Outlaw

by Angus Donald

  A horseman’s mace blow clanged off my helmet, stunning me momentarily, and the hooves of a war stallion slashed just past my face and then, thank God, I was out of the mass of whistling steel and whirling hooves. I drew my poniard with my left hand, sword gripped tight in my right, and prayed that I would live through the next quarter hour. Robin’s footmen had caught up with the cavalry and charged into the milling throng, yelling ‘Sherwood, Sherwood!’ I saw a grimy-faced spearman stabbing up at a black-clad warrior on horseback. To no avail. The rider turned and chopped down with his sword, splitting his helmet through the middle. And then a great white rider, in a brilliant surcoat with its blood-red cross on the shoulder, cantered past me and speared the enemy horseman in the side, the lance punching through the chain-mail and leaving the man spiked on twelve feet of ash and screaming hideously. The white rider, his face completely masked by his flat-topped cylindrical helmet, dropped his lance, leaving it protruding, flopping, out of the dying man’s side, and lifted a hand to me in salute before hauling out his great sword and wheeling away to rejoin the fray. As he galloped away in search of fresh prey, I heard his shouted, slightly muffled but familiar words drifting back to me: ‘Don’t forget to move your feeeeet . . .’

  And move them I did. Murdac’s infantry had joined the battle, too: a grim swordsman rushed at me with his weapon swinging. I blocked with my sword, stepped past him and back-cut with my long blade, slicing into his face just above the nose. He blundered away, blood spurting through his fingers as he clutched at his head. A man-at-arms ran at me, I parried with my sword without thinking, and stabbed my poniard down into the meat of his thigh. He screamed and hot blood sprayed my face and chest. I exchanged blows, sword and poniard against axe, with a man-at-arms in green and red. Our weapons locked together and I found my face only inches from his. I smashed my head forward, the brim of my steel helmet crashing into his nose, and he dropped at my feet. Another man charged in from my right waving a falchion, a heavy-bladed chopping sword, and I knelt under his clumsy swing and hacked my own blade deep into his waist, cutting through the padded coat he wore. He sank to his knees on the bloody grass before me, blood gushing from his side. I stepped back, twisting my steel free from the suck of the wound, and almost simultaneously fended off a weak axe blow to my head with the poniard in my left hand from the man whose nose I had smashed. I turned to face him, screaming a meaningless challenge, red blades in both hands, my face and body covered in other men’s gore . . . and, to my astonishment, he dropped his axe, turned and fled from the field. I was too surprised to follow him, too tired as well. Suddenly there were no more enemies about me, and I saw that the victory was in our grasp.

  The Templars were masters of the field. The white robed warriors trotted about as if they had not a care in the world. The black cavalry and the Flemish mercenaries were in full retreat, galloping south with Murdac’s standard in the fore. Robin, unhorsed, was five yards away from me fighting two men at once. His sword play was superb, almost too fast to see as he fended off blows from the two red-and-green men-at-arms. Then, before I could rush to his aid, he dispatched one man with a fast lunge to the throat, ducked a whistling haymaker from his other opponent and turned and stabbed him through his shoulder. I had been pleased with my own skills, but watching Robin, I was lost in admiration. That distraction nearly cost me my life.

  A tall man charged into me from behind. I had no idea where he came from, but he took me completely unawares and I slipped in the muddy ground, churned by horses’ hooves and slicked by many a brave man’s blood. Before I knew it, I was on my back in the morass, half-blinded by sweat, blood and my helmet, which had been knocked forward; I had dropped my poniard and my sword was held unsteadily above me in a feeble attempt at self-protection, all my science gone, as I gasped breathless on the ground. Above me, the huge, grey-mailed swordsman was slashing at my arm - time slowed to a crawl, I could see the slow swing of his blade, I could see the expression of bitter rage on his face, I could feel the bite of the blade into the flesh of my right arm. And then, out of nowhere, came Robin’s blocking sword-stroke, almost too late, but stopping the blade from slicing in deeply. Robin threw off the man’s sword and, continuing the stroke, he ran his blade through his neck, into a gap between helmet and mail coat. The man reeled away, tottered a few steps and sank to his knees, coughing blood.

  Blood was spurting from my wound, too, as I clutched at it, soaking the sleeve of my aketon, and there was Robin above me grinning and breathing heavily. He held out his right hand and pulled me to my shaky feet. The battle was over. Templar knights in blood-spattered robes, holding dripping swords, were rounding up prisoners at the point of their weapons; the last of Murdac’s mounted men were disappearing south towards Nottingham Castle and safety; his defeated foot soldiers were running for the forest. The dead and wounded were thick on the ground, fertilising the soil with their blood. I looked around me in amazement. Unbelievably, our last helter-skelter charge, combined with the superb skill of the Templars had turned the tide. But the price had been high. To my left, I saw Thomas, lying in the stinking mud, one hand clutching his belly which was a mass of dark blood. His other arm buried beneath his body. His ugly face was pale, strained with agony. I hurried over to him and tried to pull his arm away to look at his wound, but he fought me off with surprising strength. ‘Let me be, Joshua,’ he mumbled. ‘Just let me be.’ He pulled the other arm from under him and I saw with a crash of cold shock that the hand had been severed. Through the dark clot of drying blood, a white bone protruded. He seemed unaware of the injury and scratched at his oozing belly with the stump. He moaned once and I cradled his great lumpy head in my lap. I felt a burning sensation behind my eyes, and a great aching sadness inside me, but no tears would come. I stared down at his horrible-kindly face, dry-eyed, as he died. I sat there for a long time with the big man’s head on my thighs, my wounded arm like a line of fire, thinking of all the misery, pain and hatred in the world, as the blood dried to a thick crust on my hands.

