Desert Skies

Seventy Times Seven: Part 8/8

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:29:03 GMT

This is it, people, end of the line.

Welcome to Part VIII, in which loose ends are tied up, Guy understands something, and Robin is told what he needs to hear.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Grimsby was grey and crowded and smelled of tar and herrings. Gisburne was surprised at how easily the three of them moved through the town – a pair of wolfsheads, one of them an armed Saracen, and a displaced and poorly dressed Norman noble did not make for the most common of travelling companions, after all. But in Grimsby, it seemed, no one much cared. Trading ports, Guy supposed, were like that. Men came and went, and so long as they paid the excise men and did not pick too many fights, the locals barely looked up.

Nasir, who had stayed away until the night was half gone, and who had returned to the shelter only to kick Will awake for the night’s second watch, moved through the town as if he navigated port cities every day of his life. He had barely spoken a word all day, reacting neither to Scarlet’s jibes nor Gisburne’s determinedly aggrieved manner. It put Guy in mind of the way the man had behaved on the day that Fitz Roy had brought him out of Newark: as if he were delivering a package, not dealing with a person.

Now, with the waterfront in sight, the Saracen swung away from the port and towards a small row of clothiers’ shops, their guild signs creaking overhead in the steady breeze. Scarlet frowned, baffled.

“What the hell are you playing at, Nasir? The ships are that way.”

“I know.” Nasir barely spared him a glance. “And no ship’s master will take time for a beggar in rags. Gisburne is noble born. It is best if he looks it.”

That made Guy stare, briefly startled. He had not expected to be accorded his rank, false as it may have been, by either of these men; it stunned him how much it mattered. The Saracen was probably right, too; it would be easier to negotiate passage if he looked like he had resources to spare. Nasir nodded to him and tossed him a small purse clanking with coin.

“Find what you need. We will wait.”

Will cleared his throat. “Actually, there was a tavern just back -”

“We,” Nasir said again, with clear emphasis, “will wait.”

With a resigned sigh, Will slumped against a railing and folded his arms in exaggerated patience. “All right then,” he said. “We’ll bloody wait.”

As Gisburne moved off, Will watched him warily, with narrowed eyes. To Nasir, he said, “Aren’t you worried he’ll say something?”

“No.” Which was true; this was Lincolnshire, far beyond de Rainault’s influence – and besides, even if Gisburne did speak (which Nasir doubted) and even if anyone believed him, it seemed unlikely that Grimsby’s Watch would turn out on the spot. Will caught the clipped, brusque tone of Nasir’s voice and sighed again. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, screwing up his face in an expression somewhere between reluctance and concern.

“Look, Naz. I ain’t good at this, but … you all right?”

Nasir dismounted, hitching his bay and Gisburne’s dun to the railing next to Will. He didn’t look at his friend. “Yes.”

Scarlet pursed his lips thoughtfully and shook his head. “Yeah. Well. I ain’t so sure I believe that.”

That got no response. Will grimaced. He wished Robin was here; the man might be painfully over-bred at times, but at least he understood Nasir’s silences. Will liked his Saracen friend well enough, and respected him more than most, but he didn’t understand him at all. He tried again. “You went off like a scalded cat last night, and you’ve been brooding all bloody day, and now you won’t even let a man buy himself an honest drink.” He frowned inwardly at that last, thinking that he shouldn’t have said that, but he had not been lying when he’d said he wasn’t good at this. Soft words did not come naturally to him. “I just … look, Naz, if it’s something I said, you know I didn’t mean nowt by it. An’ if it’s what Gisburne said, Hell’s teeth man, that’s Gisburne. He’s always calling us names.”

Nasir’s lips twitched, briefly softening his expression. Ah, well, he had always known that Scarlet had a better heart than he liked to show. “No, Will. It is not for you to apologise. It is my manners that failed. The matter is of no concern. An ambush of old memories, no more.”

That, Will could understand. Memories were tricky beasts when it came to that. He’d not be without

(Elena)

his for all the world, but sometimes … oh, gods above and below, sometimes. He nodded in understanding. “I hear that. ‘S’all right then. Good.”

Down the muddy street, a trio of men tumbled out of the tavern, laughing and shoving one another like boys. Will looked after them wistfully. Nasir saw him watching and relented with a quiet smile. “Will. Go.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. This does not need you as well. But no trouble, yes?”

“No trouble. Just a mug of ale and a bowl of whatever they’ve got to eat.” Will pushed himself off the railing, looking brighter than he had all day. “You want something? I can bring you a meat pasty, if you’d like.”

“No.” Nasir repressed a shudder. There was no telling what unclean offerings might be in something like that. “Thank you.”

As Will strode off with the air of a man with a job to do, Nasir scanned the street from long habit, looking for dangers, marking ways of escape. A large rat ran from one of the narrow alley ways that led to the waterfront and scuttled down the street, the way Scarlet had gone. Nasir shuddered again at the disconcerting mental image of a grubby meat pasty garnished with rat tail. No, let Will eat at the local tavern if he liked. Nasir, who had seen too much, knew better.

The Saracen had been more than right. A new set of clothes, a sweep or three of the barber’s knife, and Gisburne felt a new man. More to the point, he looked like one as well. The ship’s master he spoke to called him ‘my lord’ and fawned about him like a hound hoping for a scratch, once he saw the money pouch Gisburne wore on his belt under a neatly cut blue mantle. Guy found himself oddly uncomfortable with the man’s obsequious behaviour. It had been so long since anyone had treated him with anything beyond contempt or utter indifference that he had almost forgotten what it was like to be grovelled to. He was not sure how he felt about that. He did know that it seemed very strange to play the lordling again. Gisburne did not think he had ever in his life felt so far removed from who he was.

He could not have said why. He had told the ship’s master nothing that wasn’t true, after all; his name, that he was seeking passage to Normandy, that he could pay his way. It might have been that he was leaving with so little; no squire or servants, no horse, no arms or armour at all – nothing, in fact, but what he stood up in. Gisburne had always valued the trappings of his rank before now, sensing perhaps that without them, people would see him for who he was: bastard-born and unworthy of the title he bore. Now trappings seemed to matter less, and his title was all he had. He supposed he had no choice but to be worthy of it.

The Saracen was waiting for him at the end of the dock. He appeared to be idling in the pale sun that peeked through the tattered clouds overhead, watching a group of porters armed with heavy iron hooks shifting wool bales from one pile to another, but Gisburne was not fooled. Cats looked like that before they decided to hunt; the Saracen knew exactly what was going on around him. Scarlet was nowhere to be seen. Most likely he was in some dockside alehouse, picking fights and losing at dice. Nasir, who had been leaning comfortably against a barrel of pickled herring, stood straight as Gisburne approached.

“You have passage?”

“Yes.” Gisburne gestured to the ship he had found, a broad-beamed merchant vessel, high-prowed and well-crewed. “The master tells me he leaves tomorrow, with the tide. To Margate first, then across the Channel to Barfluer. He even gave me the name of a decent inn for the night.”

Nasir nodded. “You will go?”

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?” There was no real bitterness in Gisburne’s tone; he even smiled a little, though it came crooked and self-aware. “There’s nothing for me here.”

“No.” Nasir turned to glance warningly at a grubby urchin who had strayed too close, looking for a purse to cut. The child veered away, wide-eyed; the Saracen looked back to Gisburne. “For you, France is best.”

“France,” Gisburne agreed. “Or Outremer. Once I have coin enough to make the voyage.”

Nasir schooled himself to impassivity over that. He inclined his head, very slightly. “Or Outremer. As you say.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke, and then Nasir shrugged and lifted the bundle that had been resting at his feet, propped against a coil of rope. Gisburne had not even seen it. The Saracen held it out, casual as if he were passing a waterskin to a friend who had complained of thirst. “For you. For a new start.”

A sword. Gisburne took it, turned it in his hands, almost in disbelief. No Damascene steel here, only a plain blade and a non-descript hilt, and an ordinary foot-soldier’s scabbard to house it, but still a sword. Gisburne stared. Nasir made a small negating gesture, stilling the young nobleman’s words before he even thought them.

“It is not much to the eye, but it sits well in the hand. It is honest, I think. It will serve until you can earn something better.”

“But … how …?” Guy frowned, floundering. He was not used to gifts or favours, and especially not from a man who was still, at the heart of things, his enemy. It left him quite off-balance. “Why?”

“Because you will need it,” the Saracen told him, with the air of a man pointing out the obvious.

“But … when did …?”

“Ya Allah, you Franks, always you question everything.” Nasir was smiling as if at some private joke. In fact, he had taken the opportunity to sell the horses, and the sword had been part of the price. Port towns, after all, thrived on trade. “Take it and be thankful.”

That, Gisburne thought, was good advice. He swallowed, disconcerted at how oddly rough his throat felt, and belted the sword about his hips. The weight of it was comfortable, reassuringly familiar. “My thanks,” he managed. “For this. And …”

Another negating flick of the hand met that. “For the sword, I accept your thanks. For the other, it is not worth mentioning.” Nasir was not about to tell Gisburne that if he owed gratitude to anyone, he owed it to Rob, who had not been willing to let a brother of his die like a dog, even if it was what he deserved. Some secrets were Rob’s to tell or to keep as he saw fit. Instead he said; “One thing. If you do go east, avoid landing at Jaffa; the excise men are vultures. Avoid too Tyre and Sidon; the slavers are worse. For you, perhaps Akka is best, or Tripoli.”

“Akka?” Guy sounded puzzled. Nasir’s brows lowered in irritation.

“Acre, you Franks say.” The word felt ugly on his tongue.

“Or Tripoli.” Guy nodded. “I’ll remember.”

Nasir paused and looked at Gisburne consideringly, then gave a resigned shrug, as if he had decided to do something he did not much like. “If Tripoli, you could do worse than find a man named Hugh de Lusignan of Tortosa. He is cousin by marriage to the Constable of Tripoli.”

“You know these people?” It was hard to hide his surprise; Guy had not really considered what circles his irksome wolfsheads might have moved in before they decided to make Sherwood their battlefield. This one, it seemed, had moved in some interesting circles indeed.

“Hugh I have … dealt with. Once. Remind him of the man who won his grey colt off him, and then gave it back.” Another shrug, almost dismissive. “He may speak to you, if he remembers.”

It was hard to tell from the Saracen’s aloof tone, but Guy thought that whatever dealings he’d had with this Hugh of Tortosa might have been sharp-edged. He hoped for his own sake they had not been too sharp; he did not want to cut himself on old daggers.

But those were concerns for another day. For now, he had enough to worry about in just getting himself to France and finding his way once he was there. Even now, Gisburne could not quite believe what was happening. It was hard to think that only a handful of days ago he had been squatting in the stinking dark waiting for death. Now he was standing on a busy dock with a ship waiting at anchor, making plans for the rest of his life. The distance from the one to the other was vast; Guy was still not sure how – or why – any of this had happened. He furrowed his brow and spread his hands, turning puzzled and needful eyes on the Saracen before him.

“Nasir. All of this – Newark, Fitz Roy, the sword, everything – can you … no. Will you tell me why?”

He’d had to ask. Too much had happened, changing his world, for him not to, and never mind what he might be told. Nasir’s dark eyes studied him, thoughtful and slow. Gisburne bore it for as long as he could. At last he burst out, “Well, come on, man, damn you! Why?”

His answer, when it came, was not what Guy had expected. Nasir never looked away from him, his gaze driving through him with a steady, considered intensity that Gisburne felt in his bones.

“Because,” the Saracen said quietly, “true nobility is more than only breeding and blood. It needs something less common. Tact. Integrity. The art of grace towards one’s inferiors. That is why.”

For the second time in the space of minutes, Gisburne found he did not know what to say. More than only blood, the Saracen had said… and if Hood – no, Huntingdon – had shown true nobility by his grace, maybe a well-bred bastard could do the same. Maybe one day he could. Finally, Gisburne nodded his head, jerky with emotion. His voice was the same as the rest of him, husky and off-key. “I think I understand.”

Nasir dipped his head, very slightly. “Yes,” he said. “Perhaps you do.” He bowed, formal and precise, nothing subservient in him. “Peace go with you, Sir Guy.”

Alone on the dock, Gisburne stood and watched as the Saracen walked away.

“I can’t believe he’s really gone,” Scarlet said for the dozenth time that day. He grinned over his shoulder at Nasir. “I saw it with my own eyes, but I still don’t bloody believe it.”

Gisburne’s ship had left as its master had promised, sailing with the morning tides. It had taken with it a hold full of wool and pickled herring, and a handful of paying passengers. One of them, standing tall on the foredeck with his fair hair lifting in the breeze, had been Sir Guy of Gisburne. If he had seen the two outlaws watching from the bank of the estuary, he gave no sign. Will went on. “Well, he’s some other bugger’s problem now. Glad to see the back of him. Here’s a question, though: where did he get that bloody sword?”

Nasir said nothing, walking on in silence. Will was more than capable of holding a conversation without him, and in any case, there were some questions he had no intention of answering. Will grunted.

“Don’t suppose it matters, does it? Here, how many days back to Sherwood? You taking us the long way around again?”

“No.”

“Good.” Will marched on a few paces without speaking. Nasir savoured the quiet. Then: “It’s a pity you sold those horses, Naz. We’d get home quicker if we rode.”

“You don’t ride.”

“I can!” Will sounded indignant. He whirled in the road, walking backwards, arms wide in protest. “I can ride. I just don’t like to. A man’s legs ought t’be good enough, I reckon.” His heel struck a stray stone; he stumbled and swore. Nasir rolled his eyes.

“You can ride? You can barely walk.”

“Oh, very funny.” Swinging back to face where he was going, Scarlet settled easily into the rhythm of the march. “Horses are faster, is all.”

“Faster if you can ride.”

“I can, I tell you!”

Drawing in a deep breath, Nasir shook his head and sent up a silent prayer. It was going to be a long walk back to Sherwood. He would need all the patience he could get.

It had been nigh on a fortnight since Nasir had left. Robin had been trying not to think of all the things that might go wrong. On his last trip to Halstead, he’d been given a letter from his cousin Harry, a brief note thanking him for the horse and telling him to find a less imposing messenger, next time. That had made Robin smile; he had known he could rely on Harry. Fitz Roy had always had a strong sense of family, in spite – or maybe because – of his illegitimate birth; and besides, Harry had never been able to resist an adventure.

The letter had given him some reassurance. His faith in Nasir’s abilities gave him more. His Saracen friend was unrelentingly competent, and deeply practical. He would carry out the task Robin had given him if he could, but he would not die trying. He would bring himself home

(home?)

with Scarlet in tow, and tell Robin he was a fool for having let Will stray in the first place.

He had received another message in Halstead, too. Marion had agreed to see him. They had met, briefly and rather painfully, in the small herb garden near the infirmary. Marion had been chaperoned by an elderly nun with kind eyes, who had accorded them privacy of a sort, setting herself on a bench where she could see them, but not hear what they were saying. That was as well, Robin thought, looking back. He would not have wanted to share those words with a stranger.

Marion would not be returning to Sherwood. He knew that now, with the same certainty that told him that the leaves would fall and the winter snows would come. She was not for him; she never had been. Even now her heart was Loxley’s; the May Queen searching for her Summer King in the winter shadows and pining for the spring. That saddened Robin, and for more reasons than his own aching heart. Marion would spend her life mourning that loss, enshrining Loxley as that irreproachable other against whom all other flames would pale, and in doing so she would let her own flame, the spark that had once burned in her so bright, fade and die. The past was another place, Robin knew; no one could linger there too long and not lose something vital in themselves. Life was hope, and a series of tomorrows, but for Marion it would always be yesterday.

That knowledge was painful, but also strangely liberating. Robin could not live in the past, and he could not fight the dead. Marion’s choices were not his to make, and his own choices were simple enough: beat himself bloody against her unbreachable walls, or grieve for what might have been and move on.

He felt better for having come to that understanding. He would feel better yet once Nasir was back. It was strange, to miss the man’s company so much, but at the same time it was not strange at all. There was no one else he could talk to, no one else who would watch him with a sure and steady gaze and say everything that needed saying with only the flick of his fingers. John was a good man, but his world had never grown larger than Sherwood and shepherding. Much could talk the ears off a donkey, but he was seldom to the point. And Tuck, whatever else he was, was still a man of the Church: whenever the portly monk folded his hands, Robin felt like a child caught avoiding the Confessional. As for Will … Robin laughed quietly. Scarlet was irrepressible, course, uncultured, and had a heart the size of a harvest moon, but he had never been able to just keep his mouth shut.

And none of them had those dark hunter’s eyes that followed Robin’s soul on every turning it took.

He had taken to watching the Newark road. There was no call for it; Nasir would find him even if he shifted camp to the other side of Sherwood, though the man would not thank him for making his task harder. He watched anyway, because he knew they would come this way, and it gave him something to do.

Robin heard Will before he saw him. The man seemed to be in the middle of a bawdy story about a serving wench in a French alehouse. “…an’ then I went out the window and she went for him with the fire-tongs, spitting like a hellcat, and when I finally got someone to unbolt the door, the dogs had eaten my supper and some bastard had stolen my boots!”

Robin grinned, wondering what Nasir, with his restraint and his Eastern grace, was making of that. He decided to do the decent thing and rescue his friend from more tales of Will’s exploits. He stepped out into the road.

“You’re back. I’ve been waiting.”

Nasir showed no surprise at all, but a brief glow of relief flickered in his eyes; he had spent the last three miles debating how hard he would have to hit Scarlet to shut him up, and whether or not it was worth it. Now he dipped his head in greeting, and thanked Allah the Merciful for Rob’s timing. “Salaam, sadiqi.”

“Salaam.” Robin clasped his friend’s wrist, pulling him into a quick, welcoming embrace. Nasir tensed slightly, but returned the gesture easily enough, stepping back with a smile. Will, though, did not have time for niceties. Without preamble, he clipped Robin across the top of the head.

“All that fucking sneaking around, and it turns out it’s bloody Gisburne,” he growled. “Why did I march all the way to Grimsby and back for Gisburne, you want to tell me that?”

“I don’t know, Will,” Robin replied sweetly, with a smile that could have sliced stone. “No one asked you to. I thought you were going to Lichfield.”

“Yeah, well.” Will had the decency to look a little abashed. “No other way to find out what was going on, was there?”

“You could have asked.”

“Would you have told me?”

“Probably not,” Robin admitted. “But it might have been worth a try.”

“Bloody noblemen,” Will said, though he was smiling in spite of himself. “All the fucking same. Never let the rest of us know what’s going on.” He pointed accusingly at Nasir. “And he’s damned-well noble born, too. He must be. No bloody way he can be so at home telling people what to do and not be, and that’s God’s truth.”

Nasir only blinked mildly and folded his arms over his chest. Robin laughed.

“Go back to camp, Will. Much went into Wickham the other day, there’s mead and ale. And Tuck’s rabbit stew.”

“And bread? Fresh bread?” Will cocked his head, like a hound who had heard his master’s voice in the distance.

“Yes, fresh this morning.”

“That’ll do me, then.” When it came to a decent meal, Scarlet did not need to be asked twice. It came of soldiering, he’d have told anyone who asked; a soldier learned to take good food where he could find it, and Will had taken that well to heart. He strode off into the trees without looking back.

Robin and Nasir stood where they were in the road, watching until Will was gone, enjoying the silence. After a moment, Robin glanced to his friend, carefully casual.

“Noble born, are you, Malik?”

“Will thinks so.” Nasir’s lips quirked at Robin’s deliberate use of that name, with its strong and royal meaning. As if, he thought, Rob did not know the status of his birth exactly. “I am sure my father, may Allah the Compassionate grant him grace, would be gratified.”

“Well, you know Will. He can be surprisingly perceptive, sometimes.” Robin grinned. “You could tell them, Malik. What’s another royal blooded noble, around here? We’re almost as common as sparrows.”

“We are not,” Nasir said firmly. “And in any case, it makes no matter. Just as your kinship with Gisburne makes no matter. Some things are our own, to tell or not.”

“Yes,” Robin said. “I suppose.” He paused, then said, “Where did you ship him off to?”

“France. It semed best.”

“He went happily enough?”

Happy? Nasir made a face. Happiness and Gisburne, in his observation, were distant kin at best. Time and kindness might change that, but … he shrugged. “He was … content. He spoke of travelling further.”

“Outremer?”

“Perhaps.”

Robin nodded, thoughtful. “I wish him well of it, then. So long as it keeps him away from Huntingdon, and away from us.”

“He will not be back, I think.” Unlacing his waterskin from his belt, Nasir took a mouthful and then said, “Your cousin sends his regards.”

That made Robin flash his quick, bright grin. “Harry? I know, he sent me a letter. You made an impression, by the sounds of it.”

“I?” Nasir’s brows went up. He shrugged. “He thought me your servant, at first. I told him I am not.”

“I’ll bet you did.”

“And his squires seemed to think I would turn into a pillar of fire like an ifrit, and burn them to ash.” Nasir frowned and rubbed lightly at his jaw. “What do you Franks tell your children about my people?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Robin assured him, with that spark in his eye that Nasir had come to know meant that he was joking. “Only that you eat babies for breakfast and that you summon devils from the sands to fight for you. And Harry has squires these days?” The idea made him laugh out loud. “Sweet Christ, who would entrust their sons to Harry?”

“He schools them well.” Nasir tipped his head. “They will learn from him what they might not from another.”

“I’m sure.” Robin grinned. “Harry always was a disruptive influence.”

“I think he would say the same of you,” Nasir pointed out, with the faintest hint of a smile. Robin laughed again.

“Ah, but I’m an outlaw; I’m meant to be disruptive.”

Nasir, who could not argue with that, simply bowed his head. Robin nodded, suddenly serious.

“And speaking of disruptive influences,” he said, lifting his chin in the direction that Scarlet had gone, “we’ve got Will contend with. I was hoping no one but we two – well, and Gisburne and Harry, I suppose – would ever need know about this, but Will won’t keep his mouth shut. He’ll have told the others everything, by now.”

“He will tell them what he knows,” Nasir agreed. “Which is little.”

“It’s enough to raise questions. What do I tell them when they ask why I’d even lift a finger to save Gisburne?”

Silence answered that. Robin, used to his friend’s pauses, did not push Nasir to speak. After a short while, Nasir shrugged very slightly and said, “Tell them mercy is a virtue. And so is forgiveness.”

There was a compliment in that, sidelong but sincere nonetheless. Robin

(I say unto you not seven times)

touched Nasir’s wrist, very lightly. “Thank you, my friend. And thank you for doing this at all. I couldn’t have asked anyone else.”

“It was no bother,” Nasir replied, with the faintest smile. “I have done worse things.”

Well, so he probably had. Robin nodded, accepting that, and started back towards camp. Nasir fell in behind him, a reassuring presence at his back. Robin wondered what Gisburne had made of being shepherded by a Saracen, and chuckled low in his chest. Dropping back half a step, he waited for Nasir to draw level and asked, “Did he give you any trouble?”

“Gisburne?” Nasir wanted to know, “Or Will?”

Robin gave a wry grin. “Either,” he said with a shrug. “Both.”

Nasir tilted his head a little, laconic as ever. “Gisburne? A little. Not much. Will?” He slanted Robin a significant look. “More.”

“I thought he would. I shouldn’t have let him off his leash.”

Nasir laughed under his breath. “As you say, sadiqi.”

Robin couldn’t help it; he laughed too, stopping where he was and turning to his friend, halting him with a hand on one shoulder. “It’s good to have you back, Malik. Truly.”

There was something other than humour in the young man’s voice. Nasir heard it and frowned, looking at him with appraising eyes.

“You feared I would not come?”

“No!” Robin said quickly, and then, with a sigh, “Yes. A little. I mean, what you said about obligation and blood, and the colours in the desert …”

“And about wanting to live a little longer, perhaps?” Nasir swatted him about the shoulders, what began as a cuff ending as a warm grip on Robin’s arm. “You must listen better, Rob. I will not leave without your blessing. To slip away like a thief in the night – this is not the act of a friend.”

“No, I know.” Robin drew a deep breath and gave a short, derisive laugh, aimed at himself. “Stupid of me, but … Marion’s not coming back. I’ve lost her. And … I thought … I couldn’t stand to lose you too.”

“Ah.” Nasir lowered his eyes briefly, wondering what to say. He decided to acknowledge the easier thing, and leave the other. Some truths did not need words, and he had always found silence to be best. “I am sorry, Rob. About Marion.”

Robin nodded, as if Nasir had said something else, then gave himself a quick shake and sighed. “I knew, I think. I just didn’t want to know. If that makes sense.”

“It does.” Nasir inclined his head carefully, picking his words. “The heart does not answer to logic.”

“No,” Robin agreed. His eyes caught Nasir’s and lingered, then suddenly dropped away. “No, it doesn’t. But it mends. With care and time. Inshallah.”

That earned him a quiet smile. “Inshallah.”

“And, if God is very kind, there may even be some food left when we get back to camp.” Flicking his hair out of his eyes, Robin laughed, trying for normality. “If Will doesn’t eat us out of supplies. You must be starving.”

“No,” Nasir said. “Not starving.” Which was true, as far as it went. If he had been starved of anything over the last handful of days, it had not been food. There were things in the world more sustaining than merely bread and meat, things which fed the very soul. Robin’s pale hair shone softly in the forest’s gentle light.

“Well, in that case there’s no hurry.” Robin took a deep breath, oddly grateful; he did not relish facing his friends’ accusing eyes when they learned where Nasir had been, and why. Gisburne had cause them all more pain than Robin knew; when it came to what he had done, mercy seemed a weak excuse. As for the other, the truer reason … Robin was not sure how much he wanted to think on that. His words came reluctantly, almost in spite of himself. “Malik. Tell me. What was … what is he like?”

Nasir understood exactly what he was being asked. How much are he and I the same? Robin had demanded that of him in a forest glade, with pain in his voice and fear in his eyes; he was asking the same thing now. Nasir gave it the thought it deserved.

He remembered Gisburne as he had been when Fitz Roy had first brought him out of Newark’s gaol, worn and angry and shouting insults, and the low desperation in his voice when he had asked why anyone had come for him at all. He recalled Gisburne’s eyes, unguarded and full of wonder at the Damascene steel in his hands, and the way they had shadowed and shuttered at the first hint of rebuke. He thought of the young nobleman prostrate with laughter at Will’s lunacy, and his courage in holding his ground against armed men in the first place. And he remembered him standing in the prow of the ship, fair hair shining and face turned forward, braving his new beginning. Just as Robin had braved his new beginning not so long ago, when he had walked from his father’s castle and lands and the title to which he had been born to take on the mantle of the Hooded Man. That had needed courage too.

They were, in some ways, not so unalike. Could I be him, Robin had asked, and Nasir thought now as he had then that the answer was no. But, if Allah the Compassionate showed him mercy, and if the world was a little kind, Gisburne could become something more like the brother who had saved him and who he didn’t know he had. That spark was in him, somewhere. In Robin’s line, Nasir had cause to know, the blood ran strong. And a man could not change that.

Those, though, were not words that would bring Robin the comfort he wanted. Not in this tongue, at least, rude as it was and lacking in subtlety. Nasir wondered what to tell him. He settled in the end for honesty, as far as he could.

With a smile, Nasir let his hand go to Robin’s face, tracing the fall of his cheek and the line of his jaw to lift his pale

(beautiful)

eyes to the light. Looking into them, he said what his friend needed to hear. If his words were also the truth of his heart, so much the better.

“No, Rob. There is no resemblance.”

Seventy Times Seven: Part 7/8

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:25:03 GMT

The story continues ... again. Or still. Or something.

Part VII, in which the invective takes a turn for the colourful, Nasir talks himself into a bad mood and Will finally scores something to drink.

And this time, I am seriously warning for Will's language. I mean it. Language. Don't say I didn't tell you.

Mistakes all mine, toys all someone else's, beta still luthien13

________________________________________________________________________________________________

The dawn broke with sheeting rain, and a black belly of cloud overhead. The weather did nothing to allay Scarlet’s temper; mornings left him cranky at the best of times, and finding that Gisburne had been unbound all night had only served to make him worse. The fact that Nasir had taken the whole of the night’s watch upon himself and let Will sleep right through did not help; at this hour of the day, Scarlet did not even have the presence of mind to be grateful. Gisburne was only glad the man had not seen him handling the Saracen’s Damascene sword the night before. Scarlet would probably have killed him on the spot. Or had an apoplectic fit. One or the other.

Will refused to go anywhere in the rain. Nasir, who didn’t care if it was raining or not, looked at Guy and raised his brows. Gisburne shrugged.

“I’d prefer to stay dry. Your friend Fitz Roy didn’t see fit to provide me with a rain cape.”

“What, are we taking votes now?” Will scowled, apparently unmoved to find Gisburne agreeing with him. “I said I’m not going. You bastards can do what you like.”

“We stay,” Nasir said mildly. “I will check the horses.”

Outside, a chill wind was gusting, slinging the rain sidelong so that it needled against Nasir’s face. Reminding himself that rain was the gift of Allah to all men did not make it any less cold. The horses, wise creatures, had swung their broad hindquarters into the wind and stood hipshot and patient, heads down. Moving them further into the lee of the hut was the work of moments, and he made them secure quickly, wanting to get back inside before there was trouble; leaving Scarlet alone with Gisburne was like leaving a lit lantern in a stable full of dry hay. At least the two of them had managed not to kill each other when he had slipped away for his dawn prayers. Nasir hoped that was a good sign. He could do without another day like the last. Truly, if they had been dogs, he would have doused the pair of them in cold water and muzzled them both.

Nasir had been surprised at himself, last night. If Robin had suggested he might let Gisburne handle one of his blades, he would have thought him mad. If he had also said that they would discuss philosophy over that blade, he would have laughed out loud. And yet last night he had done both, even if Gisburne did not understand half of what he was being told. Rob would have understood, Nasir thought. Rob, for all his Christian faith and pagan leanings, knew about the grace in submitting to a will greater than his own. Gisburne only understood submission as an ugly thing, to be forced by the strong on the weak. Hardly a wonder, then, if the sword had confused him.

Even so, there had been some flickers of hope. Gisburne could still recognise beauty when he saw it; he was not damaged utterly beyond repair. He could even – almost – be civil, when he forgot to be himself. Nasir had not lied when he had told the man that he had skills, that he would find himself a place and a path. He only hoped that Gisburne – for Rob’s sake – had the sense to make better choices this time. Because as much as Robin might deny it, he would always care what this man did and what became of him. Brotherhood, Nasir had cause to know, could do that in spite of everything. His own brothers, both those of the spirit and those of the blood, had been able to drive him verily to distraction, and none of them had been as troublesome as Gisburne. Not even the ones that had periodically tried to kill him.

Slipping back inside the hut, Nasir found his companions steadfastly ignoring each other. Or perhaps not quite ignoring: Will was sharpening the larger of his knives with a certain malicious intensity, and Gisburne was determinedly looking away, staring into the small fire he had stoked. Scarlet gave Nasir a smile as edged as the knife he was working on.

“Don’t fret, Naz. There’s not a scratch on him.”

In response to that, Nasir dipped his head in almost a bow. His expression was more than a little sardonic. “Indeed,” he said. “Alhamdulillah.”

“What?” Gisburne glared at the Saracen suspiciously. Will gave a nasty laugh.

“He’s thanking God I didn’t kill you yet.” The outlaw lifted his knife and spun it in his fingers. “Either that or he’s calling you a whoreson bastard. I never did get my head around that curly language of his.”

Nasir shot Scarlet an unfavourable look. “I offer praise to Allah that you showed sense, Will. For surely, that numbers amongst His miracles.”

Guy snorted and looked away, hiding a laugh. Will glowered.

“Oh, very funny. Smart bastard, aren’t you.”

Nasir did not bother to answer. Shaking the last of the rain out of his hair, he crossed the small room and lifted Will’s cast-off blanket, wrinkled his nose and decided that he would do better without. Some vermin he could not avoid, but he had no great desire to go looking for more.

“I will sleep,” he announced. “Be quiet, do not kill. When the rain eases, we leave.”

If Will and Gisburne did anything but sit in silence for the next three hours, Nasir never knew.

The land, already wet and green with the autumn rains, had turned in places to half a quagmire with the morning’s downpour. It made travelling slow work, with the horses stumbling on treacherous ground and Will sinking up to his ankles in mud and swearing with every second step. Grimsby, Gisburne recalled, lacked walls, its people reckoning the town protected well enough by the Humber estuary on one side and the marsh that spread around it on the other. Right now, he was inclined to think them correct.

Gisburne had spent the morning trying to understand exactly what he was doing here. He still was not sure what was worse: that de Rainault, to whom he had given his allegiance, had betrayed him so savagely, or that he had been rescued by wolfsheads. The outlaws had no reason to want him to live – and yet, in spite of all the hatred and bloodshed that lay between them, they had come to his aid when no one else would. It made no sense; they were not even Norman. Even Huntingdon’s disgraced brat was of dubious blood, with his wild Scottish heritage marring his clean Norman lines. They could have no reason to consider him kindly, and yet they had done just that. Thinking about it was making Gisburne’s head ache.

It had occurred to Guy, somewhere in the long dark of his imprisonment and on this journey that had followed, that he had been, all his life, a wretched judge of character. For all the oaths he’d sworn to this lord or that – Chester, the brothers de Rainault, even Gulnar and his mad wolf god – he had never been well served by them. An oath of allegiance should go both ways, after all: a man’s sworn lord had a duty of care. Then again, perhaps he deserved no better. As tainted as he was,

(stop your whining brat)

how could he aspire to more? Anything that might have been truly noble in him had long ago been

(fucked)

thrashed out of him at his father’s hands, and he knew it. Inside, he was still the same worthless rag his father had used and thrown away, and a lifetime spent denying that had made no difference at all.

But now he was being given a chance, an opportunity to begin his life again. The Saracen, in his oblique, indifferent way, had seemed to believe that that was possible, that a man could be more than his past and rise above even his blood, if he only found his path and followed it. Guy wondered if the man would still think that if he knew what stains lay on his battered soul, what secrets he carried in the places he hoped no one would ever see. Some things, he had always been taught, were beyond redemption. Perhaps, though, he had been taught wrong. Perhaps he could be someone else, after all.

The lurch and slide of his horse sinking up to its hocks jolted Gisburne out of his thoughts. With a muttered curse, he reined the beast back from the boggy edge of one of the many flooded waterways that criss-crossed the marshes, guiding it to firmer ground. Scarlet grunted, moving aside to give the horse space and glaring at the sweep of muddy water in front of him. There was no getting across that short of outright swimming. The dun gelding shook its head and snorted unhappily. Scarlet grimaced in disgust.

“My thoughts exactly. Naz, how far does this sodding swamp go?”

The Saracen shrugged, made a minimal gesture towards the north. “Grimsby.”

“Oh, well, that’s great, that is.” Scarlet scowled, finding a comparatively dry hummock of turf and pulling off his boots to empty them out. Dirty brown water ran from them as he tipped them up; his feet had been sodden since leaving the hut. “Another day of marching through swill. If I catch my death out here, it’ll be your bloody fault.”

Guy could not bring himself to even pretend sympathy for that; Scarlet was not, in his opinion, a man who engendered much in the way of pity. Nasir, though, rubbed a hand over his neatly trimmed beard with a frustrated growl and swung down from his horse. He thrust the reins at Will.

“Here,” he said. “I will scout ahead and find a better path. You stay. Yes?”

For a fleeting moment, Gisburne considered clapping his heels to the dun’s flanks and making a run for it. The thought did not last long; the horse would struggle in this bog and most likely fall, and Guy was not in the habit of putting horses at risk, even staid old nags like this one. Nor was he that keen on breaking his own neck, or being drowned in a puddle, pinned under his panicked mount. And in any case, there seemed little point; even if he did leave the outlaws behind he would still need passage to France, and the Saracen had all the coin. No, it was best to stay where he was. Even Scarlet’s unpleasant companionship was better than being stranded without resources in a port town full of foreign sailors.

Gisburne watched as the Saracen disappeared around a bend in the watercourse hidden by a bank of thick sedge. The man had not bothered with warnings or reproaches beyond a single level look; clearly he was not in the mood for wasting his breath. Scarlet, who could not boast the same, favoured Gisburne with a wolfish grin.

“He didn’t tell me not to kill you, this time,” he pointed out. “Think he’s getting sick of your company, Guy?”

Gisburne said nothing, though it grated to hear a lowborn English peasant so deliberately making free with his name. His horse flickered its ears uneasily; Guy gave it a reassuring pat. He spoke to it softly in langue d’oil, as he always spoke to his horses. Somehow, for horses, only the language of his childhood would do. Lord Edmund had raged at him for hiding away in the stables like a dung-sweeper’s brat, but at least the horses were always glad to see him and never

(stop my lord, you’ll kill him)

caused him pain. “I know. I’m not impressed, either.”

“Stop bloody jabbering.” Scarlet’s eyes had gone hard. “This is England. You want to belong here, you speak English like the rest of us.”

“I have no intention of belonging here,” Gisburne snapped. “And I’ll be pleased to see the back of this place. If Duke William, God rest his soul, had known what an obstreperous bunch of malcontents you English are, he’d never have crossed the Channel in the first place.”

“Well, that would’ve saved us all a lot of bother, wouldn’t it?” Scarlet seemed to find that idea grimly satisfying. “No stomping great Normans kicking around the place, sticking their noble noses in where they don’t sodding belong and making things a misery for the rest of us? No armoured fucking mercenaries brought to our lands to rape and kill innocent women, steal our homes and take the fucking shirts off our backs? Sounds all right to me.”

The bay horse, unnerved by Scarlet’s temper, tossed its head fretfully, pulling back on the reins. Scarlet gave it a glare and jerked its head down. “Stand still, you.”

“You’re frightening him,” Guy said curtly. “Give him to me, I’ll see to him.”

“What, so you can take to your heels and leave me standing out here looking the fool?” Will snorted. “What sort of idiot do you think I am?”

Guy did not answer that. He hoped the Saracen would return soon. At least he knew how to manage a horse.

Both of the horses were behaving anxiously now, shuffling their feet and snorting to each other as if unsettled by something. Guy frowned, looking about for some sign of what had upset them. He doubted there would be wolves in country like this; even wolves preferred to keep their feet dry. He supposed it might be a fox slinking through the marsh grass, or possibly the horses had caught wind of a carcass that had been swept into the watercourse – horses that were unused to battlefields did not like the scent of death.

Will glanced at the horses, frowning, and away into the waving sedge, suddenly sharp-eyed. He had lived the life of a hunted thing for long enough to sharpen any man’s instincts; he could recognise a warning when he was given one. Tightening his grip on the bay’s reins, he looped them about his wrist. He hissed at the horse in a low voice, half a growl. “What have you caught wind of?”

“Maybe it’s the Saracen coming back. Nasir.”

“No, they know him.” Will glared into the bank of sedge that lined the waterway. His hand went to his belt, easing free his knife. Guy, unarmed, cursed under his breath and set his horse’s rear to the water to guard his back, scanning the grass for movement.

They were very good. That was Guy’s first thought as the brigands broke cover, closer to them than they had a right to be. There were not many of them that he could see, only four bedraggled and roughly dressed fenmen, armed with what looked like duck spears and knives that might have been new when Charlemagne was a lad. But they were quick and quiet, slipping through the sedge like eels, launching themselves on their quarry in a sudden rush. Two of them sprang for Scarlet, one trying to wrench away the bay’s reins and the other jabbing at the outlaw with a light but wickedly sharp spear. The other two charged straight for Guy.

Gisburne did not wait for them to come to him. He might have been unarmed, but he was a knight, and battle trained. And he had a horse under him, such as it was. Clapping his heels hard to the gelding’s flanks, he lashed sharply at its neck with the end of his reins, startling the animal into lunging forward, white-eyed and squealing. The horse hit the closest of the fenmen with its shoulder, sending him sprawling; the other shouted in alarm and flung himself out of the way. Hauling hard on the bit, Guy brought the lumbering dun around – the animal was honest, but slow and ill-schooled to battlefield manoeuvres – and sent it forward again, this time towards Scarlet’s attackers.

Will had managed to keep his grip on the bay’s reins, and work himself around to put the water at his back, keeping both of the brigands in front of him. The man with the spear was giving him some trouble though; Scarlet had all he could do to turn the darting spear head away. The bay was beginning to panic, rolling its eyes and kicking out in fear. The fenmen were calling to each other, their voices high and carrying like the cries of birds.

Gisburne drove his mount hard into the fray, aiming to trample the spearman underfoot. The dun, though, had other plans. Not a war horse, it balked and shied at the obstacle in its path, slewing sideways. Guy swore and reined back hard, digging his heels sharply behind the animal’s girth. Fury, battle-fit and trained for the field, would have come up on his haunches at that and launched forward, all iron-shod hooves and thick muscle; the dun only shuddered and surged against the bit. Kicking one foot free of the stirrups, Guy swung his boot hard into the wide-eyed face of the spear-wielding fenman, feeling the man’s nose crush under the impact. At the same time, his horse lurched to the side, slipping in the thick mud on the edge of the watercourse. It collided with the hindquarters of the panicked bay, who squealed, braced, and leapt like a stag, dragging Scarlet and the last fenman into the water with it.

Leaping quickly from his horse, Gisburne hurled himself at the brigand whose nose he had broken, hauling the man up by the scruff and punching him hard in the side of the head. The man fell like a sack of grain, his eyes showing white under his trembling eyelids. His spear was nearby, light and feeble to Guy’s hands, but the point was keen enough. It lanced through the man’s throat tidily, but when Gisburne tried to wrench it free the point, caught in bone, snapped. Clutching the shaft, Guy whirled, looking for more enemies. The man he had run down with his horse was getting to his feet, pale and shaken, his arm hanging oddly like a bird’s broken wing. Guy bellowed at him in his battlefield voice; the man took one look and fled into the swamp. The remaining fenman, who had dived out of the way of Guy’s horse and had done nothing so far but wave his hands and shout, jumped the other way, into the water. With a curse, Gisburne went after him … and stopped on the bank of the watercourse, staring in amazement.

Scarlet had gone mad. That was the only explanation. The outlaw had one of the fenmen by the head and seemed to be trying to wrench it off. The fenman kept disappearing under the water with Scarlet flailing after him, howling obscenities that would have made a dockman blush. Gisburne blinked. It was really quite impressive.

“Cunting bloody fuck! Arse-licking duck-fucking goat-wankers! Get back here you sack of shit, I’m going to rip your fucking balls off!”

The fenman seemed disinclined to obey. He was struggling in the current, trying to make for the opposite bank. His friend had already got that far and was shouting encouragement from the shore. Scarlet had words for him too.

“And you can shut the fuck up, you fart-swallowing shit-rag! I’ll tear your liver out and fucking feed it to you, you whore-sniffing bitch!”

The first fenman squawked in alarm as Scarlet caught him again, shoving him under in a boil of bubbles and colourful imprecations. Guy, who had had to smother a grin at ‘fart-swallowing’, found ‘newt-screwing frog-fuckers’ simply too much. Once he started laughing, it was ridiculously hard to stop, even when he looked up to see the Saracen standing over him, swords drawn.

“What happened?” Nasir demanded, eyes going from the young nobleman apparently crippled with laughter on the ground to Will, who was still thrashing the unfortunate fenman about in the water like a hooked fish. Guy took a breath and swiped at his watering eyes, trying to talk.

“He … we … they …” It was no good. Laughter overtook him again and he could only wave vaguely towards Will and the shivering horses. “Duck-fuckers!”

Nasir stared at Gisburne in astonishment, then at Will still ranting and cursing in the water like a madman. The bay horse, still up to its shoulders in the canal, whinnied unhappily and tried unsuccessfully to scramble up the steep bank. Gisburne seemed to recover himself a little, but then Will roared something else obscene that Nasir didn’t understand, and Guy collapsed back into helpless hilarity. Nasir glared at his companions and at the dead man lying nearby, and put his weapons away. Then, throwing up his hands in despair, he went to see to the horses with Guy’s breathless laughter ringing in his ears.

Gisburne hadn’t laughed so hard in all his life. His ribs actually hurt from it. He pressed one hand to them and sucked in an experimental breath, flinching happily at the low ache he felt beneath his fingers. That made him start to chuckle, but he stifled it quickly lest his mirth sweep him away again. If he laughed any more, he thought, he’d probably break something. But Scarlet … dear sweet Lord, he’d never heard someone called a festering arse-ulcer before. The wolfshead, Gisburne decided, must have done his soldiering in some very interesting company.

