by Sue Wilson
The hooded man smiled, revealing a crenelated set of yellowed teeth, his eyes searing blackly into the Sheriff's. "Our fortune's here, lads."
Highwaymen. Murdering, thieving felons. They had warned him, told him the wood was rife with cutthroats. His wood.
He met their leader with a rigid, unforgiving stare, his hand flexing instinctively, wanting to grip the hilt of his sword. The quarterstaff slammed against his ribs, cracking bone. He caught the breath in his throat, swallowed the pain.
"And leave a sheriff what has gold a'plenty in his pretty purse?" The outlaw's fingers clawed at him, ripped the thongs barehanded from his belt, and held the coin pouch aloft. "See, ye poor doubting fools? Did I not tell ye the Sheriff'd be bleeding rich?"
"And we be bleeding dead! God's teeth, let's kill these others and be gone from here!"
The outlaw turned, snarling over his shoulder at his reluctant companion. "And waste this? Have ye turned coward on me? Or is yer belly so full ye don't feel the need of buying a decent meal?"
A slight distraction. Enough.
Nottingham drew his knee to his chest and kicked out powerfully with his booted foot, thrusting the nailed leather sole squarely into the man's chest. His hand closed over his sword and the sound of steel sang through the frozen air. Behind him, a blur of movement. The back of his skull exploded in a burst of black, visionless pain. He slumped forward, balance gone in a sea of vertigo.
His cheek met the crust of new snow. He lay there, dead to the whoop of cheers that went up around him. Icy wetness seeped through his surcoat and the metal rings of his hauberk, soaking the quilted vest beneath and chilling sweat-slick skin, the cold in contrast to the warm, sticky flow that matted his hair against his scalp and neck. Oblivion closed. Parted. Closed again, smelling of woodsmoke, of fire-
The coach-
His eyes jerked opened to a stampede of thieves at his side. Dirt-encrusted hands searched him; feet wrapped in rags and leather jabbed his side, mocking his attempts to rise.
"Fight us, Sir Sheriff. Bare-fisted. Without yer noble's weapons."
He crawled to hands and knees, the rise of bile sour in his throat, and forced the sickness down. Several men hauled him roughly to his knees. One of the thieves dangled his sword in one hand, his dagger in the other. His companions roared with laughter.
He was unarmed and outnumbered-only two of his men alive, and they with arrows nudging their spines.
And Gisborne? He did not remember seeing Gisborne. Was his cousin lying among the dead?
Alone then, but this was his wood. And he was Sheriff.
He pushed the dizziness away, channeling the pain into anger, the anger into motion. The highwaymen lost their purchase on him as he tore from their grip and launched himself at their grinning leader. The impact sent them both staggering backward, crashing through bracken and ice-covered vines to land in a forest carpet of frozen leaves.
His rib protested painfully at the graceless fall, and the breath fled from his lungs as he circled his attacker's wrist and brought it down sharply on the ground. He heard the snapping of bone, the grunt of a pained curse. Saw the outlaw's crude weapon fall from his mangled hand.
Rolling, kicking, jabbing with elbows, he embraced the miscreant with deadly vengeance. His knee thrust up, aiming for groin. Not the fight of a noble lord or the Crown official they had made him, but that of a stable boy, scrapping in a stew of snow and mud. With satisfaction, he felt his knee connect with soft, unprotected tissue, heard the yowl of surprised pain, and threw the outlaw to his back.
Victorious, he climbed upon the man's body, straddling his belly, and smashed his fist into the hooded face. Teeth tore across his knuckles; blood spurted warmly over his hand.
They were on him from behind like a pack of rabid hounds-all the men who had been reluctant enough to stay, but not reluctant enough to see their leader bested by a weaponless Norman.
Blows rained on him. Feet, fists, staffs, knives-he could not tell. He fought them all, thrusting himself at the den of thieves until the pain of their pummeling did not hurt at all, and a whirring roar of blood drummed in his ears.
Someone grabbed a hank of his hair, yanking his head back until his neck arched against a dull, rust-coated blade. He did not feel the sting, only the infuriating trickle of blood creeping down his chest. Blackness descended....
