“We will, soon,” King Richard said. “We’ve been discussing. The three of us are all that’s left of the noblemen who came here. All the others were killed, decapitated,” he said with a bitter edge to his voice. “We lost a lot of good men.”
“Yes, and we’ve kept a lot, too.” Robin gestured to the soldiers around them.
“True,” Richard admitted, nodding.
“There’s something else,” Robin’s father said. “What is it?”
Robin took a breath. “I had a dream, but it was more than that. I think Henry is sending his army into Sherwood. I need to get there faster to help defend her, everyone.”
“We can push faster, start marching in another hour or so,” King Richard said. “It will be night, but we can continue.”
“No, I need to move a lot faster than we can move this army,” Robin said. “Also, when the army gets there they need to be ready to fight. They can’t be dead on their feet.”
“You want to go alone?” Philemon asked. “That’s suicide.” His features twisted in worry.
“I’ve done more lunatic things in the last year,” Robin said grimly. “I’m afraid if I don’t go now, that it will be too late when the rest of you do arrive.”
King Richard nodded his head. “I’ve learned to put a lot more stock than I once did in dreams and visions. Go with our blessings. If you want, take someone with you.”
“No, I’ll travel faster alone. I will take a horse, though.”
“Take some food, as well, so you can limit your stops,” his father suggested.
“Thank you,” Robin said. “Thank you, both.” He turned aside and quickly chose his horse. The gray was built for speed and had incredible endurance. He bridled the animal and then turned just as his father put the saddle on the creature’s back. When he was finished cinching it down Philemon turned, his face working with emotion.
“God speed, son,” he said roughly, before pulling Robin into an embrace. He hugged his father back then pulled away.
“I have to go,” he said.
“I know. We’ll come after as fast as we can,” his father said. “Be careful, use the Roman roads as much as you can without being noticed. I’ll see you in England.”
“In England,” Robin echoed as he swung up on the back of the horse. He gave his father a parting nod then kicked his heels into the animal’s side and sent him galloping down the road. In moments the camp was lost to sight behind him, but he focused on the path ahead.
Hold on, Marian, I’m coming.
* * *
Marian peered through the trees, and she saw the rows of soldiers trying to walk into the forest. They were forced to break up their orderly rows, though, because of the terrain. There was a lot of grumbling because of it. The majority were on foot, although there were at least a dozen horses that she saw.
“I’m telling you, I shot an outlaw,” one man was saying to those nearby.
Another snorted derisively. “You shot a deer, and it got away from you anyway.”
Her blood boiled as she realized she was looking at Audric’s killer. Balling her hands into fists she forced herself to stand stock still, letting her eyes drift over some of the other soldiers trooping along. Some were attentive, some were slogging along mindlessly. She smiled wickedly as she noticed that quite a few looked nervous.
Slipping silently back into the forest, she began to form a plan. It would require help for her to execute it. The stag was waiting where she had left him, and she retreated another hundred feet farther back from where the soldiers were. He followed her, watching with his large eyes, studying her, sizing her up.
“We will drive them off, but we need help,” she told him softly.
“Then it’s a good thing I’m here.”
Suppressing a cry, Marian spun around and saw that it was the fey girl from the river challenge. She heaved a deep breath upon seeing the girl.
“Thank you for coming.”
“You called.” The girl shrugged. “Where else would I be?” Before Marian could answer the girl continued. “Oh, and I brought someone who was looking for you.” She stepped to the side and Champion bounded forward.
Marian was glad to see the fox, but she worried. She didn’t want to risk him getting hurt.
“Nothing could have stopped him from coming,” the girl said. “I just made sure he got here in time.”
“Thank you,” Marian said as she picked up the creature and buried her face in his fur. After a few moments she put him back down.
“So, what is your plan?” the girl asked.
Marian hesitated. “We should wait for more to arrive, so I can explain it all at once.”
“No others are coming... yet,” the girl said.
“What? What do you mean?” Marian asked, her heart sinking. What they needed to do could not be accomplished by just the four of them.
“You are to tell me,” the girl explained. “I will tell them. If they agree it is a good plan then they will help.”
“We can’t do this by ourselves.”
“And we won’t. I understand you. I trust that your plan is good.”
“Okay.” Marian nodded slowly, realizing it was the best she was going to get. “These soldiers aren’t from here, but many of them have heard the legends of Sherwood.”
“Which ones?” the girl asked curiously.
“That it’s haunted.”
“Is that what they say?”
“Yes,” Marian answered, and she began to be irritated. She calmed herself. The girl was a fey of Sherwood. She didn’t consort with humans, generally speaking, so as strange as it seemed, she wouldn’t necessarily know what the humans outside the forest said about it.
“Many humans are afraid of the forest,” she said. “They believe that ghosts live here.”
“We live here,” the girl said.
“Yes, and some believe in the fey and some don’t, but they all believe in ghosts. And they’re terrified of them.”
