The Wolf's Head: Part 6
Title: The Wolf's Head
Author: corrielle
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/characters: Guy, Djaq, Marian, Allan, John, Will, and Robin. Guy/Marian-ish
Word count: 3,227
Summary: The Wolf's Head takes his first mark in Sherwood.
Notes: Many thanks to endcredits, who graciously agreed to be my beta at short notice and gave me both excellent advice and much-needed encouragement. Also, this story probably wouldn't be here without my girlfriend Rae, who read it first.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to legend and the BBC, and I make no profit from this work.
Previously: Part 5
Part 6
For a week after the battle at the mine, neither Guy nor the rest of them ventured far from the camp. Sometimes, one or two of them would leave to hunt, but they always came back quickly and shared what they had found. Will presented Djaq and Guy with bows that he had made, and in the early afternoon before the wind picked up, they went to a clearing near the camp and practiced archery. Guy had been a fair hand with the bow before, but Will Scarlett put him to shame, and Allan wasn't half bad either when he could stop bragging long enough to take a shot.
Guy did not want for food, and he had a place by a warm fire at night, but as the days went on, he began to grow restless. He did not like hiding, for one thing, and for another, he sensed that the other outlaws were watching him carefully, waiting for him to do… something. What it was, he did not know.
He felt this unspoken curiosity coming strongly from Djaq one night as they all sat around the fire making short work of the brace of rabbits Will and John had snared.
"What are you looking at?" Guy growled.
"Nothing," Djaq said innocently. "I am sorry… was I looking at you strangely?"
"You act like you want something from me. Not just you, Djaq. All of you. What is it?" Guy asked.
Djaq and Will shared a look between them, and Guy was irritated that they seemed to know more about whatever this secret was than he did.
"We were just wondering what you were planning to do next," Will said.
"What we were planning to do next," Djaq corrected him.
"And why would I be the one to decide that?" Guy asked. "You're all free men, free as outlaws in Sherwood can be. Why wait for me?"
Again, all of them looked at him as if there was something that they knew and he didn't.
"Guy…" John said hesitantly, "we all worked well together at the mine, don't you think?"
"We did," Guy agreed, still wondering where this was going.
"We did a good thing, freeing those men, and we could do more," Will said. "Winter's getting closer, and the people are hungry. John and I went to Locksley today, and even with Robin to protect them, the village looks half-starved. I don't want to think about what it's like elsewhere."
"And what would you have me do about it?" Guy asked. "It's not as if we could take the castle."
"We give the poor money to feed themselves and their families, and to buy medicines for their children," Will said. As always, when he spoke of the needy, a bright, steady fire burned in his eyes.
"And where are we going to get that kind of money?" Guy asked scornfully. There were hundreds of families in the villages, and even more in the beggars' camps around Nottingham. Even the gold that they had stolen from the iron merchant would not feed so many for so long. The second after he said it, he realized he had used the word we. He sighed.
"We do what we did at the mine," Will said, smiling conspiratorially. "We steal from the rich."
"We may not be able to take the castle," Allan said, "but here in Sherwood, we could be the masters." Allan seemed to like the sound of that idea.
"But we would need you,” Djaq said to Guy before he could ask what any of this nonsense had to do with him. "You are the one who knows the Sheriff best. You know how he thinks, you can predict what he will do and use his secrets against him."
"And you're the one he and the rest of the nobles are afraid of," Will said. "We saw a sign nailed up in the square at Locksley offering a hundred pounds for the capture of the tall outlaw in the black Death's hood."
"Besides," Djaq said, "the plan at the mine was yours. We followed you, and we made it work. Without you, we have many good intentions and nothing to do with them."
Guy stared down at his hands as all of them watched him expectantly, waiting for an answer. What they were suggesting was dangerous, and it would most likely end with all of them at the end of a rope, but the alternative was to hide in Sherwood, cowering like a hunted animal for fear the Sheriff might one day find and kill him. And Guy of Gisborne was no frightened deer.
