Shadow of the Wolf (11 page)

B
y the time he reached the river he knew he was being followed.

Bones. He must have noticed me missing. The idiot. He’ll get kicked out if he’s caught
.

He forded the river and kicked Arry into a canter – she was a good night horse and Robin was a better rider than Bones so it shouldn’t be difficult to leave him behind.

But already his pursuer was splashing through the ford. The thundering of hooves. The breaking of a branch. And quickly as that Robin was caught.

He brought Arry to a halt and he looked up at the horseman towering over him. This wasn’t Bones. This was the
shadow-figure
he had seen beneath the Tree of Shields.

‘I hoped you would turn back of your own accord,’ Sir Bors’ voice rumbled. ‘But you are clearly beyond making a measured decision.’

‘Why was she here?’ Robin said. ‘Why did you take her prisoner?’ He startled himself, talking this way to the overlord. But something inside him had snapped, and now there was no holding back.

Sir Bors studied him with those cold-steel eyes. He took a long breath before he spoke. ‘Marian Delbosque was here
for her own protection. And for yours, no less. I knew I was taking a risk, bringing the two of you so close, but I was left little choice. And I didn’t think even she would be this rash. Listen carefully now, Robin, and know I have never told you anything so true: leave this place and you will be heading into worse danger than you—’

He was interrupted by shouting from the direction of the citadel. Robin looked back and saw three tiny figures, one of them attempting to turn his horse, another slipping and struggling to stay in the saddle.

‘I wondered if they would be fool enough to follow,’ Sir Bors said. ‘Your actions threaten to cost your friends dearly, as well as yourself. Come with me now, back inside.’

Still Robin didn’t move. ‘I won’t abandon her,’ he said. ‘I won’t leave her all alone. I made a promise.’

Sir Bors sat straighter in his saddle, the leather creaking. ‘I also made a promise, to myself,’ he said. ‘And the promise was this: I would not send you to face the world until you were prepared. If I let you ride away tonight I will have failed.’

Robin couldn’t raise his eyes from the ground. ‘I am prepared.’

‘No!’ Sir Bors shouted, startling Arry. ‘No you are not. What do you think has been happening here? We had more to teach you than how to swing a sword and ride a warhorse. When you came here you were driven by a rage that could have scorched the earth. That fury was hurting others, but it would have destroyed you, in the end. We’ve tried to tame it, direct it, but the work is only half done. That raw anger is still there, I can see it, clinging to you like a shadow.’

Sir Bors looked back at Bones and the others, drawing closer. Two guards had now emerged, holding flaming torches.

‘We don’t have much time. I need to stop those three
compounding your mistake. If they cross that river I’ll have no choice but to cast them out. This is your final opportunity, Robin. Leave this place and there will be no second chance. You must understand that. You will be dead to us.’

Until this moment Robin had been weathering a storm of sorrow and guilt and elation and a numb kind of doubt. But he had not been scared. Now, as he looked back at the citadel, watchfires flickering there on the battlements, and he looked once more into the unknown night, he felt fear stir for the first time and he felt it settle deeply in his bones.

You will be dead to us.

What if he couldn’t find Marian? What was she running from? What waited out there for her, and for him?

But still he didn’t move. He kept Arry facing away from the citadel. ‘Before I came here,’ he said, ‘Marian was my life. There was nobody else. Nothing else. She was … everything. You can’t forget something like that, even if it would be easier if you could.’

He took a breath, meaning to say more, but he didn’t know the words to even begin. He looked at the ground. He felt Sir Bors studying him.

‘So be it,’ the overlord said finally. ‘There can be little purpose in forcing you to stay. Deep down I knew this day would come – I only hoped I would have more time.’ As he spoke he took from beneath his tabard a rolled parchment. The wax seal was his own crossed spears and battle boar. ‘I wrote this for you the day you arrived,’ he said. ‘I wanted to know, if I failed to return from campaign, that the truth would not die with me. Where you’re going there are people who will lie to you. They were already lying to you, before you came here.’

Robin only stared at the scroll and did not reach to take it.

‘When you read these truths …’ Sir Bors said, ‘I want you to remember what we’ve tried to teach you: the greatest enemy you will ever face is yourself. Submit to fury and to hatred and you will become the monster you are fighting against.’

‘Loxley! Loxley, are you out here? Loxley!’

‘Stop there! Stand your horses.’

Bones and the others were drawing near, followed by the guards.

Robin took the scroll with an unsteady hand.

‘So then, be on your way,’ Sir Bors said. ‘By first light I want you far away from those three. Stick to the back routes – the main roads are becoming more lawless by the day. Farewell, Robin Loxley.’

Without another word he turned and headed back towards the citadel.

