Lionhearts

by Nathan Makaryk

  Arthur had convinced them all to stay.

  The rest of the Nottingham Guard was behind them—behind them.

  “Oh God.” His voice crept out of his lips. “We’re all going to die.”

  Thunder, thunder, down the streets it pounded, beating, mauling, smashing the air into pieces and back again, thunder thunder, fuck the king and fuck the prince and fuck the city, thunder thunder.

  Out beyond the castle, in the empty expanse between the stone curtain wall and the first of the city’s buildings, the army arrived at the foot of the castle. Massive tower shields formed a front line, red crosses and blue stars and green fields and mud and spears, horns, calling, screaming, and in their middle a cluster of raised banners, red fields with golden lions, their standards bursting up where the noise was loudest, until it bulged out to the front of the lines like a bubble, where paraded a man mounted on a horse with a warcrown and mail, flanked by an entourage.

  “There is all the proof you need!” called out a man who’d been given command of this legion of archers, someone important or other from Worcester, but Arthur couldn’t remember his name now. Hell, Arthur could scarcely remember his own name. The commander screamed, “They parade an impostor before us dressed as a king, as if we are foolish enough to bow down! Are we to believe the real King would march to the front line? Perhaps in France where they have no wit at all, but this is England! This is Nottingham! Ten crowns to the first man who can feather that French asshole with English plu—”

  David released his arrow before the man finished, and a shocked hush followed its flight. The army was still far, almost too far for any bow to reach, but David carried a strong yew longbow and his arms had spent their life preparing for a distance shot such as this. The arrow flew high and straight, perhaps unnoticed by the French, its arc smooth and perfect and then cut down to slice through the morning air.

  Though he did not hit the Frenchman pretending to be king, his arrow found the neck of a soldier nearby, who spasmed and fell. Around him, the French army recoiled and pulled back, surely having thought they were still too far away to be struck.

  David’s face—the man who could find laughter in everything, who was ever the light that kept Arthur fighting—was as stone serious as he’d ever been. There was no drop of doubt in his harsh lines, no regret, just a grim determination that put Arthur’s earlier panic to shame.

  The Frenchman across the expanse, stumbling down to the ground in blood, that was David’s first kill.

  The Worcester captain did not call Loose but Arthur—and every other proud Englishman alive—screamed bloody hellfire, and the sky went dark with English arrows.

  SIXTY

  QUILLEN PEVERIL

  STREETS OF NOTTINGHAM

  THE ROAR CAME FROM the north, an overwhelming noise that was in some ways reminiscent of the crowd at the archery tournament, excepting the minor difference that this was a hundred times louder and also all the killing.

  Actually, then—Quill corrected his own assessment—not so different after all.

  They emerged from the tunnels by St. Mary’s, through the same doorway FitzOdo had scorched to cinders. Their boots sunk through the fresh ash and left an obvious trail as they ducked around the outer edge of the church’s courtyard. From there they had intended on sticking to alleys to avoid being seen, but the main street that led down the hill to the west was utterly deserted. They walked it warily, wide-eyed in the hands of a city the likes of which Quill had never seen before. While Lord Beneger made some comments about “the calm before the storm” that had the vague scent of wisdom to them, Quill could not find any calm in the empty city. Normal was calm. People, going about their business, that was calm.

  This, this was walking a knife’s edge. Every second of it.

  At the bottom of the hill they felt a touch safer, less like they were sticking their necks up for attention. They passed the smaller steeple of St. Nicholas and found that its doors, too, were closed—barricaded, even—with nothing at all to indicate there was anyone inside. “I would have thought people would gather in the churches for safety.”

  “You really don’t know this city then, do ya?” the girl, Zinn, mocked him. “Underground’s the only safe place to be right now.”

  “The tunnels, you mean?”

  “Some.” She shrugged. “Almost every building’ll have some sort of cave for storage.”

  “Do they all connect to each other?” the friar asked.