...Lifted. He'd been stripped to the waist, his wrists tied together with leather thongs, arms pulled overhead, grotesquely straining from their sockets. The shrouded sun pierced the stand of oaks and beeches with frail angled rays, reflecting off ice and snow. Night soon.
He could feel the bones of his ribs crunching against each other, plum bruises splotching over back and face, blood coursing from his temple. He squinted, his swollen eye blinking away the rivulet that tinted his vision red. They had reduced him to raw, cudgeled flesh, strung from the bough of a gnarled oak, waiting for the scavenger ravens to pluck out his eyes and tear the battered flesh from his bones.
He raised his head, gritting through the pain that jagged through his skull. The coach was aflame; smoke curled around it in a hazy shroud. Better this way. Easier. Though something tore inside him, something deeper and more keen-edged than any pain the felons had caused with their fists or knives or booted feet, like an arrow to his heart, an ache he doubted would ever go away.
She slept, perhaps, knocked cold by the coach's wild ride or its lurching, axle-grinding crash against the trees. The smoke would take her. Quickly, he prayed. Make it quick.
"Make it quick," he mumbled aloud.
Voices surrounded him with disembodied threats, the thieves' usual altercation and debate, and while it was his life they argued for or against, he did not care.
"I say hang him, now, and be done with it!"
"'Twould be kinder-"
"If ye kill him, there'll be Normans crawling these woods day and night, and another one, just like him, come to replace him."
"There'd be no end to it at all, no safety in Sherwood, in the whole bleeding shire, for that matter-"
"Maybe if ye just teach him a lesson, let him know who rules Sherwood-"
The hooded face leaned into him, firepit eyes searing into his. With a foul-smelling breath, he turned his head and spat. "Quit yer mewling," he called over his shoulder to his men. "He's dead already." With menacing languor, the outlaw reached awkwardly to his belt with his uninjured hand. Withdrew a knotted whip, uncoiled it one slow loop at a time.
"Ye can't be thinking-"
"He's not a common sort. Ye cannot flog him, for Christ's sake!"
"Jesus, he's the Sheriff, not a serf!"
The outlaw answered with a slow, rhythmic wave of his wrist, letting the whip skitter along the ground.
"Come on now, ye've done enough. Norman bastard won't last the night as it is-"
Fire lashed Nottingham's back, breaking skin. His body jerked on its leather cords, dangling like a broken poppet. Again the air cracked. Molten steel poured down his back, steam from fresh blood hissed into the frosty air. He ground his teeth together, biting back agony.
Sweat blurred his vision as he looked toward the coach, focused hard on it. Flames licked along the roof, dancing around the cross-shaped arrow slit, sending curling black ribbons of smoke skyward.
The door jiggled-a small, indistinct movement. He prayed he had not seen it, prayed the sting of the whip had taken his senses, his sight. The coach rocked. Now he could see the desperate fumbling of the latch. Heard coughing; a soft, panicked cry; the thud of small fists, pounding.
God, no!
"No!"
The whip bit into him, slicing the length of his back from shoulder to buttock.
He prayed, fumbling at words and petitions he barely recalled, saints whose names were but a cloudy lesson lost in his memory.
Because if they did this to him, how much more they would do to her.
He struggled, shredding the skin of his wrists against the leather ties, twisting, swingin
g his body. No...no... "Stop!"
The door of the coach burst open. Through the haze of smoke she emerged, a slight figure, a fall of silver-blond hair, simple gray eyes widening in horror as she saw him and what they did.
The whip stopped. The outlaw's labored breathing filled the air with crystal puffs as he swept a wet tongue over frost-dried lips. "It seems we've one left alive."
Blood dripped down Nottingham's back, pooling beneath his feet in gelatinous, crimson puddles. He thought of the thieves-five...six...seven-the throbbing in his head made it impossible to count. Saw the hound-hungry expressions as intent passed from one to the other in leering, cock-sure grins.
"Better than gold," one said.
"Aye, Martin. Now this I'll be staying fer."
