Lionhearts

by Nathan Makaryk

  “We came all this way,” Peetey whispered, “just to end in a prison cell? Why would the Red Lions want that?”

  “They weren’t trying to get into the castle,” Arable sighed, piecing it together, “they were trying to get people out. That explains … Lord Beneger said that one of the Red Lions had turned traitor, which is how Will Scarlet came to be arrested. That must have been part of the plan. They wanted him to be arrested, so they could test their tunnel and see if they could break him out.”

  “Not a very nice way to do it,” Nick mumbled.

  “I didn’t get the impression they liked him much,” Peetey answered.

  They lingered in silence a bit, staring over the lip down into the gaol tunnel.

  “Well,” Nick stammered, “we’ll just have to figure it out.”

  “Figure it out?” Arable replied. “The Red Lions figured it out, that’s what this whole tunnel is for! If they went through all this work to get someone out of the prisons, what makes you think we can just figure out a new way in the next hour?”

  She didn’t want to go back any more than the rest of them—the sheer thought of it made her muscles throb anew. But if they dropped into that tunnel, they might literally be trapping themselves.

  “It’s strange,” Bolt said by the exit hole, then clicked his tongue and listened for its echoed response. “I don’t hear anything. Sounds deserted.”

  “That is strange,” Peetey huffed. “Gilbert said the prisons had been filled to the brim, twice and twice again.”

  Bolt looked at her, perhaps asking permission to continue, and Arable shook her head no. But he slipped his legs over the sandstone lip, eased his hips over, clung to Nick’s arms for another foot or so, then dropped into the gaols.

  Madness. Absolute madness.

  With help, Arable dipped over the rock ledge and stumbled down to the ground. She might have landed better had her legs not been so fatigued, so she consented to slump down and just collapse under the exhaustion. There was a bit of movement to the air at last, and her sweat welcomed the cooler air. Her arms covered in goose pimples, while her bowels screamed to be released. One by one the Delaneys landed next to her, descending from the curious hole above them. It was practically invisible from below—just a ribbon of cave wall that rolled along the tunnel, that nobody would ever suspect held a nearly unnavigable hole. She was also unsure any of them could figure a way back up to it without a ladder—but again, these were problems for another time.

  “This is downright eerie,” Bolt said again, leading them down the next tunnel, careful to make no sound. “Something’s wrong. Never seen the gaols empty.”

  Eventually, they moved. Every cluster of cells they passed was indeed vacant, the doors swung open. There was at long last another noise, like a far-off waterfall, muffled by a thousand miles. She’d been here before, exactly here, when she’d helped free Will and Elena. It had been easy enough to open the individual cells, as each key was slung from a ring nearby. The trick was to get out of the prisons themselves, which she knew required a different key on both sides simultaneously. Arable had stolen Captain Gisbourne’s ring, which he’d left behind—purposefully, she reminded herself with bitterness—but she’d discarded that ring long ago, thinking there would never be a reason to need it again. How she wished she’d held onto it now, that she might save the day with a fortuitous reveal.

  “I’ll go to the entrance,” Bolt offered. “Could be I’ll know the men there. If they recognize me, they may let me out.”

  “Or you’ll turn us all in,” Arable muttered.

  “Arable,” he responded, a shiver overcoming his shoulders. He turned to look at her, his wide eyes bulging with intensity. “On Reginold’s life, I swear, I mean to help.”

  She had no answer. It didn’t matter if she trusted him, because he was their only hope. He scampered off down the tunnel and up an incline, which she recognized as leading to the main slope up to the middle bailey.

  Nottingham Castle. She had never wanted to be here again.

  And to think she was trying to save it, of all things. She ought to just sit here and let King Richard’s armies raze it to the ground. Turn to rubble every stone and memory—of Roger de Lacy, of William de Wendenal, of her father and the discolored rock in St. Nicholas’s yard that represented his grave. There was nothing for her in Nottingham, and there never would be.

  But here she was still, because she was the dumbest girl God had ever made.