  Zinn shook her head. “Most don’t.”

  Quill considered it. The people thought they were under attack from an invading French army, and rightfully feared what came with that. Sacking, pillaging, raping. They didn’t believe that it truly was King Richard at their walls—frankly, Quill was still struggling with that truth himself. But the people were terrified, and it was easier to defend a hole in the ground than a building full of things an army might find tasty or valuable. “How many are there?”

  Again, Zinn shrugged off the question. “Caves? Who knows? More than anyone knows of, no doubt.”

  It gave Quill hope, at least, that the tunnels in the Trip to Jerusalem truly did connect all the way to the castle.

  It was not so long later that they found themselves concealed behind a ramshackle shelter bridging an alley across from the Trip, where they settled in for some time. The roar of the battle was louder here—the inn was built into the very base of the sandstone cliffs that shortly turned into castle wall to the north, and the front gates farther up. It was there that the battle had started, though they had yet to see it.

  “How do we know if FitzOdo is still inside?” Lord Beneger complained. “He might already have joined the line. We should have been here earlier.”

  “We were,” was Zinn’s response, and she took to ascending the wooden structure around them with both alarming dexterity and little explanation. Since he was largely indebted to her and Gilbert for saving his life, Quill generally forgave her worse habits of thinking she was the most important thing in the world. Once she was high enough, she knocked lightly on the wooden shutters of a window on the second story of the alley, which creaked open slightly. “They still in there?” she whispered.

  “They’re still in there,” came a muffled response, and it closed again.

  “There ya go.” She smiled back down. “We put eyes on her last night, because we’re not … what’s the right word?… slaggin’ idiots.”

  “That is the right word,” the Earl of Huntingdon said. “I checked.”

  “Fucking hell,” Beneger swore under his breath. “I hope you’ll treat this all a bit more seriously when the fighting begins.”

  “They are taking it seriously,” Tuck scolded, before anyone had the chance to fling some barb back at the man. “Different people react in different ways. I guarantee you every one of us is shitting our breeks.”

  “I’m not,” Zinn answered from above, her legs dangling off the wooden beam. “Took care of that this mornin’. Always shit before a fight.”

  If they’d been forced to wait for long like this—the ten of them all at odds and uncomfortable, unsure they were even doing the right thing—they might have eventually torn each other to pieces. But fortunately, it was not so long before the front door of the Trip to Jerusalem jarred open and belched out a small mob of men. They were dressed simply, though a few had padded leather vests, or tattered blue tabards, and all carried their weapons at the ready as they ran with purpose across the street’s gullet. A dozen men, Quill guessed, and there was no mistaking the bald head of Sir Robert FitzOdo at their center. He alone bore a steel chest plate and mail sleeves, and carried a black spiked mace instead of a sword.

  Quill’s heart quickened just at the sight of him, recalling the fury in the Coward Knight’s face when he realized his game was up. With his lackey Derrick vivisected on the stables wall, IMPOSTOR about his head, FitzOdo had nearly cut Quill in two. The idea of running toward that monster of a man rather than away was enough to
turn Quill’s stomach inside out several times over. “Where do you suppose he’s going?” he whispered.

  “To his grave,” Beneger answered. “Alright then, fighters with me. The rest of you, Godspeed. Find the prince.”

  They divided into their groups, as discussed. Arable, Charley, and the twin brothers would use the Trip to sneak into the castle, while Zinn and their friar stayed behind to watch its entrance. Meanwhile, Beneger meant to hunt down FitzOdo to prevent him from returning to the inn, with the help of Gilbert and the earl Robert. Somehow, Quill fit into this latter category of fighters. He had originally protested as much, but Beneger made a point of it. “You should be there when we kill FitzOdo,” he’d insisted. “It’ll be good for you.”

  And he did want to see this through. FitzOdo had deceived Quill for months as he chased down the wrong leads. He’d been utterly blind to it right up until the moment Gilbert spelled it out for him with literal writing on a literal wall. Quill’s days of considering himself the family genius might just be over.

