Shadow of the Wolf (24 page)

T
he further Will Scarlett sank into the gloom, the more foetid the air became, the fiercer his self-loathing burned.
How long has she been down here? How long can a person survive, breathing this miasma?

He released another length of rope and the pulleys creaked and the basket lurched deeper into the dark. All around him were the groans and pleading voices of The Forgotten – the noises swelling below him, passing close to his ear and echoing again above.
How long can a person stay sane, listening to this choir of the damned?

He lifted his lantern and tried to peer into the tunnels and caves that formed the cells of this prison. Sometimes he caught the flash of eyes, but immediately the wretch would raise their hands to cover their face, would shrink from the light the way a leaf curls against the heat of a fire.

Will descended; the voices followed.

No, noooo. I didn’t …

Help me.

Pleeeasse … What do you want with us …?

He listened to the voices and he dreaded what he was going to find at the end of his descent. He fought the urge to pull
on the opposite rope and hoist himself back to the light.
No. You put her here. You have to set this straight.

He began coughing. He halted the basket and swung in mid-air, feeling the ache of fever at the back of his throat. He coughed and kept coughing. He suspected he was probably dying, and he found the idea held no particular fear. Not any more.

He supposed he didn’t look out of place here today – his beard unusually wild, his uniform splattered with mud and blood. He had spent the past ten days in the western shires, fighting running battles with a bandit company known as Hydra’s League. Ten days of ambush and counter-ambush, of daylight raid and midnight skirmish, of rain and wind and no sleep. Finally Will’s band had scattered the outlaws. But his enemies’ arrows and the elements had exacted a heavy toll: he had limped back to the castle today with two of his men dead and another three dangerously ill.

Will himself was burning with fever, his body begging him to sleep for a week.
I’ll rest once this is done. I won’t put it off any longer
.

He descended further into the pit and reached the deepest depths of the oubliette. The basket came to rest on solid rock. He broke into another coughing fit and waited for it to subside.

He stepped out of the basket—

A filthy snarling thing flew out of the darkness, tearing at his eyes, biting at his face. There was a stabbing pain at his shoulder and in his neck. He fell backwards to the wet floor, his lantern clattering. He fought back, managed to reach out, to grab the object that was stabbing him in the neck – he threw the weapon away and in the same motion kicked his attacker, catapulting the wild-haired creature across the cavern.

He jerked painfully to his feet, threw himself on the
prisoner. By the spluttering light of the lantern he looked down into a fierce dark glare – the same intense eyes that had once stared out at him while all around them a village burned.

Marian Delbosque.

Somehow she had got loose from her bonds, and in addition had managed to fashion a blade from a fragment of bone. Beneath Will she struggled and scratched and kicked. But she had been here a long time and suddenly the fight went out of her and she lay limp.

‘Marian, I’m here to help you.’

‘Get. Off. Me.’

Will untangled himself. He stood his lantern upright and checked it; some of the oil had spilled but it was otherwise undamaged. From his backpack he took a bandage and a phial of juniper water and, still keeping his eyes on Marian, he began treating the wounds to his neck and shoulder.

‘I thought it was you who would need the curative,’ he said. ‘A fraction lower and you would have killed me.’

‘That was the general idea.’

‘And then what? You’d take the basket to the surface? There are locked doors up there, and armed guards. Could you get through them all?’

Marian sat back against the flowstone wall, hugging her knees to her chest, watching Will intently. Even all the way down here her grey-green eyes were luminous. She wore the same smoke-blackened cote and tunic she had been wearing the day they’d dragged her from that burning village. The memory of it came back heavy now and made Will wince.

Will Scarlett, child-catcher. How did you let yourself become this?

‘There is a better way out of here,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to help you see sense. I can take you back to the surface. You will have to stand in front of the Sheriff, make certain pledges. But
that’s all. Afterwards you’ll be provided for. A life of luxury, almost.’

Marian looked away, rested her chin on her knees. ‘Yes, they took me to that gilded cage,’ she said. ‘I failed to show sufficient gratitude, so they put me here instead. It makes no difference. A prison is a prison is a prison. If that’s all you came to say, I’d thank you to leave.’

‘Marian, please. That’s lunacy. You’ve been here too long. The air in this place—’

‘It was fine until you arrived. You brought the stench. I’d be content here, if only the quality of the visitors would improve.’

Will listened to the rattling of chains and the moaning voices falling from above. Now he could hear other noises too – even worse sounds perhaps for those trapped down here – people talking and working in the castle and its grounds. These were natural caves and many shafts and fissures ran to the surface. Some channels brought wafts of blessed fresh air, but some also brought the occasional faint laugh or echo of children’s games.

‘Marian, this place, if it doesn’t kill you it will break you. Take what the Sheriff is offering.’ He moved closer, knelt at her side. ‘It’s up to you now – you can save yourself. Rejoin the world of the living. All that’s happened, you can put it behind you. All wounds heal, given time.’

