Laura Strickland - The Guardians of Sherwood Trilogy

by Champion of Sherwood

  She struggled to pick out the particular pile of rubble that was her own, and her heart ached.

  Folk wandered the grounds looking as lost as Linnet suddenly felt. Catching sight of the new arrivals, they began to gather.

  Linnet glanced into Falcon’s face; he looked anguished, and he breathed but one word. “Pa.”

  “Surely he was safe in the ground before this happened,” Lark told him. “Surely. And if not, Fal, ’tis a hero’s funeral, as he deserved.”

  “I should have been here, not off haring about the forest.” Falcon’s voice sounded rough with pain. Linnet knew him to the heart and knew that, despite his habitual easy demeanor, he felt things deeply, and never more so than now.

  “What happened?” Lark addressed those who gathered to meet them. “When?”

  The smith, Yancy, spoke. “Two days past, now. They came with torches at daybreak.”

  “Who?”

  “Soldiers from Nottingham. Said they wanted those outlaws who held up the party on the York road and took the King’s taxes.”

  Lark and Falcon exchanged looks. Falcon spoke. “Did they ask after the captive?”

  “Nay. And they refused to believe us when we denied all knowledge of their lost riches. We found out yesterday they burned Held as well, and most of Elderdale.”

  “That means they do not know whence came the men who held them up on the road,” Lark murmured.

  “And so everyone pays,” cried a woman whose shocked eyes burned in her pale face. “My home is gone.”

  “We have three dead,” Yancy said gravely, “one a child who perished from the smoke, and many injured.” He looked at Linnet. “We need the skill in your hands, lass.”

  She gestured helplessly. “I have lost all.” The few healing supplies she had taken with her had been left with her mother, for Gareth. “Of course I will do what I can.”

  “My father,” Fal said brokenly, “had he already been buried?”

  Another of the men answered, “Aye, lad. But the things of his we had saved for you, his hood and his quiver, those arrows he kept for remembrances, are all gone. The shelter where they lay is burnt to cinders. Only his sword remains, and that badly damaged.”

  Grief twisted Falcon’s features. “I should have been here, to stand and fight.”

  Yancy’s eyes flashed. “You think we did not stand? The worst wounded are those who tried. Well do you know, young Falcon, a man on foot is no match for one mounted, and with a sword.” He reached out and clasped Fal’s arm. “But we need you now. Oakham needs the leadership of a strong headman, more than ever with your father gone.”

  Falcon seemed to shrink. “Can you not take the place, Yancy? I am not the man my father was.”

  “Nor am I, lad. I daresay there will never be another like him. Come, though. You must have known the place would be yours one day. And folk are anxious to look to someone. They feel lost, and there is much work to be done.”

  It seemed to Linnet the whole village stood holding its breath for Falcon’s answer. But he did not make it. Instead his face crumpled and his eyes went wide.

  Lark, still holding his arm, spoke steadily. “Of course he will step into the breach. We shall all pull together as we always do. What have those without roofs been doing these two nights past?”

  A woman spoke. “Sleeping outside, or with neighbors.”

  “At least the weather is kind,” Lark said briskly. “We shall begin with rebuilding as suits the need. Gather all those who have lost their homes here, beside me, and those sore hurt in another group, for Linnet. We shall see to everyone. Aye, Fal?”

  He nodded brokenly. The village folk, given something to do, seemed satisfied and hurried off.

  Linnet, staggering emotionally under the weight of all to be done, looked at her companions. “Someone should tell Ma and Pa. Or do you think they know?”

  “I think they suspected what we would find here,” Lark returned. “It is likely why they sent us.” Her golden eyes met Linnet’s. “They mean for the three of us to work together. And so we shall. Is that not right, Fal?”

  He had covered his face with his hands. “All lost, gone the same way as my mother and poor wee Thrush.”

  “I know how you are hurting.” Lark’s voice softened.

  “I failed him.”

  “If that is truly how you feel, then resolve you will not fail him again. Step up and take the place he held for you all these years.”

