The Two Torcs

by Debbie Viguié

  “Don’t be a fool, man. Locksley isn’t paying you enough to lose your life.”

  The Hood lowered the bow. He kept his fingers on the notch of the arrow, but let the pressure off.

  “Listen to your foppish friend here,” he said. “He’s trying to save your life.”

  Inside Will’s head he snarled.

  Foppish?

  The Hood’s foot lashed out, kicking the merchant in the belly, leaving a big smear of mud and pushing him back in a stumble toward the wagon. The man staggered and turned, pulling a key on a chain from under his tunic, all the while gasping to get his breath back. Jerking his head, the Hood indicated that Will should follow.

  He did so, still burning over the insult.

  Pudgy hands lifted the heavy lock. The key click-tapped around the keyhole, dancing in a shaky hand. Finally slipping it in, the merchant turned the key and pulled the lock. The ring of it opened, the weight of the lock itself causing the whole thing to swing and slip and fall to the mud below.

  “Open it, fool, and let me see what I’ve won from that black-hearted bastard Locksley today.”

  The merchant grabbed the handle. Wrenching the door wide, he screamed, “You win your death, outlaw!”

  Out of the darkness of the wagon rushed soldiers, armed to the teeth and with murder flashing in their eyes.

  The first soldier out was a giant, arms bulging under a mail shirt, quilted tabard emblazoned with the Locksley coat of arms. Behind him came three of his sword brothers, all wearing the same royal-blue tunic sewn with the same rampant lion.

  The sword in the giant’s skull-crusher hand was long steel with a vicious point left from the days when savages from the North came to rape, pillage, and plunder. It was thick and heavy and made for killing. He swung it with a roar that would have made the blade’s original barbarian owner proud, the cold, cruel blade aimed to cleave the Hood in two before he could raise his bow.

  Quicker than a blink the Hood drew and shot, his wicked arrow thunking deep into the dirt of the road, sinking halfway up the arm-length shaft.

  Right through the foot of the soldier.

  The giant’s roar broke, becoming a scream of pain. Pinned to the earth by the arrow, he faltered. His body twisted, drawing up in agony.

  The Hood swung the longbow, stout yew cracking across the giant’s temple, driving him to the ground with a splash of mud. The arrow shaft broke and pulled free in a boot-darkening spurt of blood.

  The other three soldiers stopped, watching their sword brother fall right in front of them. They looked at him as he lay sprawled at their feet, then up at the man in the Hood who stood almost casually in front of them.

  Will lowered his hands, watching.

  “Surrender.” The Hood’s voice came from under his cowl.

  One by one, their eyes narrowed as anger sparked between them. Will could almost see the thoughts forming in their skulls as hands tightened on weapons.

  Who does he think he is?

  There are still three of us and one of him.

  He shook his head.

  Fools.

  A soldier, young but already battle-scarred with a livid line that ran from his brow, around his eye, and across his cheek, pointed at the man in the hood. He stepped over his fallen companion.

  “Who do you think you are?” he demanded. “There are three of us and—” A fist crashed hard and savage across the soldier’s jaw.

  The man dropped to the ground, a puppet on cut strings.

  So predictable.

  Before the other two could move the Hood spun, driving his boot deep in the stomach of the man on the right. The soldier bent sharply in half as he lost his breakfast on the road. The bow whipped down, clubbing him across the back of his skull. He dropped to his knees, slowly falling to his side.

  The man in the hood flipped the bow in his hand as he turned. The last soldier was just raising his sword when the bow fell, hooking over his head. The Hood leaned back, jerking the bowstring tight across the soldier’s throat and yanking him off his feet. Planting a foot across the soldier’s shoulders, the attacker pulled up, bow bending sharply in his hands.

  Will began counting in his head.

  He didn’t get past twenty before the soldier stopped struggling, and was out cold.

  The man in the hood held the bow tight for another three-count before releasing the pressure. He unhooked the string from under the soldier’s head. Straightening slowly, he kept his head down in his hood, shoulders rising and falling as he breathed deeply.

  He’s tired.

