by Anna Burke
“Sir,” she said in a falsely grateful tone. “Oh, sir, you’ve saved me.”
The man’s grizzled face went slack with surprise. Then, as she’d anticipated, he dismounted and strode toward her with reassuring words on his lips. Willa’s sword pressed against the scout’s throat, cutting off his assurances of safety. Yvette flanked Willa, dagger bared, and Alanna came up behind him with another knife.
“What the hell is this?”
“Shh,” said Willa. “Don’t touch your dagger. Shout for help, and you die. Listen, and you’ll live.”
“We don’t have time for this.” Alanna moved as she spoke and brought the hilt of her dagger down on top of the man’s skull. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the ground. Alanna grabbed the horse’s reins before it could spook away.
“Efficient,” said Willa, sounding impressed. “Marian, help me get this off him.”
Wrestling the unconscious man out of his mail shirt, quilted padding, leathers, tunic, and breeches made sweat stream down her face. He weighed twice as much as she did, and his dead weight was clumsy. After longer than any of them liked, however, they had him stripped down to his underclothes. The clothing reeked of sweat, horse, and rancid grease. Marian pulled it on over her shift and tried not to breathe as the sweat-soaked cloth and padding released its foul odor. His helmet remained tied to his saddle. Alanna jerked it free and jammed it on Marian’s head. With all her hair piled up on top of her head, it nearly fit.
“Someone’s coming.” Yvette’s warning gave Marian’s arms strength as she pulled herself into the saddle. The tunic hung ludicrously far past her knees, but at least the quilted padding beneath the mail hid her curves from view. Alanna, Willa, and Yvette hauled the unconscious soldier into the undergrowth and out of sight.
A second rider appeared around a bend on the trail from the opposite direction. Marian swung the horse around to face him. “Anything?” he asked.
Marian shook her head, not daring to speak. Alanna, Willa, and Yvette crouched behind the trees on either side of the path. It was up to Marian to get rid of the rider, and she needed to do it quickly, because the helmet only hid her hair and nose, not the rest of her face. He frowned at her.
“You’re not Martin,” he said.
Willa crept around her tree to approach the rider from behind. Marian needed to buy her time.
“He went that way,” she said, deepening her voice to a low rasp. It sounded painfully false to her ears.
“That’s his horse you’re riding.”
He drew his sword. Marian did the only thing she could think of and dug her heels into her horse’s sides. It lunged forward as she struggled to pull the heavy sword from her stolen scabbard. While the man’s attention was on her, Willa leapt from hiding and seized him by the back of his shirt and hung on. Her weight unbalanced him as Marian’s horse slammed into his, and the point of her sword skidded off his mailed chest harmlessly, but not without adding another shove to his upset. He landed heavily on the ground.
“Don’t move,” Willa said as she scrambled out from beneath him and leveled her sword at his throat. He slammed it out of the way with a gauntleted fist and would have plunged his blade into Willa’s stomach if Alanna hadn’t thrown her knife. It flashed in Marian’s peripheral vision on its way to its mark. The hilt quivered in his eye socket. He tried to scream, convulsed, then lay still. None of them spoke. Alanna’s face had turned white with shock, and Willa stared at her with her mouth open.
“Christ,” said Yvette. “Get on the damn horse.”
Willa mounted. Alanna vomited into the bushes, then clambered up after her. Yvette shook her head in disgust and pulled the knife out of the man’s head. She wiped the blade clean on his pants and handed it back to Alanna before turning to Marian. “Good luck,” she said.
Marian looked at her pain-drawn face and nodded. “Go to the priory in Edwinstowe and ask for the Reverend Mother. Tell her I sent you. She’ll take care of your shoulder and she won’t ask any questions. Take the dog for protection. Talk to it like I did. Can you make it that far?”
“Worry about yourself,” said Yvette. She held Marian’s eyes, and the cruelty in her gaze parted for a fraction of a second. Then she turned and vanished into the woods with the alaunt at her heels.