Before him, the low fire was producing great wafting clouds of smoke as it burned. Dry wood was difficult to find in this place; the Saracen had done well to scrape together even this much. Guy’s borrowed tunic, soaked through while helping to pull the Saracen’s bay up the bank to safety, was spread over a low branching bush near to the fire, along with Scarlet’s sodden trews and jerkin. Earlier, Will had stowed the verminous blanket from the fen hut in the dun’s saddle-roll and he was using it now as a make-shift tunic. Guy couldn’t look at him without bubbles of laughter trying to push their way to the surface. “Pox-faced turd-smugglers,” he murmured to himself in approval and, grinning, bit down on his lip to keep from chuckling. “Oh, God’s Blood, that’s good.”

Away from the fire, Nasir was rubbing down the miserable bay with handfuls of grass, glancing sidelong at Gisburne and smiling to himself every time the young man went off into another fit of laughter. Will, who was seeing what supplies could be salvaged from the sodden ration sack that had been lashed to the rear of the bay’s saddle, was less amused.

“What’s so fucking funny?” he demanded. “Did he get hit on the head or something?”

“No.” In fact, so far as Nasir could tell, Will and Guy had both escaped the fight with only a few scratches between them. The fenmen had not been so lucky. A short distance from their camp lay the man whom Gisburne had stabbed through the throat, left where he had fallen. Nor had the brigand with whom Will had been wrestling fared any better; Scarlet had eventually tired of tormenting the wretch and had bashed his head with a rock, leaving his body to float down stream. Nasir did not believe that the brigands’ companions would be back to attempt revenge but, heeding caution born of experience, he had briefly scouted the area around their campsite before allowing the others to stop and build a fire to dry off and warm up. Now the Saracen slanted a bright-eyed, knowing look at Will and said, “Cock-gobbler? What is this?”

“Ah.” Will flashed him an unrepentant grin. “If you don’t know, I’m not telling. Wouldn’t want to corrupt your innocence, Naz.”

Nasir laughed quietly and went back to tending the horse, checking its fetlocks for signs of heat or swelling. The animal turned its head to him, nickering softly against his neck; he whispered soothingly to it in Arabic.

Will said, “ Naz.”

The former soldier’s tone was carefully restrained, almost conspiratorial. It was unlike him. His control brought Nasir’s head up, wary, catching his attention more than Will’s usual bellowing ever could. Will was looking at Gisburne, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Naz, look at his back.”

It took Nasir a moment to see what Will was talking about. The scars were old and very faint, mostly overshadowed by the ugly pucker of a healed puncture wound beneath the young man’s shoulder blade, where a crossbow bolt at close range had nearly killed him. Marion had done that, in the days before the fire had gone out of her. As to who had caused the others … they were thin, like lash marks, fine silvery runnels against Gisburne’s pale skin.

“Someone’s worked him over proper. You don’t get marked up like that from walking through brambles,” Will observed in a low voice. Nasir nodded slowly.

“Those are old. Many years.”

Will snorted. “So, our fine and fancy friend earned himself a punishment or two, did he? I didn’t think they flogged noblemen. Must have got well out of line.”

Nasir shook his head. “Leave it, Will.”

“I’m just curious. Didn’t have Gisburne picked for a rakehell.”

“Will. Be kind. Leave it.” Nasir knew not to pry at old scars; he had a few of his own, when it came to that. Some things it was better not to talk about.

“S’all right, I’m not going to say anything.” Will scowled and kicked idly against a tuft of wiry marsh grass. “Just thought it was interesting, is all. Maybe he was human once after all.”

That made Nasir frown. “What do you think he is now?”

For a moment, Will looked unsettled by the question – or possibly by the answer he wanted to give. But then his incorrigible nature reasserted itself and he bared his teeth in that familiar feral grin. “A right pain in the arse, most of the time. Tossing me in the fucking water like that – you reckon he did that on purpose?”

“No.”

Will shook his head, rolling his eyes at his friend’s flat-toned response. “Bugger me, Naz, sometimes I can’t tell if you’ve got any sense of humour at all.”

Nasir only raised an eyebrow at him. “Sometimes,” he said, “when you make a joke, neither can I.”

Will blinked at that, not sure if he was being made mock of or not. Nasir smiled very slightly, gave the horse a last reassuring pat, and moved off to find them some supper.

They pressed on that afternoon, but the encounter with the fenmen had taken a fair bite out of the day; they would not reach Grimsby by nightfall. The sky, grey and uncertain, had been lowering all afternoon and the prospect of a night in the open was not a welcome one. A rough worn track through the uneven marsh grass led them to a cluster of derelict structures: a tumbled down shack, a sheep pen with no railings, a pile of wood and stones that might once have been a hut, and a lean-to over a blackened pit where peat fires had burned. No one had been here for some time.

The tumbled down shack had two walls still standing, and part of its roof. Gisburne could not stand to his full height beneath it, but at least it would keep off the worst of the rain. A pair of scrawny ducks stewed with sliced apples in the small cook pot made a decent meal, although Will lamented the lack of ale to go with it. Gisburne found himself agreeing with the man, though not out loud. He was not, he told himself, so far gone as all that.

All the same, something odd was happening. Gisburne could admit that, if only to himself. He even thought he knew what it was: he had felt this before, this insistent and steady pull, when he had been campaigning in France. It happened, he supposed, when one fought alongside other men for one’s very life: camaraderie, a sense of commonality, was difficult to avoid.

Gisburne did not particularly want to feel anything in common with the men whose company he was keeping. Still, he consoled himself with the knowledge that all of this would soon be done with. On the morrow, they would reach Grimsby, and he would find a ship and never lay eyes on these men or their difficult friends again. The thought eased some of the moral discomfort he felt; his black and white world was subtly yet surely greying. Guy found it deeply unsettling to share a fire with Will Scarlet and not be beset by the urge to strike him and string him from the nearest gallows. Even, he thought with a flicker of still lingering amusement, if the man did have an impressive gift for invective.

Sitting back against one of the rough walls of their shelter, Guy considered what he knew about France. He had never travelled further south than Anjou, but he had spent nearly three years fighting in the troublesome provinces of the north – Brittany, Normandy, the Vexin – following old Sir Geoffrey from one skirmish or border raid to another at the service of this lord or that. The politics of the place had not, he supposed, been terribly different from England, except that the grudges went further back. France – or Normandy, for that matter – was not a land where younger sons flourished, nor was it rife with opportunities for landless and sponsorless knights. He assumed that he could find service easily enough in one noble household or another, but service would likely lead him nowhere, unless he found favour with a particularly generous lord. Given his luck so far, Gisburne was not inclined stake his future on that.

Outremer might be different. Guy had heard the tales brought back by pilgrims and crusaders: great wealth, vast lands, a world of opportunity for the brave and the strong of faith. Gisburne did not know that his faith was particularly strong, but no one had ever doubted his courage. He regarded the Saracen thoughtfully, this compact, hard-muscled man with his strange ways and his dark hawk’s eyes and his beautiful, deadly blades. Outremer would not, he knew, be without its challenges. But even so. Even so.

“Nasir.”

The Saracen, who had been amusing himself with feeding dry sedge leaves to the fire and holding them until they burned down to his fingers, looked up. If he was surprised to hear Gisburne call him by name, he didn’t show it. Nor did he speak. He only turned those mirror-flat eyes on Guy and waited. Gisburne shifted and cleared his throat, uneasy. Scarlet made a disparaging noise.

“Out with it, Guy. If you’ve got something to say, say it. He don’t bite.” The outlaw gave Gisburne a toothy grin. “Usually.”

Nasir’s eyes flicked briefly to Will in way that seemed to warn ‘Don’t be so sure’, then back to Gisburne. “What?”

“Outremer. You’ve been there. What’s it like?”

Been there. Nasir’s lips twitched at that. Will snorted.

“Been there? Where d’you think he fucking comes from, idiot?”

Guy flushed, ready to respond with something cutting and defensive, but Nasir raised a placatory hand.

“Easy, Will.” After all, it wasn’t as if Will knew where he came from, either. Not exactly, at any rate. “Palestine is more than only the small kingdoms your crusaders have carved. My people do not give up their birthright so easily.” Nasir was looking at Gisburne as he said that; it might almost have been a challenge. “But what you Franks call ‘Outremer’, yes, I have … been there. Edessa, Antioch. Jerusalem. I know them.”

Will pricked up his ears in spite of himself. “Wait. You’ve seen Jerusalem?”

“I have.” Nasir said it in the same voice he might have used to say that he had seen the sun come up that morning. Will, used to his Saracen friend’s reticence, gave that a moment’s thought.

“’Course you have. So then,” he said, leaning forward curiously. “Tell me one thing – is it worth all the fighting over?”

Nasir tipped his head, deliberately vague. “Men fight for many reasons. Jerusalem is a city like other cities. It has beauty and suffering in equal measure.”

“It’s the holiest city in the world, you Godless savage!” Guy sounded righteously appalled. Nasir only gave him a hard look.

“Not Godless. And Jerusalem is a holy city, yes, to all People of the Book. Holier still before your Templars” – and he almost spat the word, as if it tasted bad in his mouth – “defiled it.”

“Rescued it from infidel hands, you mean.”

It took some effort not to give that the response it deserved. Nasir’s fists clenched on his thighs; he drew a deep breath before answering. “It did not need rescuing. It belongs to God. No man can own that.”

“Then why take it back?” Gisburne demanded, as if making some telling point. Nasir breathed in again, and out very slowly. His voice was icily calm.

“Because,” he said, “when Al Haram al-Sharif, what the Jews call the Temple Mount, is desecrated and its holy buildings turned from places of worship to barracks for soldiers who kill without discretion, and to stables for their horses, this is an offence to Allah.” The mere thought of al-Aqsa turned into a Templar barracks and of al Masjid Qubbat As-Sakhrah treated so poorly, its beautiful golden dome soaring overhead as the glowing mosaics were cracked and scarred by horses’ hooves, still burned. And that was not even the worst of it, not by a long way. If these men had seen what he had seen … Nasir took another breath, slow and controlled and pushed those images

(a dead child in the street, its head beaten to pulp against the hard stone walls; a woman keening with blood on her skirts and a broken-necked baby in her arms; smoke billowing from a doorway)

away. “And when our people are denied their homes and slain in the streets for their faith, this is an offence as well.”

Will shook his head thoughtfully and glanced sideways at Gisburne. “That don’t seem right to me,” he said. “And I’m not a religious man, mind, but there’s something off about turning a House of God into a stock pen.”

“Not,” Gisburne said stiffly, “when it’s an infidel god.”

“The same God,” Nasir snapped. Ya Allah, but he was tired of explaining this. Why did these ignorant Franks not understand? “Your God, mine, the same. It is only the words that are different.” He made a sharp, cutting gesture. “Enough of this. You do not go to Jerusalem. You are not a man for shrines and holy places. If you go eastward, you go seeking something else, yes?”

Guy wanted to bridle at the Saracen’s tone, but he could not deny that what the man said was true. He was not interested in a holy pilgrimage; his goals were rather more worldly than that. He gave an unwilling nod. “Yes. You can keep your shrines, I hardly care. But I have heard that there is land out there, for those with the courage to fight for it. Wealth to be won, in the trade that travels the Silk Road. Is this true?”

“It is,” Nasir allowed reluctantly. “In part. There is land, but you will pay for it in blood, both in the gaining and the keeping. And the desert has seen more death and covered more bodies in its shifting sands than you can know.”

“But there is land.” Gisburne was insistent. Nasir’s brows lowered in frustration.

“Yes, perhaps, but not as you think it.” He made a small gesture with the fingers of one hand that seemed to take in the whole of Lincolnshire in one motion. “This, this is rich land, soft land, green and good. There, is sand and shale, with patches of green like gems, and guarded like gems too.” He sighed, shrugged. “It is a hard land, and harder still since your people have come there. But if a man is strong, and wise, and well favoured, he may find himself a place.”

“And wealth.”

“Yes,” Nasir nodded. “Or ruin.”

Gisburne seemed to consider that. “What,” he asked after a moment, “would a man need? To make a start?”

Another shrug. “Himself. A strong heart. A sponsor, at one of your Frankish courts.” Nasir shook his head. “Easier for you in France, I think.”

Will smirked. “Come on Naz, be fair. You just don’t want him trampling about in your country the way he has in ours.”

That, Nasir supposed, was true, as far as it went. There was something painful in thinking of Gisburne walking the warm spice-soaked streets of Damascus while he himself continued his exile in this damp green land. Perhaps that was unworthy of him, but he could not deny it was there. He lowered his eyes to the fire, silent.

It would be difficult, but I could try.

No, Rob. Not yet. Not yet.

One day, though. He would not die in this place; for his soul’s sake, he had to believe that. His bones would rest in the land of his ancestors, inshallah. He would walk the sands again, and see the minarets rising above the cities that edged the desert places. Until then, this damp green land – and the friends he had found in it, unbelievers but true of heart – would do. Inshallah. Inshallah.

“They say,” Gisburne went on, oblivious as ever, “that the heat is shocking. Especially in the summer months. And that everyone wears silk, and scented oils. And that the markets are a wonder of world, and that there is a bath house on every street. Is that true?”

“No,” Nasir said quietly. “Not every street. And silk is for those who can pay for it. The markets are true though, and the heat. For you, with your colouring, it would be a furnace. I have seen Frankish knights roast and die in their metal shells, too stubborn to know the desert is stronger than they are.” His eyes on the flames had a far-away look, and his voice had lowered until his words had the tone almost of a prayer. “In the summer, the days are burning, the nights very cold. Winters are short, and cool. The mountains rise to the sky, and along the coast the sea is so blue it hurts. In the desert the ways are marked by old bones, and sometimes the dunes shift and paths are lost, or the sand may turn and soften underfoot and pull men to their deaths. Water is more precious than gold. And sometimes, when the wind is off the sands, it will scour away a man’s very skin and leave him flayed raw.”

Guy wrinkled his nose, unimpressed. “It sounds like Hell.”

“La,” Nasir replied, more quietly still. “Laysa Jahannam. Bayt.”

Not hell. Home. The words had come from some place so deep that he didn’t even know he had spoken them in Arabic. They made his heart clench. Suddenly he couldn’t stand to have these men watching him. Everything about them cut at him, from their puzzled expressions to their foreigner’s eyes, reminding him how far he was from anything he knew. He stood abruptly and left, without a word of excuse. Will and Gisburne stared after him, startled.

“What did that mean?” Gisburne demanded. Will made a rueful face.

“I think it means he’s had enough of talking. Said more just then than he usually would in three days.” Nor, Will thought, had he ever heard Nasir speak of his home before in anything but the barest of words, and that only when he was pressed. Clearly something either he or Gisburne had said had touched a nerve. He did not tell Gisburne that, though.

“Huh.” Gisburne scowled. “Moody for a savage, isn’t he?”

“He can be,” Will agreed, doing his best to sound unconcerned. “He’ll be back when he’s ready. In the meantime, how’s about you give me a hand with this?” He shook a small flask at Gisburne, eyes gleaming.

“What is it?”

“Mead. Got it off that fen bastard you killed. Only thing he had worth taking.” Will unstoppered the flask and took a long swallow before offering it to Gisburne. “Here. Men who fight together ought t’be able to drink together after, that’s what I say. Naz wouldn’t touch it even if he was here, so that just leaves you.”

“You’re offering me a drink?” Gisburne might have sound less surprised if Scarlet had sprouted wings. Will barked a short laugh.

“Seems like it. But just this once, mind. Don’t go getting any funny ideas. I still don’t like you.”

“I don’t like you either,” Guy replied truthfully, taking the flask and tipping it back. The mead was raw and hard; it made him gasp, eyes watering. “Damned wolfshead.”

Scarlet grinned and took the flask back. “I can drink to that.”

And he did.

Seventy Times Seven: Part 6/8

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:15:18 GMT

Getting there. Only a couple more hits to go.

Here's Part VI, in which tempers flare and Nasir is briefly philosophical.

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Gisburne, Nasir had to concede as the morning wore on, was not entirely what he had expected. He was very young, for one thing. In an intellectual way, Nasir had been aware of that, registering the youth of the man’s face and bearing, his energy and impulsive anger, but he had not actually thought of it before. That, Sarak would have told him, was careless; if Gisburne was an enemy worthy of the name, then Nasir should have made more effort to understand him. A man should always know who – and what – his enemies were.

You are right, of course, my brother. Careless.

He had known, he supposed, that Gisburne was a twisted creature, tied up and tangled and turned away from any straight path. That was clear in his actions, in his viciousness and his callous disregard for anyone weaker than himself. Yet Nasir had never considered that Gisburne’s cruelty might run deeper. He had never imagined that, in his heart and in his head, Gisburne might be as vicious towards himself as he had ever been to any serf.

It had been in the man’s eyes last night, hollow and hurt when he had spoken of his family and asked, in a voice that wanted to choke on itself, why anyone had come. And it had been in his face, too, when he had spoken of all he had lost: a baffled, harrowed look, as of a dog that did not understand why it had been kicked, but expected nothing else. If Gisburne had been miguided before, Nasir thought, at least he had some direction. Now he was utterly lost.

That was something Nasir could understand. He had walked those paths himself not so long ago, pledging his loyalty to a man who had made of his faith both a lie

(Where nothing is true, everything is permitted)

(What does that even mean?)

and a weapon. He had seen that almost too late, fleeing the lie scant moments before he drowned in it, only to find himself without bearings or place in a strange land. He understood captivity too, and knew what it did to a man’s head and to his soul. The scars of his own enslavement had never quite healed; they still ached in the dark, even if only Rob

(Nasir, easy. Wake up, it’s only a dream)

knew that. For a long time after de Belleme’s first death, he had felt like a over-sharpened blade, untrustworthy, flawed, likely to snap. That, Nasir suspected, was where Gisburne’s new brittleness had come from: in his heart the man was still trapped in a cell, still helpless and howling. It was hardly a wonder if that made him feel like snapping as well.

As he watched the young man riding off to one side, fair head bowed and big, capable hands slack on the reins, Nasir could not help thinking that Gisburne should have been easier to hate than this. Instead, unlikely and inappropriate as it was, Nasir realised he might even come to pity him. Which made very little sense, given that this was the same man who had spent a good part of the last several years trying to kill those Nasir called friends and wreaking destruction on the unhappy villages that surrounded Sherwood. But he was also Robert’s – Robin’s – brother, and adrift in a world grown suddenly too large, and somehow that made a difference.

Scarlet, on the other hand, was having no trouble despising the man. But then, Scarlet had hating down to an art. Nasir, who had always believed that unchannelled hatred was a waste of energy, was inclined to let Will use up all the gall he wanted, and if he wore himself out in doing so, so much the better. The man might pick fewer fights that way. Nasir was getting tired of ordering the two of them apart.

Shortly after midday, Scarlet stomped to a halt, took a long swig from his waterskin and announced that he was hungry.

“We’ve been going all bloody morning. Grimsby ain’t going nowhere. Come on Naz, I know I ain’t got no chance of a decent drink, but what you got left worth eating?”

Gisburne, who hadn’t said a word since his brief discussion with Nasir, reined in his horse and glanced to the Saracen. He was as much a soldier as Scarlet had ever been; this morning had made it very clear to him who was in command here. Nasir nodded once, signalled to Gisburne to dismount, and waited until the man was standing at his horse’s head to follow suit. He had no doubt that his bay was quicker than the plodding dun, but even so, he had no intention of giving Gisburne a head start.

The Saracen pulled a sack from the back of his horse’s saddle and tossed it to Scarlet. “Food. No fire. Watch Gisburne. Do not kill.” He turned hard eyes on the young knight. “And you, behave.” Taking the dun’s reins from Gisburne’s hand, he led the horses to a nearby bush so that Will stood between Guy and his mount. Tethering the animals to graze, the Saracen paused and glanced once, warningly, at his somewhat trying companions, then turned on his heel and strode away. Gisburne narrowed his eyes.

“Where’s he going?”

“Prayers, most likely.” Will hauled a half-wheel of hard cheese from the sack and wrinkled his nose at it. “’S’about that time o’ day. Not that he’ll go far, mind. Don’t go getting any funny ideas.” He bared his teeth in what might have been a smile, if smiles could be that hard, and that mocking. “He’d be well pissed off to come back and find you dead. Be a bloody shame, that would.”

“The Saracen gave you an order. You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, you think so? Let’s fucking try it and see, shall we?” Will hefted his bow at Gisburne, jabbing the air viciously. “I don’t take orders from him. You even look like making a break for it and I’ll drop you where you stand. Just give me a fucking reason.”

“Animal.” Gisburne glared down his nose. His hand had gone to his hip from long habit, looking for the sword that hadn’t hung there in months. “You’re nothing but a bloody savage.”

“That’s right,” Will agreed, with that same hard, unpleasant smile. “That’s me.”

Curling his lip in contempt, Gisburne spread his hands in a deliberate show of surrender. “Then there’s nothing more to say, is there?” He began to walk towards the horses. Scarlet stopped him, not kindly, slapping his bow across Gisburne’s chest.

“What the bloody hell d’you think you’re doing?”

“I’m thirsty,” Guy said curtly. “The skins are on the horse. Get out of my way.”

“Oh-ho!” Scarlet’s face seemed to light up, his eyes taking on a feral gleam. It made him look almost infernal. “Giving orders now, are we?”

Gisburne wondered how long the Saracen was going to be. There was something unsatisfying about the idea of dying on the edge of a marsh at the hands of a maniac with a grudge all because of some ill-timed heathen ritual. He said nothing. Scarlet cast his bow aside and took a step closer, doing his best to loom in spite of the fact that Gisburne overtopped him by a head and a half.

“’Course, you’re used to giving orders, you are. Used to people jumping to do what you say. Peasants, serfs, anyone who can’t fucking answer back.” Will’s eyes glittered dangerously. “You and your kind, you got a lot to answer for, Gisburne. You lot’ve made this country your playground and your money box. Angevin bloody king, Norman bloody nobles, and no one gives a damn for what happens to us Englishmen so long as we fight your bloody wars, work your bloody fields, and pay your bloody taxes. What’ve you got to say for yourself, hey?”

Guy blinked, as baffled as he was angered. What else did the man think the English were good for? “Someone has to keep order. You rabble …”

“Rabble, are we?”

Guy gave the man his haughtiest look, and repeated his unlamented so-called father’s favourite saying. “Cattle must be driven.”

Will’s face had gone a very peculiar colour. Snarling, he fumbled for his knife; Gisburne, who had no intention of waiting to be stabbed, swore wholeheartedly and lunged.

He hit Scarlet with his whole body, trapping the other man’s arms and bearing him to the ground. Scarlet cursed and kicked, catching Gisburne in the knee and sending a flare of pain through his leg, but the knife stayed where it was, tangled in the outlaw’s tunic and in the clutch and grapple of their limbs. Shifting his grip, Guy managed to get one forearm across Scarlet’s throat, pressing down hard enough to make him gargle and choke, but then Will turned his head and fastened his teeth into Gisburne’s shoulder. Guy pulled away with a yell; Will flailed after him, clawing for the eyes, swinging hard.

Something solid and brutal slammed into Gisburne’s side, shoving him sharply away; something just as harsh caught Will above the ear and sent him tumbling backwards. Nasir stood between the two of them, his expression murderous. Guy hugged his ribs where the Saracen had kicked him, climbing carefully to his knees. Will, half stunned from being elbowed in the head, shook himself groggily and threw himself at Gisburne again. Nasir caught him by the scruff and one wrist, jerked and lifted, and drove Will to his knees with his arm contorted painfully behind him.

“Sodding bloody fuck! Get off me! I’ll kill him! I’ll fucking kill him!”

Nasir said nothing, only twisted the man’s arm further so that he bent double, face to the ground. Will spat something breathless and vulgar and stopped struggling. The Saracen nodded, as if that was what he had expected.

“Will you stop?”

“Get off me!”

“I told you, do not kill.” Releasing the man, Nasir cuffed him hard about the head. Gisburne made as if to stand; Nasir kicked him back down.

“You stay. You listen.” He was speaking to both of them, in a voice that sounded as if it could grind rocks into sand. “If you will behave like unruly curs, I will treat you like unruly curs. I will leash you both if I must, and teach you to obey, if you do not show some control. You understand me?”

“The bastard attacked me,” Will growled sullenly. He was still on his knees, rolling his injured shoulder. “Man’s gotta defend himself.”

At the same time, Guy said, “He was going to draw a knife on me.”

Nasir raised a hand threateningly. They both subsided, refusing to look at either each other or at the Saracen between them. Nasir glared at the pair of them, and muttered something savage and unfavourable in his native tongue. In English, he said, “Eat. Rest. Then we move on. And there will be no more trouble, or I will kill you both.”

Neither Gisburne nor Scarlet spoke for the rest of the day’s journey. Nasir found that rather restful.

If a few bruises and a slightly sprained arm were what it took to keep the peace, in Nasir’s opinion their latest clash had been worth it. But he also knew that he would pay for it. Gisburne might not retaliate – the man was used, Nasir thought, to being reprimanded – but Will would not take a beating lying down. The man had stalked in silence all afternoon, off to one side of the horses, and when they stopped for rest he stayed on his own. Nasir kept half an eye on him. His weather sense had always been good; he could tell when there was a storm brewing.

They made camp that night in an abandoned hut on the fenward side of the Lincolnshire Edge, a great limestone scarp that ran almost from Newark to the Humber, with rolling grazing land above and canal-strewn marsh below. The hut might have been a shepherd’s for summer grazing, or it might have been a fenman’s hide, thrown together as shelter when hunting waterfowl or cutting reeds. It was a simple thing, only one room and a hearth, and built from thick bundles of sedge cut from the fens, but it was warm and well made. The clear, still sky promised a cool night. Decent walls and a fire were not to be passed up.

Guy was appalled at how tired he felt. He had always prided himself on his endurance, but now he felt drained and worn. He had been aching and weary for most of the day, and was all the worse since the afternoon’s brief skirmish with Scarlet. The last few miles had been torment. He suspected the Saracen knew that; it was early to make camp, with the sun not even down, but the man had glanced at him and called a halt anyway. Guy was grateful. His knee felt stiff and swollen from where Scarlet had kicked it and his ribs were bruised and sore. As for the bite on his shoulder, he only hoped that the wound was clean. Scarlet was as mad as a wood-hound, and Guy knew what happened to a man bitten by one of those. He did not want to die staring-eyed and foaming.

He watched the Saracen go about the basic chores of setting camp: tending the horses, finding water, stoking a small fire. Scarlet was still smouldering, glaring indiscriminately at everything from the doorway. Gisburne gave him a cold glance and limped to where the Saracen had hung their supper: a trio of rabbits that the man had snared the night before. It wasn’t, he told himself, that he had any great urge to make himself useful. He was hungry, that was all.

“I’ll take care of these, if you like,” he announced, surprised at how gruff his voice sounded after half a day of silence. The Saracen looked at him and nodded.

“My thanks.” Nasir paused, and then his hand went to his belt and he tossed something small and narrow to Gisburne. “You will need that.”

A knife. Very small, the blade not even as long as the palm of Guy’s hand, but still a knife. Gisburne tried to remember the last time he had held decent steel, and decided that it was the day he had been flung into Newark gaol. He struggled not to stare.

Scarlet said, “No.”

“Will.” Nasir turned to him with a staying gesture. “There is no harm.”

“You give that bastard a weapon, and I’ll know you’ve gone over. Or gone mad. One or the other.” Scarlet’s jaw jutted challengingly. “So which is it, Naz? You mad, or just a sodding traitor?”

Gisburne raised his head in alarm. He’d heard men make idle threats before, but there was nothing idle in Will’s tone. He wondered what would happen next, and how a skinning knife less than half a handspan long could get him out of it. Sweet Christ, if there was going to be a fight, why hadn’t the Saracen given him a better knife?

“Will.” Nasir’s voice was very calm. He sighed, glanced at Gisburne, and then shrugged and stepped to the door. He had known this was coming; Will had been brooding all day. Best to get it over with. He gestured outside. “Come.”

“And leave him here armed?”

“Barely.” Nasir gestured again. “Outside. Come.” He stepped past Will and out into the settling day.

Will snarled and grumbled, but he followed. Once they were a little away from the hut, he growled, “Damn you Nasir, what the fuck are you playing at?”

“You truly think me a traitor?” Nasir asked it without accusation or defences, as if he really wanted to know. “Truly?”

“Oh, Hellfire.” Will made a face and sighed, reluctant. “No. But by God, you got a lot of bloody explaining to do. Letting him wander about loose like he’s your fucking lap dog, giving him a knife. Damn near breaking my arm.”

Nasir nodded. “I did as I thought necessary. I am sorry for your arm.”

“No you’re not.” Will’s lips twisted, somewhere between aggravation and acknowledgement. “I’m not a fool, Naz. I know you did what you had to. I don’t understand what’s going on here, or why Robin wants that piece of dogshit in there alive, but I know he’s given you your orders and you’ll bloody die seeing that they’re carried out. I know that.”

Nasir tipped his head, non-committal. That wasn’t quite true – there were no orders between him and Rob, and he wasn’t willing to die for any of this – but it was what Will understood. He waited for the rest.

“I know that,” Will repeated and scrubbed a hand through his hair in a familiar gesture of frustration. His eyes flashed angrily under lowered brows. “But God’s Bollocks man, you could quit treating me like some green as grass recruit and show me some fucking respect.”

Nasir drew a deep breath, and schooled himself not to mention Will’s lack of control, his refusal to listen, his complete disregard for discipline. “As you say.”

“Right.” Will folded his arms and nodded, satisfied. “Good. So, now we got that sorted, there’s some business to see to. You want to do this with swords, or fists?”

Rolling his eyes would have been a bad thing. Nasir avoided it by pure strength of mind. Ya Allah, why did this man always want to finish everything with a brawl? “Will, no.”

“What, you think I’m going to let you set me on my arse – twice – and not want to set the ledger straight?” Will gave him that predator’s smile. “Not likely, Nazzy mate.”

“I don’t want to fight you.”

“That’s too bad. Because I’ve got a score or two to settle.”

Nasir nodded, then in three swift movements he had shed his weapons and stood unarmed in front of Will, head high. “Settle it, then.”

Will paused, taken aback. “What, you just going to stand there?”

“Yes.” The Saracen did not move. Will frowned.

“You’re not going to fight back?”

“No.”

“And I’m just supposed to hit you?”

“If you wish it.”

For a moment Will hesitated. He glared, then shook his head and muttered, “Right then. If that’s how you want it.” Raising his fists, he advanced. Nasir did not flinch, or lower his gaze. Will clenched his jaw and drew back one fist, cocked and ready … then let out a hard breath and dropped his hands and swore.

“Oh, sodding hell Naz, I’m not going to do this.” He swung one callused hand to clasp Nasir’s shoulder, heavy and warm. “You’re a mad bastard, you are. You’d really have let me hit you?”

“Yes.” Nasir reached for his weapons, slinging the harness over his shoulder. He was more than a little glad that Will had remembered himself; the man had very hard hands. “If it would settle your ledger.”

“It wouldn’t. And you were right before, anyway. I deserved a clip around the ears.” Will grinned, unrepentant. “Always was an unruly bastard. Used to give my officers fits.”

“I am sure.” Dry as sand, that. Will laughed, clapping his friend on the shoulder again.

“Right. Let’s see if Gisburne’s got our supper started.” Taking a couple of steps towards the hut, Will turned and pointed a warning finger at Nasir. “But if we go in there and he jumps us with that sorry little knife you gave him, you’re on your own. I hope he stabs you first.”

“He will not.”

Will laughed. “Not if he knows what’s good for him, hey? And Naz?”

Nasir hoped Will was not going to talk all night. “Hmm?”

“Just so you know, when you said you’d kill us both?” Will waved a hand dismissively, eyes sparkling. “I didn’t believe a word of it.”

“Hmm.” This time Nasir did roll his eyes. Franks. All mad. All.

Whatever had happened between the two outlaws, Guy thought, it had dispersed a good deal of tension from the air. Scarlet still looked at him as if he were something nasty he’d stepped in, but the killing look had gone from his eyes. As for Nasir, Guy had to admit he was surprisingly civilised, for a Godless savage. The man was fair, at least. He might punish transgressions with ruthless efficiency, but he gave credit where it was due, as well. He had even thanked Guy for the rabbits he had cooked, spitted on sticks over a low fire. Gisburne was a little unsettled at how much he had appreciated that.

The Saracen had taken the little knife back, too – though not before Gisburne had managed to use it to shave and trim his hair. He felt better for it; the beard had itched monstrously, for a start. As for the knife, Guy told himself it was no great loss. It was a skinning knife, that was all – hardly fit for anything but preparing food and whittling arrow shafts – but it had felt good to have honest steel in his hands again, small though the blade was. After so many years a soldier, being without a weapon made him feel almost naked.

Now the Saracen was sitting cross legged near the door, one of his fine swords across his lap, stroking a small whetstone along the edge of the blade. Earlier he had stepped outside to take care of whatever strange rituals he followed, and Guy had watched Scarlet from the corner of his eye and hoped that the man would keep his fists to himself; he did not feel up to another sparring match tonight. But Scarlet had only given him a dark look and bundled himself in a blanket he’d found in one corner of the room. When the Saracen returned, Scarlet had growled, “You make sure you truss him up, Naz. I don’t fancy being stabbed in my sleep.” Clearly any thoughts of stabbing had not been enough to keep the outlaw awake; the low rasp of his snoring could attest to that.

The hiss and scrape of the whetstone on steel was somehow strangely comforting. Gisburne shook his head at that, bemused. Not so long ago, if anyone had told him he would find solace in the sight of Hood’s pet Saracen tending his blades, he would have called them mad.

Nasir noticed him watching. He raised his chin in acknowledgement.

“What coin is left from your passage, you will take. You will need to arm yourself.”

A good sword was expensive. Gisburne nodded. He gestured at the Saracen’s weapons. “Good steel. Damascene?”

“Yes.”

“I thought it must be.” Gisburne eyed the sword almost hungrily. He had heard tell of Damascus steel, worked by masters into blades of almost legendary quality. Old Sir Geoffrey, for whom Guy had squired, had claimed to have once seen a Damascene sword slice clean through a knight’s great helm so swiftly that the man wearing it took three steps before he knew he was dead. Guy didn’t know how true that was, but it made a good tale. “I’ve never seen Damascus steel before.”

“In England? No surprise.” Nasir slipped the whetstone into his pouch and took out a worn silk cloth, polishing the grained steel. Gisburne watched him, biting down on his lip, unsure. Almost in spite of himself, he spoke.

“Could I … maybe …?”

A raised eyebrow answered that, sardonic in the firelight. Gisburne scowled and slumped back muttering. “No, of course not, stupid thing to say.”

It was interesting, Nasir thought, how utterly Gisburne’s face could change. When he had forgotten himself long enough to lower his guard over the sword, his light eyes had been clear, hopeful. The moment he thought he had been rebuffed, though, he had coiled in on himself, his face going hard, his eyes shuttered. Now he sat with his head down and his gaze averted, as if expecting some scornful rebuke and determined not to show that he cared. Nasir’s lips tightened at that. Clearly this boy’s teachers had a good deal to answer for.

“Here.” The Saracen made up his mind in an instant, proffering the blade hilt first. Guy started and looked around, wide-eyed in surprise. For a moment he only stared, and then reached for the sword only for the other man to pull it away in warning. “You may see,” Nasir said. “But if you try to use, I will take your hand off at the elbow.” He raised his second sword, making his point clear. “You understand?”

Damascus steel would slice through bone with barely a pause. Gisburne swallowed and nodded. He understood perfectly.

The curving sword was shorter than he was used to, but light and alive in his hand. The balance was exquisite, perfect. Examining the blade in the dull glow of the fire, Gisburne could see the waves of pattern in the grain, where the swordsmith had folded and forged and folded again. The whole thing sang, as utterly complete and true in itself as a diving falcon or a galloping horse. Guy breathed out softly, almost reverently. His expression, unguarded, was close to wonder.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It is.” The Saracen was watching him closely, his second blade at ease but ready to strike. “As is anything that is true to its purpose.”

True to its purpose. Guy frowned. “Explain.”

Nasir looked thoughtful. He might have been searching for the words, or he might have been surprised that Guy had asked. Either way, it was a moment before he spoke.

“The sword is beautiful because it does not fight what it is. It has a purpose, and it serves it. It is simple, pure.” He made a complicated gesture with his free hand. “A man may have a purpose too, but sometimes men do not accept. Men fight what they are, lose their paths, and fail.” Nasir’s gaze had shifted, gone distant, looking past Gisburne and the blade the man cradled in his hands to ghosts that Guy couldn’t see, but then he seemed to recall himself. With a small, inward smile, he tipped his head to the blade. “The sword knows itself,” he said again. “We can learn from that, perhaps.”

Guy said nothing. The sword in his hands glimmered, inscrutable and sure, above question. Something in Gisburne resented that, even as he recognised its truth. This was soulless steel, but even so it was truer in path and purpose than Guy had ever been. Guy didn’t even know what his purpose was, or if he had one at all.

Nasir, who had suspected that this was true, heard an admission in what the young nobleman did not say, and let the silence linger. After a moment he drew a deep breath, let it out, and raised his chin, indicating the sword Gisburne held.

“Enough. Give.” He made a small beckoning motion with his free hand; Gisburne sighed and reversed the blade, letting the hilt fall into the other man’s palm. Nasir took it and ran the polishing cloth over it again before putting the weapon away.

“What would it cost, a blade like that?” Gisburne wanted to know, as much for something to say as for any other reason. Nasir shrugged.

“I do not know, in truth. These were given to me.” The man paused and frowned, as if dissatisfied with his words. He tried again. “Earned by me, perhaps, is more true. But a good sword, a good horse, is maybe the same.”

The black destrier that Guy had lost to de Rainault’s greed and treachery had cost the best part of a year’s income. Gisburne had had to borrow to buy him, and pay it back with interest, but even so the animal had been worth every shilling. There was no way he could afford the same sort of money for a sword. Or for anything, for that matter. He supposed he should be thankful he was not begging for alms in the street.

Rubbing at his stiff knee – Scarlet kicked like a mule, God curse him – Gisburne considered his situation. Leaving England was no loss; it was not as if there were anything here to keep him. He only wished that what was ahead of him was not quite so completely unknown. He was not used to flailing; he did not know how to find his way in the dark. All of his life, people had told him what

(brat squire knight gamekeeper steward whipping boy fool)

he was, what to do, what to think. He had resented that, always, but he had taken some comfort in it too. At least he had known what was expected of him. The idea of having to decide those things for himself brought Gisburne out in a cold sweat. As for whatever the Saracen had meant with his talk of beauty and truth, Guy told himself he did not care. He should know better than to listen to infidel heresies. Nor did he have any intention of feeling inferior to a sword, even one of such quality. There were enough things in the world that he was inferior to without bowing his neck to that as well.

Best not to think of such things. With a conscious effort, Guy turned his thoughts aside, focussing instead on what lay before him. Perhaps, if he looked at it all one thing at a time, it would not seem quite so vast.

“How long until we reach Grimsby?” Guy had some idea where Grimsby was, but he had never come this way before. Had he been travelling of his own accord he would have stuck to the roads and known ways, but the Saracen seemed to have a peculiar dislike of marked paths; since dawn, he had gone out of his way to avoid them, and any villages and hamlets they might have found along the way. It made it difficult for a man to know where he was. Scarp and swamp and open sky were imprecise landmarks, in Guy’s opinion.

Nasir hitched one shoulder in a vague answer. “Grimsby is not far. For us, a day’s travel, perhaps. We go slowly.”

Well, so they would with Scarlet on foot and determined to stay that way. And, Guy had to admit, he was not at his best either. He was glad the Saracen did not seem inclined to rush. If he had had to do this at a forced march in his current condition, he’d have arrived in Grimsby looking like something that had been used hard and put away wet. He nodded, slowly.

“And you’re taking me to France.”

“Sending. I do not go with you.” There was a faint undertone of amusement in that, to match the gleam of Nasir’s eyes in the firelight. Guy did not laugh. He furrowed his brow instead, staring into the flames. His voice, when it came, was pitched low and quiet.

“What am I going to do?” It sounded almost as if Gisburne was speaking to himself. But then he looked up, fixing Nasir with a demanding stare, and repeated his question in a harder, insistent tone. “What will I do?”

Nasir cast the man a mildly exasperated look. Did Gisburne think he was an oracle, to know the future? “You will do as you choose,” he said. “You will begin again.”

“With what?”

“With yourself,” Nasir replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Hadn’t he already said this? “You fight well, you ride well. You can steward an estate. You will find service, or sell your sword. Or,” he added, thinking of Rob’s charming scapegrace cousin, “there are tourneys, and reputations to be earned.”

Gisburne felt something in him shift, yearning towards that. He choked it off ruthlessly before it could make a fool of him, and made a rude noise. “Tourneys. All those puffed-up idiots playing at war. If I’m going to risk getting my head knocked off, it’ll be for the real thing.”

It wasn’t true, of course. Guy had considered the tourney circuit, before de Rainault had given him what had seemed like better options. He had considered it since then too, for the accolades as much as anything else: after years of the sheriff’s sharp-tongued jibes, it would have been good to be lauded for something. There was money to be earned on the tourney field too – modest sums for the most, but a man with a good eye for horseflesh could make that stretch further. A tourney knight, though, needed kit that Gisburne didn’t have: a decent horse, well made armour, more weapons than only his hands. Right now, riding in the lists seemed as likely to Guy as being crowned King of Spain.

Nasir sighed inwardly and suppressed a scowl. Gisburne’s words might have been scornful, but he had seen the flicker of doubt and wanting in the young man’s eyes and recognised in his voice the habit that Gisburne had of cutting himself down before others could do it for him. He was going to have to stop doing that, Nasir thought, if he was to survive. A man who could not have faith in himself could have faith in nothing at all. Nasir, whose faith was the greatest constant in his life, found that thought appalling. Even so, he could not argue with Gisburne’s words, as much as he deplored their motivation. There were worse ways than success on a tourney field for a knight of some prowess to earn himself a name and a sponsor, but Nasir had never had much time for playing at fighting. He had grown to manhood surrounded by war of one kind or another; he hardly needed to go looking for weak imitations to prove himself against. Franks, it seemed to him, did not even know enough to enjoy peace when they had it. In any case, it was not his task to tend to Gisburne’s future. He shrugged, unconcerned.

“So then. Not tourneys. But you have skills, you will not starve.”

“I’m used,” Gisburne grated, “to following orders.”

“Then,” Nasir said with maddening sense, “you must become used to being the one who gives them. For after Grimsby, there will be only you.”

“This could kill me, you know that?”

Nasir laughed, quietly and a little cruel. “Newark would have killed you. This is a chance.”

“You don’t think I deserve it.” That was not a question. Gisburne’s tone was somewhere between accusation and anger. Nasir looked at him, expression unreadable.

“Do you?”

(worthless cur tainted bastard worthless)

And Guy found that he had no answer for that at all.

Seventy Times Seven: Part 5/8

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 05:36:40 GMT

More fic. Onward!

Standard info applies; I wrote it,

luthien13 beta'd it, and if you recognise it, it probably isn't mine.

Let me present Part V, in which Will frightens the horses, Guy frightens himself and Naz scares everyone.

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“Who’s Fitz Roy?”

Nasir gave Gisburne a hard glance. The man’s brief fragility of the night before had passed; this morning he was his usual sullen, demanding self. His arrogance was somewhat diminished perhaps, by his long imprisonment and his uncertain future, but it was still enough to make Will bristle. Then again, Gisburne drawing breath was enough to make Will bristle. He and the surly Norman noble were eyeing each other like a pair of mastiffs preparing to fight over a bone. Nasir had been waiting for the snarling to start since dawn.

“Fitz Roy, eh?” Will, who had been rummaging in the rations again, looking to break the night’s fast, cocked his head aggressively. “Is that the dandy with the expensive-looking horse? Another fancy fucking Frenchman making himself rich by taking what don’t belong to him, I’ll wager.”

“Really?” Gisburne couldn’t help but bite at the irony in that. “Well, you’d know all about taking what isn’t yours.”

Will straightened, glaring. “You calling me a thief?”

“Thief and murderer. Wolfshead.”

“You …” Scarlet’s hand went for his knife; he took a single pace forward. Guy, hands still bound, sneered at him.

“Coward! Come on then, attack an unarmed man. Killer!”

“Stop!” Nasir’s voice snapped out with a crack like a branch breaking, making Will jump and Gisburne flinch. The Saracen turned hot, flashing eyes on each of them in turn, then thrust the saddle in his arms at Will hard enough to make the man grunt. “See to the horses.”

Will blinked in disbelief, ready to round his temper on a new target. “D’you think I’m your bloody …”

“The horses, Will.” Uncompromising, absolute. “Now.” The man spoke as if he expected to be obeyed; his eyes warned what might happen if he wasn’t. Will scowled and hefted the saddle.

