The Two Torcs (3 page)

“I know it’s lonely here in Sherwood, but do I need to leave you and that sword alone for a turn?”

“Very funny.” Robin thrust the blade out toward Will. “Take it and sell it. It will feed many families.”

“I think you should keep it.”

Robin’s eyes darkened. “Take it. You know I want nothing from Locksley—not for myself.”

“Keep it.” Will picked up the other three swords and slid them under a lashing strap on his saddle. “Locksley has just proven that he’s willing to trap and kill you. The other merchants will soon follow his lead.” He threw his hand up to stop a protest. “If there had been even one more soldier, you would have been in real trouble, Robin. Don’t be reckless. You need a sword, and it might as well be the best one.”

Robin pinned him with a glare.

He stared back, knowing he couldn’t blink or he would lose the argument. Then the outlaw’s brow furrowed, settling in for the contest.

Will’s right eye began clawing under its lid, scrabbling in its socket, wanting desperately to twitch, to blink, to wink. It felt wet, the strain of not blinking, of not looking away, wringing tears from it. He was about to break when Robin let out a sigh, and looked down at the sword in his hand.

“You’re right, my friend. I’ll keep it.”

Will smiled at his victory. Such things didn’t happen often, so he savored them when they did.

Robin slipped the sword into his belt and clapped Will on the shoulder.

“That cart is too big for only four soldiers,” he said, turning to look. “Let’s see what else Locksley has provided for the poor.”

Together they walked to the open door. Will stood back, letting Robin go first. He was startled when his friend jumped back with a sharp, harsh curse.

“What is it?”

Robin didn’t answer, continuing to curse Locksley’s name, his parents, and his ancestors.

Will stepped up and looked inside.

Eight men, bound, gagged, and blindfolded turned their faces toward him from inside the wagon.

“Locksley, you son of a bitch,” he said.

* * *

The huge stone was warm under Glynna Longstride’s palms, the surface smoothly rippled as she caressed it. Her fingers sought out the marks carved into it, slipping along edges worn soft by untold years of weather.

Rain and wind, snow and ice, heat and dust had beaten this stone for a thousand lifetimes, yet it stood resolute, defiant of all the efforts of the elements to wear it to nothing. It loomed above her head, leaning slightly to the east, pointed accusingly at the sun.

She moved closer, pressing her cheek to the surface. Her stomach brushed against it, and some energy passed through her, rambling and knocking low down to tickle the nether of her womanhood before spiraling up her spine to the base of her skull. She shivered as if touched by a familiar lover, one who knew her body as a musician knew his instrument.

Witchstone.

“Peel yourself away from there.”

The voice pushed through her pleasure, separating her from it. She turned, lifting her face but keeping her stomach and hands firmly on the stone. The field around her lay white. Striding across the stark plain came a man cut from the night. His armor stood out sharply. Each plate, every link of mail, even the long-bristled fur of the collar was a light-drinking darkness, a black as pure and uncut as expensive ink.

The only color showing on him was a gleaming sigil upon his chest, a symbol cut in lines and swirls of heart’s-blood red. She did not know what the symbol stood for, but when she touched it her fingers burned for hours.

His pale skin and white hair became lost in the haze of light reflected off the snow, and as he drew closer it appeared as if he were only a pair of wide ebon eyes and a sinister mouth of ruddy lips floating above a cruel carapace.

He dragged something with him as he walked, so that his footprints were wiped clean in a swath of smeared snow. He stopped a few feet from her.

The smile twitched her mouth.

“You didn’t bring the little prince?”

The man snorted. “It’s cold.”

“I noticed.”

“However, I brought you a present.”

He turned, dragging his burden around from behind him.

It was a man.

A monk.

Bound hand and foot, he had a knotted piece of rope cinched around his head for a gag.

The man was young, not much older than Robin.

Her heart twisted at the thought of him, and she felt it in her face. She stepped away from the witchstone, toward the captive. The moment she broke contact the winter cold howled against her exposed skin, drawing it taut across her face and hands. She pulled her cloak tighter around her.

