LXX
Sherwood Forest
29 March, 1194
THE FIRST THING he saw was a bloody handprint.
His eyes could barely focus, but it was there, in the flickering half-light, stamped upon rock. He blinked, frowned at it. Where he was, he couldn’t tell. But he knew he was shifting in and out of consciousness. The dream—the nightmare—had been a taste of Hell: it seemed a perpetual torment, something from which there would be no escape. In the dream, Mélisande had died. His heart still pounded at the memory of it—still half-believed in it. But now he knew that was not real, and this was.
Thank God.
Through the indistinct haze, he now saw that there were others like it—more handprints, some no bigger than a child’s—all in faded colours. And around these, dancing in procession across the uneven surface of the rock, strange little stick figures: men, animals, other things he could only half-identify.
They swirled. The room—if room it was—began to spin.
And then he remembered. The Forêt de Boulogne. This was the Forêt de Boulogne. The cave in which Mélisande nursed him. He nearly died, because of Tancred. But... That couldn’t be right.
Tancred died, in a different forest. He saw it. And that cave... It was more than two years ago. He remembered everything, now—all that followed: the battle at Castel Mercheval, the skull of St John the Baptist, capturing Hood, his escape from the Tower, the Red Hand, and Mélisande...
Then he realised. That wasn’t the dream; this was.
His limbs flailed. He felt like a straw doll. Fighting to open his right eye, he found it stuck fast. It felt covered in tar. It tore open suddenly and he thought he saw flames licking. Blurred shadows moving.
He tried to lift his head, and all turned to black.
HE CRAWLED ON his belly, sticky, sweaty, blind. Half of him was hot, the other cold and wet. Leaves and mould, sticking to him. There was flame—he could hear the crackle, smell the smoke, feel the heat on his skin. But his eyes registered nothing. One was real, one not. But which?
The left side of his head felt like it was splitting. His hand went to it, unthinking; something sharp pierced his palm and pain and light exploded in his head. A single, incessant note scraped across the inside of his skull.
Fucking hurdy gurdy...
He crawled, with no idea where he was heading. The heat subsided, gave way to the cool and damp, and he staggered to his feet, hands held out before him, not knowing whether he was stumbling to safety or into a trap.
He saw Mélisande. Dead, an arrow in her. Not real. No, he did not want that to be real.
Shapes and colours began to swirl. Then suddenly the ground gave way. He fell. The shock of icy water.
And all went black once more.
LXXI
HE AWOKE SHIVERING under a black sky.
Water. He had been in water. He lifted his right hand and realised he still was, although only inches deep. His sight had returned—to one eye, at least. Lifting his head slowly, he tried to focus on the bright horizon beyond his feet, but his vision blurred. He blinked to clear it, and the pain shot through his head again.
He remembered.
He lay still for a moment, allowing time for his faculties to return, testing each limb with tentative movements. And, bit by bit, he began to make sense of his surroundings.
The water he was lying in was slimy and still—only a couple of inches deep by his head, but deeper towards his feet. He waggled them. Perhaps a foot deep or more.
Above him was rock. He smelled mud and mould and decayed animal. When he lifted his head, he could see that the bright horizon was a strip of daylight beneath a rock overhang—a ragged curtain of foliage in front of it, and the glimmer of running water beyond.
And before it, his face bobbing close to Gisburne’s chest, was a dead man. The bearded visage was pale and bloated, the eyes bulging, but Gisburne recognised John Lyttel nonetheless—washed here by the current, his quarterstaff drifting in the still water by his side. To have survived, to be clinging to sight, and for this to be the first face he saw... It crushed what remained of his heart, made it something harder.
He understood now. He must be close to where they had crossed the log bridge. That was where Lyttel had gone to delay Hood; where he had died. And when Gisburne had staggered, blind, he had stepped right off the edge of the outcrop and into the stream. It was a miracle his brains hadn’t been dashed out on a rock.