"We should watch the Old Road," Guy said at last. As he began to speak, all of them leaned in, their faces full of the excitement that came with planning something risky. "The Sheriff sometimes sends his messengers and his money that way because it is less traveled…"
#####
Two days later, Guy waited behind a broad tree trunk close to the Old Road. He could hear the sound of hoof beats coming closer, each step rustling the orange and yellow leaves that carpeted the forest floor. The rider was in no hurry, for the horse was only walking, and walking slowly, at that. A shrill bird's call from across the road startled a pair of pheasants that had been hiding in the grass nearby, and Guy felt the wind of their wings as they took to the sky. It was Guy's signal to move.
He stepped out from behind the tree and stood in the middle of the road, one gloved hand raised in front of him. Fifteen feet away, the lone rider's horse shied at the sight of the tall, masked figure who had suddenly stepped into its path, but it was well-trained enough that its rider soon calmed it. The man on the horse looked down at Guy with an imperious gaze. He was finely dressed in green and yellow velvet, and though he was not exactly stout, he had obviously never wanted for food. Guy remembered him vaguely-a minor nobleman with an arrogance that far outmatched his station. Today, Guy thought, this man's inflated sense of his own importance would be their gain. A golden chain hung over his shoulders, and a fat purse hung at his belt.
"Out of the way," the rider said, never for a moment doubting that he would be obeyed. "Or do I look so weak as to let one man rob me?" He laughed scornfully as he put his hand on the hilt of the sword that hung at his belt.
"Not one man," Guy said, and he nodded at the rest of the outlaws. John and Will appeared from one side, and John stood on road, blocking the nobleman's retreat. Djaq and Allan came from the other side, and the nobleman was surrounded.
"The Sheriff does not take kindly to those who rob his friends," the nobleman said acerbically. "And believe me when I say he is my friend."
"The Sheriff isn't here," Guy said.
"But we are," Allan added. The nobleman glared at Allan, who favored him with a wide, friendly grin from behind the arrow he was pointing at the nobleman's chest.
"We'll take the chain around your neck," Guy said, holding out his hand. The nobleman touched the finely worked gold as if wounded, but when he saw Djaq draw his bow back further, he lifted it over his head and put it in Guy's outstretched hand.
"We'll take your purse as well," Will said.
His face red with shame and anger, the nobleman untied his purse from his belt and threw it to the ground at Guy's feet. John caught Guy's eye from his position behind their mark and tapped one finger against the knuckles of his other hand, indicating the noble's rings. He was wearing five of them: two on one hand, three on the other. The three on his left hand were too large, too conspicuous for the outlaws to trade easily. They would be recognizable to anyone in the Shire who knew to look for them. The rings on his right, however, were plain, fat bands of gold.
Guy stepped forward and grabbed the reins of the horse. "We'll take the two rings from your right hand, as well," Guy said. He held out his hand again.
"I will have these back," the nobleman insisted as he yanked the rings roughly from his fingers and laid them in Guy's palm. "When you are hunted down like dogs in the forest."
"And until then, we thank you for the use of them," Guy said, mockingly touching his hand to his forehead. Allan snickered, and the nobleman's face grew even darker.
"Damn you all for insolent wolf's heads!" he yelled. "The Sheriff will hear of this, and when he does, you will not be laughing!"
Guy let go of the man's reins, and the horse took a few nervous steps forward.
"You may tell the Sheriff that this wolf's head sends his highest regards," Guy said as he stepped to the side of the road. It was a dangerous thing to say, but Guy did not think the man had recognized his voice, and wearing the mask had made Guy bold with his words.
The nobleman gave them all one last look of disgust before driving his heels into his horse's ribs and galloping away, sending of a swirl of gold and copper leaves in his wake.
#####
With the gold they took from their first mark, and from others like him, Guy and the outlaws bought bread and meat and grain from men who would take their coin and did not ask too many questions. Some of it they stored for the winter months when food would be scarce even for those who did have the means to pay for it, but some they took to the villages, going where the Night Watchman had not been able to visit recently. Like the Night Watchman, they went under cover of darkness, and though some of the people were afraid of Guy and his Death's hood at first, they got over their fear when they saw that he had food to give them.
