looked up, he spared not a glance for the others and watched Marian instead. “You did choose this,” he said gently. “But I see no bindings. No jailers, loved ones held hostage, no false promises of riches to be gained. Why do you think we are here, if not because we chose it, too?”
Elena’s voice was barely audible over the fire. “We’re told all our lives what to do. The role we play. Where we fit.” She was waiting for Marian’s gaze, and held her eyes, lips set. Her gentle maid, with the quick fingers and the soft laugh, flawless with needle and comb and scrub brush, smiled when she saw Marian’s face shift with understanding. “You aren’t the only one who chafes at being defined by the men who rule us.”
To the others, it was a speech about choice and consequence and loyalty, and the rule of nobility. But she spoke to Marian, not Robin Hood. And Marian heard her own heart echoed back to her, and turned away.
“It must end,” she mumbled, her face in her hands, thumbs kneading at the leather at her temples.
“Then let it.” Little John spoke for the first time since Marian had lost her temper. “Once we’ve helped the people of Nottingham—once we’ve made certain they’ll last the winter at least—we’ll vanish with you, those of us without homes to return to.”
Marian’s breath exploded in a weary laugh. “As easy as that? Amass enough wealth to give sustenance to all who need it for an entire season, without being caught, quickly enough to vanish before Gisborne’s men track us down?”
Little John looked away, rubbing at his chin. His beard was growing back, and his callused hands rasped over the thick stubble like a blade on a whetstone.
“We continue with our smaller thefts,” suggested Will, face grave. “Nothing too big, targets scattered across the forest. Too random to track. We can split up, plan each move with care.”
Marian turned back but did not resume her pacing. She stared, unseeing, into the fire. “It would take a great many small thefts,” she mumbled slowly, thoughts racing. “Or one big one.”
“Robin?” Will’s voice was uncertain.
Her gaze snapped up. “The gold shipment Gisborne spoke of to Marian.”
A hush settled over the circle of faces, each peering back at her. The wind shifted, bringing with it an acrid gust of campfire smoke that made Marian’s eyes water.
“It’ll be too well guarded,” Will said finally, slowly, as if afraid to break the silence.
Marian countered, “We’ll be on our home territory, here in Sherwood, where the King’s Road passes through. And with Gisborne’s attention on the castle, on guarding Marian, he won’t be there escorting the shipment.”
“Distributing that much gold without being caught—”
“Is a task we can spread out over the entire winter.” Marian’s eyes swung to find Little John, who fell silent when she interrupted him. “Once we have it, we can lie low until pursuit has stopped, and hand out coin in secret.”
“We’ll have to fight.” Alan’s voice was taut, but there was a cautious energy to it as his eyes darted around the circle. “We won’t get away with misdirection and trickery—if we hope to capture whole wagons, it’ll come to sword and bow one way or another.”
Marian thought of the boy, Tom, dead of the arrow she’d made with her own hands and fired from her own bow. She thought of the boys dying in the desert, for a King draining his own land of life and prosperity in order to bring ruin to the infidels. Infidels who were just boys themselves, born of different mothers and sworn to a different god, and dying all the same.
She could not stop any of it. She could not end the King’s war or bring him home. She could not feed the starving soldiers on either side, or keep them safe, or bandage their wounds when they fell. She could not save them. She could not save Robin. She could not even save herself.
But she could feed those boys, the ones she’d seen watching her that day at the gates of Nottingham town, who had looked so tired and so hopeful and so very, very young.
This time, when Marian looked around at the faces of her band of outlaws, she saw only reflections of the determination crystallizing in her own heart. Robin’s spirit was still silent, and distantly, she wondered if her father had been right all along—that none of this was what Robin would have wanted. If his