Everything is a Choice

Chapter 5

Previously...

Gisborne wraps his long, slim fingers around the bars, mimicking my earlier actions. I have to applaud him for keeping his dignity when I had so easily lost mine, but he can’t hide a hurt this big.

“Don’t,” I whisper grudgingly.

He raises his eyes to meet mine.

“You kissed her?” he says.   

“What?”

“As she was...when she was... dying.”

I nod.

“Then her spirit is not in Acre, but in you.”

His words have me reeling. Gisborne has given me what days of agonising could not, what the love and support of my friends could not – a reason to go on. And just as Much had done to me, I wrap my own hands around Gisborne’s and I feel Marian move between us. 

“Thank you,” I say. 

“You’re welcome.”

It is the most bizarre moment I have ever known.

Chapter 5

“Robin!”

There are men everywhere: running, shouting, rolling barrels, climbing the rigging.

“What’s going on?” I call.

“Pirates. Boarding the boat. We have to...you have to...”  Much shoves my bow into my hands, along with my scimitar. I thought I’d left my blade in Acre but it seems Much, or maybe John or Allan, had it all along. I guess they hadn’t trusted me with it earlier.

“Look out!” Much shoves me aside as something whizzes over our heads.

“Where in hell’s name—” Then I see the ship drawn up alongside.

“They said they were taking in water and needed help,” Much rapidly explains, unsheathing his sword. “I do not,” he says, wrestling with his shield, “want to die on some poxy boat in the middle of some poxy ocean.”

I’m about to reassure him that I have no intention of letting any of us become fish food when Jehal comes pounding towards us.

“Robin, thank Allah you’re here.” Grabbing my arm, he pulls me behind a pile of nets. “We are gravely outnumbered, but your bow will make all the difference.”

“I’m not going to—”

“I know of your principles, Robin Hood,” he interrupts, forgetting or choosing to forget my earlier intention to kill Gisborne, “but these men are cutthroats and will kill you as they would swat a bothersome fly.”

Even as Jehal speaks, a pirate, brandishing a curved blade that makes my scimitar look like a table knife, charges towards us, screaming all manner of threats.

With a motion as familiar as breathing, I draw an arrow from my quiver, nock and loose it. The pirate’s eyes and mouth widen in surprise . He drops his blade and curls his fingers around the arrow embedded in his chest. He is still clutching the ash shaft as he dies.

I scramble on top of the nets and loose two more arrows, killing two more pirates. The crusades may have changed my mind about killing, but for my friends I will kill and kill again.   

Much yells, “Robin, behind you!”

Whirling around, I loose another arrow. It smacks into the chest of a burly pirate clambering over the boat’s rail. With an anguished cry, he falls back onto the marauder’s galley. More heads appear, more pirates pour over the rail, too many for me to deal with with the few arrows I have left. I think of Gisborne, in his cage, probably unaware that we are under attack.