

  “We’re in no shape to do anything,” the bald friar scolded, crouching over a dead body. Nearby, the remaining Bernesdale men were scavenging from fallen Guardsmen. Arable absently wondered if she knew any of them, wondered if she’d care.

  She noticed John Little catch Robin Hood’s eye. Are you alright? he mouthed.

  No, Robin shook his head.

  “We have to do something,” said a man nursing a swollen arm. It was no suggestion but a simple fact, and Arable found herself nodding. Whatever William had done to get himself here, he had now gone too far. He had done nothing to protect her, despite his every promise.

  He was her past. For the second time. It was time to look forward.

  “We only have one option.” Robin seemed cornered. “We’ll have to trust Prince John. He can get us into the castle.”

  “What?” Arable interrupted, alarmed by the name. “What sort of deal do you have with Prince John?”

  “He’s offered to help us,” Robin explained.

  “Sort of,” Little muttered.

  “Alright, he offered to meet with us,” Robin elaborated. “Arthur and I are meeting with him in secret tomorrow morning. He’s arranged to sneak us into the castle.”

  “He thinks it’s to talk business,” added the man she assumed was Arthur. “But once we’re done, Rob an’ I get the others in, too.”

  Arable scoffed before anyone could argue. “I don’t know what he’s promised you, but you can forget about it. Do you honestly think he doesn’t realize the coincidence, that you want to meet on the very day of de Lacy’s funeral? He’s using you, for his own purposes. This is the man who tried to appoint Gisbourne to Sheriff, who supports William now. He’s not on your side.”

  “I said as much,” Little sniffed. “That man’s only side is his own.”

  “Let him go,” a tall blond man added. “The prince, the sheriff, the king, they were all friends of Robin of Locksley. Let him go, too. Like it or not, you’re Robin Hood now.”

  Robin nodded, long and hard, and locked eyes with Little. Not in sympathy this time, but with certainty.

  “Besides, we don’t need him to get into the castle.” There was a clarity to Will Scarlet’s words that made Arable instantly aware they were directed toward her. He walked up, he reached gently for her hands. “Is there any way you can get us back inside?”

  “That depends,” she said coldly, not looking up. “Are we still thinking of killing me?”

  How quickly they had forgotten their rotten treatment of her. She had risked everything by breaking Will and Elena out of the prisons. She had freed Roger de Lacy’s murderers, all for a lie. Gisbourne had manipulated her into abandoning the last of her life that still existed, and they had nearly killed her for it.

  Will Scarlet didn’t contest that. “Please.”

  In his poor, haunted face, was her own.

  Pushed to the edge, having lost everything, he now needed the help of someone who had no reason to do so. He needed the trust of someone who shouldn’t even be capable of trusting, not ever again. He was a reflection not only of her desperation, but of her hope that there was still a path up. The hope to climb.

  She would always hate Will Scarlet for the role he played in de Lacy’s death. But there was more to a person, and to life, than hate. Will had apologized, during their travel from Nottingham, admitting Roger’s death solved nothing. These people knew about mistakes, as did Arable. And they’d asked about her scars. Robin, when she met him in the woods, and both Will and Elena despite their furious escape from the city. They did not ignore her face as the people in the city did. These people were familiar with pain, and chose not to shy away from it, but to grow from it.

  These people were the people she needed.

  “Yes, I can get you inside,” she answered. “But only tonight. After tonight, word will return to the castle of what happened here, and I would be killed on the spot. But at the moment, nobody knows I’m missing.” Her eyes found Gisbourne’s face again, his dry eyes staring upward. “At least, nobody still alive.”

  The crowd murmured. They seemed inspired by the possibility. Will Scarlet knelt beside her, crouching on the balls of his feet, and waited for her to look at him. His features were soft, there were streaks through the dirt on his bruised face where his tears had run rampant.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked gently. “Simply running away is one thing, but getting revenge is another.”

  “I understand,” she answered. “I’ll get you inside the castle, but I won’t go with you. William is dangerous, and out of control, but I couldn’t bear to see him hurt.” No one responded to that, and she knew why. She swallowed.

  “One more question,” Robin asked with some hesitati
on. “Lady Marion Fitzwalter, she’s being held in the prisons. Do you know where?”

  “Not in the prisons,” Arable answered. “She’s in the tower keep.”

  Robin exchanged a look with his men, as if asking for permission, which they silently gave.

  “How many are going?” she asked. “The fewer the better.”

  “All of us,” Robin answered.

  “No, she’s right.” Will dropped his head. “No more than two or three. Any more, and it would have been too difficult for us to get out. The same will be true for getting in. Besides, the rest of us need to see what we can do about stopping those fire brigades. We need to spread the word. We’ll need a lot of help, not just from our camp but from every village we can get to. We’ve got to start right now.”

  Robin looked at Will in wonder. “You don’t want your shot at William?”

  “I do,” Will said, choking on the words, looking anywhere but at Elena’s body. “But we need to do this right. You go to the castle, I’ll handle the fire brigades.” He raised his voice, “Any of you here who can, your help would be invaluable.”

  “I have horses in Bernesdale,” came a voice from the crowd.

  “Thank you.” Will turned now to John. “What do you think, John? Is it good?”

  “Oh, Will,” John sighed. “You don’t need me to tell you it is.” He hollered at the man who had spoken. “You have a horse big enough for me?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then I’m going with you, Robin.”

  They both smiled, something humble and genuine.

  Robin reached out and clasped Will around the shoulders. “Good luck, Will.”