Shadow of the Wolf (30 page)

Y
ou know this place – this realm of ancient darkness.

Your wolf-self remembers. It calls to you.

But there are depths here even you cannot fathom – like the primordial reaches of the ocean – there are things living here never glimpsed by human eyes. What would they look like to you, if you could see them? What stories could you tell if you managed to return to the light?

This is the realm of forgotten gods; the home of nymphs and naiads and faerie stuff. There is danger here, make no mistake. The blackness of madness and forgetting. But even this is preferable to the ways of man, so you head deeper and deeper into the unknown, yearning for the seclusion and the silence; the regeneration and the nurture. The opposite of man and all his tortures.

You keep going, further and further into the nameless dark.

Robin follows badger paths, thousands of years old, deep into the wildwood, past the glade where he first met Cernunnos, and deeper still, and now into realms where he is sure no other person has ever set foot.

It is midday, and the sun bright above, but here beneath the cathedral trees it is almost nocturnal and growing cold. Towering beech trees are wrapped in ropes of ivy and creeping
vine; every inch of forest floor and rock and fallen log is coated with a deep carpet of moss. He keeps moving and the forest grows denser still. He can sense the wolf pelt changing, darkening to the black of shadows.

It is teeming with life here, despite the gloom. Above the waterholes mosquitoes are so numerous Robin has to keep one hand clamped to his nose and mouth to keep them out. Flies and bees are noisy on the ivy and the rowan trees. They are busy too on Robin – the wolf fur is crawling with insects – nesting, burrowing bodies that Robin can feel on his skin and
beneath
his skin. He no longer brushes them away or crushes them; they are a part of all this and so is he. He feels them leaving their eggs, nurturing their grubs in him the way he is nurtured by this place, and all of this feels correct. He feels heady, almost mad, with the idea of surrendering to the wildwood and never going back. Soon, just as soon as he finds the true heart of Winter Forest – a little further yet – he will lie down and allow the wilderness to grow over him. He will feel its roots twining with his veins, his bones fusing with the stones of the forest floor. How easy it will be to cast off the last scraps of his human skin and sink into the green and be at peace.

He pushes on, hunting and foraging as he goes. A monster oak has fallen, and in the warm glade created a fawn hides in the grass while its mother feeds on flower heads. He hears the hind limping away, feigning injury, trying to distract Robin from her young. He ignores mother and baby and continues on his way, stopping instead to dig up the tuber roots of dead men’s fingers. In fallen tree bark he finds wolf spiders, fat and juicy with their egg sacs still attached, and he is pleased. He sucks them down whole.

He moves on, seeking the heart of the wildwood. But even now he is struggling to forget all that has happened. Before
she was interrupted by Narris, Mabel Felstone had not finished her story – still he did not know who his real parents were or what happened to the people he thought were his family, or why they abandoned him.

It makes no difference,
he tells himself.
They’re gone. It doesn’t matter who did what. It doesn’t matter if they deserved their fate or not. Did I deserve all that has happened to me? There is no such thing as justice, right or wrong, there is only the weak and the strong.

Robin’s family had been weak, and so they were unable to protect him. Marian, for all her cleverness, was weak also, and so she had suffered and died. That is the way of the world. That is all there is.

The victors and the vanquished. The quick and the dead.

Listen here: a goshawk, imperious on its killing stand, the feathers of a hundred songbirds littering the ground. It has a fresh bullfinch in its talons and is ripping it apart in shreds. And feel this: a fallen tree, still wrapped in the python-vines that strangled it to death.
It is the same here
, Robin thinks.
There is no justice, natural or otherwise. There is only the mighty and the fallen. The weak and the strong.

And then another thought rises. An idea he has long been trying to keep buried.
I am the strong. I am the strongest.

He stops near a beaver lake and he hears the beavers slapping their tails on the water, warning that a top predator is near. In the trees jays shriek their two-tone alarm. Squirrel bucks quit their games and head for higher boughs.

Everything here fears me.

And that is how it should be …

He turns and listens to distant noises he had been trying to ignore. He sends his senses into the green, searching for the cause of this disturbance he can feel rippling through the roots. Yes, there it is: a village on the edge of the forest. There is fighting there, and fire and death.

Robin senses one man in particular. A man dressed all in black, one side of his face like melted wax.

Here is the man who stole Marian and robbed Robin of his eyes.

Everything should fear me. That man most of all.

He probes further and he senses the suffering this man is causing. The fear and misery of villagers. A man burning alive. And … somebody else there … someone arriving on the back of a cart …

A person in a cage.

A young woman, tortured and dying.

Dying because of Robin.

He runs, heading for that village, following deer trails and badger paths, the undergrowth opening before him, allowing him passage, blackthorn and bramble drawing in their claws. He runs faster, gripping his bow, stringing it as he goes, muttering a prayer to the forest that he won’t be too late.

T
he four newly arrived soldiers, once they had finished hoisting Marian into the Trystel Tree, made their way towards the southern edge of the village.

