Lionhearts

by Nathan Makaryk

  “That’s how it is with revenge, that’s why you have to seek it out yourself and take it. Before someone steals it from you.”

  Beneger the Revenger stared at the bodies as if they had personally done him wrong. Quill wondered if Lord Beneger’s stone heart was what drew him toward revenge, or if it was the natural result of pursuing it.

  He might have said something more, to suggest that Lord Beneger might make a good Sheriff. But he didn’t.

  Three little words that meant everything. “Are you important?” Lord Beneger asked.

  * * *

  DERRICK RETURNED ON HORSE, with the injured looter walking in front of him. His right arm crossed over his chest and clutched the bloody wound of his neck. Derrick instructed him to move left, or right, and smiled at his prisoner’s obedience. The poor man’s eyes were empty, his face was pale, and most of his life was already soaked into his tunic. The other looter, who had done a good job of remaining rocklike under Jacelyn’s boot, broke out in sudden grief at the sight of his battered companion. FitzOdo and Ronnell were shortly behind, wandering back from the trees as if they had all day for this one task.

  At Derrick’s command, the injured man finally lowered himself to the ground. His breathing was too heavy, and Quill could tell he was struggling to stay conscious.

  “What’s your name, friend?” FitzOdo asked the healthier man. He had to ask it twice more before receiving an answer.

  “Han … Hanry. Hanry, my lord. That there is Munday.”

  “This is your friend?” Quill clarified. “His name is Munday?”

  “Yes, m’lord.”

  “Your friend Munday isn’t going to make it,” Jacelyn told him. “Do you know why he’s going to die? He attacked us, which was a very poor decision.”

  “He didn’t know what he was doing.” Hanry bit back tears. “He wouldn’t have been a threat.”

  “We didn’t know that.” Quill knelt, hoping to help in this, at least. “You understand that, right? A man comes at us with a weapon, we have no way of knowing if he’s a halfwit or a knight. And with you two hiding next to all this,” he pointed toward Lord Brayden’s body, “we have to protect ourselves before we protect you. You see that, right?”

  Hanry shook his head as if to argue, but he didn’t. He kept staring at Munday’s face, which was growing paler and more distant.

  “Did you kill those two people?”

  “No. Just found ’em.”

  “Do you know who did it?” Quill asked.

  But Hanry didn’t answer. He just stared at his dying friend.

  “Was it Will Scarlet?”

  The man’s muscles contorted farther, a silent scream.

  “He’s in a lot of pain,” Jacelyn offered. “We can end it for him, if you like.”

  But still, Hanry gave no response.

  Quill didn’t want to watch Munday’s final moments, but Hanry’s face was almost worse. Everything was clenched and turned red, there was no telling where his eyes were, it was all just tortured flesh.

  Eventually Munday was dead. A shiver rushed through Quill’s body like a regret. It was the oddest sensation for a death to happen while so many people were calm. Nothing at all had changed, and yet somehow there were now fewer people there.

  “Let’s talk about what you’re doing here,” Jac was saying.

  “We weren’t doing nothing,” Hanry answered, a bit too quickly. “We had just come across this when you arrived. We didn’t kill them, and we didn’t steal nothing none neither.”

  “You knew to come here, didn’t you?” Jac added, her voice offering the man no concession. “The same reason we knew to come here. Something this bloody, left out for everyone to see … that gets people talking. So why don’t you tell us where you heard about this, and we’ll take it from there.”

  Lord Beneger was back atop his horse. “Out with it. Was it Robin Hood?”

  Hanry just seemed confused.

  “What are people saying?” Quill took his attention back. “Who is laying claim to this? Are people saying that Robin Hood did it?”

  “No.” Hanry shook his head. “No no, nobody thinks that…”

  Lord Beneger did not even bother to reply, he simply bid his horse to turn away. “That’s all we needed. Deal with him quickly, Peveril, and we’ll make our return.”

  “Wait!” Quill yelled, feeling like a pathetic child. He had no clue how to deal with all these bodies. Whether he was supposed to bury them, or ride back to Nottingham to tell Captain de Grendon. Surely someone would have to notify Lord Brayden’s estate, but would they even want to receive what remained of their lord and his lady? “How do we … deal with him?”