“Yeah, well. Just keep him the hell away from me, is all. And shut him up.”

Nasir gave the slightest dip of the head, but his eyes did not soften. Will looked from him to Gisburne and back, then made a noise of disgust and went to do as he was told.

“Do not bait him.” The Saracen spoke to Gisburne without looking at him, cursorily and over his shoulder. “It is not wise.”

“The man’s a common cut-throat.” Which was true: Guy remembered the first time he had laid eyes on Scarlet, when the man had been dragged into Nottingham’s guardhouse, drenched in blood like a demon and raving about his wife. Three men dead that day, and another hurt badly enough that he would never hold a sword again, and all because a silly Saxon wench had got out of line, and her rabid dog of a husband had objected. Guy’s expression was scornful. He tugged against his bonds. “I’m not going to be intimidated by the likes of him.”

Then you are a fool, Nasir thought, though he confined himself to only sending the man a flat glance and squatting down to untie his hands. “Behave.”

From across the spinney came the sound of cursing and stamping, and a high nervous whicker: Will arguing with the horses. Gisburne and Nasir both frowned towards the noise.

“Will! Take care!

“Mind those animals, man!”

They both spoke at once, then stopped and looked at each other. Nasir shook his head, amused, but the look on Gisburne’s face was somewhere between abashed and appalled. Nasir found that interesting. The man was unrepentant about goading Will into anger, but when he was caught showing concern for a horse he ducked and flushed as if he’d done something shameful and expected to be roundly mocked. There was, Nasir decided, something very unhappy in that.

Gisburne recovered himself, rubbing at his wrists where the rope had chafed and not meeting the Saracen’s eyes. His voice was gruff. “Tell me about Fitz Roy. Who is he?”

Nasir raised an eyebrow, bemused. “Fitz Roy is who he is. Fitz Roy of Scots.”

“I know his name, wolfshead.” Guy couldn’t say that without sneering. “What I want to know is who is he to you, and why did he pay my parole?”

“To us, he is … useful,” Nasir replied truthfully. He did not bring kinship into it; he did not feel he had to. “And your parole, he did not.”

“What? Of course he did, I saw it.”

“No. He paid nothing. He merely delivered a writ.”

“A writ from whom?”

Nasir considered not answering, but did so anyway. Part of that was curiosity, part was simple contrariness. “Aaron de Talmont. Of Lincoln.”

Nasir watched as Gisburne tried to make sense of that. The man’s brow furrowed, his lower lip jutting in a confused pout. He blinked several times. It made him look, Nasir thought, like an overtired child puzzling over a philosophy text.

“De Talmont?” he said at last, sounding baffled. “Wasn’t that the name of the money-lender with the pretty dau…” He caught himself just in time, shook his head hard and pushed himself roughly to his feet. Nasir rose with him, watching him carefully. Gisburne glared.

“Lie to me, then. I don’t care. I’m free of de Rainault, free of Brewer, and soon enough I’ll be free of you and Hood and those savages you call friends. What does it matter who paid my parole, compared to that?”

His only answer was a wry tip of the head. Gisburne swore, swung about on his heel, and strode towards the trees. The Saracen spoke.

“Where do you go?”

Gisburne glowered at him over his shoulder. “I’m going to take a piss, man. What, do you think I’m going to disappear like morning mist? You can come and watch, if you like.”

That last was thick with sarcasm. Nasir, who really would have preferred not, sighed to himself, shouldered his weapons and shadowed Gisburne at a discreet distance.

There were times when what Robin asked of him was rather a lot to bear.

“Right, then.” The horses stood patiently where Will had left them, huffing soft clouds of white into the crisp morning air and tearing thoughtfully at the dew-soaked grass along the edge of the hedgerow. Will eyed the pair of them and gave a satisfied nod, like a man surveying a good morning’s work. “Well Naz, there’s your bloody horses. You want to tell me where we’re going?”

Nasir blinked at the tangle of his horse’s reins and grunted his disapproval. Stepping past Will, he ran a hand down the smooth bay neck and whispered something easy and reassuring into the flicking ear, clever fingers deftly smoothing the bridle and adjusting the heft of the bit. To Will, he said: “You should go back to Sherwood. To Robin.”

Will snorted. “What, an’ leave you alone out here? With Gisburne? Not likely.”

A brief, flat glance told Will that his concern was not welcome. He wasn’t surprised; Nasir never took well to suggestions that he might not be up to looking after himself. The man seemed to think he was bloody invincible, that was his trouble. Will knew better. Nasir was good at what he did, and competent at near everything else, but get in under his guard and he bled like any other man. And Gisburne, whatever else he was, was a fighter. A man could do better than underestimate him. Even if, right now, he did look like something that had been stuffed into a sack and beaten with sticks.

“Robin may have more need of you than I do. Go.”

Will’s jaw lifted to its most stubborn angle. “I told you, no. Robin’s not doing anything but sitting on his arse moping over Marion in any case, an’ he don’t need my help for that. In fact,” Will pointed out with a touch of malice, “if anyone should go back, it’s you. You’re the one he bloody talks to, after all. Let me take care of Gisburne.”

Nasir only gave him that flat look again, but Will was accustomed by now to hearing what the Saracen didn’t say. He shrugged. “All right, so no one’s going back. So you might as well tell me the plan. What are we doing with Gisburne?” Will frowned suddenly, looking around. “And where the bloody hell is he, anyway?”

“Right here, wolfshead.” Gisburne strode out of last night’s small campsite with a half full waterskin in his hands, which he tossed almost challengingly at Scarlet’s feet. “Did you miss me?”

“With every fucking shot so far,” Will said sourly. He flung Nasir a dark, demanding look. “What’s he doing wandering about loose?”

“Will.” Nasir sounded tired of this argument already. “Leave be.”

“But …”

“Where do you think he will go that I cannot track him, Will? On foot, unarmed, in this place?” The Saracen’s tone was dismissive, but even so his eyes followed Gisburne carefully. “If he were fool enough to try, he would not get far.”

That, Guy knew, was for his benefit as much as it was for Scarlet’s. And the Saracen was right; there was no point in trying to run. Not yet, at any rate. Guy could wait. He was used to taking his chances where he found them.

Moving to where the dun gelding – great slow plowhorse of a thing, not a spark of fire in it – waited, Guy tried to hide how stiff and sore his body felt after a day in the saddle and a night on the hard ground. Living on horseback and sleeping where he fell … Gisburne swallowed a sigh. There had been a time, not so long ago, when he would have endured such things without remark, without even thought. But that had been before Newark, and a pair of months spent starving in a cage. He had not realised how much it had taken out of him.

The dun was poorly saddled. Setting a knee into the animal’s belly, Guy pushed up, tugging at the girth strap. “Let down, you windsucking nag,” he muttered, feeling the horse resist briefly before submitting to the girth. Scarlet, he thought, had not done his task well. If any stable lad at Nottingham had been so careless, Gisburne would have given him the back of his hand.

“Look, Naz.” Will was trying to sound reasonable. Guy, who thought he was making a weak fist of it, listened without looking up. “You keep heading east, you’ll end up in the fens. Hundreds of fucking acres of nothing but swamp. What are you playing at? If we want to drown the bastard, there’s decent water closer to home.”

“We do not drown him. We take him to the coast and secure him passage to France.”

“France?” Gisburne couldn’t help himself; he swung and stared. “France? A Channel crossing at the tail end of the season? You must be mad.”

“Not mad. We have coin; they have ships; you will go.” Nasir made that sound like a royal decree. Maybe it was. He swung himself into his saddle. Will drew a breath, held it, then let it out with a slow nod.

“All right. France. ‘S’far enough away for me.” He gave Gisburne a narrow-eyed glare, then spread his hands in a gesture of reluctant acceptance. “I still say we should kill ‘im, but France’ll do. At a pinch.”

“What if,” Guy demanded abruptly, “I don’t want to go to France?”

“What, scared of a little boat trip, are you?” Scarlet, whose own experience of Channel crossings had involved clutching the gunwale and throwing up everything he’d eaten for a week, grinned nastily.

“No, I …”

“If not France, or Normandy, then Austria.” Nasir cut Gisburne off, his tone both indifferent and absolute, as if he were supremely disinterested in what the young nobleman might or might not want. “Or, if you would be warmer, Rome perhaps, or al-Andalus. If you would be colder, Robin did suggest Scotland, but I do not think that is far enough.” He shrugged, as if he didn’t much care. “Scotland is close, and who can say that your King John will not turn his gaze northward once he has finished with his Welsh rebellion? Best for you, I think, if the king does not see your face again, or even hear your name.”

Gisburne, who had not expected a lesson on statecraft from an outlawed Saracen, found he could only nod. “No. Not Scotland.”

“Or,” Nasir said slowly, almost reluctantly, “if not France, there is Palestine. What you Franks call ‘Outremer’.”

“Take the Cross, you mean?”

Nasir’s eyes were unwavering and utterly opaque. He looked down at Gisburne from where he sat his horse, and said nothing at all. Will let out a low whistle.

“Wouldn’t do it, if I were you, Guy. Place’ll be full of his sort,” he warned lightly, jerking his head towards Nasir. “All silent and intense and not pleased to see you at all. And nothing to drink worth a damn, I can promise you that.”

Nasir turned his head to look at Will. “They say,” he said, in a slow and deliberate tone, “that pilgrimage is good for the soul. Perhaps, Scarlet, if he goes, you might join him.”

Setting his horse’s head to the road, he let the others follow as they would.

They were heading, the Saracen had finally told them as he veered their course northward, for the port of Grimsby on the Humber. There were other ports at the Wash, but they were further away and the vast stretch of the fens stood in the way. In the summer, the fens were merely awkward, a distraction for travellers. In late autumn, with the rivers that fed them high and the land wet and unsteady, they could be downright dangerous. The way to Grimsby would take them by the edge of the fens, and into the marsh country further to the north, but that was still better than slogging through sedge and sleeping in the damp.

Gisburne, who had never trusted boats, was uncertain. He had endured his previous trips across the Channel with poor grace, and they had been taken in fair weather on good vessels with God’s blessing upon them. If he took ship at Grimsby, he would have half the coast of England to navigate in the Devil knew what leaking tub before they even got to the Channel. And men died making that crossing, particularly out of season. Even kings and king’s sons had been brought down by storms at sea. Hell’s teeth, everyone knew that the Plantagenets would never even have come to the throne of England if it hadn’t been for a spire of rock in a storm-tossed harbour mouth and a half drunk helmsman.

The Saracen was clearly not in a pleasant frame of mind this morning. The gaze he turned on Gisburne as the man rode up beside him was like black ice. Gisburne, who had faced those eyes before over an intricate web of steel, felt his hands go cold and swallowed. He hoped the other man would not notice that, but then the Saracen’s eyes flickered – in irritation? Contempt? – and Gisburne knew that he had. God curse him.

“Why Grimsby?” That came out more gruffly than Gisburne had intended. It made him sound confrontational, he knew, which was not a good thing with the Saracen fully armed and in what looked like a killing mood (and Guy rather suspected that if he tried to seize a weapon or spur his horse away today, his reprimand would be more brutal – and possibly more permanent – than only a heavy-handed cuff around the ears) but he knew no other way to ask. He pressed on. “It’s all herring and wool traders. It would be easier to find passage to the south.”

“The cinque ports?” Nasir lifted an eyebrow and grunted. Gisburne was surprised to hear the man name them so easily; clearly he was more familiar with this country than Guy gave him credit for. “No. Too far. Too great a risk.”

Alongside, Will made a derisive, sputtering sound. He was on foot, having refused to take a turn ahorse. “Dover, Hythe? You must be joking. Take us bloody weeks to get there. D’you think we like your company that much?”

“No one’s keeping you here, wolfshead.”

“Stop calling me that, pig. You know my name.”

“I do. Scathelock. Murderer.” There was a deliberate sneer in that. Will bristled, turning and reaching for his knife. Nasir kicked his horse between Gisburne and Scarlet.

“Do not. Either of you.” He didn’t raise his voice at all, but the dead tone he used was more menacing than any amount of shouting. Guy, who was very used to being shouted at, found himself wondering how this man’s lethal calm would fare against de Rainault in one of his rages, and decided that the calm was more frightening. With de Rainault, everything was sound and fury, like a storm; one only need duck for shelter and wait things out. With the Saracen, he thought, there would be no storm; only a rumble of warning and then lightning from a clear sky.

Will subsided with a surly curse, turning his back and striding on ahead of the horses. Nasir watched him briefly, then turned to Gisburne.

“Why bait him? Do you want so badly to die? Is your life worth so little to you?”

Guy opened his mouth to say something scathing on the theme of jumped-up wolfsheads who thought they could defeat a trained knight, but to his horror

(What’s your life worth, Gisburne?)

(Nothing!)
what came out was something completely different. What came out was, God help him, honest.

“What life? My estates are forfeit, I have no income and no sponsor, the king would be happy to see me dead, and de Rainault’s stolen my bloody horse. What’s left? Tell me that, man. What’s left?”

Guy was appalled at the words, and at the fraught, desperate sound of his own voice, but somehow he couldn’t stop himself. It must, he decided, have been some residual madness caused by all those blows to the head; next thing he would be crying like a girl. He snapped his jaw shut with a click, made himself stare straight ahead, and willed the Saracen to confine himself to a scornful glance and ride on. Instead, Nasir looked at him for a long and careful time, and then replied, “You.”

“What?”

“You are left. Yourself, your own man. You are alive, and you are free for perhaps the first time in your life.” Nasir spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “Free of duty, of obligation, of service to another’s will. What choices you make now will be your own. Understand that.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” Guy said, in a tight, strained voice. He didn’t look around. “I’m noble born; I’ve always been a free man.”

The Saracen cast him a derisive look, and did not speak. Gisburne, hating himself, found that his hands were clenched so tight they ached, and there was a pressure in his chest that made his heart shudder and beat like the wings of a trapped bird. A part of him understood perfectly what

(a second chance)
he had been told. The rest of him wanted to wail. All the world was changing, and he was caught in the middle, same unworthy, unwanted creature he always had been.

Something about that was bluntly, blackly terrifying.

Seventy Times Seven Part 4/8

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 06:02:26 GMT

Welcome to Part IV, in which Will gets punched in the jaw, Nasir gets elbowed in the ribs, and Guy gets tied to a tree.

Oh, and in case anyone missed it, I will warn once again for Will's language. That's all.

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Trust Nasir to find himself a bloody horse. Will didn’t like horses, great stupid things, with their hard hooves and rolling eyes and alarming tendency to run in all the wrong directions: he was an infantry man to the core. Give him a decent pair of boots and a good meal, and he’d walk all day. Give him a horse, and he’d moan and gripe and fall off three times before supper. Nasir, though, rode like he’d spent half his fucking life in one saddle or another – and if that wasn’t another sign the man was noble-born, Will didn’t know what was. Bloody noblemen. Even their own sodding legs weren’t good enough for them.

Being mounted made them hard to follow. Well, no, that was not true; it made them easier to follow, but harder to catch up with. Horses tended to stick to roads and pathways, after all – they weren’t much for blundering about in the undergrowth. It did not take Will long to find the place where the group had split off, the puffed-up knight and his fresh-faced squires moving off to the south and west, Nasir and whoever the hell he had with him circling around to the east. Will couldn’t imagine why. There was nothing to the east, except for miles of marsh and gods-forsaken fenland. If Nasir wanted to wade about in mud up to his bloody knees, he could have done that without leaving Sherwood.

Dark came, bringing with it the chill of the turning year. Will snugged his hands into his armpits, hunched down into his jerkin, and kept going. They couldn’t be that far ahead of him: Nasir wouldn’t ride a horse into the ground without some pressing urgency to drive him on, and Will hadn’t seen anything especially urgent in the Saracen’s pace so far. The man did have the heinously bad habit of rising before the dawn, though; he’d not waste any time come morning. Which meant finding the bastard tonight, or not finding the bastard at all.

The wind was gusting hard now, making Will’s eyes stream and the thin trees along the spurway bend and shiver. There was no way Nasir would set camp in the open, not in this wind. No, he’d look for shelter, some curve of the land or thick belt of hedgerow, somewhere out of sight of the pathway and with space for two men and their horses. Nasir was careful about things like that. The man had spent too much time being hunted, both in Sherwood and, Will suspected, in the life he had known before England, to be happy to sleep just anywhere.

It helped to know what he was looking for. In a place where the land dipped to the lee of the wind, in a tight stand of trees screened from the spurway by a sprawl of blackberry and hawthorn, Will spotted the red-orange gleam of a low fire, with a pair of horses tethered nearby and two men sitting in the glow.

Nasir he recognised at once, though the man’s face was turned. Will would know the set of those shoulders anywhere, and that sardonic tilt of the head, even without the distinctive studded jerkin and the impressive array of blades. The other, though, was cast in shadows, hunched and huddled as if he wished himself any bloody place but here. There was the faint gleam of fair hair as the man shifted, pulling his cloak tighter, but Will still could not make out his face. Even so, something tugged at the back of Will’s mind, like an itch wanting to be scratched. He had thought the man oddly familiar when he caught sight of him in Newark, and that feeling was stronger now. It raised the hackles on the back of Will’s neck. He did not even notice that he was clutching his knife ready in his hand.

Nasir handed the man a bowl of something, exchanged a few brief words. That made Will’s cheek twitch in a humourless half-smile. Any words with Naz tended to be brief; there were days when the Saracen could make a bloody stone seem talkative. The second man hesitated – maybe he didn’t fancy Nasir’s cooking, not that Will had ever noticed much to complain about – but after a pause he seemed to attack his meal, doing his best to eat everything all at once.

And then, to Will’s shock and sudden fury, the stranger raised his face to the light and spoke.

Gisburne. There was no mistaking that arrogant, commanding voice, even if the man who used it had clearly seen better days. Deep and brusque and haughty, that voice had never, in Will’s experience, brought anything with it but danger and suffering. Hearing it now made his blood surge hot, and Will didn’t pause to think, only cast himself forward on that familiar

(scarletscarletscarletscarlet)

red wave.

Gisburne’s first thought as he came back to himself was that he rather wished people would stop hitting him in the head. His second, far more startling than the first, was that the Saracen had just saved his life. The man was standing over him even now, one of his short, elegant blades in his hand, arguing furiously with someone who seemed very badly to want him dead. Or no, that was not quite right: the Saracen was not arguing at all. He was utterly silent, save for the occasional hiss of warning when Gisburne stirred or the other came too close.

It was the other man who was making all the noise. Gisburne, feeling his heart sink, recognised the voice at once: Scarlet. The madman. The killer. Guy’s instincts howled at him to get up, to defend himself, to fight. He thrashed, ignoring his reeling head and kicking for purchase, trying to find his feet, but the Saracen’s heel came down briskly on his chest, pushing him flat. The man was not gentle. His voice came to Guy as a low growl, like a hunting lion.

“Stay down.”

Scarlet was furious. “What the bloody fuck did you do that for, you mad sod? You could’ve bloody killed me!”

Distantly, Gisburne supposed that was true – but only if the Saracen had wanted to. It had not been Gisburne’s impression that this man killed people by accident. Which was a shame, really, since Scarlet might have benefited from a misplaced length of steel. At least that might have shut him up. Very carefully, Guy turned his head and saw Scarlet looming in the firelight, cradling one arm against his chest (perhaps the Saracen had broken the man’s wrist? Now there was a satisfying thought!) and looking angry enough to chew rocks.

“Don’t fucking give me that look, two bloody inches to the right and I’d be bleeding like a stuck pig! And it’s Gisburne!” Will flung out his good arm, pointing at Guy as if he thought that perhaps Nasir hadn’t noticed. “If any man deserves to be skinned from the feet up and hung by his heels, it’s that vicious bastard right there.” Rubbing at his jaw where Nasir had punched him – the man was as quick as a bloody cat: Will hadn’t even seen it coming – after dragging him off Gisburne and slamming him into a tree, Will scowled accusingly. “And what the fuck are you playing at anyway, skulking around out here with him? Switching sides on us, are you? Oh, that’s very fucking nice, that is. Unless you were planning on killing him yourself? ‘Cos it don’t much look like it, does it?”

“Will –”

“This what you and Robin been whispering about behind everyone’s back, is it? You know, I’d expect this bollocks from Robin, earl’s son and all – he can’t fucking help it, he’ll always stick up for his own kind …”

“Will –”

“… but I wouldn’t’ve thought you’d be so bloody soft as to sodding well listen to him. His kind ain’t your kind, after all.” Will paused deliberately, then his face twisted in a nasty sneer. “Or is he? Is that it? Taken your fancy, has he, pretty young thing?”

Nasir’s eyes were as cold and hard as the sword he suddenly levelled on Will’s throat. “Do not,” the man grated. “Do not.”

Well now, mused Gisburne, who thought he had recognised a certain note in the Saracen’s voice, a certain deep-buried ache. That was interesting. He wondered if the Saracen would kill Scarlet fast or slow, for saying that.

Will, faced with three feet of sharpened steel at his neck, understood in a moment that he had taken things too far. Nasir looked ready to kill him on the spot and send his body back to Sherwood in pieces. The man’s eyes sent a shiver down Will’s spine. He could not have named what he saw in them – rage, despair, anguish, pride – but he knew enough to raise his hands in submission and step back. “Naz. Easy.”

“Do not speak such shame. Of Rob or of me!”

“No. Naz, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.” Which was true, if it came to that: it had only been something cutting to say. He supposed he should have known better: Nasir could be touchy about his honour, and what Scarlet had suggested was a slur not to be taken lightly. Will gestured again at Gisburne, trying to explain. “It’s only seeing him here, and you and Robin sneaking about like a pair of stable cats looking for the biggest rat in the barn … dammit man, what the bloody fuck is going on?”

Gisburne would have liked to know that too. He tried to push himself up, and made it as far as his elbows. His head, which had been aching to begin with, throbbed terribly. The Saracen spared him a single glance; Guy stayed still. Nasir turned his basilisk stare back on Will, his blade still levelled, still ready to strike … and then he muttered what could only have been a curse in his native tongue and let the blade fall, stepping away from Gisburne and gesturing Will towards the fire. “Sit.”

“But what about Gisburne? You just going to leave him there?”

“Where will he go, Will? Look at him.”

Will did, and frowned. He was used to Gisburne posturing and strutting about, all energy and anger, but what he saw now was something else. This man had had all the strut knocked out of him. Then Guy, who had dragged himself up to lean against a small tree with his head in his hands, lifted his eyes and gave Scarlet his best defiant stare, and Will saw that the anger was still there, but burning too low to matter. Likely it was nothing that a few decent meals and three solid days of sleep wouldn’t fix, but even so, Will decided that Nasir was right. Unarmed, ill-dressed, and wounded deeper than his bruises showed, this man wasn’t going anywhere.

“He looks like shit.”

Nasir grunted. Guy snarled.

“Watch your tongue, wolfshead!”

“Or what? You’re in no position to be making threats now, my lord of Gisburne!”

“I’ll have your …”

“Be silent!” Nasir seldom raised his voice, but now it snapped out like a whip, sharp and stunning. His accent made it sharper still. “You,” he ordered, pointing at Will, “leave him. And you,” and his eyes cut to Gisburne, uncompromising and fierce, “do not speak.”

Will blinked, taken aback at the dictatorial tone of his friend’s voice. “You bloody are noble born, aren’t you?”

Nasir cast the one-time soldier an exasperated look. “Sit, Will.”

Will did so, reluctantly. He rolled his shoulders, gave his injured arm a careful flex. “You didn’t have to try and snap my hand off, you know. Still bloody hurts.”

Nasir gave him a very level look and did not apologise. As it happened, Will had managed to fetch him a rather convincing elbow to the ribs; they ached when he breathed in, but he did not think Scarlet had cracked them. A sharp twist to the wrist seemed fair compensation, in his opinion. Will made a wry face, relenting. “All right, I asked for it. Fair enough.” His eyes slid to the little cook pot, set aside near the fire. “Any food left?”

A single nod answered him. Will grinned. That was the Nasir he knew. He set to with enthusiasm, digging a slab of hard bread out of the sack of travelling rations his Saracen friend had managed to find and sopping the broth straight out of the pot.

“’S’good, this. I’m starving. Haven’t had bugger all since leaving camp. Hard man to catch up with, you are.”

“You followed.”

“‘Course I did. Didn’t think I’d let you slink off on your own now, did you? Dangerous out here, for a man travelling alone.” Will smirked around a mouthful of bread. Nasir did not smirk back.

“Robin knows?”

“Probably worked it out, by now. He’s not slow.” The pot was empty; Will scraped around the sides with the last of his bread, searching for dregs. “Don’t suppose there’s any point asking if you’ve got anything to drink? Wine, maybe? No? Aye, well, didn’t think so.” Scarlet gave a resigned grunt and put the pot down. “What you doing out here, anyway? With bloody Gisburne?”

Nasir did not answer. Will waited a moment, watching him, then rolled his eyes, unsurprised but frustrated by the man’s silence. “’Course you won’t tell me. You don’t need to. I can figure it out.” He looked thoughtfully at Gisburne, who glared back with simple bold hate. “Can’t be that Robin wants him dead, though bugger me if I know why he’d want him otherwise. Maybe the earl’s son in him can’t stand to see a titled knight brought down to the level of a fucking commoner, I don’t know. He’s too fucking soft sometimes, Robin.” Will scowled and spat into the fire; he had never really forgiven

(Robert of Huntingdon)

Robin for either the status of his birth or his reluctance to feather Gisburne with a dozen yard shafts and have done. “No, if he’d wanted Gisburne dead, you could’ve just left the bastard in Newark and let Brewer’s headsman get on with it. And as for you, you don’t give a rat’s arse for Gisburne’s neck, you’re only doing what Robin asked of you. Am I right so far?”

The Saracen neither spoke nor moved, but Gisburne thought the bully-boy was not too far off the mark. The same thing had occurred to him after the Saracen had kept Scarlet from smashing his skull: the man didn’t want him dead. Oh, Gisburne had no doubt that the Saracen would cut his throat and not break stride if it came to that, but he would have to be pushed. There was some comfort in that thought; Gisburne began to think it possible that he might get out of this alive.

Of course, that depended on whether or not the Saracen’s discipline held, and on Scarlet not killing him first.

“I’m right,” Will said confidently. He leaned forward, chin cocked in challenge. “But what I don’t understand is this: what the bloody hell are you going to do with him now? You can’t let him loose, or he’ll be straight back to hunting us before you even turn around, and making life bloody miserable for any village we’ve ever been near. So what’s Robin’s plan, eh? Ship him off to Ireland and hope he falls in a bog? Hope the Fair Folk take him?” Will made a scoffing sound, to show how likely he thought that was. “And here’s what else I don’t understand: why? Why the bloody fuck does Robin want to save that animal’s miserable life?”

In the dim light of the fire, Gisburne’s eyes glittered. That was the question he wanted answered too. He heard himself say, “Yes. Answer that. Why? What does he want with me?”

Both outlaws turned to look at him. Will muttered something angry and obscene; Nasir’s gaze cut clear and cold. Guy, impatient, frustrated and hurt, refused to be stared down. His courage, after all, was the last thing he had. He was about to ask again, in the flat, unrelenting tone that always seemed to work wonders with peasants and cattle, when the Saracen shrugged. In the shadows, it looked slightly mocking.

“Truly, is mercy not a virtue amongst your people?”

“Mercy is,” Gisburne snapped. “But this … you … Ireland isn’t mercy!”

“You are alive. If I can, I will keep you that way. Robin wishes it.” A dagger appeared in Nasir’s hand; he made it spin and flick and disappear again. “This is mercy.”

“But why?” Gisburne insisted. “Does he expect me to be grateful?” He might have used the same tone to ask if Robin expected him to fly to the moon. Scarlet’s head shot up, abrupt and fierce.

“Grateful? You bloody should be, you bastard. You,” he hissed, stabbing at the air with a savage finger, “should get on your fucking knees and thank God that I haven’t ripped your head off yet! Be grateful for that!”

“You can’t,” Gisburne jeered back. “The Saracen won’t let you.”

“I may,” Nasir said bluntly. “Do not push.”

“But you said …”

“I said I will keep you alive if I can. Inshallah. If not …” Another flourish of that knife, quick and gleaming. Will’s teeth flashed too, as sharp as the blade and twice as hungry.

“If not, you get what’s coming to you, Gisburne,” Scarlet growled. “And God willing, I’ll be the one who gives it to you.”

The man sounded, Guy thought, unnecessarily hopeful. The young knight fell silent, watching the outlaws with hot, hating eyes.

Will looked away from Gisburne and cracked his jaw in a yawn. “I’m about done in. Been walking all bloody day, almost. You can tell me where we’re taking him in the morning. You good to take first watch?”

Nasir nodded, toeing another dry branch into the fire. It crackled as it caught, sending up a brief shower of sparks. Will grunted, tipped his head towards Gisburne.

“What about him, then?”

“Leave be, Will.”

“You can’t leave him free. Safer if he’s bound.” Will paused meaningfully. “For everyone.”

Nasir made a vague gesture with one hand that seemed to say, Do as you will. Scarlet nodded. “Good choice.”

There was a short length of rope in one of the saddlebags, meant as a lead for a packhorse. It would do the trick. Will looped it in his hands and turned to where Gisburne sat. Gisburne, who had followed that last exchange unhappily, protested at his approach. “No.”

“I’m not asking.”

“Not you.” Gisburne lifted his chin, indicating the Saracen sitting by the fire. “He can do it. Him.”

Will grinned nastily. “He’s got a name, you know.”

“Nasir.” Guy had the satisfaction of seeing a brief expression of surprise flash over Scarlet’s face – what, did the man think he didn’t know who his enemies were? – and tried not to smirk. “Him.”

For a moment, Will looked as if he would argue, but then he muttered something in disgust and tossed the rope at his companion. “You deal with him then, Naz. I’m turning in. Wake me when it’s my turn to keep an eye on the bastard, yeah?”

Will was asleep almost as soon as he hit the ground.

Nasir gave the fire another nudge, then got to his feet and moved to where Gisburne waited. Guy didn’t resist as the man bound his hands, securely enough but in front of him for comfort, and tethered him to the tree against which he was resting. He had not been simply trying to be difficult when he had refused to let Scarlet do this; rather, Guy had decided that he would prefer to trust in the Saracen’s detached, professional bearing than in the dubious mercies of a lunatic who wanted to kill him and piss on his corpse. Scarlet would probably have trussed him up like a Michaelmas goose. Nasir at least remembered he was a man.

When he was done, the Saracen hunkered down on his haunches and reached for Gisburne’s face. Guy swore, jerking away, but the man only cuffed him once about the head and growled at him to be still. Taking hold of Gisburne’s jaw, Nasir tilted the young nobleman’s head to the light of the fire, frowning at the raised welt and dried blood that marked where the heavy hilt of Will’s knife had hit him.

“There is pain?”

“What do you think?”

“I think Will hit you very hard. But I think too your skull is a thick one.”

Guy grunted. “I’ve heard that before.”

Something that might have been a smile flickered on the Saracen’s face. He leaned closer, peering intently at Gisburne’s eyes. After a moment he sat back, seeming satisfied. “You will have a headache for a day or two perhaps, but there is no lasting harm.”

“I’ve had worse.” Gisburne shifted, uncomfortable with both the man’s proximity and his consideration. He was more used to being shouted at or quailed from than tended to. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

The Saracen only looked at him, face unreadable, then moved back with a nod. Quietly, he said, “You have questions.”

“I’m not going to Ireland.”

Nasir laughed, short and low. It was not a friendly sound. “No. Not Ireland. Robin wants you gone from this land, for your sake and ours. You are finished here, you know that, yes?”

“I’m finished with de Rainault. But I could take service …”

“No.” The man sketched a cutting, definitive gesture. “You are finished with England. The king is against you, and a paid pardon is nothing. There is nothing in this land for you.”

Which was, Gisburne could allow, most likely true, but he still didn’t know why Robin Hood should care. Or why anyone should care, if it came to that. The Saracen went on.

“You have family, perhaps? In France, in Normandy?”

Family. Guy supposed that he probably did, for what little it was worth. He had no intention of throwing himself on the mercy of his lying

(faithless slut!)

mother’s kin, and he wouldn’t have turned to Edmund of Gisburne’s people for so much as a glimpse of water if he was dying in a desert. Not after everything that man

(papa please no)

had done to him. He still had the God-cursed scars.

“Family?” Guy couldn’t help himself; he gave a disparaging snort. “You think if I had family worth a damn, I’d have spent so long rotting in that God forsaken hole?”

I think if you did not have family worth a damn, you’d be in that hole still, Nasir thought, but did not say. He held his silence and waited, watching with that steady gaze. If he had not known that Gisburne was damaged before, he was seeing it now. This man did not believe he had an ally in all the world – or even, Nasir suspected, that he deserved one. All because I grew up in my father’s house and he didn’t … Nasir shook his head, imperceptibly. Ya Allah, Rob didn’t know the half of it.

“I still don’t understand.” Gisburne looked straight ahead as he spoke, into the wavering firelight and the shuddering trees. “Why come for me. Why?”

“Mercy,” Nasir said again, slowly. “Forgiveness. And perhaps this too: Robin thought your sentence unjust.”

The bitter irony of that was not lost on Guy. The people had always claimed that Hood stood for justice, for righting perceived wrongs, and never mind the laws he might break which Gisburne was sworn to uphold. Except now he had brought Gisburne justice, and done it within the law, and Guy didn’t know who to hit or who to blame, or whether to rage or weep. It was enough to make a man howl.

Guy dropped his head into his bound hands and said, very low, “Go away. I want to sleep.”

If his voice was not as steady as it should have been, Nasir had the good grace not to show that he had noticed.

Will’s arrival had complicated things in one way, and simplified them in another. It was complicated because now Nasir had two people asking the kinds of questions he had sworn not to answer, and because Will and Gisburne seemed intent on baiting one another into violence, but it was simpler because it meant sharing tasks like the night watch. Nasir liked knowing he’d at least get some sleep.

Gisburne was interesting. In spite of what he’d told his friend – There is no resemblance – Nasir had not been able to resist looking for Robin in Guy. He had not found him, nor even any a sign of kinship beyond that strikingly fair hair and the pale piercing eyes and perhaps a certain cant to the jaw. What he had found surprised him; he had never really thought of Gisburne as vulnerable, before now. But then, before now, he had never really thought of Gisburne at all.

As for Will … Nasir frowned at the sleeping man and sighed. Will was quite probably the most provocative person he knew, picking fights with effortless ease and his words with uncanny accuracy. What he’d implied earlier about Rob, and about Nasir’s motivations, was the kind of thing men might spill blood over. If it touched, deep down, on some truth, that did not make it any the less wrong. Nasir shied from that accusation. No, what he felt for Rob was a more chaste thing. It had to be. There were some paths he could not travel, no matter what aches he might endure. Some paths Rob could not travel either, and they both knew it.

These were not thoughts he wanted to have. If Scarlet wanted to misconstrue friendship, even brotherhood, into something more base and less pure, let him. Scarlet, after all, was a base and impure creature at the best of times; he would not understand that beauty could be its own reason. Nasir knew better.

The moon had climbed high with the night more than half gone, and the wind had eased. Gisburne was curled in on himself with his face buried in his own arms like a child hiding from dreams in the dark. Will was muttering in his sleep, making angry little grabbing motions with his hands. Nasir grimaced, stood, and stretched, feeling his bruised ribs pull and complain. He’d performed the last of his daily prayers hours ago; he was more than ready for sleep. Will came awake with a splutter and a bleary curse when Nasir nudged his foot hard with the stick he’d been using to poke the fire.

“Wha’? Wozzit? Morning?”

“No. Your watch.” Nasir removed himself to the other side of the fire and made himself as comfortable as he could on the hard ground.

“Gisburne?”

“Sleeping. Don’t kill him.” Nasir turned his back, and let rest come and take him as it would.

It would be dawn soon enough, and they had a way to go.

Seventy Times Seven Part 3/8

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 05:56:34 GMT

Part III, under the cut. In which Fitz Roy pulls rank, Nasir tries not to frighten the children, and Gisburne's day gets better, then worse.

And again, thanks to beta-queen luthien13

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The Captain of the Guard was a better specimen than the men he commanded. He had better teeth for a start, white and even in a competent, careful face. He had better manners as well: crisp and to the point.

“Sir Guy. You’ve been reprieved. Your pardon’s been paid for, you’re to be released into the care of Sir Henry Fitz Roy of Scots.” The man’s tone was utterly impartial, as if he wasn’t handing Gisburne his life back. “My lord Brewer wants you gone by nightfall, and he says that if he finds you in his shire territories again, he’ll not be so lenient a second time. Is that understood?”

Guy’s stunned mind struggled for some semblance of comprehension. He stared at the man, fumbling to make sense of what he had just been told. “Fitz Roy? But … I’ve never … who …?”

“Sir Henry Fitz Roy. Of Scots.” A new voice, and Guy turned to face a well dressed young man who looked at him with distaste, then flicked his gaze over Gisburne’s shoulder to the captain. “All is in order, then?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Does he have any … effects?”

“No, my lord. His horse and kit were forfeit to the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham, to cover certain debts.”

Fury. Guy felt a lurch in his gut and swung back on the captain. Moving so swiftly made his head, still foggy from the guard’s club, pound horribly. “What? No, that’s not …”

“Not my doing, Sir Guy.” The man held up a hand, unmoved. “Have it out with de Rainault, if it matters.” His tone suggested quite plainly that he did not think that would be a wise idea, but that he didn’t care either way. Guy fought down the urge to hit something. The loss of his lands, such as they were, was one thing, but this … God’s Blood, this was worse. He valued that horse, and de Rainault knew it. This was personal.

“But my horse …”

“You’ll be provided with a horse, Sir Guy. It’s been arranged.” The foppish young man was pulling absently at his gloves, as if impatient to be off. “I’d let it go, if I were you. You’re not really in a position to argue. My lord Constable has given you only so long to be on your way. Best leave before he changes his mind, wouldn’t you say?”

Guy stared again, beyond flustered. “Who are you?”

“Sir Henry Fitz Roy,” the man repeated with exaggerated patience. “Really, man, pay attention. Are you simple or merely deaf?” And then, turning on his heel in a way that made his short mantle flare out quite dashingly behind him, “Well, come on then, if you want to live.”

Guy, who wanted very much to live, went.

It had not been terribly difficult to pass as Fitz Roy’s servant. All Nasir had actually had to do was tend the horses when the knight and his squires stopped at the small local livery. Nasir, who quite liked horses, did not mind that at all, though these clumsy Frankish beasts were nothing compared to the fine swift horses he had known in his homeland: elegant, spirited creatures that could race the very wind. He murmured to the animals in Arabic as he went about his task, and nodded imperceptibly when Fitz Roy haggled the livery master down to within the limits of reason over two middling fair nags and their tack thrown in. The horses, he could tell at a glance, were unremarkable but sound, and Fitz Roy, who was clearly not the fool he looked, was not willing to pay any more than he had to.

Now Nasir sat in the sun in the livery yard and waited. He considered bringing out his whetstone and seeing to his swords, just to give his hands something to do, but Fitz Roy’s squires were nervous enough with him just sitting there; if he drew steel, even only to sharpen it, they would probably faint with fright. Franks, Nasir thought, far from the first time, were strange creatures. He wondered what kind of stories these boys had heard that had them watching him like they expected him to grow horns and start shooting fire from his eyes. It was ridiculous, really. He was not even trying to be menacing.

The lads were huddled together on the other side of the yard, near the horse trough and a rain barrel full of water. Nasir could hear them talking softly to each other in the langue d’oil patois of the Norman people. It was not a language he spoke himself, beyond a few words learnt in the course of his travels. His French was a little better, enough to exchange basic courtesies, secure bed and board, or question a man’s parentage, but it was hardly conversational. He listened idly, picking out words here and there, playing with them in his mind to work out their best fit. He had established that the tall youth was named Jerome and that the solid young lad with the swathe of dark hair that kept falling over his eyes was called Gilbert and that he himself was either a demon or a devil worshipper by the time Fitz Roy reappeared.

To Nasir’s surprise, the man cast a hard look at his squires and said, in a clipped, curt voice, “He’s no such thing, you fools. He worships the same God you do. He just calls Him by a different name.” And then, to Nasir, “My apologies for their lack of manners. They should know better.”

“They are young.” Nasir shrugged, got to his feet with a faint smile. His opinion of Rob’s cousin was improving all the time. “They will learn, with you to teach them.”

“Now you flatter me.”

“Truth is not flattery.”

“Fitz Roy, I don’t understand … You! Wolfshead!”

Nasir sighed, did not bother to turn to the familiar, rough voice. He nodded to Henry instead. “So. You found Gisburne.”

“Yes.” Fitz Roy glanced back over his shoulder at the man, then raised an eyebrow at Nasir. “You don’t sound pleased.”

Nasir only raised an eyebrow right back and let Fitz Roy make of that what he would. The man paused, then nodded in understanding. “Yes, well. You have my sympathy.”

“Wolfshead!” Gisburne was closer now. Nasir, finally deigning to look at him, was surprised at his ill-used appearance. The voice was the same, and the cold, pale glitter of his eyes, but the rest of him was ragged, worn thin. He was filthy for a start, thick with grime, his fair hair grown long, matted and unkempt. His jaw, jutting even now in that familiar, assertive way, was bearded from neglect, and his tunic little better than a rag. His face was a map of old bruises, some yellowing-faint, some still purple under the dirt, and his cheeks were hollow, sunken. He moved as if he were hurt and trying to hide it, and he looked half starved, like a wolf after a lean winter. If he had been any other man, Nasir might even have felt sorry for him.

“Sir Guy.” Fitz Roy turned as Gisburne approached, his tone effortlessly commanding. “Your freedom has been paid for, and my business here is done. This man …”

“This outlaw!”

“… is here to escort you to safety,” Henry went on, over-riding Gisburne’s angry interruption. He smiled, not pleasantly. “I don’t think you’re to be given a choice in the matter, for what it’s worth.”

Guy glared. “I’m not going anywhere with that … that … filthy Saracen!”

Nasir’s brows went up, sardonically amused. He glanced down at himself, spread clean hands and looked pointedly at the young knight in his layers of muck. “Filthy?” he said. “I?”

“As I said, Gisburne, I don’t think you’ve much choice.” Henry started back to the stables, gesturing at his squires to follow. “We’ll take you out of the city, and after that, I’d advise you to forget you ever heard my name.”

“You don’t understand,” Gisburne insisted. “This man is a wolfshead! A dangerous outlaw! He’s one of Robin Hood’s men!”

“Of course he is,” Fitz Roy said, unconcerned. “I really don’t care, Gisburne. You’re being given a second chance, man. I suggest you stop bleating like a tethered goat and take it.” The tall squire, Jerome, brought out the horses. Fitz Roy leaned on the yard fence to wait. Gisburne tried again.

“You can’t send me off with this … this savage! The man’s a killer, a faithless barbarian …”

“He is?” Fitz Roy demanded suddenly, looking at Guy as if the man was something unpleasant he’d just scraped off the sole of his boot. “Or you are? Because I’ve spent a little time in both your company, and he at least understands common courtesy. You, on the other hand, are an ill-mannered lout. I’m only sorry that he has to be burdened with your welfare. If it were up to me, I’d let you fend for yourself. Now stop bothering me, man, or I’ll take you back to Brewer myself.”

Too late, Guy registered the man’s name: Fitz Roy of Scots, bastard son of the king of Scotland. No wonder he was so arrogantly difficult. Royal blood, Guy had cause to know, could be the most unreasonable thing in the world.

Which still did nothing to explain why Fitz Roy had ransomed him from Brewer in order to hand him over to Hood’s pet savage. Even now, the Saracen was standing at his back. Gisburne felt the space between his shoulders tingle, anticipating a blade, and whirled, throwing up his hands in defence. Nasir only looked at him, utterly impassive, then uttered a single word.

“Wash.”

“What?”

“You stink.” The man gestured to the rain barrel standing nearby “Go, wash. I will fetch the horses.”

“Why don’t you just kill me now.” Guy had meant that to sound defiant, strong. Instead, it came out resigned, the voice of a man too tired to care. Nasir’s eyes glittered briefly, and Guy read in them the message, Now what would be the fun in that? Then the Saracen said again, “Go. Wash,” and moved off to the stables.

For a moment Guy thought about resisting. He thought about refusing, about shouting for the City Watch, about flinging himself at this man who was one of those he had spent the last several years trying unsuccessfully to kill and attempting to snap his neck with nothing but his bare hands. For half a heartbeat that was all he wanted to do and freedom be damned … but then, suddenly, his anger failed him and it all seemed just too much trouble. The rain barrel was not far away, and he was in dire need of a dousing. It was easier by far to just do what he was told.