  Will pulled his rapier from the scabbard without a sound.

  Behind the man in the hood the merchant snuck, jagged knife in hand. Piggy eyes glittered in their flesh pockets, jowls split wide with dark, murderous lust. The knife swung back, ready to strike, to bury itself hilt-deep in the kidney of his target.

  The butt of Will’s sword bashed across the back of the merchant’s head, splitting the skin wide below the edge of his cap.

  The soft man dropped like a felled ox, mud splashing as he struck the road face first.

  The Hood whirled, hand drawing an arrow from the quiver across his back. Then he stopped, staring at Will and the deadly point of the rapier, hovering between them.

  The silence of the forest closed around them, circling them in an eerie, unnatural hush.

  “You’re welcome,” Will said as he sheathed his rapier with a quick movement, and then shrugged his cloak back around him.

  The man in the hood relaxed, letting go the arrow and slouching back.

  “I was wondering if you were going to help, or just watch me do all the work.” He reached up. Calloused fingertips flipped the leather cowl back, revealing a face nearly as dark as Will’s. The features were harsher, cut from heavier, swarthier stock than his own, but the similarity was there.

  “Oh, please, the day Robin Longstride can’t handle four Locksley thugs by himself is the day you should come out of these woods and take up cross-stitch with the nuns at the convent.” He shook out the ruffles at his cuffs, letting them fall down to cover his hands. His fingers were nearly frozen. “Besides, I would be of no help seeing that I am… what was the word? Oh, yes, ‘foppish’.”

  Robin smiled, a small pulling at the cheeks, unrecognizable if Will hadn’t known what it was.

  “Did that hurt your feelings?” the bowman asked. “Do you stand there offended, in your mighty fine hat and your fancy padded cloak?”

  “I can’t help being handsomer than you, outlaw.” Will sniffed. “And it is a very fine, very warm hat.”

  “I find myself very jealous of it.”

  Will waved away the statement with the flutter of a ruffled cuff.

  “Don’t be. It would look all wrong on you. Your ears stick out too far. Best continue with the hooded reaver look you’re perfecting.”

  Robin knelt next to the giant soldier, who still lay unconscious. His hand closed on the handle of the Viking sword, retrieving it from the mud. Wiping it clean on the end of the giant’s tunic he hefted it, looking down the blade. Hammered into the steel, along the blood-groove, were letters cut from darker iron.

  Will leaned in. “What does it read?”

  “Ulfberht.”

  “Who is Ulfberht?”

  “No one knows.” Robin twirled the sword, swinging it easily through the air. “Whoever Ulfberht was, however, he made the finest swords ever seen. They are rare and near unbreakable. This blade alone is worth a hundred English swords.” His voice dropped as he lifted the blade again, eyes glittering as they ran along the sword’s clean lines and razor-sharp edges. “It’s amazing that a raw, pagan barbarian could create something so wonderful.”

  “I know it’s lonely here in Sherwood, but do I need to leave you and that sword alone for a turn?”

  “Very funny.” Robin thrust the blade out toward Will. “Take it and sell it. It will feed many families.”

  “I think you should keep it.”

  Robin
’s eyes darkened. “Take it. You know I want nothing from Locksley—not for myself.”

  “Keep it.” Will picked up the other three swords and slid them under a lashing strap on his saddle. “Locksley has just proven that he’s willing to trap and kill you. The other merchants will soon follow his lead.” He threw his hand up to stop a protest. “If there had been even one more soldier, you would have been in real trouble, Robin. Don’t be reckless. You need a sword, and it might as well be the best one.”

  Robin pinned him with a glare.

  He stared back, knowing he couldn’t blink or he would lose the argument. Then the outlaw’s brow furrowed, settling in for the contest.

  Will’s right eye began clawing under its lid, scrabbling in its socket, wanting desperately to twitch, to blink, to wink. It felt wet, the strain of not blinking, of not looking away, wringing tears from it. He was about to break when Robin let out a sigh, and looked down at the sword in his hand.

  “You’re right, my friend. I’ll keep it.”

