jadey36 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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bbc_robinhood2013-12-05 01:47 pm
jadey36) wrote in bbc_robinhood2013-12-05 01:47 pm
Entry tags:
Trapped
Title: Trapped
Author:jadey36
Prompt: none – I just felt like writing another fic in this series
Rating: pg-13
Characters: Guy, Robin, Much, Marian, Vaisey
Summary: Guy’s hope of escaping Robin’s wrath is thwarted when the outlaw finds Guy’s hiding place
Word Count: 3,152
Disclaimer: Robin Hood belongs to Tiger Aspect and the BBC. No copyright infringement intended. All rights reserved.
Author’s Note: Further fic in the Outlaw Guy series.
1 – A Different Life
2 – Fitting In
3 – Falling Apart
4 – Back to Black
5 - A Glimmer of Hope
Trapped
“He’s in here,” Guy hears Robin tell whoever it is who is with him.
“Are you sure?” Much asks, clearly fearful about entering the cave.
“Yes,” Robin says. “See this. That’s blood, human blood.”
Guy tucks his long hair behind his ears and sits, aching bones and ripped flesh protesting at the sudden movement. Despite the pain in his injured leg, the numbing cold and the image of Djaq pressing her small hand to her slashed stomach dancing in front of his tired, tear-scratchy eyes, Guy had fallen asleep. The dry firewood he had collected the evening before lies scattered about the cave floor, hurled there in a fit of fury when he had been unable to find a flint with which to light it and no amount of stick rubbing had produced a spark.
Two pairs of boots crunch on the rock-strewn floor of the cave. Guy glances at his stockinged feet, which he can just make out in the gloom. The big toe on the right foot is black with congealed blood, the result of stubbing it on an exposed tree root and tearing off the nail as he fled the camp.
He hears the creak of a bowstring: Robin nocking an arrow.
A small sob escapes Guy’s mouth. Last evening, having found the cave, he had thought he might still make it out of the forest alive, that come the morning he might find his way back to Nottingham. Once there, he planned to concoct a story about the outlaws mistrusting him, especially after he had failed to maim a single guard during the ambush on the Great North Road. He was going to tell the sheriff that the outlaws had taken him hostage, intending to use him for their own ends, but that he had escaped. Guy had also planned to tell Marian that his stabbing Djaq had been nothing more than a terrible accident and that, supposing Robin would not believe his story, he had panicked and run.
What he would do after that, he had no idea. The thought of being under Vaisey’s thumb once again made him shudder. Somehow, he would find a way of dealing with that particular problem. And when Robin was dead – for surely the outlaw’s luck had to run out sometime – Guy would set about winning Marian; not with baubles and trinkets and fine horses, but with a promise that he will become the better man she desires him to be.
Unhappily, Hood has found him, snuffing out that particular glimmer of hope. All Guy can hope for now is a swift and merciful death, though he doubts Robin will grant him either.
A flaming torch casts flickering shadows on the cave wall. As it nears, its orange glow pierces the gloom in the farthest reaches of the cave where the morning sun struggles to throw any light.
Guy sits and waits. There is nowhere to hide and a feel along the damp, rocky walls of the cave last night revealed there are no negotiable tunnels through which to make an escape. He doubts he can walk in any case; his wounded leg is numb, the other one nearly so.
Robin rounds the bend in the cave’s shallow entrance and comes into view, bow held out in front of him. Behind him is Much, sword in one hand, flaming torch in the other.
Guy closes his eyes. Through chattering teeth he says, “Do it.”
The bowstring creaks as Robin draws back the arrow.
Despite his determination to die with a modicum of dignity, a wet warmth floods the seat of his leathers. Guy lets out a short bark of hysterical laughter. He should have done this last night when he was freezing his arse off instead of trying to light a fire.
A warm tear tracks down his freezing face. When someone eventually stumbles upon his dead body, will they find nothing but putrid flesh rotting inside his bloodied, soiled leathers, or will those leathers have collapsed onto the cave floor as his dry skeleton topples over with the weight of his thick padded doublet?
