Lord of Sherwood

by Laura Strickland

  Havers saw them also. “Outlaws! Wolfsheads! Vermin!” he barked. He stumbled to his feet and raised his bow, clearly not sure where to aim first.

  “No need to be insulting,” said the big man wearing the sheepskin. His voice reverberated oddly, and Anwyn wondered if she heard it only in her mind. But no—Havers heard too, and shifted and faltered.

  “Let her go,” the scarred man told him.

  “Nay. The wench is my wife.”

  “She belongs not to you but to us,” warned another of the men. He had steady hands on his bow, fair hair and dangerous eyes: Will Scarlet. “How dare you come here and think to defeat us? How suppose your small defiance can withstand our power?”

  The trees swayed overhead. Havers directed one terrified look up into the branches. Sweat beaded his face and his notched arrow quivered.

  The scarred man said, “Your men will never leave the forest, and neither will you.”

  “’Tis a crime to kill a King’s forester,” Havers bellowed. “You will all pay with your lives.”

  The big man with the great beard laughed. “Impossible. We have already given our lives for Sherwood. Go ahead and draw your bow, little man. Shoot.”

  Havers darted an incredulous look at Anwyn. “What are they on about? What do they mean, they have given their lives?”

  The scarred man cast aside his bow and spread his arms wide. “Kill me, if you dare.”

  Havers swore and then drew his bow in a sharp, vicious movement. His arrow flew true despite his uncertainty, and struck the scarred man in the center of his chest.

  And passed clear through him.

  Triumph ignited round the circle, touched Anwyn, and streamed through her, bright as fire.

  The scarred man showed his teeth in a terrible smile. “Now what say you, vile forester?”

  “Impossible! Who are you? What?”

  “We are guardians,” Curlew’s grandmother said, “we who have given our lives, our hope, and our blood in love. Sherwood can never die so long as our love holds strong.”

  Havers still attempted to sneer, but without success. “You are not real.” He waved his hand at the scarred man. “If my arrow passed through you, how can your arrows harm me?”

  “Perhaps they cannot.” Yet another man stepped forward. Strongly featured and lion-headed, he wore the authority of a village headman: Geofrey of Oakham. “Or perhaps they can. Are you willing to risk your life on it?”

  They raised their bows once again, every arrow pointed straight at Havers’ heart.

  He reached out to flick the fletchings of the arrow that had embedded itself in the fallen tree, beside him. His fingers encountered only air.

  He grunted. “Nothing there. Illusion, it is all illusion.”

  Grandmother Wren told him, “You never spoke so true.”

  “But,” the scarred man said, “that tree above you is very real.”

  He waved a hand. Havers turned dazed eyes to where he pointed, even as the power billowed and rose mightily. It streamed up from the circle, from those who occupied it all together, staggering in its intensity, and struck the ash that stood directly behind Havers.

  The tree seemed to fall slowly, as it might if hewed by an axe rather than culled by lightning. Anwyn had time to leap away, yet Havers stood as one enchanted and made no attempt to move aside. She caught one terrible glimpse of his face just before the boll of the trunk struck him full in the back. His arms flew out and he fell amid the crash mighty enough to shake the forest.

  She turned her eyes away then, even as the reverberation died. Not so much as one leaf had touched her body. Peace followed the violence of it, and the rain abruptly slackened.

  Anwyn met the rueful gaze of Wren, who inclined her head.

  “Mother,” Wren said, and Anwyn gasped. Aye, this was her daughter—hers and Robin’s—the child she had failed so terribly when he died in the greenwood, the living part of him she had abandoned.

  “Wren. Can you ever forgive me?” She had not even given the girl her name. Another must have done that, or Sherwood itself. Deeply shamed, she looked around the circle. “Can any of you?”

  “My Lady,” said the man in the sheepskin. And he bowed to her, went down on his knees in reverence.

  One by one the others followed, making a circle all about her, sundered only by the tree beneath which Havers lay. Light shimmered from one to the next of them, and Anwyn felt it flow also to her.