  It must have been mid-afternoon when Little John found me, hauled me bodily on to the back of a horse and walked me back the few hundred yards to the shattered ruins of the manor of Linden Lea. Sir Richard was there talking with Robin and I heard the Templar say as I rode through the battered gate on the back of a borrowed nag: ‘So you will keep your side of the bargain, then?’ And Robin saying in a weary voice: ‘Yes, I’ll keep it, as you kept yours.’ Sir Richard waved at me and then cantered away to rejoin his surviving men, who had formed up outside the manor and were waiting to pursue Sir Ralph on the road to Nottingham.

  Robin came over to me and insisted on bandaging my cut himself. Although he was as gentle as he could be, he chuckled as I let out an involuntary squeal of pain, and his half healed face-cut from the day before cracked as he smiled, leaking a few drops of blood down his grimy cheek. When he had finished washing my cut in wine and wrapping it in a clean bandage, he said: ‘Between stealing pies, the Sherwood wolves and this inglorious shambles, it seems God really wants this hand, Alan. But I have denied it to him three times - and He shall never take it while I have strength.’ He slapped me on the shoulder and went to deal with other more badly wounded folk.

  And in truth we were in very bad shape: there was hardly a man who was not wounded in some way. Hugh was limping from a lance wound in his right leg. John had a gash on his left arm that looked as if a sword point had scored up his naked forearm nearly to the bone. We had lost perhaps two score men in the final attack and their bodies were laid out in a neat row. The brothers Ket the Trow and Hob o’ the Hill were dead, too, their tiny corpses lying together a little apart from the rest as they would receive a pagan burial. Only Tuck, indomitable Tuck, was unwounded. He was sitting on a barrel of ale, eating a great piece of cheese, with his two great hounds Gog and Magog at his side, guarding a prisoner. It was Guy of Gisbourne.

  The boy - the man - who had tortured me, humiliated me, stripped me of my pride in that foul Wi
nchester dungeon was slumped dejectedly, hands bound, between the two massive dogs. He was facing the death of a renegade from Robin’s band with as much dignity as he could muster. One whole side of his face was swollen, I guessed from a great blow that must have rendered him unconscious, but before I could ponder his ill-luck in being captured rather than killed outright in battle, he caught sight of me, and with a cry of ‘Alan, help me!’ he tried to get to his feet. The two dogs growled, deep and terrible, like the vengeance of God, and Guy collapsed down again. I turned my back and walked away.

  We washed ourselves and ate and drank and slept that hot afternoon at Linden Lea, and many of us, too many, died of our wounds. At dusk, Robin gathered together in the courtyard as many men as were able to walk. He stood over the forlorn figure of Guy of Gisbourne, who seemed to be trying to shrink into the earth at Robin’s feet.

  ‘We have fought, and we have won,’ said Robin in his carrying battle voice. ‘And many have died. And after victory comes justice. Here, before you, is a man who was once your comrade but today he rode with the enemy; this man, who was once your friend, with whom you shared your daily bread, is a traitor. What shall we do with him?’

  The courtyard rang with cries of: ‘Boil him alive!’ and ‘Flay him!’ and ‘Hang, draw and quarter him’. A wag yelled: ‘Tell him one of your jokes!’ Robin held up a hand for silence. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘The punishment shall be—’

  And then I was shouting: ‘Wait, wait. I claim his life. I claim his life in single combat.’ I don’t know why I did so; I could have sat back and watched my enemy meet his deservedly cruel end - and even enjoyed it. But there was something about his pathetic air, the way he had appealed to me before, and perhaps my sense of guilt was stirring. If I had not engineered his expulsion from Thangbrand’s with the stolen ruby, maybe he would have fought with us this day.

  So I said it again: ‘I claim his life. I will fight him and kill him in single combat, if the prisoner is willing.’

  Robin looked at me oddly. ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘What about your arm?’

  ‘It will be fine,’ I said, though I was far from sure. The cut was burning, my arm felt weak and I was trembling even as I loudly made the absurd boast: ‘My sword requires his life.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Robin. ‘The prisoner will face single combat with our brother Alan. Swords the only weapons. If he wins, he shall go free.’ There was some grumbling from the crowd at this, although a good many seemed to consider a sword fight to the death a fine entertainment to crown such a bloody day. ‘Does the prisoner accept the challenge?’

  Guy had lifted his bruised head at this strange turn of events. He looked across at me, doubtless remembering the many times he had beaten me on the practice ground at Thangbrand’s. He half-smiled, a mere twitch of his dry lips, and said: ‘I accept.’

