Chapter 25 #2
‘Nunquam,’ she replies – ‘never’ in the old tongue – as if to say there is no debt between them.
They cut through the larder, shelves muscle-tight with winter’s hoard.
Apples gone soft with bruises rot in their bins.
Salted pork sweats in the damp. Marian’s skirts catch on a protruding nail; Allen’s hand is there, quick, freeing silk with a whisk that doesn’t tear it.
When they reach the back door, they halt, listening.
Outside, the east hedge is a dark seam, and behind it the forest draws the horizon like the low line of a sleeping beast.
Eamon turns to face them. ‘This is where I leave you,’ he says.
Marian turns. The light is unkind to him. It carves his cheekbones into knives and shows every bruise that worry has pressed around his eyes. He looks, finally, what he is: a man who has dragged himself to the edge of a cliff and is about to step off. He does not reach for her.
‘Once you’re across the cobbles,’ he continues, ‘do not break stride. The outer gate should still be unguarded.’ Eamon tests the latch and it yields without complaint.
For an instant he holds the door only wide enough for light to slip through, his head bent in the slat of brightness so that the white in his hair flares.
‘Go. Build a life the Sheriff cannot touch. Choose a path that does not end in ledgers or lords.’ His mouth works once, as if the next words catch on bone.
‘Choose a new name, Marian. Because once you cross Sherwood’s threshold, you can no longer be a Hallomere. ’
The words are a blade and a benediction. They split something inside her that has been calcified since childhood.
Marian studies his face for the apology he tried to give and she cannot accept. She finds only the man she has always known – terrified, calculating, late. She holds his gaze. Rage still lives there, sharp as flint, but something older moves beneath it: grief.
‘I’m not sure I ever was,’ she finally answers, and the steadiness in her voice surprises her. Then, quieter, because there is nothing else left between them worth trading: ‘Goodbye, Lord Hallomere.’
A single nod is all he gives her before he opens the door fully.
The courtyard slaps them with cold air and the tang of iron. Marian lifts her chin the way she learned as a child, reminding herself the world is a burden she’s been taught to carry without complaint, and lets the dress be her mask. Allen falls into the easy, jaunty pace of a hired player.
Up the slope, the hedge looms to their right, a green wall gone dull with the season, its underbelly snarled with bramble and last year’s bird nests.
They are halfway across the yard when the ground shudders.
Movement knifes across the far field.
Antlers crest the low rise beyond the manor wall.
Lox breaks from the treeline at a dead sprint, every inch of him fury honed into grace.
The hill rolls beneath his boots as if Sherwood throws the world forward to meet him.
Roots surge like muscles beneath the grass to meet him, the hill itself ensuring his passage is clean.
The sun lances his antlers and breaks, gilding the tines in a savage halo.
Even from this distance she can see the wrath set in the line of his jaw, the controlled burn in the flex of his hands.
He is coming for her like the storm the Sheriff knew he would be.
Not far behind him, she sees the familiar outline of the other Merry Men. Will, with their knives at the ready, and Little John with a large club held aloft, as if it were no more than a twig.
The sight splinters something in her chest. They came. All of them. Against every warning, every trap.
For her.
A shout tears from the manor steps as a contingent of soldiers floods the yard.
Spears glint and crossbows rise, as they march up the hill.
Will darts between their ranks, carving through leather and steel.
Little John’s roar shakes the courtyard as he swings his club through a line of armoured men, scattering them like stalks before a scythe.
Lox barrels through the wreckage with feral determination. A soldier steps in his path, but Lox doesn’t slow. He slams into the man, lifts him off his feet, and keeps moving. Another swings a halberd. Lox catches it, snaps the shaft like kindling, and throws the splintered end into the man’s chest.
He doesn’t look left or right. His gaze is fixed on one target: the Sheriff.
Marian’s eyes trace his path, and the early-morning sun glints off lattice wires, so thin you’d miss them if you weren’t looking. They vibrate in a way that, even from far away, makes the fine bones of Marian’s ears ache. A tone pours out, high and warped and twisted.
She opens her mouth to scream his name, but it’s too late. On the slope, Lox’s stride hitches.
There’s no visible snare, only the sudden wrongness of a creature who should be moving and is not.
The force catches him in the joints, in the lungs, in every line between heart and earth.
He tries to call speed from the ground but his arms flail, clawing at the pale lines criss-crossing over his body.
The field hums brighter, drinking what he offers like a cruel, thirsty mouth.
Lox falters and the world rips open beneath Marian’s feet. One of his hands snatches at the grass; the other flings wide, as if to steady whatever part of himself still controls the pull of soil and root. Will and Little John are preoccupied with the guards.
Lox is on his own.
The Sheriff steps forward from the shadows as if seeking an ovation. A handful of men follow him – not the broad mass of guards, but their steel glints. Faces set hard with the ease of men who have been paid to do violence and enjoy it.
Her father stands frozen at the threshold, slate-faced and suddenly small. For an instant Marian wonders if he’ll run to the hedge and come to Lox’s rescue. Instead, he just stands, hands clenched at his sides, and his mouth forms a line she cannot read. The betrayal writes itself on his face.
Marian charges forward, crossing the yard in a long, terrible bound. Silk slaps at her calves; the dress she has been forced into squeals soft protests around her thighs. Allen lunges, his grip a hot clamp at her elbow.
Lox drops to one knee despite himself.
Marian shoves the fistful of skirts higher, muscles coiling. Allen catches her again, pulling her hard toward the hedge. His fingers bite into the soft meat above her elbow. ‘You can’t help him,’ he hisses. ‘If you cross that field, you’ll sign your death warrant next to his.’
‘We can’t just leave him!’
‘He’s Sherwood’s Rootkeeper,’ Allen snaps. ‘It’s his duty to die for—’
‘Lox didn’t come because he’s the Guardian.’ She jerks free and spins on him. ‘He came in spite of it! He came for me.’
Marian doesn’t wait for Allen to grab her again. Her vision funnels to a single point of focus: Lox straining against invisible cords, and the Sheriff walking to meet him.
She doesn’t think about plans. She doesn’t think about dying. She thinks about how the first time Lox said her real name, it peeled something false from her bones; about how he kissed her, worshipped her body and taught her what it meant to be a part of something free.
Soldiers shout. Two break to intercept her.
Marian ducks the first, remembering Allen’s drills and Little John’s patience; the second lunges for her wrist, fingers grazing the skin.
Marian plants a heel, pivots hard, and drives her shoulder into his sternum.
He folds and she doesn’t spare him a second glance.
And the Sheriff never sees her coming.