  “He was stealing. He’s a thief,” Beneger said, with a naked sort of finality. “Stealing amongst the poorfolk is usually punished by taking fingers. Stealing from a lord, even one who’s already dead … I would take his hand.”

  Quill’s arm started twitching. He looked to Jacelyn for support, but she only shrugged in general approval. “That’s fair,” she admitted. “I would think we’ve seen enough severed hands lately, but fair is fair.”

  “It isn’t about being fair.” Beneger squinted. “It’s the law. Make haste.”

  Quill pulled out of himself, he floated up and away and watched his own body draw his sword from the frog at his belt. He heard the dull scrape of its steel against the iron ring, though he couldn’t feel its weight in his hand. His eyes, yes, his eyes were locked with Hanry’s, but even so he wasn’t really looking anywhere. He knew he had to do this thing or else the others would leave without him, and he was more scared of that than of doing the thing.

  “Put your hand against the log,” someone said, and it sounded very much like his voice. Perhaps he’d simply never heard himself speak before.

  Hanry, this person, kept his hand clutched against his chest. He didn’t understand—he needed to put it on the log. The sooner he put it out, the faster this would be over, and everyone wanted this to be over. The man begged, “No no no,” just kept guarding his hand and huddling down into it, but Quill couldn’t hear him.

  “Take your punishment,” Lord Beneger commanded, cutting through the haze. “If you pull it back, or try to run, then it will be far worse for you.”

  Despite his coldness, there was no cruelty in his voice. He was simply offering facts, as if he were stating that there would be rain later, or what sort of soup he preferred at dinner.

  Somehow, Hanry put his arm out, quivering, until it touched the bark of the rotted log and then he leaned away. Suddenly he gasped and swapped hands, plunging his left hand there instead, relieved that he’d made the wiser choice in time. It made Quill feel a bit better but still he was nauseous as he raised the sword up over his head.

  “Please.” Hanry’s eyes were small and wet and red. He was saying other things too, lots of things really, but the words blurred together and hung like a fog.

  “I’m sorry,” Quill said. “I surely wish Robin Hood had been here after all.”

  He pulled up, hard, quickly—

  “What if he had?” Hanry blurted out, his beady eyes widening in horror.

  Then I wouldn’t have to do this, Quill answered.

  “What does it matter if Robin Hood was here?” Hanry yelled.

  “If Robin Hood was here,” Beneger answered from the top of the ridge, “then you’d be talking with me. If he wasn’t, then you lose your hand for theft.”

  “What do you want to know?” Hanry asked, shaking his head, begging. “I’ve met him. I’ve met Robin Hood. His real name’s Will Scarlet. I’ve seen his people, he gave us coin before, and food, though not for a long time. What do you want to know? Tell me, please, I’ll tell you anything. They say he’s gone mad. That’s why Munday left them, why we’re on our own. I heard he abandoned all the women and children in his group, it’s just him and his men now. They killed these people, for certain they did. They say that he…” He paused for a moment, eyes fixed on the sword that Quill
still held aloft. “They say he went to Nottingham. They say he has a man inside the Nottingham Guard.”

  That was chilling news, but a relief that Quill could lower his weapon.

  Lord Beneger looked down his nose at the prisoner. “You’ve taken money from this Robin Hood, money that you knew was stolen, food that you knew was stolen. Did you report any of this to the county Guardsmen?”

  “Hm?” Hanry’s face twisted. “No. No, of course not.”

  “You should have. You’ve seen these murderers, you know their faces, you’ve accepted their payments for secrecy. You say they planted a traitor within our ranks, and you kept that to yourself.” A warm cloud billowed from his nostrils. “You are complicit in their crimes.”

  “Complicit? What does that mean?” Hanry looked from face to face, his own shifting from a frown to a smile, unsure if he was being chastised or rewarded. “I told you about them, that’s everything I know. I can’t help you any more than that.”