He had not escaped unscathed. He reached up and touched the flesh near where the arrow shaft was embedded in his left eye, and felt the fresh, warm ooze of blood.
There was a part of his mind that seemed somehow separate from his body, and able to apply cold logic to his situation. Had Hood’s arrow hit him, he’d be dead. He also seemed to remember the sound of the impact before he was blinded. He concluded that the arrow must have struck a nearby tree and shattered, sending part of the shaft into his eye. That meant the barbed arrowhead was not in him.
Ignoring the flashes of pain and light that the slightest touch produced, he gripped the bloody, slippery shaft—all the while imagining the consequences if he were wrong.
The length of ash wood clicked against bone as he slowly drew it free, teeth clenched, knowing he must not cry out. The last of it slid out all at once. His head span. He thought he might vomit. Something thick dribbled down his left cheek, and he fumbled for something with which to bandage it, cursing himself for not having prepared it first. He pulled roughly at the edge of his tunic, but it was having none of it, so he gripped the protruding neck of his undershirt and yanked at that. A ragged piece barely the length of his hand tore off. He threw it down, and then—taking deep breaths to slow the pounding in his chest—drew his eating knife, found the bottom hem of the shirt, and cut away a long, even strip.
This, he wrapped about one half of his head. It was tight—too tight—but somehow this more familiar discomfort was reassuring.
His thoughts turned to what he must do next. It was impossible to know who or what was still out there. Perhaps Hood was dead—he saw his arrow strike him—but perhaps not.
He sheathed his eating knife and ran a quick audit. His sword was gone, the wood-lined scabbard snapped and twisted beneath his legs. But the seax remained in its sheath at his back. There was his eating knife, of course, and, tucked into the same belt, he still had the bloody arrow that had killed Asif. And Lyttel’s quarterstaff bobbed nearby.
It was not much of an arsenal. He wasn’t even sure how effective he could be in a stand-up fight. He flexed his shoulders and felt he could probably draw a bow—if only he had one.
Then he heard it. A familiar voice, singsong.
“Gu-uy... Gu-uy...”
Hood, calling him as one calls a cat or a dog. And he was getting closer.
Gisburne had hit him, he was certain of it. But the outlaw was not done yet. If Hood were to find him here, and could still draw a bow, Gisburne would be shot like a rat in a barrel.
He tried to prop himself up, but his head swam again. He knew he was weak from loss of blood. Hearing the crunch of footsteps above him, he lay, barely breathing, waiting—hoping—for Hood to pass. Perhaps he would not think to look here. Perhaps he did not even know this place existed.
“Where are you, Guy?”
Only then did it occur to Gisburne that he must have left a trail of blood. Hood would find him.
Gisburne drew out his seax, fingers tight around the wrapped cord grip. It was the one substantial weapon left him—but it was only useful if his enemy was close. He thought of Asif—poor, dead Asif—and his talk of throwing weapons. A stone, a disc. A knife.
He hefted the old seax and felt its weight, but the heavy blade would not serve. It would simply be throwing his most valued weapon away. Reaching out, he caught Lyttel’s staff with the tips of his fingers and eased it towards him. It was the final parting gift from their brave ally. But what use was it in this low space? Gisburne cursed his stupid luck—a knif
e he could not throw, a staff he could not wield and an arrow he could not shoot.
His mind raced. The thought of tying the eating knife to the staff struck him; a spear would improve his chances, at least. But as he took up the seax again and began to unravel the cord wrapping, some other words of Asif’s came to him: A stick of wood and a string...
He looked at the staff, and the seax. He had a stick. He had a string. And... He clutched at his belt. He had an arrow...
He raised his right knee and pulled the staff against it. It was no bowstave, but it had some flex in it. He went back to the seax’s cord wrapping and unwound it as fast as he could, hoping to God it would long enough ...
It was—just. Whether it would hold was another matter—there would be no test, no second try. Just one shot, by which he would live or die.