  I hope you’re better than me, she prayed for her daughter. I hope I can give you a life that will never involve anything as terrible as all this.

  “Surprise,” Bolt said, poking his head around the corner again.

  “What did you find?”

  “The gate’s wide open.” He shrugged, shaking his head back and forth. “We’re clear.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  ARTHUR A BLAND

  LOWER BAILEY, NOTTINGHAM CASTLE

  “GO, GO, GO, GO!” Arthur led the men at a crouch as long as seemed reasonable, then they broke into a run. Back onto the battlements from which they’d previously retreated. The fighting was now outside the curtain wall—both the mounted Nottingham Guardsmen and the bulk of Will Scarlet’s baileyfolk had streamed out the front gates to bring the battle to the French line. This distraction had successfully slowed the stream of soldiers climbing the siege ladders, and gave the archers a chance to reclaim ground. Arthur was a shit shot with a bow, but when the French were shoulder to shoulder as they were, it didn’t take much skill to find a fucking target.

  “Down!” he yelled again, and the eight Guardsmen ahead of them took a knee. They each held a tall shield that they angled as they knelt, giving the archers a few perfect seconds to shoot over their heads. Arthur let his arrow fly and knew it sailed shy to the right of their target, but he pulled another arrow and compensated to the left. His middle fingers were bleeding from the hemp cord, and he silently reminded himself to never make fun of David’s fancy archery glove again. As soon as the second wave of arrows had flown, he screamed for the shield men again, who raised their defense and ran another dozen paces forward.

  “Pull with both your arms,” David said, beside him, hunching his head until their next opportunity.

  Arthur stared at his friend until those words made sense, which was never.

  “You’re just holding your bow out with your left hand,” David explained, “and pulling the string with your right.”

  “That’s how you shoot a fucking bow!” He couldn’t believe David thought this was the proper time for a lesson in archery finesse.

  “But your right arm is tiring, isn’t it?”

  “My whole body is fucking tiring!”

  “Start with your bow at the center of your body,” he demonstrated as best he could, given that they were shuffling behind a rampaging shield line, “and push it forward with your left just as much as you’re pulling back with your right. Don’t shoot this time, watch me.”

  “Down!” Arthur would have yelled either way, but Arthur knelt along with the shield men and watched David as the arrows flew. He loosed three arrows in the time it’d taken Arthur to do two, and still had enough time to flash him a reassuring face between each one, showing him his proper bow placement.

  “Do you see the difference?” David asked when the shields went up again, and they started nudging forward.

  “No,” Arthur said, honestly. It looked exactly like every other damned person who’d ever shot an arrow, excepting David’s smug little face.

  “It’ll keep your aim in line,” he continued. “Right now you’re yanking the string back and missing your target.”

  “Fucking hell.” He shook his head. How David was able to keep track of Arthur’s form during the midst of this madness was so far beyond him. “I thought you said you’d never killed anyone before!”

  What rippled beneath his friend’s skin had no humor. “Well, I’ve quick become an expert.”

  When the shields
went down again Arthur stood and tried this new technique, giving his muscles equal weight as if he were tearing a giant wishbone in two. The end result was an arrow that sprung far to his left and down into the bailey—thankfully finding nothing but mud, but Arthur nearly exploded with anger. “I’m doing it my way!” He pulled another arrow and flung it into the dwindling group of Frenchmen. He felt a painful searing slice in his fingertips as this arrow too flew wide, and he cursed every damned thing that’d ever been bold enough to bother existing in his path. He was useless up here. He needed a sword and a Frenchman close enough to stab with it.

  “We’ve got this covered.” David nudged him away. “Get back down to Will.”

  “Henry,” Arthur corrected him.

  “Go!”

  He clambered backward, looking down into the bailey in search of Will Scarlet. He hadn’t left the castle with the rest of the baileyfolk—frankly, Arthur wasn’t sure that was even part of Will’s plan at all. But when the castle gates opened for the first time in a month, those baileyfolk had seized the opportunity to fight their way out. He wondered how many even engaged the French at all, or if they fled south down the castle walls until they ran out of army to fight and could escape, finally, back into the city. Find their families. If they still lived.