One night when they were in Nettlestone, after the last of the food had been given out and the villagers had invited them to share their meal, Allan started telling stories. He told the story of Guy leading the band to the mine and freeing the slaves that toiled there, and when the people seemed to like it, he told another, and then another. Of course, he made them all fleeter, stronger, and more clever than they had been. To hear Allan tell it, Guy could move more quietly than a ghost through the forest and strike fear into the hearts of noblemen by his presence alone. Djaq could raise the dead with his herbs and poultices, John could knock over one of the standing stones with a single finger, and Will could shoot so straight and so far that he could put an arrow in the middle of the gates of London if he wanted to. As for Allan, he was witty in the stories, quick and cunning and charming, and that, Guy had to admit, was not too far from the truth.
The admiration in the peasants' eyes as Allan spun his tales made Guy uncomfortable at first. He had not gone looking for their trust or their thanks, and he thought about asking Allan to stop telling stories that featured him, but in the end, he did not. Even the third or fourth time Allan would launch into one of his accounts of their escapades, the people still listened eagerly, and the rest of the outlaws laughed along with them and added their own embellishments. Guy supposed there was no harm in it, and it seemed to bring some happiness to those who had little enough of it.
It was not too long before someone put an old lute in Allan's hands, and he put his ear close to the strings as he plucked them and turned the pegs. When the tuning was done, he started to play a familiar tune, but the words he put to it were about new. He sang verse after verse about the Wolf's Head and his wily men, making some of them up as he went, and by the time he was done, the people were singing the chorus along with him.
When they were on their way back to the camp that night, Guy asked Allan, "What was that business about 'The Wolf's Head' in your song tonight? All of us have prices on our heads, not just me."
"We do," Allan agreed, "but that's what the people are calling you. Besides, you're not just a wolf's head. You're The Wolf's Head. You can hear the difference when they say it."
"Besides, it is fitting that they call you this," Djaq, who was walking behind them, said. "The tattoo on your arm is a wolf, is it not?"
"It is," Guy said. He knew that all of them must have seen it, but none of them had asked where and why he had gotten it, for which he was thankful. He did not want to have to lie to them.
"Is that what it's supposed to be?" Allan asked. "That would make for a good song…"
"No!" Guy said. His voice was sharp and loud in the quiet of the forest. "You can't put it in a song. The Sheriff knows I have it," he explained. "And if he hears the song, then he will know that I am the one in the mask."
"Shame, that…" Allan said.
"No. Mention. Of the tattoo," Guy reiterated between gritted teeth. One had to be direct with Allan, Guy had learned, for he could find a way around any order that was not clearly and expressly given.
Allan shrugged, and Guy walked on ahead of the others.
As far as Guy knew, the Sheriff did not know that he still lived. The talk in the villages was that the Sheriff had proclaimed Guy dead in dishonor for helping a foreign criminal to escape the mines, and Guy wanted it to stay that way. He found excuses not to go to Locksley with the others for fear that someone there would know his voice, and he spoke very little in the other villages.
In one thing, and one thing only, he was reckless. Once, in the days after they had robbed their first nobleman, Guy left the camp at dusk and snuck close enough to Knighton Hall that he could see the light from the lamps. After a while, Marian came and stood at one of the upper windows. Though he was far away, Guy could see that she was well, and that was enough. Marian looked out over the manor grounds for a moment as if searching for something, then she pulled the shutters closed. Guy left as quickly as he had come, and he did not go to Knighton again.
#####
The nights were growing colder and the days shorter, and by the first week of October it had rained more than once in Sherwood. Guy was still wet and cold from the last downpour when Allan, Will, and Djaq came back to the camp talking excitedly with one another.
Guy glanced at the two pheasants that Will held in one hand. "Not much between the three of you, is it?" he asked.
"We can eat from the stores tonight," Djaq said. "We may not have found food…"
"But we found something better," Will finished for him." Come and see."
Guy and John followed the three of them through the forest. The traveled deeper into Sherwood than Guy had ever been before until they came to a thick stand of trees and brush. Will determinedly pushed his way through the tangled foliage, and after struggling through the vines and branches for a little more than fifty yards, they broke through the other side into a small clearing. In the middle of it, half-covered in vines, was the ruin of a stone cottage.
Though Djaq had been one of the three who had discovered the ruin, he frowned, and he hesitated before stepping into the open. "I thought you told me this was the King's land," he said.
