I made the sign of the cross over my gory confection to keep his spirit quiet, mumbled an apologetic prayer to St Michael, the sword-wielding archangel and patron saint of battle, and gathered up my victim’s helmet, sword-belt and spear. Then I began to trudge up the muddy track. My whole body was shaking, every step I took was unsteady, and suddenly the pain in my bitten hand came roaring out of nowhere like an angry bear. I switched the spear to my other hand and fought the reeling giddiness in my head. My victim had been slightly shorter than me, even before I hacked off his pimply head, and a shade thinner, but I calculated that on that dark night, from a distance of a hundred yards or so, if I walked in his tracks, I could pass as his double before an unsuspicious eye. I finally won control of my body and mind and banished the thoughts of the infernal deed I had just done; I slumped my shoulders a little and tried to emulate his resentful slack-kneed slouching as I walked away from his mutilated cadaver.
As I reached the brow of the hill, and paused, pretending to scour the area with my eyes like a dutiful sentry, I heard the mournful call of a barn owl hooting three times from the tree on the ridge away to my right. And for the first time in hours, I cracked a smile.
Hanno.
It was the signal, a message as warming to my heart as a hug from a loving mother.
If I had heard the sour barking screech of a mating vixen, the message would have been: Run for your life, the kill has been discovered. Run.
But Hanno’s skilful imitation of a hunting owl was telling me that, for the moment, I was safe. And in that moment, I loved him for it.
I could imagine his ugly round face, his stubbled, badly shaven head and wide grin, and hear his harsh foreign-accented words of praise at my completion of an unpleasant, difficult, bloody task, and I turned towards the tree where I knew he was concealed, a mere hundred and fifty yards away now that I was at the top of the track, and had to resist the urge to raise my hand to him in salute. Instead, I turned on my heel and, walking boldly, even jauntily, surcoat swishing around my shins, spear casually on my left shoulder, I made my way downhill, away from the muddy road, away from my friend Hanno, and plunged into the heart of the enemy encampment.
I walked with purpose, quietly but never stealthily, through the sleeping tents of my enemies, with what I hoped was a nonchalant grin fixed to my face — though it was, of course, too dark to see my expression. A few campfires were still smouldering between the tents, and a handful of men-at-arms dozed beside them wrapped in blankets, or sat slumped over jugs of ale. The September night still retained a little of the warmth of summer, but most of the men had retired to the large, low, saggy woollen tents that were dotted over almost all the surface of the open field.
Somewhere in the sleeping camp, I knew, was a friend and comrade, a strange middle-aged Norman woman named Elise. She had attached herself to our company on the way to the Holy Land, and had become the leader of the women who had joined our marching column. A healer of no little skill, she had undoubtedly saved many a life on the long journey to Outremer and back, tending the hurts of battle. Some whispered that she had other, darker skills and could read the future, but while I had found that her prophecies for the most part seemed to come true, they were always vague enough to be interpreted in several ways.
My master had sent Elise into the camp two days previously, to read the soldiers’ palms, tell wondrous and bone-chilling fireside tales — and to deliberately sow a particular fear among the enemy’s ranks. I hoped that she was safe: had she been captured and found to be a spy, she would have faced a slow and painful death.
I had half-overheard Robin give her orders the day before she left us to wander in the guise of a travelling seller of trinkets into the camp — to be honest, I had been hanging around him hoping to persuade him that I was not the right man for the task of dealing with the sentry; but I had the impression he knew this and was avoiding a conversation with me.
‘Elise, you are sure that you can do this; that you wish to do this?’ Robin said, fixing her with his strange silver eyes, his handsome face concerned and kindly. They were equals in height, but she was as thin as a straw, clad in a long shapeless dark dress that had once been green, her lined face topped with a mass of white fluffy hair. She looked like nothing so much as a giant seeding dandelion.
‘Oh yes, Master Robin, I can do this. It is but a small thing to spin a few tales at a campfire.’
‘And you know which tales you are to spin?’ asked my master.