Gritting his teeth, Guy presses his back into the unforgiving cave wall, waiting for Robin’s grey and white goose-feather fletched arrow to thud into his chest.
“Why,” Robin asks, “did you stab Djaq after all the kindness she showed you, after she tended you when you were injured?” Robin lowers his bow, no doubt realising that, without a sword and in pain, Guy poses no threat.
Guy thinks about telling Robin what he was going to tell Marian: she tripped; it was an accident, unavoidable. He looks up and meets Robin’s penetrating stare. “Because she got in my fucking way, that’s why. Now loose your damn arrow and be done with it.”
“Explain,” Robin says, his arrow still pointing at the floor of the cave.
Guy shakes his head from side to side. Let Robin work it out, he thinks. In the two weeks since Guy had joined the outlaws, yesterday had been the first time the men of the camp, excluding Robin’s snivelling manservant, had been away from their leader. It would have been Guy’s best chance to make a strike. Robin would not suspect another reason for Guy’s attack; not that that would make any difference now. He killed one of Robin’s friends and that is something Guy knows Robin will not forgive.
“Tell me,” Robin shouts, throwing the bow and arrow aside and unsheathing his scimitar. “We trusted you. We offered you friendship, the chance to redeem yourself and this is how you repay us.” Robin crouches, the sharp edge of his blade pressed to Guy’s throat. “I want to know why you betrayed that trust. Why, after living and working alongside us, you turned against us.”
“If you trusted me so much,” Guy says, his heart thumping wildly at the feel of the cold steel on his neck, “why did you continue to blindfold me?”
“You know why we did that. The camp is our last line of defence. No one, other than Matilda, knows where it is. We had to be certain you were on our side before revealing its whereabouts to you.”
“Marian knew where to find it.”
“Marian is on our side, you know that.”
“Oh, I know it all right.”
Robin gives Guy a questioning look, and Guy feels the blade ease away from his throat. For a heartbeat, he considers punching Robin in the stomach and making a run for it. He changes his mind. Even with Robin down, there is still Much to get past and Guy knows he will not get far with his injured leg and his lacerated feet.
“Robin,” Much hisses.
Robin stands, not taking his eyes off Guy. “What?”
“Someone’s coming.”
Much is right. A rider is approaching.
“Take a look,” Robin says, waving an arm at Much. “But don’t let whoever it is see you, not until we are sure they are a friend.”
Wedging the torch in a crevice, Much creeps towards the cave’s entrance, sword at the ready. Moments later, he returns, Marian at his side.
“You,” Guy says evenly, his earlier suspicion confirmed. “You’re the Night Watchman.”
Marian, clad in her usual Night Watchman attire, mask dangling from her hand, does not attempt to deny it, but simply waits as the full implication dawns on Guy.
“I’m sorry,” he says, eyeing Marian’s tight-fitting tunic and the spot where his curved dagger sliced into her as she pushed past him; the day she tried to steal his wealth. “I did not know it was you.”
“But you knew what you were doing when you stabbed Djaq,” Marian says, standing beside Robin, their arms touching.
Guy bows his head, covers his face with his cold, dirty hands. He cannot lie to Marian now, say it was an accident; he has already told Robin the truth. “I did not mean to,” he says, his voice muffled. Warm tears seep between his frozen fingers and plop onto his filthy, mud-smeared leathers, though whether those tears are for himself or for the kindly Saracen woman with the gentle hands and the warm smile, he doesn’t know.
“That is what Djaq said,” Marian says.
“What?” Robin asks.
“Djaq said that Guy did not mean to hurt her. He was just trying to warn her off, so he could get to you.”
Guy looks up. “She’s alive?” he asks, a beat after Robin asks the same question.
Marian nods. “Yes. She lost a lot of blood, but Matilda worked one of her miracles and Djaq lives. Just before I left the camp, she spoke a few words. She said to beg Robin not to kill Guy, to ask him to find forgiveness as she will find forgiveness.”
Robin shakes his head no. “If I let him live, he will go back to the sheriff. He will tell Vaisey where our camp is.”