The shock of the cold water left him gasping and shivering, but he felt a little better with the worst of the dirt sluiced off. More human, at least. There was nothing he could do about his tunic – it was beyond salvaging – but he hoped the dunking had got rid of most of the vermin.

The sound of hooves behind him made him turn. The Saracen was mounted on an ordinary bay hack, holding a non-descript dun gelding on a lead rein. Gisburne ran a practised eye over the beast and scowled. “I’m not riding that.”

The Saracen shrugged with supreme indifference. “Then walk.” He turned his horse, began to move away. Gisburne sighed.

“Wait, damn you.”

At least, Guy thought as he left Newark, he had a horse under him and the open sky overhead. Things, he now knew, could be far worse.

Will had been right about Newark. He’d had no trouble finding himself an alehouse – and better yet, an alehouse with a view onto the market square where the Fosseway met the Great North Road. If Nasir and his new fine friends were going anywhere, they’d have to pass this way to get there. As far as excuses to settle in with a mug of ale and a meat pasty went, that was as good as any. Besides, he needed to think. Ale had always helped him, when it came to that. And the ale in this place was decent, as well – barely watered down and served in a relatively clean mug. Amos, Will considered, taking a deep pull at his drink and sighing in appreciation as the ale went down, could learn from a place like this.

Something odd was happening here. Will couldn’t make arse nor elbow from it, and that was God’s truth. What business Robin could possibly have with an overdressed Norman lordling was beyond him, but then, it wasn’t so bloody long ago that Robin had been an overdressed Norman lordling himself. Perhaps old loyalties died harder than Robin would have had them all believe. Except that if it were that simple, if it were only Robert of bloody Huntingdon casting his nobleborn shadow where it didn’t fucking belong, why all the slinking around? And what was Nasir doing helping him? The Saracen wasn’t a man for foolery; he’d not waste his time on just dropping off Robin’s bloody love notes. No, Will was sure he was on the right track. There was something more going on, and he was damned well going to find out what it was.

Or, he swore to himself as the ale went down, he’d know the bloody reason why.

When the dandified knight with his poncy squires went past in mid-afternoon with Nasir at heel, the Saracen looking as out of place as a wolf herding a gaggle of geese, there was a new player in the game. Thin and ragged and slumped unhappily on the back of the horse Nasir was leading, the newcomer had long legs and a patchy beard and a thatch of unkempt blond hair. Something about him made Will’s skin prickle suspiciously, though he could not have said why: the man could have been anyone, huddled and drawn in as he was. Certainly he was too far away for Will to catch a proper glimpse of his face. Even so, some part of Will’s wary mind growled in warning, and Will thought that was interesting too. Taking a thoughtful pull at his drink, Will watched the small party go by, the knight riding straight through the crowd in the market square like Moses through the Red Sea. Once they had reached the edge of the square and turned for the open road, he put his drink down and followed. It meant leaving his third mug of ale only half finished, but Will told himself it was worth it.

After all, when a man wanted to know what the bloody fuck was going on, some sacrifices had to be made.

“This is as far as we go.” Fitz Roy drew rein outside of Newark, where the Fosseway stretched off to the south and west, and the Trent veered away into a straggly stand of trees. He gave Nasir a quick grin. “Give Rob my regards, won’t you? And tell him that next time he needs a favour, he can leave me out of it. Not that telling him that is likely to do any good!”

Nasir nodded, hiding a smile. Rob and his cousin must have been proper hellions, once. “I will tell him.”

“Yes. Well.” Fitz Roy shifted, gathering his reins. “One more thing. There was mention of a horse?”

Ah yes, Robin’s grey stallion. Nasir reached into his pouch, brought out a thin scrap of paper. “Rob sends you this. The horse is at his father’s manor. All you need do is claim it.”

Taking the missive, Fitz Roy read his cousin’s words and laughed softly. He glanced sidelong at Nasir. “Have you read this?

“No.”

“He writes that he hopes you did not intimidate me. Make a habit of scaring people, do you?”

Nasir quirked an eyebrow in amusement, and looked pointedly at Fitz Roy’s wary squires. “So I have been told.”

“Oh, they’ll get over it. Likely they’ll be telling tales of you for a month. You’re quite exotic, you know.” Fitz Roy folded the paper into his own pouch and smiled. Then his gaze went over Nasir’s shoulder to the ragged young knight slouching dispiritedly in his saddle, and his smile faltered and fell.

The Saracen had the other horse’s lead rope tied to his own mount’s harness, leaving his hands free. Gisburne had already tried once to wrest control from the Saracen and break away, and had earned himself a solid clout around the ears and a guttural “Do not!” for his troubles. Fitz Roy doubted that he’d have got far even if the Saracen had not stopped him: the dun gelding was a quiet beast, not made for speed, and Gisburne himself did not look up to much either. The man was clearly an accomplished horseman – Fitz Roy could see that just by looking: Gisburne sat his horse as if riding were the most natural thing in the world – but his head hung down and he hunched in on himself, shivering miserably in the brisk autumn air. Fitz Roy wondered if he was ill.

“He’s not been well treated,” the nobleman observed quietly. “I hope you’ve not got far to go.”

Nasir only shrugged. His eyes, when they went to Gisburne, were dispassionate, cold. Fitz Roy frowned, lips thinning, and rubbed at his jaw with the knuckles of one hand. Gisburne, he could see, was not going to get much sympathy from that quarter.

“Wait.” He reached under his mantle, fumbled with something, then handed a clanking coin pouch to Nasir. “This is the rest of Rob’s money. Brewer might be a vulture, but he’s an honest vulture. He only took what was due him at the money changer; the rest he gave back. You might need it, I think. And … Jerome, come here.” Fitz Roy gestured to the first of his squires, who kicked his horse over to his lord’s side. “You’re a tall lad, you might do.” He slapped at the youth’s saddlebags. “You must have a spare tunic and leggings in there. Do you?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Get them out for our friend here, will you?” Fitz Roy said, nodding towards Guy. “Can’t have the man freeze to death on his first day of freedom now, can we?”

“No, my lord.” Jerome sounded gloomy, but he did as he was told. “I’ve my second best cloak here too, my lord. Will you be wanting that as well?”

“What? Oh, yes. Don’t worry, I’ll find you better.”

Nasir, who had no doubt that Fitz Roy would do just that, chuckled to himself under his breath. Oh yes, this man was definitely of Robin’s line. Apparently taking pity on waifs and strays ran in the blood too.

The trews were too short, and the tunic too tight in the shoulders, but at least they were clean and dry. Guy supposed that he should be grateful he still had his own boots. A gust of wind buffeted the small camp site, making the surrounding trees creak and sway and sparks swirl out of the shelter of the small fire pit the Saracen had dug. Gisburne huddled disconsolately before the wavering flames, cursing under his breath and drawing the cloak Fitz Roy had given him more tightly about himself. He wondered if he would ever be warm again. A deep chill had gnawed its way into his bones at some point during his time in Newark’s dank cells, all cold stone and hopelessness, and now no borrowed cloak or hissing fire seemed enough to ward it away.

The Saracen was behaving oddly. For a start, he was not treating Guy as a prisoner. Nor was he even acting as if Guy mattered much at all. Gisburne did not know what to make of it. The man had left his hands unbound and showed no concern that he might attempt an escape. There was reason enough for that, if Guy wanted to be fair: he was unarmed, penniless and ailing, and in the middle of nowhere besides – where was he going to go? Guy was not in the business of being fair, though. He was being held by a man who, not so long ago, would have seen him as an honest threat and treated him like one too, trussing him up like a butchered boar and watching him with wariness and good clean hate. Clearly the man no longer thought him worth the effort. Right now, Guy was not sure what was worse: owing his life, such as it was, to a wolfshead, or being so steadfastly discounted. Guy could withstand all manner of mistreatment, but he could not bear to be ignored.

They had ridden on for what was left of the day, after Fitz Roy had left them. Gisburne had thought once or twice about trying for the reins again, or even making some attempt to get his hands on one of the Saracen’s weapons, but the swiftness of his earlier correction made that seem unwise. The Saracen said not a word, but kept their pace steady, never pushing the horses past a light sweat. Guy was glad of that; his back ached horribly from where the guard at Newark had struck him with his club, his head felt as if someone had smashed a wine flagon inside his skull and left all the pieces to grate against each other until he went mad, and he hadn’t eaten in two days. As the sun sank, the wind that had been gusting all day strengthened, cutting and cool, making Guy more miserable by the mile. When the Saracen had finally stopped as the light waned, Gisburne had been nearly ready to fall from the saddle. Dropping off the side of his horse, he had lurched barely three steps before his knees faltered and the world faded to grey. He stayed upright only by virtue of a strategically placed tree and sheer stubborn effort of will, feeling as weak as a kitten. Perhaps the Saracen was right to discount him, then.

During their ride, Gisburne’s weary mind had cast about for some sign of what was going on, and why, but without success. This man, of all men, had no reason to help him, and in any case, he was hardly likely to be acting on his own initiative. Clearly Hood – Huntingdon, if you could believe it, though why a man of such breeding would chose to run with a pack of peasants was something Gisburne would never understand – was behind it. Give Rob my regards, Fitz Roy had said, which only meant that he was in on it too. Guy could not begin to imagine why Robin Hood would orchestrate his release from Newark’s gaol, but whatever the man’s reasons, Guy had no cause to think them good. Most likely this would all end with him dead in a ditch somewhere. Gisburne scowled. If Hood wanted his blood, the least the man could do was come and kill him himself.

A nudge from the Saracen’s booted foot jolted Guy out of his sullen reverie. He looked up, prepared to snap something sharp and insulting, only to have a small bowl of hot broth thrust into his hands. His stomach rumbled keenly under the hiss of the wind.

“Here. Eat.” A heel of hard bread accompanied the brusque words. Guy glared.

“I’m not hungry,” he said stubbornly.

“Liar. Eat.”

“If you think I’ll break bread with you, you filthy savage, you’re mad.”

The Saracen only looked at him, impassive. “Then starve.”

Moving away, the man set about eating his own meal with the spare, methodical motions of a man performing a necessary if joyless task. Gisburne watched for a moment, painfully aware of the hollow, gnawing emptiness in his stomach. The Saracen glanced at him over the flames.

“Eat.”

Gisburne ate.

As soon as the broth-soaked bread touched his lips, his hunger, until now repressed, roared free. He tore at the bread like a wolf, emptied the bowl in mouthfuls, and looked up to see the outlaw watching him with an amused expression. It was on the tip of Gisburne’s tongue to snarl something defensive, but all Nasir did was lean over and push the cook pot towards him.

Guy glared again, but dipped his bowl into the pot all the same. This time he ate more slowly, savouring the warmth in the way that a man lost in an endless night might savour the coming of dawn. It made him feel better than he had all day, more alive, more himself. Wiping his mouth on the sleeve (also too short, but beggars made do with what they were given) of his new tunic, Guy fixed the Saracen with a hard, demanding stare.

“What do you want with me?”

A shake of the Saracen’s dark head answered that, and a raised hand that seemed to gesture for silence. Guy swore.

“I know you can speak, man. Answer me! What’s this about?” It was the tone of voice that usually made the guards of Nottingham quake. This man, though, barely noticed. He was staring beyond Gisburne into the wind-tossed shadows of the trees of the spinney where he had chosen to make their camp, hidden from casual travellers by a dip in the land. The Saracen’s eyes were suddenly as intense as a hunting hawk’s, and the hand he had raised to hush Guy had flown to the hilt of his nearest sword. Gisburne, who had been a soldier for half his life, felt his instincts surge and a chill run down the back of his neck. He had time to hiss, “What? What is it?” and then something sprang out of the night and there was a shout, cursing in a language Guy didn’t know – Arabic, he supposed, when he thought about it later – and a quick flurry of movement in which Gisburne tried to duck away and raise his hands to ward off whatever was coming at him, wishing fervently for a sword, or a buckler, or even a God-cursed stick, anything but fighting off unseen attackers bare-handed … and then something cracked hard against the side of his skull and everything fell into darkness.

Seventy Times Seven Part 2/8

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 05:50:59 GMT

The story continues. *insert soaring theme music here*

Still beta'd by luthien13

Still my mistakes and other people's toys.

Still no alien probes.

Welcome to Part II, in which Robin has a plan, Nasir has a mission, and Will's had enough. Enjoy.

“Nasir.”

          The Saracen looked up from the deer he was butchering, and sat back on his haunches, blood to the elbows. He swiped a hand over his brow, leaving a streak of red, and frowned. Robin was standing above him, hands on hips, looking remarkably pleased with himself. Nasir told himself not to smile back. “What?”

          “I need you to steal a camel for me.”

          Nasir rolled his eyes and went back to butchering his deer.

          Later that evening, Robin was more forthcoming. Nasir had brought his kill back to camp and deposited it in John’s tender care, then gone to clean up. Robin had followed him to the river, and waited while the man washed. By the time the Saracen had emerged, wet and shivering, from the water, Robin had a small fire going near the bank.

          “Here. Sit and warm up.” He watched, bemused, as the man sank down gratefully, bare to the waist and shaking water out of his hair. “Why do you do that so often anyway? It must be freezing.”

          “It is,” Nasir confirmed, snagging Robin’s set-aside cloak and slinging it about himself. “But we are taught that cleanliness is half of faith. And, too, where Allah the Compassionate has given us the gift of so much water, it would be ungrateful not to use it.”

          Robin caught the gleam of humour in that last, and surveyed himself with mock dismay. “You must think us very savages, sometimes.”

          “Not savages. Infidels.” Nasir’s grin was quick and brief, but it made his eyes shine. “Which explains a variety of wonders.”

          “Infidel yourself,” Robin replied in a prim voice, then ruined the effect with a grin of his own. “I’m going to bathe, then. You tend the fire.”

          The water was every bit as cold as he’d expected, stealing his breath and making him yelp. He dealt with that with a flailing of limbs, splashing about with a vigour borne of self-preservation, and then hauled himself to the bank. His clothes clung to his wet skin as he slid back into them, cursing at the chill air and at himself for not thinking of fetching a drying cloth before jumping in the river. Dusk was falling; the days were coming shorter as the year turned to winter. It would be a hard winter too, with the grain harvest destroyed and so much livestock slaughtered by the Sons of Fenris. And in the common cells at Newark, it would be bitter.

          Nasir saw him coming and flung the cloak at him as he neared the fire. “Here. You will freeze.” He had his shirt back on, damp from its rinse in the river. Robin felt a peculiar pang at that, and couldn’t place it. He tried to hand the cloak back.

          “No, keep it. I’m fine. I was born to this, remember? This is a fine balmy evening, where my people come from.”

          “Then your people should have taught you better than to turn away warmth when it is offered.”

          Nasir’s tone was mild, but Robin felt something flinch inside him all the same. Jesus God, Malik, don’t. Don’t. He took the cloak unspeaking, and sat close by the other man, careful to keep his eyes on the flames.

          “It is no more than any friend might give you.” Nasir did not move. His eyes were on the flames too. His voice was very quiet, almost off-hand. Robin shivered, wrapped his arms about knees and tried to make himself sound normal.

          “My thanks, then.” He took a breath. “Sadiqi. My friend.”

          He won a flicker of dark eyes in response, but all Nasir said was, “Your accent improves.”

          “Shokrun,” Robin offered, oddly relieved that Nasir had said nothing else, even though he could not have explained why. His grin, white and wicked, was almost convincing in the shadows. “Yours doesn’t. It’s still perfectly exotic. Quite fitting, for a camel thief.”

          Nasir, whose blood was every bit as noble and a good deal older than Robin’s, and who would have cut out the tongue of any other man who challenged his honour so lightly, made a low sound under his breath that Robin knew for laughter. “So then,” he said. “Tell me, sadiqi, about this camel.”

          “Blond,” Robin said. “Bad tempered. Bullying.” He shrugged. “My brother.”

          “He is not worthy of the name.”

          “Even so.”

          “And you are not like him.” Emphatic, at once both fierce and gentle. Robin felt a low warmth surge through him and smiled softly. Thank you, Malik. Thank you.

          “So. Gisburne.” Nasir made an unflattering gesture. “You want me to … steal him?” The man sounded puzzled. Robin chuckled.

          “Not quite. Not even free him, not really. More … escort him. See to it he stays far from us, and out of trouble.” And then, when Nasir only looked at him, “Listen. I’ve worked this out. We can’t break him out of there. It would be too dangerous for a start: Newark’s not our ground. And Guy wouldn’t be pleased to see us, rescue or not. Most likely, he’d raise the alarm himself, just for the satisfaction of knowing that we’d swing right after he does.”

          Nasir could not argue with that; Gisburne could be painfully bloody-minded. He nodded, slowly.

          “He needs ransoming. He can’t pay, and neither can I. The villagers are going to need all we can give them this winter, and I won’t take food from their mouths to set Gisburne free.” Robin’s sudden smile was sharp and hard. “If God was kind, we’d take Gisburne’s money from de Rainault’s personal coffers, but I doubt that my lord sheriff is going to be strolling through Sherwood strapped with money bags come dawn. Our luck isn’t that good.”

          Nasir snorted. Maybe this young Frank did have some sense of irony after all. Or perhaps it was simply natural justice.

          “So,” Robin went on, edging closer to the fire as the night drew in, “I’ve decided to draw on my father’s resources. Being an earl’s son – even a disinherited one – must be good for something. He won’t turn me away, not after that mess with the king and my late, unlamented uncle. After all, Guy is his father’s son too. Even if neither of them know it.”

          “That would be … fitting,” Nasir agreed. If David of Huntingdon would not acknowledge his by-blows, he could at least pay towards their keep. And towards his legitimate son’s peace of mind, which was, Nasir thought bluntly, more valuable than Gisburne’s sorry hide any day.

          “Then we have the problem of securing his release. I can hardly march into Newark myself and demand that Brewer hand Gisburne over, money or not.” Robin cast Nasir a wry look, to show how well he thought that might work. “If I tried that, like as not I’d find myself sharing a cell with him, and I don’t think my welcome would be warm. Though at least my stay would be short – Brewer would probably have me at the block by dawn.”

          “Hsst!” Nasir made a sharp negating motion with one hand, his eyes hard glints in the firelight. “Lasamahallah! Do not say such things.”

          The intensity of his tone made Robin blink. Unthinking, he put his hand on Nasir’s wrist, closing his fingers tight. The man’s skin was warm from the fire, his pulse ticking steadily under Robin’s touch. “Malik. It won’t happen. I’m not that great a fool.”

          “Inshallah, you are not.” Nasir glanced once at the hand that clasped his wrist, seemingly impassive, but he did not move away. “You will use an agent?”

          “Yes.” Robin let his hand drop, suddenly uncomfortable at the feel of this man’s heartbeat in his palm. “My cousin Harry. He’s the natural son of my uncle of Scotland, and a knight, and his father’s recently invested him with decent estates near Stirling.” With an effort, Robin made his tone light, crisp. “If he were to ride into Newark with a ransom for a fellow knight of the realm, Brewer might huff and grind his teeth, but he’d be reasonable. He’d have to be.”

          “Your cousin would do this thing?”

          “Oh yes, I think so. He owes me three or four rather large favours, mostly to do with pretty girls and jealous husbands.” Robin’s smile now was genuine, and more than a little rakish. Nasir’s brows went up: Franks really were brash creatures.

          “I’ve had word sent to Harry to come south to Newark. I want you to meet him there. It has to be you; I can’t do this myself lest someone ask why Huntingdon’s disgraced son is interested in the fate of a man like Gisburne. And I can’t ask the others, even if they knew. John wouldn’t stand for it, Much saw the man kill his father, for pity’s sake, and as for Will …” He rolled his eyes, meaningfully. “Will would kill him as soon as look at him. It has to be you; you’re the only one with the skill to manage him and the discipline not to just strike him dead. So I’ll organise the writs for Gisburne’s ransom, and you’ll see that Harry gets them.” Robin grimaced, realising something. “You might have to play the servant’s part, if you go with Harry into Newark. I’m sorry for that, but there’s no other way you’ll not draw attention.”

          Nasir glanced at him slowly and shrugged with the barest twitch of one shoulder. “I have been worse things than a servant in this land.”

          To anyone else, Nasir’s voice would have sounded utterly indifferent, but Robin caught the jagged edge under the smooth surface. He had met Simon de Belleme once, at Huntingdon, when the baron had been, very briefly, his father’s guest. He remembered a cold, unnaturally intent man with a fixed stare and hot, dead eyes. To have been in the Great Hall with him for half an evening had been discomforting enough; Robin did not like to think what it would have been like to belong to the man, like a horse or a hawk or the dagger he kept tucked in his belt. The idea of that made Robin’s jaw clench in anger, and a part of him wondered that it was possible to so hate a man with whom he had barely exchanged three words. But there were some creatures in the world that were not made to be caged, and Nasir was one of them.

          “I know you have,” he said, low and soft. “I’m sorry.”

          “It is not for you to apologise.” Nasir lifted the fingers of his right hand in a small, dismissive flick, but nothing else moved. “It is done. And he, alhamdulillah, is dead.”

          “May he never find rest.”

          Nasir, who privately hoped that Belleme would find in the black fires of Jahannam exactly what he deserved, only nodded and stirred the fire with a stick, so that sparks rose like fleeting stars, striving for the sky. There were things he preferred not to talk about. “So. I am to find your cousin, and to play the servant in the city. And then?”

          “He will give Brewer the writs in return for Gisburne’s release.”

          “And then?”

          “You will take Gisburne out of the city.”

          “And then?”

          Clearly Nasir did not believe he’d thought this through. Robin supposed the man had a point. He shrugged. “There are options. Gisburne might be a fool, but surely even he can’t believe that his life is worth anything if he stays in England. He has to go somewhere beyond Lackland’s reach, if he’s any chance of starting again. Normandy, perhaps, since the king’s made such a botch of keeping it under his sway, or France.” Robin gave a short, wicked laugh. “Or even further. How do you think Gisburne would fare in Outremer, say?”

          At first Nasir did not answer, though his eyes slid from Robin’s face to the lowering flames of their small fire and back again. After a moment, he said, “Well enough. He is a fighter, and there is always a place for fighting men. He would find others of his kind, there.” And then, almost an afterthought, “You could arrange passage?”

          Sweet God. Robin drew a breath. Why hadn’t he thought of that before he spoke? He’d meant it for a joke when he’d suggested Outremer, though Nasir was right: a fighting man could find a decent sponsor there, and earn himself both fame and fortune. He answered honestly, though it pained him.

          “For him, I could, probably. For you … it would be difficult, Malik, but I could try. Do you wish it?”

          Another silence answered that. Robin let it grow, waiting, watching Nasir very closely in the darkness. At last the man stirred.

          Say no, Malik, my friend, say no. Say no.

          “Yes.” Softer even than a whisper, the word fell like a stone. Robin felt as if he’d swallowed rocks. He opened his mouth to say something, but couldn’t find the words. Instead, Nasir spoke again.

          “Yes. But not now. Not yet.”

          It was selfish, perhaps, to feel such relief. Robin didn’t care. The tightness in his gut loosened, as did his tongue. “I’m glad. I’d be sorry to lose you.”

          “And I would be sorry to go, in some ways.” Nasir gave the faintest smile, flicking his eyes towards Robin and letting them linger. They seemed to glow, reflecting the flames, like embers in the dark. “There are some things about this land that I would miss. But that other is my home, and one day I will return. Right now though, I suspect it would mean my death.”

          “Sinan?”

          “If he still lives. And even if he does not, there are others who will not forgive.” Nasir shrugged. “Best to stay, for now. I might live longer, this way.”

          That, Robin realised, was a joke. He chuckled, very quietly. “If one of my outlandish plans doesn’t kill you first, you mean.”

          Nasir inclined his head. “I mean.” He sounded as if he were laughing too, in that silent way he had.

          Robin considered that for a moment. “Then I will try to keep you safe. I won’t have you missing your home and blaming me.”

          Those words had a twist in them. Nasir eyed them warily, then shifted one hand in an odd yielding motion. “Rob, there is no blame where the choice is freely made.”

         “Is it free?” Robin wanted to know. “You have duties there, I know: estates to see to, obligations to family. I understand that; I was raised to the same thing. You’d go back to that?”

          “Yes,” Nasir said, as if it were obvious.

          “Why?”

          Nasir tipped his head, bemused. “You are about to move mountains for a man you do not even like, simply because his blood is your blood, and you ask me why?” His shoulders hitched in that familiar shrug that he used to say so much. “Blood is strong, Rob. It calls, and a man cannot deny who he is.”

          “Maybe not,” Robin allowed, “but he can change who he is.” He sounded as if he believed it. Nasir, who had his doubts when it came to that, only glanced sidelong at his friend and away. Robin frowned. “Is that what it is, then? Duty, obligation, faith, blood? You’d go back for that?”

          “For that, yes. And for other things.” Nasir regarded the dark sky through the tree tops thoughtfully. “Mostly for other things.”

          “For what, then?”

          “For the desert. For the cities. For words that flow like oil from a jar, and do not make my head ache in the choosing of them. For the muezzin’s call above the dusty streets. For the sky burned almost white by the sun, and gardens of oranges and limes and olives. For the colours.” He would have said more, tried to explain the simple, brutal honesty of men killing each other in the sands over water they could step across, and the honour and courtesy that kept them civilised even so, but some words were too difficult for his friend to understand. Even now, Robin was looking at him as if he’d said something strange.

          “Colours?” Robin was baffled. “What do you mean, ‘colours’?”

          Nasir did his best. “The light. Here, it is all green and gold in the summer, grey and green in the winter. Soft, cool. There, it is … whiter. Wider. Sharper. It makes the colours shine pure, like gems.”

          It sounded beautiful. Robin spoke without thinking. “I should like to see that.”

          “I should be glad to show you.” Another strange flickering gesture went with that, at once wistful and promising. “Someday. Inshallah.”

          “Inshallah. But first, there’s Gisburne to deal with.”

          “And you wish for me to steal a camel and take it to France.” Very dry, and gently mocking.

          “No, idiot.” Robin gave the other man a laughing tap on the shoulder. “Just to the nearest port. Or north, across the border into Scotland. Maybe he could take up service with my uncle, and keep it all in the family.”

          “Truly.” Nasir’s raised eyebrow was sardonic. “And if he does not wish to go?”

          “Convince him.” Said simply, and without pause. “But keep him alive. If you can.”

          “If I can.”

          “And in the meantime, I say we get back to camp before the others finish off supper without us. That venison should be about ready.” He paused, glanced thoughtfully at the other man as if something had just occurred to him. “Nasir. You have friends amongst the Jews of Lincoln, don’t you? Money-lenders?”

          “I do,” Nasir said catiously. “The de Talmonts. But I cannot speak for them.”

          “No matter.” Robin still had that considering look in his eyes. “I can make arrangements.”

          “You said the money would come from your father.”

          “It will, but it can’t be seen to. I need to muddy the waters a little.” Robin flashed that grin again, bright and bold. “Who says we Franks lack for subtlety?”

          “You Franks lack for many things. But you, sadiqi, are not an ordinary Frank.” Nasir smiled quietly, and rose to stamp out the fire and shrug into his half-dry jerkin. “Sometimes, you are almost Arab.”

          “My father would be …” Robin shook his head, letting his words trail off as Nasir hauled him to his feet.

          “What? Appalled?”

          “No,” Robin said truthfully, thinking of his father’s tales of the Holy Land, and the people he had known there. He clapped one hand to Nasir’s shoulder, and met the shine of those dark eyes. “No. Not at all.”

          Henry Fitz Roy had considerable time to think on the ride south. He had received his cousin’s message, courtesy of a road weary courier and a decidedly feminine hand. Robert, it seemed, had got himself into some kind of trouble – which was no surprise at all, given that he’d taken to gallivanting about in the forest, playing at outlaws with a bunch of runaway serfs. Robert always had been one for strange flights of fancy. It was only a shame that he had so little care for his father’s reputation.

          If it were not for the fact that the last tourney of the season had been delayed, Henry would have ignored Robert’s request … or at least, sent back his carefully worded regrets. It was not that he disliked his cousin; they had in fact got on famously well in their youth, leading each other astray in the ways most suitable to the noble born, drinking their way into trouble and talking their way out. Robert had been good at that, particularly the talking; his clever tongue and quick mind had saved his cousin’s fat from the fire more than once, when Henry’s discretion had failed him. But there was also the family’s honour to think of, and Robert had made himself rather the black sheep. The only son of the Earl of Huntingdon, heir to vast estates and nephew to the Scots king, and he’d given it all up for a life of simple banditry. Adventure was one thing, and well and good in its place, (and Henry understood that: why else would he seek out tourney after tourney when the prize purse was so pitifully meagre?) but in turning against the King’s Peace, Robert had taken things a step too far. Which was like Robert, when he thought about it. It had always been Robert’s idea to visit that one last ale house or take that final spin of the dice, but somehow it had always been Henry

(Come on Harry, faint heart never won a fair maiden!)

who had come out carrying the consequences.

          Henry was damned if he’d bear the consequences for this latest escapade too, no matter what it might be. He’d grown up since his days of carousing with Rob and letting his cousin have his way; he’d learned to see trouble coming, now. He would stop in Newark and find out what game it was that Robert was playing, but that didn’t mean that he’d willingly be a pawn in it. He’d have to see what it was, first. He did wish that his cousin could have been a little more forthcoming, though. It would have been nice to know exactly what he was getting himself into.

          There was, in Will’s considered opinion, only so much sneaking about that a man could be expected to put up with. Will had reached his limit days ago. Robin had been to the priory again, though only to the guest house, and couriers had come and gone along the roads towards both Huntingdon and Lincoln. Nasir was his normal inscrutable self: infuriatingly calm and as receptive to questions as a stone. Tuck seemed uneasy, though the fat sod wouldn’t speak up as to why. “It’s just a feeling,” was all he’d say, for what little use that was. As for John and Much, well … John wouldn’t question Robin if the man told him the sky was green, and Much never noticed anything beyond his own bootstraps.

          Will, though, had not been a soldier for nothing. He could tell when his officers were on the move, and he had learned the hard way that when the men in the fancy cloaks were up to something, it usually wasn’t good news for the rank and file. And when it came to fancy cloaks, Will knew who to watch. Robin might dress no better than anyone else now, but he had been an earl’s son in his other life, and Nasir … well, no one actually knew exactly what Nasir was (though Will had an inkling that Robin might have a better idea than most; at least they bloody talked), but Will doubted that anyone could be as autocratic as the Saracen on a bad day and not lay claim to noble blood somewhere along the line. Probably he was second cousin to Saladin himself, or some such thing. In any case, whatever was going on, those two were at the heart of it.

          And then Nasir had left.

          The Saracen had spoken briefly to Robin, and taken a packet from him: a sheaf of papers, some wound with the coloured cords of their seals. Nasir had flicked critically through the papers, frowning as if he knew exactly what he was looking at (and so he probably did, Will allowed; the man was a veritable basket of tricks when it came to knowing things no normal person would know), and then he had given Robin one of those courtly-proper bows of his and turned on his heel and was gone.

          Nor had Nasir just wandered off like he usually did, stealing an hour or so to himself to see to the weird foreign rituals he observed – and Will still firmly maintained that any religion that denied a man a decent mug of ale was cruel and unusual at best – before coming back to the camp to poke at the fire and glower at the best of Will’s jokes. No, this was a proper leaving that took him out of Sherwood altogether.

          Will knew that, because Will gave it half a day and then followed.

          Because sometimes the only way to find out what the bloody fuck was going on was to jump in with both boots and a grin.

          It did not take Robin long to notice that Will was missing. The man had been gone for half a day, which was not terribly unusual, but when he did not return to camp for supper, Robin knew that something was wrong. He had never yet known Will to miss a meal, especially one he did not have to prepare himself.

          “Much?” he asked. “John? Have either of you seen Will?”

          “Aye,” John rumbled, helping himself to a chunk of dark flatbread. “Didn’t he tell you? He’s gone off for a bit.”

          “Off where?”

          “To Lichfield, he told me. To visit that brother of his.”

          “Amos?” Robin frowned. “He doesn’t even like Amos.”

          “Likes his ale, though, don’t he,” Much pointed out, picking bones out of his roasted trout and flicking them into the fire. “And we’ve run out of mead.”

          “And speaking of the dearly missed,” Tuck chimed in, “where’s Nasir got to? Don’t tell me he’s gone to visit Scarlet’s brother too.”

          “Naz, in an alehouse?” John scoffed. “Not likely. He wouldn’t be caught dead.”

          “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that alehouse,” Robin grimaced. “Not again. Once was enough for me. I don’t mind rough company, but that place …” He gave an eloquent shudder. “At least Sherwood is clean.”

          “Well, where is ‘e then?” Much asked. “Nasir, not Will.”

          “Nasir’s taking care of something for me,” Robin said, deliberately vague. “Family business.”

          Tuck narrowed his eyes, then shrugged with his whole body. “Well then,” he said, “that’s him and Will both. Seeing to family business, I mean.”

          Robin heard what the rotund friar was saying without words and repressed a sigh. Of course Will had gone after Nasir; what else would he have done? Damn the man for being so bloody-minded, for never knowing when to leave a thing well enough alone. With any luck, though, he’d miss Nasir’s trail and end up chasing himself in circles. Failing that – well, Nasir was a resourceful one. If anyone could manage Will, it would be him.

          Robin hoped rather fervently that that was true. Gisburne’s life depended on it.

          “God’s Wounds, Rob doesn’t ask for much, does he?” Henry Fitz Roy glared at the missive in his hand, then turned disbelieving eyes on the man who had delivered it. In point of fact, Henry wasn’t sure which was more startling: Robert’s request, or the Saracen warrior who had appeared out of nowhere and addressed him in the road by name, in good if accented English, and with a courtesy that would not have been out of place in the king’s own Great Hall. “Secure a release for this Gisburne fellow, find a pair of horses and equip them for travel … does he believe I’ll do whatever he wants?”

          The Saracen shrugged, as if he didn’t care. The man had the most unflinching gaze Fitz Roy had ever seen. It really was quite discomforting. “He believes that you will do this. He says it is a debt owed. A matter of honour concerning Sir Giles of York.”

          “Sir Gi… oh.” Henry flushed, remembering. “Yes, well. Can’t blame a man for trying. She was alarmingly pretty. Even Rob said so.”

          If that had been meant as a joke, it fell short. The Saracen only looked at him, eyes like jet in an impassive face. Henry wished that Robert could have found another servant to deliver his message: this one was too intimidating by half. A short way off, his squires, a good pair of lads but green as grass, watched wide-eyed, as if they expected a Holy Crusade to break out on the spot. Henry sighed and waved his hand in frustration, making his horse jerk its head and snort. “All right. Yes, I’ll do it. Brewer’s a nasty piece of work in any case; it wouldn’t hurt to bring him down a notch or two. But this is going to cost, and it won’t be coming out of my purse.”

          “No.” The Saracen indicated the writ in Henry’s hand with a flicker of those intense eyes. “It is dealt with.”

          “It is?” Henry snapped the seal on the writ, furrowing his brow as he fumbled his way through the words. Nasir waited patiently, watching the man’s lips move as he read. “Wait. To be paid by Aaron de Talmont of Lincoln? Who is this de Talmont?”

          Nasir hid a smile. Oh yes, Robin had been subtle – and if he’d wanted irony, he had it now by the cartload. The de Talmont family, providing the funds for Gisburne’s ransom: that was enough to make a stone dance. The fact that the money had only rested in Aaron’s coffers on its journey from the Earl of Huntingdon to Brewer’s treasury was neither here nor there. To Fitz Roy, Nasir said nothing at all. It was enough that the man had the writ, and knew where to deliver it; he did not need to know the rest.

          Fitz Roy waited a moment, but the Saracen did not answer. Probably he didn’t know; the man was only a servant, after all, even if he was armed to the back teeth (Henry had counted six blades, and those were only the ones he could see) and impressively regal in bearing. They really were remarkable people, these Saracens; Fitz Roy wondered how much Robert had paid for this one. Surely he hadn’t found the man wandering wild in the woods? At last Henry said, “Well, no matter. If your master didn’t tell you …”

          “Robert is not my master.”

          “…then you – what?”

          “Robert. He is not my master.” Those eyes were almost keen enough to cut, hard and cool and quite uncompromising. “He is my friend. My friend who has asked a favour of me, that I have agreed to grant. I call no man ‘master’. Understand that, my lord Fitz Roy.”

          Henry said, “I’m sorry.” Nasir blinked in surprise; the last thing he had expected was an apology from this feckless Frankish noble. Yet the man went on, seeming sincere, with a conciliatory smile. “I assumed; it was wrong of me. I didn’t mean to cause offence.”

          Well, perhaps charm ran in the blood in Robin’s family. Nasir nodded, dipping his head in half a bow. “No offence. A misunderstanding, no more.”

          “Quite.” Fitz Roy looked unsure – he knew Robert had gone native and set much of his good up-bringing aside in doing so, but he’d have thought that fostering friendships with Saracens was a step too far. There again, this was Rob, after all. Rob would make friends with a street beggar, given half a chance. He gave a mental shrug. “Well, we’d best get on with this, then.”

          Tucking the writ into his pouch, Henry swung back onto his horse and wondered, not for the first time, what Robert was getting him into. His cousin always had been a distracting influence.

          Just ask Sir Giles of York.

          Nasir bloody Malik bloody Kamal, Will thought with a scowl, did not make things easy. It had taken two days to find him, marching through the night and sleeping in snatches. The Saracen was making no special effort to elude him, but even so the man moved like a bloody shadow, leaving next to no sign, seeming to melt away between one step and the next and appearing again when he damned well pleased. It was luck as much as woodcraft that had led Will to his quarry, in the end. If he had turned left rather than right when he’d come to that overgrown mill race and then hit the Fosseway, he’d still be wandering about in circles.

          As it was, he’d caught up with Nasir in time to see the man speaking with some puffed up Norman windbag with an expensive looking horse and a pair of smooth-cheeked squires. Will watched in hiding as Nasir handed over the sealed missives Robin had given him. The knight – he had to be a knight, what with the horse and the squires and the cocksure way he dealt with being stopped in the road by an armed man – had frowned and fussed, and then Nasir had said something that had made the knight blink and look abashed, as if he’d just been clipped around the ears. Will grinned, wondering what that had been about. Nasir might not say much, but when he did speak up he could be bloody scathing, and sharply to the point. Will had cause to know that; the Saracen was not a man who pulled punches, metaphorically or otherwise.

          When they left, all of them together, Will waited a short while and followed. He watched them go into Newark, and decided that was no bad thing. At least in Newark he’d be able to get a decent mug of ale.

          There was a dead man in the far corner of the cell. Guy had wondered how long he would last when they had brought him in: the man had been coughing and shivering, hectic with fever. It had occurred to Guy that if he was unlucky, the man’s pestilence might spread and he himself might die, coughing his lungs out in a hole in the ground, but it was hard to care. Guy was a dead man already, after all. His body only did not know it yet.

          He hoped they would drag the corpse out before it started to stink. He had become used to the fetid stench of the cells – unwashed bodies, rotting straw, waste, filth and despair – but he could have done without that as well. A part of him could not help but recall the tale of Maude de Braose, whispered about Nottingham in the days before everything had gone wrong: imprisoned by the king and left to starve, she had died mad and raving, gnawing like a rat on the body of her dead son. Guy glanced at the sadly huddled body in the corner and shuddered. It had not yet come to that, at least.

          Guy had long since given up counting the days. He knew that he had been here some time; it had grown colder, and the guards were grumbling about the chance of early snow. He knew, too, that no one cared enough to speak up for him, or even remember where he was. He wondered distantly what de Rainault was up to, imagining the man sprawling in his chair in front of the wide hearth in Nottingham Castle’s Great Hall, quaffing heated wine and sniping at the servants. De Rainault had always been a demanding lord, with his sharp tongue and his sharper temper and his fickle, taunting favour, but Guy had never expected this from him. The man had delighted in treating Gisburne poorly, making him jump for scraps like a dog at table, offering security with one hand and deceit with the other, but Guy had not ever believed he would pay for the man’s duplicity with his life. Gisburne did not know what pained him more; that the sheriff had

          (On your knees, Gisburne)
used him so badly, or that Guy himself had let him. If God were just, he thought bitterly, de Rainault would choke.

          He wondered how much longer Brewer would make him wait. He had always hated waiting. During his time in France, campaigning alongside Sir Geoffrey and, later, Bertrand de Nevilles, it had always been the waiting that unnerved him. Battle he could face, even enjoy – an enemy to fight, a sword to swing, a decent horse under him. There was power in that, a sense of action, of choosing one’s own destiny. There was no power in waiting. Waiting gave a man nothing but time to think, and Gisburne took no comfort in that.

          There was a familiar scraping beyond the cell door, the sound of metal clanking and the heavy, stubborn bolt being drawn back. Guy lifted his head, but did not bother getting to his feet. He’d given up rushing the door when the guards opened it, either to toss some new wretch in or to drag someone else out; all it had ever gained him was an impressive series of beatings. But he still made sure that his head was up when the guards came in, and that he met their eyes as was fitting for a man of rank, rather than shrinking away into the dark like a frightened animal. He had that much dignity left, at least.

          “You. Gisburgh. Come on.”

          “Gisburne.” Guy stayed where he was. “Why?”

          “What d’you bloody mean, why? ‘Cos I fucking told you, that’s why.” The man took two paces into the cell, looking like he would kick Gisburne to his feet if he didn’t get up himself, and rather enjoy doing so. Guy hauled himself to his full height and glared. In Nottingham, that would have been enough to make a man like this pale and mumble and stare at the ground. Now, it served only to make the guardsman spit and grab him by the collar of his soiled and ragged tunic and thrust him roughly towards the door. “Get out there, you miserable turd. Move!”

          Guy had long ago decided that when it came to his death, he would go to it with what pride he could muster. He would not be dragged out like some animal for slaughter. He stumbled at the man’s shove, righted himself and squared his shoulders. Then, with a single scathing glance at the guardsman, he stepped forward into the corridor, squinting in the light of the torches.

          The belligerent guardsman poked him hard in the back with the short club he carried. “Not that way, scum. This. Cap’n wants a word, he does.”

          “I’m a titled knight,” Gisburne grated through a clenched jaw, ignoring the bolt of pain that jolted through his spine from the man’s blow. “And a noble son of Normandy. You’ll address me as ‘Sir Guy’, or ‘my lord’. Is that clear?”

          “Shut up, scum.” This time the club struck him higher, clipping him behind the ear and making sparks scatter behind his eyes. Guy grunted, caught himself against the wall and willed his knees not to buckle. The guard made a harsh, short sound that could have been a laugh, and bared ugly, worn teeth. “You’re a prisoner of the King’s fucking Constable, and I’ll call you what I bloody well like. Now bloody move!"

          Guy moved, and imagined beating the man’s face to a bloody pulp and watching those ugly teeth scatter across the floor. The idea was strangely satisfying; it made him briefly happy.

Seventy Times Seven Part 1/8

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:52:38 GMT

This is set after Time of the Wolf. The premise is that Guy, contrary to the *cough* novelisation, has not in fact managed to pull off a Teflon Boy act and has been dumped hip deep in sh*t by de Rainault. He is currently in line to be shorter by a head - or longer by a stretched neck - just as soon as Brewer, the King's Constable, can get around to it. And Robin discovers that he cares rather more than he should.

Title: Seventy Times Seven
Summary: Blood's thicker than water, dammit.
Warnings: ... er, Will's dodgy and colourful language.
Rating: PG I suppose. No smut, mildly slashy subtext.

Beta'd by the ever diligent luthien13

All the mistakes are my own, all the toys are someone else's.

So, on to part one, in which Will has questions, Robin has a confession and Marion has a wimple.

Seventy Times Seven

Then Peter came to him and said “Lord, how oft should my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Until seven times?” Jesus saith unto him “I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven”. ~ Matt 18:21-22

          Will did not have the faintest idea what the bloody fuck was going on, but whatever it was, he was damned if he was just going to sit around and wait for it to happen. Everything had been strange since Marion had hied herself off to her nunnery, leaving the rest of them to stumble on as they could. Well, leaving Robin to stumble: the man had barely been able to think in a straight sodding line since she’d gone. Even Will’s best remedy for ills of the heart hadn’t helped much: Robin had drunk himself senseless, blubbed on Will’s shoulder like a girl, and woken up the next morning with a hangover the size of France and a shamefaced expression. Nasir had growled something at both of them in Arabic – and just why in all hells the man didn’t use English like a proper person when he spoke it well enough was beyond Will at the best of times – and taken Robin off and dunked him in the river until he came up spluttering and sober. Robin had not been able to look Will in the eyes for two days, after that. Nasir, who never had trouble meeting anyone’s gaze, had done enough glaring for them both.

