Chapter 25 | Robin
“ROBIN!”
I jolted up from Tuck’s lap, my head swimming, my eyes burning and bleary. Tuck also popped up with a gasp, torn from slumber.
The voice had been a shriek. Calling my name.
I shared a confused look with Friar Tuck, who appeared just as tired and stunned as I was. “W-What was that?” I croaked. “A dream?”
I sniffed. The sharp smell of burning pine and oak.
Then I noticed smoke curling in underneath the flap of the tent, slowly wafting into the small space.
I coughed.
“Shit!” Tuck swore, rolling off his cot.
I jumped to my feet, grabbed my bow from beside me, and moved for the flap.
“Wait for me, Robin!” Tuck growled, tying his habit completely closed. He reached into his pockets and came out with Atonement and Discipline strapped across his knuckles, then gave me a stern nod.
We barreled out of the tent, unprepared for whatever lay head in the darkness—
And it was madness.
The camp was in disarray, a complete state of bedlam. Thick black smoke choked the dark night sky from two burning tents. The tents were completely ablaze, and were dangerously close to creeping up toward hanging tree branches nearby.
I blinked in shock, mouth falling open, trying to get my bearings.
It was a nightmare scene: Merry Men running around like headless chickens, trying to find weapons, shouting and wailing. Someone screamed in a muffled voice and came shrieking out of the closest burning tent, his body completely engulfed in an inferno.
I didn’t even know who it was.
The sweet, sickly smell of burning flesh reached my nose and I wretched as I watched the man stagger two steps, lift a hand to the heavens, and crumple to the ground in a heap of ash and fire.
I drew my bow with shaking hands.
“Fuck!” Tuck yelled beside me, above the din of cries and madness. He pointed forward. “That’s your tent burning!”
He was right. The second tent that was aflame was certainly the one I’d been sleeping in. If I hadn’t come visited Tuck tonight to hash things out with him, I would have had a similar fate as the burning pile of a man near us. But who is doing this?
My eyes caught Will Scarlet out the corner, two swords drawn as he sprinted through camp and launched himself over an overturned sitting log. Alan-a-Dale was beside him, evidently returned from his scouting, and my heart slammed against my ribs with relief, knowing he was alive.
Yet none of us were safe.
My head moved on a swivel, taking in the rest of camp, trying to make my next move and make sense of the carnage.
Little John charged out of his tent with his quarterstaff in hand, and Robert and Uncle Gregory were near him.
My heart soared more, until it lodged firmly in my throat and refused to move. My mates are alive. And my family. Thank God.
“Robin!” came another scream, this one feminine.
I looked over as Emma came streaming toward me, dressed in a thin sleeping shift, pulling her younger sister Gracie behind her by the hand.
Gracie was disheveled—both of them were—and shocked into disbelief. “Where’s Ada?!” she wailed madly.
A groan and grunt filtered in, echoing across camp, and I spun around again to find Will Scarlet skewering a man through the chest and ripping both swords out in a spray of blood. Will shouted something unintelligible and moved on—clearly knowing who our enemies were, even if I didn’t.
Who was that man he stabbed? I don’t recognize him . . . or, wait, do I?
A newcomer. One of the—
“Enid!” cried a woman, and I twirled around, moving toward the voice.
It was Maria, one of the girls I’d been locked in the carriage with—the one who dared to help me escape with the key in her mouth. She lunged across a fire pit and shouldered a man out of the way, rescuing poor Enid, the rape victim from the carriage, from being sliced by the man’s sword.
My stomach plunged.
The man with the sword was one of the seven newly joined recruits. One of the Muddy Meddlers.
Maria caught my eye over the man’s shoulder.
“Maria!” I yelled, and drew an arrow from my quiver.
Maria shielded her body over Enid’s smaller frame, hands held out at her sides in a show of protection.
The man ruthlessly stabbed into her, and Maria staggered with a gasp. She fell to her knees.
One more slice, and Maria fell from her knees to her side with a severed throat, blood pooling around her unmoving body.
“NO!” screamed another voice across camp—Griff, the young man who swore to protect her in Much the Miller’s Son’s absence.
Griff had already seen death tonight when he joined us on the raid to capture Bishop Sutton.
Sutton! Where is he?
I scanned the field and found Sutton at the tree, tied where we’d left him, glancing around with wide eyes of shock and awe.
My eyes swiveled again.
Enid crawled away from Maria’s murderer, silent and mute as she had been since the carriage incident. The murderer stalked toward her, stepping over Maria’s body.