‘I must apologize, Chief Rider,’ the Sheriff said. ‘I have continued to keep you in the dark. In fact, there is a third matter we must resolve here today. Not as vital as the phantom outlaw perhaps, but significant, nonetheless.’ As he spoke he looked behind him and nodded. The three captains of the guard were stepping their horses forward. The four new arrivals were approaching Will from the front.

It all happened so fast.

Will was still reeling from the shock of seeing Marian, near death in that cage. By the time he realized what was happening, by the time he had reached over his shoulder for his sword, the soldiers were on him from both sides and he felt a wet crack at the back of his head and the world pitched forward and turned black.

Will blinked. His head throbbed and felt icy cold. He couldn’t move his arms. Something hard was pushing against his spine. He found he was sitting upright against the stone wellhead, his hands tied. He looked blearily to the western edge of the
village and he saw Ironside and Borston Black were similarly restrained. He looked around the rest of the village, getting his bearings. On the eastern ridge, Jadder Payne had lit the fire beneath Much Millerson’s feet. Horor Conrad had regained his senses and stood in front of the smouldering pyre, holding a cloth to his ruined nose.

The Sheriff looked down at Will. ‘Good, you are still with us. If Marshal Treadfire had killed you I would have been displeased. You and I are going to spend many days together before I allow you to die. For you there will be nothing so quick or merciful as a balefire.’ He looked up at the forest, before turning once more to Will. ‘I meant what I said earlier about anger, about how it must be moulded to best use. My fury, at this moment, could not be topped even by God. And yet, would you know it? Do I not appear composed, on the surface? I shall need my fury when you and I arrive back at the castle. I do not intend a single drop of it to go to waste.’

Will tried to speak, but his tongue felt too big for his mouth. ‘Let e uffersss go,’ he managed to mumble. ‘If aa nuffffin to do wiff em.’

‘Captain Treadfire,’ the Sheriff said. ‘Give the traitor something to loosen his tongue.’

Sansom Treadfire knelt and tipped a drinking bladder, pouring ale across Will’s face. Will began to work some life into his mouth.

‘Why are you holding Ironside and Borston Black?’ he said slowly. ‘They have nothing to do with this. They tried to talk me out of it.’

‘Very noble,’ the Sheriff said. ‘But no, I know their part, the same as I know yours. You should understand, better than anyone, that nothing happens in this realm without my learning of it. I have ears and eyes everywhere. I know
those two travelled to Winter Forest with you, to make a deal with the outlaw. They too will pay the price of treason. But rest assured, their suffering will be as nothing compared to yours. You have not watched Jadder Payne at work, have you, in his chambers? I can tell you this: after the first few days his subjects begin to look at him with something like awe in their eyes. With something almost like love. The man is an artist. You will be his masterwork.’

The Sheriff stroked his mare’s neck. He bent to whisper something in her ear, but then straightened and stared, unblinking, towards the wildwood.

Something was happening near the treeline. One of the pikemen had sat down on his backside, like a petulant child. A second man went to the ground, and a third, crumpling like puppets with their strings cut. There was shouting, and a metallic
ping
and
zip-zip
sounds.

Dark shapes were emerging from the forest, like startled birds. They appeared to rise slowly at first before accelerating forward at great speed. One of the flashes raced towards a crossbowman and he went to his knees, his weapon firing into the ground.

The forest
, Will thought, his head throbbing and his thinking confused.
The forest is coming to our rescue.

But then he saw the dark shapes were arrows. They had crow feathers as fletches: that was why they looked like angry black flashes.

Robin Hood is here. The trap is sprung.

‘So, the waiting is over,’ the Sheriff said. ‘We reach our main order of business, at last.’ He stood in his stirrups and raised his voice. ‘An incentive for the man who kills the outlaw. Ten pounds in silver. If he comes to me alive, fifty pounds to his captor. Any man who runs will receive his reward in the company of Jadder Payne.’

At the treeline more dark shapes were spreading their wings. A mounted ranger tumbled from his horse. Pikemen were advancing, huddled behind their shields. Longbowmen were loosing into the trees. But they were shooting blind – still there had been no glimpse of Robin Hood. And still his arrows continued to race down the slope. A crossbowman went to his knees to wind his weapon and stayed there, huddled around an arrow in his groin.

‘He will have to show himself eventually,’ the Sheriff said. ‘And then we shall see the true face of this monster.’ He wriggled his fingers back into his gloves. ‘In fact, this Robin Hood may have done the Sheriff’s Guard a favour. He has reminded me what a powerful tool fear can be. And people fear most what they cannot see, is that not so, Chief Rider? What do the rangers call our outlaw? The Shadow of Death. He steals life unseen, like the plague. What power! Power that should have come to me. When the outlaw lies at my feet, I intend to borrow his skin. I shall receive the boon that should have been mine all along.’

