Laura Strickland - The Guardians of Sherwood Trilogy (12 page)

“To Nottingham. What place shall you hold in de Vavasour’s company?”

Gareth shook his head. “I know naught beyond that he has summoned me.”

“To be his wolfhound and chase us to ground here in the forest? If so, you have been given a great advantage, having seen how and where we live.”

“He patronized the last of my training and demands my service in return.”

“Ah, perhaps you are meant to replace the vile Monteith as Captain of the Guard, since that man has not had great success in curtailing our activities.” She smiled a dangerous smile that made her look very like the man, or spirit, Gareth had encountered in the forest—Robin Hood.

“I am unable to hold any place at all, what with my arm broken.”

“We shall see to that. Drink.”

Gareth raised the cup to his lips. The contents tasted sharp and smelled intensely aromatic. The bitterness stung his throat on the way down. Aye, poison, no doubt. He wondered that he did not feel more upset about it.

When he could speak again, for the taste, he said, “It is not possible to merely re-knit the bone in my arm. Such an injury takes many weeks’ recovery.”

“We shall see. When you are finished with drinking that—to the last drop, mind—strip yourself down. You are going into the water.”

Gareth felt heat sweep over him. “I think not.”

She raked him with her gaze. “Do not flatter yourself, lad. I am scarce interested in what you have beneath those rags. They are in such tatters you have few secrets anyway. But do not concern yourself; my husband will tend you in this.”

“Why should either of you care to tend me, by any road?”

She smiled again. “I have my reasons, and my reasons are Sparrow’s. Only do your part. You will feel better for it.”

With that, she got to her feet and moved off. Gareth, rueful, had to admit he already felt better. He downed the last of the cup’s bitter contents and tried not to shudder. After that he merely sat and let the strengthening light come find him, settle on his hair, and sift through him from the head down. Each morning had it been thus; magic rode on the light.

And since when had he begun believing in magic? His eyes flew open wide at the question. He was a Norman knight, trained in practical things, a proven champion and product of a man who sneered at anything other than control and physical prowess. His father had permitted no talk of fancy, nor vision. He had tried to knock such nonsense out of his young wife.

But Gareth’s mother, with her Celtic blood, had refused to yield her instinctual belief. Indeed, she had died before ever doing so.

A flare of hate raced through Gareth’s veins, his consistent reaction when he thought of his father and the way that man had treated his mother.

“All right, lad?” Sparrow’s deep voice rumbled over him. “Up on your feet. Good thing ’tis a warm morning, eh?”

Sparrow’s big hands made short work of the tether and the magic that secured it. Gareth stripped off his clothes, able to feel the difference in his body when he moved. Many of his scratches were healed and almost all the aches and bruises gone. He could wiggle the fingers of his left hand with almost no pain.

“The bandages, as well,” Sparrow told him.

Gareth peeled them off and scrutinized the wounds. Mottled with new, pink skin, they appeared far less inflamed. He raised his fingers to the long cut Scarface had given him on his cheek. Not nearly so tender.

“Come along to the stream.”

It felt good to move free of the hated restraint. Gareth stretched his body as he went. The stream ran deep here, and clear, between clean-cut banks. Where two trees leaned together across it, a pool had formed.

Sparrow gestured. “In with you.”

Gareth shot him a look. It might well be a warm morning, but he knew from experience how cold that water ran. He had already been sluiced in it and told to wash himself from the bank.

He slid down into the water and promptly lost his breath. Moving quickly, he submerged himself to the neck.

It felt—wonderful. The water, clattering over stones, streamed across his shoulders and pooled around his body. After a moment he stretched out his arms and laid his head back. When he raised it again, the hair slapped wet against his back.

Sparrow seated himself on the bank and placed his staff across his knees. Gareth could not help but wonder about that staff. A great, mighty thing, it had a twisted trunk and looked something more than a weapon. Surely it wielded magic.

He curved his lips in a wry smile. There was that word again:
magic
. How absurdly often it now came to his mind.

“Funny thing,” Sparrow rumbled, as if having a casual conversation, “how men are all the same when you strip them down to the skin. Take you, for instance. At the moment ’tis hard to tell whether to figure you for a fine Norman lord, a peasant’s son, or someone who simply does every daft thing he is told—like sit in a pool of cold water.”

