Wild Boy (9 page)

There. A thickly spreading oak with just enough knobbiness on its mighty trunk.

Rook climbed, but it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. His brief burst of strength had passed. He hadn’t eaten in too long. He felt weak. Instead of scooting like a squirrel up the oak, the best he could do was crawl up, gripping like a badger. He hadn’t yet reached the concealment of the foliage when he heard men’s voices behind him.

“I hear one of them!”

“Where?”

“Yonder!” They crashed toward Rook.

Rook heaved himself to the first big branch, still in plain view, still an easy shot for someone’s arrow. Terror shook him worse than ever. Even a wild creature does not want to die. Hoofbeats sounded, brush crashed, and Rook could not help looking over his shoulder as four of Nottingham’s men burst into sight.

But not one of them glanced up to see him. They all gawked straight past the trunk of his tree, and one of them gave a hoarse yell: “Wolves!” They hauled on their reins, stopping their horses.

What wolves? Where? Rook had not seen any. But the men-at-arms snatched for their bows to shoot a hasty spate of arrows. Rook heard the swish of brush, a yelp of pain. The men relaxed.

“That sent them running.”

“It was wolves you heard, dolt.”

“Somebody got one.”

“Leave it. It’s outlaws we’re after. Come on!”

Without pausing to reclaim their spent arrows, they cantered off.

Rook clung to his tree, panting with weariness and relief, as they rode away. He heard something whimper, and at first he thought it was him. Then he saw the wolf trying to drag itself to cover. It crawled only a short way before it collapsed on the roots of his tree, head flat on the ground, its ribs heaving, a yellow-feathered arrow jutting waspish between them.

Rook had never seen a wolf so plainly before, although he had seen the pigs they killed, sometimes right in the pigsty. Since he had become an outlaw, a few times he had seen gray shadows flitting. Mostly he had heard fearsome howls in the night. But this wolf didn’t look fearsome. With its ears flattened in pain, it seemed like a long-legged gray dog lying there.

He heard a whine, and a smaller, darker wolf trotted to the dying one and bent to lick its face. A mate? Or a half-grown pup, a daughter, a son?

Brush rattled, branches snapped, and three big red deer bounded past—frightened from their thickets by Nottingham’s men, most likely. The dark wolf did not even give the deer a glance. It stood for a moment with its proud head bowed. Then it curled up close against the other one, licking its eyes and ears.

Rook bit his lip. He remembered wiping sweat from his father’s face as his father lay in the man trap. He remembered some of the sounds his father had made, dying. And some of the sounds he, Runkling, Jack’s son, had made.

The wounded wolf shuddered and stopped breathing. The arrow’s yellow tuft of feathers grew still.

Rook didn’t want to watch anymore. He turned his face upward and climbed. The first wolf had gone silent, but the dark wolf whimpered as if it were weeping.

R
ook crawled up the tree and settled himself in a muscular, comfortable crook of bough. Far above the ground, blanketed with foliage, he lay at ease as the tree held him like a mother cradling a baby.

Or like a father.

Far below, the dark wolf howled, grieving. Could the dead one be its father?

Stop it. Think no more of fathers
.

Looking for something else to rest his mind upon, Rook glanced around him—but then he saw the rowan. Close to where he curled in the tree’s embrace, far above the ground, a rowan seed had taken root on the oak, and now a rowan sapling grew right out of the massive tree’s broad shoulders. White blossoms were beginning to froth on the rowan’s feathery boughs, so that it stood like a dove, feet on the oak and head high in the sky. Every rowan was goodly, but this one seemed almost magical. A flying rowan, the country folk would have called it.

Rowan Hood
, Rook thought,
and Robin’s the oak
.

Robin Hood. Her father.

Fair, kind, mighty. A father worthy of any child’s dream.

I had such a father
. Jack-o-Shoats, Jack Pigkeep, Jack Woodsby, gentle and brave. Until the Sheriff of Nottingham doomed him to die.

But Tod … Tod’s father
was
the Sheriff.

Which of us is worse off
?

Was it perhaps better to have a kindly father, dead, than a cruel one, alive?

All that day Rook hid in the oak. Twice more he heard the rattle and swish of frightened deer running through the forest. And twice more horseback riders passed beneath him. Nottingham’s men. The first time, he heard their shouts as the dark wolf ran away from them. The second time he heard only their hoofbeats, the creaking of their saddles and the
jingle of their armor. He did not bother to look down. He knew he could not see them and they could not see him. He was not afraid.

Except of the strange ideas in his mind. Some of his own thoughts made him cold with fear.

When twilight had deepened to dusk and promised nightfall, Rook slipped back down to the ground, avoiding the stiff body of the dead wolf. He stood just looking at it for a moment, wanting to back away, yet at the same time wanting to kneel and caress the gray fur.

Wolves, in stark daylight? What had they been doing here, just in time to keep Nottingham’s men from spotting him?

Likely they had been frightened from their daytime hiding place, just like the deer. Yet Rook felt a warm shudder, a sense of presence, as if some spirit of Sherwood Forest had put an invisible arm around his shoulder.

“You saved my life,” he whispered.

The wolf’s dead eyes looked at him yet through him, past him, staring and empty. Soon the flies would come buzzing around them.

“Thank you,” Rook murmured.

The wolf lay as flat as forever, with its mouth open, its tongue hanging slack between its fangs. How many people had it killed with those fangs?

“Bah,” Rook muttered, turning away. “Scare stories,” he grumbled. False tales folk told, like the ones they told about outlaws. He could not imagine that the dead wolf had ever hurt anyone. No more than Tod—

“Bah!”

