by Tim Hall
He sprinted away just in time—throwing nets swished narrowly wide, a single club struck him on the arm.
He ran toward South Gate, the rangers in pursuit, yelling and blowing horns and banging their clubs against their shields. He darted off the main streets, well-lit with hanging lamps, and he fled through the darkened alleys of the slums.
He stumbled over something dead at his feet. He collided with a wall but regained his balance and ran on. Rangers came at him from either side. He darted between them—spiked clubs caught him glancing blows or whispered wide.
There was no fizz of crossbow bolt or hiss of arrow: The Sheriff wanted Robin taken alive. He swept around another group of soldiers and they charged after him, shouting.
Ahead was South Gate, only fifty paces away. But it was closing with a grinding of wood and rattling of chains.
Thirty paces away, twenty, ten.
The portal clumped shut. Cla-clunk.
Robin ran close to the city walls, soldiers swarming around him, thick as flies. He slipped through their grasp and he leaped onto the steps that led to the ramparts. He fled to the top of the walls.
Without pause he flung himself over the battlements.
His heart lurched; his breath stuck in his throat. A long, frightening drop.
He splashed down in the cold, deep river.
He came to the surface, gasping, and he swam to the bank and dragged himself onto dry land. He crouched beneath a stone bridge, listening for the sound of soldiers in pursuit. There was only the blaring of horns within the walls, shouting from the ramparts. The city gates remained closed.
He crouched there, shivering, seething with frustration. How would he ever claim his revenge, with the entire Sheriff’s Guard standing in his way? How would he free Marian if she was locked within that fortress? He would need an army, and siege engines.
Except—
Would I?
Or was there another way?
The black tentacles shifted in Robin’s palm. He felt what power the shadow of the wolf held, even this fragment. He thought of possessing the whole of the weapon once more and his whole body fizzed with the idea of it …
This time I could master it, and not be its slave. Haven’t I learned to wield the piece that remains?
He remembered what else the vixen-woman had offered.
Three gifts I have, buried beneath. Which would you take: the shadow, the blood, the teeth?
The Shadow. The Blood. The Teeth.
How powerful would a person become were they to possess all three?
Thinking all this, he found himself leaving the riverbank and returning the way he had come. He broke into a run, the black tendrils tugging at his arm, speeding him toward the wildwood, and toward the goddess of the forest, and her gifts.
All Marian’s meticulous plans were starting to unravel. Something had gone horribly wrong, that was the only explanation.
She and all twelve of her fellow prisoners had been corralled into one place. They were all in the wash room, sitting on the tiled floor, amid the buckets and the ewers and the barrels. Four wardens flanked the only doorway. Norman Banes was there, sweating heavily, his crazed eyes rolling side to side. Gordon Sleth fidgeted, looking anywhere but at Aimee Clearwater.
“What’s going on?” Ira Starr whispered at Marian’s side.
“Why aren’t they saying anything?” said Ena Agutter. “Where’s Killen Skua?”
“Listen,” said Alice White. “Hear the gates? Somebody’s come. Who is it?”
Alice was right: Riders were being led into the Garden of Angels. Bishop Raths again? And who else? What could be so urgent that they had traveled here now, after dark?
“Marian, what is it?” said Elfen Goldacre.
“Something’s not right,” said Petronilla Coldish. “What do we do if—”
“Be quiet,” hissed Minnie Reaper. “Can’t you see she’s thinking. Everybody stay calm. Don’t crowd so close.” Black-haired Minnie, as tiny as she was fierce, elbowed and poked the others until they shuffled away and allowed Marian more space.
Now Marian could hear people approaching. One of them was carrying tools—they clinked as the person walked. Because of the enclosed cloisters and the acoustic pots the sounds became an ominous thump and rustle as they came to a halt outside the wash room.
“Be my guest.” This was Killen Skua’s voice.
The visitors came inside.