I closed one eye, aimed, and loosed my arrow.
It struck the man in the back, causing him to arch as his hand lifted. He dropped his sword.
Griff ran in holding a burning log and slammed it across the man’s face. Sparks and embers sprayed across flesh as the man collapsed with a wail. Griff threw down the log and went to his knees over Maria, lifting her limp head onto his lap. “Maria . . . no!”
Behind him crept a woman—that gray-haired lass, one of the two women from the Meddlers. She had a sickle in her hands. Griff didn’t see her coming.
I drew another arrow as quickly as I could, took aim, and launched it before I could get a steady shot.
It struck the woman in the shoulder, twisting her old body sideways and unbalancing her as she lifted the sickle to plant into Griff’s back.
Griff looked over his shoulder, croaking—
Just in time to catch the blade in the soft part of his shoulder. He cried out and fell back, the curved blade stuck in his body.
Little John appeared and swung his quarterstaff so hard against the old woman’s face that her head exploded like an overripe melon in a shower of bone and gore.
Blood splashed across my huge lover as he roared, “Stop killing my friends!”
Tears came to my eyes. I stuttered a step and my vision swam.
Armison dashed out of the shadows near me, blade in hand. My stomach curled into knots.
He swung once and I lifted my shortbow crossways.
Thank God for Alan’s excellent carpentry, because it stopped the blow with little more than a knick in the fortified wood.
I swung the bow left, right, batting it across Armison’s body.
Then Tuck was beside me, fists flying, and with quick and precise strikes he punched Atonement and Discipline into Armison’s ribs and torso, flattening muscle and crunching bone.
Armison wobbled in place, eyes wild, and dropped to his knees.
I moved on, knowing he was out of the fight if not dead, and pulled out another arrow in anticipation.
The remaining woman from the Muddy Meddlers—a woman near my own age—was rampaging across the burning camp like a banshee. She chased orphan girls, yelling, “Come here, you filthy little bitches! Earn your retribution!”
A horse whinnied and stampeded across the burning embers of various fire pits. Someone I didn’t recognize rode atop the steed, head bent low.
I led the man and beast with my bow, not recognizing him as a Merry Man, and loosed my arrow.
It caught a tree branch and bounced harmlessly away.
Then the man was gone from camp, careening into the road, and I had to look away because there were more pressing matters.
The young Meddler woman terrorized screaming girls with her short dagger—
And then Maid Marian leapt out of nowhere and charged at the woman barehanded. She screeched and tackled the girl to the ground.
Rosco, Tick, and Jimmy were right behind Marian. They watched for a moment as the two women rolled on the ground, wrestling for dominance, until Rosco found an opening.
He pounced, shoving Marian away, and held the Meddler woman down by straddling her chest and pinning her arms above her head on the muddy ground. Tick jumped on her next, ripping the dagger from her hand. He stabbed into her over and over again—five, ten times—until she was spurting blood and coughing and dying.
Jimmy hugged Tick from behind and ripped the crying, sniffling lad off the dead woman.
The orphan girls looked at them in awe.
I didn’t look at them in awe. No, I looked at Maid Marian in awe, as she sat heaving, her mane of red curls tumbling like a raging fire all around her head.
She seemed to feel my stare and looked over, giving me a small nod as Rosco helped her to her feet.
“Ada!” Gracie cried out, and chased off after the orphans, where her lover was huddled. Emma went after her sister.
I panted and heaved. Marian . . . saved those girls.
Slowly, I turned away and surveyed the camp for more danger.
Robert placed a well-timed strike into a straggler’s leg, and the man went to his knees. Robert ducked, Uncle Gregory charged in behind him, and decapitated the ailing Meddler with a huge swing from his giant greatsword.
I jolted with a start at the sudden sight of a rolling head on the ground, the geyser of blood that erupted from the hole in the dead man’s neck.
I blinked away the shock, coughing from the thick, choking smoke.
“We have to move,” Tuck ordered, wrapping a hand over my shoulder.
Garbled laughter from behind me made my feet freeze to the ground. I looked over my shoulder.
Armison was on his side, blood leaking from both sides of his lips. He gave me a gory grin, his body broken from Tuck’s punishment.
I stormed over to the man, crouched, and grabbed him by the collar of his filthy tunic. “Why?!” I screamed in his face. “We let you into our camp, Armison! Why did your people do this?”
His grin widened, eyes unfocused and rolling. “Courtesy of the Sheriff of Nottingham, you silly whore.”
