by Tim Hall
Once more Edric Krul invaded the crawlspace, but this time it was his arm that came thrusting in. At the end of his arm was not a hand but a double-pointed claw—a cooper’s grapnel hook—its base forged shut around the stump of his wrist.
The claw thrashed and flailed, grazing her skin. She pushed herself even harder into the wall.
The clawing stopped and the arm scraped out of sight.
“You will have to come out, sooner or later,” Edric said. “I have come to understand your purpose. You must help me cleanse the world of the wildling.” He chuckled to himself, then put his face close to the crawlspace and continued to whisper his story.
“Finally the wildwood admitted defeat. It released me. But even then my waiting was not done. By now I was frozen to my blood and fevered to my bones. I stumbled across a hermit’s shack. The old man took me in, gave me shelter and what succor he could. But all winter I was forced to wait in that sickbed, never strong enough to stand. The old man had barely enough food for one, let alone for both. In the end he too gave up his flesh, when he saw it was the only way I would endure. And so I began to see how the world is ordered. I started to understand that the rest of you—each and every one—you have all been placed here to serve—”
He fell silent. Marian knew why. Dreadful sounds were seeping up from somewhere below the cavern. Today it was a buzzing, like a thousand wasp wings, together with a rough slithering of tails, and a wet crunching, like children stomping snails. Beneath it all was that half whimper, half laugh. The noises grew louder; Marian couldn’t help thinking the thing down there was rising, moving nearer.
Edric cleared his throat before he spoke, and for the first time he sounded relatively sane. “I don’t need to wait here. I can return whenever I choose. I have other preparations to make. You will still be here, ready to fulfill your purpose, when the time comes.”
Marian listened to the pulleys creak as Edric Krul left. The sun had moved on; the shaft of light had gone. She lay there in the total darkness, shivering in the cold, her mind full of monsters.
The soldier hung upside down, his cloak trailing to the ground. He laughed, and he kept laughing until it became a choking sort of sob.
“You’re dead,” he hissed into Robin’s face. “One freak against the whole Sheriff’s Guard! We’ll skin you to the bone.”
Robin tipped his head. This one was interesting. He had not been brave; he had been the first of his cadre to run. But now, captured and alone, his fear had bubbled over into a raving kind of courage.
“Whoever you are, whatever you want, you don’t stand a chance,” the ranger said. “I’ll kill you myself! I’ll crush you with my own bare hands.” For the third time he pulled himself up and tried to free his ankle from the noose. He gave up and fell back. The rope creaked on its branch.
Bending young trees to the ground, Robin had built catapult snares—larger versions of the ones he used to hunt for food. When this soldier had run he had blundered into one of the traps.
“Marian Delbosque,” Robin said. “Tell me where he’s keeping her.”
“Aha, ha-ha-ha. So that’s it. A girl. The monster and the princess in the tower. That old one. Aha-ha-ha.”
“Where is she?”
“What are you going to do, fight the Sheriff for her? Maybe you’re the king of this place. Out there is his world. He’s set up garrisons all along the forest edge. Hundreds of us! You step out there, you’re dead.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“Aha. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”
Robin turned and walked away, leaving the soldier hanging there, laughing to himself.
* * *
A snake slithered. The girl with the fox-red hair.
“Three gifts I have. The first is for you. Where is it hidden? I’ll give you a clue.”
“Leave me alone. I know what I need to do. You and I are finished.”
“Finished? No, no, no. We’ve merely begun. Here’s the next stage; so much to be done. We’ve planted the seed; now it must grow. Come, no more talk; let the deed show.”
Robin was walking away, following the course of a stream.
The vixen-girl sprang alongside. “You defeated the wolf, took only the skin. The rest of the spoils are more … interesting. Three gifts I have, buried beneath. Which would you take: the shadow, the blood, the teeth?”
Robin drew his bow and aimed at the girl. She just laughed.
“Look, he’s come far, his aim is so true. He could be so much more, if only he knew.”
There was another slither in the leaves and the girl was gone. Robin told himself to forget her, he knew what he had to do next. He needed answers, and he wasn’t going to get those here. Which meant he had to go out there. He couldn’t put it off any longer.
* * *
He stopped at the threshold, where forest ended and open country began. Ahead he could smell a wild flower bank, warming in the sun. He felt for the vibrations in the web of green—above him a squirrel leaping, causing a jay to call in alarm, sending its mate into the air. Tracing these patterns and shapes, detecting the threads that weave within and beneath the visible world. His forest-mind seeping into the roots and the burrows—and then outward, pushing at the edge of the forest and beyond.
He finds with relief these abilities are no longer confined to the wildwood: His awareness trickles across the boundary, running through the rootlets and the water channels, nosing amid the bluebells. His awareness widens, like waves on a lake, tunneling through the topsoil with the beetles, mining with a badger’s claws, warring in the bushes with the sparrows.
