Will in Scarlet (13 page)

“That’s why Much stays here,” said Will. “The trees will keep the horses hidden, and Much will keep them quiet. And he can have them ready if we need a quick escape.”

“I’m not a stable hand!” said Much. “I’m a thief!”

“You’re a lookout,” said Rob. “And a good one. We should do it Will’s way. You stay here and keep your eyes open for those patrols.”

“He’s right,” said John. “We need the horses to make a quick getaway if things go sour.”

Rob brushed his hands on his pants. The matter was settled. “Much stays here. The rest of you—time’s wasting.”

Will lowered himself into the passage, careful to avoid Much’s gaze as he disappeared into the hole. He knew what the boy was thinking. He was thinking that Will didn’t trust him, that he’d found a way to keep the boy behind to protect himself from a knife in the back. While that might be true in part, it was also true that Will wanted to keep the boy safe if possible.

The irony of protecting the one who might be trying to kill him was not lost on Will. His life had turned upside down and just kept tumbling about him.

The passage was big enough for a normal-sized man to duck through, and true enough, John had to crawl. Though not nearly as tall, Stout found his wide gut to be a problem in spots, and Rob threatened to grease him up like a pig if he got stuck. As it was, he slowed the lot of them down, and on more than one occasion Will had to stop and wait for the rest of them to catch up. Waiting in the dark, surrounded by dirt walls that seemed to be closing in on you every second, was not a pleasant way to pass the time.

The passage turned from dirt to stone as they made their way into the interior of the castle. A ladder led to a flight of stairs that ended in a secret door in a rarely used storage room. Will could hear Stout behind him, out of breath from the climb.

“Don’t you … don’t you get too far ahead,” panted the fat bandit. “We’re staying together on this one, you and me.”

Stout grinned at Will, showing all his yellow teeth. Was that some kind of threat? It didn’t matter. Whether Stout trusted him or not was irrelevant to what he needed to do.

“Fine,” whispered Will. “But keep your voice down!”

They emerged from the tunnel without making too much more noise, although there was barely enough room for the four of them to stand upright in the storage room. Will doused the little hooded lantern they’d been using for light, and after a few moments of listening at the door for footsteps, they stepped out into the hallway.

The castle was dark, but torches still burned out in the yard, and numerous guards could be seen through the windows warming their hands over braziers of hot coals. Will’s father kept just a skeleton crew of guards on the night watch, but Sir Guy was a more paranoid ruler. And he was right to be. Will couldn’t be the only one in England who wanted the Horse Knight dead. But it was well past midnight, and the feasts were all done for the day, and the kitchens had yet to start work on breakfast. If there was any time to move around the castle unnoticed, this was it.

“All right,” said Stout. “Where’s the treasure?”

They all winced as Stout’s voice echoed down the hall, but no one came to investigate.

Will pointed over his shoulder. “This way,” he whispered. “We have to go higher.”

It was nearly impossible to move silently in their stolen soldiers’ armor, so they’d have to hope their disguises worked if they met anyone along the way. If they did meet any servants from Will’s household, he was hoping that the half helm would disguise his face enough so as not to be recognized. And he’d been given one of the guard’s swords at last—it was necessary
to play the part of mercenary. He’d need the blade before the night was through.

As they climbed the steps to the main tower, they passed a single servant girl carrying a dirty chamber pot. Will didn’t recognize her, but he kept his face turned down just in case. Luckily, she didn’t give the four of them a second glance, so she must’ve been used to seeing armed men in this part of the building, even at this late hour. That was both reassuring and troubling. The servants might not care about unfamiliar faces, but other soldiers would. If they stumbled across the wrong guards, they’d have little choice but to draw steel.

They reached the entrance to a long, curving stairwell, with doors on either side. It was a stairwell that Will had traveled countless times in another life. Rob stepped up beside Will and whispered in his ear.

“These look like they lead up to the lord and lady’s living quarters,” he said. “I thought we were looking for a vault.”

Will hadn’t expected any of them to be familiar with castle layouts, but obviously Rob was.