“Let’s go,” Marian said to Willa and Alanna. Willa looked as if she wanted to argue, but as Marian turned her horse away, she heard the sound of Willa’s horse’s hooves following. They spurred their mounts back toward the greenwood. Her horse tried to seize the bit in its teeth. She fought it, mustering strength from reserves she didn’t know remained, and attempted to think of a plan. Nothing came to her. Exhaustion and adrenaline warred inside her skull and left no room for anything else. All she knew was that she had to stop Robyn from killing her father, and more importantly she had to stop her father from killing Robyn.
The horse seemed to know where to go. She let it choose the path, though not at the pace its arched neck suggested it would prefer. Shouts rang out periodically from farther down the lake as her father’s soldiers hunted down Siward’s gang. How am I going to find Robyn in the middle of this? Her stolen clothing caught on branches and she gripped the horse tightly with her legs. Ahead, a low-hanging limb threatened to knock her off entirely. She ducked. With her face pressed to her horse’s mane, she glimpsed a small clearing. Riders surrounded two figures on foot. One of them was Robyn.
She pulled up on the reins, ignoring her horse’s snorts of protest, and burst into the clearing with Willa arriving behind them in a shower of dislodged moss.
“Hold,” she shouted as she wheeled her horse around. She took in the scene as quickly as she could. Cedric, the man who had identified Robyn to her father, stared at her with relief writ across his pimpled face. The other man shouted at his horse. Blood streamed from its nose, and she recognized the stallion a split second before she recognized her father.
“Marian?” Robyn gaped up at her. Blood and scratches covered her face, and Marian saw more blood seeping from the crossbow bolt sticking out of her leg. Her own thigh tightened in sympathetic pain.
“Kill him,” ordered the sheriff. He still had not looked up from his horse’s anguished head.
“No.” Marian interposed her horse between her father and her friends. Her father stiffened at the sound of her voice, and his horse hung its head in blowing defeat.
“Marian?”
“Father.”
“Marian, what—”
“Listen to me.”
“You should have—”
“Listen to me.” Her shout silenced him. Had she ever shouted at him? Certainly not in front of his men, and certainly not with the vehemence that now filled her voice. “You sentenced me to die.”
“I—”
“I was in those caves. Did you think to rid yourself of me? Is the price of your pride that high?” Her voice did not break.
“Never. Marian, I swear I did—”
“Don’t lie to me. You knew there was a chance I was in there. You knew what might happen, and you set the dogs loose anyway.”
“Outlaws lie. Come back to Nottingham, daughter.”
She laughed. “I am not your daughter. I haven’t been in years, but I didn’t know it until today. Thank God mother died before she could see what you’ve become.” Her words leached the color out of his cheeks.
“How dare you speak of her like that.”
“How dare I?” Her horse sidestepped as her legs tightened. “I asked you to choose me another husband. Then I asked you to send me to the priory. You denied me, as is your due, but when I disobeyed, you set your dogs on me as if I were vermin. I would have been torn to pieces if one had not recognized me. Do you hear me?”
He opened his mouth.
“I will not come back to Nottingham. Not with you, and not with any other. Tell your men I died here. That should satisfy your pride.”
“You would choose this outlaw over me? Over the life I gave you
?”
“Yes. A thousand times, yes.”
The sheriff turned to Willa. If he’d hoped to find support from that quarter, he was mistaken. She saw recognition flicker in his eyes. “I see,” he said. “Nottingham’s daughters now play whore to filth. I shall tell your father, Lady Willa, and we—”
“What will you do, m’lord?” said Willa. “Hunt us? Bring us back and punish us? What will that bring but your own disgrace?”
“Mark my words.”
“No,” said Robyn. “Mark mine.” Marian looked down and saw Robyn push back her hood so that the morning light fell full over her face. Cedric stirred. The sheriff frowned.
“What is this?” said her father.
“Do you not know me, my lord?”
“The archer from the fair.”
“I am more than that to you, surely. I begged your mercy once, and you threw me back into the street.”
Horror, followed by understanding, curled his lip. “You’re the sister.”