The girl got a wicked grin on her face. “We can play ghosts.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Marian said, “and I think you’d be especially good at scaring them.” She added her own smile.
“Of course I will be.” The girl’s grin grew even more. “I will go and tell the others.” She turned away with a skip in her step. Seconds later she had disappeared into the forest. Marian stood there, waiting, hoping, though she wasn’t sure what she should be expecting.
A minute passed, then another. She had no idea how far away the other fey were gathering. She felt frustration building inside of her. She should have stressed the importance of time and wasn’t certain the fey even knew the concept. They needed to do this now, though, before the soldiers made it much farther into the woods.
Maybe I’m going to have to do this by myself.
She turned and found the stag blocking her path. He shook his antlered head, as though to tell her to turn back.
“Someone has to,” she told him. “If I have to do it alone, I will give it all I have.”
“Fortunately, you don’t have to do it all alone.” A voice that was now familiar piped up behind her. Marian spun in surprise.
“Do you always like to sneak up on people?”
“It’s not my fault people turn away just as I’m approaching.”
Marian very much doubted that was the case, but she held her tongue.
“They have decided that your plan is a good one.”
“Wonderful,” Marian said. “When can they start?”
“Oh, they’ve already started,” she said. The girl cocked her head to the side.
“Oh!” Marian said. She’d thought there would be more planning.
“I brought this for you, so you can watch if you want, and yet still just be a ghost to them.” The girl handed Marian a light gray bundle. She took it and shook it out. The bundle turned out to be a cloak, though it was tattered and had material that fluttered all about it in varying shades of gray. It looked like death
to her, though she couldn’t have said just how.
Then she smiled as she realized how she would look when wearing it.
“Thank you,” she said as she slung it around her shoulders. The material draped behind her, giving her a flowing look. The hood was oversized so that her face would be lost within its darker folds.
“There, you’re a ghost now, too,” the girl said somewhat too gleefully. “Don’t you feel better?”
“This should fool them beautifully,” Marian said. She didn’t bother to tell her that she didn’t actually want to be a ghost.
“You just need one more thing,” the girl said.
“What’s that?” Marian asked.
The girl leaned down and stroked her hand across Champion’s back. Beneath her touch his fur turned a silvery gray that was almost translucent. Marian stared in shock as the girl lifted her hand, but the effect continued to ripple through Champion’s coat.
“Don’t worry, it will only last a night and a day, and then he’ll be his normal color again,” the girl said. “Until then only ghosts should be seen walking with one another.”
Marian glanced down again at Champion and then looked at the cloak she was wearing. She pulled it closer around herself and lifted the hood.
“You are so right,” she said.
“Excellent, now come with me,” the girl said with impish glee. “It’s time we show these men just how haunted Sherwood is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Marian paused behind a tree with the girl fey. Champion stood with his nose pressed against Marian’s leg, staying as close to her as possible.
“They’re good and scared already,” the girl whispered to her. “They’ve been hearing noises, seeing things move that aren’t there when they look at them straight on. It’s only going to take one or two good scares to send them running,” she said confidently.
The talking had died down. They still could hear the sounds of the army moving, but it was just the noise of feet and hooves on leaves and twigs, the shuffling of a great many bodies through the trees and brush and snow.
Marian cautiously peered through the underbrush. The men in front looked nervously around, eyes wide as if expecting anything. Every one of them had a hand on a weapon, scared but prepared to strike out at whatever came into their sight. It wasn’t the right time or place for her to make a sudden appearance.
She gritted her teeth in frustration. The girl drew her back a couple of steps and whispered.
“How brave are you?”
Marian stared. “As brave as I need to be.”
The girl nodded. “Then watch, and choose your moment.”
Marian nodded back, and returned to her observation spot. A break appeared in the ranks—a decided gap between the front half of the men and the back half. It looked to be at least thirty feet.
Glancing across from where she was, she saw a very large tree. Behind it there was a lot of thick brush. It would be easy to get lost in there if she had to.
She looked again at the second group of men. They seemed tired and a bit nervous, but not nearly to the extent that the first group had been. Likely the fey had been harrying them less. Their swords were still sheathed, their bows still slung on their backs.
Marian made up her mind.
She waited until the last men in the first group had passed. Then she stepped out behind them, moving directly across the path of the second group. She walked as smoothly as she could, attempting to glide. The fabric billowed around her, trailing wisps of it and swaying as she moved. Champion walked at her side, looking like a ghost himself.
She stared straight ahead but heard gasps going up. She would have to move fast before the group in front realized what was happening and turned. When the moment was right she twisted her head toward the approaching men.
I should say something, she realized.
Then, suddenly, from all around her a hundred voices whispered.
“You should not be here.”
“Ghost!” one of the men shrieked at the top of his lungs before turning and plunging into the soldiers behind him, knocking several of them over. Marian and Champion made it to the safety of the large tree and hid behind it to watch.