  “You are wrong.” Fal raised an anguished face. “He held it not for me but because he was a leader to the bone. As I am not! How can I act as these folk expect? Better you take the place of headman, Lark, than I.”

  “Never mind.” Lark hooked an arm about his neck and drew his head down to hers. “We shall hold the place together, eh?”

  They went off and left Linnet alone, save for one child who lingered, large-eyed, with his thumb in his mouth. “Go home to your mother, Roger,” Linnet told him kindly. “She will be missing you.” Not until she had spoken the words did she realize his home, close by her own, stood no longer. “Here.” She held out her hand to him. Best she find his mother, amid all this madness, and see him safe.

  She came upon the child’s mother standing with a knot of other women, gossiping, and stood to speak with them. The children, they said, were sore frightened, tired, and hungry. Linnet set them to organizing a communal cook pot and bade them bring their little ones to a cleared place where she could tend their injuries.

  She could see Lark and Falcon across the way, still in tandem and giving similar directions. That was, Lark appeared to be giving instructions while Fal stood at her side, shocked and silent.

  Linnet stole a moment to walk back to the rubble that had once been her home, where she looked to see what could be salvaged. Nothing. The thatch must have burned and come down, engulfing everything inside. The rubble still gave off heat. Perhaps when it cooled she would be able to search, but she could not imagine finding anything intact.

  Tears flooded her eyes and she had to catch herself up, hard. No one ever said life was not difficult or that things would be just. But following so swiftly on the loss of Martin, this seemed a cruel blow indeed.

  And now what? With her parents still deep in Sherwood, must she, Lark, and Falcon take the reins in their hands in order to move forward? Was that what her parents intended, to set the new triad in motion and force them to accept their places?

  And would Ma and Pa now disappear into Sherwood like all those spirits who inhabited it, lose themselves in the magic that held the ancient forest? Better that, Linnet acknowledged, than to lose them as Falcon had lost Martin. Even though she did not see her parents often, they were the bedrock of her life, and her heart ached at the idea of going on without them. The prospect of trying to exist without her Pa’s smile, the steady wisdom in his eyes, the comfort he emitted, or Ma’s lightning humor and sharp wit, and the strength of her knowing, seemed impossible. How did Fal endure it?

  And what of Lark? She seemed as strong and undefeatable as Ma, but in many ways Martin Scarlet had been her hero, and that part of her world had been destroyed.

  How could Linnet be so selfish as to think about herself at such a time? How wonder at being able to go on in the absence of Gareth de Vavasour when others had lost so much? How let herself pine for a pair of clear, gray eyes, when Fal’s eyes were full of pain? How hunger for the taste of someone she had never even kissed…

  Get hold of yourself, girl. A short while ago, you did not know he existed. But you have always known the path that lay before you. Time to set your foot upon it and forget him.

  “But I cannot forget,” she said aloud into the ashes of her past life. “I cannot hope to forget.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Drink this.”

  The demand roused Gareth de Vavasour from his sleep. The dawn sun was just rising, and all around him the forest lay in a deep hush. Light had begun to seep between the mighty boles of the trees and through the
high canopy of leaves.

  Linnet’s mother stood above him with a wooden cup in her hands.

  He blinked at her and sat up. His bed had been the moss of Sherwood and he had slept surprisingly well. He remembered—and did not remember—dreaming; the remnants of sweet visions still wrapped round him. Linnet. Surely he had loved her, in his dreams.

  And surely this woman offering him the cup knew it. She seemed so aware of everything. Three days they had been together at this new place, Gareth, Wren, and Sparrow. And Gareth had begun to develop a strange, inexplicable affinity for the magic here that he breathed like air.

  Sometimes it all seemed too real, painfully vital—the light, the sounds the trees made whispering among themselves, and the twining threads of power. Sometimes nothing at all seemed real or substantial, not even the people with whom he found himself. It might all be illusion, like his vivid dreams.

  He looked into Wren Little’s eyes and wondered what he saw there, besides impatience. He did not reach to take the cup from her but instead asked, “What is that?”