“Are you afraid to speak his name? Yes, I am Michael Fletcher’s sister. Did you not wonder what had happened to me, or did you assume that I had starved, as you intended?”
Marian had never seen her father truly speechless. His eyes bulged and his lips worked, but no sound passed them as Robyn spoke.
“Hear me now. You will not have Marian, and you will not have me, and you will not have anyone under my protection. Hunt us if you will. If we are captured, however, know this: you were thwarted by a woman. That will be what Nottingham remembers. Not my death, and not the justice you claim to work. They will remember that Nottingham’s daughters rose up against you when no one else dared. Will you rule them then with fear?”
In the silence that followed, Cedric dropped his crossbow to the ground.
“Dismount, m’lord,” said John. “Your horse wants tending.”
“You can get off your horse, too,” Willa told Cedric. “We’ll be borrowing it.”
Cedric dismounted; the sheriff did not. He sat, immobilized, as Cedric handed his reins over to John. Marian studied her father. This might not be the last time she laid eyes on him—fate was rarely that kind—but it was the last time she would look at him through a daughter’s eyes. She began to memorize the bulk of his shoulders and the set of his jaw, then she stopped herself. This was not how she wanted to remember him. Instead, she thought of the man who’d smiled to see her mother laugh and whose arms had lifted her onto the back of her first horse, guiding her hands on the reins as he beamed up at her with pride. She would remember that man, not this one.
“Robyn,” Cedric said. Accusation filled his voice.
“I am sorry to meet you like this again,” said Robyn. “It was never my intention to hurt anyone.”
“Pol. Brendan.”
Marian followed Cedric’s gaze to the bodies she’d overlooked before. Robyn’s arrows protruded from their wounds.
“And Clovis.” Exhaustion crept into Robyn’s words. “I know. I’ll carry them with me until the end of my days.”
“I believe you,” said Cedric.
“You’re a good man, Cedric. Much better than your master. Don’t let him make you cruel.”
Cedric nodded and backed away, looking lost. Marian spared him no further glance. “Get her on my horse,” she told John. John helped Robyn up behind Marian’s saddle. The feel of Robyn’s arms around her waist drove away some of the emptiness in her chest, and she turned to her father one last time as John mounted.
He watched her out of haunted eyes.
“Good day, sheriff,” she said, and then she dug her heels into the horse’s sides. There would be time for reckoning later, when they were far away from here.
John led the way out of the valley. They passed the bodies of brigands near the tunnel she’d emerged from. Some sported man-made wounds. Others bore the marks of teeth. Had Siward perished in the darkness, or had he clawed his way to sunlight at the end? Once, she thought she recognized his body, or at least his ringed hand, but the corpse’s face was too mangled to say for sure and she did not stop to check. It did not matter if he lived or died. His reign was over.
They heard riders only once. John led them off the path to a stand of firs, where the boughs blocked them from view, and then they rounded the cliffs and entered the forest.
John kept them to game trails. The horse’s tracks would be easy to follow, but it was faster than breaking through the undergrowth, and they needed speed. Robyn breathed rapidly behind her. The wound had to hurt badly. Crossbow bolts were thicker than arrows, and the jarring of the horse’s hooves must have felt like a knife in the wound, but there was nothing Marian could do for her except get her to the priory as swiftly as possible.
“Should we take the road?” she asked John.
“They’ll have it watched. We’ll loose the horses at the river to throw them off our trail, and walk from there.”
“Robyn can’t walk.” Marian wanted to turn in the saddle to see Robyn, but the mail made that impossible.
“She’ll have to,” said John.
“But—”
“I’ll be fine.”
Marian felt the effort the words cost Robyn in the tightening of the arms around her waist. She was grateful for the foreign leather and mail between them, for all that it reeked of unwashed man. The reality of Robyn was suddenly too much. What if Marian had arrived in the clearing even a moment later? Who would have been left standing? Don’t, she warned her mind. She could not afford doubts until they were safe, and besides, she’d arrived in time. If Robyn suspected some of the turmoil riding pillion with her, she didn’t let on. Instead, her head sagged against Marian’s back. Twice she nearly slid off the horse.