  And so they split up, making hasty farewells and good lucks. “It was nice to re-meet you,” Quill said to Arable, having no connection to the others headed to the inn. “I hope you don’t die.”

  Her face confirmed exactly how stupid a thing that was to say.

  “Protect yourself, Arable,” Lord Beneger said, more an order than a wish. “If Charley knows the castle as well as he says he does, then you stay inside the tunnels until it’s safe.”

  “Fuck you, I hope you die,” Arable returned. She left without hesitation, leading the others across the cobbled road to the entrance of the Trip to Jerusalem. Zinn cackled silently at Beneger as she followed, going so far as to actually point her finger and hold her belly.

  Quill was compelled to comment on the queer exchange but there was no time—FitzOdo’s men were already disappearing up the street, closer to the sounds of war, and Beneger prompted them to follow. Quill took a moment to wish he was the sort of person who might find comfort in prayer at a time like this, and then followed the others so that they could all meet a very ungentlemanly death together.

  * * *

  SOME PHYSICIAN MIGHT FIND an academic curiosity in what went through Quillen Peveril’s mind as he trudged along at the back of their foursome. Given the imminent likeliness of his life’s end, his brain was drawn toward daydreaming of his possible futures. Perhaps it was some sort of primitive animal instinct intended to keep him brave and inspired, but Quill found it incredibly distracting. He clearly should have been focusing on how best to move silently and keep strangers’ swords away from his innards, but all he could think about was whether he ought to ask Arable de Burel to marry him once this was over.

  He knew there wasn’t any rational causality to the thought, like I’m hungry and therefore I should eat, but logic had been evicted from Nottingham and he was not beholden to its laws. It didn’t matter that he’d only shared a handful of sentences with the woman, nor that those sentences were mostly about an embarrassing event from his childhood. The only facts relevant to Quill’s horror-soaked brain were that they were both of comparable age, unwed, and knew each other’s names—which surely comprised a romance. After all, she was born a lady but her family had lost everything, while Quill’s family was well known. She would be a fool not to take such an offer. And one day, when Quill finally proved himself to his father, he might become the Lord of the Peak himself, and Arable was surely wise enough to see that. She was, by all accounts, incredibly lucky to have recognized him.

  With exactly that milk-sopped lunacy clouding his thoughts, he stepped directly into a puddle in the middle of the road with a loud splash, tripped as he tried to correct himself, and fell to the ground in something that would be best described as the absolute opposite of silence.

  Ahead of him, Beneger and Robert both cursed and threw themselves at the closest building to hide, which Gilbert had also done with an offensive grace. Quill was left alone on his hands and knees, reaching out for the sword he had dropped which could not possibly be retrieved quietly, staring up and down the street at the two trailing members of FitzOdo’s entourage who had heard the commotion and turned around to get some murdering done upon him.

  Having already been noticed, Quill panicked and scrambled for his sword, which only skittered farther away, and by the time he got a knee underneath himself to make a second grab, one of the two attackers was nearly upon him. But shockingly, it was an unarmed hand that extended, palm up, accompanied by the fairly unmurderous question of: “Need a hand?”

  Quill assumed the man—a deeply tanned fellow with wide-set eyes and a disheveled mop—was just being chivalrous and preferred to do his killing on armed enemies, so he refused the help and found his way back to his feet on his own. The man responded by patting his back and urging him along. Around the same time, a few nearby buildings opened their doors as one or two more men slipped into the street and encouraged Quill to hurry.

  Now badly outnumbered, he took their command and ran forward, making eye contact with his original companions who were extremely visible from behind. They, too, were welcomed by the newcomers, who continued to trickle into the street. Each had a weapon, each looked like they knew what to do with it, and each one did their best to stay quiet and follow the path of FitzOdo’s gang. If Quill didn’t know better—which he coincidentally did not—he would have thought that every one of them had the same intent of catching up to FitzOdo and confronting him. Soon enough, the four of them were running along with half a dozen armed strangers, having very little idea as to what was happening.