The creatures’ senses become his own: A weasel explores a warren and Robin knows this black world through its whiskers. He picks up the chemical messages passed between ants, and he traces their labyrinth. There is a moment when all this is overwhelming in its complexity, but he breathes deeply and allows the pieces to settle and a kind of clarity is restored. He takes flight with a hobby hawk, pursuing a dragonfly; he prowls through the reeds with a fox, stalking a lamb.
And there—what he has been hoping to find—a man-made den. It smells of cold stone and old blood and it warbles with human noise. Robin examines closer, knowing this building through the swifts that nest in its roof, the rats in its rafters. It is a church, but it has been claimed by the Sheriff’s Guard: It has been fortified, a lookout post in the bell tower, arrow loops punched through the stained glass.
Pulling all his senses toward the center, concentrating on the garrison, Robin sat back against a tree. He stayed there, motionless, while the day cooled in the evening and dew dampened the ground and night came and a frost settled. He wrapped the wolf pelt close and still he waited, observing. He learned there were twelve soldiers in this garrison church. During daylight hours other people came and went: a baker and an alewife arrived from a nearby market town; a forester delivered firewood. Once a messenger visited and another time a weapons trader.
The night deepened. Robin stood, gripping his bow. He waited a heartbeat longer at the boundary. He stepped out of the forest. Immediately he felt exposed and vulnerable. But he didn’t pause; he ran down the bank in a half crouch, weaving between a copse of trees, a hillock, a hedgerow. He slipped down the final slope and into the graveyard, tucking himself between two sepulchers.
He strung his bow and listened to the two sentries rounding the church. He wanted to find his answers without further bloodshed, but he admitted now it was impossible. These sentries would have to die, quickly and quietly, before they could raise the alarm.
Part of him was horrified. This ambush is cowardly. They should be allowed a fighting chance.
Another part of him, nervous to be out of the forest, just wanted this over, by whatever means necessary. It can’t be helped. Marian needs you. Think of her suffering, not these men.
The sentries were approaching the graveyard, fifty paces from Robin’s hiding place. Forty. The clomp of their nailed boots, the clink of swords at their belts. Thirty
paces. Twenty. Ten.
In one movement Robin stood, planted his feet, drew, let loose. The first soldier fell, his lantern smashing against stone. The second man gasped and reached for his war horn, raising it toward his lips. A second arrow appeared at Robin’s bow and the string drew and snapped back and the arrow whistled through the night. It stapled the horn to the man’s face.
This second ranger was making a low moan. Robin unsheathed his knife and ended the man’s suffering. He moved to the nave door and used the hilt of his knife to knock five times: two short taps, followed by three long, the way he had heard the sentries knock.
His plan was vague—he knew only that he needed to find the garrison commander. Senior rangers must know where Marian was being held. He would tell Robin everything he needed to know, and then it could begin …
But how would he reach the commander, surrounded by guards? It was only at that moment, standing there waiting for the door to open, that Robin realized how stupid he had been. He had come here in desperation, without any real strategy, or any true chance of success. How could he fight ten men, out here, with only the darkness for cover?
He crept away from the door. It was not too late to bolt for the forest. But even as he took his first steps he heard a shuffling noise inside the church, and then a faint voice struggling through oak. “We heard a crash. Is all clear? What’s the watchword?”
As the porter spoke, Robin heard other noises from behind the door: the shuffling of feet; the scrape of something steel being carefully lifted from stone; a man being shaken by the shoulder. The sounds of men trying not to make a sound.
He pushed himself against the wall, curling himself into a ball, his mind screaming escape. But where? He was caught in the open. How could he disappear in this place?
A crash where the nave door flew open. Soldiers pouring out.
No choice left but to run—Robin sprinting away from the garrison, up into the churchyard, slipping between gravestones.
“After them! Nets. Bolas. Take them alive.”
Something clattering off a headstone. Robin running.
“Where are they? There! With me.”
Robin’s head down, racing up toward Winter Forest, his heart thumping, feeling again like that blind boy who first ran from men in nailed boots. Slipping through a hedgerow and sprinting for the tree line. The ground rumbling under hooves—at least five horsemen giving chase.
The forest was only a hundred paces away. But Robin wasn’t going to make it. The mounted rangers were too close.
Still Robin ran. And he realized he shouldn’t be running. In the shock he had forgotten everything Cernunnos had taught him. These soldiers didn’t know their quarry—they appeared to think it was an entire bandit horde out here in the night—and they were thrilled by the chase, and dazzled by the flaming torches they were waving. All of which made them more than half blind.
Robin fell on his stomach and lay still.
In the wide open …
But perfectly still …
The hooves thundering …
The horsemen galloped past, the closest trampling just wide of Robin.
He got up and went back to the hedgerow and crawled into the undergrowth, feeling frightened and small. That ranger had been right: The wildwood was Robin’s place of power. Out here, in the Sheriff’s world, his new strength was not enough.
Something slipped into the hedgerow beside him. The girl with the fox-red hair. She didn’t say a word, but he knew she was smiling.
Three gifts I have, buried beneath. Which would you take: the shadow, the blood, the teeth?