With the seax, he chopped a notch near each end of the staff, then tied the cord in a bowyer’s hitch about each end, tucking one loop into one of the grooves.
Then there was the arrow. He stared for a moment at the shaft, bereft of its feather fletchings. It needed something—something to catch the air, to make it fly straight. He hunted around for the discarded scrap of undershirt torn from his collar, found it floating in the water, squeezed it out, and with shaking hands tied it around the nocked end of the arrow. It would have to do.
He stopped for a moment, listening intently, suddenly aware that he could no longer hear Hood’s footfalls.
“Guy?”
The voice was unbearably close—and now Gisburne fancied he could hear someone wading through the water.
He turned the staff sideways across the low cave, jammed the nocked end against the rock, pulled the other end towards him and pushed it hard against its belly. It bowed—reluctantly. He edged the remaining loop towards the groove, the whole bow quivering, suddenly fearful that he had tied it too short, that he would run out of time. The end of the staff slid against the rock. He gave one last shove—and the loop slid into place.
The sounds of displaced water drew steadily nearer.
He prayed that it would be enough. That the cord would not snap. That the staff would not break.
The wading stopped, and Gisburne held his breath. Then it began again.
He lifted his feet clear of the water, hooked the bow over them and drew back on the string. The he nocked the arrow, resting its shaft between his feet.
And he waited.
It had gone quiet again. He thought back to that time by the road, bow at the ready, waiting for Hood—who never came. It would not happen again. He wanted it over with. This time, live or die, it was to be on his terms.
He let out an audible groan, as of a dying man. Then he lay back, feet braced against the bow, squinting the length of the arrow. His head was pounding, and he struggled to judge the distance with his one eye.
And then a shadow loomed in the opening.
Gisburne drew back the cord, willing the bow to hold together. It cut into his fingers. He shook with the effort, but kept going, until the terror of the staff cracking became unbearable.
“Gu-uy...”
Gisburne released. The bow leapt forward, the string slapping his booted toes hard enough to numb them. He heard his arrow clatter against rock on the far side of the river, and his heart sank.
But the figure staggered backwards.
Then a little more.
It uttered a strange sound—like a sigh.
Gisburne realised the arrow had passed straight through him.
It was the last clear thought Gisburne had, before time slipped away from him again.
LXXII
HE DID NOT know whether moments or hours had passed when he emerged from the stinking hollow.
A fine rain was falling. He stood unsteadily and looked up at it, blinking in the daylight. Pain seared him as he blinked, but it was a different pain. The scoured, empty socket throbbed darkly, and he could feel the tattered lids pull at the improvised bandage.
Of Hood there was no sign.
He had hit him, that was certain. The outlaw should be dead.
He glanced up to the black crest of the escarpment, then along its ragged edge. No sign of life. He waded backwards a few paces, and the tarry reek of burned wood and blackened earth hit his nostrils. He saw a great pall of dark smoke rising from the direction of the village.
He stepped further back, and a dark shape to his left caught his eye: a crouched figure. He reached for his sword, but found he had only the empty, broken scabbard. The man did not move, and looked to be deep in prayer. Gisburne’s left hand had reached for his seax and found that gone too—then he realised the man was dead.
He was one of Hood’s; which one, he could not tell. It might have been Arthur a Bland. An arrow stuck out of his neck where it met his collarbone, but evidently it hadn’t killed him outright. He had staggered the two hundred yards from Hood’s camp before collapsing into a tangle of blackened briars, from which he now hung like a puppet. As Gisburne approached, he realised the man had also been on fire.
He waded out further, feeling the water’s resistance, searching along the opposite bank. There: the arrow that had killed Asif. That was blackened with his blood – that was still sticky with Hood’s, and now partly encrusted with grit.
It cannot have been long ago. He tossed the arrow in the water and watched it float away. It had served its purpose. Hood was dying.
He had to find him—to see it with his own eyes.
He turned and waded back to the hollow to retrieve his seax, shivering in the cold water.