Will wondered if she had understood – wondered if already her mind had slipped too far – but then she looked up and glowered.

‘No, no, that’s not it at all,’ she said. ‘Time doesn’t heal wounds, it just drives them deeper, down into your bones, where you can’t see them but where they can devour you from within, until one day there’s nothing left but an empty skin, flapping in the wind. That’s what I learned about you, Chief
Rider, from our friendly chat on the road. All those people you’ve killed, or left to rot in places like this – not all of them deserved their fate, did they? – but in any case you did what you were told, and the knowledge of it is eating you whole.’

She pushed her tangled hair out of her eyes and smiled at him thinly. ‘You still don’t have the first idea what all this means, do you? You don’t have a clue what the Sheriff is searching for – what he’s afraid of, what he wants – but still you go on following him, blindly, like an old loyal lapdog, barking when he says bark, wagging your tail for a treat. You don’t even know why you’re here. You didn’t come to rescue me from this place – you’re here to save yourself. If I go to the surface meek and mild, if I sit in his gilded cage and don’t die, that’s one less life weighing on your shoulders.’

Will stood, feeling dizzy, steadying himself against the wet wall. ‘I can see I’m wasting my time.’

‘There’s only one way you can put this right,’ Marian said. ‘One way to atone for all your crimes …’

Will went to the basket, fetched his backpack.

‘… I’ll leave here with you,’ Marian continued. ‘I’ll grant you forgiveness. The day you bring me the Sheriff’s head.’

Will closed his eyes. His throat burned, his skull thumped in time with the
plip-plip
of water dripping.

‘You don’t know what you’re suggesting,’ he said. ‘The Sheriff’s power is near absolute. There are hundreds who do his bidding, thousands more who follow his rule. What can I do, alone?’

Staying at arm’s length he pushed his backpack close to Marian’s feet. ‘There’s meat and bread and fresh water,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back soon with more.’

Marian looked away from the pack, hugging her knees.

‘There are fights that can be won,’ Will said. ‘And there are things beyond our control. Wisdom is knowing one from the
other. The Sheriff is here to stay, that’s a fact we have to live with. But we don’t have to accept this torture. We can get you out of here.’

He went back to the basket, climbed inside. He pulled on the rope, rose towards the open air, leaving Marian there below, knowing without doubt that tonight when he slept he would once again dream of her eyes, watching him from the gloom.

A
knight of the realm, standing at the prow of a warship. He is sailing for home, triumphant, a golden sword at his hip, his cloak billowing. A young woman is there, on the shore, watching him, seeing all he has become …

But look closer. The knight’s cloak is crimson, and glistening. It is made of flesh and blood. And its rippling has nothing to do with the wind. The cloak is still living. It is writhing twisting constricting …

Robin woke choking and frantic, feeling trapped in a body that was not his own. He took long shuddering breaths. His limbs came to rest with a final spasm and twitch, and he lay there gathering his senses.

He found he was in a natural shelter beneath a shelf of rock. He did not recall crawling in here. He searched his memory to see what he did remember and he found … something raw and dripping … voices screaming … the stench of …

He pushed these thoughts away, crawled quickly out of the hollow. From nearby came the trilling of a stream. He moved towards it, staggering slightly, his throat fiery, his head groggy. The feeling of rousing from the longest sleep. An idea
nagged at him: something had happened, close by, and it was important he remember …

He reached the stream and went to hands and knees to drink. Once again he searched his memory, but this time, to orientate himself, he went further back, put everything he knew side by side, piece by piece. He had fought the Wargwolf at the close of summer. He knew that much for certain. He looked for the weeks and months that followed but found nothing. The whole of the autumn was still a complete blank. Winter was a little clearer. Winter had passed in a half-dream in which Robin was fully a forest creature, roaming the snow-filled woods, slaking his thirst and his hunger, concerned with nothing else. Thinking back, it seemed a glorious dream and one he could happily have never left.

But now it was spring, and the paths were unblocked, the rivers unlocked. And the Sheriff’s soldiers had returned in force … dragging Robin painfully, hazily awake …

He listened to the tinkling of the stream. And he listened to his own bones creak and groan – like the beams of a home as they settle among the stones. With the noise came a twisting in his joints, but it passed quickly: the worst of this physical torment was over. His major agony now was of the mind. What had he become? Had he taken possession of this second skin, or had it taken possession of him?

What had happened before he crawled into that shelter? Half-formed recollections rose once more, black and howling.

At the same time he tasted blood in the water.

He stood and walked upstream.

He found a wildflower glade, and a scene of slaughter.

It stank of death and was silent – even the scavengers had avoided this massacre. He moved around the clearing, feeling nauseous, smelling earth soaked with blood, bending to touch
moss thick with it. He sniffed at the corpses and examined it all with his fingers, reconstructing events in his mind’s eye.