"It didn't used to be," Will said. "Before the Normans came, the forest belonged to those who lived in it."
Guy moved closer to the cottage. It was a good-sized building, and he could see through the open doorway that the hearth was still standing. The roof, however, had rotted away long ago, and there were holes in the wall large enough for him to fit his head through.
"I can fix it," Will said, coming to stand beside him. "If I had help, I could fix it before the month was out, and the stable in the back, as well."
"It's hidden well enough," Guy said as he walked around the back to see the stable Will had mentioned. They had acquired four more horses, two bought with stolen gold, and two taken outright from a stuffy noble who had five pulling his carriage. The cold season would be hard for the horses as well, and it would be good to have a place that sheltered their animals from the weather.
"We would be dry and warm, and I would have a place to keep my medicines so they would not get wet…" Djaq said longingly.
"It's a good place," John said with a decisive nod of his head.
Guy nodded as well, then turned to Will. "What do you need us to do first?" he asked.
#####
For the next two weeks, they worked most days from sunrise to sundown on the cottage, and travelers through Sherwood went mostly unmolested, with the exception of one supercilious clerk who had the misfortune of being in the forest as the outlaws came back from the pond with bundles of water reeds for thatching in their arms. When all was done, the clerk went on his way with his purse lighter, and the outlaws put away their weapons, retrieved the reeds they had put to the side, and continued home.
Guy worked long hours helping Will to replace broken beams, repair pieces of the wall that had crumbled, and thatch the sharply pitched roof. He was grateful for John's strength more than once, as the big man pushed support timbers into place that would have crushed anyone else. Djaq proved more than once that he was stronger than he looked, and Allan did everything he could to avoid physical labor, though when Djaq chided him enough, he would come and join them, and his talk made the hours pass more quickly.
When the second week of October drew to a close, Will declared the house livable, and they brought their horses, their bedding, and their supplies from the camp by the stream. They celebrated their new home by taking a deer and opening a cask of ale, and that night, for the first time since the day he had defied the Sheriff, Guy slept without the open sky overhead.
Next: Part 7
Author: corrielle
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/characters: Guy, Djaq, Marian, Allan, John, Will, and Robin. Guy/Marian-ish
Word count: 3,227
Summary: The Wolf's Head takes his first mark in Sherwood.
Notes: Many thanks to endcredits, who graciously agreed to be my beta at short notice and gave me both excellent advice and much-needed encouragement. Also, this story probably wouldn't be here without my girlfriend Rae, who read it first.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to legend and the BBC, and I make no profit from this work.
Previously: Part 5
Part 6
For a week after the battle at the mine, neither Guy nor the rest of them ventured far from the camp. Sometimes, one or two of them would leave to hunt, but they always came back quickly and shared what they had found. Will presented Djaq and Guy with bows that he had made, and in the early afternoon before the wind picked up, they went to a clearing near the camp and practiced archery. Guy had been a fair hand with the bow before, but Will Scarlett put him to shame, and Allan wasn't half bad either when he could stop bragging long enough to take a shot.
Guy did not want for food, and he had a place by a warm fire at night, but as the days went on, he began to grow restless. He did not like hiding, for one thing, and for another, he sensed that the other outlaws were watching him carefully, waiting for him to do… something. What it was, he did not know.
He felt this unspoken curiosity coming strongly from Djaq one night as they all sat around the fire making short work of the brace of rabbits Will and John had snared.
"What are you looking at?" Guy growled.
"Nothing," Djaq said innocently. "I am sorry… was I looking at you strangely?"
"You act like you want something from me. Not just you, Djaq. All of you. What is it?" Guy asked.
Djaq and Will shared a look between them, and Guy was irritated that they seemed to know more about whatever this secret was than he did.
"We were just wondering what you were planning to do next," Will said.
"What we were planning to do next," Djaq corrected him.
"And why would I be the one to decide that?" Guy asked. "You're all free men, free as outlaws in Sherwood can be. Why wait for me?"
Again, all of them looked at him as if there was something that they knew and he didn't.
"Guy…" John said hesitantly, "we all worked well together at the mine, don't you think?"