As Robin rode away he tried not to listen to his friends calling to him in the dark. He tried not to hear Sir Bors’ words, echoing through his thoughts.
You will be dead to us.

He forced himself to think of Marian, out there somewhere, alone, and he kept his eyes fixed ahead, on the dark and unknown road.

R
obin ignored Sir Bors’ advice and he kept to the major roads because they were quicker. While the night lasted it looked like a good decision. He saw nobody.

Around midnight he rested Ariadne, resisting the temptation to take a break himself, stomping back and forth to stay awake. He rode on, the landscape passing in blue and purple layers – open farmland and rolling hills, calm and quiet. He began to feel relaxed and then almost heady with the freedom of the road. Where the ground flattened and straightened he coaxed Arry into a gallop and he felt the wind bringing him fully awake, his cloak streaming like a banner.

But now, as dawn broke and a light rain started to fall, he began to see danger at the roadside and he slowed his progress to a walk. Just after sunrise he crossed a crumbling stone bridge and there beneath were three cut-throats. They had murdered a man and had stripped him of his clothes and now they were driving a sharpened stake through his heart. The killers froze and watched Robin cross the river.

A little further on he thought he saw metal gleam from a thicket on the opposite side of the track. Only when he rode over it did he see the outline of a heavy rope buried in the leaves. This was a garrotte line – the bandits would raise
the rope to knock a traveller from his horse. Robin didn’t know why they didn’t bother with him: perhaps they were waiting for a bigger catch, or lying in ambush for somebody specific. Whatever the reason, Robin was relieved to ride on unmolested.

In those early hours he saw plenty of other life. A bishop’s carriage, escorted by armed riders. A tavern, travellers gathering thickly there for safety in numbers. A stonemason’s wagon, pulled by a dozen oxen.

But as the day went on these signs of life became fewer. For many miles now he had seen nobody, not even bandits. Even the occasional village he passed was deserted, and Robin began to feel like the last person alive. At a crossroads he passed a row of stakes, each mounted with a human head. Their mouths were open and crows had pecked out their eyes. A warning to robbers, perhaps. But it seemed to Robin these dead mouths were urging him to turn back before he fell off the edge of the world.

But more unnerving than any of this was the forest. It had accompanied Robin his entire journey, at first only visible in the distance, but increasingly tight against the road, sometimes now spilling over the road so he was forced to ride through gloomy tunnels.

He knew now it was true, what Marian had told him when they were young, that Sherwood Forest was vast, and that different parts of it had different names and very different natures. Where it ran closest to Sir Bors’ manor it was known as Thorpe Wood. There it had been tamed, large parts of it cleared for timber, the rest crisscrossed with hunts and enclosures. The further Robin rode west the wilder Sherwood became. Now it loomed over him, tangled and ancient and black in its depths. Here was the true wildwood. He turned again and stared into the trees. He was
sure
this time he had
caught the edge of movement – something tipping its head – but he kept staring and there was nothing but old man’s beard bobbing in the breeze.

Stop imagining things
, he told himself.
There’s enough real danger on this road without inventing horrors
.

He stopped to give Ariadne another rest. While she drank from a stream he sat with his back to the forest. He couldn’t resist taking Sir Bors’ scroll from his backpack. At first his fingers only picked at the seal but refused to break it. What would these words reveal about his parents? Why had Sir Bors felt the need to shield him from these truths? His fingers went on bothering the wax.

At last he forced himself to break the seal and unroll the parchment. He stared at the writing, but initially he saw only meaningless swirls. He started again, forcing himself to take his time. During their years living in the tower, Marian had been teaching Robin to read and write, but she had never been the most patient of tutors, and at the academy Robin had proved better suited to physical pursuits than book study, so reading for him would always be a laborious task. What made this doubly hard was Sir Bors’ script: it was an erratic scribble, the letters lurching about the page like dying spiders.

Robin tried once more, tracing the lines with his finger. A few phrases lifted themselves from the babble.

…
A silent spring
, he thought one part read.

And another:
tearing of an angel’s wing
…

So far none of it made much more sense than Marian’s cypher. Did Sir Bors really write this nonsense-riddle?

One line looked like:
A son in darkness, a daughter chained.
There was something that might have said:
Fenrir’s lust
. Then several words he couldn’t read, then:
winter-born.

He read this last phrase over and over. Where had he heard that before? Why did reading it make his heart thunder?

He looked up. He had been concentrating so hard on the scroll he hadn’t heard the armed riders until they were almost on top of him. There were four of them, wearing black
half-armour
and blood-red cloaks. Stark against their breastplates was an image of a wolf, its teeth bared. The Sheriff’s Guard.