  Will smiled at his victory. Such things didn’t happen often, so he savored them when they did.

  Robin slipped the sword into his belt and clapped Will on the shoulder.

  “That cart is too big for only four soldiers,” he said, turning to look. “Let’s see what else Locksley has provided for the poor.”

  Together they walked to the open door. Will stood back, letting Robin go first. He was startled when his friend jumped back with a sharp, harsh curse.

  “What is it?”

  Robin didn’t answer, continuing to curse Locksley’s name, his parents, and his ancestors.

  Will stepped up and looked inside.

  Eight men, bound, gagged, and blindfolded turned their faces toward him from inside the wagon.

  “Locksley, you son of a bitch,” he said.

  * * *

  The huge stone was warm under Glynna Longstride’s palms, the surface smoothly rippled as she caressed it. Her fingers sought out the marks carved into it, slipping along edges worn soft by untold years of weather.

  Rain and wind, snow and ice, heat and dust had beaten this stone for a thousand lifetimes, yet it stood resolute, defiant of all the efforts of the elements to wear it to nothing. It loomed above her head, leaning slightly to the east, pointed accusingly at the sun.

  She moved closer, pressing her cheek to the surface. Her stomach brushed against it, and some energy passed through her, rambling and knocking low down to tickle the nether of her womanhood before spiraling up her spine to the base of her skull. She shivered as if touched by a familiar lover, one who knew her body as a musician knew his instrument.

  Witchstone.

  “Peel yourself away from there.”

  The voice pushed through her pleasure, separating her from it. She turned, lifting her face but keeping her stomach and hands firmly on the stone. The field around her lay white. Striding across the stark plain came a man cut from the night. His armor stood out sharply. Each plate, every link of mail, even the long-bristled fur of the collar was a light-drinking darkness, a black as pure and uncut as expensive ink.

  The only color showing on him was a gleaming sigil upon his chest, a symbol cut in lines and swirls of heart’s-blood red. She did not know what the symbol stood for, but when she touched it her fingers burned for hours.

  His pale skin and white hair became lost in the haze of light reflected off the snow, and as he drew closer it appeared as if he were only a pair of wide ebon eyes and a sinister mouth of ruddy lips floating above a cruel carapace.

  He dragged something with him as he walked, so that his footprints were wiped clean in a swath of smeared snow. He stopped a few feet from her.

  The smile twitched her mouth.

  “You didn’t bring the little prince?”

  The man snorted. “It’s cold.”

  “I noticed.”

  “However, I brought you a present.”

  He turned, dragging his burden around from behind him.

  It was a man.

  A monk.

  Bound hand and foot, he had a knotted piece of rope cinched around his head for a gag.

  The man was young, not much older than Robin.

  Her heart twisted at the thought of him, and she felt it in her face. She stepped away from the witchstone, toward the captive. The moment she broke contact the winter cold howled against her exposed skin, drawing it taut across her face and hands. She pulled her cloak tighter around her.

  The monk looked up at her, eyes wide. They were set a bit deep in his skull but pretty, curving down at their corners. They were the eyes of a poet, a man who could talk a summer girl out of her dress, though only if he had been born first. Second sons went to the monastery, became monks. Only God wanted the castoffs, taking them in from the poor, putting them to purpose. Denying them even the chance to talk to girls, much less talk them into bed.

  She squatted, holding her stomach as she did. Immediately the pressure on her lower back eased. She wouldn’t be able to stay down very long, but it would feel good while she did.

  She touched the monk’s face. It was cold, feeling like wax except where his short stubble scratched her palm. Spittle had frozen in the corners of his mouth, cracking on the surface of lips gone dark blue.

  “He’s adorable.”

  “He’s not that kind of present.”

  “No?” She pouted for the man in black’s benefit. “But I’m not hungry.”

  “Not that kind either. He has information. I want it.”

  She smiled and a light flickered deep in her eyes.

  “Oh, good,” she said. “A plaything.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  A pale lace of frost covered the window glass, catching the buttery glow of the fire that crackled and popped in the hearth behind her. It was low, but still cast enough heat to penetrate the linen gown and the scant garments underneath.