“I told you,” Guy protests, trembling once again at the thought of rotting away, unburied, in the depths of the cave. “I was always blindfolded. I have no idea where your—”
“You were not blindfolded after the ambush.” Robin throws Much a daggered look. “Even in the state you were in, you were capable of remembering the path, or at least of having some idea of the camp’s location. A few choice landmarks and it will not take long for the sheriff to find us.”
Guy’s heart sinks. He should have known Robin would notice Much’s blunder once they were safely back at the camp and he came to take Guy’s blindfold off.
“There’s always such a lot to remember,” Much says, trying to sheathe his sword and twice missing the scabbard before he slides it in.
“Well next time try writing it down,” Robin says, sarcasm dripping from his tongue.
Much sniffs and Marian, noticing Much’s wobbling lower lip, gives Robin a poke in the ribs. “Robin,” she says, laying a soothing hand on his arm.
“What?” Robin shakes Marian off him, clearly irritated that she is here, intent on stopping Robin doing the thing he has been itching to do since the day he first walked back into Locksley to find Guy living in his manor and mistreating his peasants.
“Djaq also said that Guy was not asleep when I came to the camp to see you. He saw us together. That’s why he wanted to hurt you.”
“Is this true?” Robin asks him.
Guy nods.
“Even so,” Robin says, shooting Marian an annoyed look, as though this is all her fault. “I am still going to kill him. I will not have him back in the camp, not now, and it’s too much of a risk to let him return to Nottingham. This is the only way.” Robin sheathes his blade and picks up his bow.
Marian pushes in front of him, blocking his path. “No. I forbid it.”
Robin scowls. “You cannot forbid it. Now go outside and tend to your horse. It sounds fretful. I will be quick, I promise.”
Guy wants to tell Marian he is sorry, that he tried to be the man she wanted him to be, that he would do anything if they would just give him another chance. But fear has clogged his throat and he can manage no more than a terrified grunt as Robin nocks an arrow. Clearly, the outlaw wants to let whoever finds Guy know that this was the work of Robin Hood. Perhaps he even intends to take Guy’s body back to Nottingham and dump it on the castle steps, proving to the sheriff that, no matter what schemes the sheriff thinks up to catch the outlaws, Robin Hood will always triumph in the end.
Guy turns tear-filled eyes on Marian in a last desperate appeal, hoping that her sense of fair play will win out over her love and respect for Robin: whatever Guy may be, he is a knight and deserves to die with a sword in his hand.
The bowstring gives another ominous creak as Robin draws the arrow back to his ear. “I am hardly going to miss his heart from this distance, Marian,” he says, as if to justify what he is about to do.
Guy does not want to end up with his eyes frozen open in mortal terror, so closes them.
Marian’s horse whinnies and snorts. Another horse answers.
Guy’s eyes fly open. Robin swivels round, arrow still nocked.
“The gang?” Marian queries.
Robin shakes his head. “No. We have no horses.” He waves Much towards the cave’s entrance. “Go check it out, but stay hidden.”
Much takes two steps and then stops as it becomes clear from the jingle of bridles, the rattle of mail and the clank and thud of shield and sword that there are a number of riders approaching and they are unlikely to be friendly. He turns to Robin, says, “What do we do?” his head twisting this way and that, as though hoping that an escape route will suddenly open up before them.
Robin glances back at Guy, and Guy catches a fleeting look of fear on the outlaw’s face before Robin masks it with a grim smile. “We fight.”
“What, just the two of us?” Much says, his voice noticeably rising in pitch.
“There’s Marian, too.”
Even as Robin is saying it, Marian has donned her mask and is nocking an arrow.
“That’s the Lady Marian’s horse,” one of the riders calls out.
“But where is the fair lady?” Sheriff Vaisey asks.
Robin steps up beside Marian, ignoring Much’s hissed whining about dying in a poxy cave.
“Let me go,” Guy says. “I’ll get rid of them.”
“And why would you do that?” Robin asks.
“Because there are too many of them for you to fight, even if you had enough arrows. And because Marian is dressed as the Night Watchman. The sheriff will hang her too.”
Robin takes a step towards the entrance.
“I will not betray you,” Guy says, managing to push himself up onto his knees. “I will not tell the sheriff where your camp is, I swear it.”