  The poor fool. Quill lowered his head. “You only talked at the edge of a sword. That isn’t help. That’s a confession.”

  “You’re not…” Hanry cradled his arm again. “You’re not still going to take my hand, are you?”

  Lord Death may have been a proper name for Beneger after all. “You have abetted Robin Hood’s gang in thievery and murder, assassination, and treason. You will be treated as one of them.”

  The air left Quill’s chest, and he found himself pleading for the man’s life. “He’s shown some remorse. Ought that earn a man a bit of leniency? His friend is already dead, and we were going to take his hand, we could leave it at that.”

  Lord Beneger gave the tiniest shake of his head.

  I should have taken his hand, was the last thing Quill would have thought he’d regret when this day began.

  “I haven’t done anything!” Hanry gasped, kicking backward, and coming uncomfortably close to Munday’s body. “Please! I haven’t abetted nothing, all we ever did was take some of his coin, and then you came and burnt us out of our own fields! I’ve been lost out here, Munday and I have had to survive on our own. I’ve got a family, somewhere, please!”

  “If you can truthfully answer me yes to any of these questions,” Lord Beneger crouched to eye level with the panicked Hanry, “we’ll only take your hand. You’ve admitted to hiding secrets about Robin Hood’s movements from the county Guard. First, do you have any proof that you have not helped Robin Hood beyond this, or that you played no part in the crimes here with this murdered lord and his mistress?”

  “Proof?” Hanry gaped and looked for support. He wouldn’t find any. After some amount of babbling, he slumped down in defeat and answered, “No.”

  “No. Second,” Beneger continued, “can you provide any proof that you genuinely regret your actions and that you will make efforts to repay the damage you’ve done?”

  “I am regretful,” Hanry let out. “So very regretful. I see now that keeping silent was as good as helping them, I see that, I do.”

  “No,” Beneger answered for the man. “You cannot provide proof. You show your regret now that you have been caught, but not before. You cannot trade us anything that we can hold in hostage until you repay your debt. You have only your word to give, which you have proven is unfaithful, so you can offer us nothing of real value.”

  It was a while before Hanry could agree, and admit it. “No,” he said. “I can’t prove it. But I didn’t do it. And I didn’t mean to help them, I was just trying to survive. Isn’t that enough? What else can I do? What’s the third question?”

  Three little words that meant everything. “Are you important?” Lord Beneger asked.

  They hanged Hanry by the carriage.

  * * *

  DURING THE RETURN TO Nottingham, Quill could not escape his own mind, which tumbled about his skull in search of an escape and, finding none, chose to boil.

  There was privilege to a name. Lord Beneger would have let that man live if he’d been family to a lord, if he’d held any title beyond looter. Quill, if not for a quirk of birth that put him under the protective title of Peveril, would not have been able to answer yes to any of those questions, either. Everything Quill had was his father’s, or his grandfather’s. Except his cowardice, that was his alone. He thought himself clever for playing games with noblemen and dabbling at policy, but in the real world he was useless. By all standards that mattered, he was exactly as useful as Hanry, dead and hanged.

  FitzOdo and his men left to spread word of Hanry’s hanging to any local villages, that they might collect the dead and—more importantly—know why he hung there.

  “Staying silent is no less of a crime,” Beneger explained as they walked their horses. “It is fear alone that keeps the people silent. They’re right to fear Robin Hood, but the only sway he holds over them is that fear. Overcoming fear, that is the mark of a man. Succumbing to it, makes a man nothing.”

  “Are you alright?” Jacelyn asked Quill a bit later, when Lord Beneger’s horse was far enough ahead to be out of earshot. “You seem shaken.”

  “That looter,” Quill admitted. “I feel for him.”

  “That’s good.” She reached out, but their horses weren’t close enough to make contact. “That’s the only way we can help them. You think FitzOdo and those two donkeys have any care for the people out here? It’s good to have a heart, don’t lose that. You’re one of the good ones, Quill.”

  It was a startling compliment, considering the source. “What about Lord Beneger? Is he one of the good ones?”