  Wherever they’d gone, the tactic had worked. As the cranes grappled a few more siege ladders up and over the walls, the French had fewer opportunities to reclimb onto the battlements. It took twenty men and women below to spin the turncocks, even with the tall wooden fulcrum arms they’d built to make it easier. If the curtain wall had been any higher, then it might not have been possible at all. But there were already a dozen stolen French ladders cluttering up the bailey, and it didn’t seem that the invaders had built many more than they’d used on their first wave.

  Arthur practically ran down the open stone staircase into the bailey. The enemy that had already made it below was grouped in one massive cluster on the north end now, held in place by the Worcester garrison, but Arthur could see they were struggling to contain them. He spotted a heavy spiked mace lying on the ground between him and that throng, and felt a burst of dark joy. David may be good with arrows, but Arthur—Arthur was good at clobbering things. Swords were nice but they required such … aim. But a mace, all it wanted was to smash things to pulp, and Arthur very coincidentally wanted the exact same thing.

  It was surprising how quickly his senses—and humor—had returned to him, once the tide of battle had changed. The first few hours had been like nothing he’d ever experienced. Pure blistering white fear had turned his bones into fire, and when the French topped the walls and slowly started gaining ground he’d been overcome with a singular clarity of action that had been intoxicating. Men were killed all around him at times, but not Arthur. Perhaps he started to believe in his own words, that the three of them were indeed special in this rabble, but it prompted him to lose himself in the mania of it all—something like the fabled euphoria of a long-distance runner, where time sped by and blurred together and his muscles could not tire. It was hard to tell how long that lasted, but now that the French were being beaten back, he felt the slow, cold normality sink in, which made the world all the easier to laugh at. In normal speed, Arthur looked at the throng of enemy soldiers and knew he just had to smash his mace into each of their heads, and fuck all if that wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever been asked to do.

  “Arthur!” came a voice, and he was quickly joined by Will Scarlet, the red paint on his face marred with sludge and blood. He carried a tower shield with a red cross on it, scarred with deep axe gouges. It was nearly as tall as he was.

  “Perfect,” Arthur said, waving Will closer. “Let’s do this together. Make room for me, I swing, then fall back. Over and over until they’re dead.”

  Will made a couple of quick pointed breaths. “All of them?”

  “Do you think we should keep a few alive?”

  “No, you’re right.” Scarlet smiled. “All of them.”

  They ran into the line where it was thinnest, Will pounding forward hidden entirely by the shield, pushing against the first man he could find, then turning into a slim profile. Arthur filled the gap, wheeled the heavy mace up and down, and smashed a man’s helmet in, bursting blood out the front of his crushed skull. Will closed the shield and backed up.

  They could save Nottingham, the three of them. They’d united the Guard and the baileyfolk. They’d negotiated for the release of the prisoners who had joined the fray. The defenders of the castle were three times what they would’ve been without them. Let the prince and his men stay in the baileys above. He laughed, swung, killed, retreated. Let them look down at the real heroes here. Smash, skull, gore, meat. Captain of the Guard, Arthur a Bland. Swing, pound, bone, crack. Bend the knee, Sir Arthur a Bland, Sir Arthur of Nottingham. Black, crunch, pulp, pop! Prince Arthur! King Arthur! Here’s your God, Tuck, here’s the God you’ll never meet, a God of death, a God of Gods!

  Around him, the screams, the screams, the screams of victory.

  The French were dead, only a pile of bodies, moaning and begging for mercy, which they would not find. Nottingham Guard next to Red Lion next to poorfolk next to nobleman all there, raising their weapons, roaring, roaring.

  He turned his attention up to the battlements, and found the archers there rejoicing, too. He spotted David—always easy to find in a crowd, thanks to his height and golden locks—who raised his bow in victory. They waved at each other, and Arthur laughed that he was so damned lucky to be alive at a time when such a thing as this was possible.