“The latter, without question.”

“Where are you from, lad? Oh, I do not mean your blood lines, though I suppose those are relevant enough. I mean where are you from—you, the man inside? For we all come from a place molded by our experiences and those who have loved us.”

An image flashed across Gareth’s mind of a slender woman, honey-haired and with fey, knowing eyes. He dismissed it quickly and thought instead of his father. “My sire owned a large estate north of Leeds. It belongs to my brother now, since his death.”

“Any other siblings?”

“A sister, long wed and gone.” She had been traded for her value, and Gareth had scarcely seen her since.

“Were you raised in the Church?”

The question seemed so strange, Gareth raised his eyes to meet Sparrow’s. They were dark and wild and held wisdom so potent it sent a chill up Gareth’s spine.

“Of course,” he replied. Could it be otherwise? A man accepted the Church’s teachings if he did not want to spend eternity in hell when this life was done. And for a Norman knight, life could end at any time. Youth lent no guarantee.

Gareth knew men who had bought favor and had tried to purchase absolution. His own brother, Bernard, had made a rich donation on his father’s behalf after he died. Much good it might do, Gareth thought bitterly. The man deserved to writhe in endless torment.

“Some men who take to the sword,” Sparrow said thoughtfully, “do so for the sake of righteousness, some for pure gain—that is true of your kind and mine as well. I just wondered what sort you were.”

“Neither,” Gareth replied wryly, and not untruthfully. “As you said, I do as bidden and go where told.”

The big man leaned over the bank toward him. “Some day, Gareth de Vavasour, you will have to make a choice. You will need to decide whether to follow your head or your heart. So much is true of all men. And so much, for you, is told by the stars.”

“What have the heavens to do with it?” Gareth asked, taken aback.

“The heavens, the earth, the fire, and the water.” Sparrow gestured with the staff to the pool where Gareth lay. “All things conspire, lad, to bring us to our destiny.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Where is your headman?” The cry broke the morning stillness the way an axe blade might shatter a skull. “On your feet when you face your betters, you lazy vermin. Do you not know who I am?”

Robert de Vavasour
. Linnet’s mind supplied the name even before she poked her nose from the temporary shelter she, Lark, and Falcon shared. She had heard that haughty voice before and could not mistake it now. Her heart stuttered and then leaped in terror.

Dawn had just come to Oakham; the gentle light of summer sifted through the trees and into the ruined village. But all hope of peace was scattered by the stout company of mounted men milling not far from where Gareth de Vavasour had once been pegged out like a sacrificial goat: soldiers and two knights, all wearing the insignia of Nottingham Castle—a pair of foresters flanking a castle—and a man with a thin, severe face and an air of absolute superiority.

Aye, she remembered him. Rich brown hair, high-bridged nose, haughty demeanor, and fine clothing. The Sheriff of Nottingham, himself, here.

Almost before she could grasp the fact, she found herself elbowed aside by Lark, who took one look out the doorway of the shelter and called, “Fal!”

Falcon unfolded himself from the pallet upon which he had spent much of the past three days. Linnet was not sure how she felt about Fal’s response to the call of leadership. She loved him like a brother and she knew how badly he hurt, how lost he felt. But he had retreated to a place inside his head and seemed reluctant to emerge again. Whatever she had expected of him, it had not been that.

It could not be denied that Lark had been leading them all since their return from the forest. A small fury, she had been everywhere, speaking encouragement, organizing for the needs of the villagers, and deciding what should be rebuilt and when. Folk turned to her readily, simply because she was accessible as Fal was not. True enough, she carried Falcon’s banner, prefacing most of her words with “Fal says,” or “Falcon thinks.”

No question, Lark was—and should be—the new headman of Oakham. But she could not step forward now, when the Sheriff of Nottingham called the village leader to appear before him. Falcon knew that as well. Linnet saw as much in his eyes when he stepped to the doorway and laid his hand on Lark’s shoulder.

Lark responded to the gesture instinctively and wrapped her arms about his waist. The two of them had bonded in some curious way Linnet could not completely understand. She knew she could rightfully attribute the connection to love on the part of Lark. But she feared on Fal’s it came mostly of need.