The second time this happened, Marian halted and turned in the saddle. Robyn’s face had changed from pale beneath the bloodstains to gray. She looked like she might pass out at any moment.
“Stay with me,” Marian said. They’d been riding for only twenty minutes, with at least an hour more to go before they hit the river. Robyn struggled to focus her eyes.
“Damn.” Willa brought her horse alongside Marian’s, although the closeness of the woods here made it difficult. Blood dripped down Robyn’s leg and onto the leaves. Marian heard the double meaning in the curse. Robyn was not only losing blood too quickly, but they were leaving a blood trail.
“Get her off the horse,” said Alanna.
“No.” Robyn shook her head slowly, as if the effort hurt. “If I get off, I might not be able to get back on. I need . . .” she trailed off, blinking rapidly. “I need something to stop the bleeding.”
“We should have seen to this before. Here.” Alanna sliced a strip of cloth from the saddle skirt. “Tie your leg off above the wound.”
Robyn hissed as she tied the tourniquet. The blood slowed to a trickle, which Robyn stanched with her hood. She looked vulnerable without it covering her head. “Nothing we can do about the blood trail now,” she said, “except ride and hope no one comes looking for us.”
Morning faded to afternoon. They had left the tangle of the woods around Siward’s cave behind. The trees here spread their branches high and wide, blocking the sunlight from all but the most ambitious of saplings. Vines curled around their trunks, and sweet ferns rustled in the shade.
“We’re near the road here,” said Willa. “We’d make better time.”
“John said to stay off it.” Alanna craned her neck to stare at Robyn as she spoke.
“She’s lost too much blood. We need to get her to safety.”
“Willa’s right,” said John. “Come on.”
Marian directed her horse through the trees toward the road and strained her ears for the sound of voices. Only birds chorused. “Hold on, my love,” she said to Robyn, who slumped against her. She urged her horse into a slow canter, fearing a trot would be too jarring for Robyn. Willa stayed on her other side so that Alanna could keep an eye on their casualty while John scouted ahead. They hadn’t ridden for more than a f
ew minutes when a group of traveling stonemasons came into view. She felt their eyes as they cantered past, hands raised in greeting.
John brought his horse down to a walk as they rounded the next bend and stared at Marian, wordless. She nodded. They led the horses off the comfortingly rutted surface of the road and into the forest once more, letting the trees swallow them from sight.
“We have to assume they’ll tell someone,” Alanna said. “Nothing travels faster than a secret.”
“I know.” John’s frustration carried over into his mount, which shied at a passing branch. “We’ll make for the river as we planned.”
Marian’s arm throbbed from the awkward effort of keeping Robyn in the saddle. She clenched her teeth and endured. On top of pain and blood loss, neither of them had had anything to eat or drink since the day before, and she doubted Robyn had slept while she had been tied up. It was a miracle she’d held on to consciousness this long.
She smelled the river before she heard it. A breeze wafted the rich smells of mud and damp, and her taxed salivary glands ached at the nearness of water. The horses smelled it too. Sweat dampened their flanks, and she knew her father’s men had ridden them hard to reach the cave by dawn. All of them needed a drink.
“We dismount in the water,” said John as they crested a low hill overlooking the reedy riverbank. “We leave no tracks. And we’ll release the horses and move downstream before we go the rest of the way on foot.”
The horses scrambled down the banks and slurped greedily at the reedy stream. This deep in the forest, the water flowed over fallen leaves and silvery fish, who flitted away from the disturbance created by the horses’ hooves. Willa and Alanna dismounted with a splash. John’s landing was quieter, and he patted his horse’s shoulder.
Marian stayed mounted.
Willa cut the other two horses’ reins with her knife, leaving only a foot or so of leather dangling from the bridle. “This way it won’t catch on a tree,” she said, pocketing the leather straps. “I’ll help you with Robyn.” She waded closer while Alanna searched the horses’ saddle bags for anything of use. John moved to help Willa.