  Engulfed by humility and power and devotion, she looked into her daughter’s face. “Thank you. Thank you all.”

  “Well, Lady.” Her daughter gave an impish smile. “This takes care of one problem that beset you. Even in the eyes of the Church, I believe you are widowed.”

  Anwyn shuddered. “I pray rather I am not, for I care little for the dictates of the Church, and this one was never husband to me. I am wed most surely to another. Take me to your father.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “He lives yet.”

  Heron met Anwyn at the edge of the encampment and spoke the only words she wanted to hear. Led by Curlew’s grandmother—her own daughter—she had come through the sodden forest to this place where the survivors of the skirmish had retreated. Wren, like those others who had helped her, disappeared into Sherwood then; she knew they did not retreat far.

  Now she looked into Heron’s eyes and gasped, “Where?”

  “I will take you to him. But before you see him I must tell you”—Heron’s voice faltered abruptly—“it is grave. Diera thinks the arrow pierced his lung. He bleeds from his lips and gasps for air. Oh, and your father is here.”

  “Da, here? How?”

  “He was the lone survivor of the Nottingham party, following that last skirmish. Havers—?”

  “Dead,” Anwyn said shortly. “Is my Da being held prisoner?”

  Heron shook his head. “To speak true, I have not been able to consider what should be done about your father, or aught else. All I can think on is him.”

  Anwyn nodded; she grasped Heron’s arm and felt his emotions rise. “I cannot endure it, Heron. I cannot lose him again.”

  “I know. Come.”

  Heron led her quickly across the rough encampment. They passed Anwyn’s father as they went; he leaped to his feet and called, “Anwyn, lass!”

  “I will speak with you anon,” she told him.

  Heron shot her a look. “How did Havers perish? Did you kill him?”

  “Nay, Sherwood finished it,” she said briefly.

  Heron nodded, though Anwyn barely noticed. For she could see Curlew now, stretched on the ground with a number of people gathered near. Diera bent over him with her black hair hanging down and his blood smeared on her hands.

  Anwyn’s step faltered. For an instant time itself shuddered and she saw two scenes, one overlaying the other: Robin lying awash with blood and Lil bent over him; Curlew bleeding, bleeding his life away.

  Terror, stark, fierce, and crippling, arose and threatened to destroy her hard-won courage. All her life had she feared this. And so it had come to her, inevitable as the turning of the seasons. At this moment, she had but one chance, one choice between the weakness of fear and the strength of love.

  She saw now that the love never changed, only her response to it: she could admit the light or she could shut it away.

  What was it Curlew said? Sherwood was all about light, and all about love.

  “Anwyn?” Heron touched her arm and looked at her askance.

  She told him, “Come.”

  She reached the place and fell to her knees at Curlew’s side. Diera looked up, her face set and streaked with tears. The others who were gathered, three villagers from Oakham, stepped back. Anwyn barely saw them go.

  She looked into Curlew’s face—so still!—and her heart convulsed. His eyes were closed; lashes thick and brown shielded all the bright radiance she loved. Blood—his own—spattered his cheeks and chin.

  They had hauled open his tunic and the shirt beneath, yet
she could not see the wound or any bandaging for the blood. Worst of all, she could hear the wound; it whistled with every painful breath he drew—slow, labored breaths in, and each exhalation marked by a little froth of blood at his lips.

  Oh, my love.

  The darkness rose and threatened to swamp her again. Seeing him so knocked her back on her heels, back in time.

  Do not leave me. Do not dare leave me!

  No response. Aye, he was there—the hum that had vibrated between them continuously since first their circle forged now throbbed very low but endured yet.

  “It is bad, you can see,” Diera’s red hands fluttered. “We removed the arrow, but that did not help much. You hear how he breathes, and the blood just comes. I have tried—” Diera’s voice broke.

  “Only one thing can save him.” And that, Anwyn knew with blinding conviction, was not doubt but certainty, the undying certainty of their love.

  She reached up and seized Heron’s hand. He sank to his knees so they knelt facing each other, Curlew between them. She gazed demandingly into Heron’s golden eyes.

