Enemy of My Enemy

Chapter Nineteen - Plans

The trickster. The traitor. The silver-tongued rogue, always ready with a line and a laugh. The realist, always able to spot hogwash when he heard it, as ready as not to call folk out on it. Robin, too, on occasion.

I'm not being funny, but....

Perhaps, because of the face he showed to the world, folk imagined he didn't think deeply about things. But he thought plenty. Oh yes. Like now, as Allan sat huddled against the outer wall. He knew he should scarper, but the energy required to do that, at this particular moment, escaped him.

So, he was thinking. Watching a skinny cat amble along the opposite wall, tail flicking, as it hunted. Thinking of the day he'd almost left for Scarborough, when he'd had the chance, until Will had turned them both around. Until one of them had done the honourable thing.

It would have been honourable, too, to refuse Guy's deal back when it was offered to him. Allan lifted his hand, looking at it; the skill with which these people inflicted pain made Guy's beatings seem tender by comparison. Starting to feel dizzy again he had to lean forward, tipping his head between his knees.

He wouldn't kid himself: Guy would have done what was needed. He'd hurt that day too. A lot. And if this was where honourable would have led, then what other choice had he had, really?

It was only the sheriff's warped sense of humour which had saved him from worse today; Vaisey had decided it would be amusing, once Guy returned, to have him take over the task. But for that, they'd have moved on to his right hand next. And this would have taken everything from him. His livelihood lay in his hands, in his quick-fingered skills in a crowd or a tavern, in his skill with the swords when a fight came to them. Take that away from him – if he could no longer function as thief or outlaw – what was left? He had precious little enough as it was.

Cradling his injured hand, his thoughts circled back, back. Fleeing to Scarborough. Giving Guy the deal he offered. Not 'fessing up when Robin gave him the chance.

Choices.

They circled back further. An unjust penalty, interrupted, before his fingers could be taken from him. The day when he'd come the closest he ever had to hanging – a miracle, really, considering the life he'd led ....

...and an arrow severing a rope – a memory he shuddered to recall. Far worse, that, than any stranglehold in a brawl, where at least you had the chance to fight your way out. Dangling in a noose it was death grasping at your throat, and you knew it wasn't going to let you go.

Only that day, with a little help, it had. And that very same arrow had sent the archer who aimed it to the sanctuary of the forest - landless, stripped of his titles, an outlaw.

Not only his own choices, then.

There was an irony somewhere there, buried so deep that he lacked the strength to find it. Perhaps the lesson was simply that life was chaotic and tangled and messy, and if you were one of the lucky ones you survived it and if you weren't, then you ended up like Tom. Was he, Allan a-Dale, one of the lucky ones? Right at that moment, sitting in a stinking alley, pain washing through him in waves, he found that hard to believe.

Ask me again, he said to himself, if I survive this madness.

He tilted his head back against the wall. I need Djaq to patch me up.

He'd thought about that, too. Quite a lot.

How love trumps like. How steady and dependable trumps wayward and unreliable. Sometimes, though, he just wished they'd get on with it, if they were ever going to. It would save him the occasional sliver of hope which, like fleas on a cur, might slip in unnoticed and which, once there, was devilish hard to get rid of.