          They really ought to have been celebrating, and Marion be damned. Silly chit would come to her senses eventually: she wouldn’t last two seasons locked up behind Halstead’s walls with nothing to do but embroider and play with kittens, or whatever it was that noble-born novice nuns did. In the meantime, there was Sir bleeding Guy of sodding Gisburne’s terribly unfortunate demise to gloat over, and Will found it downright unsettling how little gloating they’d got done. This was Gisburne, after all; the man who had made their lives hell – well, awkward – for nigh on three years. Surely that merited a drinking session or two, and never mind what Naz thought. If you could even tell what Naz thought. He might chatter like a bloody jackdaw to Robin (Will doubted that, actually, but apparently the man did talk) but he barely said a word to anyone else. Will found his imperious silence frustrating. It was hard to start a decent argument with a man who wouldn’t even yell back.

          He’d have argued with John, just for something to do, if John hadn’t been mooning around like a lost puppy as well, because Meg had gone off the idea of sitting on her bum watching sheep. Bloody pathetic, was what that was. Anyone would think these idiots had never dallied with a girl before and had it turn bad. For hell’s sake, it wasn’t as if anyone
          (Elena)
had actually died.

          More’s the fucking pity. Still, there was always hope. The King’s Constable up in Lincolnshire might decide to have Gisburne hanged, yet. That thought made Will rather cheerful.

          What was not cheering, though, was that Robin had sloped off again, on another of his secret forays. He’d been doing that lately, sneaking about like a cutpurse looking for a pocket to pick … or a rat looking for a ship to abandon. That set Will’s teeth on edge: Robin had been secretive before, but never furtive. This time he’d taken Nasir with him – thick as thieves, those two, all of a fucking sudden – and Will liked that even less. If Robin could be secretive, Nasir was downright impossible. Push Robin into a corner, and he just got haughty and commanding, bloody earl’s son talking down to the servants. Push Nasir, and you took the chance of ending up dead. Well, not dead, maybe – Will had known the Saracen for enough years and been through enough shades of hell with him to call the man a friend, and Naz didn’t make a habit of knocking off his mates (though there was that one time, with that Sarak fellow, but necessity could be a hard bitch like that). But he had no qualms about setting them on their arses if he thought they were getting their noses too far into his business. All of which made finding out what the bloody fuck was going on rather difficult, but it didn’t mean that Will wasn’t going to try.

          “They’re holding him in Newark.” Robin kicked unhappily at a moss covered log, sending splinters of rotted wood flying. “In the common cells. Brewer’s petitioning the king for his head.”

          Nasir only nodded, sitting cross legged in a fall of pale autumn sun. He removed a stray clump of wood pulp from his trews with a fastidious flick of one hand, and gave his companion a flat, eloquent look. Robin sighed, and left the log alone. He slumped back against a tree instead.

          “The king will probably give it to him too, given Brewer’s claiming that Gisburne lost the grain on purpose in an effort to undermine Lackland’s bloody campaign. As if Gisburne’s interested in Wales. As if anyone’s interested in Wales.”

          Well, Nasir thought, that was probably true. Wales was rather grim.

          “Which means Gisburne doesn’t stand a chance unless someone makes Brewer – or the king – a better offer.”

          Nasir slanted him a knowing look. “You mean coin.”

          “And a lot of it.” Robin scowled briefly, shoving himself away from the tree and stalking about in a circle. Nasir sat where he was, head cocked attentatively, and watched him. The younger man paced briefly, then stopped on the spot and spun back to face his friend, making a hard slashing gesture with one hand. “It’s ridiculous. Gisburne can’t raise money like that, not with his miserable estates –assuming he still has them, which I doubt; they’ve most likely been made forfeit to the Crown, given how grasping our good King John’s been lately. De Rainault won’t pay: he as good as sold Gisburne to Brewer in the first place in return for salvaging his own damnable reputation after that sorry mess at Grimstone. And if Guy has friends, I’ve never heard of them.”

          So, it was Guy now, was it? Nasir raised his eyebrows at that and said nothing. Everything about the other man seemed sharp with frustration, but Nasir, who had caught the unease in his voice and the uncertainty in his eyes, knew Robin too well for that. He was edgy about something: that was as plain as day. It only remained to seen what that something was. That Robin would come out with it, Nasir did not doubt. Franks were appalling at keeping things to themselves, and in any case, Robin told him most things in the end.

          Robin looked at him hard, and then came and sprawled beside him on the rock-strewn ground. “It’s maddening. It’s Gisburne. I’ve half a mind – more than half a mind, sometimes – to let him hang and be damned.”

          Which meant that he also half a mind to save the wretch’s life. Nasir found that interesting. In a deliberately unconcerned tone, he said, “Gisburne has much to answer for. His fate is not our concern.”

          “Inshallah, you mean?”

          Nasir shrugged, said nothing. After a moment, Robin sighed and pushed one hand through his fair hair, setting it all awry. It made him look even younger than he was: an earnest and ill-kempt boy playing at outlaws.

          “Sweet Jesú, Malik, you’re a wonder, you know that?” He sounded half resentful, half amused. “You’ve been listening to me go on about Gisburne for a sennight and more, and not once asked why. It would be the obvious question, you know – why do I care.” Robin looked at him sidelong, canny about the edges. “For any other man it would be.”

          “You’ll tell me,” Nasir said calmly, as if it were of no import. “Or you won’t. A question is of no use until a man is ready to answer.”

          Robin snorted. “I can just imagine campfire conversation amongst your people. Must be the quietest thing in the world.”

          “Actually, no.” Nasir roused himself to cast the other man a quick, white smile. “We sing, and argue, and contest in poetry. But pointless questions, we avoid.”

          “Poetry,” Robin said dubiously, giving his friend a skeptical look. He was answered by an elegant dip of Nasir’s dark head.

          “Oh yes.”

          “And song.”

          “Yes.”

          “Liar.”

          “No.” Nasir’s lips quirked, in the way that Robin had come to know meant laughter. "I do not lie. For surely, truth is beloved of Allah."

          Robin thought about that for a moment. Then he said, very quietly, his gaze fixed on his own hands as if they were the most fascinating things in the world, “He’s my brother.”

          Silence met that, and a sudden stillness that made the air seem to quiver in anticipation.

          “Nasir?” Robin frowned and glanced up, apprehensive. The dark-eyed intensity of the other man’s gaze made him swallow, dry-mouthed. A rabbit must feel like this, he thought, when the hawk’s shadow passes over. He tried to shake it off. “Malik?”

          “Gisburne is.” Very flat, and oddly emphatic. Robin wondered what to make of that. He nodded, unsure.

          “He doesn’t know it. No one does, except… well, Tuck does, I think, and Lady Gisburne, but she’s dead. And I suppose Lord Edmund knew he was played for a cuckold, even if he didn’t know by whom. I only found out by accident, at Croxden. The abbey. You remember?” God’s teeth, he was babbling. He made himself stop.

          “Tuck knows?”

          “I think so. But he won’t say anything,” Robin replied quickly. “Whatever he knows was told to him under the seal of Confessional, and he won’t break that.”

          Another odd Frankish custom: to tell one’s transgressions in secret, as if that made them less ill. Nasir, though, had more pressing concerns than trying to understand aspects of the Christian ritual. He tilted his head, watching Robin carefully. “Tell me.”

          “What?”

          “How.”

          Robin blinked. “How? The … well, the usual way, I expect. My father was besotted with the Lady Gisburne. Her husband, Lord Edmund of Gisburne, had taken the Cross and disappeared in the Holy Land, and everyone thought him dead. My father courted her, she received him, and … well …”

          Nasir snorted and made a small, complicated gesture with one hand. “An old story.” And so it was: absent husband, young wife, courtly lover … and then an unexpected return and shame upon all their houses. In his land, blood feuds had been started over less. “So Gisburne does not know. And your father?”

          “Sweet Jesú, no! And I pray he never finds out.”

          Nasir narrowed his eyes, surprised at Robin’s answer, and the fervour behind it. That the Earl was unaware he’d fathered a son on his paramour made the man, in Nasir’s opinion, either extremely careless or impressively obtuse – most men, in his experience, could count to nine and know. And a man should acknowledge his mistakes, bastards amongst them. He did not say that, though. There was such a thing as good manners, even when one was lurking in an infidel forest discussing adultery with an idealistic young Frank possessed of a conscience and no sense of irony at all. Robin was still talking.

          “No, think about it. Gisburne might be bastard born, but he’s of good blood on both sides. And if my father knew, and he acknowledged him, that could be enough to let Gisburne inherit. Especially with me out of the way.” Robin made a sound that might have been a laugh, if it hadn’t been edged in stone. “Hellfire, William of Normandy was duke’s by-blow, and he ended up King of England! But Gisburne as the Earl of Huntingdon?” He shuddered. “The idea leaves me cold.”

          There was a certain sense to that, Nasir could concede – and not only because no man liked to see his birthright usurped. Huntingdon was a seat of some power, linked to the throne of Scotland, and Gisburne had shown himself to be a man not to be trusted with that. Power was a privilege, to be wielded wisely and well or not at all. Gisburne would never understand that. One need only look at who his teachers had been.

          “So then. He is your brother.” The Saracen gave a minimal hitch of one shoulder that was both accepting and somehow dismissive, as if to show that mattered only so far. “He is also your enemy. Think you the one removes the other?”

          “Jesú, I wish it did. I wish it were that simple.” Robin sighed, kicking at a stray chunk of stone with the heel of his boot as if it were the source of his troubles. “Then we could go our separate ways and be done. Then I wouldn’t have to care.”

          That made Nasir twitch his lips in a smile, quickly hidden: the one thing Robin could never master was indifference. This young Frank was passionate about everything; it made him beautiful, but wore him thin – especially of late, what with him looking for any deserving cause he could find to take his mind from the woman he had lost. Nasir only hoped that he would not burn himself to ash with the strength of his own fire; clearly Robin needed to learn how to bank the flames. He said, “Your care is to your credit, sadiqi. I doubt Gisburne loses sleep for fretting over you.”

          “Of course not. He doesn’t know.”

          “No, he does not know,” Nasir agreed. And then, because it needed to be said, “Truly, for him, do you believe it would matter if he did?”

          Ah. Now, there was the hard question, the one that Robin had been avoiding. He tore a handful of leaves from a low bush, and set to shredding them into small strips. “This is Gisburne. Nothing matters to him, except himself.”

          “It matters to you. Blood is strong. It calls, whether we will it or no.”

          “Not that strong.” Robin looked up sharply, expression scornful. “Trust me, I’m hardly going to fall into his arms and weep for joy at our newly found fraternity.”

“No?” A clear hard glimmer of approval went with that, and beneath it, something both more gentle and less kind. “I am pleased to hear it. He is not worthy of your tears.”

Robin’s breath caught at the low throb of the other man’s tone; he dropped his eyes swiftly before they could betray him. “Don’t, Malik.” He is not, she
(Marion)
is not: it was not a stretch. There was not even really a difference.

Nasir said nothing, only waited. Hearts, he knew, mended in their own time. It hurt to watch this man struggle, to see him flail and fail and try, but there was nothing else he could do. He had never been one for comfort and sympathy: he had always found action the best cure for wounds of the soul. A hard ride on a good horse, a day’s long hunt, a war, an ambush, an enemy – all of them better than sitting and thinking on what had been lost. Robin though – ah, Robin needed something other from him than that. Kind words, a friend’s warm embrace. Nasir would have given those things to him too, if he’d only been a stronger man … or if Robin had not been able to see through and through him with those bright pale eyes. After a moment he reached over, touched his fingers, light and brief, to the pulse point of Robin’s throat.

“Robert.”

The young man stirred, drew a deep breath that twisted a little at the end, and went on as if nothing had happened. A blackbird fluttered to the ground near the log he had kicked and started pecking about in the debris for grubs. Robin watched it as he spoke, as if it were the last bird in the world. “I don’t expect Gisburne to weep either, or to welcome this if he finds out. He’d see it as another betrayal, another way in which he’s been denied what should have been his, with me and mine at the heart of it. I think … Sweet saints help me, but I think I’d rather he never even knew.”

What should have been his. Nasir considered that, eyes thoughtful. “Rob,” he said, finally. “The blame is not yours. You know that. Yes?”

Nasir might have been talking about Gisburne, or he might not. Robin, after all, had the habit of blaming himself for many things, displaced half-brothers and misplaced loves not least. If he’d only come to Halstead sooner, before Marion could ride to the Wheel and make her foul discovery, or if he’d not sent her to the priory in the first place … but no. What-if was a game for fools. In that much, at least, Robin knew his Saracen friend was right. Nasir never bothered with maybes and might-have-beens. Here and now, he would say, was enough for any man to contend with.

“I know. I do. That’s not it.” He grimaced, fisted one hand in the damp leaf mould of the forest floor and flung the handful of dead leaves away in a burst of irritation. The blackbird froze, then threw itself skyward, whistling in alarm. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Nasir’s shoulders stiffened imperceptibly at that. He frowned faintly, drawing almost invisibly away. “As you say.”

“Shit.” Robin swore, grimaced again. Damn the man for being so blasted touchy – and damn himself, too, for so often saying the wrong things. He reached out, laid a hand on the other man’s arm. “No, Malik, wait. That came out wrong. But this doesn’t even make sense to me; how can I expect it make sense to you? How can you understand me when I don’t understand myself? I have to say this, though, and I can’t say it to anyone but you. I meant no offence. I’m sorry.”

First there was stillness, and then Nasir relaxed, offering him a graceful nod that was not quite a bow. “Ahfwan, sadiqi. So, if you do not blame yourself, why does this trouble your heart?”

Robin thought of telling the other man that his heart had nothing to do with it, then decided that would be worse. It would be a lie, and Nasir would know and give him that cool, disappointed look and say nothing, and Robin would feel small and stupid for the rest of the day. This man, after all, was not someone he lied to. There was so much between them that had to go unsaid: it would be highest folly to taint what they could say with untruth. He shrugged, conceding. “It’s something Will said. And, I suppose, something you said too.”

Nasir’s brow creased in puzzlement. “I?”

“Blood is strong.” Robin mimicked his Saracen friend’s inflection and accent perfectly, and grinned briefly at the other man’s amused glance. But then he repeated the words in his own voice, and their shared levity faltered and died. “Blood is strong.”

“Ah.” There was a dawning comprehension in Nasir’s eyes, and a low hint of regret in his tone. He thought he knew what was coming. Robin braced himself and let go.

“Will told me once – more than once, truth be told – that Gisburne and I are the same. That he’s a nobleman and I’m an earl’s son and that makes us the same. Because we come of the same stock. And he’s right, about the stock at least, and wouldn’t that make a cat laugh?”

“Rob…”

“But here’s the thing, Malik. If he’s right about that, what if he’s right about the other?” Robin’s voice had an edge to it now, caught between pleading and ready to howl. The words came faster, running out of him like blood. “Gisburne is my father’s son, and look at him! Cruel, vindictive, corrupt, lacking any feeling for those beneath him, or for anyone at all, for that matter. And if he can be my brother, and be so … so … warped, so twisted away from anything noble and good, and the only difference is that I grew up in my father’s household and he didn’t …”

“Rob, no.”

“… then how easily could I be him? Or become him? Because I think of who he is and what he is, and I can’t help but wonder, if the tables had been turned and he was the favoured son and I was the bastard cast-off, how much would we be the same? The same blood runs in him as runs in me – does the same darkness run there too?” Blue eyes, murky and raw, found Nasir’s and clung with the need of a drowning man. “Hell’s teeth Malik, how much are he and I the same?”

There was no answer, only steady dark eyes staring back in a still, grave face. Robin could feel his heart kicking hard, his breath ragged as if he’d just run a mile. He was sure he was flushing like a fool. The intensity of Nasir’s silent scrutiny was too much, of a sudden: he turned his face away.

No, Rob. Never hide your face from me.

Strong fingers caught him by the chin, gently and firmly lifting his face back into the light. The dappled sun of the forest, green and gold, fell over his features, making his pale hair seem almost, softly, to glow. Nasir’s eyes were unreadable, fiercely intense. They searched his own, scouring him away layer by layer. Robin waited, hardly breathing. In his chest, his heart clenched and ached.

At last Nasir smiled, very faintly, and his eyes softened. His hand brushed, almost an accident, down Robin’s neck, then went to his
shoulder, clasping warm and tight. “No, Rob,” he said, low and very sure. “No. There is no resemblance.”

          And again, Robin found he had to look away.

          Sir Guy of Gisburne’s experience of prisons was extensive. He had seen dungeons and deep cells, open pits and oubliettes, and cast peasants and thieves and uppity serfs into all of them. He had seen the Tower of London and heard of the confinement of kings. He had never, though, actually been held prisoner himself before now. Not for any length of time, at least.

          When he had first been cast into the dank, stinking cell that had been his whole world now for more than a month, he had fought and raged. He was a
          (worthless bastard)
knight of the realm, after all: he deserved better than this. His surroundings left somewhat to be desired. Mouldering hay to sleep on, the type of kitchen swill he would not have inflicted on swine, appalling company, and not even a bucket to shit in – it was enough to make a man feel like an animal.

          Guy had been an animal, at Grimstone. Or half an animal, at least: a badly cured wolfskin and a horde of half-mad Welshmen had not made him forget entirely that he was human – but battered pride and betrayal and a head full of thoughts as jagged and discordant as broken pottery had not done much to remind him of that, either. Now he wondered what in blazes he had been thinking, and cursed Robin Hood with a whole and hating heart. It was his fault that Gisburne was here; if that filthy wolfshead had not stolen the grain in the first place, Brewer would never have threatened de Rainault, and de Rainault would never have thrown him – almost literally, as it turned out – to the wolves.

          Raging had helped, to start with. It had made Guy feel more himself, given him some outlet for the howling tangle of emotions he had locked inside. It had not swayed the guards, though. They had responded with blows and curses, which had been bad, and later with derision and laughter, which had been far worse. When it became clear to Guy that threats and outrage would not work, he had tried to be reasonable, sweetly rational, calm. This, he told the guards, was all a mistake, most surely, and as soon as de Rainault came to his senses or the king heard of this injustice, he would be released, and then he would favour any man who helped him and hunt down any who did not. The guards listened and nodded, and did nothing. Guy had even asked that he be given provisions to write a message, with some vague and desperate idea that Abbot Hugo might ransom him, in view of his past service. They had let him write, but nothing had come of it. Gisburne wondered if they had even bothered to find a courier. He was not sure what was worse: the idea that they had not, or the idea that they had, and that Hugo was as happy as his brother the sheriff to let him hang.

          After that, he had been reduced to begging. He pleaded with whoever would listen, made wild promises of coin, of wealth he didn’t have, of eternal and undying gratitude and a seat in Heaven amongst the saints. His estates were gone, of course, claimed by the king – a run down manor and a handful of weed-choked fields held in fiefdom to the Crown, they had never amounted to much – but he promised them too, and the title that went with them. He offered up his service, his pride, even, God help him, his body, if they would only let him walk free.

          He did not want to die.

          Gisburne was not a coward, but the thought of death terrified him. Or, more accurately, the thought of what came after. Dying was easy, after all; any fool could die. And pain could be endured. But after, if the Church was right, there would come a judgement, and Guy knew without question that he would be found wanting. How could he not be, with the stains on his soul? His father’s sin, his mother’s lies, his own defilement and perversity
          (use me hard make me hurt)
and ugly, debased needs … how could a loving God, a pure God, ever look on any of that and forgive?

          They did not let him walk free. And then, from cruelty or misguided care, one of the guards had told him that Brewer had had word from the king, telling him to deal with his prisoner in any way he saw fit, and Guy stopped doing anything at all. He did not rage, or beg, or bargain. He found a corner, set his face to the wall, and waited for the end.

          He missed the sky, he found. That was odd. He had never much noticed the sky in his other life, when he had been free. Now, though, he’d have given his last scrap of dignity for a glimpse of blue shot through with the wisps of cloud the peasants called mare’s tails, and perhaps a bird winging across it. A falcon, if he was lucky. Guy had always liked falcons.

          He would hang or face the axe, and no one would care. Certainly no one would lift a finger to stop it. And he would die as he had lived: brutish and brutal, unloved and unwanted, and all because he had tried to live the lie he’d been raised to, and to do what duty demanded. But he would die under the open sky at least, and with his head up. That was the last right thing he could do.

          There was security, in the peaceful round of Halstead’s days. Marion found it restful. She had had no such security in Sherwood, where she had never known from one day to the next where she would sleep, or when she might eat, or if she and all her friends would live to see the morrow’s dawn. And then had come the day when one of them
          (Dying’s easy. I’m asking you to live)
hadn’t, and her heart had been shattered along with his body, and she had never yet found all the pieces. Her father had won her a pardon after that, and she had taken it though she did not really want it, because she hadn’t had the energy to fight. Then another young man had come, all flash and shine and laughter, and an honesty that hurt her soul, and she had dared hope she might find a way to be whole again. In the end, though, she had lacked the courage, and when he had come back from the dead with a hopeful smile and a willing heart, she had turned away and bolted her doors.

          Now she lived behind them, and told herself she was content. She slept warm in a bed, and by day she tended her bees and worked in the herb-scented garden sheltered by Halstead’s broad walls. If her gaze sometimes lifted past those walls to the dark loom of the forest beyond, it meant nothing. There was no bright splash of blond, and she had never seen anyone looking back.

          He had tried to visit, twice. She had refused to see him, telling the sisters to turn him away. It was easier that way, for both of them. The second time, he had sent back a message that had made no sense, claiming urgency, begging a favour. She had ignored that too. That had been a clumsy thing, as ploys went; it was almost disappointing.

          “There you are, Marion.” A tall, austere woman in a dark habit strode across the garden, avoiding the newly hoed beds. “A letter has come for you.” She put a sealed square of rough parchment into Marion’s hands. Looking at it, Marion felt a tightening in her midriff. There was only one person who could have written this. She turned her gaze swiftly back to the other woman.

          “Who delivered this, Sister?”

          “I’m sorry, Marion, he didn’t give his name.” The woman smiled, making her hard face look briefly softer. “Only the letter, and thanks in advance for my bringing it to you.”

          “Was he …” Marion paused, thinking. Who of Robin’s men would have left no message but what courtesy demanded? “Was he dark? With an odd accent?” It had always surprised her that Nasir was willing to play the errand boy when Robin asked it of him; the man was as proud as Lucifer, otherwise.

          “No,” the other woman said slowly. “He was a local lad by his voice, young, with good teeth and a ready smile. A pedlar, by the donkey he was leading.”

          Well, that could have been anyone. It would not have been the first time that Robin – Robert – had charmed some passing traveller into doing what he wanted. Marion nodded and managed a smile. “Thank you, Sister.”

          What could Robin want from her now?

          Marion. Of all the things I might ask of you, this is one you will not expect.

          Marion smiled sadly at that, reading from his brief words how carefully he was trying to respect her decision. She went on.

          I hope you will not refuse it, because a man’s life may be in the balance. Not a good man, but one close to us all the same, and does not our Lord and Saviour teach us to forgive those who sin against us not seven times, but seventy times seven, and that whatsoever we do to the least of our brethren, so we do to Him?
          I would ask that you send a missive to the House of my uncle of Scotland, to my cousin Henry Fitz Roy. Ask that he come south, to Newark. Tell him that his cousin who climbed the keep at York has need of him, and of his discretion. Tell him too that there is a horse in it for him, a grey he’s had his eye on for years.
          I would send to him myself, but having been disinherited reduces one’s influence, and I do not trust this to a bought courier. I trust this to you, and to your good judgement.
          If you would aid me, hang a strip of white cloth from the tall elm at the west wall of the priory when the message is sent. And know that whatever you decide, you are always in my heart.

          R.

          That last line was written in a tight, cramped hand, as if added at the last moment, before the writer lost his courage or changed his mind. A part of Marion acknowledged that, and wondered how long this would go on hurting. The rest of her read the letter again, and wondered what Robin was up to.

          Then, quietly, she burned the letter, and took out her writing box. Scotland was a fair ride; a courier would have to make haste.

          No one remarked when Marion’s wimple found its way into the high elm a day or so later, apparently taken there by a gust of wind that had disturbed nothing else. After all, Marion’s past was a colourful enough thing for a missing wimple to be neither here nor there.

          “I’m telling you John, he’s up to something.” Will took a healthy swig from the jar of mead John had offered, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “All the way to bloody Halstead, and all he does is sit in the fucking forest and stare at the walls.”

          “Have a heart, Will. He’s pining for Marion. Any fool can see that.” The big man took the mead jar back and set it aside before Will could finish it off. He turned his attention back to the bowstring he was waxing, twisting the thin strands for strength. “Probably just hoping for a sight of her, is all.”

          Will made a disparaging sound. “That’s soft, that is. If he wants t’see her, he’d do better to show some backbone and march up to the gates. Or go over the walls. S’only a bunch of women. What’re they going to do, smack ‘im with their needlework?”

          “He can’t do that, man!” John seemed shocked by the thought. “It’s a House of God, that! Can’t just barge in, it ain’t right. They’re brides of Christ.”

          “Yeah, well, Marion’s not, is she,” Will replied, with a sullen scowl. She shouldn’t have left them, not if this was what came of it, with Robin sneaking about and moping around the priory and putting everyone at risk. “She’s … well, she’s Marion.”

          “She’s taken vows, Scarlet.” John gave his friend a firm look, rolling up the finished bowstring and putting it in his pouch. He started work on another, his thick fingers deft, trimming and knotting the nocking loops with the ease of long experience. “It means something, does that. She’s made her choice, and Robin and us’ll just have to deal with it. Give him some time, that’s all.”

          “We don’t bloody have time!” Will thrust himself to his feet and reclaimed the mead jar. He took another swallow, then shook the jar at John to emphasise his point. “We’ve been here too long already, haven’t we? We never stay so long in one place, it’s too much sodding risk. But Robin won’t shift, will he? And why? Because he’s got his head all tangled up with Marion leaving and he can’t think right no more.” Another mouthful of mead, and Will said, “And I’ll tell you something else, shall I? I don’t like how he’s been going off on his own so much. Or he drags Naz off with him. ‘S’not safe.”

          John chuckled. “Robin’s a grown lad; he can look out for himself. And if it’s safety you’re worried about, you won’t find no safer company than Naz. Nothing gets past that one.”

          “That’s not what I bloody meant.” Will slumped back down by the stump where John sat, and scowled. “He’s up to something, is all. Keeping secrets. And I don’t like it.” He lifted the mead jar, then gave it a frustrated glare and flung it away. “S’empty. Pass us another, would you John?”

          “There isn’t another,” the big man rumbled. “That’s the last, until we get back to Wickham.”

          “See, this is what I mean.” Will made a gesture of frustration, looking like he wanted something to hit. Probably he did: Scarlet preferred problems that he could fight to ones he had to think about. “We’ve been here too long.” The one-time soldier turned his narrow-eyed gaze about the camp. “Where the bloody hell is everyone, anyway?”

          “Tuck’s fishing. Much is off to Duxton after new fletchings. And Nasir … I don’t know. Wandered off mid-morning, hasn’t been back. Hunting, maybe.”

          Will grunted. “Take his bow with him?”

          “Aye.”

          “Hunting, then.” Will seemed satisfied with that. “Hope he has a bit o’ luck. I don’t fancy fish tonight.” For a moment he was quiet, but then he gave sudden chuckle and nudged John in the thigh with his elbow. “I’ll tell you what else – one o’ them women at Halstead’s got a job on her hands. I’d swear it was a wimple hanging in that big elm. Wouldn’t’ve thought that lot’d be much for climbing trees.”

          John agreed, and suggested Will make himself useful by fetching some firewood; if either Tuck or Nasir had any luck at all, they would not want to be eating their quarry raw. Will declined: he was, he had discovered, quite comfortable where he was. He would have been happier if there had still been some sodding mead left, but a man couldn’t have everything.

         He would have been happiest of all if he had been able to work out what the bloody fuck was going on.

RoS fic: In the End part 2

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:04:00 GMT

In The End cont ...

It is remarkable, how quickly a man can lose control. If I were a coward, I would say it is his fault as much as mine. He will not let things lie. Merciful Allah, if any other man pushed me the way this one does, I would cut out his tongue and string it around his neck to teach him to use his words with respect.

But this is Robin, who calls me Malik when we are alone because it is the name I was born to and I shared that with him once as a gift, when he took his new name and wondered who he was. Sarak would have snarled at me for that, for giving him my name to sully with his infidel’s mouth, but when Robin learnt that Malik means “king” he found it fitting, and said so. ‘A prince should be called something princely,’ he told me, laughing with those bright eyes. ‘What’s more princely than that?’ No, I cannot silence that tongue, and I would kill any man who tried.

Even if, right now, I want to kill him myself.

I feel my hand close on his throat and hear my own words slash like fine Damascus steel, to the bone.

‘You can’t help because there is no help for it. Because some things are written, whether we will it or no. And because today I did for you what I would do for no other – not for ad-Din Sinan, not for my brothers of the Order. I lost my land and liberty for that refusal, and nearly my life, and now you come and you, you ask, only ask, and now I have done this thing and none can change it, and you will never know what it cost me or that I hate how easily you sway me with your words and your loyalty and your friendship, and still you know nothing at all!’

Of course, he does not understand a word. He looks startled, and he has a right to; if I have surprised him, I have appalled myself. I did not know I was that angry. Or that irrational. To blame him for asking of me what others have asked before, and for less reason, only because this time I did not refuse? Where is the logic in that?

But this is grief, and grief does not bow to logic. And, by my heart, his kindness was not kind.

This time, when I leave, he does not try to follow.

Raising a hand to his neck, Robin touched the place where he could still feel the fading pressure of Nasir’s furious grip. He stared into the dusk after his friend, amazed. He had never seen Nasir like that, never seen him lose his temper before now. The Saracen was always so in control, his self-discipline rigid to the point of pain. Now, at last, he had been pushed past the limit of endurance, and a part of Robin found it ironically amusing that the man could be unmoved by the sort of physical or emotional duress that would leave another in a weeping huddle on the ground, but be utterly undone by kindness and the offer of an open heart.

Another truer part of him found that distressing beyond words.

‘Robin?’ John pushed his way through the trees, face drawn tight with concern. Behind him, Will had his knife out, as if he expected to use it. ‘Robin?’

‘I’m here.” Hauling himself upright, Robin drew a breath, winced at the way it seemed to catch in his bruised throat, and called out again. ‘I’m fine.’

‘What was all that bloody yelling about?’ Will’s eyes moved ceaselessly, looking for an enemy. John was still. Robin sighed.

‘Nasir. He was … angry.’

That made John blink. “Naz? What did you say to him, lad? The last time I saw him let go like that was with those bloody Templars – he’d have killed them all, if Robi … if we’d let him. What did you say?’

‘Nothing. And I don’t know what he said to me, either, but it was probably something unflattering to do with my ancestry. Still, at least he’s talking.’ It was a poor joke. Will grunted, moved closer.

‘Talking’s not all he did,’ he observed. ‘Nice bruises you’ve got there. Try to rip your throat out bare-handed, did he?’

‘No,’ Robin said truthfully. ‘If he’d tried to do that, I’d be dead. He only wanted to make sure I was listening.’

‘Were you?’

‘Yes.’ That was true too; there were more ways of communicating than only words. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘Good,’ Will said, tersely. ‘You’ll leave him be, then. Doesn’t like people prying, that one. He put up with us today, down at the lake. That’s all.’

‘No,’ Robin interrupted. ‘Marhaban. It means welcome. He wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it.’

‘He’s got the manners of a bloody prince, Robin, he’d say it just to be polite.’ Will gave him a look of disgust. ‘Leave him be. He’s not a talker, he never was. Like as not he wants to forget the whole sorry mess. Bit hard to do that with you dredging it all back up, ain’t it?’

He is a prince, you ignorant bastard. And he’s bleeding. Robin did not say that out loud, though a part of him very much wanted to.

‘Will’s right, lad.’ John shrugged in his heavy jerkin, looking like nothing so much as a shambling bear. ‘He’ll be back when he’s ready. And ease off with the questions. He never answers them anyway.’

Yes he does, Robin thought, glancing over his shoulder once as he followed the others back to camp. He answers. You just have to open your eyes and listen.

Robin means well, I know that. He always means well. He meant well the first time he asked about my family, and about the struggle that tears my homeland apart, and about my cursed servitude to that misbegotten snake Belleme (may jackals eat his liver and piss on his bones!) and the things that still haunt my dreams. Robin doesn’t know about memories that should be left to the shadows: his own life so far has all been bright sun. For his sake, I pray that it remains so. I would not like to see the light in him go dark.

I should not have struck him. My control should be better than that, stronger. It is to my shame that I acted so cheaply, lashing out like a spoiled child denied a favourite toy. Sarak would scorn me for my lapse. I can hear his voice, almost as if he were at my shoulder. ‘Is this what I taught you? Have you forgotten yourself completely?’

No, Sarak, my friend. I forget nothing at all.

I did try to warn him. I knew his gentleness would be my undoing: I am better suited to silence and steel than to sweet words. There was a time when that was not so, but that time is not now. Not after this day, and this life.

I find myself at the broad pool that forms in the brook that is a tributary of the river the English call the Trent. This was my destination when I left camp, and my feet have remembered it even if my mind did not.

The water is bitingly cold, but not as bitter as it can be in the winter, when snow rests on the ground. I welcome the sting of it on my skin, the way it chases the whispers from my head. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, teaches us that mind and body should be cleansed, purified, if we are to find our peace with Allah. Peace tonight would be a fine thing. To find it, I will do what I can. There is always sanctuary in prayer.

Ah, but Robin confounds me. What does he want from me? Tears and lamentations, rending of clothes and ashes in my hair? Even if my faith were not stronger than the need for that, still I would not give it to him. A man’s grief is a private thing, surely. If he had known Sarak, perhaps then we would have some grounds on which to speak, to remember together the man he once was. But he did not, and no words of mine – English is a poor language, rough and simple and not enough, not ever enough – will make him see what he did not know. As for myself, if he wants me to cut out my heart and show it to him, he will be waiting a long time. There are secrets there that I can hope he will never see. Secrets I am not sure I want to see. It is best that way. It is best.

I told him that I hated how easily he could touch me, with his words and his foreigner’s eyes. That was, for the most, a lie. I don’t hate that: I fear it and am drawn to it in equal measure. It puts me in mind of a sandstorm in the desert, that a man must suffer through or die; a storm that might take all known ways and signs and leave a man flailing and lost, or that might uncover great treasure in its passing. One does not hate such as that. One respects its power and marvels at its beauty, but one does not seek it out.

Robin, sometimes, is like that storm. His eyes are the most striking blue. Like the faded sky on a hot day over the baking sands. And he has no business being kind.

It was Much, in the end, who decided things for Robin. The others had turned in, leaving only Will’s drunken snoring rumbling through the camp and Much awake for the night’s first watch. Marion had gone to her blankets safe behind the wall of Tuck’s bulk, casting one long complicated glance at Robin as she went. Robin, who had read in her eyes only two words – not yet, not yet – felt a certain resignation at that. She had begun to soften towards him, to smile in spite of herself at his clumsy flirtation, but she was still with Loxley, in her heart. Still with that irreproachable other, whom Robert of Huntingdon could no more fight than he could fight a shadow, and no matter what name he took.

Nasir had not returned to the camp, for which Robin decided he was grateful. Will had set about determinedly getting drunk as soon as night had fallen, and John had matched him for long enough to lead to raised voices and blurred, off-kilter bawds that would have made a whore blush had the two of them been able to remember all the words. That they were celebrating being alive and free in the best way that they knew, Robin understood. He also understood that Nasir, reserved and stoical even on a good day, would have found in himself little patience for their lack of tact.

Much shifted where he sat near the low glow of the fire, drawing a tattered old cloak more tightly about his shoulders to ward off the growing chill. His eyes caught the dim red of the fire, making him look infernal in the dark. It was such an incongruous image that Robin smiled, stretching out opposite the lad with the fire between them. Much was the least infernal person he knew.

Wriggling his feet in front of the fire, Much announced: ‘Nasir ain’t back.’

‘No.’

Much thought about that for a moment. ‘He is coming back, ain’t he?’

‘Yes.’ Robin was sure of that, if nothing else. After all, the man had no other place to go.

‘Good.’ Much nodded. He seemed to think about that too, then said: ‘He don’t usually stay away so long, is all. Usually just for when he does his praying and all, or if he’s hunting. Or if Will’s bein’ too loud.’

‘Will was pretty loud tonight.’

‘Aye.’ Much looked relieved. ‘Aye, he were. Naz probably heard that, and decided to sleep somewhere else. He’s smart like that. He’ll be back.’

Robin chuckled softly. ‘The noise Will was making tonight, Gisburne probably heard him all the way in Nottingham.’

‘D’you think so?’ Much peered at him in worry, then smiled when he realised the joke. ‘Aye, well. I hope it gave ‘im nightmares.’

‘I suspect Will gives Gisburne nightmares on a regular basis.’

Much seemed to find that thought cheering. He grinned, toeing another dry branch into the fire. ‘Robin?’

‘Yes?’

‘That man Nasir killed today, the one what came with the new sheriff … were they really friends?’

‘Yes. A long time ago.’

‘Oh.’ Another thoughtful pause. Then; ‘Only, it’s hard to think of Nasir having friends, really. He just ain’t the friendly type.’

That made Robin sit up, frowning. ‘He has us, doesn’t he? He’s our friend.’

‘’Course he is, I know that. But …’ Much grimaced, struggling to find the right words for what was in his head. Robin waited, watchful. ‘But,’ the lad said at last, ‘he’s always sort of on his own, ain’t he. Even when we’re all together. Always apart, like.’

That was more true than Robin could stand. He felt something inside him clench, leaving a cold dull ache. With a muttered curse, he got to his feet, reaching for his swordbelt and strapping it on. Much eyed him curiously.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To find Nasir,’ Robin said. ‘And bring him back.’

For one who grew to manhood in walls of stone, Robin does well enough in the forest. He has learnt stealth, and the patience of the hunter. It is not his fault if I know he is there long before he speaks. I can smell him, for one thing: the tang of woodsmoke from the campfire, the low scent of Tuck’s rabbit stew, the sharp taint of ale. Too sharp for Robin, really; he usually curbs his appetites, when it comes to that.

I suppose I have been expecting him. He was never one for leaving a thing half done. When he calls my name into the dark, soft as a cat’s paw, I can’t help myself. I laugh, because I have waited for him and I am glad.

The Saracen’s voice came low and warm out of a deeper patch of dark by the bank of the brook. ‘Robin. Allahu akbar, but you’re as persistent as sand.’

‘Is that a good thing?’ Moving forward, Robin came to the other man’s side, crouching on the edge of his shadow in a shifting fall of moonlight. ‘Did I startle you?’

That earned him a slow, amused glance. ‘Sand? Perhaps. Nothing stops it. It eats whole cities. There are places I have seen in the desert … And no, I am not … startled.’

‘And here’s me doing my best stalking.’ Robin tried to make his tone light. ‘How did you know I was here? An owl’s alarm call? The scuttle of fleeing rabbits? A flutter of errant night birds against the moon?’

‘No.’ Nasir wrinkled his nose. ‘Ale. You were drinking.’

‘Ah.’ Robin grimaced, casting a glance down at his soiled trews. ‘Not really. Will was drinking. He was careless with his bowl.’

Nasir nodded, as if that made perfect sense. He gave the faintest of shrugs. ‘Will is often careless.’

‘He is.’

Silence. Then a deep breath, and Nasir said, ‘As was I, tonight. Careless of my temper, careless of you.’ Dark eyes came up, direct in the moonlight. ‘I ask your forgiveness.’ He raised one hand, gently tracing a line in the air around Robin’s throat, not quite touching. ‘For my words, and for … that.’

Sweet Christ on the Cross. Robin swallowed, looked away. His skin, where Nasir had not touched, pulsed warm. His voice came out rougher than he liked. ‘Ask nothing. I provoked you.’

‘Even so.’

‘And no harm was done.’

Nasir’s head dipped in acknowledgement. ‘Even so.’

Robin laughed, a little desperately. To his own ears, it sounded oddly strangled. ‘I didn’t even understand what your words meant.’

‘Even so.’ Soft still, but implacable.

‘Nasir …’

‘Rob. Forgive, please. I would hear you say it.’

Robin drew a breath, let it out very slowly. It seemed to shudder in the air. He understood, in a deep, distant way, that it was not only he that Nasir was speaking to now, out here in the dark. Dead men, though, had no mercy at all: Sarak would not speak from the grave. Robin said it for both of them. ‘If you want my forgiveness, poor as it is, you have it.” He wanted to set one hand on the other’s shoulder, in friendship and support, no more. He didn’t, not trusting, in this peculiar atmosphere that he did not understand, that such a gesture would not go wrong. ‘You always have it.’

There was the faintest movement in the dark, but Robin didn’t have to be able to see to know that Nasir had answered him with a lifted eyebrow and a twitch of a smile. ‘Shokrun, sadiqi.’

‘You called me that before. Earlier. At the lake.’ Robin gave himself a shake, leaning forward to dip one hand in the brook’s cool water and wipe it over his face. The cold thrill of it on his over-warm skin made him feel more alert, less like a stammering idiot. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Sadiqi?’ Nasir shifted again in one of those tiny shrugs. ‘My friend.’

‘And am I?’ Robin asked, because he had to. His eyes caught the moonlight, pale and silver, like hope. ‘Malik? Am I?’

‘Yes,’ came the reply, barely above a whisper. ‘You are.’

‘Even …’ Robin waved his hand in a vague, encompassing motion, taking in their differences, their silences, the gulf of words between them in the things they did not say. ‘Even so?’

‘Even so.’ Reaching out, Nasir set two fingers, very lightly, on the back of Robin’s hand, paused, then moved away. There was something strangely intimate in the gesture. ‘Especially so.’

Robin felt his breath catch then, and had to look away. He felt sure that he had been given something just now, something of great value, even if he did not know what it was. He had the good grace not to question it, and to be silent until the moment passed.

It was Nasir who spoke first. Nasir, who could hold his silence for days on end, communicating only with a glance or a flick of his hand, said, ‘If you have questions, I will answer. If I can. But some things …’

‘Are your own. I know.’ Robin smiled. ‘No questions, Malik. Sidiqi. But if you would talk, I will listen. Is that enough?’

‘For me? Yes.’ Dark eyes glinted in the moonlight: Robin recognised the gleam of them as laughter. ‘But for you?’

‘It’s enough.’

‘Liar.’ That was said affectionately, though. ‘You Franks, you are full of questions. So full of questions you have no room for answers.’

‘And you Saracens talk in circles. When you talk at all.’

Another amused glitter of eyes from the shadows. Then: ‘He was a good man, in his heart. Before ad-Din Sinan drove him too hard, and he lost his way.’

So. They were talking about Sarak now, were they? Robin said nothing, only nodded.

‘He remembered who he was, in the end. Saw a way to be good again, to make things right. He gave me back your lives when Mark would have taken them, and for that I am grateful.’

‘As are we.’ Robin looked thoughtful. He had wondered how Nasir had known so surely where they were, and what to do. He supposed it made sense. Strange, though, to think that the difference between his sitting in Sherwood tonight and his head on a spike over Nottingham’s gates came down to a Saracen warrior he had never met and Nasir’s hidden past. Well, his father’s chaplain had always said that God moved in mysterious ways.

‘We were kin. He knew me almost from the time I was born. My training was given to him, when I was old enough. Knife, bow, sword. Mostly sword.’

‘Would he regret that, now?’ Robin asked, and chuckled as Nasir swatted him lightly around the head.

‘No questions, you said.’

‘Can’t help it. We Franks, remember?’ Robin shifted, lying back on one elbow to make himself more comfortable. ‘Would he?’

‘You Franks. Yes.’ Nasir paused, considering Sarak’s last words of praise. Tidy work, the man had said, and meant it. ‘I think not,’ he answered, after a moment. ‘He would be proud that I learned so well, I think. That I was worthy of him, in the end.’

Robin thought about that. There were times when Nasir’s world seemed utterly incomprehensible to him, with its rules of courtesy and codes of honour and long proud traditions drawn from deep in the sands. And then there were times, like now, when Nasir was not incomprehensible at all.

‘Did he know,’ he asked, ‘that you loved him? In the end?’

For a long while, Nasir did not answer. Robin was beginning to think that he was not going to, but then the man murmured something low and soft in his native tongue, and dipped his head, conceding. ‘He did.’