  “That’s just the first wave,” Will was saying, trying to dampen Arthur’s celebration.

  “Bring another!” Arthur shouted in his face, heaving the weight of the bloody mace from hand to hand. “I’ve got more in me!”

  He was met by Will’s curious expression, which carried with it a hesitation. As if he did not recognize Arthur, and perhaps he didn’t. Arthur had never expected to be here, embracing the city he’d hated, and the Guardsmen he’d despised, and himself … who he’d never been exactly fond of. But defending the city felt good, as good a thing as ever he’d done. There were still people that needed him, and damn but he still had room for scars.

  David joined them shortly, and pressed a skin of water into Arthur’s chest. “Drink.”

  He did, amazed that he hadn’t realized how parched he was. Leave it to David, always the saint to whatever-it-was-that-Arthur was, to think of bringing him water even at a time like this.

  “Facking fack,” David said, cracking his neck, “that was lunacy.”

  “I hope some of them got through alive,” Will said, looking deeply at the front gates of the castle, where his allies had escaped. “Sad that they have a better chance out there than in here.”

  Arthur couldn’t follow his logic. “What do you mean?”

  “The prisoners,” Will answered. “At least out there they might get out of this alive. In here…”

  “What’re you talking about?” Arthur balked. “We got them out of the gaols.”

  Will scoffed. “You think that’ll matter when this is over? If this is ever over.”

  Arthur hadn’t thought about it at all. His mind hadn’t really grasped the concept of what anything would be like afterward. Would the captain’s offer of pardons stand? Would the prisoners be sent back below to pay for whatever crimes the prince thought they should be punished for? Would he and David be captured once their faces were finally recognized? Did he even want to stay?

  Or did the world just go back to the way it was, thieving in the forest, with the Sheriff building little posts in the Sherwood to search for them? That was an impossible world, it was forever ago.

  And if he had a choice, which side would Arthur be on?

  “What do we do after this?” David asked him quietly.

  “I don’t know.” He clasped his friend’s shoulder, unable to bear that burden at the moment. “But it’ll start with drinking.�
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  “That, I can agree with.”

  “You know I thought of something earlier,” Arthur added, remembering a stray thought. “When we left Marion’s group, you said that we ought to stop running and build a castle instead. Well here it is, David, you got your castle.”

  David’s thin smile had a bit of pride in it.

  At that, a commotion at the front gates aroused their attention. “Open the gates!” came a hurried call. “Captain Grendon!” They all turned to the main entrance, where a dozen men rushed forward to lift the massive timber barrels from their iron locks. It was a good sign, that the French must’ve retracted far enough that they felt safe to briefly open the gates again. The Nottingham Guard came streaming forward, whooping at the return of their captain.

  The moment the gate heaved open, a single body appeared in its gap. It was Captain de Grendon alright—horseless, nursing an injured arm, covered head to heel in blood. He had led the mounted assault out of the gates, to break the bases of the siege ladders, which was how they’d claimed this first victory. Arthur had assumed nobody on that assault would come back alive, but here he was—the heroic captain, returning to his castle. Battered, beaten—but walking, and victorious. That’s how Arthur wanted to end this day, too.

  “Close the gates!” came another command, and the ground thundered.

  “Hurry!”

  It was hard to tell because he was limping, but Captain de Grendon was running.

  “They’re English!” the captain screamed, then his back exploded with arrows and he fell into the slop.

  The gates screamed on their hinges nearly shut when a roar sounded from the other side, and the mouth of the castle was suddenly blocked by a horseman who swung his blade down into the heads of the men who were pulling the gate closed. Then another horse squeezed into the gap, a renewed struggle, until the gates lurched a second time … this time opening. A dozen horses burst through the entrance at full gallop, pounding over Fulcher de Grendon’s body with little care. The earth shook with their mass, and more were coming, more, not just more—the entire fucking army. It grabbed Arthur by his bones and throttled him, he turned and ran, unable to speak, to scream, he could only count the number of steps between himself and the barbican up to the second bailey and he knew he could not make it in time.