"We did," Guy agreed, still wondering where this was going.
"We did a good thing, freeing those men, and we could do more," Will said. "Winter's getting closer, and the people are hungry. John and I went to Locksley today, and even with Robin to protect them, the village looks half-starved. I don't want to think about what it's like elsewhere."
"And what would you have me do about it?" Guy asked. "It's not as if we could take the castle."
"We give the poor money to feed themselves and their families, and to buy medicines for their children," Will said. As always, when he spoke of the needy, a bright, steady fire burned in his eyes.
"And where are we going to get that kind of money?" Guy asked scornfully. There were hundreds of families in the villages, and even more in the beggars' camps around Nottingham. Even the gold that they had stolen from the iron merchant would not feed so many for so long. The second after he said it, he realized he had used the word we. He sighed.
"We do what we did at the mine," Will said, smiling conspiratorially. "We steal from the rich."
"We may not be able to take the castle," Allan said, "but here in Sherwood, we could be the masters." Allan seemed to like the sound of that idea.
"But we would need you,” Djaq said to Guy before he could ask what any of this nonsense had to do with him. "You are the one who knows the Sheriff best. You know how he thinks, you can predict what he will do and use his secrets against him."
"And you're the one he and the rest of the nobles are afraid of," Will said. "We saw a sign nailed up in the square at Locksley offering a hundred pounds for the capture of the tall outlaw in the black Death's hood."
"Besides," Djaq said, "the plan at the mine was yours. We followed you, and we made it work. Without you, we have many good intentions and nothing to do with them."
Guy stared down at his hands as all of them watched him expectantly, waiting for an answer. What they were suggesting was dangerous, and it would most likely end with all of them at the end of a rope, but the alternative was to hide in Sherwood, cowering like a hunted animal for fear the Sheriff might one day find and kill him. And Guy of Gisborne was no frightened deer.
"We should watch the Old Road," Guy said at last. As he began to speak, all of them leaned in, their faces full of the excitement that came with planning something risky. "The Sheriff sometimes sends his messengers and his money that way because it is less traveled…"
#####
Two days later, Guy waited behind a broad tree trunk close to the Old Road. He could hear the sound of hoof beats coming closer, each step rustling the orange and yellow leaves that carpeted the forest floor. The rider was in no hurry, for the horse was only walking, and walking slowly, at that. A shrill bird's call from across the road startled a pair of pheasants that had been hiding in the grass nearby, and Guy felt the wind of their wings as they took to the sky. It was Guy's signal to move.
He stepped out from behind the tree and stood in the middle of the road, one gloved hand raised in front of him. Fifteen feet away, the lone rider's horse shied at the sight of the tall, masked figure who had suddenly stepped into its path, but it was well-trained enough that its rider soon calmed it. The man on the horse looked down at Guy with an imperious gaze. He was finely dressed in green and yellow velvet, and though he was not exactly stout, he had obviously never wanted for food. Guy remembered him vaguely-a minor nobleman with an arrogance that far outmatched his station. Today, Guy thought, this man's inflated sense of his own importance would be their gain. A golden chain hung over his shoulders, and a fat purse hung at his belt.
"Out of the way," the rider said, never for a moment doubting that he would be obeyed. "Or do I look so weak as to let one man rob me?" He laughed scornfully as he put his hand on the hilt of the sword that hung at his belt.
"Not one man," Guy said, and he nodded at the rest of the outlaws. John and Will appeared from one side, and John stood on road, blocking the nobleman's retreat. Djaq and Allan came from the other side, and the nobleman was surrounded.
"The Sheriff does not take kindly to those who rob his friends," the nobleman said acerbically. "And believe me when I say he is my friend."
"The Sheriff isn't here," Guy said.
"But we are," Allan added. The nobleman glared at Allan, who favored him with a wide, friendly grin from behind the arrow he was pointing at the nobleman's chest.
"We'll take the chain around your neck," Guy said, holding out his hand. The nobleman touched the finely worked gold as if wounded, but when he saw Djaq draw his bow back further, he lifted it over his head and put it in Guy's outstretched hand.
"We'll take your purse as well," Will said.