Fleeing his own thoughts, Rook strode into the forest.

He tried to walk quickly and found he could not. Too weak. His pace kept slowing. He needed to eat. But the clotted feeling in his belly had swollen until it hurt, and he walked on without foraging, because he knew he would not be able to eat until he had seen Rowan. Until he knew she was alive and well. She and the others.

He had to find them.

But he had no idea where they might be, whether at Robin Hood’s oak dingle or the rowan hollow or the hemlock grove or some other place.

And it scarcely mattered, for he had no idea where in vast Sherwood Forest he was himself.

He walked on, wobbly on his feet. Perhaps if he kept moving, he would stumble across something, some landmark he knew….

If he could see it. Which seemed unlikely. Night had fallen.

Dark. The whole world.

But then, far off in the darkness Rook heard a distant sound. Once, then again, then a third time, clear silver notes shining like a star to guide him.

He raised his head, took a deep breath, blinked water from his eyes and turned toward the music of Robin Hood’s horn.

For a long, weary time he stumbled through the forest, banging his bare toes against hard things and scraping his bare shoulders against rough ones while thorns scratched his bare arms and legs until they bled. No matter; a creature of the wild didn’t mind thorns.

But I do mind
, whispered a traitor thought deep within Rook.

No. No, such thoughts were not allowed. A wild boy didn’t care about thorns, or the pain of hunger, or the pain of wondering whether his friends were all right.

But I do care
.

Rook remembered the dark wolf’s whimper, the dark wolf’s howl. He remembered the blood he had seen on Rowan’s face, the arrow jutting from Lionel’s shoulder, Beau’s pale face as she tugged him away from danger. He remembered the way Tod had cried out—

He bit his lip as he struggled on.

Twice more Robin Hood’s horn sounded its silver notes to guide him before at last he saw the campfire’s warm golden light and recognized the place—the hollow with Robin Hood’s giant oak spreading over it. Rook forgot to harden his face as he hurried the last few steps toward—Rowan, yes, Lady be thanked. It was Rowan turning toward him in the firelight, a strip of bandaging in her hands.

Everything blurred, and for a moment he couldn’t see properly. But he heard many voices.

“There’s Rook.” One of Robin Hood’s outlaws.

“Rook!” Rowan called. “Are you all right?”

“
Mon foi
, look, the poor Rook.” Beau had her
accent faux
back. “All blood and blunder.”

“He’s done in,” said another outlaw.

“Rook.” Rowan touched his arm; even in the bleary darkness he knew the gentle power of her hand. “Sit down, let me look at you.”

He sat, and felt a wet cloth wipe his face, felt her touch strengthening him, and blinked away wetness until he could see her kneeling beside him.

“I’m fine,” she told him even though he had not spoken a word of his fears for her. “I wish I could start the day over and change it, that’s all.” He had never seen her face so bruised with sorrow as well as with blows. “Men dead because of me—”

“Do not say so, lass,” came Little John’s gruff voice somewhere behind him. “Only three badly wounded, and they might yet live. You have cared for them well.”

Rowan pressed her trembling lips together and said nothing.

“John,” complained a familiar voice, “she means Nottingham’s men too.” Leaning against the great oak, his shoulder bandaged and his arm in a sling, sat Lionel.

“Aye?” Rook could hear the shrug in Little John’s voice. “Well, Lady be thanked, ours are all accounted for. And now Rook’s back.”

“Rook,” said another voice, intense. Robin Hood crouched before him with—Lady have mercy, Robin was holding Runkling like a baby in his arms. “Rook, lad.” Worry grayed Robin’s eyes. “Have you seen aught of Tod?”

Rook just stared.

“Tod’s not here,” Robin Hood said. “No one saw where he went. Do you know where he is?”

I
t was nearly noon of the next day when Rook got up and walked away from Robin’s camp with Runkling trotting at his bare heels.

“Are you running off again?” Rowan called after him. Harsh words, for her, but he accepted them without anger. She had been up all night tending to the wounded outlaws, Rook knew, and one of them had died. Robin and Little John were off in the forest somewhere, digging a grave. Some other outlaws were searching for Tod, but not many could be spared, not when their comrades were lying hurt. No one had much heart for the search. Tod could be anywhere, maybe even back in Nottingham. No one had seen Tykell either, so on top of everything else, Rowan missed her furry companion…. Turning to look at her, Rook saw sleepless nightmares of worry in her face.

So, even though a wolf roams where he will, Rook answered Rowan, if only with a shake of the head. No, he was not running off again.

Rowan frowned. “You should rest, and eat some more.” He had eaten only broth and bread for her. “Where are you going?” Rowan seldom showed such exasperation.

Rook shrugged. He was only going to his father’s hut to get clothing and coverings. A jerkin for when the night air grew chill on his shoulders. Maybe some leggings, and sheepskins to sleep on. And he wanted the pigskin shoes his father had made for him. He was tired of banging his bare feet on stones.

But he did not know how it was that he had started to feel the cold and the stones again, and he did not know how to say any of this to Rowan.

“Oh, toads take you, go wherever you want.” Rowan turned her face away.

Rook stood a moment longer, but could not think how to help her. Silently he went away, walking off between the hazel bushes that edged Robin’s clearing, striding uphill into oak forest.

It should have been a fine day. Sunny, warm. Runkling trotted along cheerily, grunting with mindless good humor. Dogs, too, were like that, happy for no reason. That dog Father used to have, the one that helped herd the pigs, even after the foresters had cut its toes off, it still wagged its tail, happy just to be patted, fed, be with its family.