“You and you,” the sheriff barks. “Search that cave.”
Robin lowers his bow, waves Marian and Much towards the deep shadows at the back of the cave. “See that you don’t,” he says to Guy.
Laying his bow on the ground, Robin crouches and offers Guy an arm.
Jaw clenched, hand gripping Robin’s bow-muscled arm, Guy struggles to his feet.
Two pairs of booted feet crunch on the rock-strewn ground as the sheriff’s men cautiously make their way into the cave.
“Hurry,” Robin hisses in his ear. He shoves Guy forward.
Sharp rocks cutting into his sore and bloodied feet, his injured leg on fire, Guy hobbles towards the sunlit entrance. He rounds the bend in the cave just before the sheriff’s men do.
“Sir Guy,” one of the men exclaims.
“Help me,” Guy says, uncaring about revealing his pitiful state to the sheriff’s guards, wishing only to steer them out of the cave and away from Marian.
The nearest guard offers Guy his shoulder.
“Gisborne,” the sheriff says, eyes flicking from Guy to Marian’s horse and back again. “Have you been meeting the Lady Marian? Are you keeping some secret tryst I know nothing about?”
“Do I look like I’ve spent the night with a woman?” Guy says, still clutching onto the guard’s shoulder.
“That depends on the woman, Gisborne.”
Marian’s horse, the one Guy gave her as a token of his affection, paws the ground with its right forefoot, tossing its head.
“So where is the leper, then?” The sheriff waves an ermine-trimmed gloved hand at the agitated horse.
“Marian is not here,” Guy says. Breathing heavily through the pain, he stammers out his earlier planned fabrication, about the outlaws mistrusting him and holding him hostage, about escaping and running through the forest. To it, he adds a further lie about bumping into Marian, stealing her horse, losing his way in the dark and holing up in the cave for the night.
During his garbled lies, Guy limps towards the nervy horse. Please God don’t let the damn beast throw me, he thinks, grabbing the reins.
“We must go, my Lord Sheriff,” he says, hauling himself into the saddle, nausea clawing up his throat, the forest coming in and out of focus as he struggles to pull himself erect. “The outlaws are after me. They are on foot but they know the forest well. They could be on us at any moment.”
“We are many,” the sheriff says, ignoring Guy’s obvious distress and indicating his men. “And I believe there are only a handful of them at most.”
“No,” Guy says, stroking his mount’s neck, attempting to calm the skittish animal. “The outer circle is with them. They easily match us for numbers and they are all armed. And they have the Greek fire,” Guy adds, remembering that when he first joined the outlaws he told Robin where to find the Greek fire that the sheriff planned to kaboom them with. Robin said he had destroyed it, but the sheriff isn’t to know that.
At the mention of the deadly black powder, the sheriff’s expression changes from one of smug assurance to horrified alarm. Barking at the men to about-face, he gives the order to move off.
Guy clicks his tongue and when his horse doesn’t move, smacks his bleeding stockinged feet into its flanks, grinding his teeth together in an effort not to cry out in agony.
“My God, Gisborne,” the sheriff says, drawing up alongside Guy. “You smell worse than the castle privies.”
“You’d stink if you’d been living in this fucking forest,” Guy says, eyes smarting at the sheriff’s remark.
“I always said your scheme to infiltrate the outlaws wouldn’t work.”
“If you recall, my lord,” Guy says through gritted teeth, the desire to insert a fist into the sheriff’s gold-toothed mouth outweighed by the desire to stay in the saddle of his temperamental horse, “you said my idea was genius.”
“Rubbish! Since when would I refer to you as a genius? I think you’ve been eating too many mushrooms, my dear boy.”
Guy recalls Djaq and him, foraging for edible herbs and fungi; her kindly laughter at his numerous blunders when it came to recognising foods fit to eat; her gentle hands as she soothed his nettle-stung wrist with a dock leaf.
I am not your dear boy, he thinks, tears welling. I am your whipping boy. I am the one you shout at when things go wrong, the one you ridicule, the one who never wins the girl.