The woman stopped, her fingers working nervously at the ribbons of her mantle, her eyes uncomprehending.
He wondered if the first one to take her would kill her, or if they would all have their turns with her, leaving her, torn and bleeding, for crueler games when their initial lust had been sated. They promised no kindness, no restraint, only a death as slow and vicious-and as certain-as his. Somehow he made his choice.
He took a last look at her, at the curtain-straight length of hair, at the cheeks and lips frost-bitten to deepest rose, at her eyes, glistening with fear, with trust he did not deserve.
"Run," he said, although the word barely escaped his parched lips. Then louder, more gruffly. "Run!"
She trembled, confused, looking at him like a frightened deer caught in an arrow's deadly path and unable to move.
"Run, damn you!" The hoarse warning tore from his lungs, taking breath with it. Through a fog of sparkles graying the edge of his vision, he saw her lift her skirts, step beyond the coach, saw her tiny, slippered feet turn in the snow-
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
"Alyce! God...Alyce!"
The Sheriff bolted upright, clawing his way through the nightmare to wakefulness. The solar was closeted in darkness, save for the stand of candles where flames guttered in wax-draped stubs. In the muffled darkness, his breathing sounded strident, his lungs laboring to draw in air and the cold prickle of sweat stinging his body.
Someone touched his shoulder, and he jerked around, heart pounding. Alyce? He peered into the gloom, half-expecting woodsmen with bows-and whips-but saw only the black shadow of his silhouette, elongated against ochre-gray walls. And Thea's dark blue eyes reflecting his own panicked image.
He was surprised to find her still there, seated beside him near the hearth, surprised to find his fingers knitted desperately into the fabric of her kirtle.
"A dream is all," she said, brushing aside the wet strands of hair plastered to his forehead.
The events of the past few days came back to him, scattering the remaining fragments of his dreams. His body ached-no, worse. His back and shoulders felt as if they had been seared by one of the gaoler's irons, his head as if he had dunked himself into a vat of brown ale and drunk it dry. And to add to this physical insult, his surgeon had let him sleep the night through on hard timbers with only a paltry cushion of rushes and sheepskin.
He exhaled shakily, trying to laugh, to appear relieved. "Why this arcane taste in bedding, woman?" he groaned, willing away the effects of the sleeping potion. "A forest floor? A stable floor? That poor excuse for a mattress in your cottage? And now this-" he gestured with bone-jarring stiffness to the disarray of furs and skins, "-love nest. What have you against eider-down or satin and a decent tapestry to ward off the chill?"
She continued to watch him, saying nothing, narrowed eyes seeing his words for the diversion they were. She knew something, he realized; everything in her manner, in the forthrightness of her stare, bespoke it.
What she knew, or how, was a mystery he did not care to unravel. It was enough that, in sleep, he had unknowingly revealed some secret he had guarded with his life and invited her into a private place where she did not belong.
The nightmare crept back, worrying the edges of his thoughts with its hazy, half-remembered presence. He pushed it aside. He had vowed years ago never to share it.
He found his robe and, rising, stabbed his arms into its sleeves. "You filled me to the gills with wine and mandrake," he said gruffly, as he wrapped the floor-length satin tightly around his body. "Likely I spilled endless confessions for your amusement the night long. Regaled you with fractured accounts of my exploits in Wales, waxed drunkenly about the last whore I bedded."
The remark was a whipcrack to his soul; he could not believe he had said it. One glance at her face told him she could not believe it either, that whatever he had let escape from his dreams had been infinitely more serious than any inflated boasts he could invent. The blood drained from his stomach and plummeted to his feet, making him feel weighted and clumsy before her all too discerning gaze.
"Why did you come back with me when you could have stayed in Sherwood?" he asked suddenly, with a viciousness that sounded more like attack than the defense it was. "Why did you insist? To hover so closely that my nights are not even my own any longer? To aggravate me with impertinent opinions and challenge my authority at every turn-"
"Because I wanted to be with you," she said simply. "Because I think you need me to be here with you, although you will not allow yourself to voice such a sentiment. Because Mildthryth believes I love you."