She heard her sister speak to him now, low and urgent. “You must show yourself and put a brave face on it.”

Fal nodded. Linnet felt rather than saw him pull himself up precisely as if he donned a coat that had belonged to another, likely his father. He stepped out into the morning light with Lark half a step behind him.

Robert de Vavasour’s gaze found him at once. He pulled his horse around, no doubt bent on using his superior position to good advantage. The Sheriff had light-colored eyes beneath brows of reddish brown, and a cruel, impatient slant to his mouth.

“What is your name, serf?” he demanded of Falcon.

“Scarlet.”

“Are you headman here?”

“I am.”

Linnet had to hand it to Falcon; his voice sounded steady and sure. He seemed to have donned some of Martin’s confidence along with his manner.

“We are searching for a knight seized some days ago on the road south from York.” No mention of the others taken captive with Gareth. Being mere soldiers, they did not matter much to de Vavasour, she supposed.

“He is not here.” Falcon shook his head and added, deliberately late, “My lord.” He waved a hand. “Your men already searched the village before they burned it. Naught is hidden.”

“I am aware they have already searched. They will continue to do so until the man in question is turned over to us.”

“I am sure we would give him to you at once, my lord, if we could.”

“Are you? I am afraid I lack any such conviction. But I come here myself this day, as to every other village under my domain, to assure it. The man I seek is my nephew, Gareth de Vavasour. And I tell you there will not be a village left standing in all Nottinghamshire if he is not returned in good health to me.”

Falcon, like those around him, stood mute, a stubborn look in his eyes.

De Vavasour gave him a hard glare and turned to his men. “Seize him.”

“What? Nay!” The cry burst from Lark’s throat and was echoed by a half score of others.

The Sheriff raised his voice. “We are taking the headman of each and every village to Nottingham, where I will hold them as security against my nephew’s return.” He smiled thinly. “Think of it as a mercy, for this ransom you can pay.”

“You cannot do this! How dare—” Lark got no further. One of the two knights leaned down from the back of his mount and struck her with a gauntleted fist. She flew sideways and lay as if broken. Falcon roared and hurled himself at her attacker. Violence erupted everywhere at once.

Linnet ducked a drawn sword in an effort to reach her sister’s side, but before she got there Lark sprang up and leaped into the fray. The two mounted knights shifted their horses, using them like weapons, and Linnet had to move her feet quickly to keep from being trampled under the chargers’ hooves.

Amid the screaming, blows, and confusion, she saw a flame ignite as a torch was lit.

“No!” she shouted but no one heard her or, if they heard, heeded. A knight spurred his horse to one of the few standing houses and put flame to thatch. Three soldiers now had hold of Falcon, whom they had beaten down mercilessly. As Linnet watched, they bore him to the ground, with Lark, once more on her feet, attacking all the while.

One put his sword to Fal’s throat.

“Now, then,” said Robert de Vavasour, calmly, “let us try this again. Have you knowledge, serf, of my nephew’s whereabouts, or must we question you further at Nottingham?”

Falcon bared his teeth in a grimace. It was Lark who again screamed, “No!” She threw herself at Fal in a wild attempt to free him from the grasp of his captors, nearly disarming the soldier who leveled the weapon at Falcon’s throat. Almost casually, Robert de Vavasour leaned down and struck her with the blunt of his sword.

“Troublesome wench.” He looked round at the stunned faces of the villagers. “You have a fortnight, which I call a generous allowance. After that we will begin putting our captives to the death.” He gestured at Fal, bloodied and snarling. “Your headman will die first.”

One of the soldiers hauled Fal up across his saddle bow, like a felled hart. With a great clanking and jingling of harness, the party gathered themselves and moved off, Fal straining back for one last look at the place where Lark lay.

Linnet fell to her knees at her sister’s side. Lark’s eyes stared, wide open, and blood covered the side of her face.

Her lips formed but one word. “Falcon.”

****

“I shall kill them all slowly and painfully, every carrier of vile Norman blood! I will save him for last—the accursed Sheriff, Robert de Vavasour—and let him see the spike on which I mean to impale his ugly head.”