Robin went to Ariadne and kept his hand on her muzzle. Three of the horsemen looked at him briefly then turned away, continuing along the road, slouching in their saddles. The fourth soldier held Robin’s gaze. He was around Robin’s age, or a little older. Visible beneath his skull-helm was a shock of hair, orange as a wasp. His cheeks were dotted with scars, each one in the shape of a teardrop. He searched Robin up and down. He looked at the scroll in his hands. Finally he turned away and continued after the others.

Robin rolled the scroll and put it back in his pack. There would be time to decipher it later. His most pressing task was to find Marian. He swung into the saddle and continued on his way, overtaking the soldiers at a canter and leaving them far behind.

At last, as the day drew to a close, he saw landmarks he recognized. Here were the standing stones known as Merlin’s Dancers, and the overgrown mound of Beowulf’s Barrow. He skirted Thuner’s Fold, where he used to go with his brothers to shoot at crows.

And then finally, on the hillside, wrapped in mist and drizzle, was Wodenhurst. From this distance it appeared silent and still, huddled around the Trystel Tree, cowering beneath the wildwood.

Robin passed well wide of the village, following Packman’s Furrow into the valley. He splashed through the shallow river and climbed Lord’s Hill and approached the remains of the Delbosque manor.

He reached the boundary and tethered Arry to a tree. He walked among the collapsed buildings, grasses growing thick between the crumbled stone. He found the husk of the tower he and Marian had once called home. He stood there in the eerie quiet, and he almost believed he could hear her voice, reading to him in their den, whispering as they tumbled out on one of their adventures. But then these memories were swept away by thoughts of fire and panic.

Why would she come back here, of all places?

He looked for signs that she had been here recently but found nothing. And by now he knew he was just wasting time. Putting off the inevitable. Because he had become quite certain where Marian’s trail began: what she meant by
follow the Path of Angels.

He suspected too where the trail would lead, and he dreaded the idea.

In any case, there was no more he could do tonight. The rooks were already squabbling in their roosts and the sky was darkening into blood-red strips. He went back to Arry and they wound their way back up the valley, heading for the village.

Much of Wodenhurst was exactly as he recalled, only smaller. His brothers had taught him to swim in Mill Pond, and back then it seemed large as a lake; now Robin thought he could probably jump across that patch of water. Some of the sounds were the same: the lonely creaking of the waterwheel, the
clink-clink
, of Gord Moore working late in his forge. But then the hammering stopped. Robin felt eyes searching him. Candlelit faces at windows.

He stroked Arry’s neck and continued up through the lanes, beneath the limbs of the Trystel Tree. He couldn’t help imagining what he must look like to the villagers, returning this way, dressed in these clothes from Florence, riding this
courser worth more than all the livestock these people had ever owned.

Children came out to look. But there were too few children. Where were all the people? Half the houses looked deserted, their thatched roofs stripped bare by their neighbours.

The villagers went on staring. And by the time he reached the common ground the voices had started.

‘It
is
him.’

‘She said he’d return.’

‘You shouldn’t have come back here. This is no place for you.’

‘Keep riding. You don’t belong.’

He thought he recognized the voice of Agnes Poley, and Matheu Plowless, but nobody came fully into view so he could not be sure. He began to regret coming back here. He didn’t need the shelter, not really; he could sleep wrapped in his cloak somewhere off the road until it was light enough to follow Marian’s trail. So why had he come back? To be reminded? To try to remember?

He came to the top of the village and stopped in front of his old home. He barely recognized it. The stone walls stood whole but now the timber door was off and propped against the barn and most of the shutters were missing or hung loose.

Narris Felstone was in the croft, chopping wood. His axe hovered. His mother, Mabel, came out of the house and she froze, staring. Robin looked for signs of Warin Felstone, and Richard and Ida, Narris’s younger brother and sister.

Mabel saw him looking and shook her head. ‘Times have been hard,’ she said. ‘For all of us.’ She looked back up at Robin. ‘I’ll fetch fresh straw for your bedding. I’ll put something in the pot. We’ll get you comfortable. This is still your home, and always will be.’ She went back into the house.

‘Nobody wants you here, you know,’ Narris said, scratching his face with the stump of his left arm.

Robin ignored him. Of all the things that looked smaller than he remembered, Narris Felstone looked the smallest of all.

He led Ariadne to the barn, made her as comfortable as he was able, then went into the house. Mabel brought a bowl of nettle soup and she and Robin ate in silence. She gave him bedding and he laid it in front of the hearth.

When Mabel and Narris were sleeping Robin tried once more to make sense of Sir Bors’ scroll. It was impossible by the light of a single candle. He put the parchment back in his pack.

He couldn’t help thinking of his friends competing in the tourney today without him. He couldn’t help listening to the memories scuttling in the corners of this house. Eventually, he slept.