Lionhearts

by Nathan Makaryk

  “The real sacrifice is for you to give up your ability to sacrifice yourself for us. It will be far, far harder. But it’s what we need from you.”

  Though she was still furious with Amon, it was hard to ignore the anguish on the Delaney brothers’ faces. Their words were heartfelt, they trembled to even confront her like this. She could only imagine what bravery it must have taken for them to plan this thing out in the middle of the night. They wanted her to represent more than herself, to be the face of a movement, something to believe in. To show a better way, and to let her name become something powerful—which required it to be invulnerable.

  They were asking of her everything she had asked of Robin.

  They wanted her to be, in their own way, Robin Hood.

  But well-meaning or not, they were still wrong. They had the advantage of being at her side, and simply did not want to lose her. “You can convince yourself this is noble,” she said, “but it is a selfishness. When they throw women and children out of the castle to starve, do you think they will agree with your philosophy? When they take Lord Robert’s castle from him, do you think his people will agree with you? When they—”

  “That’s already happened,” Amon answered.

  Her breath left her.

  “De Senlis’s army came to Huntingdon this morning. That’s why we left before they arrived.”

  “We have to go back now!” She shoved him again, trying to claw through Amon’s body to get to his horse, to ride before any more damage could be done. Amon had taken everything from her with his misplaced heroism, he couldn’t understand that Lord Robert’s stability meant more than a thousand Marions. Amon seemed to think she was some sort of savior, when she was nothing but a feeble voice in the wind, yelling things nobody wanted to hear.

  Lord Robert would think she had abandoned him. After everything they had discussed, all their dreams of what an England might look like when the Chancellor’s powers were curbed, they now had nothing. And that night in the tent …

  With a start, Amon stepped aside, and she stumbled forward, suddenly unobstructed. Her thoughts were too wild to recollect, but her hands knew the work of finding the horse’s saddle and checking her straps. But as she readied to heave herself up onto a horse she could barely reach, a rumble at the edge of her reason alarmed her.

  Her three companions had not stepped aside because of anything she had done.

  They each were looking south on the road, and Marion joined them in time with a few quick distant blurts from a short horn that announced the approach of a group of armed men on horseback. She startled, her winter’s instincts still honed to fear any men on the road discovering them, but there was nowhere to hide. As the strangers grew closer, their details defined—they wore uniform pleated leather tunics and their horses were draped in chequered trappings, though they varied in color and she could distinguish no sigils.

  Her fury with Amon paused as the four horsemen met them. “Clear the road!” the lead man shouted. “Move that carriage off to the town, and quickly!”

  “And good morning to you!” Sir Amon replied, his hands out and open. “I am Sir Amon Swift, on business for the Earl of Essex, and here his granddaughter. Why do you ask us to clear the road?”

  “Well met, sir,” the man replied. “Didn’t know there were any knights left behind. Well, you’re welcome to stay on the road, but your earl’s granddaughter will be trampled to death, so I’d still recommend you clear it.” With little other explanation the men rode by, leaving them thoroughly untrampled.

  Marion looked back down the road. She felt it in her feet before she noticed the shift in the air. The sky was ever grey, but off to the south and above the hills that obscured Cambridge, a soft white haze half the length of the horizon lingered.

  “A fire?” Nick asked.

  “No,” Amon answered. “That’s dust, kicked up from the road.”

  “Dust?” Peetey squinted at it. “What kicks up that much dust?”

  Marion handed the horse’s reins back to Amon. “An army.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  QUILLEN PEVERIL

  NOTTINGHAM

  IT WAS A WIDE FLAT barge, a square raft cobbled together from mismatched wooden planks. From their larger skiff in the middle of the Trent, merchants tried to correct the barge’s trajectory toward the docks with long poles, as best they could without coming closer. A stranger might think they kept their distance because Nottingham was afflicted with a contagion—which would not necessarily be wrong.