Guy turns his head to look behind him. The cave is lost from view. All he can see are trees and dappled sunlight, the forest where, for a brief time, he was happy.
Author:
jadey36Prompt: none – I just felt like writing another fic in this series
Rating: pg-13
Characters: Guy, Robin, Much, Marian, Vaisey
Summary: Guy’s hope of escaping Robin’s wrath is thwarted when the outlaw finds Guy’s hiding place
Word Count: 3,152
Disclaimer: Robin Hood belongs to Tiger Aspect and the BBC. No copyright infringement intended. All rights reserved.
Author’s Note: Further fic in the Outlaw Guy series.
1 – A Different Life
2 – Fitting In
3 – Falling Apart
4 – Back to Black
5 - A Glimmer of Hope
Trapped
“He’s in here,” Guy hears Robin tell whoever it is who is with him.
“Are you sure?” Much asks, clearly fearful about entering the cave.
“Yes,” Robin says. “See this. That’s blood, human blood.”
Guy tucks his long hair behind his ears and sits, aching bones and ripped flesh protesting at the sudden movement. Despite the pain in his injured leg, the numbing cold and the image of Djaq pressing her small hand to her slashed stomach dancing in front of his tired, tear-scratchy eyes, Guy had fallen asleep. The dry firewood he had collected the evening before lies scattered about the cave floor, hurled there in a fit of fury when he had been unable to find a flint with which to light it and no amount of stick rubbing had produced a spark.
Two pairs of boots crunch on the rock-strewn floor of the cave. Guy glances at his stockinged feet, which he can just make out in the gloom. The big toe on the right foot is black with congealed blood, the result of stubbing it on an exposed tree root and tearing off the nail as he fled the camp.
He hears the creak of a bowstring: Robin nocking an arrow.
A small sob escapes Guy’s mouth. Last evening, having found the cave, he had thought he might still make it out of the forest alive, that come the morning he might find his way back to Nottingham. Once there, he planned to concoct a story about the outlaws mistrusting him, especially after he had failed to maim a single guard during the ambush on the Great North Road. He was going to tell the sheriff that the outlaws had taken him hostage, intending to use him for their own ends, but that he had escaped. Guy had also planned to tell Marian that his stabbing Djaq had been nothing more than a terrible accident and that, supposing Robin would not believe his story, he had panicked and run.
What he would do after that, he had no idea. The thought of being under Vaisey’s thumb once again made him shudder. Somehow, he would find a way of dealing with that particular problem. And when Robin was dead – for surely the outlaw’s luck had to run out sometime – Guy would set about winning Marian; not with baubles and trinkets and fine horses, but with a promise that he will become the better man she desires him to be.
Unhappily, Hood has found him, snuffing out that particular glimmer of hope. All Guy can hope for now is a swift and merciful death, though he doubts Robin will grant him either.
A flaming torch casts flickering shadows on the cave wall. As it nears, its orange glow pierces the gloom in the farthest reaches of the cave where the morning sun struggles to throw any light.
Guy sits and waits. There is nowhere to hide and a feel along the damp, rocky walls of the cave last night revealed there are no negotiable tunnels through which to make an escape. He doubts he can walk in any case; his wounded leg is numb, the other one nearly so.
Robin rounds the bend in the cave’s shallow entrance and comes into view, bow held out in front of him. Behind him is Much, sword in one hand, flaming torch in the other.
Guy closes his eyes. Through chattering teeth he says, “Do it.”
The bowstring creaks as Robin draws back the arrow.
Despite his determination to die with a modicum of dignity, a wet warmth floods the seat of his leathers. Guy lets out a short bark of hysterical laughter. He should have done this last night when he was freezing his arse off instead of trying to light a fire.
A warm tear tracks down his freezing face. When someone eventually stumbles upon his dead body, will they find nothing but putrid flesh rotting inside his bloodied, soiled leathers, or will those leathers have collapsed onto the cave floor as his dry skeleton topples over with the weight of his thick padded doublet?
Gritting his teeth, Guy presses his back into the unforgiving cave wall, waiting for Robin’s grey and white goose-feather fletched arrow to thud into his chest.