His face red with shame and anger, the nobleman untied his purse from his belt and threw it to the ground at Guy's feet. John caught Guy's eye from his position behind their mark and tapped one finger against the knuckles of his other hand, indicating the noble's rings. He was wearing five of them: two on one hand, three on the other. The three on his left hand were too large, too conspicuous for the outlaws to trade easily. They would be recognizable to anyone in the Shire who knew to look for them. The rings on his right, however, were plain, fat bands of gold.
Guy stepped forward and grabbed the reins of the horse. "We'll take the two rings from your right hand, as well," Guy said. He held out his hand again.
"I will have these back," the nobleman insisted as he yanked the rings roughly from his fingers and laid them in Guy's palm. "When you are hunted down like dogs in the forest."
"And until then, we thank you for the use of them," Guy said, mockingly touching his hand to his forehead. Allan snickered, and the nobleman's face grew even darker.
"Damn you all for insolent wolf's heads!" he yelled. "The Sheriff will hear of this, and when he does, you will not be laughing!"
Guy let go of the man's reins, and the horse took a few nervous steps forward.
"You may tell the Sheriff that this wolf's head sends his highest regards," Guy said as he stepped to the side of the road. It was a dangerous thing to say, but Guy did not think the man had recognized his voice, and wearing the mask had made Guy bold with his words.
The nobleman gave them all one last look of disgust before driving his heels into his horse's ribs and galloping away, sending of a swirl of gold and copper leaves in his wake.
#####
With the gold they took from their first mark, and from others like him, Guy and the outlaws bought bread and meat and grain from men who would take their coin and did not ask too many questions. Some of it they stored for the winter months when food would be scarce even for those who did have the means to pay for it, but some they took to the villages, going where the Night Watchman had not been able to visit recently. Like the Night Watchman, they went under cover of darkness, and though some of the people were afraid of Guy and his Death's hood at first, they got over their fear when they saw that he had food to give them.
One night when they were in Nettlestone, after the last of the food had been given out and the villagers had invited them to share their meal, Allan started telling stories. He told the story of Guy leading the band to the mine and freeing the slaves that toiled there, and when the people seemed to like it, he told another, and then another. Of course, he made them all fleeter, stronger, and more clever than they had been. To hear Allan tell it, Guy could move more quietly than a ghost through the forest and strike fear into the hearts of noblemen by his presence alone. Djaq could raise the dead with his herbs and poultices, John could knock over one of the standing stones with a single finger, and Will could shoot so straight and so far that he could put an arrow in the middle of the gates of London if he wanted to. As for Allan, he was witty in the stories, quick and cunning and charming, and that, Guy had to admit, was not too far from the truth.
The admiration in the peasants' eyes as Allan spun his tales made Guy uncomfortable at first. He had not gone looking for their trust or their thanks, and he thought about asking Allan to stop telling stories that featured him, but in the end, he did not. Even the third or fourth time Allan would launch into one of his accounts of their escapades, the people still listened eagerly, and the rest of the outlaws laughed along with them and added their own embellishments. Guy supposed there was no harm in it, and it seemed to bring some happiness to those who had little enough of it.
It was not too long before someone put an old lute in Allan's hands, and he put his ear close to the strings as he plucked them and turned the pegs. When the tuning was done, he started to play a familiar tune, but the words he put to it were about new. He sang verse after verse about the Wolf's Head and his wily men, making some of them up as he went, and by the time he was done, the people were singing the chorus along with him.
When they were on their way back to the camp that night, Guy asked Allan, "What was that business about 'The Wolf's Head' in your song tonight? All of us have prices on our heads, not just me."
"We do," Allan agreed, "but that's what the people are calling you. Besides, you're not just a wolf's head. You're The Wolf's Head. You can hear the difference when they say it."
"Besides, it is fitting that they call you this," Djaq, who was walking behind them, said. "The tattoo on your arm is a wolf, is it not?"
"It is," Guy said. He knew that all of them must have seen it, but none of them had asked where and why he had gotten it, for which he was thankful. He did not want to have to lie to them.
"Is that what it's supposed to be?" Allan asked. "That would make for a good song…"
"No!" Guy said. His voice was sharp and loud in the quiet of the forest. "You can't put it in a song. The Sheriff knows I have it," he explained. "And if he hears the song, then he will know that I am the one in the mask."