Sonskya Luz sucked in a breath. Alice White groaned. The visitor was not Bishop Raths; as far as the prisoners were concerned, this was somebody far worse. Here was Gideon Johns, the Apothecary. His apprentice followed behind, struggling under the weight of his master’s casket. It was this that had caused the clinking sound.
Killen Skua came forward, smoothing his mustache with a finger and thumb of one hand. “As you all know,” he said, “I like to think of myself as fair-minded. That is why you girls are granted certain freedoms and … privileges. But … recently my generosity has been abused. I have been forced to endure disobedience and disturbance.” Here he looked at Lyssa Brekehart. His eyes flicked across the other girls, each in turn. “Worst of all are these markings that have appeared on some of your wrists. All of which is unacceptable. Whatever is going on here”—this time he stared at Marian—“whatever is going on here, it will stop.”
“Your troubles are not in the least surprising,” the Apothecary said. “A young woman’s elements contain excessive fire. When quartered together, they feed off one another, until they are burning beyond control.” He had opened his casket and was taking out phials and flasks, squinting at each in turn. These were his purgatives: vile concoctions of linseed and salt soap and beetles’ wings and wasp stings. “But fear not,” he continued. “My art is equal to the task. And a full moon is rising—the most efficacious time to act. I will soon restore serenity to these troubled young souls.”
Marian had witnessed this man’s treatments: She had seen girls so racked with sickness that afterward they were mere husks of their former selves. During her initial imprisonment here, Marian herself had been bedridden by one of his potions and had taken weeks to recover her vitality. That is what the Apothecary meant by serenity.
“The remedy required will vary by individual case,” the Apothecary said. “Naturally, each subject will need a purgative to begin, to cleanse the humors. We will follow with ministrations of water and ice, to dampen the excessive fire. But some of the afflicted will require the opposite: a treatment of intense heat. The malady, made to rage, will burn itself out, exhausted of fuel. So, since we are here and ready and able, you may bring forward the first subject and we will proceed.” Gideon Johns turned. “Master Skua, I said I am ready for the first subject, if you please.”
But Killen Skua was no longer listening. Neither was Marian. Her attention had been drawn to the rear of the wash room. Lusk Varg, a sentry from the main gates, had appeared at the doorway, short of breath. Killen Skua had gone to join him and the two of them were talking in low tones.
A creaking and rattling meant the gates were opening once more.
“Who is it now?” said Elfen Goldacre. “What can’t wait until morning?”
Marian thought she heard Lusk Varg mutter two names: the first was Bishop Raths. The second was Jadder Payne. Other girls heard it too and a nervous whisper began to spread.
“Did you hear? The Inquisitor. Here.”
“With the torturer. Why?”
Marian felt the Prime Warden staring at her. The Inquisitor does know something. What has he uncovered?
Killen Skua glanced up at Norman Banes and Marian felt her panic deepen. How much do they know?
“Marian,” the Prime Warden said. “Come here to me.”
She stood and shuffled mutely toward Killen Skua, her hands at her sides.
Killen Skua came forward. He reached out an arm. “Marian, come with me. I don’t know what—”
Marian flew at him, screeching, her teeth bared—Killen Skua,
startled, stepped back. Marian sprang to the side, raced around the Prime Warden, ducked the grasp of Lusk Varg. Two other guards closed together, the gap narrowed, the men reached, but they were too slow and Marian had dashed between them and fled out of the wash room.
She ran. Through the cloisters and the corridors. Skidding and slipping on the floor rushes. A warden appeared from a side door. She went to the floor and skidded beneath his lunge. Another warden lurched at her but she ducked and weaved and kept running. Other guards merely stood and stared at Marian as she went. They had known this slack-eyed girl for longer than a year, and in all that time she had barely shown a glimmer of life. Now she was a wildcat, hissing and scratching at any hand that crossed her path.