‘Good. That’s fitting.’ Flicking back a stray strand of hair from his brow, Robin went on, ‘Tell me one other thing. That … thing you just said. Yin sara’t yisra’a gamal…’

Nasir laughed out loud. ‘Stop! You butcher it.’

‘I only heard it once, and you were mumbling.’ Robin gave the other man a playful tap. ‘What does it mean?’

‘If you steal, steal a camel.’ Nasir’s accent blurred the words in odd places, sharpened them in others, making them sound exotic. ‘And if you fall in love, fall in love with beauty.’ He gave Robin a considering look, a little too long for comfort, then shrugged. ‘If you tell the truth, tell it all. Yes, I loved him, as a brother, as a friend. Yes, he knew. We made our peace, in the end.’

There was something to that. Robin gave a slow, careful nod. ‘And with us? With me? Can you do the same?’

Nasir frowned, tilted his head. Robin clarified.

‘I sent you out there. I pushed. Do you forgive me for that?’

‘Rob.’ Nasir sounded surprised, then soothing, as if he were talking to a child. ‘There is no forgiving …’

‘But …’

‘…because there is no fault.’ The Saracen made a staying gesture with one hand, cutting off whatever Robin was going to say. ‘These things come from a will greater than yours, I think.’

‘But I …’

‘Think you that your will is greater than God’s? Would you blaspheme again, so soon?’ Nasir’s tone was gentle though, to show he meant no threat. ‘It was not your doing. How should I forgive you for bringing me no wrong?’

There was no point in arguing with that. Robin accepted it with a small smile. ‘Peace, then?’

‘Of course. Salaam. Peace.’

‘Then come back to the camp. Please.’ That did not win a response: Robin tried again. He said, very softly, ‘You’re one of us, Malik. We need you. I need you.’

‘Soon.’

Damn the man. Robin frowned. Surely he wasn’t still brooding? He had thought the Saracen was beyond that. ‘Nasir …’

‘You go. I will follow.’ A faint, barely hinted at smile went with the words. ‘Soon. My word on it.’

Pushing himself to his feet, Robin narrowed his eyes at the other man, thoughtful, half-concerned. ‘Stealing camels again?’

‘One last thing,’ Nasir agreed. ‘And yes, to be done properly. Go. I will join you soon.’

Robin nodded, then stepped to his friend’s side and rested one hand, lightly and wordlessly, on his shoulder. Then he turned, and disappeared into the night.

I am as good as my word. Once Robin is gone, I do the last thing that is left. Next to my heart, wrapped in wool and slipped beneath my jerkin, is the medallion Sarak left for me. I know it well; he left it for me once before, at Acre when he left everything else. We have traded this thing back and forward between us for years, it seems. I would have left it with him where he rests, but that did not seem right at the time. Now I know why.
The forest at night is alive, a whole and breathing thing. I, who have seen the beauty of the sprawling desert and cities of rose and gold, the gardens of Damascus in bloom, and water pour like music from fountains of marble that glitter in the sun, find this place at night, in the cool northern summer, more beautiful still.

When the moon is high, it strikes this pool in this brook just so, setting it all to silver. The medallion makes a soft splash as it falls, sending ripples of light over the water. The silver will rest among the stones and silt, and glimmer sometimes at the sky above, like a fallen star longing for home. And this is right. This is right.

Robin is in his blankets already when I return to the camp. He is awake though, and greets me with his eyes.

‘Get that camel?’

‘Quiet, you. Sleep.’

‘As if I could, with that noise going on. Give Will a kick, will you?’

He has a point. Will is snoring fit to shatter stones. Kicking him will not help, I fear: I know from experience that when Scarlet is this drunk, he stirs for nothing. I drop a blanket over his head instead. It does a little to muffle the sound.

If, during my time in Masyaf, any man had told me that I would one day look upon a ragged group of uncouth Franks – or worse yet, drunken English barbarians – and call them friends, I would have laughed at him and called him a fool. And if that man had also said that one of those Franks – pale skin, pale hair, bright pale eyes – would be a friend above all others, dear to my soul and close to my heart, I’d have killed him where he stood.

And I would have been the fool.

For truly, Allah is most great, and His wisdom is hidden from us.

RoS fic: In the End 1/2

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:56:51 GMT

Set immediately after the season three episode "The Sheriff of Nottingham", this deals with the aftermath of Nasir's duel with Sarak.

Big shout out to luthien13 who stepped up to bat as beta. All remaining errors are my own.

Title: In the End
Rating: Pretty gen, but there's some mildly slashy subtext if you squint.
Summary: Half of friendship is knowing when not to speak.

In two parts.

In The End

Either stay and be forgiving, or, if you like, be cruel and leave.

~Rumi

For Sarak, the end came like a flash of silver into the grey. Grey sky, grey lake, grey and hazy day … and the bright silver flame of his opponent’s blade sinking deep into his belly. An odd, detached part of himself found that interesting: all of his other wounds had come in a wave of red.

He kept his feet, but not for long. A breath, and then another, looking into painfully familiar eyes – and why had he ever thought that he could turn his blade on this man and not feel this? – then the light wavered and his knees failed, and he slipped forward into the other man’s arms.

Friend, brother, enemy, friend. It didn’t really matter now. Nasir was lowering him to the ground, gentle of his wound and his pride. That didn’t much matter either. Sarak had spent enough of his life with a blade in hand to know a mortal wound when he carried one. No amount of gentleness was going to help that. Not even when Nasir whispered, in a voice so like the one Sarak remembered from when they had been young and this man had been a wild and wilful boy, ‘I’m sorry, my brother. I’m sorry.’

He coughed, winced, hitched a shallow breath. ‘Don’t be.’ It hurt to talk, hurt to breathe. Sarak pushed through that, raised his chin in a small, approving gesture. ‘A good block … subtle. And a good strike behind it. Tidy work.’

Nasir’s expression was a complicated thing, equal parts sorrow and strength, warmth and regret. ‘I had a good teacher.’

‘You were a demanding student. I should,’ Sarak murmured, ‘have beaten you more often.’

‘Sarak …’

‘You still forecast with that shoulder.’ He could feel himself starting to shake. The pain seemed to be coming in waves, from a long way off.

‘Be still.’ The younger man had turned his attention to his wound, was trying to staunch the blood. Well, Nasir had always been a stubborn one.

‘Don’t …’ A low rasp of coughing cut him off, leaving the taste of blood in his throat. ‘Don’t be a fool, Malik. I’m dying. One of us had to. Let it be.’

Obedience was ingrained in Nasir still, or perhaps he simply knew when a task was hopeless, because he let his hands fall and swore, quietly.

Sarak grunted in what might have been admonishment. ‘No regrets now, boy. Allah punishes us for what we can’t accept. And see, now, what comes of that.’ With a great effort, he moved his hand, brought it to rest it against Nasir’s. He felt a rising numbness in his centre, a thick distant chill pouring into him from something shattered, deep inside. ‘We know who we are.’

‘We do.’ A dip of the head. ‘Now we do.’ Nasir’s voice, usually so controlled, was aching.

It was cold, and now light was fading too, draining out of him with his life’s blood. So many things to say, and no time. No time. Sarak would have laughed, if the realisation was not so bitter. But that would have wasted time too, and there was one thing he could do, one gift he could give that might – just might – redeem a little of what he had lost.

‘Malik. Listen. These … men … you run with now. You care for them?’

‘They are my friends.’

‘Unbelievers. You honour the unworthy.’ That came with another low cough, and a gasp of pain that Sarak could not suppress. Nasir’s lips tightened, as did his hand over Sarak’s clutching fingers.

‘I don’t think so, brother.’

‘Don’t argue. No time. Mark has them.’

‘What?’

‘Philip Mark. They came …’ A deep shudder wracked him; he clung on with sheerest will until it passed. Not long now. Not long. ‘Like sheep into the slaughter pen. He’ll kill them.’

‘Not if I can help it.’

Even through the pain and the dark, that won a hard, approving nod. Ah, Mark would be no match for this man. This one, Sarak thought proudly, he had trained well. He wondered why it had taken him until now to realise it.

‘He will expect me to do it.’ Barely a whisper now; it was all the voice he had left. ‘Take my horse. You understand?’

‘I do. I will.’ Nasir drew a steadying breath. ‘Thank you, brother. And forgive me.’

‘Allah forgive us both, Malik. We’ve both been fools.’ Somehow, he managed a smile. It was a tight, blood-stained thing, but his eyes were laughing. ‘I expect that from you, of course, but I had hoped for better from myself.’

‘Hope is an immortal thing, my friend.’ And, twisted around the grief, there was laughter in that too. Sarak was grateful for that.

‘Say the words with me,’ he whispered. ‘Then go. Find your friends.’

‘I’ll go when you do,’ Nasir returned, sounding calm now, sure. ‘But I will say the words, gladly.’

And Sarak turned his eyes to the sky, and let the Shahadah – eternal faith, eternal truth – be the last and only sound in all the world.

**********

Philip Mark was not, I think, a man deserving of the name. I do not regret killing him: I regret only that I had to taint honest steel with his cheap coward’s blood to do that. The blade that took his life belonged to Sarak, once. I doubt Mark realised that, but Sarak, at least, would appreciate the irony. For myself, it seemed right. Justice perhaps, writ small. At the last, we are taught, all men are given the ending they deserve.

As was Sarak, in the end. A good death, even if it was for reasons neither of us could say, and so very far from home.

There is no one else to do what is necessary, so I will do it for him. I owe him that much, at least. For what he did and what we were, I owe him. We were friends, after all.

Friends in the beginning, friends in the end. It was only in between that we fell, that things went wrong. I could wish things had been different, that fate had been more kind, but who am I to question the will of the All-Merciful? It was written, for him and for me. We make the best of that we can.

It hurt to leave him here, like so much carrion left out for the dogs. But it was necessary, or I would now be mourning more passings than only his. I pray he understands. I think he would: he told me what was needful, and he was always one for doing the practical things first.

‘Perspective, Malik,’ he would say to me. ‘If you’re making a decision, make it count.’

And so I did. So often, so many decisions, and all of them leading here. To this place, high sighing grass near a lake in an infidel land, where the dark water gleams like black glass. To blood on a borrowed blade, and a wide empty sky, and my brother dead at my feet.

At my hand.

Ah, Sarak. What went wrong? How did we come to this?

‘Next time you feel like risking everyone’s life on guesswork,” Will grumbled, ‘could you let me know before you go and do it? That way, I might at least get a wager in on the chances of you getting us all killed.’

‘Now where’s the fun in that, Scarlet?’ Robin turned to grin at him over his shoulder, all bright eyes and white even teeth. ‘And in any case, who’d take that bet? The sheriff?’

‘Aye, maybe. Or Gisburne.’ Will’s flash of teeth was wolfish. ‘What do you reckon, John? Gisburne seem like a betting man to you?’

‘I don’t think so,’ John scoffed. ‘Unless the odds are well stacked. Gisburne’s not one for playing fair. And the sheriff’s no better.’

‘John’s right,’ Robin said. ‘My lord sheriff only likes to lay wagers when he’s assured of earning something from the winnings. Little bit hard for him to collect from a dead man, don’t you think?’

‘Only if I lose,’ Scarlet pointed out. ‘Or you do.’ And then, suddenly serious, ‘Come on, Robin. You really didn’t know that was Naz in that get-up? It wasn’t something you two cooked up behind our backs?’

‘I really don’t think Nasir’s the sort for cooking things up, Will.’ John bent to duck under a tree bough that had passed easily over the others’ heads. There were disadvantages to being a tall man in Sherwood forest. A stray twig caught in his shaggy hair; he pulled it out, twirling it idly between thick fingers. ‘Might like to keep his thoughts to himself, but he’s not one for plotting in shadows.’

‘So you say.’ Will sounded unconvinced, but the twinkle of his eye was enough to tell the others he was not so surly as he let on. He cast Robin a knowing look. ‘But in my experience, when two fellows are off whispering in the undergrowth, they ain’t exchanging drinking songs.’

‘Nasir wouldn’t know any drinking songs,’ Much piped up. ‘On account of him not drinking and all. Not real drink, anyway. Says it’s haw… ham…’

‘Haram,’ Robin said, smiling. Much’s logic was impeccable, in its own way. ‘Forbidden. And no Will, we weren’t plotting the downfall of empires, or even that of sheriffs, for that matter. I just needed to know who this Sarak was, and what he wanted with Nasir.’

‘Did you find out?’ John tossed the twig, now twisted beyond recognition, away. His broad face, made for smiles and good humour, was serious now, expressing his concern. ‘And does it have something to do with where Nasir is now?’ The Saracen had left them even before they had arrived at their forest camp, melting away into the trees before anyone even noticed. It was not unusual for him to slip off on his own – Nasir was a solitary creature by nature, and Robin knew that even after so long with the outlaws the chatter and banter of the others often rubbed badly on the quiet man’s nerves – but his timing now was off. It was not time for his ritual prayers, and in any case they had only just escaped from Nottingham with their lives; he’d have thought Nasir might want to acknowledge that.

Nor was it only Nasir’s timing that sat ill with Robin: something else was amiss. Robin could not quite put his boot on what that was for long enough to pin it down, but it bothered him all the same. He could only remember what he had said to Nasir earlier that day – he was your friend, that’s why you didn’t kill him – and the deep sigh that had drawn from his dark-clad companion. It left him cold inside.

Damn you, Robert, he thought to himself. Damn you for being right.

‘Robin?’ John was looking at him now, expectant. ‘Is it something do with why he’s gone off, and why we’re out here searching for him like a lost lamb?’

‘I don’t know.’ Robin frowned, then shook his head. That wasn’t quite true. He had his instincts, after all. ‘I think so. It might be.’ And then, because every part of him was sure of it and he didn’t have any better answers for his friends, ‘It’s this way. Come on.’

‘Ain’t no lamb,’ Will muttered, falling in behind Robin on the trail. ‘Not that one. Ain’t no lamb at all.’

I give him what rites I can. The birds – crows, I expect: they always find the dead first – have been here before me, and taken his eyes. My fault, and I ask forgiveness for letting that happen. He deserved better. He taught me, nurtured me, showed me what it is to be a man. The lessons he gave, I still use. I used one of them, in the end, to kill him. Never over-commit, he used to say. It leaves you flat, off-balance, open. Maybe he forgot that, but I never have.

I close what is left of his eyes and wash his body, sluicing away the blood until the single wound in his side is pale and clean, like the mouth of a drowned man. There are more scars on him than I remember, some still new enough to be bright. And those are only the scars I can see, the wounds of the flesh. If he is anything like me (and I think he is – no, I know he is), his real wounds will be in places that leave no scars, just marks on the soul visible only to Allah. I wonder what happened to this man whom I used to know so well, where he has travelled these past years, and if he has always been searching for me. There is no way of knowing, not now. I would have asked him before, if there had been time. If we had not been so set on trying to kill each other. After, there was no time at all. There was only his final mercy to my friends, and the Shahadah, and then the light of Paradise filled his eyes and turned them up to the sky.

I have no shroud for him, and that hurts too. I have only his dishdasha and keffiyah, both soiled and unfitting for one such as he to pass to Judgement in. Even so, they must suffice. Allah will be forgiving, and there will be more to discuss than only a shroud, I am sure. The water of the lake is clean and cold; it soaks the fine weave of the dishdasha, cleaving it close to his skin. This man promised me a clean death, once. It sounds cruel perhaps, but he meant it as a mercy and I took it as one. Now he is dead and I yet live, and all I can give him is a decent burial.

It would be easier if I hated him. I don’t, and I never did, though I admit I tried. Ad-Din Sinan, the old scorpion, may he be plagued by vermin and die alone to be eaten by dogs, would have it no other way. Hate him, he ordered, and I was meant to obey. Kill him, he told me, and I was meant to do that too. I did neither. Until now. I wonder if the Old Man would be glad. Sinan told me what Sarak did, and yes, it was a betrayal. But Sinan didn’t tell me why. He didn’t have to. I knew why, and know it still. And Allah be merciful, I understand. Sarak was always like that. Always doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

How could I hate him for that?

Robin hesitated on the edge of the tall grass. He had been right; Nasir was here. A part of him had known that he would be, and what he would be doing. He was your friend, he’d said, only that morning. And Nasir would not leave a friend who needed him. He’d proven that time and again.

Having brought him here, Robin’s instincts suddenly deserted him. He found, appallingly, that he had no idea at all of what to do. He’d come here for a purpose, to help a friend of his own, but seeing the man so poised and contained beside the body all wrapped in white, Robin could not help but feel that he was intruding.

Nor was he the only one. Will shifted uneasily, scuffing his boots on the ground.

‘Should leave him to it,’ he muttered. ‘Not our business, this.’

‘He’s our friend, Will. That makes it our business.’ Even so, Robin didn’t move. Down near the lake, Nasir had lifted his head. Robin fancied he could feel those dark eyes searing him through and through. ‘Even if he doesn’t think so.’

That earned a brief, hard laugh. ‘Oh, aye? And who’s going to tell him so, eh? You?’

‘If I have to.’ Robin sounded surer than he felt. Nasir hadn’t moved, was still watching them with that intent, unwavering gaze. Unreadable, as always. Damn the man. He’d not show pain if both of his legs were cut off at the knees, and Robin knew it. Certainly he was not going to show pain now, and no matter that he must be balanced on the barest edge of a howling abyss of it. Why must he be so cursed proud?

‘He’s a private one, Robin.’ That from John, who could never stand to see injustice, or a man left to stand alone. ‘He won’t thank you for barging in. He’ll not argue, he’ll just up and leave. Trust us. We’ve known him for longer than you have.’

Longer, Robin thought, but not better. Not better. He kept his eyes on Nasir’s face, feeling the weight and rawness of the other man’s gaze, willing him to bend, to give just a little. Willing him to call.

John said, ‘Come on, lad. Let be. He’s …”

And Nasir lowered his head and, slowly, raised his hand.

I did not expect them to come. I should have, perhaps: Robert – Robin – is perceptive, sees more than he lets people know. But I was not thinking when I came here, not of him or the others. They never so much as crossed my mind.

Sarak would say, Why should they? They are infidel dogs, he would tell me, and remind me no son of Mahmud should follow in the dust of any such as those. Ah, but my brother, you are wrong. They are decent men for what they are, and Robert – Robin, and I must get used to that, they are so peculiar about their names, carrying them so lightly and yet so dear – perhaps the most decent of them all. My father, may Allah the Compassionate show him grace, would have approved of him, I think. Infidel dog or not. You would have approved of him, if you’d known him. Once you would. Once.

When the world was young and loss was distant, and I was young too.

‘Nasir...’ Robin paused, fumbling for the right way to do this. The Saracen gave him no help, standing like a statue between them and the body in its white wrappings. Even the man’s eyes were shuttered: closed and distant. Robin didn’t like the look of them. He had been prepared for rage, or grief. He had not been ready for ice.

He settled for something simple, bowed his head, spread his hands in a gesture that was almost supplication. ‘Nasir. Please. May we help?’

It was the right thing to say, perhaps. At least it broke the man’s stillness. Nasir drew a deep breath, let it out in a sigh like all the world was leaning on him, and gave a small nod of the head. His voice, when it came, was so quiet Robin barely heard it above the thud of his own heart and the breath of the wind in the green tall grass.

‘Yes. Marhaban, sadiqi, yes.’

I show them where to dig, as best as I can tell. There are no tools, only what the forest can provide, but John is as strong and honest as a horse, and the heavy earth no match for his energy. Much has ever been a worker, and even Will, who would usually complain loud and long at any labour, makes no murmur of resentment. Robin keeps an eye on him, I notice, as if he is afraid Will might say something and give offence, but I know that Scarlet can behave when he has to. Alone, this would have taken me all day. With their help it is the work of an hour.

When the grave is ready, I ask them to stand away. This is my task alone: Sarak may or may not mind that his last place on this earth was made ready by the hands of unbelievers, but he would not have them lay him to rest. This is for family to do, or for friends, and I to him have been both; am both, for what that is worth now. He came to me an enemy, and died in the arms of a friend with the name of Allah on his lips. I take comfort from that. He did not hate me, at the end.

I lay him down facing Makkah, as comfortable as if in sleep. And so it is a sleep, we are taught – from now until the Day of Judgement, all days shall pass as one night’s sleep to him. I hope his dreams are pleasant, and Allah is kind. Sarak knew enough of turmoil in this life. I pray Allah shows him mercy, and that he finds peace in the next.

Robin watched from a respectful distance as his friend murmured softly over the grave. He could not catch the words, and even if he had been able to he would not have understood them – his Arabic barely extended beyond saying hello – but he knew reverence when he heard it.

Will rolled his shoulders and squinted towards the lake, where the light from the lowering sun flared silver and pale. ‘Getting on for dark soon, I reckon. He going to stay out here much longer?’

‘I don’t know, Will.’

‘Seems a lot of bother, don’t it.’ The one-time soldier cast an appraising eye over himself, and over Robin too. ‘I mean, look at us. We’re dirt to the ears.’

Robin, who had never noticed Will to be particularly bothered by dirt before, only grunted. Will shrugged.

“Yeah, well. It’s only it seems a lot of trouble to go to, that’s all. If Naz weren’t all dark and brooding and ready to snap a man’s head off for speaking out, I’d have told him to dig his own bloody hole.’ The man tipped his head towards Nasir and the raw, new grave. ‘Do his lot do this for all their enemies, then?’

‘No,’ Robin said briefly. He glanced at Will once, and away. Nasir wasn’t the only one who wanted to snap. ‘They do it for their friends.’

‘For their …’ Understanding dawned; Will fell silent. Then he said, ‘Oh. Shit. You knew?’

‘Yes. He told me.’ Or, rather, I told him, Robin corrected himself silently. ‘They were like brothers.’

‘You knew that, and you sent him here?’

That made Robin uneasy. His response was defensive. ‘No! I only …’ He sighed, relenting. ‘Yes. But he would have come anyway. I think he had to. This thing with Sarak … whatever was between them, it goes a long way back. Unfinished business is the worst kind. It always comes back with interest. Nasir should be glad that it’s over, at least.’

Will grunted. ‘Tell that to Cain.’

Robin flinched unhappily. ‘Jesu, Will, have a care.’

‘Idiot. I’m hardly going to say that to him, now am I?’

‘You’d best not.’

‘I said I won’t!’

Behind them, John made a sound low in his chest, a soft aching rumble. ‘Will you two stop your bickering? It’s him has to carry this, not us.’ The big man shook his head, gazing out over the lake. ‘Poor bastard.’

‘Who do you mean, John?’ Much wanted to know. ‘Nasir, or Sarak?’

Reaching out, John clapped a hand to Much’s shoulder, a rough warm gesture that was half an embrace. ‘Both of them, lad. Both.’

Too much grief, we are taught, is unseemly. It is ungracious, to wail and lament and howl to know why a thing is so, why such a death was wrought. All comes to pass as Allah wills, and His wisdom is hidden from us. As Sarak’s body is hidden now, under its mound of earth in this cold and foreign land. A green land, though, and a fat one. Sarak would like that. We who are born of the deserts have a great love of gardens and trees, and things that grow. There is nothing green in the desert, after all. Only space and silence, and the sun beating us blind.

I had not thought that the others would come, and I had not thought that they would stay. Will is uncomfortable, I can tell. He hunches his shoulders and will not meet my eyes. John, as always, wears his heart on his face, and I find it strange that he should weep for a man he never knew. Or, for that matter, for me. Much often understands more than he seems to, but he does not understand this: he is baffled by John’s emotion and Robin’s intensity. And Robin … his eyes follow me like a man dying of thirst follows water. We will talk again soon, I know it. He cannot be content with the half-answers I gave him before. He thinks I am a broken thing now, and he cannot see something broken and not try to put it back together. I am not broken, of course, and not for him to mend if I were, but try telling him that. These Franks, they have no restraint, no composure, no control. They are like children in the world; they feel everything all at once, and let it be all their lives for a handful of heartbeats – all sorrow, all joy, all anger, all tenderness. And I love them for it. Even if they do drive me mad.

As Sarak and I drove each other mad, or to laughter, or to rage. And in the end, to this. And oh, Allah be kind, it hurts. It hurts.

It is time to leave. I bend, touch the mound where Sarak lies, and offer him a last salute: May you find peace. Rest well, my friend. Then I turn, and go to the place where the others wait for me. Robin reaches out, takes my arm, wrist to wrist.

‘Nasir? Is there more we can do?’

‘No. It is enough. Shokrun, sadiqi.’

And that, Allah help me, hurts too.

The journey back to the camp passed in almost silence. Nasir, who never wasted breath on words he didn’t need in any case, wandered a little apart from the others. He had his head down, seeming deep within his own thoughts, but Robin was not fooled by that for a moment. He’d seen hawks look like that, in the moment before they hurtled into the sky.

Marion, who had waited at the camp with Tuck, saw at once that all was not well. She was used to the squabbling and good-natured rivalry of these men; she knew enough to sense the strain in them now. Her eyes, as green as new leaves, searched Robin’s face carefully and found it drawn, tight. Will looked abashed, and John uneasy. Only Nasir seemed his normal self, silent and calm. She greeted him with a smile, stepping forward to briefly rest her hand on his arm, and received a courtly dip of his dark head for her troubles.

‘I want to thank you.’ Even now, Marion could not quite believe what she had seen in that outer garth in Nottingham castle, when Nasir had stood without flinching in the face of what could so easily have been his death, with God’s good will and the speed of his own sword arm the only thing between him and a crossbow bolt to the chest. ‘What you did today … that took courage.’

‘Mashallah.’ Nasir twitched one shoulder in the barest shrug, as if facing death – and dealing it – was of no remark. Perhaps to him it wasn’t. Marion watched him as he moved away, his face like something carved from stone.

It was Robin who told her, in a quiet and strained voice, where they had found him, and why. Marion, who sighed over orphan fawns or broken-winged doves and who had once nearly scratched out a man’s eyes for trying to drown kittens in a sack, found herself feeling oddly uncertain. She had counted Nasir a friend for some years; surely she should have felt more sympathy toward him than this? Sitting on a deer hide spread close by the fire, she let her gaze shift from Robin to the Saracen lurking on the edge of the camp and back again.

‘Someone should talk to him, then,’ she whispered, finally. ‘I would, but … I don’t know what to say.’ There was truth in that: for all that Nasir had been among them almost since the beginning, in so many ways he was unknown to them. Faced with those intent eyes and that distant, controlled manner, Marion barely knew where to start. He was not frightening, exactly … but his world was so different from her own, and he gave so little back that speaking with him was like trying to find one’s way in a strange place in the dark.

‘Do any of us?’

‘You might. He speaks to you more than he does to the rest of us combined, I think. And in any case, who else should it be? Will?’ Marion raised her eyebrows to show how ridiculous she thought that was. ‘Tuck?’

Robin gave a brief, quick smile. ‘You might be surprised at Will. He’s the only one other than Nasir who’s actually seen war, after all. He might know more about what’s going on in his head than any of us.’

‘Maybe,” Marion conceded. ‘But it’s you he talks to. Will tries his patience, you know that.’

‘And Tuck?’

‘Don’t bring me into it,’ the portly friar huffed, catching the last of that as he lugged the cooking pot towards the low fire. ‘He’s never let his walls down around me, not really. It’ll have to be you, Robin. You’re the one he trusts. Don’t try weaselling out of it.’

Robin, who supposed that he had known that all along, only nodded. As if he’d ever planned to do differently in the first place.

I get my talking to, and sooner than I had expected. As the sun draws low and the evening prayer approaches, he starts. He might have given me a little time, but Franks are ever importunate. And Robin is a brave one: he pushes, even follows me out of the camp when I walk away. I would tell him that some things are my own, and not to be cheapened by sharing, if I thought he would understand. These Franks though, they talk and talk: they think words the cure for anything. But I know that some wounds need to be left alone so they can begin their healing.

Robin surprises me. He does not begin with soft words and awkward sympathies. He begins with accusation, and challenge.

‘What were you thinking, coming into Nottingham? I could have killed you today, you know that?’

Of course I know that. I am tempted to argue the point anyway, to tell him that even with a loaded crossbow to hand he is slower than my blades, but that is not fair. Of course he could have killed me, if he had been other than what he is. He has never yet killed a man without hesitating over it first, and I hope to Allah that that will never change. He is innocent still, and I treasure that about him. Somehow, it soothes my soul. So I tell him he is right, but I had no choice, and that is true too.

He shakes his head, so that his hair – and such a shade, a gold so pure it is almost white – flickers in the forest’s fading light.

‘There are always choices,’ he tells me. ‘If I had … if I’d killed you, thinking you were him … If I had done that, I would never have forgiven myself.’

He sounds like he means it. I point out that he didn’t kill me, that we are both alive and well and so this discussion is of no merit, but he shakes his head again, more fiercely this time, and grabs at my arm as if he is afraid I will leave before he can say what he feels he must. This is a Frankish thing of course, and I know that: Franks do not understand that some things are written, and what-if is nothing at all.

‘No. You’re not listening. I appreciate your loyalty Nasir, we all do. And no one doubts your courage. But if you ever … if it comes to … Listen. Your life is worth something too. I would rather die than have you sacrifice yourself for me. For any of us. Do you understand?’

I tell him, quite bluntly, I don’t. Does he think these things happen by my poor will? If I thought he would comprehend, I would tell him that this is beyond him: he cannot choose his fate or mine. Or I could remind him that it was he who sent me to Sarak, and he who needed rescuing after. Should I have stayed away only so that he might die with a clean conscience? No. To lose one friend today was enough. I would not lose him too.

I wish he spoke more Arabic than only the handful of words I have given him, or that my French was up to more than asking for food and water and throwing insults. So often, it is as if we are speaking across a void, and half of the meaning falls away before our words reach the other side. If he wants to have this discussion – and I can see that he does: he is insistent, his hand warm on my arm and his eyes so sincere – we need a better language than the one that lies between us. This one is full of traps for the unwary, and we must both take care with what we say, lest we say too much. So often, I have found, silence is best.

His eyes are brightly, persistently blue. If he is kind, he will break me; I do not think I can withstand kindness, right now. I hope he knows that, and is kinder still.

Robin sighed, frustrated. It was always difficult talking to Nasir when he was like this – he seemed determined to be alien, to deliberately misunderstand. The man had his shields up well and proper tonight. Robin supposed he could understand that. Nasir held himself tightly at the best of times, letting very little slip, and this was not the best of times. The look of ice that had been in his eyes by the lake was back, leaving a distance and remove that Robin found disquieting. He wished he knew how to make it go away.

‘I know what I asked of you was difficult,’ he began, only to be sharply interrupted.

‘You presume. It is not wise.’

There was honest anger in that, beneath the carefully accented words. Well, that was better than ice. Robin braced himself, went on.

‘I know it brought you grief. He was your friend, your brother. I’ve never lost anyone close to me, I was too young when my mother died to remember her. And I’ve never had a brother, but …’

‘Then you know nothing.’

‘But I do have friends, Nasir, and I would flay myself raw before seeing harm come to any one of them. Even you.’ No, that was wrong. The young man took a breath. ‘Especially you.’

The dark eyes flashed, brief and hard, then looked away. ‘There was no harm.’

Yes, Robin thought silently, there was. There was. Even if you never admit it. Aloud, he said, ‘Malik, for God’s sweet sake …’

‘Blasphemy is not worthy of you.’

‘And lying isn’t worthy of you!’ Robin burst out, suddenly angry. ‘I’m your friend. Did you forget that? And I’ll not let you sit here and brood all night and tell me no harm was done! Do you trust me or not?’

‘This,’ Nasir said stiffly, ‘is not trust. This is …’ He paused, sighed, raised one hand in a vague gesture of surrender. He sounded tired and drawn. ‘Ya Allah, Rob, it’s done. Leave be.’

‘No. I know you. I know when you’re holding things back.’

‘You do not. And some things are not for you.’ Final, that was, and firm.

‘Nasir …’

‘Imshi, Rob. Utruk’nee wahdi. Min fadlak.’

‘Don’t.’ Robin glared. ‘Don’t talk to me in bloody Arabic. You do that when you want to avoid something. Use English, so I can understand.’

‘You don’t understand anything.’

‘Then make me!’

Nasir looked at him for a long moment, thoughtful and outwardly calm. Then, very clearly, he announced, ‘I said, “Go, Rob. Leave me alone. Please.”.’

Well, at least his manners had not failed. Robin threw up his hands in despair. Curse the man and his pride and his need and his fierce determination to hoard his pain and beat himself bloody with the dregs of it. If Robin had only cared for him a little less, he’d have let him do it and be damned. Instead he cursed under his breath and said, ‘That’s a weak thing to say. Feeble.’

‘Be careful, Robert.’ There was a low, throbbing sound to the Saracen’s quiet voice that Robin could not quite identify. Warning was part of it. The rest might have been pain, or it might have been something altogether else. All at once, Robin felt the anger ebb out of him. He had been going about this all the wrong way – Nasir would hardly yield to this. Flinging himself against the man’s shields was not going to prompt him to lower them.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I am. It’s only …’ The young man shook his head, made an unhappy sound of bewilderment. ‘I know what you did for us. For me. And I know you can’t be as easy with that as you seem.’ He sighed and frowned, then raised hopeful eyes. ‘Nasir. Malik. Please. Let me help. Why won’t you let me help?’

For a moment there was silence, and then, suddenly and shockingly, a barrage of Arabic, so swift and harsh that Robin could make out no more than only sound flung like stones. He almost gasped at the fury of them – and then did gasp, eyes going wide as a strong hand closed on his throat and squeezed hard. Nasir’s teeth flashed like a knife in the gloom, his eyes glinted bright and sharp, and then as quickly as he had struck he moved away, letting go all at once so that Robin fell forward with a lurch.

‘You know nothing.’

And he was gone.

RoS fic: An Assassin's Knife, part 2

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:47:33 GMT

An Assassin's Knife cont ...

Richard Plantagenet, by the Grace of God King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou and Lord of Poitiers, was in a foul mood. This should have been a time for celebration; he had, after all, won a famous victory here. For two years Acre had stood against the forces of Christendom, her garrison holding fast against anything the crusader army could throw at them … and then Richard had arrived with his fresh troops and his clever tongue, and he had talked them into surrender in less than a month. Well, Conrad of Monferrat had done most of the actual talking, but Richard had told him what to say. Now Acre was theirs, with more to come if Saladin was as much a man of his word as he was said to be, and Richard should have been enjoying every accolade a man could be given. Instead he was squatting in a stinking camp, taking insult after insult from that French popinjay – Philip always had kept a viper’s tongue behind those pretty lips – and trying to keep this army in one piece.

The Austrian Duke – now there was a weak ally if ever Richard had seen one – had already left, taking his troops with him. The man had gone off in a huff, and all because one of his pretty banners had been dunked in a privy pit by a handful of soldiers settling some score. Richard didn’t see what the problem was, really; a few of his men and few of Leopold’s had got to calling each other names, and one thing had led to another, but a banner could always be replaced. And then Philip, who had been as difficult as a woman since Richard had quit coming to his bed, had started up at him over Leopold’s departure, as if it were Richard’s fault that the old man couldn’t take a joke … sweet Jesu, did none of these men, these so-called kings, know how to make a war but him?

Of course, Richard had been taught by the best. His lady mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was a woman able to pick a fight with the very saints; Richard had learned a trick or two from her. Then there had been his father to contend with, and everything had been a war, with Henry. His marriage, his kingship, his relationship with his sons – all a battle. Richard had won that war, in the end. He would win this one too, even if he went mad in doing so. Richard Plantagenet was not a man who could tolerate defeat.

Which was why, on this warm evening at the end of a hellish day – and why did it have to be so appallingly hot in this damned place, if it came to that? – Richard was slamming around his tent in a temper and thinking very hard about not breaking things. Skulls, for one. Philip’s neck, for another.

“Coward. That’s what he is. If he’s ill, I’m a Saracen.”

“A coward would not have come here at all, my lord. But this is proving a hard campaign, and King Philip is not … robust,” Conrad said carefully. A wise man was always careful where the Angevin temper was concerned, and Conrad had more cause for care than most. He was Philip’s man, for a start, and candidate for a kingship that Richard did not want to give: there were worse things than to be wary. Back in the dim shadows of the tent, Richard’s minstrel Blondel was playing something light and easy on the lute – music to soothe the devil’s blood, perhaps. Conrad, who knew the infernal story of the Angevin line as well as the next man, hoped that it might suffice. The last thing he wanted was Richard in one of his furies. “Philip was never a soldier, my lord.”

Richard snorted at that, his lip curling in disdain.

“Aye, that’s true – he always did prefer to fight his battles with words, and at a distance.”

Pouring himself a triple measure of wine, Richard downed it in one long swallow and glared toward the back of the tent and Blondel. It was wretchedly hard to rage sufficiently with soft lute music in the air and Conrad being so cursed diplomatic about it all. Now all Conrad said was; “Indeed, my lord.” Richard gave a frustrated snarl and set to pacing the room.

Blondel played on. His music hovered at the edge of Richard’s mind, tones of tranquillity and cool water. The English king found he could not help but listen. The troubadour had attached himself to Richard some years back, impressed by the volatile warrior-king who wrote poetry in two languages and killed in half a dozen more, and who could shake the sky with either his laughter or his wrath. Richard had tolerated him at first, as he tolerated any admiration – grudgingly and with more than a little suspicion; frankly, he was not used to being complemented for his own sake – but Blondel had proven himself true.

Truer than that snake Philip at any rate, Richard fumed. For everything they’d been, everything they’d had, and now this … the anger made Richard’s teeth ache.

“So he betrays me again. I don’t know why I’m surprised. He’s always been the faithless one, all lies and promises.” Richard flung himself down in a low chair, rubbing his head as if it

(whispers in the dark and I love you and I hate you and the taste of promises and wine oh Philip why this why us?)

pained him. The man gave a low groan from between set teeth, then swore steadily and viciously in every language he knew.

Philip had abandoned him again, abandoned the crusade this very afternoon. Even now his men were leaving, following their lord. The French king had pled poor health in the end, but Richard knew better. He’d not let Philip have his own way – half of Cyprus and his vassal on the throne of Jerusalem, and wasn’t that enough to make a man spit? – and Philip had flounced off like a sulky child. Leaving Richard with an army in the field, a new won city to garrison and all of the Holy Land to win on his own. Not to mention near to three thousand prisoners to keep and care for, and never mind how impossible that would be for an army on the march. The only good thing to come from this whole benighted day was that the first portion of the hostages’ ransom had arrived. Conrad, who did not want to discuss Philip any further than he had to, pointed that out.

“At least we need not worry about coin now, in the short term. It seems the Saracen lord is keeping to his word about the hostages.”

Richard grunted without opening his eyes.

“Damned prisoners. Better if bloody Saladin had paid in full, then I could be rid of the lot of them. Better if I didn’t have them to think about at all.”

“And what would hold the Saracens to their word then, my lord?”

“Honour?” Richard suggested brusquely, letting his hand fall and giving the other man a hard stare. “Some men do have it, I’m told. Or maybe plain good sense – Saladin’s general enough to know a dead horse when he’s beating it. Acre’s ours.”

“So are the prisoners.” Conrad said, with careful deliberation. “Ours to care for until their ransom is paid, my lord. It is what we agreed.”

“I don’t care what we agreed.” Richard shot him a scathing look. “He’s a canny one, is Saladin. If he thinks he can keep us waiting here like virgin brides in a marriage bed, he’ll do it. If a dead hostage or two is what it takes to show him we mean business, I’ll take their heads myself.”

To speak so easily of killing hostages … well, Conrad had known that Richard was a hard man. “The lord Saladin has paid half of the ransom, my lord. There’s no reason to think he won’t pay the rest.”

“Eventually.”

Conrad blinked, then tried another tact. “Of course, you could always bring them to Christ. Convert them and be rid of them that way.”

“What, save their heathen souls?” That made Richard laugh. “Nearly three thousand of them? No chance of that, my lad. You might convince a handful, but the rest will hold out like mules.” He shook his head, dark bronze waves glinting in the dim light of the lamps. “No, Saladin will buy them back or I’ll do what I have to do. Either way, it had best happen soon. I don’t want to be pinned down here. Not with Leopold and Philip gone. I don’t like sitting here with my arse to the wind.”

“My lord, it is not right to speak …”

“I will speak,” Richard announced in a low, hard voice, “of anything I damned well like. And you, my lord of Monferrat, will not speak at all. Get out.”

“My lord king …”

“Get out!”

When he had gone, Richard sat back with a curse, lifting one hand to rub at his face. Christ’s Blood, but he was tired. The scattering of notes from Blondel’s lute paused briefly, then changed into something private and close. Richard waved his hand; the playing stopped, the man drew near.

“My lord. Do you have need …”

“No. Nothing. Your playing’s giving me a headache.”

Blondel sighed. “Not my playing, my lord.” He cast a glance at the shuttered door, then leaned forward to touch the king’s hand. “My sweet lord, you deserve better friends than those.” His touch lingered longer than it needed to. Richard stirred, moved his hand away.

“I have better friends,” the king growled. He gestured to the door, to the camp beyond. “They’re out there, soldiering their backsides off for me.”

“A king needs more than soldiers, my lord.” Blondel let that mean what it would. It hung between them, half hopeful in the still, warm air.

Richard was not in the mood. His gut was churning and his head ached, and there was not enough wine in the world for what he wanted right now. He let out a groan that was half a sigh. It had been a long, miserable day, and he was tired of waiting for it to be over. With a sour grunt, he flicked his hand in dismissal.

“Go away, Blondel. I’m for bed. Send one of my boys in to see to things, will you?”

Richard stretched mightily, making his bones crack as he hauled himself upright and made for the inner room, speaking over his shoulder as he went. “And for the love of Christ man, unless Philip has a change of heart or Saladin is struck by lightening, no one had best disturb me before tomorrow’s noon.”

*****

It had not been difficult to make his way into the Frankish camp unnoticed. There was movement afoot, a great deal of it; half of the army seemed to be breaking camp, while the other half did its best to get in the way. It was an easy thing to hide amidst such chaos. Easier in fact than slipping into Acre had been, earlier in the day; then a non-descript burnous and a full saddlebag and a downcast gaze had been sufficient disguise; now he needed no disguise at all. No one noticed another shadow slipping through the dark. Even the dogs that hung about the camp, hungry slat-sided things hunting scraps from the middens, did not bother to bark.

The English king’s tent was not hard to find. It lay in the centre of the camp, far from the reek of the filthy privy pits and the horse lines, where the afternoon breezes would bring fresh air from the sea. Twin banners flew over it, gold lions on a field of red, and the bold crusader’s cross. Nasir glanced at them and offered an ironic salute. The Franks set such store by their pretty dyed banners that faded so badly in the brutal desert sun. It was good of them to use them, though. It made knowing who their leaders were so very simple.

There were guards on the king’s tent, for what that was worth. Nasir barely registered them, beyond the fact that there were four of them and they were all clustered about the tent’s door. As if there was only one way into a tent. Ya Allah, but Franks could be such fools.

It was the work of moments to let himself in. A deep patch of shadow, a sharp knife and a trio of horses that had conveniently broken their tethers and cantered past the night patrol were all the cover he needed. The watchmen had set off after the horses; Nasir had slipped under the wall of the English king’s tent.

He had meant what he had told Sarak; if he did this right, there would be no blood. No need for blood: the guards were all looking outward, and no one stirred inside. Nasir paused, waiting for his vision to sharpen in the darker black of the royal tent. He was aware of vague shapes around him, more by sense than sight – a low slung chair, a broad table with lamps about, a couch along the far wall. A man with a shock of blond hair was sprawled on that, a patch of light against the dark. Nasir allowed a small smile as he padded past. The man was snoring fit to wake the dead; if no one stirred for that noise, they would not stir for him. He made his way to the inner room.

A boy – a page, probably, by his age – lay on a pallet on the floor, snuffling like a puppy. Nasir stepped over him as he entered, wrinkling his nose at the scent of unwashed bodies and old blankets. His quick eyes scanned the dark, finding at once what he wanted.

Richard of England lay on his belly in an untidy tangle of blankets and bare skin. He was a big man; that was the first thing that Nasir noticed. He was also a restless sleeper, kicking out at some unseen assailant and fisting one hand in his pillow. There was an odd noise coming from where he lay; it took Nasir a moment to understand that the man was grinding his teeth as he slept. Oh yes, restless indeed.

It was a simple enough task, and a simple enough message. Nasir had left it a dozen times before, in places far more difficult to access than this one. A knife, small and sharp, mother-of-pearl inlayed in the hilt in a sign that no one could mistake, left on the pillow of the sleeping man, or driven into the wall behind his head, or on a stool beside his bed; a knife that said, You are known and marked, and this time we have stayed our hand. We will not stay it twice. A knife that said, You live for so long as we want you to live. You die when we want you to die. It had worked before. It had brought better men than this to their knees.