  “Thank the Green God I have come in time. Take his hand. You, I, and the circle will save him.”

  Heron said with regret, “Even that power may not be enough to hold him now.”

  “’Tis the only thing that can. Always, always he has been my strength. Now I will be his. This time I will not leave go of him.”

  ****

  He lay in darkness and peace, floating as if on the swells of a gentle river. The dark, not complete, was marked by little shards of brightness that tailed away to the corners of his vision and gave glimpses of things: the glint of light on green leaves, the white gleam of a hart’s hide, the warm beauty of Marian’s eyes.

  Marian.

  He could feel her still, the constancy of her presence, her love like faint music. Regret touched him once more and ruffled the peace.

  I did not want to go from you.

  Did she hear? Ah, but he could feel her emotions striking at him the way the arrow had, reaching through the intervening formlessness. Almost he thought he could feel the touch of her hand on his.

  And the circle.

  Matchless magic of Sherwood.

  But he did not lie alone, here. Others as formless as he rustled and gathered all around him, those with whom he shared the love of this place, those who cared deeply for it and for him. They shared his peace, and thought flowed effortlessly among them the way light might through Sherwood, and comfort like that he felt in his lady’s touch.

  His lady.

  A great force pulled at him like memory, like desire, like the need to breathe. His darkness, so very harmonious, no longer felt complete. Light flared, seared him, and formed a circle.

  It glowed and shimmered with power that possessed sound as well as brightness. It flowed from his hand to hers and thence to that of he who carried inside him the very spirit of Sherwood—nay, not from her hand but from her heart.

  It sparked with demand. The sound—that of many blended voices—became one.

  I will not let you go. Do you hear? Heed me! I will not let go of you this time.

  The dark all around him convulsed in response to her call. His very being quivered to it. The circle of power gripped him still more surely.

  Come my lord, my love, my heart. It is not over. There is yet work to be done. Return to me and I promise I will walk not behind you but at your side.

  The circle flamed once more, became so intensely bright it hurt the eyes he no longer possessed. Surely it must burn all else away.

  Even fear.

  Yet he had drifted so far, and the flesh to which he must return lay so damaged. The threads that bound him to it had frayed and very nearly broken. Even for love of her, he did not know if he had the strength.

  Then take my strength. Her grip on his hand tightened until it filled him, anchored him. Her very touch became love. I have enough for both of us.

  Joy stirred inside him, took hold, and then arose like a shout of laughter. He rose with it, spirit spiraling up in answer to her call, irresistible. For, as it had ever been, joy could only flow to joy, plenty to plenty, and love to love.

  He broke the surface into life even as the brightness of daylight erupted all around him. Pain came with it, where there had been none, and the staggering need to breathe. But so did the beloved sight of his Marianwyn’s face, contorted not by terror but transfigured by certainty. He gazed into her eyes and his world tumbled into place around him. The magic gleamed bright, even as he strained for breath.

  One breath taken in shattering pain. Her strength and that of Heron, solid as bedrock, upheld him.

  A second breath that tasted less of fire and more of the sweet air of Sherwood. Strength flowed not only through Marianwyn’s and Heron’s hands but up from the soil at his back, pounding in time with his heartbeat, from the light and the raindrops shimmering on the leaves, from the fire that endured, always.

  A third breath came easier; it filled him with magic that sang through him, even as he heard Lil—or was it Diera?—say, “Look, only look how his flesh knits! Ah, by the blood of the Green Man—”

  “He is the Green Man”—Heron’s voice—“now and forever more.”

  Chapter Forty

  “A word with you, young man, if I might.”

  Anwyn jerked her head up at the sound of her father’s voice, even though he spoke not to her but to Curlew. Evening had come to Sherwood; a cold breeze fluttered the leaves overhead, and all the fires in camp burned low. Guards stood watch for soldiers from Nottingham, and Anwyn sat at Curlew’s side with her hand in his, the same place she had occupied all day long.