  Marian’s back was dry and warm as a loaf of fresh-baked bread, but the front of her was so cold it felt damp, clammy. The two sensations kept her concentration sharp and she embraced them, considering first one and then the other in turn.

  Anything to keep her mind occupied.

  Over the edge of the frost crystals she could see the top of mighty Sherwood. The barren trees alternately held patches of snow in nets of woven branches, or gaped open, letting it fall to be swallowed in the depths. The wood looked like a vast checkered blanket laid across the western part of the kingdom.

  It was so bitter cold out there in the wilderness.

  She turned from the window with a jolt and a flap of cloth. The warmth of the room brushed across her face, feeling hotter than it was because of the cold on her skin. She crossed the room in three swift strides, reaching her bed. Stepping high, she went over the bed instead of around it and dropped on the other side, falling into a hard wooden chair.

  Leaning forward she pushed the mattress away from her, sliding its soft mass across the slats until a space opened as wide across as her forearm. A sheet of leather had been tacked to the slats, allowed to droop between them to form long pockets in the apron.

  Between each slat lay a weapon.

  A sword taken from a locker at the stables. She didn’t know who its owner had been. There was no mark on the plain wood grip or the simple leather scabbard, but the blade itself had been well cared for, honed to razor sharpness by hours of passing a whetstone over the edge.

  Next to it lay the Duke of Raleigh’s family saber. The handle gleamed with inlaid pearl and gemstones held by gold and silver wire. The scabbard matched, a line of rubies tracing out the sigil of Raleigh’s family. This sword had become hers when her friend and servant Chastity liberated it from the Duke’s drunk and sleeping form at the bottom of a stairwell, after one of King John’s debauches.

  The ancestral blade had been near impossible to pull free from its sheath, gummed in by years of neglect and disuse. It had taken creative thinking and a thorough application of oils to break it free. She’d been afr
aid that when it finally gave way, that the blade would be worthless—a ceremonial plaything, a decoration and nothing more—but it was made of good Spanish steel, stout on the spine and sharp on the edge, a heavy weapon made for cleaving bone.

  A half-dozen knives were scattered between the slats, as well, from a wide-bladed kitchen knife to a thin poniard with no edge but a wicked point for punching through armor, to a small chirurgeon’s blade not half as long as her littlest finger.

  To one end lay a fire-hardened cudgel, the wood black and varnished to a dull sheen, the knot on the end of it bloody red like mahogany. A leather thong wrapped the handle and the knuckle was dimpled from the dozens of skulls to which it had been applied.

  To the other end lay the war hammer.

  King Richard’s war hammer.

  Her fingers stroked the handle, sliding over the worn oak stave and the slick strap of steel nailed to halfway down its length, there to reinforce the mounting of the head. She touched it, rubbing her finger pad over the point of the deadly spike that jutted from the back, opposite the wide, flat face. Tiny grooves squiggled on the surface of the steel, like worms after the rain, cut there by the torn edges of all the armor plate it had punched through.

  This hammer had been in Richard the Lionheart’s hand when he ended the war between Geoffrey the Dark and Sir Lidamont, over the hand of a woman from Iberia. Geoffrey the Dark still walked with a limp because of this hammer, and the woman from Iberia still rubbed ointment into the puncture in Sir Lidamont’s side.

  She’d found it in a cache, hidden away in one of Richard’s secret gardens, and had taken it before it could be discovered by John or one of his men.

  A knock came at the door.

  It was a familiar one, but nevertheless she tugged the mattress back in place, standing and smoothing her dress as she did.

  “Enter,” she called. A key clattered in the lock for a moment before the door swung inward, pushed by a short figure swathed in a dull-green wool cloak. Snow that clung to the shoulders hadn’t yet begun to melt. Turning and locking the door behind them, the figure pushed the cloak up and over. It came loose in a wad that was tossed aside, revealing a young woman in rough clothes too small for her generous curves. A mop of blonde curls waved in the air, crackling as she shook herself.