Laura Strickland - The Guardians of Sherwood Trilogy

by Champion of Sherwood

  All the breath left Linnet’s body. “No. They would not.”

  “Aye, that was my first reaction. But then I got to thinking on it. The hermitage was left all tidied, Lin. Ma’s healing supplies were all put away or burned, some of them, for I sifted the ashes of their last fire. And Pa’s supplies for making arrows—you know he always had ash wood and fletchings on hand.”

  Linnet felt the blood drain from her face. “Would they take such a dire step without telling us?”

  “I thought on that, as well. With Martin gone, I believe they think it best for the three of us to take up ownership of the triad in earnest. We would not do that with them still available to us. I do not know about you, Lin, but one of my first impulses is always to turn to Ma or Pa with any need or trouble. If they told us they meant to withdraw, we would have fought tooth and nail. This way, ’tis just a thing done, a fact with which we must deal.”

  “But,” Linnet protested as panic flowed through her, “they must know how difficult this will be for us and how we will miss them. Ma can be brutal when needs must, aye, but Pa is never so unkind.”

  The rueful expression in Lark’s eyes sharpened. “He will follow her anywhere. You know that.”

  Linnet acknowledged this also. Her thoughts raced over possibilities and eventualities. “Have you told Fal?”

  “I just came from him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He took it hard. He has barely got over the loss of his father—now this.” An unnamable expression flickered in Lark’s eyes. “He wishes to speak with you. I do not doubt why.”

  Neither did Linnet. She reflected, with longing, on that last carefree day before Gareth de Vavasour had been captured and brought to Oakham—Lark and Fal playing together, tumbling like wolf pups and spoiling her morning’s work. What would she not give to have that simple time back again?

  “Fal knows his duty,” Lark went on, not without bitterness, “as do you. Will you accept him now?”

  Linnet lifted her hands, helpless. How could she, when her heart belonged so completely to another? When she might be carrying Gareth’s child? And yet, how could she fail to take up the duty for which she had been bred and raised?

  “You do not even want him.” Lark said viciously. “Just as he does not want me, even though I would give my soul for him. By the Green Man’s horns, Lin, could life be more unfair?”

  ****

  “Lin? Have you a moment?” Falcon appeared out of the gathering darkness of early evening and, moving softly as a shadow, took the place at Linnet’s side. All day long, ever since speaking with Lark, she had been awaiting and dreading this encounter. She and Fal had grown up together, yet she felt uncertain of him now.

  “Lin.” He spoke only her name. The two of them sat, looking out over what had once been Oakham. Much of the rubble had been cleared away and, like Linnet, folk now made their homes in the open air around their old hearths. Children ran and played until their mothers called them home to bed; hens pecked, and dogs slept with one eye open. Over it all the trees swayed and the breeze played its eternal song.

  Linnet said into the deepening dark, “I wonder if this is what it was like when the ancients came here, the first folk who made the forest their home and found the magic.”

  “Found the magic”—Fal took it up—“and made it their god. The god has had so many names over the centuries, just as he has had many faces.”

  Linnet shot him a surprised look. This was a Fal of which she had seen little lately. While growing, the three of them had often mused over such things and spoken of their sacred bonds with Sherwood. She needed to remember the heart of that lad, now a man. Falcon had been ever a dreamer whom his father had called, innumerable times, to duty.

  Linnet thought, again, she might have loved that lad, as a woman loves a man, had Gareth de Vavasour not entered her life. She wondered how much of Fal the gentle, the mischievous, remained.

  “We need to speak together,” she said softly.

  He lifted his hands, broad-palmed but graceful. “Aye, and so I have come.”

  “The future, it seems, has rushed upon us.”

  “It has.”

  “Too sudden, Fal. I should have been prepared; I find I am not.”

  His hand stole over and clasped her fingers; his grasp felt warm and strong. “You are not alone. None of us is. The present may be unbearable and the future daunting, but the three of us must prevail. We have no choice.”