Suddenly it was pandemonium as men began to scream and run. The group in front turned and arrows went flying through the air, only to find homes in the chests and backs of the soldiers in the second wave. A sudden keening sound went up from the forest all around, a hundred voices rising in unison.
The men in the front group broke, most of them running back the way they’d come, a few running deeper into the forest. One of the fey that Marian did not recognize, a large creature with nearly albino skin, ran in front of those, causing them to turn back.
Soldiers collided with one another and went down in piles on the ground, shouting and trying to pummel each other in their attempts to escape. The smell of blood filled the air as those who had been shot with arrows collapsed on the ground, and others began bleeding from broken noses and bloody mouths. It was absolute chaos.
The few who were riding horses urged their frightened animals away from the confusion. The mounts, succumbing to blind panic, trampled several of the soldiers who had already fallen and knocked still others down.
Those men who could run followed their leaders back the way they’d come. Those who couldn’t dragged themselves along the ground in an effort to escape the horrors that had descended upon them. They lashed out at anything that got close, their terror rendering them unable to distinguish between friend and foe.
Within moments all that was left were the dead and those who had been too badly injured to get away. Suddenly, from out of the forest, fey of all types descended with high-pitched shouts that literally hurt her ears, so intense were they. She was paralyzed as they ripped apart the men who were still alive, until not one was left.
Then silence descended upon the forest, eerie and final, like the grave.
Marian just gaped at the aftermath. There were at least sixty men dead, maybe more. The carnage was awesome. Anyone who happened upon it would never be able to tell exactly what had happened there.
Not that any of the soldiers who had fled would ever be stepping foot in the forest again. She was quite certain of that. A fierce sort of joy burned in her for a moment. Sherwood was England, wild, untamed, strong. It would survive and crush her enemies beneath its heel.
And so will I, Marian vowed, as her thoughts turned to the Sheriff and her cousin, Henry. They were the ones who had declared war, not her. Yet she was the one who was going to finish it.
The girl fey appeared at her side.
“You did well.”
“Thank you,” Marian said.
“The bloodshed, it does not bother you?” the girl asked sharply, her eyes probing. Marian shook her head slowly.
“The moment they stepped foot in Sherwood, violating the sanctity of this place, their lives were forfeit.”
“Good,” the girl smiled. “You are becoming one of us.”
“One of us.”
The words echoed in her mind, and slowly Marian smiled back.
* * *
Glynna woke with a cry of anguish. It was before dawn, and she shivered in her bed. Normally that time, when all was darkest, was her favorite. This morning, though, the blackness around her just served as a backdrop for silvery images that seemed to explode all around, her dreams made manifest in horrific fashion.
Ships were sailing, barreling down toward her on the tides of darkness. In her dreams those tides had been blood, not water, but the silver images that traced in the air around her showed no color. At the bow of the first ship stood a great lion, his mane billowing in the breeze, his teeth bared in anger and his paw raised as though ready to strike. Next to him was a tiger whose eyes burned into her soul. In her dream those eyes had been the eyes of Philemon, Lord of Longstride. There were others with them, so many others.
Most took the form of starving wolves.
The boats circled around her, an invisible tide drawing them closer and closer. They would reach her before she knew it. She screamed and shut her eyes to try and block out the visions, but they etched themselves into her eyelids so the silvery lines kept swirling.
“It can’t be true!” she wailed, fear making her entire body shake.
King Richard and her husband were coming home.
She slithered from the bed, keeping her eyes tightly closed. She pulled a cloak about her, not daring to try and call the shadows around her. All she wanted was to find her love and warn him of what she’d seen.
Once she had left their room she opened her eyes a slit. She was relieved to see only the torchlit hallway, the flames dancing on stone. She began to walk, gaining confidence, leaving behind the dreams that had disturbed her. She should have known better than to worry. Her love could handle whatever and whomever came their way.
Suddenly she caught motion out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head to the left. The fire from the torch nearest her seemed to leap from its place and dash itself against the walls. It exploded against the stone in a shower of sparks, but then suddenly fire seemed to trace its way along the stones, running in rivulets.
She stopped walking and stared in fascination, wondering what it was that she was witnessing. The fire continued to run and spread. It swirled and then began to take on form. Her stomach clenched as she suddenly made out the image of a ship, inscribed in fire on the stone. It seemed to approach, growing larger and larger until she could see every part of it clear. There at the bow was the lion, the tiger beside him. Behind them the pack of wolves gathered.
More ships began to form behind the first.
The lion opened his jaws in a silent, fiery roar and the tiger bared its teeth. She screamed and turned away. There, ahead of her, though, the flames from all the torches leaped to the walls as well, and began forming the same scene, over and over.
Glynna ran down the hall, trying not to look, her heart pounding within her. What kind of magic was this that kept showing her the same image, even while she was awake? She needed to be away from it. Fear roiled through her. It was an emotion that she thought she had forgotten, from the moment she’d laid eyes on her lover.
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