It had happened recently, and quickly. One of the soldiers was slumped in the centre of the glade, an arrow protruding from his spine, his head bowed as if in prayer. A second man, speared through both legs, had crawled some distance away, like an injured insect, leaving a slick slug trail. The third ranger had run as far as the stream, where he lay trailing one arm in the water. Occasionally he flapped, like a landed fish. But these were only ghost-spasms; he was dead, the same as the rest.

Robin stood perfectly still for a long time, numb with guilt and horror.
You did this, and you barely even remember. What else have you done? What have you become?

Hazily he thought of his past life – his time with Sir Bors – all he had been taught about valour and the rules of war. These soldiers had not died facing their enemy. Their crossbows were still cocked, their blades unbloodied. They had been murdered from the shadows.

Consumed with remorse, still feeling thick-headed, Robin didn’t hear the other soldiers until they were very close. There were three more of them, approaching the glade. Robin went to a king oak. Taking hold of creeping vines, gripping the rough bark with his toes, he scuttled up the trunk. He reached a high sturdy branch and ran along it in a half crouch. He stopped directly above the clearing – he suspected this was the killing stand he had used to attack the soldiers below. He listened to the three newcomers, drawing near.

‘I still say it’s a waste of time,’ one of the men was saying. ‘How long has it been? Months. No chance we’ll find them alive.’

‘Makes no difference,’ said a second man. ‘You know his rules. Every ranger comes back, even if he’s just bones.’

‘We won’t find even that much,’ a third man said. ‘You know what I think – they never made it as far as the wildwood. Krul always was a mad dog. I say he killed Bul and Oxman himself, in some tavern over a game of dice, and now he’s gone to ground.’

‘I’ve heard wilder theories,’ said the second man. ‘I tell you what Treadfire said? He swears blind that Edric Krul came—’

Pushing through the undergrowth, into the clearing, the men were swallowed into its silence. Several moments passed during which none of them flinched and they barely breathed.

Finally a twig snapped and they were moving forward again slowly. A blade hissed from its sheath. A
click-clack
where another man wound his crossbow.

Krul and Bul and Oxman.

Did Robin take those lives too? He searched his memory and found more of those red smells and putrid sounds and he knew it must be true. Half of him sank further into remorse. But at the same time … another part of him felt a savage shiver of pride. The world was a better place without Edric Krul. And these other men who died, they each carried the Sheriff’s blades. Robin had seen such men torturing farmers, burning homes. It was men such as these who put Marian in a cage and robbed Robin of his eyes.

And now here were more of them, below.

He strung his bow, took an arrow from his quiver. As he did so he fought an argument with himself.

What good will it do, killing these men?

Justice. Revenge.

They may not even have been there that day. It was the Sheriff. And Jadder Payne.

These are the same. Kill them all.

If I let them live, they might lead me to where Marian is being held.

Kill them.

What purpose will it serve?

Kill.

All other thoughts failed and this final command echoed over and over,
kill kill kill
, until the word became meaningless and was merely a sound, throbbing in time with his heart. Already he felt himself slipping beyond thought. Mindless rage rising.

He nocked the arrow. Every tremor of the forest had become perfectly distinct. Below him, tucked in a hole in the tree, he could hear a shrew crunching insect shells. Above, the footsteps of a wolf spider across bark. He was aware of each rustle and sniff of the men below. He could smell the sweat on their palms where they gripped their weapons.

‘Derek Yilman,’ one of the rangers said, who was kneeling near the corpse at the stream. ‘And Wilt Scragger over there and Samuel Topps. I suppose they were sent looking for Krul too. Weren’t Rilke and Gouger part of this patrol? I guess they didn’t make it this far.’

‘Yilman was a good friend of mine,’ another soldier said, winding his crossbow. ‘Whoever did this had better be long gone. If I catch up with them—’

‘Over here is where they broke through,’ the third man said. ‘See these snapped branches. So they came running across, in this direction … and they stopped here, where Scragger is. But it doesn’t make sense. There are no tracks following. Whoever did this must have had wings, or—’

This soldier had come to a halt in the centre of the clearing. His heartbeat had begun to thunder and Robin knew he was looking up.

‘What is it?’ said the man at the stream.

With shaking fingers the man below was fitting a quarrel to
his crossbow. ‘I’m … I can’t be sure. Come over here, both of you. Take a look at this.’

Robin remained so still a death’s head moth came to rest on the bodkin of his arrow.

‘Look, there,’ said the ranger below. ‘That part of the branch, see. The mist swirled, and I thought I saw … There! Look!’

Robin drew his bow. The death’s head moth took flight.

The ranger was yelling, raising his crossbow …

Robin loosed his arrow – it sped towards the thundering pulse in the man’s neck.

The second ranger stumbled, slipped, scrambled for cover. The third took a sharp breath and raised his weapon. But they were both too slow – Robin had already nocked another arrow and let loose. And even as the killing proceeded, he felt himself forgetting it, dumb fury descending in a thick mist, smothering the guilt and deadening the screams, leaving nothing but a numb nameless horror in their place.