  From where had come this flint she sensed in him? Fal had ever been one to tease and play, to put things off, to tread the light path.

  “So we journey on together. Wed with me, Lin. Let us take up our lives in earnest.”

  She squeezed his fingers. Sitting here with him as the night came down felt good. She might claim it as her future, would her heart but let her.

  “There is something I must tell you, Fal.” There were many things she should tell him—that she had lain down in the forest with Gareth de Vavasour, that she was not sure she could ever be the wife Fal deserved. “It must be kept in strictest confidence between us, only you and me.”

  “Aye?” he looked at her and, through their linked hands, she felt his caution.

  “I love you, Fal, but not in the way you might wish, as a woman loves a man.” Full and rushing, filling every breath and every heartbeat... “I love you like a brother, nay, more than that. I love you like kin, to the bone.”

  His eyes searched hers. Through their fingers, she felt his emotions stir: regret, protest and longing. “That will do for now, Lin; it is enough.”

  “It is not.” She knew now what love should be—bright and consuming. “You deserve someone who will give you her whole heart, love you, and breathe only for you. And there is such a one standing before you.”

  “Eh?”

  “It is Lark who loves you, Fal, and desires you as a woman should.”

  “Lark?”

  “I am not surprised you fail to see it. She hides her feelings well behind that fierce shield. But I know what is in her heart.”

  “Madness! She is like a brother to me, a companion.”

  “Then you have not looked at her properly, for she is a woman in every way that matters. Take her for your wife, Fal, bond with her and leave me to the forest.”

  “I want you. I always have.” She could no longer see his face clearly, but despair filled his voice.

  “And she has always wanted you,” Linnet added honestly, “as I do not. A tangle, indeed. What is to be done?”

  “I will tell you what: you are to put these foolish notions from you and accept me now, and the future will be what was always meant.”

  “I no longer know what is meant.”

  “I do, Lin. I have always known. True, it has rushed upon us betimes. My father’s death has brought it, and your parents push us to it with their absence. But I see in a way they were right to leave us, sorely as I miss them. For it forces us to grow up and accept what we were born to be.” His fingers clenched hers, hard. “Bond with me, Lin. Let our strengths become one.”

  “I cannot.” Linnet blinked into the darkness.

  “Because you think you do not love me, or desire me as you should? I will prove you wrong, Lin. Once we lie together—”

  She could feel his emotions so strongly they swayed her. She distinctly felt her heart break over his longing. “No.”

  He turned toward her and strained to see her in the gloom. “Lin, love,” he said with an edge of passion, “there is naught else for us. We were conceived and bred for this. How can you think to reject it?”

  How, indeed? She did not seek to reject the duties inherent in the triad—only him. But she could not tell him that.

  “Let me go to the forest,” she begged, “and you go speak with Lark.”

  “No.” Now he spoke the word. “I cannot lose you, too, atop all the other losses.” Emotion roughened his voice. “Do not do this to me, Lin. I pray you, do not!”

  “Fal�
��”

  “Trust me, Lin. Put yourself in my hands. You are like a flower that has never been touched by the sun. I will show you what may lie between a man and a woman. I will win your heart.”

  Before Linnet could draw a breath, he kissed her, his lips claiming hers and his arms drawing her fast against him.

  All his desire lay in that kiss, a vast river of it, unstoppable as a spring flood. It brimmed with sweetness and erotic power. It should have melted Linnet—or, indeed, any woman—to her bones. Instead it left her wracked by dismay.

  In that instant, tasting his feelings, she knew she could not hope to lie to him or deceive him in any way. He deserved better, deserved all she had to give. She could at least give him honesty.

  Somehow she drew her lips from his and planted both hands on his chest where she felt his heart racing.

  “Lin.” He dove for her mouth again.

  “Wait.” She sucked in a painful breath. “There is something more I must tell you, something you do not know about me.”

  He laughed unsteadily. “I know everything about you, beautiful girl.”

  “You do not know that I lay with Gareth de Vavasour.”

