Lois Bujold: Irresistible Forces

All dead to her now: father, mother, brother; even the manor, which now was held by the Crown, embodied by a man she knew as heartless. John Lackland. John Softsword. John, King of England. Who refused to return to her the hall into which she had been born, in which she had found a worthwhile living even after she knew herself the only one left of her blood. A man, a king, who listened instead to another man she named enemy: William deLacey. High Sheriff of Nottingham.

The warmth, the body beside her, sensed her awakening and began its own. He turned toward her, drawing her nearer, wrapping her in his arms and legs. One spread-fingered hand cradled the back of her skull, tucking her head beneath his chin.

He stroked the black strands escaped from her braid. "Cold?"

She felt more than heard the words deep in his chest and smiled. "Not now".

The prickle of unshaven jaw snagged her hair as he shifted closer." 'Twill be winter soon."

"Too soon," she murmured, twining her limbs more tightly with his.

One hand wound a strand of her hair through his fingers. "I had hoped to offer you more than a rude cave and a bed upon the ground."

Of course he had. And would have: wealth beyond imagining, power, title, castle. But he, as she, was denied that legacy, stripped of all his father had labored to build even as hers had labored, even as hers was stripped, albeit in death. Her father had been a mere knight, his a powerful earl, but it mattered little to sheriff or king. Knight and earl were dead, and the heirs of both, through royal decree, lacked such claim as would put them beneath the roofs their fathers had caused to be raised.

She gazed upward, blinking against moisture. The only roof now they called their own was the canopy of trees arching high overhead; their hall made of living trunks rather than hewn pillars; windows not of glass but built instead of air, where the leaves twined aside and permitted entry to the sun. Such little sky to see, here in the shadows of Sherwood, where their only hope of survival lay in escaping the sheriffs men.

She and Robin — formerly Sir Robert of Locksley, knight and honored Crusader, companion to now-dead Lionheart — took such privacy as they could find in the depths of the woods, laying a bed some distance from the others, friends and fellow outlaws, screened by the lattice-work of limbs and leaves, of bracken and vine. A pile of small boughs, uprooted fern, an armful of hides and blankets spread upon the hummock. Some would call it rude, a peasant's crude nest. But so long as he was in it, she would call it home.

Yet Robin was right. Already autumn's leaves fell, cloaking the ground and everything upon it, including themselves. They would soon have little warmth, and less foliage to hide behind. It was close on time to go to the caves.

But not just yet. His hands were upon her, and hers upon him, finding eager entrance into clothing beneath the blankets of cloth, of hide, of fallen leaves. As dawn broke upon them, sluggish behind the fog, they affirmed yet again beneath the vault of tree and sky what had been obvious to their souls, obvious to their hearts, from even before the beginning that night in the oratory, with illumination banished save for lightning's fitful brilliance.

Robin set his shoulder against the bole of a broad-crowned oak and gazed down the road, one hand wrapped around the grip of a strung bow that stood nearly as tall as he. A leather baldric crossed from left shoulder to right hip; from a quiver behind the shoulder sprouted a spray of goose feathers and a sheaf of straight-hewn shafts a full cloth-yard long. He wore hosen and tunic as any peasant, woven of crude cloth, but also boots upon his feet — once fine, now scuffed and soiled — and a brigandine taken from a man he himself had killed. Once accustomed to weighty armor, he found the shirt of linked rings to be no burden.

In the Holy Land, on Crusade, stealth had not been an issue. He had ridden with an army headed by three sovereigns and many high lords. But Sir Robert of Locksley had returned to England a very different man. And that man, now stripped of his knighthood, his earldom, and his home by the Lionheart's brother, lived among the shadows in the company of outlaws instead of kings and queens.

Robin in the Wood, Robin in the Hood. Robin Hood. Whose entire life, now, was defined by stealth.

He listened for hoofbeats. Then knelt, pressed a palm against the beaten track, and felt for the same. He heard, and felt, nothing. There was no prey upon the road.

Once awake, awareness did not slide again into sleep. The tiny spark he recognized as himself, in spirit if not embodied, continued to glow brightly, slowly gathering strength until he had no fear it might be snuffed out. He remained bound, bodiless, with no recourse to escape, but he was awake, aware, and alive. He understood this, too, was a part of the spell, that to know oneself trapped for uncountable days was as much a torture as a lash upon bare flesh — as if betrayal such as he had known were not torture enough. But he rather thought not. These happenings seemed unplanned, and unforeseen, by the enemy who had enspelled him.

He recognized — something. Nebulous yet, wholly unformed, but his senses comprehended what his body could not feel.

Someone is coming.

Awareness coalesced, compacted, then spasmed in recognition. In comprehension of — opportunity.

He lacked a mouth, but the words, the plea, formed nonetheless.

Oh, come. Come soon. Come NOW.

Marian had grown accustomed to living among the trees, naming the forest her hall. She had arrived at a compromise with the results of such surroundings: the damp soil that worked its way into her clothing, the stains of vegetation, the litter of crumpled leaves, the occasional thorn punctures and scratches. So long as no true hurt came of such importunities, she could suffer them in silence, except when a broken thorn stuck fast beneath her flesh, in which case someone — usually Robin, or Much with his quick, deft hands — dug it out for her. She had, three years before, cast off the binding skirts of a lady's embroidered chemises and went now clothed more like a man, in heavy woven hosen, tunic, and boots. Over it all she wore a surcoat belted around her hips, the sleeveless, open-sided length of cloth invented on Crusade to beat back the blow of the Holy Land's sun on metal armor. But hers was not made of fine cloth with the red cross of Crusade on her breast or shoulder; hers was leather, cut to her size, and offered more maidenly modesty than hosen and tunic alone.

Though, at that, Marian smiled. She was no more a maiden, being too often titled whore despite the fact she and Robin had married a few years earlier. And her modesty had been shed years before in the oratory.

But the part of living as an outlaw among the trees and deadfall that she most detested was packing to move the camp. They had all taken to heart the lessons learned of keeping safe from the men who would capture them. They claimed no true home except what they made for a day or a night, though occasionally they settled some few days longer in a place deemed safe; no tables, no stools, save for the trunks of fallen trees, a tumble of moss-laden stone. But there were such things as iron pots, a tripod for the fire, bowls, mugs, bedding. Not to mention the swords, the staffs, the knives, and the invaluable bows Robin had taught each of them to use with frightening accuracy, from Much, the simpleton boy, and the giant, Little John, to Will Scarlet and the minstrel Alan of the Dales; even poor Brother Tuck, preferring to trust to God rather than to the bow, learned it nonetheless. An English longbow, Robin had explained, was a more powerful weapon even than a Norman crossbow with its deadly quarrels, for a cloth-yard arrow could punch through armor from long distances, with the archer well-shielded behind trees and brush.