  “A draught to make you stronger.”

  So it might well be; she had dosed him with many vile potions these days past. Most tasted of dirt and sticks. But something about this offering pricked his senses.

  “What have you put in it?” He always asked. Usually she did not tell; she just insisted he drink. He found the woman relentless.

  “Herbs.”

  Cautiously, he accepted the cup in his right hand. The contents steamed a bit, the way the trees did when the morning sun first hit them. He sniffed and the contents smelled bitter; the vessel might contain poison, or pure enchantment.

  He stirred and stretched his limbs on the end of his tether. Secured to a young ash tree that persistently rattled its leaves at him, he had watched Wren each day while she secured the bond with a murmured spell.

  “Drink it,” Wren repeated inexorably and folded her legs beneath her, so to sit beside him. He knew from experience she would stay until he ingested every drop.

  He could not doubt her skill as a healer or that she employed some measure of magic when she treated him. He could feel that much whenever she laid her hands on him, a bright tingle that penetrated his flesh and seemed to heal his wounds from within. He found it an altogether disconcerting sensation and hoped she would not touch him now, even though her care had lent him immeasurable strength.

  “We have been given signs,” she announced, “telling us you will soon be able to go home.”

  “Home?” But he had none. Any such claim had been buried with the whimsical creature he had called Mother.

  “To Nottingham. What place shall you hold in de Vavasour’s company?”

  Gareth shook his head. “I know naught beyond that he has summoned me.”

  “To be his wolfhound and chase us to ground here in the forest? If so, you have been given a great advantage, having seen how and where we live.”

  “He patronized the last of my training and demands my service in return.”

  “Ah, perhaps you are meant to replace the vile Monteith as Captain of the Guard, since that man has not had great success in curtailing our activities.” She smiled a dangerous smile that made her look very like the man, or spirit, Gareth had encountered in the forest—Robin Hood.

  “I am unable to hold any place at all, what with my arm broken.”

  “We shall see to that. Drink.”

  Gareth raised the cup to his lips. The contents tasted sharp and smelled intensely aromatic. The bitterness stung his throat on the way down. Aye, poison, no doubt. He wondered that he did not feel more upset about it.

  When he could speak again, for the taste, he said, “It is not possible to merely re-knit the bone in my arm. Such an injury takes many weeks’ recovery.”

  “We shall see. When you are finished with drinking that—to the last drop, mind—strip yourself down. You are going into the water.”

  Gareth felt heat sweep over him. “I think not.”

  She raked him with her gaze. “Do not flatter yourself, lad. I am scarce interested in what you have beneath those rags. They are in such tatters you have few secrets anyway. But do not concern yourself; my husband will tend you in this.”

  “Why should either of you care to tend me, by any road?”

  She smiled again. “I have my reasons, and my reasons are Sparrow’s. Only do your part. You will feel better for it.”

  With that, she got to her feet and moved off. Gareth, rueful, had to admit he already felt better. He downed the last of the cup’s bitter contents and tried not to shudder. After that he merely sat and let the strengthening light come find him, settle on his hair, and sift through him from the head down. Each morning had it been thus; magic rode on the light.

  And since when had he begun believing in magic? His eyes flew open wide at the question. He was a Norman knight, trained in practical things, a proven champion and product of a man who sneered at anything other than control and physical prowess. His father had permitted no talk of fancy, nor vision. He had tried to knock such nonsense out of his young wife.

  But Gareth’s mother, with her Celtic blood, had refused to yield her instinctual belief. Indeed, she had died before ever doing so.

  A flare of hate raced through Gareth’s veins, his consistent reaction when he thought of his father and the way that man had treated his mother.

  “All right, lad?” Sparrow’s deep voice rumbled over him. “Up on your feet. Good thing ’tis a warm morning, eh?”

  Sparrow’s big hands made short work of the tether and the magic that secured it. Gareth stripped off his clothes, able to feel the difference in his body when he moved. Many of his scratches were healed and almost all the aches and bruises gone. He could wiggle the fingers of his left hand with almost no pain.