And there, as he crawled under, he saw John Lyttel again. He sheathed his seax, caught hold of the big man’s foot and hauled him out of that dank hole. It did not seem a fitting resting place. He didn’t exactly know what would, but then an idea struck him and he floated the body out into the middle of the stream.
“Goodbye, John Attemille...” he said. Then he gave the body a shove, and let it be carried away by the swift water.
As he stepped back, his heel touched something and he heard the ring of metal. There, on the rounded stones in the clear water, lay Irontongue. He plunged his arm in and drew it into the air again, holding it briefly in his hand before feeding it into the bent, broken scabbard.
Hauling himself up the bank, he headed back towards the flames, one thought keeping him moving.
One terrible thought.
IF THE VILLAGE had been bad before, now it was a vision from Hell. The air was a pall of choking smoke, lit orange by the still-burning fires, stinking of pitch and burnt flesh. The ground was littered with the corpses of Hood’s men—so many that in places the mud was puddled with red. The flames had spread to Hood’s great hall and the ancient oak burned at its heart, with a heat as unbearable as the parched plain of Hattin. And amidst all this, passing strange, stood the smoking tree that had housed the treasury. It had burned with such fierce heat that the molten riches had cascaded in rivulets down the gnarled trunk, transforming it into a tree of silver and gold.
He found Mélisande still propped against the tree, her face pale as the drowned John Attemille’s, Hood’s arrow still in her.
He fell to his knees and wished to go back to the river—to be carried below its surface and sink into the oblivion of ever deeper waters.
He grasped her hand. It was warm, warmer than his. It must only have been minutes ago that he left here. Precious, lost minutes.
He bowed his head and listened to the flames.
She stirred. He started violently, thinking he had imagined it. Then he heard her halting breaths, and her eyes flicked open and looked right at him. He stared, dumbfounded. “You’re alive...” she croaked. He almost laughed at that. Then she reached up and took his face in her hands.
He realised he probably looked worse than she did.
“I am sorry,” he said.
She shook her head, smiling. “Don’t be,” she said. “Is it done?”
“Yes... I mean... I think so.” He let his head
drop. “I should not have brought you here. Dragged you into this.”
“Dragged? You did not drag, you invited. I came of my own free will.”
“If it weren’t for me, you might now be fit and well in some castle somewhere...”
She smiled. “If it weren’t for you, Gisburne, I’d be dead.”
He frowned and shook his head; what she was saying made no sense. Then, to his astonishment, she sat up, unbuckled her belt, and pulled aside her surcoat, revealing the gleam of metal; the breastplate he had given her, Hood’s arrow embedded in it. He helped her unbuckled the straps and then, shaking with the pain, she cast it and the arrow off.
“Broken rib, I think,” she said. “Whatever you do, don’t make me laugh...”
And then, laughing to himself with tears in his eyes, he held her to him. She winced and sucked in air.
“Sorry—does that hurt?”
“Yes,” she said. “But don’t stop.” And she held him tighter.
A cough broke the spell. Gisburne stood and looked to the next tree, and there was Aldric. He had removed the bolt himself, and his arm was bloody and limp. But he was alive. “Don’t mind me,” he said. Then he dug his heels into the earth and slid himself up onto his feet against the wet tree trunk.
Gisburne laughed in relief. He helped Mélisande to her feet, then turned and looked across the fire-ringed courtyard of blood and bodies just as Galfrid and the Norseman—the crossbow bolt still in his shoulder—approached, dragging a battered and bloody Alan O’Doyle between them. They threw him on his face in the mud, and Galfrid tossed his fancy crossbow down next to him.
“Don’t ever say I don’t do anything for you,” said the squire.
“I should like to study that...” said Aldric, pointing tentatively at the crossbow.
“It’s yours,” said Gisburne. Then he looked at Galfrid. “But how did you—?”
Guy of Gisburne- The Omnibus Page 129