It was not what he expected. Never. Her candor swept through him like a storm, undermining his intentions with the same swift destruction. He was convinced that she desired him, even found him tolerably amusing at times. Obviously, she even found something exciting in the rapid-fire duel of wits in which she engaged him at every opportunity. But love-?
No one had loved him in his entire life-no mother he could remember, no father he could name. No woman he had ever bedded dredged up more than acquiescence from her heart, self-serving lust if he were fortunate. Love was some mysterious thing sung and chanted about by bawdy minstrels and priests alike, lauded equally by knights and their ladies fair and every innkeeper's daughter who had ever spread her legs for him-a one-word panacea for the ills of the world. Some holy mixture of purity and ecstasy of which he was undeserving. Something always withheld.
And yet she had let the word slip out between them, let it linger in the air like a tantalizing balm to the empty, scarred hollow of his soul. Not a profession of love; she was careful to avoid that. But better. More certain. For she had said Millie thought it so.
Candle flame spiked the darkness of the chamber, gilding her features. For a moment, she seemed as surreal as the dreams. A vision that haunted him. A slight figure in soft wool and laces, her face half-hidden by the copper-lit curls that spilled to her lap.
"And what do you believe?" he asked, watching her with an intensity that divided him in two: half straining to hear her echo Millie's sentiments as her own; half preparing himself for the rejection he feared.
She stood and walked to his side, then took his hand and gazed into the well of his palm, her face as pensive, as unfathomable, as a teller of portents. When she looked up at him, her chin quivered with scraped-together courage, as if she dared herself to be bold.
"I believe I have been half enamored of you from the night you first came to my cottage, wounded, but proud and fierce and unyielding, unlike any man I had ever known." She lowered her eyes and stared again at their joined hands. "I have been of two minds ever since."
He wished now he had not asked, for she talked in riddles, and he steeled himself for what he suspected would come-a disclaimer of some confused, half-felt passion that was all she could give because he was unworthy of more.
"There are things in you I admire," she admitted, her eyes downcast. "The way you cared for Mildthryth and Warrin and provided for her after he was gone. The way you argue with her and play the role of recalcitrant son. The way you love her a little, I think. The way you laugh with your soldiers, slap their shoulders and share their ribald jests. And grieve when they're lost. Your abili
ty to see falseness in those around you and the courage to call it to light. The way you dare much, fight hard, and bend not at all. Many things, I suppose."
She stopped and looked up at him. "But there's another, darker side of you. The tempests of rage, the cruel, vindictive set of mind when rage overtakes you. The arrogance. The suspicion. The obsession. The absolute certainty you are none of those things. The absolute refusal to let me see who you really are."
"Who I am?" He laughed with bitter amusement, feigning the stiff, regal air and imperious tone she abhorred. "Why, I am the Sheriff of Nottingham, woman, lord of this castle, tyrant of this shire, despot of Sherwood Forest-"
"So you proclaim, so loudly and with such fervor there is scarce a soul who would not quake with fear and utter conviction. Yet there is a chink in your wall, Sheriff." She reached up, caressed his bearded jaw with the backs of her fingers. "I would tear it down."
He knew in an instant the reason she had come back with him, could feel the insidious sapping of his strength and intentions, could feel the wall already crumbling. Uneasiness settled alongside desire, cold and heat running parallel in his veins. He pushed her hand away. "You wouldn't like what you found."
"And what would that be?"
He strode past her, angry, afraid. "What is this, Thea? Some feminine determination to see inside my soul? I will spare you the trouble. There is nothing behind the wall. Nothing. I am as you see me, as you know me to be. Ambitious, corrupt, brutal, soulless-"
"Truth, my lord?"
The word struck him like a blow. He turned slowly in her direction, fingers curling into fists at his sides. "That is truth, or a very pale version of it. Christ, woman, you are relentless! Have you not heard? I am the Sheriff of Nottingham! I am evil, the devil incarnate! If you had your wits about you, you would cease this nonsense about love and hie back to Sherwood and your outlaws and praise God for His mercy in sparing you!"