The monk looked up at her, eyes wide. They were set a bit deep in his skull but pretty, curving down at their corners. They were the eyes of a poet, a man who could talk a summer girl out of her dress, though only if he had been born first. Second sons went to the monastery, became monks. Only God wanted the castoffs, taking them in from the poor, putting them to purpose. Denying them even the chance to talk to girls, much less talk them into bed.

She squatted, holding her stomach as she did. Immediately the pressure on her lower back eased. She wouldn’t be able to stay down very long, but it would feel good while she did.

She touched the monk’s face. It was cold, feeling like wax except where his short stubble scratched her palm. Spittle had frozen in the corners of his mouth, cracking on the surface of lips gone dark blue.

“He’s adorable.”

“He’s not that kind of present.”

“No?” She pouted for the man in black’s benefit. “But I’m not hungry.”

“Not that kind either. He has information. I want it.”

She smiled and a light flickered deep in her eyes.

“Oh, good,” she said. “A
plaything
.”

A pale lace of frost covered the window glass, catching the buttery glow of the fire that crackled and popped in the hearth behind her. It was low, but still cast enough heat to penetrate the linen gown and the scant garments underneath.

Marian’s back was dry and warm as a loaf of fresh-baked bread, but the front of her was so cold it felt damp, clammy. The two sensations kept her concentration sharp and she embraced them, considering first one and then the other in turn.

Anything
to keep her mind occupied.

Over the edge of the frost crystals she could see the top of mighty Sherwood. The barren trees alternately held patches of snow in nets of woven branches, or gaped open, letting it fall to be swallowed in the depths. The wood looked like a vast checkered blanket laid across the western part of the kingdom.

It was so bitter cold out there in the wilderness.

She turned from the window with a jolt and a flap of cloth. The warmth of the room brushed across her face, feeling hotter than it was because of the cold on her skin. She crossed the room in three swift strides, reaching her bed. Stepping high, she went over the bed instead of around it and dropped on the other side, falling into a hard wooden chair.

Leaning forward she pushed the mattress away from her, sliding its soft mass across the slats until a space opened as wide across as her forearm. A sheet of leather had been tacked to the slats, allowed to droop between them to form long pockets in the apron.

Between each slat lay a weapon.

A sword taken from a locker at the stables. She didn’t know who its owner had been. There was no mark on the plain wood grip or the simple leather scabbard, but the blade itself had been well cared for, honed to razor sharpness by hours of passing a whetstone over the edge.

Next to it lay the Duke of Raleigh’s family saber. The handle gleamed with inlaid pearl and gemstones held by gold and silver wire. The scabbard matched, a line of rubies tracing out the sigil of Raleigh’s family. This sword had become hers when her friend and servant Chastity liberated it from the Duke’s drunk and sleeping form at the bottom of a stairwell, after one of King John’s debauches.

The ancestral blade had been near impossible to pull free from its sheath, gummed in by years of neglect and disuse. It had taken creative thinking and a thorough application of oils to break it free. She’d been afraid that when it finally gave way, that the blade would be worthless—a ceremonial plaything, a decoration and nothing more—but it was made of good Spanish steel, stout on the spine and sharp on the edge, a heavy weapon made for cleaving bone.

A half-dozen knives were scattered between the slats, as well, from a wide-bladed kitchen knife to a thin poniard with no edge but a wicked point for punching through armor, to a small chirurgeon’s blade not half as long as her littlest finger.

To one end lay a fire-hardened cudgel, the wood black and varnished to a dull sheen, the knot on the end of it bloody red like mahogany. A leather thong wrapped the handle and the knuckle was dimpled from the dozens of skulls to which it had been applied.

To the other end lay the war hammer.

King Richard’s war hammer.

Her fingers stroked the handle, sliding over the worn oak stave and the slick strap of steel nailed to halfway down its length, there to reinforce the mounting of the head. She touched it, rubbing her finger pad over the point of the deadly spike that jutted from the back, opposite the wide, flat face. Tiny grooves squiggled on the surface of the steel, like worms after the rain, cut there by the torn edges of all the armor plate it had punched through.