“Lord Shackley never wanted to sleep far from his silver,” Will said. “He kept the vault in his room.”

Will suddenly felt Rob’s hand on his arm, stopping him in his tracks.

Rob leaned in close, angry. “So you are taking us into the lord’s bedroom.
Sir Guy’s
bloody room? Are you mad?”

Stout and John had stopped as well, curious what the two were whispering about. Will tried to think of an excuse, fast. He was too close to his revenge to have to stop now.

As it turned out, he didn’t have time to think at all. One of the side doors opened suddenly and out stepped three men. The first two were guards of the castle, Guy’s men. The third
stepped out behind them and was holding a large lockbox in his hands. He looked out of place in his woodsman garb, with his dirty white scarf and strange braided beard. The ends of which were blackened and burnt.…

The two groups stopped in their tracks, and there was a surprised, tense moment as they looked each other over.

“What are you men …,” began Tom Crooked. Will had hoped that their helms and uniforms would be enough to disguise them, but there was one man who was impossible to hide.

“Bloody hell, it’s John Little!” Crooked shouted, pointing at the giant. “Kill him!”

Tom Crooked had his sword out of its sheath in the blink of an eye, but before the man could swing it, Rob threw a sudden punch at his face, knocking him backward and sending his lockbox clattering to the ground. It landed with the distinct clank of coins being jostled within.

Shouting an alarm, the two guardsmen stepped up to take his place and were met with John’s and Stout’s steel. Swords clashed around them as Rob and Will drew their own swords and turned to face the sound of booted feet running toward them. Someone else had heard Crooked’s call.

“This had better be a really big treasure,” said Rob.

From down the hall came three more guards, swords drawn and at the ready. They fought back to back now—John and Stout on one side, Rob and Will on the other. Each pair of men had three enemies to deal with. Bad odds.

Rob’s fighting style was wild but not undisciplined. He was always on the offensive, pushing back against two of the guards and forcing them to cede ground, while Will was doing his best to keep his single opponent’s blade at bay.

He’d studied swordplay and trained to be a warrior since a very young age. But that’s all it was—
training. Play
. This guard was actually trying to kill him, and that changed the dynamics of a fight. The guard swung his sword in long, powerful arcs, but he was hacking away with it like he was chopping wood, trying to use his greater size against a smaller opponent. The impact against Will’s own parries was already making his arm numb. But such a tactic left the guard unbalanced. Osbert had shown Will that you never put all your strength into a blow. Just enough to do the job.

Will waited for the man to swing again, then leaped backward. He trusted that John and Stout had his back covered, because he couldn’t see where he was landing. The guard’s swing went wide with nothing to stop it, and the man stumbled forward as his sword cracked harmlessly off the floor.

The guard looked up just in time to see Will’s boot kicking him in the face. The man’s head snapped backward and he fell.

There wasn’t time to celebrate, though, as Rob was still fending off two men. But when Will turned to help, he backed into someone who shouted his name.

Stout was there, glaring at Will, his own sword raised.

No sooner had Will spotted him than the bandit was forced to fend off a fresh attack from Crooked himself. John was wrestling on the floor with two guards at once (a fight that wasn’t going to go well for the guards). Rob had one of the guards on point against the wall. The mercenary had lost his sword and seemed to be surrendering, but the second had flanked Rob and was readying a blow at the man’s back. There was no way Rob would pivot in time to avoid it.

The guard swung, but Will was there to parry the blow. Their swords clashed, and the guard backed up, buying Rob enough time to bring his sword around to protect himself.

“You’re welcome!” shouted Will. After all, he’d just saved Rob’s life.

John had the guards on the ground. Stout was busy with Crooked, and Rob and the last guardsman were now engaged in a furious duel. That left …

The guard Will had kicked in the face came back at him with a snarl, charging him even though he was weaponless. Unfortunately, the guard was so nearly blind from his bleeding broken nose that he tackled the two of them into the stairwell, and together they tumbled down the steps and out of sight.

Will came to a rough, skidding stop about halfway down the first flight of steps, landing painfully on his rear. But he was lucky, as the guard had continued rolling all the way down until he lay unconscious in a heap at the foot of the steps.