He reached for the handle of a sword next to him.
I dragged an arrow out of my back-quiver first, faster, and slammed it into his neck.
Armison coughed red, his entire chin coated.
Rage swelled inside me. Unfiltered and unstoppable. I pulled the arrow and stabbed it again and again into his dying body, until I was jabbing the arrow fletching-deep into a pulpy, soft corpse.
Tuck yelled, “Robin, he’s dead!”
I snapped to and gritted my teeth, barely able to recognize the Muddy Meddler from all the blood.
The Sheriff of Nottingham. Of course.
“I heard what he said,” Tuck growled as we made our way deeper into camp, where it seemed the fighting had stopped.
Nearby, others were tossing buckets of river water onto the burning tents.
“This is the Sheriff’s doing,” I said. “He planted those fucking Meddlers.”
“Aye. Which means Guy of Gisborne—”
“Had nothing to do with it!” I snapped before he could finish, feeling strangely defensive. “I’m telling you, Tuck, those bastards aren’t allies in the way we think they are. Why would Guy lead us to Sutton’s whereabouts, helping us capture him, if he just meant to terrorize our band once Sutton was in our control?”
Tuck stared blankly at me, clearly not having a good answer for that.
My voice was too loud. It carried across the field of crying, wailing men and women.
Bishop Sutton sat up where he was tied against the tree. He looked at me askance. “Ah. So it’s Sir Guy I have to blame for my predicament. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
The priest was entirely too calm given the destruction surrounding him. As if he’d seen this type of Hell on earth before, and thought nothing of it. His true colors came to light, reflected in the fires of the pits that burned in his irises.
Inside me, the rage swelled to new heights.
I wasn’t in control of my own emotions or body. My legs carried me toward Sutton—helpless, bound, frowning at me. Lifting his chin in defiance as I stormed over to him.
I imagined all the ways I’d peel his skin from his muscles and leave him for the ravens to feast on. How I’d pluck his eyes out and cut his tongue from his blasphemous mouth before finally letting him die a horrible, painful death.
I held the bloody arrow I’d killed Armison with in my hand, gripping it so tightly I risked snapping the thing like a twig.
When I came to Sutton, I yelled my thoughts in his face. “This is all your fault, you cursed bastard!”
I lifted the arrow to stab into him, not caring about the fallout or the repercussions—
Large arms wrapped around my body from behind, lifting me off the ground and spinning me away.
Tuck shouted in my ear, “You promised, Robin!”
“Gah!” I screamed. “Get off me, Tuck!”
“He’s not worth it. Lass, we have more to take care of.”
As if on cue, painful howling filled the night.
Will Scarlet and Alan-a-Dale were huddled over Griff, who was writhing in pain on his back, lying next to poor Maria’s corpse, sickle blade still lodged in his shoulder.
Shame and guilt swallowed me whole. My entire body slumped in Tuck’s firm grip. I dropped the arrow and nodded my understanding, trying and failing to speak past a lump wedged in my throat.
Tuck let me go, and we hurried over to Griff.
He gritted his teeth in pain, holding onto Will Scarlet’s arm and pulling at his sleeve. “Tell me she’s alive, Scarlet. Tell me Maria’s alive!”
I glanced over. She wasn’t.
Will snarled, “She’s with Much the Miller’s Son now, boy. You’ve done your duty.”
Griff wailed in agony. “I’ve failed her. Oh God, I’ve failed everyone!”
Will grabbed the bleeding young man by the collar and shook him. “Shut the fuck up, lad! I’m not losing you like Much, so sit still goddammit!”
Tuck kneeled next to Will and held Griff’s body down. “We have to remove the sickle to reduce chance of infection. It got him in the meat. He’ll live if we—”
“Just fucking do it, chaplain!” Will yelled in his face.
I bit my lip nervously, watching.
Little John ran up, legs bent in a fighting stance like he’d just finished someone off. “I count six dead Muddy Meddlers.”
“One of them got away on horseback,” I said, gulping hard past a dry throat.
“Aye, I saw.”
“He’s going to report to the Sheriff of Nottingham what’s happened here. It was a ruse, John.” I hugged him tight, shoving my face against his chest. “I’m so stupid for letting them in. I’ve been entirely too trusting.”
“It’s not your fault, little hope,” John said, wrapping his arms around me. “It’s mine.” His voice was low, raspy, and tinged with grief. He looked over at Robert, nearby, and said, “You were right, Loxley. You were fucking right.”