He listened to the soldiers at the forest edge, charging up and down, shouting at one another. Finally they rode back to the church. He left the hedgerow and slouched up the hill and slipped gratefully into the wildwood. And the vixen-girl was following behind and still she said nothing, only smiled.
Marian was engaged in two important tasks, neither of which she could permit to fail or be relaxed, even for an instant. Firstly, she was marking the movement of time by the plip-plip of water dripping behind the walls.
Plip. Twelve thousand, four hundred, and four.
Plip. Twelve thousand, four hundred, and five.
Down here it was hard to tell otherwise if a day had passed or an hour or a year. It was true that sometimes she heard other temporal clues, filtering from the surface, echoing along the shafts of these caves. She heard mothers calling children in from play; bells announcing the hour of curfew or prayer; people laughing and arguing.
There was a time when she would have picked out each and every one of these sounds, grasped them to herself as fragile treasures, using them to build a picture of the world above. She did not do this any longer. She ignored these phantom noises altogether.
She focused on the single note of water dropping against stone.
Plip. Twelve thousand, four hundred, and ninety-eight.
Plip. Twelve thousand, four hundred, and ninety-nine.
Originally, Marian had maintained this count in order to estimate when the jailer might appear: She needed to know when to pause in her other undertakings and to pretend she was still securely restrained. But at some point her marking of time had become even more vital. She understood now that this whole prison—the walls, the tunnels, the wretches above—all of it was held up solely by her vigil.
If she ever stopped counting it would bring disaster.
Plip. Twelve thousand, five hundred, and one.
Plip. Twelve thousand, five hundred, and two.
As she counted, she continued with her other task. When strands of her hair fell out—as they were doing more regularly—she collected them up and twisted them into threads. It was difficult work in the dark, but she kept at it, plaiting the threads together so they were forming a rope. Her plan was this: When the rope was long enough and strong enough to hold her weight, she would tie it with tiny yokes. Each yoke would harness one rat. The rodents would pull her up the sheer walls of the oubliette and propel her to the surface.
How many rat-steeds would she need? Fifty? One hundred? There were certainly enough here: She heard them scurrying in the gullies. To think how she used to hate the rats! She would wake, in the pitch-black, dreaming they were crawling on her face, gnawing on her flesh.
Now she knew the rats as her friends, most of them, although some were not to be trusted. She knew them individually by their squeaking voices: She knew which ones were cheerful or dyspeptic, which were tough and which ones weak and bullied. But more than anything she knew the rats as her salvation. It was merely a matter of time …
The first glimmer of a light descending and Marian looked up and she almost—almost—faltered in her counting. The ground lurched but she regained her place and the world held.
Plip. Twelve thousand, five hundred and eighty-four.
Plip. Twelve thousand, five hundred and eighty-five.
She watched the light descending. Was this Edric Krul, come to torment her once more? No, why would he return already? Then was it Will Scarlett …? Yes, it must be—Will Scarlett was here to lift her out of the dark!
The part of her that was aware she was going mad—that knew she was losing her grasp—listened to the creaking of the pulleys and rejoiced. This sane part of her knew that this time she would return with Will Scarlett to the surface; she would do whatever was asked of her in order to escape this place.
But even as she was thinking this another part of her was screaming: Too late! You can’t leave. You have to stay and count, or the world will collapse.
The light swung and dropped fully into view and dropped lower and came to rest. A figure stepped out of the basket, holding a flaming torch.
Marian missed a beat. The cavern shuddered.
“You’re not Will Scarlett.”
The walls began to spin; the sound of rock grinding.
“Where’s Will Scarlett? He’s coming to take me away.”
The caves turning faster; a great cr
unching through the earth. Marian regained her place, continued counting. The world kept its shape.
Plip. Twelve thousand, six hundred, and nine.
Plip. Twelve thousand, six hundred, and ten.
It was Grust who had come, the giant jailer, a bunch of keys hanging in his fist. What was he doing here? It wasn’t that time already. She could not have miscounted.
Plip. Twelve thousand, six hundred, and … thirty-three.
Plip. Twelve thousand, six hundred, and thirty-four?
Grust thrust in front of her a bowl of pottage and a jar of water. He turned to leave. But then he moved close to her once more and hung his face next to hers, making clomping noises through his gums. He held his torch high, reached past her, and picked up the iron collar.
She had forgotten to reattach it! She had thought it was Will Scarlett coming.
“Little woman. Big Trouble,” Grust said. “No more visitors for little woman. Now only Grust come. Grust tell him. Will be angry.”
He moved back toward the basket. Marian followed. “Don’t leave,” she said. “You have to help me. It’s all going to fall!”
Plip. Twelve thousand … six hundred … seventy … two.
Plip. Twelve thousand … seven hundred, sixty …
Marian was clinging to the jailer. He lifted one arm and sent her sprawling across the cavern floor. By the time she ran again to the basket it was swinging up and out of reach, the light already fading into the heavens.