  Behind me I heard a deep voice whisper in my ear. ‘By God’s swollen loins, you are a fool, young Alan. But don’t you worry; you’ll easily slaughter him. And if by some mischance, he wins, I’ll chop his head off myself.’

  Both Guy and I stripped our tunics and shirts off to fight bare-chested in the warm evening. Robin had flaming torches brought out for light and I found myself facing my childhood enemy over the point of my sword inside a ring of jeering outlaws. As we circled each other, I felt the weight of my blade for the first time in months; my cut arm had weakened me more than I had supposed, and I was bone-weary from two days of battle. But then Guy spoke quietly, so that only I could hear him: ‘I enjoyed hearing you sing in Winchester, little trouvère, or rather hearing you squeal.’ He was looking at the burn scars on my naked ribs and, remembering the deep humiliation, the heat of the burning iron near my most intimate parts, I felt for the first time a flare of real anger. ‘Good,’ I thought, ‘now I can kill you.’ Whatever pity, whatever weakness I had felt before was swept away by his words. As we circled each other, naked steel in our hands, I felt my being fill with the strength that comes from pure hatred. I wanted his blood, I wanted his guts smeared all over my blade. I wanted him dying, begging for his life in front of me in the dust of the courtyard before my friends and comrades.

  Then he sprang at me, and he was as fast as I remembered him; a lighting quick flurry of blows which I parried with my wounded sword arm. By God, he was strong, too, he was fighting for his life, and he had learnt a thing or two since our days at Thangbrand’s. But, then, so had I.

  He attacked hard down my right hand side, hammering backhanded blows against my blade. By luck more than skill, I managed to fend him off and we broke apart, both panting for breath. I looked down at the bandage on my forearm and noted with dismay that the bleeding had started again, and a large crimson patch was seeping across the white of the cloth. He came at me again, this time on the left, then left and right in succession. He was driving me back, the outlaws scattering behind me, back towards a surviving stretch of palisade, trying to corner me to a place where he could hammer me down.

  And then he over-reached himself - he must have been tired too, for he mistimed his sword stroke and I was through his guard in a heartbeat, slashing him across his naked chest. A shallow cut but bloody, a foot long and an inch or so above his nipples. The crowd gave a great animal roar of approval. First blood to me. He looked down in complete surprise, as the gore welled and spilled down his bare chest and on to his belly. And then I was attacking. I used a combination of cuts and lunges that Sir Richard had taught me. Guy seemed bewildered by this change in my demeanour. In his heart, he still believed me to be the snotty thief that had been an easy target of his bullying only the year before. Or the cringing victim, screaming for mercy in that Winchester dungeon. But I was no longer that boy. I was a man, a full member of Robin’s band, a warrior. He tried a desperate counter-attack to break my lunge-and-cut routine, but it was another mistake. I let his blade slide past my head and chopped down into the meat of his right bicep. He roared in pain and dropped his sword and I could have killed him there and then. The blood-drunk crowd was shrieking for his death. But I did not strike. I heard again his laughter at my humiliation, my agony of body and mind in that cell, and it was not in my head to give him a quick death.

  I made him pick up the sword with his left hand and fight on. But after that cut to his arm, the battle was all mine. He was no swordsman with his left hand and in three passes I had sliced his chest again, slashed into his side, stabbed his calf muscle and, with a contemptuous flick of my wrist, made a deep cut on the unbruised side of his face. He was staggering and crying now. He could see his death in my eyes. His defence was at an end and he barely moved as I swung and sliced deep into the muscle of his left shoulder. By now, weak with loss of blood, he could barely lift the sword. And suddenly all my anger drained away. Here, in front of me, was a wreck of a man, bleeding from a half a dozen cuts, right arm useless, humiliated. I had had my revenge.

  He stood there panting, his clean sword trailing in the dust, waiting for the death blow like a bullock at a slaughterhouse. I felt disgust for myself; this was not how a true warrior behaved, to torment a beaten foe. I stepped away from him and looked round the ring of eager blood-lusting faces. The marks of recent battle and the firelight from the torches gave them an evil cast: they looked like a circle of demons glowing with a hideous desire. They began to chant: ‘Death, death, death . . .’ But I wanted no more part in their gory entertainment and said in a loud voice: ‘I have finished. Let him go. The fight is over. Release him.’ And I turned my back on that bleeding remnant of my childhood and started to walk towards the manor house.

  Then someone shouted my name and I whirled round fast. Guy had raised his sword in his left hand and he was charging at me across the torch-lit courtyard, a scream of humiliated rage in his throat. He swung the sword hard at my head but I ducked easily and lunged forward, spitting his already blood-slicked chest on my blade. His own momentum drove him forward on to my sword and he came to rest, inches from my body, his face close enough to kiss.
I could see the light dying in his eyes and, feeling a last flicker of hatred, I leant forward and whispered in his ear. ‘It was me who planted the ruby in your clothes chest, Wolfram. Take that knowledge with you to Hell.’ He gurgled blood, a crimson stream running from his lips. I could see he was trying to speak, to curse me, and then he slumped at my feet, dead, on his back with my sword still stuck between his ribs, the hilt pointing to the heavens.