still, but Jonquille’s gait was starting to jolt. She’d held the mare at a canter too long, tiring her. She let her settle down into a trot, gritting her teeth against the bone-jarring bouncing.
When the granite boulders melted out of the distant foliage, Marian left Jonquille to drink at the river’s edge and crept forward on foot, senses tingling. She saw no movement, heard no sounds except for the rustle of leaves overhead in the breeze and the distant, multithreaded tapestry of birdsong. She halted at the edge of the hollow, listening intently, but heard nothing out of the ordinary.
Finally she gave up and slipped around the stones, eyes scanning the shady hollow. They had been here, certainly—Alan and Little John. The remains of a fire, or several to judge from the thickness of the ash, dominated the clearing, and they’d rolled up a few half-rotten logs to serve as benches. A pile of apple cores, brown and humming with flies, lay nearby, and by the far edge was a handsome pair of stag’s antlers. Marian couldn’t help but snort at their foolishness—the antlers were smooth and white and knobbly at the ends, obviously shed at the end of last winter, but a nosy patrol wouldn’t necessarily have the wood sense to know that. They’d arrest them on the spot for poaching.
She didn’t see the tracks until she’d crossed the hollow to examine the antlers. When she dropped her eyes, she saw that the earth was churned up by hooves, and not those of a single horse. At least half a dozen men had ridden up to the edge of the hollow, and then, Marian realized with a sinking, creeping feeling, ridden off at a gallop. If there had been footprints—if Alan and John had tried to escape—they’d been obliterated by the horses pursuing them.
Marian took off at a run. She didn’t bother to whistle for Jonquille—Alan and Little John wouldn’t have gotten far chased by horses, and she couldn’t risk Gisborne seeing “Robin” riding Lady Marian’s dapple gray.
She saw Gisborne’s party through the trees, a glinting, sickly metallic tumor in the autumn colors of Sherwood. She crept closer, moving around toward the north where the trees were thicker and older, and provided better cover.
The first she heard of them was a roar of outrage, a bellow that made her halt in her tracks. She’d never heard Gisborne so angry—his was a cold, quiet fury. The shout came again, interrupted this time by a resounding, meaty thud. Now that she was close enough to see, she realized the shout hadn’t come from Gisborne at all—it had come from Little John.
She’d been dumbfounded by the “little” man’s height when they first met, unaccustomed to anyone towering over her. But now, seeing him surrounded by a swarm of the Sheriff’s men, she was struck anew. They looked like children in their fathers’ war regalia in comparison, with shortened toy swords to match. John was struggling in their grip, stronger than any one of them by far, but not stronger than six. Every so often he landed a blow that sent one reeling back, but there were more men than could gather round him at once, and another would replace his disoriented cohort in seconds.
There was no sign of Alan. Would she find him some distance away, a crossbow bolt between his shoulder blades?
“Down!” a man’s voice commanded, and a few of the men fell away. Gisborne strode up, holding John’s staff, and swung it in a massive arc at John’s head. John grunted and dropped to his knees, his eyes glazed. He’d brought two men down with him, and they scrambled out of the way as Gisborne readied the staff for another blow. Marian, crouching behind an oak, dug her fingers into the leaf mold to stop herself from rushing headlong into the fray.
Her heart was as cold as Gisborne’s anger as she watched him drop Little John into the dirt, breathing hard, face grim. Some part of her, Marian realized, felt a strange pity for Gisborne, in obsessive pursuit of a man who didn’t exist. But as the man prodded John’s now unconscious form with an armored boot, Marian could no longer find so much as a glimmer of compassion.
When Gisborne turned, she saw that his face was red, one eye half-shut with swelling. John had gotten in a few blows of his own before Gisborne felled him.
“Tie his arms and feet.” Gisborne’s voice was terse and hoarse. “And bring him