Mark of the Black Arrow (21 page)

Other groups had a very different reaction to him. They would stiffen as he approached, tensing hands on their belts, always near the dagger or dirk that had become fashionable among the landed gentry. He was the only one who still wore a longsword strapped to his hip. These groups would still part for him, and allow him to stand in their midst as he parlayed and positioned himself. These were Longstride allies left leaderless by a fool’s insistence on sailing with the king.

He wasn’t an unbeliever. To the contrary, his religion was devout and strictly disciplined, but God was in England. If He chose to allow barbarians and infidels to overrun the Jews, then so be it.

Old Man Minter nodded to him, one eye closed in a permanent squint by an old knick with a dagger caught in a border skirmish long ago.

“Locksley.”

The men around him grunted unenthusiastic greetings. He remained silent for a long moment. When he did speak he leaned in, tilted his head, and kept his voice low, sounding conspiratorial.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “Good day to you.”

Feet shuffled. Eyes flickered to Minter.

So he’s the one to bring to heel, in Longstride’s absence.

Locksley said nothing more, watching the older lord. His years had barely stooped him, just the slightest curve of shoulder. He remembered a younger version of Minter, a rawboned rogue in his father’s hunting parties. He’d known the man near his whole life and he knew to wait, let his patience be Minter’s downfall.

Minter rubbed his upper lip with a blunt finger.

“’Tis certainly no feast we’ve been called to this time,” he said, and the group murmured their agreement, the babble of noise rolling around the circle. “Any idea what the proxy wants with us?”

One by one the faces turned toward him. He waited until they all watched him before casually lifting a shoulder and gesturing lazily with his left hand.

“He is the new king, even temporarily,” Locksley responded. “This is where he establishes how things will run under his hand.”

“I, for one, am not interested in being summoned like a dog,” Lord Staunton said.

“None of us are,” Minter affirmed.

“He needs to be told,” a man to Minter’s right said, a thin voice coming from a thin neck. “He needs to understand that our support is necessary, if he is to rule.”

The murmurs grew louder, more animated. Other men began to move closer, wedging into the group. Men he had in his pocket.

Excellent.

He responded to Minter’s right-hand man, but lifted his voice for the entire group to hear.

“We enforce the throne’s decrees, and yet you worry that this king remains unaware of it,” he said. “Of the fact that we are free men and landowners, who supply the resources he needs through our own nobility.”

The nods and murmurs were vigorous.

He smiled. “Then we shall remind him.”

One of his men struck up a cheer, and the others grabbed onto it like a lifeline. Minter held fast to the end, but even he joined in, and with that they were his.

*  *  *

Will fell over his own arms as he leaned forward. Brow furrowed, he tried to make his tongue work properly. “You thee, wha’s happeninanin is strange.”

Robin sighed. His lower back ached; despite his youth and despite the loosening effect of the drink, it still throbbed a little. He leaned forward in his chair and lifted the jar, draining the last dregs. The movement made his head feel as if he were underwater, reality dragging just slightly with the smallest movements.

“You can obserf… ob… look for yourselb when you come wilth me.” Will’s words stumbled into each other, sticky in his mouth.

“I’m not going,” Robin said stubbornly. Will stared at him with wide eyes and a slight shake of his head that wouldn’t stop.

“You
muth
.”

“No.”

“Buth…”

“Tell Prince John what you want,” Robin said. “Or not. I’m staying here.”

“Do you not take this seriouth… seri-ah…”

“It has nothing to do with me or this land.” He shrugged, and rose to his feet. Standing made the room tilt, but not much. Will pushed himself out of the chair with a lurch. He stopped himself, hands out in the air as if it were a wall to brace on. Nevertheless, he swayed precariously.

Robin grabbed his cousin’s arm. “You will be able to ride?”

Will looked at him with a smirk on his face. “I’ll be fine.” He took a step that made him arc lazily in a quarter-circle. “Walk wif me to the thables.”

Robin laughed, and it felt good to do so after the days he’d had since his father and brother left.

*  *  *

“I am pleased to see you all here.”