  Quill added his voice to a symphony of meaningless directions shouted at the dockworkers, who were trying to steer the barge and its precious cargo. He stopped screaming when he realized his voice was being drowned out by Sir Robert FitzOdo’s beside him, who was screaming something the opposite.

  Quillen Peveril, self-acclaimed genius, was the only person to successfully orchestrate an escape from the castle’s lockdown. His plan had only succeeded with the help of the Sheriff, as the point was to sneak Ferrers out of the city that he could rally the neighboring earls to take Nottingham back. It had required a massive coordination amongst sympathetic Guardsmen. In the silent span of half an hour they’d taken the colossal task of removing the unguarded blockade from the castle’s postern door—just long enough for Ferrers and Wendenal to slip through, along with Quill and a few others. Those that remained behind risked themselves doubly by returning the blockade as it was, hoping the prince’s sentries did not catch them.

  But escaping the city walls had proven equally tricky. The entire city was on edge. Fights broke out at the slightest provocation. The only people allowed to pass through the city or castle gates were Prince John’s loyal supporters, of which there were more and more every day. The arms of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire were everywhere; their men-at-arms had taken the duty of patrolling the city’s gates, diligent to the point of ruthlessness. Trade was allowed via the wharfs only, not the city roads, which had given Quill his idea. He’d smuggled Beneger and Ferrers out in two empty wine barrels, which were supposed to be payment for a shipment of incoming food. Had there been a third barrel, Quill would have gone with them.

  The river merchants must have discovered the slight, because the Worcester host clamped down on the dock trade the next day. Merchants were not allowed to berth at all now, but instead had to ridiculously remain in the middle of the river and send their wares by unmanned raft. The Worcester Guard sent payment back the same way, inspecting both cargoes, to make sure nobody dared another escape.

  Two successful escapes, Quill ought to be congratulated. But he’d left himself behind, which felt like the opposite of a victory. And try as he might, he could not concoct any new reliable plan for a man to get in or out of the city without risking a quarrel in the back.

  Which meant that Beneger and Ferrers had to be successful. They had to return with a host to confront John’s coup, and before the French army arrived.

  The city’s only hope, riding on Quill’s longshot.

  “Unload!” the dockworkers cried, when the barge was finally tethered to the city-side docks. It was laden with nothing exotic—sacks of grain and vegetables—but it would go a long way to keeping the city alive.

  “Let’s go,” Sir Robert FitzOdo grunted, at the same time that a hiss sliced the air and ended with a thunk. The hungry crowd recoiled in horror—a single flaming arrow had been shot into the barge’s hold.

  “Put it out!” Ronnell cried, while Quill searched for the perpetrator. There were endless claptrap wooden shacks that littered the wharfs, and any of a dozen windows might have hid the bowman. It didn’t matter. Half the city seemed eager for more destruction. After the Red Lions’ leaders were killed in the archery tournament, the other fledgling gangs had all gone to war—desperate to prove themselves the most ambitious, or at least the most brutal. Quill regretted now what they’d done to the Red Lions; that gang had likely been a stronger source of stability in Nottingham than Quill had ever realized. Their absence j
ust added one more layer of chaos on top of an already over-flowing chaos cake.

  It didn’t matter. The Nottingham Guard didn’t have the men or resources to stop every act of terrorism, while the men from Gloucester and Worcester cared only about stopping any traffic through the city, and not a thing for its inhabitants. They’d let the city starve before admitting a single stranger.

  Because of that other thing. The other half of what kept the city on edge. The French army was coming, and everyone in the city knew that now.

  What at first Quill had dismissed as a princely delusion, was now a rumor turned into horror. The only information coming into the city came with Prince John’s new allies—and though none had yet seen this French menace, there was increasingly little doubt that it existed, and that it was headed for them. But directly in between the prince’s stolen castle and the approaching French was the city itself. Nobody knew what the near future held for them, but everyone knew it would be bloody.