She ran through the gardens and the lashing rain and she reached the northern end of the convent, where the tower stood. She darted inside and started up, taking three steps at a time. The golden angels painted on the walls spiraled past and Marian grew dizzy—the stairwell inviting a thirty-foot fall. She put her hand to the wall and ran on. Breathing hard, she reached the top. The domed prayer room. She went to the window and looked down. Killen Skua was approaching, flanked by two rangers, the wolf-head insignia on their chests. And two other men followed behind. One was Bishop Raths, gripping the hem of his cassock.
The second was Jadder Payne.
He was holding what looked like a small pair of wool shears.
No, no, she thought. Too soon. I needed more time. She turned away from the window and went to the far wall. With her fingernails she eased out a single brick. She reached into the cavity and pulled out the smithing hammer she had hidden there weeks before. She used the hammer to smash at the bricks, the noise echoing down the tower.
Over many months, using a gardening trowel, Marian had spent her nights scraping away at the mortar of this wall. Now one brick gave way, tumbled out. A second leaped free. If ten or perhaps twelve of these bricks were removed, it might just be possible for a slim person to crawl through and throw themselves out and over the curtain wall and into the river beyond.
A third brick popped out, a fourth, the hammer beating the same rhythm as the soldiers’ boots on the stairs.
A fifth brick. A sixth.
The final one.
A pair of boots had stopped. A second came to a standstill.
Marian looked to the doorway, the two soldiers there, rainwater running from their skull-helms. Behind them came Killen Skua, and then Bishop Raths, a grim expression on his leathery face. Finally appeared Jadder Payne, his expression blank, gripping the shears.
Marian put down the hammer.
So this was it. Time up.
Robin’s forest-mind flies ahead, rustling the hedgerows. It ghosts through homes, making children stir in their beds. It stone-skips across ponds and puddles. It reaches Winter Forest and here it starbursts, sparkling through root and burrow, fuming with breath and spore, glittering away infinite as the heavens.
And instantly he finds her: the goddess of the forest. She is walking back and forth across a shimmering glade, humming softly to herself. Her skin is flushed in the moonlight and she has one hand resting atop her swollen middle.
We’ve planted the seed; now it must grow. No need for talk; let the deed show.
Where would this new development lead? What more did she want from him? But such thoughts did not make him pause. He forced himself to think of the shadow of the wolf, of possessing it entirely once more, and he quickened his pace …
But then he came to a halt. Because his forest-mind has also rippled backward, seeking any rangers who may be in pursuit. There is Nottingham, a shrieking void in the web of green, and there is something else, a few miles outside the city, which demands his attention …
A patrol of horsemen, traveling east, following moonlit paths. Six of these men cause barely a tremor in Robin’s forest-mind. But the seventh rider is a distortion—a hot-steel noise and a red twisting taste. He is a tall, skeletal man, a holster of knives concealed beneath his cloak.
Here is the man who took Robin’s eyes.
Jadder Payne.
Robin turned away from Winter Forest; he loped after this patrol. The vixen-woman would have to wait. Tonight Robin would, after all, claim a measure of his revenge.
His forest-mind nosing after these men, trying to sense them more clearly. They are approaching a walled town. At least, Robin thinks it is a walled town, or perhaps it is a fortress, or even a convent. Could it be a prison? His impression of this place is confused: It is quiet colors and musical aromas, but it is also hard tastes and a hatred that prickles the skin. All of this refusing to swim into focus.
Jadder Payne and the other men have reached the gates and are being led inside. Robin running faster, loping through field and copse and across stream and river, slipping through deserted hamlet and ghost village.
His forest-mind probing at the mystery place, thinking now that something has changed behind those walls … something has snapped, like a spring-loaded trap. There is running and shouting and violence.
And at the heart of this disturbance is a single blazing figure.
A wildfire force of nature.
And he knows he has found her, at last.
Marian.
His muscles burning, his heart thundering, sprinting to the limits of his strength and beyond, charging across scrub and splashing through ford and running through rain now falling in torrents.