“Why,” Robin asks, “did you stab Djaq after all the kindness she showed you, after she tended you when you were injured?” Robin lowers his bow, no doubt realising that, without a sword and in pain, Guy poses no threat.
Guy thinks about telling Robin what he was going to tell Marian: she tripped; it was an accident, unavoidable. He looks up and meets Robin’s penetrating stare. “Because she got in my fucking way, that’s why. Now loose your damn arrow and be done with it.”
“Explain,” Robin says, his arrow still pointing at the floor of the cave.
Guy shakes his head from side to side. Let Robin work it out, he thinks. In the two weeks since Guy had joined the outlaws, yesterday had been the first time the men of the camp, excluding Robin’s snivelling manservant, had been away from their leader. It would have been Guy’s best chance to make a strike. Robin would not suspect another reason for Guy’s attack; not that that would make any difference now. He killed one of Robin’s friends and that is something Guy knows Robin will not forgive.
“Tell me,” Robin shouts, throwing the bow and arrow aside and unsheathing his scimitar. “We trusted you. We offered you friendship, the chance to redeem yourself and this is how you repay us.” Robin crouches, the sharp edge of his blade pressed to Guy’s throat. “I want to know why you betrayed that trust. Why, after living and working alongside us, you turned against us.”
“If you trusted me so much,” Guy says, his heart thumping wildly at the feel of the cold steel on his neck, “why did you continue to blindfold me?”
“You know why we did that. The camp is our last line of defence. No one, other than Matilda, knows where it is. We had to be certain you were on our side before revealing its whereabouts to you.”
“Marian knew where to find it.”
“Marian is on our side, you know that.”
“Oh, I know it all right.”
Robin gives Guy a questioning look, and Guy feels the blade ease away from his throat. For a heartbeat, he considers punching Robin in the stomach and making a run for it. He changes his mind. Even with Robin down, there is still Much to get past and Guy knows he will not get far with his injured leg and his lacerated feet.
“Robin,” Much hisses.
Robin stands, not taking his eyes off Guy. “What?”
“Someone’s coming.”
Much is right. A rider is approaching.
“Take a look,” Robin says, waving an arm at Much. “But don’t let whoever it is see you, not until we are sure they are a friend.”
Wedging the torch in a crevice, Much creeps towards the cave’s entrance, sword at the ready. Moments later, he returns, Marian at his side.
“You,” Guy says evenly, his earlier suspicion confirmed. “You’re the Night Watchman.”
Marian, clad in her usual Night Watchman attire, mask dangling from her hand, does not attempt to deny it, but simply waits as the full implication dawns on Guy.
“I’m sorry,” he says, eyeing Marian’s tight-fitting tunic and the spot where his curved dagger sliced into her as she pushed past him; the day she tried to steal his wealth. “I did not know it was you.”
“But you knew what you were doing when you stabbed Djaq,” Marian says, standing beside Robin, their arms touching.
Guy bows his head, covers his face with his cold, dirty hands. He cannot lie to Marian now, say it was an accident; he has already told Robin the truth. “I did not mean to,” he says, his voice muffled. Warm tears seep between his frozen fingers and plop onto his filthy, mud-smeared leathers, though whether those tears are for himself or for the kindly Saracen woman with the gentle hands and the warm smile, he doesn’t know.
“That is what Djaq said,” Marian says.
“What?” Robin asks.
“Djaq said that Guy did not mean to hurt her. He was just trying to warn her off, so he could get to you.”
Guy looks up. “She’s alive?” he asks, a beat after Robin asks the same question.
Marian nods. “Yes. She lost a lot of blood, but Matilda worked one of her miracles and Djaq lives. Just before I left the camp, she spoke a few words. She said to beg Robin not to kill Guy, to ask him to find forgiveness as she will find forgiveness.”
Robin shakes his head no. “If I let him live, he will go back to the sheriff. He will tell Vaisey where our camp is.”
“I told you,” Guy protests, trembling once again at the thought of rotting away, unburied, in the depths of the cave. “I was always blindfolded. I have no idea where your—”
“You were not blindfolded after the ambush.” Robin throws Much a daggered look. “Even in the state you were in, you were capable of remembering the path, or at least of having some idea of the camp’s location. A few choice landmarks and it will not take long for the sheriff to find us.”