  Falcon froze for the span of ten heartbeats, twenty. “What? Say that again.”

  Linnet forced herself to hold his gaze, even though it cost her dear. “I gave myself to him. We lay together as man and woman, in Sherwood.”

  Rage blossomed in Falcon’s eyes. She felt his body stiffen with it, as with the lash of a whip, and for an instant she did not recognize the man who looked at her.

  “In Sherwood?” Being Falcon, and destined for guardianship, he grasped the significance of that. Vows were made in Sherwood and magic garnered there.

  He sprang to his feet and glared at her. In that moment he looked so like his father, Linnet experienced a rush of dismay. “You gave yourself to that stinking, high-born piece of shite? For god’s sake, Lin, why? You knew you were meant to be mine—you were always and ever meant to be mine!”

  “Hush, Fal, please!” Folk all around turned their heads, searching through the gathered darkness for the source of the disturbance. Linnet stumbled to her feet also and reached for Falcon, but he drew away from her.

  “Nay, do not touch me with those hands that have touched him. I do not believe it, Lin! Yours is the purest heart I know. I would have wagered my life on your honor. How could you betray me with the enemy to all we are?”

  “He is not—”

  “His kind killed my mother and Thrush—killed my father! Have you forgotten so quickly the people you said you loved?”

  “I have forgotten nothing.”

  “He has made misery for countless others, he steals the bread from the mouths of dying children. Look around you! He steals the roofs from over our heads.”

  “Not he, Fal. His kind, aye, but not—”

  Falcon went suddenly still with a quiet so intense it silenced Linnet. The darkness quivered before he said, “He is his blood. You, of all people, should know that. We are all what our blood makes us. I ask you again”—pain filled his voice—“how you could do such a thing.”

  “I had to follow my heart.”

  “Your heart, is it? I thought your heart a true thing, worthy of my worship. I set it high above me. I would have loved you lifelong. Now I cannot bear to look at you!”

  “What goes on here? What is all this shouting?” Lark stood suddenly beside them, materialized out of the darkness.

  Falcon rounded on her. “Ask your sister. Or do you know already? Has she told you what she has done?”

  “No, what?”

  “Given herself to the accursed Norman, lain down for him like one of his harlots or the women his kind seize from our villages, only to rape and ravish. She has taken the greatest prize Sherwood had to offer and thrown it at his feet.”

  “Never!” Linnet felt Lark’s gaze sear her even through the dark. “Say this is not true.”

  “She just told it to me.”

  “How?” Lark demanded of Linnet. “When?”

  Again, Falcon answered for Linnet. “In Sherwood, no less—on that holy ground.”

  “Lin, is this true?”

  “I love him,” Linnet said helplessly.

  Lark struck out so swiftly, Linnet never saw the blow. It took her in the face and rocked her where she stood. Vicious words, and the hate that accompanied them, followed after. “Love? By the Green Man’s heart, you must have forgot the meaning of love—for it is sacrifice. You selfish, loathsome wench!”

  “Lark—” Linnet cried, but Lark turned from her and put her arms around Falcon. “She is naught to us, Fal—naught.”

  Falcon, desperate, spat at her, “She is everything to us—a third of the triad and all we must be.” Wild-eyed even in the dark, he rounded on Linnet. “I cannot raise my hand to you, Lin, not ever. But I will repay that Norman cur in full for all he has stolen from me. I swear by the Green Man himself, I shall see Gareth de Vavasour dead.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “I hope you are proud of yourself. You have shattered the triad before it was fairly formed, and now Falcon has gone off to his death.”

  Linnet whirled in the face of Lark’s angry words, and alarm once more speared through her. All the night long she had lain sleepless, replaying the scene with Falcon, beleaguered by regret. Surely there must have been a better way to tell him the truth. Yet she had always tried to be honest with him, and she loved and respected him enough to grant him that, even in this.

  Now, in the first light of morning, her sister flew at her again, eyes wide and her small body rigid with anger.

  “What?”