This hammer had been in Richard the Lionheart’s hand when he ended the war between Geoffrey the Dark and Sir Lidamont, over the hand of a woman from Iberia. Geoffrey the Dark still walked with a limp because of this hammer, and the woman from Iberia still rubbed ointment into the puncture in Sir Lidamont’s side.

She’d found it in a cache, hidden away in one of Richard’s secret gardens, and had taken it before it could be discovered by John or one of his men.

A knock came at the door.

It was a familiar one, but nevertheless she tugged the mattress back in place, standing and smoothing her dress as she did.

“Enter,” she called. A key clattered in the lock for a moment before the door swung inward, pushed by a short figure swathed in a dull-green wool cloak. Snow that clung to the shoulders hadn’t yet begun to melt. Turning and locking the door behind them, the figure pushed the cloak up and over. It came loose in a wad that was tossed aside, revealing a young woman in rough clothes too small for her generous curves. A mop of blonde curls waved in the air, crackling as she shook herself.

“Och, it’s cold out there, Princess!”

“I went last time.”

“I know.” Chastity rubbed her hands together, moving toward the fire.

Marian moved close. “Any word?”

“About what?”

Marian hesitated. “My uncle.”

“Not a peep. No news either way.”

“Damn.” Marian’s voice came out a growl.

Chastity laid a hand on her shoulder. “No news isn’t bad news.”

“Crusading armies send word back when they land. That’s what kings do.”

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t land.”

“Then what
does
it mean?” she snapped angrily.

Chastity stepped back and Marian felt the small distance like a dash of ice water.

A blossom of shame opened inside her. She sighed, clearing the tightness in her chest with the deep breath.

“I’m sorry.”

Chastity shrugged. “I know it’s tough for you, Princess. Even without John and the Sheriff and their mischief, I know it’s hard.”

Marian had no words. None. She turned away so that Chastity wouldn’t see the despair in her eyes. She missed her uncle more than she ever thought she could miss anyone, and in these moments—the quiet moments—her missing him turned from melancholy to anger and back again.

It was exhausting.

“Be strong and of good faith,”
he had said.
“I will return.”

The rightful king’s last words directly to her.

Uncle Richard, you had no idea what you were leaving me to face.

She knew deep in her gut that none of the messengers she’d sent had made it through. Yet there
had
to be a way to reach Richard.

If he’s even still alive.

The thought came unbidden to her, filling her with an instant sense of terror. She prayed every night for his safety, sometimes weeping into the wee hours of the morning with the fervency of her prayers.

He wasn’t the only one she prayed for. She also prayed for her cohorts, those who had donned the mantle of the Hood to try to spoil King John’s plans. Particularly for Robin. Then she prayed for the children of the nobles, the young ones who had been stolen to keep their parents in line. The children nobody could find.

“Still no word on where they might have taken the little ones?” Marian asked, knowing already what the answer would be. If Chastity had such news, it would have been the first thing from her lips.

“No,” the young woman admitted. “No one seems to have any idea. They can’t be in the castle, though. There’s not been food leaving the kitchens unaccounted for.”

Marian took a deep breath. “You don’t think he’s killed them, do you?”

She waited for an outburst from Chastity, a reassurance that even John wasn’t that stupid or heartless. It never came, and Marian turned to look at her friend.

Chastity had gone pale.

“I don’t know, milady.” The formality in her tone told Marian everything she needed to know.

“You think he has.”

“I
pray
he hasn’t.”

“As do I. Let us think, though. If he has kept them alive, and they are not here, where would they have been moved to?”

“Somewhere secure, where they couldn’t escape and no one could find them. There’d have to be soldiers with them, and at least a few servants to handle the cooking and the like.”

Marian nodded. “Have any servants gone missing since the children were taken?”

Chastity frowned. “I cannot say for certain. I know there are a few I haven’t seen in a while, but no one moves about the castle as freely these days, so that may mean nothing. I will find out, though.”