Guy’s heart sinks. He should have known Robin would notice Much’s blunder once they were safely back at the camp and he came to take Guy’s blindfold off.
“There’s always such a lot to remember,” Much says, trying to sheathe his sword and twice missing the scabbard before he slides it in.
“Well next time try writing it down,” Robin says, sarcasm dripping from his tongue.
Much sniffs and Marian, noticing Much’s wobbling lower lip, gives Robin a poke in the ribs. “Robin,” she says, laying a soothing hand on his arm.
“What?” Robin shakes Marian off him, clearly irritated that she is here, intent on stopping Robin doing the thing he has been itching to do since the day he first walked back into Locksley to find Guy living in his manor and mistreating his peasants.
“Djaq also said that Guy was not asleep when I came to the camp to see you. He saw us together. That’s why he wanted to hurt you.”
“Is this true?” Robin asks him.
Guy nods.
“Even so,” Robin says, shooting Marian an annoyed look, as though this is all her fault. “I am still going to kill him. I will not have him back in the camp, not now, and it’s too much of a risk to let him return to Nottingham. This is the only way.” Robin sheathes his blade and picks up his bow.
Marian pushes in front of him, blocking his path. “No. I forbid it.”
Robin scowls. “You cannot forbid it. Now go outside and tend to your horse. It sounds fretful. I will be quick, I promise.”
Guy wants to tell Marian he is sorry, that he tried to be the man she wanted him to be, that he would do anything if they would just give him another chance. But fear has clogged his throat and he can manage no more than a terrified grunt as Robin nocks an arrow. Clearly, the outlaw wants to let whoever finds Guy know that this was the work of Robin Hood. Perhaps he even intends to take Guy’s body back to Nottingham and dump it on the castle steps, proving to the sheriff that, no matter what schemes the sheriff thinks up to catch the outlaws, Robin Hood will always triumph in the end.
Guy turns tear-filled eyes on Marian in a last desperate appeal, hoping that her sense of fair play will win out over her love and respect for Robin: whatever Guy may be, he is a knight and deserves to die with a sword in his hand.
The bowstring gives another ominous creak as Robin draws the arrow back to his ear. “I am hardly going to miss his heart from this distance, Marian,” he says, as if to justify what he is about to do.
Guy does not want to end up with his eyes frozen open in mortal terror, so closes them.
Marian’s horse whinnies and snorts. Another horse answers.
Guy’s eyes fly open. Robin swivels round, arrow still nocked.
“The gang?” Marian queries.
Robin shakes his head. “No. We have no horses.” He waves Much towards the cave’s entrance. “Go check it out, but stay hidden.”
Much takes two steps and then stops as it becomes clear from the jingle of bridles, the rattle of mail and the clank and thud of shield and sword that there are a number of riders approaching and they are unlikely to be friendly. He turns to Robin, says, “What do we do?” his head twisting this way and that, as though hoping that an escape route will suddenly open up before them.
Robin glances back at Guy, and Guy catches a fleeting look of fear on the outlaw’s face before Robin masks it with a grim smile. “We fight.”
“What, just the two of us?” Much says, his voice noticeably rising in pitch.
“There’s Marian, too.”
Even as Robin is saying it, Marian has donned her mask and is nocking an arrow.
“That’s the Lady Marian’s horse,” one of the riders calls out.
“But where is the fair lady?” Sheriff Vaisey asks.
Robin steps up beside Marian, ignoring Much’s hissed whining about dying in a poxy cave.
“Let me go,” Guy says. “I’ll get rid of them.”
“And why would you do that?” Robin asks.
“Because there are too many of them for you to fight, even if you had enough arrows. And because Marian is dressed as the Night Watchman. The sheriff will hang her too.”
Robin takes a step towards the entrance.
“I will not betray you,” Guy says, managing to push himself up onto his knees. “I will not tell the sheriff where your camp is, I swear it.”
“You and you,” the sheriff barks. “Search that cave.”