The voice came from everywhere. It wasn’t raised, nor shouted, yet every person paid attention. Sounding as if the speaker stood by her side, it brought Adaryn a chill so strong her skin puckered beneath her clothes.

Her sister shivered and stepped back. Both of them—indeed, everyone in the room—glanced around to locate the source of the words.

The shadows at the far end of the hut deepened, coalescing and taking on the texture of sackcloth. They moved from sooty gray to rich midnight. In the center of the veil something pale moved forward, swimming through darkness like a serpent through stormy seas. The shape clarified as it drew near, closer to the lamp’s light. A man’s face, pale and angular, topped with a shock of white hair that hung straight to the waist. Then two shapes to the side, long fingered hands held in intricate knots of knuckles. He stepped from the pool of darkness, boot heels sounding for the first time as they struck the plank floor, and the knuckle knots relaxed, falling free into simple, normal looking hands.

The darkness behind him broke, tumbling away. As the shadows snapped back to normal, something swept through the room, not a breeze or a whisper, but just a brief brush of
something
that touched them all.

The reaction followed it in a wave. Most of the practitioners in the room shuddered, a few growled like animals, two convulsed. Her sister gasped as if she were with a lover, and the Mad Monk wept, lifting ball-and-joint hands in the air.

Adaryn swayed on her feet, legs gone to water beneath her.

The man at the end of the room walked toward them with an easy gait. He was clad in light-drinking armor. It didn’t reflect highlights or make a sound as he walked, save for the
clomp
of boot on wood. The only color that relieved the sheer black lay over his chest and at the pommel tip of the bastard sword on his hip. It was almost a pentagram, the symbol of harmony among the five elements of the universe, yet inverted—its point hanging down over the place where his heart would lie.

Ancient symbols squiggled on the edges of it and whorls cut into it, the whole creating a sigil of terrible meaning. She didn’t know it, but recognized it as part of an ancient path of workings that her father had sternly warned her away from. From a distance the symbol had looked to be painted in bright, harsh red but as he drew closer she could see it was actually carved into the armor and the color of it pulsed from within like a slow, ponderous heartbeat.

Midway across the room a dark shape detached itself from the man’s shoulders, falling to the floor with feline grace and landing on four paws. The creature looked up, glinting eyes red in the lamplight. Lupine face on feline predator curves, its pitch-black fur stuck out in bristles and juts over a body big enough to be a threat even to a large man. Adaryn did not recognize it. It hissed at them then ran straight for the wall, where crescent claws dug in as it climbed in a streak of ebony and disappeared into the rafters of the thatched hut.

She followed it with her eyes, but lost it in the shadows. The thought of that thing over her head, that it could drop at any moment… another shiver chased her body, and her hand moved instinctively into the protective ward.

The man stopped, glittering eyes turned toward her.

Her sister took a broad step away from her.

“What have we here?” the armored man said.

She wanted to shrink, to pull herself inside her shawl, to climb into the fetish bag around her neck and huddle beside the river stone, badger teeth, herbs, and bird-bone powder that was housed inside.

“I’m Adaryn of Moonmist Hollow.”

Suddenly he was there in front of her, so close the air felt tight, as if a blanket had been thrown over her head. Sweat beaded her throat and chest, and her lungs closed like fists. He loomed over her and all she could see by craning her neck was the cleft chin and the thin villainous lips… and the pearl white teeth that smiled down at her.

“I did not ask
who
we have here, little bird.” The teeth clicked together, biting off the ends of the words like tails on puppies. “I ask
what
we have here.”

Her mouth, her dumb mouth, moved but made no sound.

“To illustrate—” He leaned back, allowing these words to go to the room “—I am the Sheriff of this land. I am the arm of the law and the law is given by the word of Prince John, holder of throne and crown. I am the one who called you forth. You have come by mine own will, whether you admit it or not.” He glanced at Agrona. Then his face swooped back down near Adaryn’s, mouth so close it could brush her lips in a lover’s kiss.

“But
you
I did not call.” Air pulled sharply into the blade of his nose, the inhale brushing air across her cheek. “You don’t smell like the power I seek.” He sniffed again. “You were not summoned.”

That’s not true
, she thought frantically.
The castle guard…
Her mind had become a babbling brook, a hundred thoughts tumbling over one another in an avalanche of confusion.