And then stumbling, almost falling to the mud. Because very faint, through the wall of rain, a scream.
He was too late. He had let them hurt her, again.
A second inhuman shriek.
They were killing her.
He flew across the ground—the shadow tendrils boiling through his skin—over hillock and across vale and through thicket. He crested a high hill above the mystery place—above Marian’s prison. He powered down the lee slope, into a wooded valley.
More screaming, slicing through the night.
Robin kept running, but now it felt more like falling. The ground had opened up and the one final cord tying him to this world had been cut and he was spiraling through blackness …
A shout went up, and the blaring of a horn. The prison guards must have spotted him. He tried to make sense of how many men, and where, but his forest-mind was fuzzy through his pain and fury.
It made little difference, in any case, because Robin knew one thing with clarity: This would be a fight to the death. If this was the end for Marian, it would be the end for him too.
Our fates are tied. We’ve always known that … I am you, just the same as you are me.
Guards were coming toward him, their spears leveled, the slanting rain drumming against their shields. From behind the walls the screaming continued, raw and strange.
Too late. Failed.
Robin readied his bow. He nocked an arrow and powered toward the waiting spears. This was the end. A fight to the death and a measure of revenge. That was all he had left.
* * *
In those moments before the first scream, Bishop Raths studied Marian Delbosque, cowering in the corner of the prayer room. He felt a strange mixture of emotions for this girl. Desire, certainly. Respect, yes. To think she had almost succeeded where warlords and assassins had failed: to kill the Sheriff. And all from behind these walls! He felt a degree of pity. This was a cruel place, this painted prison, he understood that. And now Jadder Payne was about to cut her hamstrings. By crippling her they would be sending Marian to the cruelest prison of all—she would spend the rest of her life caged within her own body.
The Inquisitor looked at Marian and he felt one final emotion …
Fear.
Fear, truly? The idea shocked him. The girl was thoroughly at their mercy. Look at her, pushed into the corner, wearing only those ascetic rags, defiance battling panic in those gray-green eyes. How could he possibly fear this girl?
A jumble of thoughts arrived simultaneously, jostling for their correct position, try
ing to form an idea that was long overdue.
Marian had won help from beyond these walls …
If poisoned garments could be smuggled out, then other objects could be smuggled in …
He thought of all Marian had achieved.
An extremely resourceful girl, and ingenious. Yes, ingenious most of all.
What other resources does she have in this place? What else could she use …?
He remembered the Prime Warden’s words.
Some of the girls do a bit of archery. They even like to swing a practice sword.
A lump rose in his throat. He looked at the wall where Marian had been hammering. She didn’t have a hope of escaping that way, not really. She would break her neck on the curtain wall. But the hammering had produced one tangible effect: the noise had brought the wardens and the soldiers running. They were all of them gathering here. All in one place. Leaving the other girls unwatched.
The idea hardened into its finished form. The Inquisitor took a step back.
The fear grew. So did the respect.
Clever girl. You’re not just one killer. You’ve bred a whole flock of killers. Deadly little angels all.
But these thoughts, and this final realization, had arrived too late. Because Marian was already reaching into the space within the wall, and Killen Skua was walking forward, saying: “You’ve brought this on yourself, Marian. Don’t make it worse than it has to be. If you don’t struggle, it can be over quickly and cleanly. There’s no point fighting. We’ve got you cornered.”
And when Marian removed her hand from wall she was holding three short pipes of some sort. “Do you?” she said, those magnificent eyes flashing. “Or do we have you cornered?”
And she smiled. And in the next instant the screaming began.
From her hiding place Marian removed the three blowpipes. She put the first of these to her lips and she spat the sticky liquid. Killen Skua screamed, clawing at his eyes.
Bishop Raths had already turned and was fleeing for the stairs. The two rangers were following his lead, bustling Jadder Payne to safety.