Robin lowers his bow, waves Marian and Much towards the deep shadows at the back of the cave. “See that you don’t,” he says to Guy.
Laying his bow on the ground, Robin crouches and offers Guy an arm.
Jaw clenched, hand gripping Robin’s bow-muscled arm, Guy struggles to his feet.
Two pairs of booted feet crunch on the rock-strewn ground as the sheriff’s men cautiously make their way into the cave.
“Hurry,” Robin hisses in his ear. He shoves Guy forward.
Sharp rocks cutting into his sore and bloodied feet, his injured leg on fire, Guy hobbles towards the sunlit entrance. He rounds the bend in the cave just before the sheriff’s men do.
“Sir Guy,” one of the men exclaims.
“Help me,” Guy says, uncaring about revealing his pitiful state to the sheriff’s guards, wishing only to steer them out of the cave and away from Marian.
The nearest guard offers Guy his shoulder.
“Gisborne,” the sheriff says, eyes flicking from Guy to Marian’s horse and back again. “Have you been meeting the Lady Marian? Are you keeping some secret tryst I know nothing about?”
“Do I look like I’ve spent the night with a woman?” Guy says, still clutching onto the guard’s shoulder.
“That depends on the woman, Gisborne.”
Marian’s horse, the one Guy gave her as a token of his affection, paws the ground with its right forefoot, tossing its head.
“So where is the leper, then?” The sheriff waves an ermine-trimmed gloved hand at the agitated horse.
“Marian is not here,” Guy says. Breathing heavily through the pain, he stammers out his earlier planned fabrication, about the outlaws mistrusting him and holding him hostage, about escaping and running through the forest. To it, he adds a further lie about bumping into Marian, stealing her horse, losing his way in the dark and holing up in the cave for the night.
During his garbled lies, Guy limps towards the nervy horse. Please God don’t let the damn beast throw me, he thinks, grabbing the reins.
“We must go, my Lord Sheriff,” he says, hauling himself into the saddle, nausea clawing up his throat, the forest coming in and out of focus as he struggles to pull himself erect. “The outlaws are after me. They are on foot but they know the forest well. They could be on us at any moment.”
“We are many,” the sheriff says, ignoring Guy’s obvious distress and indicating his men. “And I believe there are only a handful of them at most.”
“No,” Guy says, stroking his mount’s neck, attempting to calm the skittish animal. “The outer circle is with them. They easily match us for numbers and they are all armed. And they have the Greek fire,” Guy adds, remembering that when he first joined the outlaws he told Robin where to find the Greek fire that the sheriff planned to kaboom them with. Robin said he had destroyed it, but the sheriff isn’t to know that.
At the mention of the deadly black powder, the sheriff’s expression changes from one of smug assurance to horrified alarm. Barking at the men to about-face, he gives the order to move off.
Guy clicks his tongue and when his horse doesn’t move, smacks his bleeding stockinged feet into its flanks, grinding his teeth together in an effort not to cry out in agony.
“My God, Gisborne,” the sheriff says, drawing up alongside Guy. “You smell worse than the castle privies.”
“You’d stink if you’d been living in this fucking forest,” Guy says, eyes smarting at the sheriff’s remark.
“I always said your scheme to infiltrate the outlaws wouldn’t work.”
“If you recall, my lord,” Guy says through gritted teeth, the desire to insert a fist into the sheriff’s gold-toothed mouth outweighed by the desire to stay in the saddle of his temperamental horse, “you said my idea was genius.”
“Rubbish! Since when would I refer to you as a genius? I think you’ve been eating too many mushrooms, my dear boy.”
Guy recalls Djaq and him, foraging for edible herbs and fungi; her kindly laughter at his numerous blunders when it came to recognising foods fit to eat; her gentle hands as she soothed his nettle-stung wrist with a dock leaf.
I am not your dear boy, he thinks, tears welling. I am your whipping boy. I am the one you shout at when things go wrong, the one you ridicule, the one who never wins the girl.
Guy turns his head to look behind him. The cave is lost from view. All he can see are trees and dappled sunlight, the forest where, for a brief time, he was happy.