  “He is. If you find him cold, then he’s the sharpest kind of ice. He knows to surround himself with opposing viewpoints.” She studied his reaction—with her good eye, her soft side. “How many times did he demand that you speak your mind?”

  That was true. Beneger had respected Quill’s opinion, even when he hadn’t respected it himself.

  “You see things that curs like FitzOdo never will. You feel things. Emotions, you know, and thoughts. I’m not sure FitzOdo has ever tried those out.”

  That made Quill laugh, which surprisingly came with a wash of guilt. Four bodies lay behind them off the Sherwood Road, who would never laugh again.

  As he thought on the day’s carnage, a stray thought wandered to the front. “What did you mean earlier,” he asked Jac, “when you said you’d seen enough severed hands lately?”

  She shrugged it off. “Nothing. We’ve been running down leads on Robin Hood sightings. There’s some old stable in the French Ward where a couple of severed hands were nailed to the wall. Some people claimed it was Robin Hood, cutting off the hands of people who had stolen from him. Damned creepy.”

  Severed hands? That sounded like Scarlet, but they’d already decided that he couldn’t be responsible for any Robin Hood sightings inside the city. He was many things, but not a magician.

  “What do you think about what that man said?” he asked. “About Will Scarlet having a man inside the Guard?”

  “It’s possible. Probably bribe a Common Guard to look the other way now and then. Happens all the time. I doubt it’s anything more than that. Or we’d know.”

  The pieces fell into place. “Would we?”

  Damned creepy.

  Severed hands.

  “Staying silent is no less of a crime.”

  “They say he has a man inside the Nottingham Guard.”

  “Overcoming fear, that is the mark of a man.”

  “How do you want to die?”

  “Are you important?”

  * * *

  “I THINK HE WAS RIGHT,” Quill told Lord Beneger de Wendenal. “Scarlet has a man inside our ranks, and I think he’s responsible for the Robin Hood sightings in the city.”

  He described everything he knew about Gilbert with the White Hand.

  His unknown past, his curious late-night activities, his utter lack of friendships. His choice to volunteer for the midnight walk. His perverse interest in hands. How he joined the Nottingham Guard at exactly
the same time Robin Hood’s men started killing Sheriffs. His strange familiarity with all the town’s gangs.

  “Good man.” Ben lowered his brow. “Now help me prove it.”

  Quill had never felt more important in his life.

  THIRTEEN

  MARION FITZWALTER

  HUNTINGDONSHIRE

  FRIDAY, 17TH DAY OF JANUARY

  HIS NAME WAS GREY Symon, and he was dead, and that, too, was Marion’s fault.

  That wasn’t the worst of it.

  Nobody had known him well, nor had they tried. Such was the way all winter. Stragglers joined the group for days or weeks and might speak to nobody. There was no point in growing attached to someone who was unlikely to stick around.

  Grey Symon collapsed not so long after they crossed the river Welland and entered the royal forest of Huntingdon. The entirety of Huntingdonshire was a royal forest, which meant only the Earl Robert’s men were allowed to hunt its game. So even when they saw a handful of deer or signs of a wild boar, Marion had to refuse those who begged to hunt. She couldn’t jeopardize their new relationship before it even began.

  So old Grey Symon fell, hungry, surrounded by food.

  A young girl, one of the Harnetts, said he’d given her the last of his bread the day earlier.

  That wasn’t the worst of it.

  They had to debate—good God, they had to honestly debate—what to do with his body. With everyone starving, they couldn’t delay the whole group long enough to bury him. They didn’t have the tools, much less the strength, to do so.

  But that wasn’t the worst part, either.

  The worst was that they decided so quickly. Because the facts were against them. They couldn’t even carry his body. So they left him, seated beneath a yew tree, propped up as if he were napping. Somehow that made it easier than leaving him lying down. Tuck mumbled a blessing, and they moved on.

  Once upon a time, Marion convinced a group of refugees to leave their lives in the Sherwood Forest to find a new home in Huntingdon. They could have stayed and waited for Will Scarlet’s reinforcements from the city. Instead they left, and an old man named Grey Symon starved to death along the way.