Will looked towards Much Millerson. Flames now were licking the pyre, but the big villager still hadn’t uttered a sound. At the gibbet, the magpies had been chased away by a gang of rooks, which now took their turn jabbing their beaks through the bars.

‘Observe those pikemen,’ the Sheriff said. ‘Resisting their urge to run. Weighing their fear of the outlaw against their terror of me. The monster imagined, versus the devil they know. The outlaw will not be so frightening once he shows himself, that I can guarantee.’

It was at that moment Will caught sight of Robin Hood. The outlaw had left the forest and was moving along the treeline. At first he was little more than an outline – a green-black blur against the green-black of the leaves. But
then he came into clear view, moving down the slope, loosing arrows on the run.

Zip-zip
sounds. Two more soldiers falling, their blood running in rivulets down the furrows of the field. As Robin ran he notched, drew, let loose, notched, drew, let loose. Two pikemen blocked his path and they fell, holding their throats.

At the sight of the outlaw, some of the soldiers had frozen, staring. The dead eyes of his hood glistened. His wolf-pelt cloak trailed the ground, obscuring his legs and feet so it looked as though he was gliding across the ground, moving in a zigzag, the way a fox stalks its prey.

A crossbowman came to his senses and let loose, but his quarrel went wide. Another arrow appeared at Robin’s bow and the air hummed and the guard fell. The outlaw continued down the slope, letting an empty quiver drop and drawing from another, slung at his hip. A pikeman spun to the ground, an arrow in his eye.

The Sheriff’s smile disappeared. For the first time something like doubt crossed his face. As Robin drew closer, details of the battle were becoming horribly distinct. The outlaw was armed only with a shortbow, yet his next arrow removed a man’s arm at the elbow. He loosed again and a mounted soldier was decapitated, the head rolling down the field, the headless horseman galloping away and fountaining blood.

Will could see now that Robin’s left arm throbbed and pulsed – it writhed with what looked like tendrils of black mist. When he drew his bow the tendrils tightened and when he let loose they flowed forward, a wisp of the dark stuff flying with each arrow.

His next shot sliced off a man’s leg. Another punched through a steel breastplate and into a soldier’s chest. The
range of his bow was also impossible. His next black-shrouded arrow arced far into the village and left a longbowman slumped across a dung-cart.

This was the moment Will saw fear flicker in the Sheriff’s face. Robin was still hundreds of paces away and yet that last missile reached almost to where the Sheriff sat. Others had seen it was time to retreat: Jadder Payne had mounted his horse and was hurrying away from the execution ridge; Horor Conrad too was galloping towards the Sheriff.

The Sheriff turned his mare. As he did so he pointed down at Will. ‘Marshal Treadfire, take the traitor and—’

The Sheriff screamed. An arrow had speared his leg, puncturing the platemail near his knee. A second shot glanced off his breastplate.

All was confusion then. Jadder Payne appeared at the Sheriff’s side and took the reins of his mare and began pulling the panicking animal away. Sansom Treadfire and the rest of his troupe were helping to bustle the Sheriff to safety.

Robin had reached the northern edge of the village. But now he was out of arrows. He drew a knife. It flashed darkly and sliced away a sword hand. He swept across two more men, leaving fountains of blood in his wake. At this distance the black thing on his arm looked like oil, flowing and surging as he ran and attacked. His mouth was locked in a grimace, as if the black pulsing was causing him great pain – or as if the killing itself was torment.

He surged towards the Sheriff. But the gap was widening. Jadder Payne and Sansom Treadfire and the other soldiers had spurred their horses into a gallop and they were taking the Sheriff’s horse with them, the Sheriff slumped forward, both arms locked around the mare’s neck.

Robin stopped and pulled an arrow from a corpse. He sent it arcing high. It landed where the Sheriff had been a
heartbeat before. He found another arrow and tried again but now the Sheriff was beyond even his prodigious range.

The outlaw became still, the black writhing of his arm pulsating slower.

The Sheriff had escaped, the drumming of the hooves starting to fade. The valley was loud with the sounds of injured men, and with the frantic efforts of the villagers to rescue Much Millerson from his burning pyre.

Robin stood a moment longer, his head tipped forward and to one side. Then he turned towards Marian. He moved closer to the Trystel Tree, and the crow’s companion. He knelt at the corpse of a crossbowman and he twisted an arrow free. He nocked the bloody thing to his bow. He drew, took aim, sent a shot through the bars of the cage.

The arrow found its mark in her heart. Death would have been instantaneous.

Will watched this with disbelief. He could see Marian was beyond saving: her wounds were too severe. But he had expected Robin to try. After searching for Marian for so long, he had expected him to show some emotion at least … or to hold some kind of ritual or … something.

He looked at the crow’s companion, rocking slightly from the impact of the arrow.
At least her suffering is over. It was all Robin could do for her, in the end.

He looked back towards Robin – already the outlaw was approaching the wildwood, fading into the dark. And a moment later, as quickly as it spat him out, the forest swallowed Robin Hood and he was gone.