  “Falcon. He has gone to Nottingham—alone—with the intention of killing de Vavasour.”

  All the breath left Linnet in a rush. “He would not be so foolish.” Even as she spoke she scanned the open area that used to be the village of Oakham, searching for one wild, fair head. People arose, women lit their fires and children wailed for attention, but she did not see Falcon.

  “He is angry. More than that, he is hurt. I spent all the night while you slept peacefully striving to talk him out of it. When I dozed off, he left me.” Disconcertingly, Lark’s eyes filled with tears. “He left me.”

  “I did not sleep quietly—” Linnet began to protest.

  “Neither did you come to him, argue with him, make him promises.” Two tears trailed down Lark’s cheeks. So rare was it for Linnet to see her sister weep, it caused emotion to clutch at her heart. “Say or do whatever you must to keep him from going. He would not stay for me—not for me!”

  “Nor would he have for me,” Linnet put in, distress flooding her. How could Falcon have been so heedless as to go haring off into danger alone? He knew what he meant to Oakham, to the triad.

  Aye, just as she, Linnet, had known how important she was to Falcon and Lark before she lay down with Gareth de Vavasour in the forest.

  “Stand there as you will,” Lark sneered. “I mean to act.”

  “How? What—”

  “I am taking a band of men and going after him. If you had one loyal bone in your body, you would come.”

  “If he gets himself captured—”

  “If he gets himself captured, I will move heaven and the earth itself and slay every Norman bastard in Nottingham so to free him! I barely know you, Linnet. Where is the sister with whom I grew? Where the daughter our parents raised? How could you so much as touch that stinking swine when you could have had Falcon?”

  “Gareth de Vavasour is not what you think. He is a man of honor.”

  “Ha!” Lark spat. “There is no such thing, as bespeaks a Norman. He must have stolen your wits as well as your maidenhead. Stay you here—I do not need you with me to save Falcon.”

  “Wait.” Linnet seized her sister’s arm. Lark shrank from her, the action as stinging as a blow. Lark—closest in the world to her, flesh of her flesh—stared at her with a stranger’s eyes and flinched from contact.

  �
�Lark, please try and understand. I never intended to love Gareth de Vavasour. It came upon me from nowhere, like a blessing. Can we choose where our hearts decide to bestow themselves? You, who love Falcon, should understand.”

  Lark lifted her chin a notch. “Falcon Scarlet is fine and just, and worthy of regard. And I would have held all my love for him locked in my heart. I would never have acted on it because I knew the triad—the welfare of our people—must come first. I would have sacrificed him to you—you, Linnet! I would have watched him wed you and bed you, and give you his beautiful children. All because it was what he and Sherwood chose. And what do you do? Throw it all away like it is naught, so you can rut in the forest like a Norman whore.”

  Linnet fought down her own anger, a rare thing but now rising wildly. “It is not like that, Lark, it is not just a thing of the flesh. Gareth and I have formed a deep connection. We are even able to share thoughts between our minds, just as Ma and Pa do.”

  “How can you? Do not ever speak of them in the same breath as that cur!” Lark raked Linnet with wild eyes. “I do not know you. You are no longer my sister.” She turned to leave, her small body stiff with indignation.

  “Wait,” Linnet said again. “I will come with you, if you think it will do any good.”

  “It may make a difference to Fal,” Lark spat in return. “So aye, I bid you come, and I suppose I shall just have to bear your company.”

  ****

  My love, are you there?

  Linnet formed the words and sent them forth through the stillness of the morning, telling herself they did not constitute a betrayal. The party from Sherwood, of which she made the fifth member, moved almost silently. Around them, birds flitted and the light strengthened. She could feel her sister’s anger and resolve, and her desire for secrecy. Was it wrong to tell Gareth they were on their way?

  My love. His reply came like a thread of music afloat through the trees and, despite her despair, gladdened Linnet’s heart. Are you safe?

  A strange thing for him to ask—or perhaps not, if he could sense her emotions and the furor that possessed her.