Sherwood Rogue

Chapter Twenty-Seven

We stared at each other, this stranger and I, the forest oddly still around us.

It was a moment before the man spoke. "Is every stranger greeted so grandly in Sherwood?" he asked. Turned away from me, only the right side of his body was visible.

"If the stranger gives no sign," I said carefully, "he is greeted as an enemy."

"Even though he may be a friend?"

There was something familiar about this man, but I wasn't sure who he was. "A friend would know better."

The man turned slightly and I caught a glimpse of green on his left arm.

"Who are you?" I asked.

He turned toward me, and I did indeed see a band of green about his arm. "I am the friend who knows the sign. And once I was a tanner who met a fellow on the road in Sherwood—"

"Arthur!" I cried, just as Bran and Peter came up. "Arthur a Bland of Blythe!" He looked older and far more careworn than I remembered. I sheathed my swords and ran to him, giving him a hug. He hugged me in return.

"You're a welcome sight, Kay. Was that your boy? He's the spitting image of Will. Who's this?" He gestured to Bran and Peter.

"New men. These are two of them who made it possible for us all to return to Sherwood."

"If that's so," said Arthur, "then I'm thinking I owe you both thanks." He shook hands with the two of them.

"Come on," said Peter. "Let's go back to the others. Paul will have stirred them all up by now."

"Yes, he will," I agreed. "And you've got a story to tell us, Arthur!"

"Aye, do I."

***

BEFORE ARTHUR HAD TURNED UP, Paul had found me to call me to dinner. Back at the clearing, we sat down to it, eating what food there was while it was still hot, as Arthur began his story.

"When the Lionheart died, Robin was near him, one of the first to hear the news. He gathered us together—what was left of us fighting in France. I was with him when we left the country. We landed at Dover and started back. Everything was fine, no problems.

We traveled openly and by day. King John wasn't crowned yet and hadn't organized the hunt. I think Richard's death was as much a surprise to him as it was to all of us. As the fifteen of us traveled, we began hearing things—little things that made us keep off the beaten track and travel by night.

"One night, our man Henry of Norwich went into a town for supplies and never came back. That dawn, we spotted his body hanging on a tree at the main gate.

"William of Chester and Jonathan of Derby were shot. A lone arrow out of nowhere for each. We had no time to bury them.

"By the time we reached Huntingdon, we were being chased outright by the king's soldiers. On Robin's orders, we split up. We were to get out here on our own, without leading the soldiers to your camp."

"King John's determined this time, isn't he?" asked Much.

"I guess so," someone answered. The rest were silent, each of us enveloped in our own thoughts.

"Why does he hate us?" Much continued. No one answered, thinking it was a rhetorical question. "I'm serious. I want to know. I mean, we've tweaked his nose a few times, but is that justification enough for this brutal hunt? All we've done is be ourselves. Be what the law made us."

"I think that's it, Much. We're ourselves," said Will. "We stand up for everything he tries to knock down. We're opposites. Two sides of . . . of a torch. We are the light, shining into the darkness, straining to be free of the bonds holding us back. The branch that holds the flame is John."