  Quill no longer had any pride in his ability to predict the future. Frankly, he was too tired to even piece it all together. He could only hope that Beneger and Ferrers could make more sense of it, being on the outside now. Would they bother with their original plan, if reclaiming the castle meant losing it immediately afterward to the French? If they successfully took the castle back, would they then surrender Prince John to the French in exchange for the city’s safety? Perhaps it would be better if the French arrived first and were weakened at the castle walls, that Ferrers and Beneger might attack the remnants from the rear—but at the cost of the city’s sacking. The only thing Quillen Peveril knew for certain was that he should have seen all this coming, and had failed to act. It was Quill’s sole misfortune to be the weather vane that had failed to announce the coming storm.

  “Let’s go,” FitzOdo grunted a second time. “This place is fucked.”

  He meant the docks, but he’d accidentally described the whole city.

  Quill almost protested, but the Worcester Guard had already swarmed the barge, put out the fire, and kept the crowd at bay. As far as they were concerned, everybody else was just part of the rabble. So Quill hastened to catch up with FitzOdo and his half-incompetent lackey Ronnell.

  “Where’s Derrick?” Quill asked, not really caring for the answer.

  Ronnell answered by widening his eyes and shaking his head numbly, as if he was too overwhelmed to even attempt a guess. “The Trip, maybe?” FitzOdo’s trio slept at the Trip to Jerusalem each night, and were rarely seen apart. The fact that one of FitzOdo’s most loyal dogs might have abandoned him … that said everything.

  Left to his own volition, Quill would prefer to lose FitzOdo as well, but they’d somehow become the highest-ranking members of the Nottingham Guard present in the city. Most had been at the tournament, but FitzOdo must have gone drinking before the lockdown started. So the Coward Knight and Quill the Nightwalker were now in charge of the few others that hadn’t been in the castle. He did his best to keep them on their alert, to create repeatable processes, to establish rules they could depend on in the midst of absolute uncertainty. To prevent them from falling victim to their fears.

  That, too, was a constant danger. Guardsmen saw threats in every corner. Paranoia turned every terrified citizen into an enemy in disguise, and hesitation could mean death. There was no tolerance for interfering with the Guard now—it didn’t even make sense to “arrest” someone anymore. There was no access to the castle prisons, and the two city gaols were bursting past capacity. Quill had watched normally docile Guardsmen—cowlike boys with friendly temperaments, like Potter—beat citizens halfway to death out of fear. And as much as that haunted him, Quill couldn’t even blame them. That, perhaps, was the third half of what kept the city on edge.

  It didn’t even matter that the math of three halves made no sense, because neither did the city. The world was apparently under no obligation to obey the rules of reason.

  Quill followed FitzOdo up the Long Stair that led to the south side of Saint Mary’s, watching the continued commotion on the docks below as they climbed. The barge had been besieged by a crowd of commonfolk who must have gotten past the Worcester Guard, but their weight unbalanced it. One corner dipped into the river and then upended the other, dumping every last precious sack of grain to the bottom of the Trent.

  Quill had to stop, just for a moment, to digest the devastating loss of what that meant.

  The cries from that crowd below carried up, but St. Mary herself could do nothing to get that grain back. There would be another merchant later, a fresh shipment, but it wouldn’t be enough. Fewer boats were braving the journey to the doomed city of Nottingham. Rats knew well enough to flee a sinking ship—but every rat here was trapped inside the hull boards, and Quill was one of them.

  The great church of St. Mary’s had become the Guard’s unofficial base, one of the safe shelters along with St. Stephen’s down the west hill, and the Market Square. People flocked inside its courtyard walls for safety. Anywhere else in the city, it was every man for himself, and not enough Guardsmen available to even try to maintain order.

  Today, as always, there was commotion billowing about St. Mary’s perimeter walls—lines of commonfolk hoping for a portion of the food that had just sunk to the bottom of the Trent. That news wasn’t going to be well received. Guardsmen were already struggling to keep a secure border at the church’s entrance, while desperate folk tried to sneak their way in or outright rush the front double doors. The moment Quill had the church in sight, he was already at work commanding people to climb down, to settle down, to hunker down.