My brother sheathed his sword and sagged where he stood. “I wish to God I hadn’t been, mammoth. Fucking hell, what a mess. I’ll go count the dead and wounded on our side. Gregory?”
“Coming, nephew,” my uncle said, and turned to leave. Then he stopped and shot me a pitying look. “Don’t blame yourself for this, dear niece. There’s a reason why John here calls you ‘little hope.’ It’s because that’s what you represent to the Merry Men and Oak Boys. Don’t lose that. You can’t go changing yourself or losing your virtue for every wicked, vile person on God’s green earth. Otherwise, they win. Understand?”
I nodded dumbly, like a child, sniffling. His words helped quell the angry spirit rioting inside me, yet it did little to help how I felt about this situation.
Maria was dead. Griff was possibly on his way to join her. Another man who we couldn’t even identify had been burned to death. Six men and women who called themselves Muddy Meddlers were meeting their maker.
And that wasn’t even counting the dead from earlier tonight.
Tears fell down my cheeks.
Little John pulled me back and wiped them away. The towering wall of a man stared down at me. “Your uncle is right, love. You can’t take on all this heartbreak and pain alone. Leadership is a heavy burden to bear. You don’t have to do it alone. Please let me be there for you.”
I nodded again, unable to speak.
Griff’s moans abruptly faded, and it was a stark change from the layer of agonizing sound that had been surrounding us up until that point. I dashed a look over, and saw Tuck breathing heavily.
“He fell unconscious when I pulled the blade out,” the friar said. “He’ll live, though. God willing.”
I nodded to him and Will and Alan.
Alan said, “I’ll go join Robert and Gregory and help count our losses. You have this handled, little badger?”
Will nodded. “Go.”
Alan turned to leave—
And froze where he stood. “Oh. Fuck.”
Everyone spun around to where he was looking.
“Get away from me, you wretched, godless little cunts!”
A gasp ripped from my lungs.
Bishop Sutton’s head was moving left to right—the only part of his body he could maneuver tied to the tree like he was.
Surrounding him, closing in on him like a pack of hellhounds, were girls I knew well: Enid at the front, a jagged knife in her hands; Ada next to her, also armed; Emma holding her hands on her head behind them, struck dumb; and three other girls from that slaving carriage.
“Enid!” I shouted, bolting out of John’s arms to run across camp.
The poor girl glanced over her shoulder at me. Her face was slack, eyes unseeing. She had always been troubled, ever since her assault. The terrors she relived nightly still scarred her, months later.
Perhaps troubled was not the right word, because now she looked positively possessed.
Just like that full-moon night when we escaped the carriage and flew through the woods in our bleeding rags and rage. Howling at the moon like feral animals.
Enid displayed all of that in her single, unblinking expression at me over her shoulder.
Then she turned back to Bishop Sutton.
“Enid, wait!” I gasped.
“Girl, do you have any idea who you’re—”
Bishop Sutton’s words cut off as the girl plunged her dagger into his side.
Sutton groaned, mouth opening on a silent scream, eyes bulging in shock.
That first stab encouraged the others, and then Ada stabbed into him. Then another girl, and a fourth. All over Sutton’s body they jabbed their daggers and knives, again and again.
I stilled halfway across camp, slapping a hand to my mouth. Watching in sheer terror and numbness.
The girls howled as they had back at the carriage. Feral, primal, angry, and needing somewhere to exact their retribution. Someone to blame.
It just so happened that that someone was a defenseless, tied-up priest, and one of the most powerful men in the country.
They pierced him over and over, until his pristine white robes were trailing with red streaks, lines of blood. Until the gore was dripping from his chin and his eyes were dewy, glassy, and sightless.
They kept stabbing him once he was dead, all but ripping apart the bishop’s body.
And I just watched, unable to do anything to stop it.
“Oh good fucking God,” Tuck eked under his breath as he sidled up next to me. He made the sign of the cross over his body. “Lord have mercy on our souls.”
The squelching of the girls’ daggers plunging into flesh became a wet, grotesque sound. They kept stabbing and stabbing until their skinny arms got tired.
By that point, everyone in camp was bearing witness in a circle behind them, dumbfounded. Emma was on her knees, weeping loudly into her hands.
Will Scarlet and Alan-a-Dale returned to my side, having just caught wind of what was going on here.
I had been too distracted by Griff’s wound to stop the young women from executing Sutton. We all had.
“Well,” Will said simply, hands on his hips, staring at the bloody carcass of Bishop Sutton. “That’s not fucking good.”