  When they rounded a few final corners, they’d caught up to the rear of FitzOdo’s group, which had now tripled in size. His bald head was easy to find, bobbing at their center and leading them forward. The men at the front of the group would pause at select doorways and knock quickly—always two short knocks, then a pause, then two more—while the rest of the group ran forward. Half a minute after each knock, that door would open and a man would barrel into the street, running to catch up with the mob. They were calling out their men, he realized, and Quill and the others had been mistaken as allies.

  They rushed on, their noise now impossible to hear beneath the din of the army a few streets to the north. They finally stopped at a waist-high makeshift barricade in the center of a wider street. Most of the men were swarming past it on either side, but a few were gathered behind it, kneeling in preparation. Beyond the barricade, down a short straight lane, was a sight that took Quill’s breath away. The army. This path led directly to it; there was a wall of men pushing slowly to the left, shields held above their heads, and their noise had taken on a stunning new clarity.

  Quill and the others stopped behind the barricade, and found themselves face-to-face with Sir Robert FitzOdo.

  “Lord Beneger!” the man exclaimed with surprise, even relief. But upon seeing Quill, a flash of rage overcame him—and when he recognized Gilbert, he perhaps understood what was happening. He tensed but did not attack, shifting his gaze from one of them to another.

  Sweat accumulated in Quill’s palms as he repositioned the grip on his sword. He hated this man, from his wet bald head to his bulbous nose, his scabby ears. FitzOdo had betrayed them all, masquerading as a Robin Hood in the night to torment the poorfolk, and had very nearly killed Quill for that discovery. As his nerves flared to see the man again, so close, he knew that Lord Beneger was right. He wanted to be here for this, he needed to watch the man receive his due.

  “Whatever you’re here for,” the Coward Knight said with caution, “it can wait.”

  The sounds of the army moved through the earth itself, Quill could feel it in his feet.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Lord Beneger demanded.

  “We’re fighting back,” FitzOdo answered, and turned just briefly enough to direct a few of his men forward, down the sides of the lane. “We’re going to fuck the French in the ass.”

  “Those aren’t the French!” Lo
rd Robert hissed. “That’s King Richard out there!”

  FitzOdo’s mask curled, and he turned to look down the lane. Quill might easily have thrust his sword’s point into the man’s neck then and there, but the knight’s lack of concern was disarming.

  “Those are Englishmen!” Robert continued. “That’s your king out there, sir.”

  “The fuck does it matter who it is?” FitzOdo growled back at them. “They’re here for the city, and we don’t mean to let them.”

  Beneger shook his head. “They’re here for Prince John, no more.”

  “Tell that to them!” He pointed one meaty finger down the lane. “The city’s being destroyed, and the castle needs our help.”

  That much, sadly, was true. King Richard’s men thought they were quelling a rebellion, that Prince John was throwing a coup. And by helping him, Nottingham had become their enemy.

  Still, honor was hardly in FitzOdo’s character. “Since when do you care about the city?” Quill forced himself to a full voice. “You’ve been chopping hands and burning buildings and beating innocent people, now you think you’re one of them?”

  A single furious moment passed as FitzOdo realized his secret was out; but rather than deny it, he claimed it fully. “I did that for a reason, whelp, one you could never understand. The people were putting their faith in Robin Hood rather than the Guard, and where the fuck is he now? I brought them back to us, back to trusting that they’re safe when they see a Guard tabard, which is the only reason they’re willing to follow me now. I’ve got half the city ready to fight back, ready for my signal.” He placed his mace on the ground and reached out to another man, who had a couple of strong longbows and a full sheaf of arrows. “Robin Hood split this city in half, but I brought it back together. You really give two shits about the way I did it, in the face of this?”

  He nodded, took an arrow from the bag, and signaled the men next to him to do the same.