Nasir stood for a handful of heartbeats, looking at the sleeping king’s face. Even at rest he looked fierce, as a hungry wolf looked fierce, or a rabid dog. This was a creature that was made for blood, made for battlefields and baying at the moon; there was nothing peaceful in this. He made Nasir’s hackles want to rise.

Swift and sure, Nasir laid the dagger

(no one dies not the lionheart not me)

where it was meant to go, letting the point of it slice into the pillows so that a small puff of feathers escaped. They caught on the sleeping man’s breath, floating in the dark like lost souls. Nasir watched them rise, then turned and slipped away.

If, for a moment in the dark, Nasir had thought of taking that blade and stopping the English king’s heart, no one would know. That he would regret for years to come that he had not was a pain he would learn to bear.

*****

Richard sat in his tent, glowering darkly at the little dagger that had been buried hilt deep in his pillow when he woke, bare inches from his face. He did not need a scholar to tell him what the symbols on the hilt meant. Richard was not a Plantagenet for nothing; he knew a death threat when he saw one.

Beside him, Conrad of Monferrat drew in a shaky breath. “Hashishyun.”

“I know.”

“It’s meant to frighten you.”

“I know.”

“Saladin, do you think?”

“I doubt it. It doesn’t matter.”

Conrad blinked at the flat, harsh tone. There was something frightening in Richard’s lack of emotion. Usually when he lost his temper it was all fire and thunder and the wrath of God, but this … oh, this was worse. This could very easily be deadly. “Doesn’t matter?”

“No.” Richard gave him a sharp, smouldering look. “I will not be intimidated, Conrad. Do you hear me? My enemies will learn this. My hand will not be forced.”

“No, my lord.”

“Kill the prisoners.”

“My lord?” Conrad started, feeling a chill go down his neck. Not this. “Sweet Jesu, Richard …”

The English king lifted the dagger, letting the blade catch the light. It reflected in his eyes, blank and bare and utterly cold. “You heard me, Conrad. Kill them all.”

The rest of the day was blood.

*****

It hurt, to have been so wrong. Nasir saw the slaughter begin from the small camp he and Sarak had shared, and knew that he had caused it, and that he would never forgive or forget. Not himself, and not Richard of England. Richard, who would not be forced any more than a lion would be forced, and Nasir should have thought of that, should have known … there was so much blood that the sand could not soak it up. It churned to a red mud about the soldiers’ boots, flowed like syrup to the shore where the waves picked it up and turned it into a pink foam. Overhead, kites were already starting to swarm.

And Sarak was gone. It would have helped, not to be alone with this. He very badly wanted Sarak to shout at him right now, to curse him in the name of every life he had lost this day. Every life he had wanted to save. But Sarak had not been here when he had returned. Instead, there had been only his horse, hobbled and patient, and a note tied to her saddle with a leather thong bearing a small silver medallion. The medallion was Sarak’s, won years ago in a duel. The note was Sarak’s as well. Nasir was no fool; he knew what Sarak had done. Not the details, of course … but he knew. He was not even sure how far he could blame him. It made him want to howl. The words only made a bitter morning cut deeper.

Nasir, my brother. I will not be returning with you to Masyaf. It is not safe that I go there, not now. It is best that you do not know my reasons, so that you may answer the Da’i truthfully when you are questioned. Take this note; show it when they ask.

I have fallen from my faith in our Order, my brother. I urge you not to follow in my example. Stay your path, Nasir. Be true, uphold your name. May Allah the Beneficent bless and keep you.

And then, scrawled in a cramped hand almost as an afterthought;

I am sorry, Malik. Sorrier than you know.

“Oh, Sarak, my friend. I’m sorry too.”

He rode away from all of it – the blood, the death, the betrayal and the loss – with the weight of three thousand souls upon him. Something cold and cruel coiled about his heart, pinching with ragged talons, and did not let go. All the world was death and loss, and in Masyaf there was nothing but death and loss for him go back to. But he would go back still. He couldn’t not. After today, there was nowhere else for him.

And heavier than all the three thousand souls that had died was the one who yet lived – friend and family, teacher and traitor – and that, somehow, was the worst thing of all.

Ros fic: An Assassin's Knife, part 1

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:44:47 GMT

Set pre season one, in Palestine. The seige of Acre, a pair of assassins, and one Plantagenet king ... I couldn't resist. This is Nasir and Sarak playing headgames with Richard the Lionheart during the Third Crusade. Okay, I know the time line's tight and *coughthisneverhappenedcough* but this is fic. This is what might have happened if it did.

(To clarify, the seige of Acre did happen, the Austrian duke did abandon the crusade, the massacre of prisoners really happened and Richard the Lionheart is not the shining hero of myth - he's way more interesting than that.)

Title: An Assassin's Knife
Rating: Meh. Pretty gen stuff here. A bit of violence, but nothing heavy.
Summary: Some betrayals are never forgotten.

Posted in two parts, because LJ is not robust.

An Assassin’s Knife

Acre’s walls still stood. They were scarred and scorched from siege and battle, but they rose still over the strand of shore and the barren sweep of land beyond. A hole gaped in the stone curtain on the landward side of the gatehouse, full now with rubble and broken timber. One of the great gates hung broken and twisted, its wooden beams a splintered wreck. To one side, like the bones of some vast dead beast, lay the remains of the ram that had done the splintering, burnt and toppled. Beneath the battered walls boiled an army of tents and soldiery, bright banners snapping in the wind blowing in off the sea, horses and men sweating and stinking beneath the blaze of the sun, and in the broad harbour low ships rode at anchor, flying colours that matched the banners ashore; red and gold, gold and blue … and everywhere, white slashed with red, the Crusader’s cross.

“It stinks in there.” Nasir slid down into the shade of a broad stone scarp some short distance from the city’s walls and the camp that squatted around them. “Franks. Death. Filth. It is no fitting place for a dog.” A baring of teeth went with that, and the man spat, deliberately vulgar. “They live like swine. And if they’ve dug a new privy trench in the last month, I’m a dancing girl.”

Dragging his burnous from his shoulders, Nasir cast the garment onto the bundle near his companion’s feet and ran a hand through his hair, tossing the sweat-damp black curls into disarray. His companion, who could not have cared less for the state of the Frankish privies, lay down the knife hilt he had been rebinding and regarded him with dark, demanding eyes.

“Were you seen?”

“Of course I was seen, Sarak.” Nasir’s eyes flashed, daring the rebuke. “I am not a lizard to slither beneath a rock; I’m careful, not invisible. But I wasn’t noticed, if that’s your concern.”

“We are not meant to be here,” Sarak pointed out, in a tone that denied debate. “If word gets back to …”

“Word won’t. And who would recognise me, in any case? Or you.”

Sarak smiled at that. It was not a pleasant expression. “Me? Who can say. And as for you … Ah, Malik Kemal, you’re enough your father’s son for people to see it in your face.”

“People, as you’ve taught me O Da’i, don’t look.” The younger man lifted a half full waterskin from the saddle pack that lay nearby and took a healthy swallow, shooting his companion a hard glance. “And don’t call me Malik. I’ve earned my name.”

“I know,” Sarak said simply. His one-time apprentice was clearly in an argumentative mood; Sarak did not care to indulge him. “I’d not have given it to you, else.”

Standing, Sarak turned his back on Nasir and peered out over the scarp at the torn walls and the scurrying Franks. It looked like chaos, but then, most military camps looked like that. As he watched, a rider on a fast horse ploughed through the camp, drawing to a halt outside a large, low tent in a spray of dust. Men eddied like water around a rock; someone in a plain tabard was shouting, the sound beyond faint on the light air. Oh yes, they were up to something. Sarak spoke over his shoulder.

“What did you find out?”

Nasir’s brief silence was answer enough. Sarak nodded.

“It’s true, then.”

“It’s true. Salah al-Din has ceded the city to the Franks, and the Franks are turning on each other like rabid dogs when it comes to holding it.” Nasir’s voice seemed calm, but Sarak knew him well enough to hear the anger and contempt in it. “Salah al-Din and the Frankish commanders agreed to terms, and the Franks have taken hostages to see those terms are held to. Nearly three thousand of them.”

“Combatants?” Sarak frowned, glancing at the younger man. The number seemed high for that.

“No. Not all.”

“Civilians.” Sarak growled in disgust. “These Franks have no honour.”

“Malik Rik,” Nasir pointed out, “is known for many things. Honour is not always amongst them.” The English king had come to these shores with his reputation sailing before him; the man that some called the Lionheart had shown himself a fine warrior, but inconsistent in his loyalties and brutal in his tempers, and that was before he had been given a crown and taken the Cross. Kingship and crusading had done nothing, so far as Nasir could see, to improve him.

“Malik Rik.” The name sounded like a curse on Sarak’s lips. In the camp, the man with the plain tabard had hauled back his mailed coif and seemed to be arguing furiously with someone. His hair was dark bronze in the sun. “Richard of England. He leads here?”

“So far as anyone can tell.” Nasir came to stand at his friend’s shoulder, gazing out at the distant mass of men. “They snap at each other like jackals squabbling over carrion. One of their leaders has left their cause already, and the others waver. But the prisoners are Coeur de Lion’s, yes.”

“And you want to do something about it.” That was not a question. Sarak knew this man, had trained him from the time he had first arrived at Masyaf, a well-born young thing barely out of childhood, and sure of himself with his titles and his manners and his noble blood. That had been many years ago. That boy was grown now, with his titles second to his calling. His manners came and went, and his blood had spilled as red as any commoner’s, but he was noble still, and still sure of himself. Oh yes, Sarak knew him.

Oblivious to his companion’s thoughts, Nasir made a quick, fierce gesture with one hand. “Yes. Something. There are women, Sarak. Children. No man should make his wars against those. It is written.”

Ah, there he went again with that odd idealism. Sarak slanted him a glance, eyes shuttered. The Brotherhood made their wars on whatever targets they were given; if he himself had never been called on to show his faithfulness by killing children, it did not mean it could not be. Nasir was a fine fighter, and for stealth and surety of strike he could not be matched, but he was given to thinking too much, prone to too many questions. Sarak supposed that the boy had learned that from him. He had been known to question as well – to do more than question, if truth were told – but at least he had been discreet. Still, a better teacher would have been more careful with what examples he set. There were words – even thoughts – that could get a man killed. Sometimes, Sarak wondered how long either of them would survive.

“Sarak? O Da’i?” Perhaps Nasir had picked up on his thoughts after all. Sarak frowned and hissed.

“Don’t call me that. Save it for the Old Man. Your apprenticeship is well over – as you pointed out.”

“Perhaps,” the younger man nodded thoughtfully, then gave a sudden grin that made him look a boy again. “But you will always be my teacher. You can’t help yourself. It isn’t in you.”

Sarak shook his head. Ah, Malik. There’s a lot in me that I never knew. “You think not?”

“You gave me my name, what, five years ago? And still you see to it that I don’t trip on my own folly and break my neck.”

“Someone has to.” Sarak grunted, as if it didn’t matter. Nasir wasn’t fooled. He quirked one eyebrow, still with that boyish grin; Sarak saw and growled at him, ignoring the coil of pride and shame in his gut

(by my eyes, if he knew what I’ve done …)

and giving one hand a dismissive flick. “Don’t flatter yourself, boy. You know I don’t like to see my good work go to waste, that’s all.” He turned, moved back towards the shade. “And I won’t have you getting us both killed out of carelessness. We will do nothing here.”

That took the grin off Nasir’s face. His eyes hardened; he lifted his jaw to its most regal, most stubborn angle. Noble blood indeed, Sarak thought, not for the first time. His father would have been proud.

“We have to,” Nasir insisted. “Whatever ad-Din Sinan says, this is our fight too.”

“Ad-Din Sinan will tell you what your fight is, boy, and you’ll accept it. Nothing else matters.”

“Nothing … of course this matters! The Franks bring war to our land, destruction to our people …”

“Not your people.”

“… and we spend our efforts unseating those who could resist them, who could bring the people together to fight, and let these barbarians have their way with our cities, our women and children? How does that not matter?”

Merciful Allah, that was dangerous talk. Sarak did what he had to do to stop it, rounding on the younger man with a sudden snarl. His eyes and voice were like ice in the dry, sun-drenched heat.

“Do you question the Teachings, boy? Have you lost faith?”

Nasir stared. That was an accusation that might have meant blood, had it come from anyone else. His hands, that had turned to fists at his sides, trembled with the force of his denial.

“No!’

“Then turn your dagger where you are ordered to turn it, and leave the thinking to your betters!”

Sarak let his gaze lock to Nasir’s until the younger man’s eyes dropped, then sighed and took Nasir by the shoulder, drawing him back down into the shelter of their small camp beneath the rock wall. He tried to make his voice gentle. Bad enough that he himself should have strayed so far from the loyalties he should have held; he had not trained this man to see him stray too. No matter what the provocation.

“I dislike this as much as you do, Malik. But this is not our place, my brother. We shouldn’t be here at all; we can’t act on this.”

“But we are here.”

“Boy, you nag at me like a woman. I tell you no, do you not hear me?” Sarak made a gesture of finality. “The Old Man won’t like it.”

“The Old Man won’t have to know.” Nasir’s mouth tightened. “And in any case, the Old Man needs to figure out which side he’s on. He’s had us roosting with the crows and flying with the eagles for too long.”

Sarak’s hand, calloused from years of sword and rein, swung like a striking snake, hard and fast. There was a sharp dry sound like a branch breaking and Nasir’s head rocked back; for a moment, sparks of light burst behind his eyes. He blinked, stunned. Sarak leaned close, fisting a hand in the younger man’s robes and pulling him in. White teeth flashed in Nasir’s face.

“Do not say such things to me, lest I forget the blood that runs in you and curse you for a fool! Ad-Din Sinan hears a whisper, and your death will come on wings.”

“And who will tell him? You?” Nasir’s lip curled in almost a sneer in spite of the throbbing in his jaw. He’d had beatings from Sarak before – not for years now, but he knew the strength of this man’s hands – and he knew when he was holding back. He even knew why. He was not blind, after all. Sarak had taught him to observe, and to observe well. The man might be surprised what his one-time apprentice had seen. Nasir had always been a good student. “You think the same, you know you do. You’ve said so yourself.”

“Maybe.” Sarak’s expression as he released him was odd, disgust and regret and pride all mixed together. Nasir wondered briefly what to make of it. “And no, I’ll not tell the Old Man. I’d not give you to him – I’d kill you more cleanly than that. But I will see to it that you learn silence, if I have to cut out your tongue to do it. I’ll do that if I must, and count it my failure as your teacher that you’d learn no other way. I warn you, Malik Kemal. Don’t push me.”

For a moment, Nasir neither moved nor spoke. It wasn’t the threat that stilled him: Sarak threatened him with death or worse usually on the order of once a week, and yet he lived and breathed. That was only Sarak’s way. No, it was what else the man had said, and the respect – the desperation – behind the warning. That was new. That was something Sarak meant – a gift, from one warrior to another. Very lightly, Nasir reached out and touched two fingertips to the other man’s wrist.

“You’d give me a cleaner death? Your word?”

“Cleaner than he would. You’ve seen what he can do.” There was a look in Sarak’s eyes that might have been pain. “You … Malik, you talk. It’ll cost you your life.”

Nasir considered that. Then, at last, he lowered his gaze to the sand.

“My apologies, brother. I spoke out of turn.” He took a deep breath. “I thank you for your rebuke.”

Well, the boy had discipline enough, when he chose to remember it. Sarak nodded, and clasped his hand wrist to wrist in wordless acceptance. He hoped that Nasir would take his caution to heart. Sometimes he wished that his own teacher was alive to have rebuked him when his thoughts got the better of him, before he could have made the choices

(Your information is accurate?

From the Old Man’s own scribe.

Good. You’ll find the coin is what we agreed.

I’d expect no less)

he had made. Then perhaps he would not have found himself in the position he was in now.

Pushing that from his mind, Sarak reclaimed the worn knife hilt and set about finishing the binding: it would not do for a man’s hand to slip when he made his strike, after all. Nasir watched him for a short while, then settled himself cross-legged and turned his face to the cooling breeze, calm and quiet. They sat together in easy silence as the sun made its way down the western slope of the sky. Soon the evening prayer would come, and then they would move on in the darkness that followed. With any luck, the Franks would never know they had been here at all.

It was peaceful, now that Nasir had stowed his perilous talk. The younger man was right, of course – and that was what made his words so dangerous. It was true that Rashid ad-Din Sinan, called the Old Man of the Mountains, had been indiscriminate in naming their enemies of late; it was true too that as many of those that the faithful had slain were good sons of Islam as were infidel aggressors. Sarak preferred not to think about that, just as he preferred not to think about the words that had been said and the money that had changed hands, or about the power that rippled and eddied in the spaces ad-Din Sinan had emptied. It was becoming, though, increasingly difficult to ignore.

There had been a time when Sarak had believed in his Brotherhood and their cause, a time when he had not questioned anything at all. He had been a happier man back then, with no hope or expectation but to lay down his life for his beliefs. Now he had seen more, and knew better. Ad-Din Sinan acted as much for political gain as he ever did for the defence of the Faith, valued his own power above the welfare of his people. He treated, even, with the infidel who sacked the holy places and attacked pilgrims and raided the caravanserai along the trading roads. There was no honour in any of that.

Nasir was right. It was the Franks who were the enemy, more than any Seljuq or Imam or Caliph. And yet where did the daggers of the faithful go in search of blood? It was foolishness, worse than foolishness. Perhaps ad-Din Sinan had lost his straight path as well as his mind – and Sarak had no doubt that the man was mad: no one could be so arbitrary in their nature as the Old Man and still lay claim to sanity – and forgotten the battle that they were meant to fight. That thought had long gnawed at Sarak’s mind. If he was being used – if they all were, all the faithful that ad-Din Sinan laid claim to – it should at least be for a cause he believed in.

Sarak’s thoughts strayed to Acre, crouching behind him in its ruined walls. Three thousand prisoners, three thousand Muslim souls held hostage to Salah al-Din’s word and the Franks’ good faith. Sarak did not like the idea of that any more than Nasir did, but he was damned if he could see what could be done about it. The city’s garrison might fight free if their bonds were loosed, but what of the others? Civilians, merchants and traders, potters and painters and poets – they would not fight. And if there were women, with children at their skirts … what could two men do about that?

Something. Anything. Ad-Din Sinan be damned.

“Nasir. Brother.” Sarak spoke slowly, almost absently. “May I ask you, what did you intend?”

At first there was no response, but then Nasir stirred from his meditation and gave a brief frown.

“What?”

“When you spoke of … doing something … about the Franks and their prisoners, what was it that you had in mind?”

Silence. Then; “Not much. A message, perhaps. A warning. That we watch, that they are not beyond our reach.”

“Not a killing?” Sarak hefted the small knife in his hand and regarded its blade carefully. “Sending Richard of England to his personal God, perhaps?”

Nasir gave his companion a slow glance, then shrugged. “I thought there might be … consequences.”

“For the Lionheart?” Sarak gave a quiet snort of laughter and put his blade away. “There would be. The Old Man has not moved against him, and there are reasons for that. The retribution for it would be a hard thing, for one thing …”

“But worth it.”

“Maybe.” Sarak rolled his eyes at the younger man’s bravado. “For another thing, the Lionheart may yet prove useful. You know ad-Din Sinan likes to play our enemies off against each other. I doubt he’d thank you for taking this into your own hands.” That was true; the Old Man of the Mountains did not like his faithful veering from his control. “And then you have the hostages to consider. How long do you think they would live, if the camp woke to find an assassin’s knife in Malik Rik’s heart? A message, though … it might give him pause for thought.”

“So, then.” Nasir nodded calmly, as if a sudden fierce joy had not just clenched in his gut and lit up his spine. The prospect of battle did that to him. Sarak would let him go. He should have known that he would, once he’d had time to think. Sarak did not make decisions on impulse. “What do you think I should do?”

Sarak surprised himself by laughing out loud.

“What should you do?” he repeated. “What you should do, is leave it well enough alone. But that’s not what you’re going to do, is it. Whatever I tell you.”

“You know I respect your words, my brother,” Nasir said mildly, but his eyes sparkled. Sarak shook his head, rueful and resigned. He recognised that look.

“If any other man confounded me half so often as you do, I’d kill him thrice over. You’re a fool, Malik.”

“Yes, perhaps.” Nasir brought his own knife out of nowhere and made it dance in his hand. The blade flared, bright and keen like its master’s grin. “But I’m a young fool. I’ll learn.”

“If you live long enough.”

“Allah willing, I’ll live a while yet.”

“Allah willing.” Sarak plucked the knife out his companion’s hand and made it spin over his knuckles before flicking it back. “You know, if you did manage to get yourself killed over this, I’m not sure what would be worse. Telling the Old Man you slipped his leash, or facing your father. The Old Man might have me tossed from the walls for letting you go. Your father though …”

“Tell him I joined the martyrs in Paradise, and am feasting in fine company with beautiful women.”

“He’s always blamed me that you joined the Brotherhood, you know. Cousin or not, he’d have my hide.”

“Probably.” Nasir inclined his head in that familiar, courtly way, spoiled only a little by his fierce white smile. He tossed the knife into the sand at his feet; it landed between his boots, upright and quivering. “He’s like that. Good at holding grudges. It runs in the blood.”

“Take care, Malik. Your word?”

“Always, my brother. If I do this right, no one dies.” Nasir looked up, a wicked gleam in his eyes. All anticipation, no fear. “Not me, not the Lionheart.”

“Good.” Sarak threw the waterskin at him. “Now clean up. It’s time for prayer. Then, when it’s dark, since you must do this thing in spite of good sense, you will go.”

“With your blessing, brother?”

“With my blessing.” Sarak felt suddenly

(if he knew if he only knew)

hollow. He found he did not want to look at Nasir, fearing what the younger man might see in his face. Fear gave him strength; he looked anyway. “May peace go with you, and may you win glory in the name of Allah and follow in the path of the Prophet, blessings be upon him, for all of your days.”

If that blessing was stronger than it needed to be, and if Sarak’s voice had caught a little at the end of it as if surprised by its own intensity, Nasir did not notice except to bow his head in acknowledgement.

“My thanks.” Setting about his ritual ablutions, the young man sluiced water carefully over his hands and face. “And Sarak?”

“Yes?”

“You’ve really got to stop calling me Malik.”

Ros Fic: Same Difference

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:33:48 GMT

This is set at the beginning of RoS series three - the era of Robert of Huntingdon. Young Robert is having trouble finding his feet in the outlaws' world, and finds sympathy - and help - from an unexpected direction.

Also, just quietly, my very first Ros fic ever (no, I'm not posting stuff in order, I'm lazy like that.)

Title: Same Difference
Rating: Harmless
Summary: Robert isn't sure who he is. Nasir isn't sure he's ever been anyone else.

SAME DIFFERENCE

It had been raining for three days straight. The forest was alive with it, heavy with wet and the scent of green and growing things. Overhead, leaves shifted in the canopy of the trees, sending down lingering sprays of damp along with dapples of weak spring sunlight, and underfoot the mud clung and slipped and threatened to send the unwary sprawling.

Robert hissed in annoyance as one booted foot slid on a moss covered tree root, catching himself with one hand before he fell and swearing at the unhappy squelch of dead leaves beneath his fingers. Straightening, he shook the muck away and brushed his hand down the front of his damp jerkin, still scowling. He was cold and wet and he hadn’t had a warm meal in days, not since the makeshift canopy that had protected their meagre camp fire had given out and doused everything in water, including the cook pot that Tuck had been tending. The stew had been modest enough to start with, only a couple of scrawny rabbits and a handful of withered winter vegetables scavenged from an abandoned crofter’s garden on the edge of the forest; the healthy dosing of rain had only served to make it thinner, a feeble and watery broth. Robert was used to better.

“You’ll want to watch yourself there, Robert.” A smile that was more than part sneer flashed out of the shadows, mocking. “Can’t have you landing on your noble arse in the mud, can we?”

“I’ve dealt with worse than mud, Will.” Robert schooled his voice to calm, and hoped his face matched it. Scarlet had been niggling at him all week, in one small way or another. Robert had hoped after their fight in Lichfield that he had proven himself well enough to Scarlet, and he had hoped the same thing after their raid on Castle Clun. Will Scarlet, though, was a difficult man to impress. It took more than a fist fight and one successful sortie to earn Will’s respect, it seemed. It took more than a title and an earldom at one’s feet, too. Will had made that abundantly clear. He did so again now, laughing as if he had heard something funny.

“Really? Wouldn’t have thought they’d have mud in Huntingdon Castle. Wouldn’t have thought your father the earl would stand for it.”

“Carpets,” Much said. The lad had come out of the trees behind Scarlet, carrying an armload of wood still dry enough to burn. Robert wondered where he had found it. Will gave the boy a narrow look.

“What‘re you on about?”

“Carpets. That’s what they have in castles, ain’t it.” Dumping the wood near the fire pit that Will was clearing, Much looked up at Robert, bright eyed and curious. “Did you have carpets in Huntingdon, Robert? An’ beds big enough to sleep a horse in, with a fire in every room?”

“Not quite, Much.” Robert couldn’t help but smile at the boy’s enthusiasm. At least it made a change from Scarlet’s sharp jibes. “There was one fine carpet in my father’s solar, and a hanging in the great hall that he brought back with him from the Holy Lands, but there were only rushes on my floor. And I don’t know if you could have fit a horse into my bed – I never tried.”

“Only rushes, eh?” Scarlet made a sour sound, still working on the fire, the damp wood giving him trouble. “Sounds a hard life, that.”

“I never said it was a hard life, Will. I had my privileges …”

“I’ll bet you did.”

“… but I’ve turned my back on that. This is where I belong, now. Herne called me, I answered.”

“Oh, aye?” Scarlet hit the flint in his hand harder than he needed to, sending sparks flaring. “And how long d’you reckon that’ll last? ‘Til winter sets in and the snows come …”

“I’m not scared of weather, Will.”

“… or until the first time you get yourself caught by Gisburne and his men and your father comes to buy your freedom?”

“Gisburne couldn’t catch a cold.”

Will turned to smile at him sweetly. “Well. I reckon we’ll find out about that, won’t we?”

Robert felt his jaw harden and took a deep breath. The man was baiting him, that was all. He would not rise to it. “Just light the fire, Will.”

“Yes, light the bleedin’ fire, Will.” John strode into the small camp, shaking water out of his shaggy hair. His sodden goatskin jerkin he had left spread over a rock near the fire pit before he had set out hunting. Now he prodded it with a discontented grunt at finding it no drier than before and flung a brace of plump wood grouse down by Scarlet’s boots. “I’m hungry, I am. What’ve you been doing, sleeping in? Waiting for the fairies to come and set the camp for you?”

“He’s been needling Robert,” came the arch reply. “Loudly, and at length.” Tuck waddled his way up the slope, dragging a slopping bucket of water from the nearby brook. The fat friar stopped to adjust his grip on the rope handle and heave himself around a particularly troublesome tree, only for Nasir to appear silently from the forest and take the bucket from him without breaking stride. The Saracen had a pair of ducks hanging from his belt; Nasir always killed and prepared his own meat. Robert wondered if any of the others knew why. Tuck, freed of his burden, signed a blessing at Nasir’s back then levelled a disapproving gaze at Scarlet. “He’s been at it all morning.”

Scarlet did not have the grace to look abashed. He grinned nastily at John. “No fairies here, mate. Only him.” He cocked his head towards Robert. “God knows he’s good for nothing else.”

Tuck sighed, rolling eyes to the heavens. “Forgive him, O Lord. He knows not what he says.”

“You’ll apologise for that.” Robert’s voice had gone hard and cool. “Scathlock. Scarlet.” He knew as soon as he spoke that it had come out wrong. He sounded exactly like what he was – a nobleman, talking down to a peasant soldier who had got himself out of line. He should have shouted instead, thrown insults back like a common trooper, even turned it into a joke and laughed it off: Scarlet would have tolerated any of those things, understood them. It was the lordling he could not stand, the earl’s son. Now Scarlet glared at him, flint and fire forgotten.

“Damned if I will,” he snarled. “And it’s Scarlet. Don’t you forget that. Scarlet!”

“Will,” John said, laying one big hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“Will,” Robert began.

“Shut up!” Scarlet shrugged John’s hand away, surging to his feet and rounding on Robert. “Who the hell do you think you are, coming in here and telling us what to do and how to do it, like you was one of us? You ain’t one of us, my lord of bleedin’ Huntingdon, and like as not you never will be, Herne or no Herne. And d’you know why? ‘Cos you’re one of them. Bloody noblemen, too big for their boots and bleeding the country dry!”

“Herne called me Will, and I answered! Do you think I like it any better than you do? Do you know how easy it would have been to stay in Huntingdon and forget I’d ever heard of the Lord of the Trees?”

“Why didn’t you, then?” Will flung the words like stones. Robert recoiled, throwing up his hands.

“I don’t know! I don’t bloody know!” And, turning, he plunged into the forest.

For a moment, there was silence. Then Tuck breathed what sounded suspiciously like an oath and stamped his way to the still dead fire pit, slapping at Scarlet with one wide sleeve as he passed.

“Couldn’t leave it alone, could you?”

John let out a low growl.

“Aye Will, you idiot, now see what you’ve done.”

“What?” Will spun on him, indignant. “It’s not my fault if he flounces off like a girl in a sulk at the first sign of a proper argument, is it?”

“It is when you’ve been at him for days with my lord of Huntingdon this and my lord of Huntingdon that.” John scrubbed a hand through his beard and glowered at Will in disgust. “It’s hard for him, this is.”

“He’ll come back, won’t he?” Much looked up at John, big-eyed. He had quickly got used to the outlaws being together again, even with Marion gone and Robert of Huntingdon in their midst. This was his family. He’d been lonely at Hathersage, tending John’s small flock of sheep and keeping out of sight of the local lords. Sherwood was better. “Won’t he?”

“Aye lad, he will.” John spared another filthy glance for Will and turned to pick up his staff. “You see to the birds, and get that fire going. I’ll find Robert.”

“No.” The quiet voice surprised them all. Much swung to stare at the Saracen – Nasir seldom spoke above half a dozen words in a day, and Much did not think he’d said even that much since their return from Castle Clun. Much did not think the others had noticed, but there was something different about Nasir since they had come back to Sherwood. The man had always been intimidating in his black leather with his arsenal of blades strapped about him, and distant with his silence and strange ways, but of late he had seemed thoughtful, as if something was weighing on his mind. In the last week, when Much woke in the mornings to find the Saracen gone – morning prayers, he’d told them once, when they’d asked – he had never quite been sure that the man would come back. Now Nasir said, “I will go.”

“Naz?” John gave the dark man a quizzical look. Nasir quirked an eyebrow right back, pausing only to set aside the bird he’d started to pluck. Will laughed, a harsh, disbelieving sound.

“Oh, that’s perfect, that is. You two can sit in the forest together and not say a bloody word – him in a sulk, and you doing the silent thing until the crows come home. How’s that going to help matters?”

“Maybe there’s been enough words,” Tuck suggested, looking at Nasir with consideration in his eyes. “Maybe silence could help.”

“Ye what? Saying nothing, that’s your answer?” Scarlet blinked, puzzled. “Then why go out there at all? Stay here and wait for him to come back. He will, when he gets hungry enough. Those birds John brought back look tasty. And you don’t need two ducks all for yourself now Naz, do you?”

Nasir’s lips twitched a very little. It might have been a smile. “Will,” he said, moving past the others into the forest, “You talk too much.”

*****

When Robert had left the camp, he’d had no idea where he was going. He had no idea now, either; the forest confounded him still, with its twisting game trails and dense thickets. The others moved through this place as if it were no more a mystery than the nearest village common, but Robert still found himself snagged by brambles or tripped by creepers or up to his knees in mud at least twice a day. An earl’s son, he had hunted in forests before, for boar or pigeon, sending beaters on ahead, a spear in his hand or a falcon on his wrist. He had done so from horseback though, a proper nobleman, not stumbling about on foot – and no hunting party of his had ever come so deep into the trees. Not for the first time, Robert of Huntingdon wondered what he had got himself into.

The first time he had come to Sherwood as the Hooded Man, it had been at the behest of a voice that he could not ignore. He had saved the outlaws’ lives that day, freeing them from the trap set by the Sheriff and Sir Guy of Gisburne, but he had not stayed. He had a duty to his family, after all, an obligation – he was his father’s only son, and Huntingdon needed its heir. But then there had come Marion, pale and poised, and his father fawning to Owen of Clun and his lords of the Welsh Marches, men who had more in common with rabid wolves than anything else, and Robert’s path had been set. Even without Herne’s calling, he would not have left Marion in the hands of the lord of Clun, and if that meant that he would spend the rest of his life hunkering under a bush in a forest, disowned, denied and dispossessed, then so be it. He only wished it did not have to be so damned unpleasant.

The sound of running water slowed Robert’s footsteps, and he turned from the narrow deer trail towards the noise of the brook. He came to it on a bend, where the stream had swirled out into a broad pool and the trees grew back from its bank, leaving a clearing of sweet grass in the pale sun. The water was cool and good on his tongue, the grass damp through his rough-spun trews, but Robert paid that no mind. He sat where he was, his bow across his lap, watching the water ripple and swirl its way past, fish rising softly to take the small insects that danced on the surface. He thought of Tuck’s fishing line, and wondered where this place was, if he would be able to find his way back here again. The others probably knew it well, most likely even had a name for it. Robert sighed. He had never felt so much the outsider, or so far from what he knew.

Behind Robert, a twig snapped and there came the distinctive chucka-chucka-chuck of a blackbird’s alarm call. Someone coughed, quietly. Robert did not turn. So, one of the outlaws had followed him. He wondered who. John, most likely – he seemed the one to play the peacemaker. Irritably, Robert called over his shoulder.

“Well, come on then. Say your piece.”

Silence answered him. Turning, Robert saw Nasir standing at the tree line, hands clasped in front of him, waiting. The Saracen lowered his head fractionally as he met the young nobleman’s eyes, not quite a bow. Robert paused, then nodded back. As if that was what he had been waiting for, the other man came forward.

He made no particular effort to be quiet, but Robert thought he had heard prowling cats make more sound than this man did. Watching him was like watching a shadow. Considering what the others had told him about the Saracen, Robert supposed that was no surprise. He did not think that a professional assassin would last long if he were given to making noise.

Nasir arranged himself comfortably on the stream bank, cross legged in the grass. He tipped his head to Robert again, as polite as if he were an envoy in some great lord’s hall.

“As-salamu alaykum.”

Robert blinked. The sound of the words woke faint memories in the back of his mind, memories of his father’s stories of the Holy Lands and the knowledge they had brought back. He spoke uncertainly, his tongue uneasy with the distantly remembered phrase.

“Wa alaykum as-salaam.”

Nasir smiled, very slightly. “That is good. You learned from your …” – a hesitation, as the man seemed to cast about for the right word – “… your teacher?”

“From my father. He crusaded in the …” Realising what he was saying, Robert fell silent. Nasir cocked his head, made a small, placatory gesture with one hand.

“It is a war. Some who fight it are men of honour.”

“And some are not.” Robert thought of some of the tales he had heard, of butchery and betrayal and trains of prisoners put to the sword. The Saracen made that oddly elegant gesture again.

“Some are not,” he concurred, as calmly as if he were commenting on the weather. There was no bitterness in him that Robert could see, no anger or resentment. The young nobleman wondered at that. Perhaps the Saracen was simply very good at wearing his mask. There was something strangely familiar about his restraint.

For a long moment they sat in silence, Nasir watching the stream roll by and Robert watching Nasir. The man seemed as relaxed as a cat in the sun, and just as likely to pounce. He looked as if he had been in the forest all his life, as utterly at home in this place of flowing water and green trees as he had ever been in the desert lands of his birth. Robert felt a moment’s sudden envy.

“It becomes easier.”

The words broke into Robert’s thoughts, making him jump. He frowned at his companion.

“What does?”

Nasir shrugged, a barely perceptible lift of his shoulders. “The woods. The weather.” His dark eyes flicked to Robert’s, faintly amused. “Will.”

“He doesn’t much like me, does he. Will he accept me, do you think?”

Another shrug answered that, and a long pause. Finally, “Inshallah.”

Robert cast the other man a sour glance.

“That’s not very helpful.”

Nasir raised an eyebrow. Robert laughed reluctantly, relenting.

“I know, I know. The will of God. I only wish I knew what that was.”

Nasir said nothing, unsure how to respond to that. Such things were not for men to understand – if Allah willed a thing, so it would be, and that was all. Franks were strange creatures, asking their questions in all the wrong places. He shook his head, waiting.

Robert picked a blade of grass, spun it in his fingers. “Will’s only part of my worries. I’ve dealt with his type before.”

“Will fights,” Nasir offered. “He does not know anything else. But it is …” – he lifted a hand, flickering his fingers in the air to demonstrate – “… it is wind and smoke.”

“It’s not Will. Or not just Will. Or the woods, or the weather, or the fact that I’ve barely eaten in days.” Casting down the now twisted piece of grass, Robert ran a hand through his bright fair hair and pulled a face at the sky. “It’s all of this. Everything. There’s so much to get used to. It’s so different from the life I’ve known.” Robert looked at Nasir, frowning. “Do you understand?”

That won a long cool glance, with a glitter of wry humour in the dark, dark eyes. Robert understood what he was being told without words. Well, of course Nasir understood. This place was different from the life he had known, too – different land, different language, different culture. Robert felt faintly foolish, realising that. And here he was, lamenting the loss of feather pillows and servants who did his bidding. Even so, he pressed on.

“It’s not just the castle, or being comfortable at night. It’s … it’s knowing where you fit in the world. Robert of Huntingdon is easy – people respect him, even if only for who his father is. Robert of Sherwood, now … I don’t even know who he is.”

For a long while, Nasir did not react. Then, when Robert had nearly given up hope that he would speak at all, the Saracen tilted his head a little to one side and said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “He is you.”

“I know, but …”

“No, listen. I will tell you a tale.” That cut Robert dead. Nasir was notoriously reticent; the young nobleman suspected that the Saracen had used more words already today than he usually would in a week. Part of him wondered if the man used a rationing system: certainly his habitual silence was not due now to a lack of English. His words were oddly accented perhaps, but they came easily enough.

“In Aleppo, there is a house with cool rooms, and a wide courtyard with suncloth for shade, and a fine fountain, and orange trees that blossom in the spring, and jasmine that sweetens the air at night. There are servants to cook and to bring cool drinks, packed in crushed snow brought down from the mountains of Syria. Wealthy and powerful men come there, to break bread and to honour one another with their company. There is a bath house, and a rooftop garden where bright birds please the eye. There were other houses, other places, but Aleppo was always my favourite. My father, may Allah the Merciful forgive and keep him and grant him peace, held wide estates, you see.”

“You … your father?” Robert looked hard at Nasir, feeling as if some odd veil had suddenly dropped from his eyes. “You’re noble born.”

“Yes.” A small smile. “A minor son of a very great man.”

Robert nodded slowly. The restraint, the courtier’s manners, the cool, calm mask and the elegant killer’s hands … ah, of course it had seemed familiar. It was nobility that did that, an ingrained education of how to act, what to say, what to hide. He should have known sooner, he supposed. After all, he had suffered that education too.

“In my father’s house, I was Malik Kamal,” the Saracen went on, almost absently. “Then, in my Brotherhood, Nasir. Now here, and John calls me Naz as if I were a child and cannot say my full name no matter how often I repeat it.” Another glitter of amusement went with that. “But I am still who I am. And all of this,” he added, taking in the whole of the forest and Nottingham and everyone in it with the barest twitch of one hand, “It gets easier, if you remember that.”

Well. Robert supposed that it would. He thought of the Saracen steadfastly preparing his own food to avoid compromising his beliefs, of how he slipped away during the day to observe his ritual prayers, holding fast to what he knew and what made him who he was, even at cost to himself. Robert thought he might understand that. Anything would get easier, once one had decided what was important. It was only the first chosing that was hard.

The morning had warmed as they spoke by the stream, the sun gaining heat as it climbed. Now the silence came back, gentle and companionable. Robert felt the morning’s conflict ease from his bones, leaving him feeling more sure of himself, and less like a stag caught in a thicket while the hounds closed in. He could do this thing. Herne’s Son or Huntingdon, it made no difference: he knew that now. Nasir made no move to leave, only sat where he was in the damp grass and let his eyes close, enjoying the sun on his face. Robert watched him for a moment, then pushed himself to his feet and tapped the other man lightly on the shoulder. Nasir looked up at him, expectant.

“Come on. Let’s get back, before John eats everything in sight.” Extending a hand, the young nobleman pulled the Saracen to his feet. Nasir inclined his head in thanks. Robert smiled.

“Shokrun,” he ventured tentatively. “Shokrun gis … jaz …”

“Jazeelan.” Nasir made another tiny bow. “Al’afw. You are welcome.”

“Tell me, Nasir,” Robert said as he shouldered his bow and moved to the edge of the clearing. “What became of the house in Aleppo?”

There was a long pause, but Robert was used to that now. At last Nasir’s quiet voice came, sounding unconcerned.

“When my father, may Allah the Forgiving show him grace, died, the house in Aleppo came to me. I own it still, if it stands. I should like to see it again one day, insha’Allah.”

Robert smiled at that, and reached out to clap Nasir’s shoulder.

“One day, I hope you will. Inshallah.”

Ros fic: Benedictio Novi Militis

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:21:40 GMT

Sir Guy of Gisburne is, of course, the villain of the piece. Or one of the villains, at least. But he's also a tragically conflicted young man with a dodgy moral compass and a dark secret ... and a very pretty pout.

This is for him.

Title: Benedictio Novi Militis
Rating: M for mature audiences. I guess.
Summary: Guy's vigil leaves him nowhere to hide.
Warnings: incest and non-con inferred.

"Benedictio novi militis."

Guy had never been one for churches. He was a soldier after all, a man of action, not of contemplation and prayer – and besides, too much thinking gave him a headache. No, skulking about in shadowed naves and silent copy rooms was no way for a man to spend his life. It would mean spending too much time on one’s knees, for a start. And, Guy considered, thinking of the cloistered life of most men of the cloth, a great deal less by way of diversion.

It was after midnight, and Guy was alone. A pair of priests had wandered in some time ago, mumbling some droning Te Deum and renewing the candles that burned by the altar before they shuffled away. Quite possibly that had been for his benefit; Guy did not know or particularly care. He had been in this place since sundown, and he was tired and hungry and his back was starting to ache from all this piousness. It would, Guy had long since decided, be a good thing when all of this was over.

The young man was halfway convinced that the last time he had spent so many hours in God’s house had been the day of his own baptism: he had no memory of that event himself, but he’d been told it had been lengthy, and that he had startled the priest with the strength of his squalling. The day of King Richard’s coronation had been a day of churches and priests as well, but at least then there had been the colour and pageantry of the court to distract him and all the wonders of London to look forward to once the rites were done. Right now Guy had nothing to occupy his mind but his own thoughts, and a mouldering chapel in a hamlet outside of Rouen was hardly a match for Bankside on a fine day. The whores of Bankside were legendary, and though he’d been only a boy on that long ago visit and too young for the tawdry pleasures on offer, his father had taken no great care to see his son sheltered from the sights. Sir Edmund of Gisburne had had other concerns than the moral welfare of his scapegrace son.

With a sigh, Guy shifted uncomfortably against the unforgiving chill of the cold stone floor and shook his head, trying to dismiss thoughts of Bankside and its doxies and his father’s

(bitch slut knows what’s good for her, eh lads?)

dealings with them. It seemed improper, somehow. On the altar before him, a plain cross stood in the light of a pair of tallow candles. Even the air smelled holy and judgemental. This was not a place for impure thoughts.

Or then again, perhaps it was. Wasn’t that the point of this vigil business, after all? To purify oneself, to come to terms with one’s demons and pass them by in the night? Guy frowned, then scowled at the cross and its attendant candles and hoisted himself to his feet. Bad enough he had to spend the night in some draughty chapel, but he was damned if he’d do all of it on his knees.