Will took a deep breath and climbed back up the stairs, wincing and limping as he went. It wasn’t possible to actually break one’s bottom, was it?

Atop the steps, the fight was over. One guard had surrendered, three were unconscious, and the last was lying dead on the ground at Rob’s feet, a bloody wound next to his heart. There was no sign of Crooked.

“There you are,” said Stout.

“We have to go,” said Rob. “Crooked got away, and he’ll alert the whole castle before long.”

“He fled like a cowardly dog,” said Stout.

“Just what was Tom Crooked doing here?” asked John.

“I don’t know,” said Rob. “But of course he recognized your massive face. Can’t really disguise that, can we?”

“You think he’s in league with Sir Guy?” asked Stout. “Would a knight actually partner with an outlaw?”

“Sir Guy pays mercenaries to do his bidding—perhaps he
found Crooked’s price,” said Rob. “Time to ponder later. The castle alarm’s been sounded, so we’re leaving. Now!”

“No!” said Will. They were close. So close. The lord’s bedroom was just up one more flight of stairs, and that was where they’d find Guy. Will was sure of it.

“We still have time to get the treasure,” said Will. “This way!”

Will sprinted off toward the stairs as fast as his wounded bottom would take him. He ignored Rob’s calls for him to stop. Each step was painful, and he really was beginning to wonder if he’d broken his backside, but he wouldn’t allow himself to slow down. There wouldn’t be a second chance at Sir Guy.

Up the stairs past his old room without stopping. The guards that should’ve been stationed in the family quarters must’ve been the ones they’d already fought. They’d heard the sounds of battle below and come running.

Down the hall and to the great oaken door at the end. The lord’s bedroom, his father’s room, which had been empty for years now, ever since Lord Rodric had ridden off to war. An empty bed now defiled by that murderer Sir Guy of Gisborne. Will forced himself to pause before going in, to focus. Sir Guy was no simple castle guard. He was a killer.

Will listened for the sounds of pursuit but heard nothing. Very well. If Rob and the others had fled, then he’d do it himself. Or die in the attempt.

The door opened easily. For a moment, Will remembered opening this door in times past, coming to tell his father about a compliment he’d earned from his tutors or awkwardly confessing some minor crime Nan had caught him in.

He half expected to see his father hunched over his table, his nose in a book.

Instead, he found a dark, unused room. Of course his father wasn’t there, but neither was the Horse Knight. The bed was made and hadn’t been slept in. The hearth was cold. No one had used this room in quite a while.

So where was Sir Guy?

Will had lied about the patrols. Much had seen it in the boy’s eyes. And if he’d lied about the patrols, then what else had he lied about? Admittedly, it was a shock to find out that the secret passage was real, but every good sneak thief and ne’er-do-well knew that a seed of truth didn’t add up to a whole.

If the secret passage was the seed, the rest of the plant was probably rotten. That meant no patrols and, most likely, no treasure.

So what was Will Scarlet up to? Much had watched the boy closely, not just because he was pleasing to look at (and saying that he was a sight prettier than your average bandit wasn’t exactly high praise). No, she’d watched him because he’d had plenty of opportunities to escape, and one by one he’d passed them by. Back at the watchtower, during the chaos of the fight, or whenever Stout took a turn at night watch because everyone knew he slept through his shifts. But Will hadn’t slipped away. He’d wanted to bring them here, to this castle, and he’d wanted all of them to follow him inside. Everyone except Much.

Which was precisely why she felt justified going in anyway.

Her plan had been simple, and it had seemed like such a good one until she’d gone and gotten herself lost. Following the tunnel had been easy—she’d had room to spare—but once she emerged from the storage room, things got a bit trickier. She had no idea where the men had gone. If Will was indeed leading them to treasure (which she doubted), then they would most likely have headed downstairs. Though she’d never seen one herself, she’d heard that most treasure rooms were kept in the lower levels, beneath stone. But since Will was lying about all this, he could have led them anywhere. He might’ve deposited them directly into the prisons or marched them in front of the captain of the guard.