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she said impatiently, ‘the spirits of dead men are trapped inside the wild ponies hereabouts, and horse-headed monsters patrol the night stealing men’s souls for the Devil… Wooooooah! Hooooagh!’ She made a series of loud eerie noises in the back of her throat and waggled her fingers in the air like a madwoman. It should have been ridiculous, comical even, but on that warm September afternoon I felt my blood chill a little. ‘Don’t you worry, master, they will all have nightmares,’ this odd woman continued. ‘And don’t you concern yourself about me, sir; no harm will come to me. I have seen the shape of the future in a bubbling cauldron of blood soup, and all will be well; you shall have your victory, sir. Mark my words. A great victory after a night of fire and mortal fear.’
Robin embraced her, and promised that she would be well rewarded for the risks she was taking. ‘Serving you, my lord, is reward enough,’ said this strange creature calmly in her French-accented tones. ‘Your fame will last for more than a thousand years,’ Elise continued; her eyes seemed to have glazed over, and she clearly had at least one foot sunk in the swamp of madness. ‘And those who serve you, they too will be remembered: John, Tuck, Alan, even my poor dead husband Will — they shall not be forgotten. So, I say again: the reward of serving you is enough: it is a path to immortality.’ And she gave a short, high-pitched laugh that was uncomfortably close to a cackle.
He had that wondrous ability, did Robin, of commanding love in the people around him, no matter what he did. And I was not immune myself — I had witnessed Robin committing the most appalling crimes, yet I was still his faithful hound. Hearing her half-crazed declaration of loyalty nipped at my conscience and I slunk away from Robin without raising the subject of the sentry’s death. I could not bear to be seen to be less courageous, or less loyal to Robin, than a bone-skinny, half-crazed wise woman.
I avoided the firelight as I walked through the enemy camp that dark night, circling around behind the tents whenever possible, and kept on sauntering downhill, roughly south-west, heading towards the dark, looming bulk of Kirkton Castle, Robin’s high seat overlooking the Locksley Valley. Although my master was lord of Sheffield, Ecclesfield, Grimesthorpe and Greasbrough, and dozens of smaller manors scattered all over the north of England, Kirkton Castle was his home. It was also the home of Robin’s wife, Marie-Anne, the Countess of Locksley, and she was even now inside its walls, besieged by the very men whose sleeping forms I was passing, whose snores and farts I could now hear. However, with God’s help, and Robin’s cunning, the castle would not be under siege for much longer.
The camp of the besieger, Sir Ralph Murdac, erstwhile High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests, was laid out in the shape of a crescent moon, well out of bow shot, about three hundred and fifty yards to the north-east of Kirkton. Some of Robin’s men, including myself, had watched it from concealment up on the high hills for four days and nights: we knew that it contained more than three hundred armed men in total — mostly spearmen, but with a handful of crossbowmen and about eighty cavalry — and that its strength easily overmatched our small force.
Robin had left England two and a half years ago to take part in the Great Pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a small, well-trained army of archers, spearmen and cavalry, but battle, disease and the fleshpots of the Levant had thinned our ranks so that when we landed at Dover ten days ago, seasick, sore and wet through from a rough Channel crossing, we had only thirty men-at-arms capable of straddling a horse, and a score or so of Robin’s surviving archers. But though we were a ragged lot, battered by much hard travel and the loss of many comrades, the fires of war in the Holy Land and the brutal journey home had tempered us like the finest steel, so that we believed ourselves to be the equal of any company twice our strength. Yet for all that we were hardened by battle, and confident in our abilities, we could not face a force such as the one Sir Ralph Murdac had mustered here — six times the size of ours — in honest, open battle and expect to be victorious.
Murdac was a loathsome man, a short, dark Norman lordling with the Christian kindness of an angry adder and the trustworthiness of a rabid rat. While he had been High Sheriff — before King Richard came to the throne — my master had been a very successful thief and outlaw, the famous Robin Hood of song and tale, no less, and he had humiliated this sheriff in many ways, robbing and killing his servants without the least compunction. They had long hated each other but had clashed in full battle only once before, more than three years ago at the manor of Linden Lea, north of Nottingham. On that occasion, after two days of the most appalling carnage, Robin had emerged the victor — but only by the skin of his teeth. Murdac had fled the country, avoiding the righteous wrath of