  But how could she have forgotten about her father? He alone had survived the battle after Curlew fell; he alone could identify Curlew and so betray him to Lord Simon.

  All this she thought as she looked up into her Da’s worn and kindly face.

  Curlew shifted himself on the pallet they had fashioned for him. Well bandaged now, he still had some pain, but nothing like what had come before. She knew because she felt everything he felt—each breath, each twinge. She knew how impatient he was to get up, and that he would far rather face her father on his feet.

  She knew, too, how closely Heron watched them from his place at Diera’s side, some twenty paces away. She found it so easy now to sense Heron’s presence. Their circle had never been stronger.

  She wove her fingers tightly between Curlew’s and whispered into his mind, Peace.

  He eased at that and spoke to her father, “Welcome, Master Montfort, and speak as you will.”

  Mason Montfort seated himself, and Anwyn searched his eyes. Usually she could easily read her father’s feelings, but not this time. Did he come to warn them there must be retribution for this day’s events? She would fight, if she must. She smiled to herself grimly; this must be how it felt to be Lark Scarlet, always ready to battle fiercely for those she loved.

  Her father said, “I scarcely know where to begin. I have seen things this day I would never have believed possible, had I not beheld them with my own eyes.” For the first time he looked at Anwyn. “You have said you claim this man for husband, lass?”

  Anwyn drew a breath. Surely she was free to do so, since Havers now lay a pile of shattered bone and flesh beneath a tree in Sherwood. She gathered herself and replied, “Aye.”

  Her father smiled ruefully. “Yet you took vows before God with another.”

  “Most surely, Father, I am widowed now.”

  Montfort nodded. “I have been listening to the talk about camp all this day long, and also sharing words with the young woman, Diera, who helped tend me. It seems all the men who made up the search party from Nottingham are dead—the foresters, and Lord Simon’s soldiers, as well. Now you say Havers met his end. How?”

  “In the forest, as he deserved.”

  “Havers,” Curlew said shortly, “would have taken what is mine.” He struggled to sit up in defiance of his weakne
ss, to face her father on level ground, and Anwyn felt him draw on her strength. “Sherwood would not permit that, nor suffer him to live.”

  To Anwyn’s surprise, her father nodded again. “There is magic here, I see that. Ah, do not look so surprised. You suppose I could be wed with a Welsh woman and fail to credit the existence of magic? By any road, I know what I saw earlier when my daughter and your holy man raised you up. I saw light. And felt power.”

  “Da—” Anwyn began.

  He stayed her with a raised hand. “Nay, Daughter. This is between the man you have chosen and me.” Montfort looked Curlew in the eye. “I am not sure who you are—what you are—besides a wolfshead. I have sworn fealty to Lord Simon and also bear him the duty of friendship. But I have an older duty to my daughter, one born of love.”

  Steadily, Curlew answered, “That duty I both understand and share. Many are the ties that bind us, Master Montfort. Some cannot be denied.”

  “Now, I am aware I lie, here, very much in your power. You have naught to do but slit my throat in order to eliminate all possibility of retaliation for this day’s events.” Montfort crooked an eyebrow. “Or, Curlew Champion, you and I might come to terms.”

  “I am listening.”

  Montfort shot another look into Anwyn’s face before returning his gaze to Curlew. “Do you recall, Master Champion, the day we first met in Sherwood? You told me you numbered one among Lord Simon’s foresters.”

  “I will never forget.”

  “And now I learn from Mistress Diera you are a kind of guardian of this forest, one whose authority she believes reaches beyond Norman laws.”

  Curlew replied softly, “That I am.”

  “You could, as I say, slit my throat. But that would gain you little in the long run. You would still be at odds with Lord Simon and whomever he might appoint after me. You would have no return for all the bloodshed and grief spent. And my daughter—my daughter would still live with a man outside the law.” His smile, this time, was dour. “Lord Simon has condemned me roundly for my handling of my willful daughter. Indeed, his recommendations precipitated much of what has happened. But, young man, what I have seen this day has set me back on my heels and made me wonder whether love be not the stronger path, after all.”