  “The bandages, as well,” Sparrow told him.

  Gareth peeled them off and scrutinized the wounds. Mottled with new, pink skin, they appeared far less inflamed. He raised his fingers to the long cut Scarface had given him on his cheek. Not nearly so tender.

  “Come along to the stream.”

  It felt good to move free of the hated restraint. Gareth stretched his body as he went. The stream ran deep here, and clear, between clean-cut banks. Where two trees leaned together across it, a pool had formed.

  Sparrow gestured. “In with you.”

  Gareth shot him a look. It might well be a warm morning, but he knew from experience how cold that water ran. He had already been sluiced in it and told to wash himself from the bank.

  He slid down into the water and promptly lost his breath. Moving quickly, he submerged himself to the neck.

  It felt—wonderful. The water, clattering over stones, streamed across his shoulders and pooled around his body. After a moment he stretched out his arms and laid his head back. When he raised it again, the hair slapped wet against his back.

  Sparrow seated himself on the bank and placed his staff across his knees. Gareth could not help but wonder about that staff. A great, mighty thing, it had a twisted trunk and looked something more than a weapon. Surely it wielded magic.

  He curved his lips in a wry smile. There was that word again: magic. How absurdly often it now came to his mind.

  “Funny thing,” Sparrow rumbled, as if having a casual conversation, “how men are all the same when you strip them down to the skin. Take you, for instance. At the moment ’tis hard to tell whether to figure you for a fine Norman lord, a peasant’s son, or someone who simply does every daft thing he is told—like sit in a pool of cold water.”

  “The latter, without question.”

  “Where are you from, lad? Oh, I do not mean your blood lines, though I suppose those are relevant enough. I mean where are you from—you, the man inside? For we all come from a place molded by our experiences and those who have loved us.”

  An image flashed across Gareth’s mind of a slender woman, honey-haired and with fey, knowing eyes. He dismissed it quickly and thought inste
ad of his father. “My sire owned a large estate north of Leeds. It belongs to my brother now, since his death.”

  “Any other siblings?”

  “A sister, long wed and gone.” She had been traded for her value, and Gareth had scarcely seen her since.

  “Were you raised in the Church?”

  The question seemed so strange, Gareth raised his eyes to meet Sparrow’s. They were dark and wild and held wisdom so potent it sent a chill up Gareth’s spine.

  “Of course,” he replied. Could it be otherwise? A man accepted the Church’s teachings if he did not want to spend eternity in hell when this life was done. And for a Norman knight, life could end at any time. Youth lent no guarantee.

  Gareth knew men who had bought favor and had tried to purchase absolution. His own brother, Bernard, had made a rich donation on his father’s behalf after he died. Much good it might do, Gareth thought bitterly. The man deserved to writhe in endless torment.

  “Some men who take to the sword,” Sparrow said thoughtfully, “do so for the sake of righteousness, some for pure gain—that is true of your kind and mine as well. I just wondered what sort you were.”

  “Neither,” Gareth replied wryly, and not untruthfully. “As you said, I do as bidden and go where told.”

  The big man leaned over the bank toward him. “Some day, Gareth de Vavasour, you will have to make a choice. You will need to decide whether to follow your head or your heart. So much is true of all men. And so much, for you, is told by the stars.”

  “What have the heavens to do with it?” Gareth asked, taken aback.

  “The heavens, the earth, the fire, and the water.” Sparrow gestured with the staff to the pool where Gareth lay. “All things conspire, lad, to bring us to our destiny.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Where is your headman?” The cry broke the morning stillness the way an axe blade might shatter a skull. “On your feet when you face your betters, you lazy vermin. Do you not know who I am?”

  Robert de Vavasour. Linnet’s mind supplied the name even before she poked her nose from the temporary shelter she, Lark, and Falcon shared. She had heard that haughty voice before and could not mistake it now. Her heart stuttered and then leaped in terror.