  Down was, after all, the only direction to go anymore.

  FitzOdo was less gentle, yanking and pulling people where he saw fit, and Ronnell followed after, snapping at those in FitzOdo’s wake. They were nearly inside when something grabbed Quill’s attention like a slap in the face. He startled and whipped his head around, looking for it again through the throng of churchgoers, without even realizing what he was looking for. It was the same frightening clarity of hearing one’s own name spoken distinctly across a crowded room.

  “Get along,” FitzOdo demanded, but Quill grabbed the knight’s arm and held him back, waiting for the crowd to open up just for a moment—there.

  “What the fuck is that?” Quill asked. He didn’t care for curse words, but he had to speak the language of FitzOdo.

  “The fuck is what?”

  “That.”

  Past the northwestern entrance to St. Mary’s, a tiny doorway in the first stone building closed shut. It was the same as a thousand other entrances, excepting that this one bore a handprint next to its frame, notable for being painted in white.

  A White Hand.

  “You’re worried about vandalism now?” FitzOdo laughed, prodding Ronnell to join him in doing so. “Or are you going to start arresting people for shitting in the streets again? Think it’ll take a while!”

  It took every bit of Quill’s patience to detail the obvious connection between a painted white hand and Gilbert with the White Hand.

  “What does it matter?” the knight balked. “We never found anything on him. And we got an army marching our way now. Past’s about to get wiped clean.”

  “If Gilbert’s innocent, then he’s a Guardsman. And we could use every man we can get here. If he’s not … well, half the city still thinks this is all Robin Hood’s fault,” Quill explained. “They think the prince still cares about catching every Robin Hood in the city. Could be the major victory we need to calm people down. Could … do some good.”

  “You’re serious?” FitzOdo’s bald head turned into all wrinkles. “’Sides, you think he’s going to announce his hiding place by stamping his name on his front door for everyone to see?”

  Quill bit his lip. “Does it hurt to go look?”

  “It’ll hurt when I slap some sense into you.”

  They might have argued more, but both of their eyes narrowed on a young man in a cloak who approached the door
in question, placed his palm on the white hand, and whispered into its hinges.

  “I’ll be damned,” FitzOdo breathed. “Good on you, Peveril.”

  “Try not to stare,” Quill warned, watching out of the corner of his eye. They had to play this right, or risk spooking the stranger. “Let’s see what happens next.”

  But Sir Robert FitzOdo was already three steps away. “Got a better idea.”

  Moments later the stranger’s face was smashed into the wooden door, FitzOdo’s meaty fingers wrapped around the man’s skull like a melon. This instantly caused a dervish amongst the surrounding crowd, which Ronnell abated by flipping out a short bludgeon on a rope tether from his tunic, and making it very clear that he knew how to use it.

  “What’s in there?” FitzOdo demanded of the cloaked man, his mouth inches from the other’s ear.

  The man’s voice was muffled. “Nothing!”

  “You get one lie, and that was it. Lie to me again and we break your knees, both of them. What’s in there?”

  “The White Hand! The White Hand!” The man squirmed, pinned against the door. He was young, had a pudgy face, and was carrying something underneath his cloak that was apparently more important than trying to defend himself.

  Quill edged closer. “What do you mean, the White Hand? Gilbert?”

  “I don’t know their names, maybe.”

  The use of the plural raised Quill’s eyebrows. “Why are you here?”

  “They say they can get you out of the city,” the pudgy man whimpered. “Say they got caves that go all the way out. Say to go … go to St. Mary’s and look for the White Hand, then knock and say the right phrase—oh! And to bring oil.” He shrugged open his cloak to reveal a small but plump wineskin.

  “Oil?”

  “Dark down there,” the man explained. “Oil’s hard to come by. Say if you don’t have oil, you get lost and never come out.”