"Shame, that…" Allan said.
"No. Mention. Of the tattoo," Guy reiterated between gritted teeth. One had to be direct with Allan, Guy had learned, for he could find a way around any order that was not clearly and expressly given.
Allan shrugged, and Guy walked on ahead of the others.
As far as Guy knew, the Sheriff did not know that he still lived. The talk in the villages was that the Sheriff had proclaimed Guy dead in dishonor for helping a foreign criminal to escape the mines, and Guy wanted it to stay that way. He found excuses not to go to Locksley with the others for fear that someone there would know his voice, and he spoke very little in the other villages.
In one thing, and one thing only, he was reckless. Once, in the days after they had robbed their first nobleman, Guy left the camp at dusk and snuck close enough to Knighton Hall that he could see the light from the lamps. After a while, Marian came and stood at one of the upper windows. Though he was far away, Guy could see that she was well, and that was enough. Marian looked out over the manor grounds for a moment as if searching for something, then she pulled the shutters closed. Guy left as quickly as he had come, and he did not go to Knighton again.
#####
The nights were growing colder and the days shorter, and by the first week of October it had rained more than once in Sherwood. Guy was still wet and cold from the last downpour when Allan, Will, and Djaq came back to the camp talking excitedly with one another.
Guy glanced at the two pheasants that Will held in one hand. "Not much between the three of you, is it?" he asked.
"We can eat from the stores tonight," Djaq said. "We may not have found food…"
"But we found something better," Will finished for him." Come and see."
Guy and John followed the three of them through the forest. The traveled deeper into Sherwood than Guy had ever been before until they came to a thick stand of trees and brush. Will determinedly pushed his way through the tangled foliage, and after struggling through the vines and branches for a little more than fifty yards, they broke through the other side into a small clearing. In the middle of it, half-covered in vines, was the ruin of a stone cottage.
Though Djaq had been one of the three who had discovered the ruin, he frowned, and he hesitated before stepping into the open. "I thought you told me this was the King's land," he said.
"It didn't used to be," Will said. "Before the Normans came, the forest belonged to those who lived in it."
Guy moved closer to the cottage. It was a good-sized building, and he could see through the open doorway that the hearth was still standing. The roof, however, had rotted away long ago, and there were holes in the wall large enough for him to fit his head through.
"I can fix it," Will said, coming to stand beside him. "If I had help, I could fix it before the month was out, and the stable in the back, as well."
"It's hidden well enough," Guy said as he walked around the back to see the stable Will had mentioned. They had acquired four more horses, two bought with stolen gold, and two taken outright from a stuffy noble who had five pulling his carriage. The cold season would be hard for the horses as well, and it would be good to have a place that sheltered their animals from the weather.
"We would be dry and warm, and I would have a place to keep my medicines so they would not get wet…" Djaq said longingly.
"It's a good place," John said with a decisive nod of his head.
Guy nodded as well, then turned to Will. "What do you need us to do first?" he asked.
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For the next two weeks, they worked most days from sunrise to sundown on the cottage, and travelers through Sherwood went mostly unmolested, with the exception of one supercilious clerk who had the misfortune of being in the forest as the outlaws came back from the pond with bundles of water reeds for thatching in their arms. When all was done, the clerk went on his way with his purse lighter, and the outlaws put away their weapons, retrieved the reeds they had put to the side, and continued home.
Guy worked long hours helping Will to replace broken beams, repair pieces of the wall that had crumbled, and thatch the sharply pitched roof. He was grateful for John's strength more than once, as the big man pushed support timbers into place that would have crushed anyone else. Djaq proved more than once that he was stronger than he looked, and Allan did everything he could to avoid physical labor, though when Djaq chided him enough, he would come and join them, and his talk made the hours pass more quickly.
When the second week of October drew to a close, Will declared the house livable, and they brought their horses, their bedding, and their supplies from the camp by the stream. They celebrated their new home by taking a deer and opening a cask of ale, and that night, for the first time since the day he had defied the Sheriff, Guy slept without the open sky overhead.
Next: Part 7