“
Answer the question
!” He screamed pain into her ear. “
What are you?
”

“I am a witch!” she cried. “A medicine woman and a midwife.”

He turned away from her and began to walk around the room. “You are a medicine woman. Yet I am not sick.” His hand flicked out, brushing through the dirty red hair of a man wearing a plaid kilt, wrapped in bandages from head to toe, all skin covered save his eyes and mouth. His eyelids looked as if they had stacks of ash on them, the skin dead and white and flaky, tumbling onto his lashes each time he blinked. His mouth lay wide across his teeth.

When you have no lips you’re always smiling
, she thought involuntarily. The Sheriff slid his arm over bandaged shoulders, ignoring the exposure to leprosy. The man looked up at him with moonish eyes that spun in deep sockets.

“I am much more needful of a plague-bringer like this one,” the Sheriff said. Then he pushed the leper away, leaving his arm outstretched. It swung the room until it pointed at the Mad Monk. The tarnished priest flung himself at the Sheriff’s feet, knees banging into the floor, robe catching and pulling on splinters. The graying wool blossomed dark as blood from torn and punctured skin seeped into the coarse fibers. His fingers danced along his open jaw and his eyes rolled back in ecstasy while pouring tears down hollow cheeks.

The Mad Monk began speaking, low and jumbled, in a language she didn’t recognize. The Sheriff reached down with a pale finger and lifted the monk’s chin up, closing off the sounds of the tongues. Then his eyes cut to her again.

“I am born of time and judgment, come forth to walk this land and fulfill my purpose here. I have no need of a midwife.” He looked down. “This one has carved himself into a perfect Enochian vessel.
That
I can use.”

Turning away from the monk, he took Agrona by the hair, fist gnarled in the tresses rooted at the back of her neck. He yanked, drawing her to her toes. Her eyes fluttered, her chest heaving as it blushed red across her cleavage.

“I have need of the dead and those who intercourse with them. Your sister is valuable to me. A necromancer I can use.” He turned his face toward Agrona, eyes still on her. His mouth parted and a tongue, long and wide and split down the middle, licked across the throbbing artery in her throat. Her sister swooned, leaning against the armored chest of the Sheriff. “A hedgewitch I cannot.”

He let go. Agrona stumbled across the short distance and fell against her. She grabbed her sister, keeping her from falling to the floor.

“I did not summon you. I had you
fetched
, for there is one role you can fulfill for me.” The Sheriff snapped his fingers with the sound of old bones breaking. Instantly Adaryn gasped in pain as blood began pouring from her eyes. Her hands clutched like iron bands as the voice filled her ears.

“I do need a sacrifice.”

*  *  *

The sound of the doors caused all heads to turn so fast it looked as if invisible assassins had snuck behind each man and snapped their necks.

Prince John strode in, flanked by guards holding crossbows ratcheted and locked, all of them step-marching through the middle of the room as if they were on parade. The
bang
of boot heel on the parquet floor sounded like a regiment, instead of the proxy king’s personal security detail. The nobles parted and Locksley made certain he moved with Minter and his men, to ensure that he retained his hold on them.

The prince wore the crown on his brow, a simple circle of gold adorned with rushing lions. It had been gifted by the cardinal to Richard the Lionheart when he first took the throne. It sat wobbly on Prince John’s skull, like a hat too big, and he held it in place as he stepped awkwardly up the stairs to the throne itself. There he turned, and sat. The guards fanned out to each side of the throne, like gull wings.

In his hand he held a heavy scepter made of gold. Prince John smiled with one side of his mouth.

“Come closer, gentlemen,” he said. “We have much to discuss.”

Before they could look to him or, God forbid, look to Minter, Locksley strode toward the throne. Behind him he could hear the others fall into line. Stopping sharply, he inclined his head in a short bow, more an acknowledgment of the position than of actual subservience.

“Milord, we are here…”

“Stop.”

Locksley froze.

“Milord is not proper,” Prince John continued. “Refer to me as ‘Your Majesty,’ or ‘Your Highness.’ ‘Liege’ is acceptable, but only barely.”