There had been an easier way to do this. Men were knighted on the field all the time, dealt the dubbing blow by their liege lords for some feat of valour or another – or even for doing nothing much at all, as far as Guy could tell. He had expected that it would be that way for him, that he would save Sir Geoffrey from an offside blow – the man always did his drop his shield when he thrust – or storm a gatehouse or some such, and the old man would hand him his title. He’d worked hard enough for it, after all: seven years as a page in the Earl of Gloucester’s household, and another seven playing squire to old Sir Geoffrey, one of the Earl’s many cousins, and three of those years going from one French battlefield to another to scrap over fishing ponds and grazing lands for lords who didn’t much care either way. Countless hours scouring at his lord’s chain mail, countless more oiling and sharpening the man’s sword, tending the man’s horses, even cleaning his tack; months of toil in the yards being buffeted senseless by hard faced men with wooden swords, and more falls to the quintain than he could remember … oh yes, he had worked. And after all of that, old Sir Geoffrey had been overtaken by a sudden surge of piety and had insisted that his squire receive the Church’s blessing on his knighthood, and so Guy found himself here, in an ill fitting white shift and a painfully inadequate red cloak, watching the candles burn down and waiting for the dawn.

Well. He had spent sleepless nights before, and in less civilised conditions than these. The last time he had seen in the dawn, he had spent the night crouching under a hedge while the rain came down, watching a village burn and listening to the men around him taking their pleasure of the women they had caught. There had been no warm wenches for him, though. He had told himself that was because he preferred his bedmates more willing and less crawling with vermin, but the truth was that the grunting and weeping and harsh laughter had reminded him of his father,

(brat! i’ll teach you to mock me!)

and he could not touch a woman after that.

In any case, he had lasted out the night at his post, and none the worse for wear once one got past the mud and soot and chill and the ravenous hunger that had seen him devour his ration of flat bread and stew and go looking for more. He would last out this night too, and in better sorts. He was clean and dry, for one thing. He had come to this vigil freshly bathed and scented, his blond hair catching gold in the candles’ gleam and a single silver signet ring – his own sign, a couchant wolf, purchased with coin he had set carefully aside – glittering on one elegant, long-fingered hand. In spite of the humble and rather plain vestments he wore, young Guy looked every inch the nobleman. He took a certain satisfaction from that. It was not, of course, that he was a man vain of his appearance, but he could hardly have come before God looking like something that had been dragged backwards out of a ditch.

So a vigil it was, with a vow and a blessing to follow, and then he would be a knight. The young man went over the oath he would swear on the morrow, repeating the words silently in his head for the dozenth time since his long night had started. To serve God and the king, to defend the weak, to champion the helpless … and was it something about widows and orphans? Guy snorted in disgust and gave a dismissive flick of his hand. What did he care for widows and orphans? Still, if it would bring him his spurs, he would swear it. The alternative did not bear thinking about. To refuse, to be sent crawling back to his father’s

(tossed you out, did he, boy? i should do the same. worthless cur. worthless as the bitch that whelped you)

fiefdom in disgrace and be judged by Sir Edmund’s cold, accusing gaze … ah, Guy would rather have chewed off his own leg than face that. No, a knighthood would give him a place in the world that did not depend on his father’s approval; it would give him status, power, means to make himself free. A titled knight could seek employ in any lord’s household, or hire out his service to a cause, or even make his fortune in the tourneys that ran up and down the country. A knight, Guy knew, was worth

(worthless cur!)

something.

Or perhaps that was not true. Perhaps there were those so unworthy that no title could make them other than what they were. Perhaps there were sins from which a soul could not be shriven, shames that cut too deep to mend. That thought, that Guy had been trying to avoid all night, rose unbidden and would not be driven down. Instead, it coiled itself about inside his head, letting his mind worrying at it the way that a man’s tongue might worry at a loose tooth, perversely fascinated by the pain and imperfection. Guy was no fool; he knew

(worthless, ungrateful brat)

what he was. His father, God rot him, had seen to that. He came to his vigil tainted, and no blessing of Church or sanction of state would change that.

No one else knew, of course. Edmund of Gisburne had made sure of that – for his own sake, not for Guy’s. For the one thing, Edmund was not a man who could have born to be known as a cuckold: it had been his honour he was defending by raising his wife’s bastard as his own, not his misbegotten son’s. For the other … Guy shuddered inwardly and drew himself away

(take it like a man, Guy)

from that. He did not want to think about the other.

Drawing a deep breath, the young man muttered a low curse under his breath and set to pacing. It didn’t matter. No one knew. Besides, any man of training could become a knight, who was free and of age and who fulfilled the required conditions of birth. Two from three were not the worst odds in the world. Guy grunted, shooting a sour look at the altar and its silent, prayerful cross. Perhaps he lacked legitimacy, but that didn’t mean he was not a noble son of Normandy – his true father could have been a prince of the realm, for all he knew. His mother may have been a faithless slut who had lied to him and to her husband both, but she had been a well-born slut: she had her standards. She would not have dallied with some unwashed kitchen boy. And in any case, Edmund had acknowledged him, and that alone served to gentle his condition. The Church would just have to be satisfied with that.

And the other, Guy? What will the Church think of the other? Guy flinched. In his mind, Edmund’s voice was as clear as if the man was standing at his shoulder, and not festering in his long slow death in his manor house in England, with his twisted arm and sagging face and hard, cold anger. The voice in Guy’s head was unmistakably his, the tone harsh and mocking as always. I took the Cross, boy. I’ve been blessed at the Holy Sepulchre. There’s no stain on my soul. But you … you’ve been stained since birth, and none of my doing. What’s one more sin, to that?

“Not my sin,” Guy whispered in the dark. God’s Blood, this was all he needed – now not only was he hearing voices, he was talking back to them. His teeth set in a snarl all the same, biting off each word. “Not. My. Sin.”

You carry it. Hers and mine. God sees what you are, boy. Bastard born, catamite … how can you ever be anything noble? Worthless

(take it boy, quiet if you know what’s good for you)

cur.

“No. You came to … you forced …” Guy snapped his jaw shut so hard he nearly bit his own tongue. He would not admit this thing here, he would not. His hands ached. He looked at them in dull surprise. He had not even known that he was clenching them.

You wanted it. Don’t pretend you didn’t. In Guy’s head, the hated voice laughed. Wanted your father to love you.

And there it was. Truth and lie both tangled up together, like love and hate were tangled, like they had been for all of Guy’s life until he wasn’t sure he knew one from the other. Wasn’t sure if he had ever known. Guy felt his heart kick and, horribly, tears prickling behind his eyes. He had cried then too, with his face pressed into the pillow and his father sweating and grunting over him in the dark. He swallowed the pain down, made his face hard. “Not like that. I wanted … not that.”

We don’t always get what we want, boy. Look at me. I wanted a fine son … and I got you. Tainted, worthless bastard. Should have drowned you at birth, like a kitten. And now you think you’re worthy of a knighthood. God will smite you for aspiring to this. You’ll see.

Pain came with that, like a whiplash out of nowhere, but anger came with it. For a moment Guy froze, lips skinned back from his teeth and eyes blank and bitter in the fading candlelight, and then he lurched forward. His long legs covered the distance to the chapel’s small alter in three strides; he stared hard at the plain gilt cross. There was no singing of saints, no howling of demons. With a heartfelt curse, Guy reached out and laid the flat of one bastard-born, tainted hand on the face of the cross.

Nothing happened. No stench of sulphur, no lightning from the heavens. It was only an ordinary cross on an ordinary altar in an ordinary village church. It did not hate him. It did not, so far as Guy could tell, think anything much of him at all.

Two years ago, when Guy had been nineteen, Sir Edmund of Gisburne had suffered an apoplexy that had left the right side of his body twisted and useless and robbed him of speech and dignity. Guy remembered the last time he had seen the man, propped up in his chair with one eye glaring brightly and the other drooping and drool running down his chin. He had not felt pity then, and had been ashamed at the lack. Love and hate, duty and honour. It should not have been so hard to tell which was which. Now Guy wished the old man dead with all his heart, and knelt in sincere prayer before the chapel’s modest altar.

“Holy Father, in your eyes be all my sins forgiven, now and in days to come.”

It would be dawn soon, and he would be ready when they came for him. His soul might not be pure, but the Church preached forgiveness. A man could only try.

Ros fic: Strange and Unusual

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:04:59 GMT

Another RoS fic. This is a companion piece to What Dreams May Come - Will's response to the group's new arrival.

Title: Strange and Unusual
Rating: Mostly harmless.
Summary: Will doesn't like strangers.

Strange and Unusual

He was an odd one, this newcomer. Will did not begin to trust him. Not that there was anything unusual in that, the one-time soldier was prepared to admit; he didn’t trust much of anything, these days. This man, though – ah, this man was all kinds of strange. He was not one of them – not a labourer in fields or a shepherd or thatcher or fletcher or wainwright, not a serf or a villein who had lived all his life under the Norman heel. Hell’s teeth, he was not even English!

Nothing about him was right, in Will’s simple estimation. He was too silent, too watchful, and too much given to slipping off on his own. His weapons, from which he was seldom parted, were strange as well; elegantly curving blades, quick bright knives as sharp as a serpent’s fang, and that short light bow that looked like it should snap like a twig but had matched their good English longbows shot for shot. His name was a nightmare, his language was impossible – he’d barely said three words in it, but even that little had sounded like someone drowning a cat in a tub of honey – and from what Will could tell, he would touch neither ale nor wine. That, as far as Will was concerned, was downright unnatural.

John was unconcerned, even by the untouched wine. “Aye, well, means more for the rest of us, doesn’t it?” he’d rumbled, when Will had pointed it out. Will had rolled his eyes at that, impatient that John had missed the point.

“Yes, but don’t you think it’s strange?” He had hoisted the ale jar and taken a healthy swig, shooting the dark stranger a mistrustful glance. “‘T’ain’t right, an’ that’s God’s truth.”

“Moderation, Will.” Tuck had managed to sound smug even as he wrested the jug from Will’s hand and took a mouthful of his own. “Maybe you should try it.”

John had laughed. “Look, if it bothers you that much, I’ll drink his share. Naz won’t mind.” And then, ignoring Will’s frantic shushing gestures, the great lummox had turned and called over his shoulder, “Will you, Naz?”

The stranger – a Saracen, though Will was fairly sure that someone had told him that Saracens were supposed to have horns and tails and eat unbabtized babies for breakfast, and so far as he could tell this man preferred to break his fast on bread and cheese – had only glanced up from oiling one of his many blades, lifted an eyebrow at the ale jar and then dismissed them all with a flick of his dark eyes.

That had been three nights ago. Will had had nothing to do with the Saracen since then. It was not difficult to avoid him; the man seemed to spend half his time up one tree or another, vanishing off into the forest with nary a word. He rarely ate with them, and seemed to pay his weapons more mind than the people around him. If he had seemed only a little less sure of himself, Will would have been inclined to be kinder, to give the newcomer the benefit of the doubt. As it was, the man made his hackles rise. Then, this evening, with the light slanting golden through the trees, the Saracen had strode into camp with a yearling buck slung over his shoulders, the carcass already half dressed. He had lowered it neatly to the ground and quickly cut away a portion of meat from the beast’s haunch before getting back to his feet and looking at Tuck.

“For you,” he’d said, indicating the carcass with a tap of one booted foot. Then he’d left.

Robin blinked after him, surprised, then looked back to the deer. “Well, at least we know he can hunt.”

“Huh,” Will grunted sourly. He glared at the deer as if it might turn to poison while he watched. “That’s about all we know.”

Robin sighed, his mouth forming a hard line. “Give over, Will.”

“Well, it’s true. All we know is he were the Baron’s man, an’ now he ain’t. Why’s he even here?”

“He’s here because he chooses to be,” Robin answered, in that pompous, preachy voice that made Will want to hit something. “He was the Baron’s slave, Will. You think he doesn’t know what injustice is?”

Will scowled and scuffed his boots in the dirt. “No. I’m just saying, is all. We don’t know him. I’m just saying.” Then, rounding on Tuck, “Well, are you going to stew it or roast it or what? I could do with a nice bit o’ stew.”

“You, Scarlet,” Tuck announced, as he settled in with a small knife and a cooking pot, “are enough to turn a saint to drink. Bring me a drop of that wine we took from our merchant friend, will you?”

“That merchant weren’t our friend,” Will pointed out with a feral grin. “And you ain’t no saint.” But he brought the wine all the same.

Later, with a belly full of rich stew and the fire burning low beside him, Will had more time to think. Yes, the Saracen had been in bond to that snake de Belleme, but that did not do anything to set Will’s mind at ease. He had seen the man wield both bow and blades, and he knew enough about fighting to know mastery when he saw it. In fact, when a man could handle weaponry the way that the Saracen did, as natural and sure as breathing, keeping him bound would be no simple thing. And it was not as if Naz …? Nasir …? Nasir. It wasn’t as if Nasir had been in hobbles, or marked with symbols of enchantment like John. He’d had access to his weapons, to a horse of better quality than anything Will had ever handled, to armour and livery and a degree of freedom. Slave? If the Saracen had been a slave, what had bound him had been something stronger and more subtle than simply chains.

Not, Will could concede, that that was impossible. A man could be chained by many things, not only links of iron. Memories, honour, thoughts of the past and hopes for the future ... after all, were those things not what bound all of them now, to Robin and this idealistic nonsense of his, to the forest and whatever strange spirits lived in it?

So then, perhaps the Saracen had been a slave. And perhaps he was as glad to see the Baron taken down to meet his own personal devil as the next man. That did not mean that Will had to like him. The others who’d joined them, who’d come to the band after their escape from Nottingham and the Sheriff, they had been men Will could understand. Not relate to, perhaps – they’d been decent enough, but there had been no fire in them, no spark of fury like his own, or of passion like Robin’s, or of justice like John’s – but they’d at least been proper Englishmen. And they’d died well, as deaths went. The others – Marion, Much, John – didn’t understand that, didn’t seem to know that there were good ways for a man to die … in fact, they had seemed surprised that anyone could die at all. Will had spent too many years a soldier to be surprised by that, and seen too many deaths not to recognise that some were better than others.

Nasir understood those things. Will realised that suddenly, without thought. He had seen it in the man’s eyes at Castle de Belleme, in the moment that the outlaws had levelled their weapons at the Saracen and he had faced them with his blades down and his head high: this was a man who knew what death was, and who was ready to face it on his own terms. In spite of himself, Will found he could respect that. The man was a warrior, that much was clear. A soldier, like Will himself was a soldier. Well, they had that much in common, at least.

A faint scraping and rustle from the far side of the camp drew Will’s attention. It was the Saracen returning. He did not come forward to share the fire’s warmth, showed no interest in the good smells wafting from the still warm stew. Instead, he set his swords – why in all hells would a man need two swords? – in their odd harness within easy reach and crouched on his heels, his back against a tree as he surveyed the others, already sleeping quietly. Will smiled in the dark. It was not an entirely pleasant expression.

“Oy, Naz.”

A quick glitter of eyes was his answer. Will’s smile widened. Quiet one, wasn’t he? Well, that was just fine.

“You take first watch.”

There was no response to that, and Will rolled over without waiting to see what the other man did. After all, if Nasir was a soldier too, he would appreciate the need to keep sentry. That, at least, was a good thing. Will was tired of doing all the work around here.

*****

Robin might have been an idealistic young fool, Will thought two days later, but there were also times when he was too big for his own boots. Right now was one of them. At sword practice, Will could still set the lad down a notch or two, in spite of the fancy blade he’d found for himself – but when it came to the bow, Robin was a right show off. After he’d dropped the swinging hide target three times in a row by shooting through the twine Much had used to anchor it, John had chased him off with his staff, threatening to rearrange his skull. Will could still hear the clacking of wood on wood and the peels of laughter from beyond the clearing, where Robin defended himself from John’s revenge with Much cheering them both on.

“That’s it, John,” he muttered happily to himself. “You show ‘im.”

Beside him, Will heard the hiss and snap of a bowstring being released, and looked automatically toward the now repaired target. A black-fletched arrow struck it with a dull thud, quivering in the centre. Nasir shot nearly as well as Robin did – the archery contest had shown that, if anyone doubted it – but when he shot it was with the air of a man seeing to business, not of a boy bragging to his friends. Now the Saracen lowered his bow with a faint frown and tilted it slightly, examining the tip of one limb.

Will eyed the man’s bow. It looked for all the world as if it should break at the first strain, put together the way it was. It was made of layers, dark wood and light and something else that might have been bone or horn, and shaped in a series of smooth, switch-back curves. Will had fought all over France, and he’d never seen its like. It seemed to work well enough, though. There was no arguing with that.

Suddenly Will became aware of dark eyes watching him. He glanced up and found Nasir’s unreadable gaze on him. At once, his previous good humour faded; a scowl began to steal over his face. Then, to Will’s surprise, the Saracen tipped his bow toward him.

“You.”

“Me?” Will frowned, unsure. “Me what?”

Nasir paused, then set the bow more firmly in Will’s hand. “You … try.”

The Saracen’s English was rudimentary at best, his accent doing odd things to words he barely knew, but Will understood enough. He took the bow and hefted it, feeling the way it sat light and balanced in his hands. His brows shot up in approval.

“Nice,” he said. Carefully, he raised the bow and drew back the string, startled at the weight of the draw. He released slowly, forearm burning as he brought the bow to rest. “Strong for a little thing, ain’t it?”

Nasir cocked his head, then drew one of his arrows – shorter than the great yard shafts Will was used to, to match the smaller bow – and held it out wordlessly. Will took it. The Saracen indicated the target. There was no hint of challenge about him; Will would do it or he wouldn’t, Nasir’s stance seemed to say, and it would not matter much either way. Will shrugged. “Why not.”

The bow drew smooth and sure, far more stable in his hand than Will was used to. He anchored his draw, sighted and released … and watched the arrow spin harmlessly to one side. His eyes shot to Nasir, ready to snarl something defensive about the strange cant of the weapon, but the Saracen only shrugged and offered another arrow. This time it found the target, sinking in half the length of the shaft.

“Aye, it’s not bad, for what it is.” Will handed the bow back, then gestured at the sinuous limbs. “Why’s it shaped like that, then?”

Nasir blinked and frowned. “Stronger,” he managed. “Scythian. From …” he cast about for the right word. “…husaan, cheval, hippos … horse?”

Well, that made no sense. Either the man had just said the bow was made from horse bones, or that it was made for use on horseback, and either sounded wrong to Will. No one could manage a thing like that from horseback. All the same he smiled and nodded, giving the Saracen a slap on the shoulder. “Horses, eh? And here I had you pegged as an infantry man.”

Nasir, who could in fact wield his recurved Scythian bow with deadly accuracy from the back of a galloping horse and no matter how unheard of that might be to an ignorant English barbarian, nodded back calmly and went to find his wayward arrow.

*****

It still didn’t mean Will had to trust him, of course. So the man was a fellow soldier, a professional in a world of amateurs, and so he knew a thing or two about weaponry. That was useful, given that Robin, who could barely be relied upon not to cut himself with his own sword, seemed to be taking this whole protector of the people lark more seriously than Will had expected; if they were going to go looking for trouble, it was good to know they’d have an even chance of fighting their way out. John was a fair hand with the staff, of course, and Tuck was quicker than his bulk let on, but Will had always preferred to put his faith in a decent length of steel.

It was a warm day and the outlaws were taking their ease near a newly discovered fishing hole after a morning spent dodging foresters near the Newark road. Tuck, who fancied a fish supper, had rigged a crude line and had it balanced between his toes as he lay back on the bank, snoring softly while he waited for a bite. John and Robin were arguing playfully over the morning’s events while Marion dandled her feet in the stream a little further along, humming a quiet tune that seemed to blend perfectly into the green and gold of the forest. Listening to her, Will found that he could easily have dropped off to sleep, soothed by the dappled sun and the soft sound of her music. Instead he propped his back against a young tree and his feet against a smooth rock and brought out his dagger to spin in idle fingers while he watched the others.

Nasir, who had revealed a new bag of tricks this morning – the man could, it seemed, track a butterfly by its bloody shadow if he wanted to, and hadn’t that frightened the daylights out of the foresters when they had realised that the hunters had become the hunted – had set his twin swords aside to oil the harness in which he carried them. Much, tiring of flicking small stones towards Tuck for the pleasure of seeing him twitch, gazed at the finely curved blades, wide eyed. One hand crept out, touching the nearest hilt and darting quickly away as if burned. Nasir’s eyes flicked sideways, but he said nothing. Taking courage, Much reached out again and picked up the sword.

Will said, “Much.” Swinging about with a wide smile, the boy brandished the blade with an awkward flourish that came close to slicing off his own ear. Will surprised himself with a laugh. “Put that bloody thing down.”

Obediently, Much lowered the sword, turning back to Nasir and extending the weapon blade first. “Here Naz. Sorry. I should’ve …”

The boy cut off with a yelp as the Saracen’s second blade hissed out and tapped down the sword he held. At the sound of steel, Robin’s head came up sharply.

“Nasir!”

The Saracen rose gracefully to his feet, expression calm and steady. He did not take his eyes from Much, or lower his sword, but neither did he attack. Much looked uncertain. Robin started to his feet, voice urgent.

“Nasir, what …”

“No, Robin, it’s all right.” Will recognised what he was seeing. There was no danger in Nasir’s stance, only a quiet dignity that had its own intent. “It’s a lesson, is all. I had an officer once, always said no man should level a blade unless he means to use it.” He paused, looked consideringly at the dark foreigner. “I think Much could have worse teachers, if he wants to know how to use a sword.” To Much, he said, “Well, go on, you daft lump. He’s waiting.”

Much swung about worriedly, looking from Nasir to Robin to Will and back again. “But … but … what’s he want?” the boy said, almost pleading. He pushed the blade towards Nasir again, only to have it batted away. “Naz, please. Take it back.”

“He could if he wanted to, don’t fret none over that,” Will pointed out with a nasty grin. “But you did draw steel on him, Much. Now he wants to see you use it.”

“Oh.” Much looked stricken. “But … I don’t know how.”

Nasir shifted slightly, opening his defence, gesturing the boy forward. Will nodded.

“There you go. He’ll teach you.”

The lesson was short, but to the point. After having had the sword flicked out of his hand three times, Much learned to hold it correctly, and how to stand so that he could move in and out as Nasir directed. The boy finished with a smile that lit up his whole face, whooping proudly to his foster brother as Nasir reclaimed his weapons and put the twin swords away. “Did you see, Robin? Did you see? I used a sword! Just like a knight, Robin! Sir Much, that’s me!”

“Sir Much.” Will snorted good naturedly and looked to Nasir. The man was smiling a little to himself, watching young Much with amusement. He caught sight of Will’s eyes on him and inclined his head in a small bow of acknowledgement. Will nodded back. “Yeah,” he murmured to himself. “You’re all right, you are.”

*****

The sound of blades clashing rang across the small forest campsite. Steel whirled and darted, singing around the two men who fought on the open ground among the trees. The others gathered about, cheering them on.

“Come on Will, don’t let him push you!”

“Ah, he’s toying with him, look …”

“Teach ‘im, Naz! Needs a few lessons, that one does.”

Will ducked and scrambled back from one particularly quick surge. Nasir moved like a cat, fast and balanced, his twin blades scything a net of steel about him, reaching out almost effortlessly to knock Will’s heavier sword aside. Panting, Will flung himself behind a convenient tree and came back swinging, roaring happily. Nasir stepped neatly to one side and let him spin past. The Saracen was all control and efficiency compared to Will’s ruthless energy, silence to Will’s sputtered shouts and curses, and when he laid Will’s guard open for the second time running and tapped one of those short, sharp blades – scimitars, he called them – against Will’s stomach with a knowing smile in his dark eyes, Will found he didn’t mind. They’d been doing this every evening for a week, and Will had not won a match yet. Of course, there was always tomorrow.

Nasir stepped back and gave Will a small bow, acknowledging the effort. Will, who had never bowed in his life, laughed and caught the waterskin that John tossed at him. The Saracen was still a strange one, an oddity with his quiet ways and deadly skills, his name was still a nightmare

(Nasir Malik Kh … K … what?)

and his language was still impossible, he still would not touch wine or ale or mead and the expression of disgust on his face when John had offered him a slice of pork from the boar they’d caught had been priceless, but Will supposed he could live with all of that. He grinned into the Saracen’s face, holding out the waterskin for his friend to take it. Nasir did, neat handed as ever, and hesitated only slightly before taking a drink. Will laughed and punched him lightly on the shoulder as he made his way back towards the fire and the pot that Tuck had simmering over it.

“Aye, Naz. You’re all right, you are.”

RoS fic: Going Home Part 2

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:35:52 GMT

Going Home 2/2

PG for profanity.

Lincoln was no better than Nasir had expected, if not precisely any worse. The streets were narrow and cramped, the houses and stores seeming to lean in overhead, reducing the sky to a tapering line of grey. It had been raining on and off all day.

The guards on the town gates – slovenly uninterested men who reeked of ale and old sweat – had eyed the small party dubiously as they entered, but done little else. Perhaps de Talmont’s claim to be a merchant visiting for the wool market, accompanied by his family and their armed servant for the road, had convinced them. In any case, the guards had not impeded their passing, nor asked Nasir to surrender his weapons while inside the city walls. That, Nasir considered, was either dreadfully careless or very wise.

Inside the city, de Talmont led the way, coming after several twists and turns – and was it Nasir’s imagination, or were there whores on every street? – to the Jewry’s gates. Like a town within a town, Lincoln’s Jewish quarter was walled off; kept apart from the world without. The main gates were closed, with only a small portal left open for the comings and goings of the citizens of this place. Pausing, de Talmont glanced at Nasir.

“You need not accompany us further, if you’d prefer not to. My brother’s house is close now, and we will be safe beyond this gate.”

Nasir shook his head. “I was charged to see you to safety. Safety is not an old man and children wandering in the street.” Beneath his jerkin, his torn shoulder throbbed and burned. “Go ahead.”

For a moment de Talmont only looked at him with that odd, quiet smile, and Nasir braced himself for another flurry of questions and well meaning admonishments. But then the old man dipped his head and took the donkey’s halter, clicking his tongue to urge it forward as they passed through the gate.

The streets inside the Jewry were much as the streets outside, if a little cleaner and less crowded, and not so seething with whores. Children played in a cluster in the mouth of an alleyway, chasing a spinning top with rope whips. A pair of women hurried past, loaded with burdens from the market – a jar of oil, a lamb leg swathed in sacking. A man in fine if understated robes moved by, accompanied by two fellows with stout sticks. There were eyes everywhere, watching suspiciously, wary of strangers in this place where strangers could so often mean trouble, but suspicion turned easily enough into smiles when they recognised their own.

De Talmont’s brother’s house was large, standing in a good street close by the synagogue, with a solid door and a slate tile roof. A porter opened at de Talmont’s knocking, a heavy man with a hard face. But he smiled at the old man and his gathered children, and pushed the door wide.

“Master Joshua! It’s a right glad sight to see you! We heard about that nastiness down there in Nottingham, and Master Isaac’s been all a-fret over whether you got caught up in it. But here you are, safe and sound. I’ll send Daniel to tell the master you’re here, and to fetch a lad to take your donkey around the back. Come inside, come inside.”

The children, wide-eyed and weary, let themselves be ushered into the house. De Talmont and Sarah hesitated on the threshold. Exchanging glances, the two of them turned to Nasir, both beginning to speak at once.

“You’re welcome to …”

“Thank you so much for …”

Nasir silenced them both with a small gesture and a courtly bow. “No thanks are needed. I was given a duty; I have discharged it. It was my honour to do so.”

“You should stay,” Sarah said quickly, as if worried someone would stop her. “At least until morning. Your arm …”

“… is of no concern. Your hospitality is appreciated, but I will not stay.” Nasir handed off the donkey’s halter rope to the lurking servant boy who had slunk out from the shadows of the narrow alley that ran beside the house and was staring at him as if he were some black ifrit from a storyteller’s tale. “It is best I return to the forest. I am … too easily noticed, here.”

De Talmont nodded. “Aristotle says that it is misfortune that shows a man his friends from his enemies. You have been a friend to my family. We will not forget.”

“Aristotle was fond of words, I think.” Nasir smiled. It had been good to talk with someone who even knew who Aristotle was, he supposed. He had not realised how much he had missed those things. The closest Will would come to discussing the philosophy of the old Greeks was debating whether a man would rather lose his left ear or his right. To de Talmont and his daughter, he bowed again. “Ma’a salama.”

“And peace go with you too, my friend.”

Leaving Lincoln was even easier than getting in. The men on the gates watched only who entered. They didn’t give a fig who went the other way. Nasir thought it likely that they had not seen him at all.

Dusk was drawing down, casting the already grey evening into deeper tones of blue and shadow. Nasir did not go far. His shoulder was aching in a way he didn’t like, though it was too dark to see if the wound had discoloured, and he was tired and worn. It was not difficult for one man alone to find a place to sleep, especially if he did not much care for comfort beyond being warm and out of the rain. A haystack drying in an open field was a welcome shelter. It was scratchy, and chaff worked into Nasir’s clothes and made him itch and sneeze, but it was comfortable enough.

He pushed on early the next morning, after shaking the hay out of his shirt and the dust out of his hair. The state of his shoulder in the morning light caused some concern; the wounds seemed angry, deep purple bruises shot through with dark red lines, and hot to the touch. The day was as grey and fitful as the one before; the rain seemed to chill him to the bone.

By mid-morning, Nasir knew he was in trouble. His mouth was as dry as if he’d run three miles in the desert sun instead of trudging in the English rain, and he felt flushed and weary in spite of the cool damp of the day and the easy pace of his travel. Bite wounds, he knew, were prone to turning bad, poisons seeping in regardless of the wine wash and herbal tinctures. He cursed inwardly. A wound fever now was the last thing he needed.

It did not take much thought. There were not, after all, many options to consider. He could hole up out here like an animal in its den and wait for things to take their course; he could push on to Sherwood and hope that he didn’t half kill himself in the process; or he could go back to Lincoln and trust that de Talmont would be as good as his word. Sherwood was days away, he had no intention of shivering like an animal in ditch, and Lincoln was but a handful of hours back the way he had come. It was, really, no decision at all.

There had been many times in his life that Nasir had been thankful for his training. Making his way through Lincoln to de Talmont’s brother’s house was one of those times; had he not been taught so painstakingly to observe, to see, to understand his surroundings, he would never have found his way back. He did his best, too, to remain unnoticed, unobtrusive. He was not sure how far he succeeded, but no one challenged him. Nasir was rather glad of that. He did not feel up to a skirmish right now. His head was increasingly light, and he wanted to sleep for a week.

Nasir’s unchallenged progress through Lincoln ended rather abrubtly at de Talmont’s door. In answer to his knocking, the same porter who had answered yesterday slid open the small trap window. The man was not smiling now: he looked harsh and disapproving. He peered at Nasir unhappily.

“You. Go away. We don’t want your sort here.”

“Your pardon,” Nasir said, striving for patience. His tongue didn’t want to remember Hebrew at the moment: he stumbled over his words. “A word with your master, if you please?”

“Master don’t be speaking to the likes of you. Get away off now, before I call the guard on you.”

“I was here yesterday.” Nasir briefly considered the merits of driving a dagger through the belligerent porter’s eye. He decided against it. It would not get the door open any faster. “With de Talmont … Joshua …”

“I know that,” the porter interrupted. “Told us all about you, he did. Outlaw, you are. Outlaw and heathen. Don’t want your type around here, causing trouble for honest folk. Clear off!”

Nasir was unsure what was more irritating: the sheer ingratitude of the man, or being called a heathen by an uneducated lout who opened doors for his keep. In perfectly modulated court Arabic, he announced, “The word you want is ‘paynim’, you moon-faced idiot son of a poxed camel. May your women cool at your touch and your skullcaps be made from the scrotum of a diseased goat.” And then, far more coarse but very satisfying, “Fuck you.”

Behind the door, the porter yapped something about spells and witchery, but Nasir payed that no mind. Instead, he stalked off down the narrow alley where the boy yesterday had taken the donkey. Perhaps he would have better luck there.

As it happened, he was right. At the end of the alley was a fenced yard with a modest stable, a kitchen garden thick with herbs, and a small battalion of chickens. The serving boy to whom Nasir had given the donkey was there, pushing muck around in a desultory fashion and whistling something untuneful. Nasir opened the gate and pointed to the boy.

“You. Fetch Joshua de Talmont. Go.”

For a moment the boy only stared, and Nasir wondered if he’d spoken in Arabic again without noticing, but then the lad took to his heels, racing for the house. Scowling after him, Nasir shrugged and made himself comfortable on a bench near the herb garden. His shoulder ached, his head throbbed, and he was horribly thirsty. Someone would come. And if not, he would go looking.

Someone, as it turned out, was the porter. The boy was not with him. The porter was accompanied by a heavy stick instead, and wore a determined expression. Ill and insulted and thoroughly fed up, Nasir greeted the man with one of his daggers, flung with alarming precision to bite, quivering, into the porter’s staff. The porter paled, stopped. Nasir said, very clearly, “Fetch your master. Fetch Joshua de Talmont. Go now.”

“What’s all the fuss about?” A familiar voice came from the doorway. “Meron, why are you pounding about with that cudgel?”

“It’s the Saracen, Master Joshua. Him what’s a killer an’ such! I’ve told him to leave but …”

“You’ll tell him no such thing!” De Talmont strode into the yard, giving the porter a withering glare. “This man is a friend who came to our aid when no others would. Are your manners so poor as that?”

“His manners are appalling,” Nasir said bluntly, then sighed. “As are mine, right now. I must impose, I fear.”

De Talmont looked at him closely. “You are not well, my friend.”

“Wound fever. It will pass. But …”

“You need a place to rest. Of course, of course.” De Talmont nodded, spreading his hands in welcome. “You must stay here. Come, please. Come inside.” And then, to the porter, “Meron, give him his knife back.”

“But he …”

“I’m sure he did. And I’m sure you provoked him. So that balances the ledger, does it not?”

Frowning, the porter twisted the little dagger out of his cudgel and tossed it clumsily to Nasir, who caught it neat-handed and made it disappear. Even feeling like a wrung out rag, he could handle a weapon smoothly.

Following de Talmont inside, Nasir found himself in a warm, homely kitchen alive with good smells. A calico cat lazed near the door, and a woman with flour on her cheeks stared as they passed, but de Talmont paid her no mind, leading Nasir through a door and into a comfortable room with low couches and a chess game set up on a table. Nasir paused by the board, regarding the pieces with an odd intensity. De Talmont raised his brows, surprised.

“You play?”

“A little. Not well.” Nasir, who had actually been contemplating the strange way the squares of the chessboard seemed to shift and blur at the edges, closed his eyes briefly and rubbed at his forehead with the heel of his hand. Even to his own touch, his skin burned.

There was a sound at the door; the boy from the yard came in, gasping for breath.

“Master Joshua, there’s … oh. You found him.”

“Yes, Daniel. Thank you. Go tell Leah to make a room ready for our guest, please.”

The boy disappeared. Nasir looked after him, unimpressed. Weariness loosened his tongue.

“Your brother’s servants are ill-disciplined.”

“Yes,” de Talmont said cheerfully. “He really should beat them more.” He smiled, so Nasir could tell he was joking. “They lack decorum, but they’re loyal. You will be safe here. I can promise you that.”

“It is not my safety which concerns me.” Nasir slumped onto the nearest couch without waiting to be asked. His bones were starting to ache. “It’s yours, and your family’s; I put you in danger by being here.”

“I know.” De Talmont smiled again, a little. “Yet I think we will survive.” He surveyed the man before him, taking in the faint tremor of his hands and the glimmer of sweat on his dusky skin. “How bad is it? Do you need a doctor?”

That made Nasir laugh under his breath. “A doctor? Is there one in this … place,” – and there was a world of scorn in that simple word – “… who doesn’t kill people?”

“A physician who doesn’t kill his patients? Does such a wonder exist in all England?” De Talmont laughed too, and there was an undertone of bitterness in the sound that Nasir thought he understood: no doctor could help de Talmont either, in this land or in any other. Not with his infirmity. That could incline any man towards resentment.

Aloud, Nasir said, “No, no doctor. Only rest and warmth.”

The servant boy came back, bearing a pitcher and a cup on a tray. “Leah says the room’s ready, Master. The one at back, over the kitchen. She told me to bring water.”

“Very good, Daniel. Leave the water here, I’ll bring it up.”

The boy cast a wary eye over Nasir as he lowered the tray to the table. It put Nasir in mind of the way a lap cat might watch a strange dog that had wandered into its yard: carefully, and with equal measures of fascination and fear. Or, his memory murmured, suspicion and survival. For some reason, Nasir found that almost amusing.

De Talmont caught the glimmer of that in his eyes, and quirked his lips in understanding. He waited until the boy left, then said, “You are something of a legend to him, I think. He has not met a man of your people before. And it helps that Samuel has been bragging of your exploits. Last I heard, you single-handedly fought off a whole army of brigands and defeated a pack of wolves, and that after setting the Sheriff of Nottingham on his ear.”

Nasir snorted. “I killed one man because it was needful and was chewed on by a wild dog; hardly exploits. As for the Sheriff, the praise for that does not belong to me.”

“Indeed.” De Talmont looked pensive for a moment, recalling the Sheriff’s hands defiling the sacred book and the price the man had paid for his arrogance, but then he smiled. “Still, young boys need their heroes. And speaking of boys, here is Samuel now. Samuel, will you bring the water to Nasir’s room?”

“Yes father.” The boy darted forward, taking up the pitcher two handed with an enthusiasm that made the water slosh against the rim. “Salaam, Nasir.”

“Wa alaykum as-salaam, Samuel.” Nasir forced himself to his feet, hating the unsteady way he felt and the swimming in his head. Samuel looked up at him, bright-eyed.

“Nasir?’

A lifted eyebrow answered that. “Hmm?”

“I’m glad you came back.”

“Hmm.”

“Nasir?”

Ya Allah, the boy was as bad as his father with all his questions. Nasir made himself patient, though his vision was starting to pulse now in time with his heartbeat. “Yes?”

“What does eye … ayr … arye fique mean?” And then, when Nasir only stared, “I heard you say it to Meron.” The boy frowned, then whispered conspiratorially. “He thinks you put a curse on him.”

Merciful Allah, did the boy listen at every door? Nasir shook his head in despair as de Talmont shooed his son away.

Later, upstairs in the tidy, well-aired room Nasir had been given, the sound of Joshua de Talmont’s quiet laughter followed him into sleep.

For the first time in years, Nasir slept in a bed with clean, herb-scented covers and goose-down pillows, under a roof that did not leak or drip, in a room that caught the day’s light and warmth. During the day, he listened to the sound of children playing in the house below, and out in the yard, chasing each other through the herb gardens and scattering the chickens. Some mornings, he lingered in the garden himself, sprawling on the bench in the sun surrounded by the smell of sage and thyme and the drone of bees, though for the most he kept to his room. Joshua de Talmont brought him a great treasure of his house: three books purchased at great cost from a travelling merchant. One, Nasir saw without surprise, was Aristotle’s Ta Ethika, in the original Greek. The others were poetry, in Greek, Hebrew, and even, Allah be praised, in Arabic with its beautiful flowing script. He devoured them all.

His Hebrew, learned so long ago, grew less laboured, more natural on his tongue. He learned the names of the people of this house; Isaac, de Talmont’s younger brother, his wife Ruth, and Ruth’s dead sister’s son Aaron, who was Sarah de Talmont’s betrothed. Sarah came to bring him herbal infusions of willow bark and cinquefoil, which he drank without complaint in spite of the sharp and lingering taste, and he let her clean his wounds and dress them daily until good healing flesh began to show. Mostly he rested, and let his body mend itself.

He slept a lot, but he dreamed surprisingly little. Fevers, Nasir had learned in the past, could do odd things to a man’s head. This time, though, he did not dream of enemies and ambushes and being hunted through the dark. It took him a day or two to understand why: it had been some time since he had felt so much at peace.

“Ah,” de Talmont said one night, when Nasir admitted that to him over a game of backgammon. The man had taken to bringing the board up to Nasir’s room at night, after supper, to talk about the day. It was, Nasir supposed, very nearly civilised. “But that is what family does for a man – gives him a place to belong. There is no greater peace than that.”

“This is not my family,” Nasir demurred. “And not my place.”

“And yet you are welcome in it.” The old man smiled, shifting a pair of black pieces in a very clever block. “Does that not make it yours, at least a little?”

“Perhaps.” Nasir studied the board, flicked the dice, and shuffled a red stone five points to counter. “A little. If it will have me.”

“Of course, you’ll have to stop teaching my son to swear like a caravanserai merchant’s guard.” And then, in the same tone of voice, as if it were nothing much, “I’m dying, you know.”

Inna’lillahi wa inna’ilayhi rajiun. Nasir recited the short prayer silently – From Allah we come and to Allah we return – then looked up. “I know.”

“They tell me …” A spate of coughing interrupted him; Nasir waited until he was done. “They tell me it’s my heart. Dropsy.”

“Yes.” Nasir was not surprised by that. He had not precisely studied medicine at the feet of the masters, but he had paid attention to what lessons he’d had, and the signs of a failing heart were clear enough. He thought that de Talmont might live out the year, if he was lucky and kept away from the hedge doctors that passed as physicians in this part of the world, whose single best cure for any ill was blood loss and outrage of the flesh. Better than that, though, Nasir could not say.

“Your fever has lifted.” The dice rattled in their cup, clattered on the board. Stones shifted from point to point. “You will be leaving us soon, I expect?”

“It would be best.”

“Safest. You attract notice here.” A smile, to show that the words were well meant. “And your friends in the forest will be expecting you.”

Nasir nodded, took a breath. The old man had offered him something, just now: a truth, and one that went to the core of him. It was only right to return that in kind. He braced himself, made his offering. “I don’t want to go.”

“I know.”

“It has been long since I have had a home, long since I have known where my home even is.” And that was as brutal a truth as he carried; a truth he had been hiding from for longer than he could know. When was it that he had begun to doubt his place in the world? In Acre, when Sarak had left? Or before then, in Masyaf, listening to ad-Din Sinan lie and lie and call it faith? “This is not my home. But I think … if I stayed here, I think it could become so.”

“God forbid,” de Talmont murmured wryly. “Of course, you must leave at once.”

“Allahu akbar, a Jew with a sense of humour. Is that a sign of the End Times?”

For a brief moment, they laughed quietly together, recognising at the same time the thing that had grown between them. Friendship was odd like that; it took root in the most unlikely of places. Then de Talmont leant forward and, very lightly, touched his fingertips to the place over Nasir’s heart.

“Your home,” he said, “is here. In your heart, in who you are. Carry it with you, my friend. The world is a wide place.”

“Hearts fail.”

“They do.” The old man smiled, kind and sure. “They do. But souls do not.”

No, Nasir supposed. Souls did not.

He left Lincoln and the de Talmonts two days later. He might have gone sooner, but Sarah had eyed him sternly, folded her arms across her chest in that way that was common to women the world over, and threatened to burn his boots if he even looked like leaving before she said he was ready. His wounds were healing well and his fever was long passed when she relented and he won his way to the door.

Samuel had insisted on walking with Nasir as far as the Jewry gates. Meron had shadowed them, in part to keep an eye on the Saracen (“Not to be trusted, that sort, not at all!”) and in part to escort Samuel safely home. The boy returned with a message for his father. He delivered it with fierce, careful concentration, his head high.

“Jazakallahu khairan,” he said. “It means, ‘May Allah reward you with good’. Nasir said to say … he said to say …” Samuel’s brow furrowed in concentration, then lightened as he remembered. “He said to say that only the best sort of caravanserai guardsmen speak like that.” The boy frowned, a little puzzled. “I’m not sure what he means by that. Do you know, Father?”
“Yes, Samuel,” de Talmont smiled. “Yes, I do.”

“Oh. Good.” Samuel was silent a moment, wriggling his toes in his sandals. “Will we see him again, Father?”

“I don’t think so, Samuel.”

“But …” The boy looked disappointed. “But why?”

“Because he is on a journey,” de Talmont said, looking down the quiet street in the direction Nasir had gone. The sky was clear and warm overhead. “And he has some way to go.”

Epilogue

Joshua de Talmont exceeded Nasir’s expectation and lived out the year and more, holding off his failing health for long enough to see his oldest daughter wed to her betrothed, Aaron ben Aaron. He died in the autumn of the following year, and was laid to rest in the cemetery near Lincoln’s synagogue. Sarah was delivered of a healthy son, four months after her father’s death. He was named Joshua.

In 1255, the body of a Christian boy named Hugh was found floating in a water cistern near the Jewish quarter. The Jews of Lincoln were blamed for his death, for it was widely put about that it was Jewish custom to murder a Christian child as part of a holy rite. Ninety-one Lincoln Jews were seized and taken to the Tower of London, and eighteen of those imprisoned were later hanged without trial.

Samuel de Talmont, an elder of Lincoln, was one of them.

For stories do not keep us safe, and sometimes faith must be tested.

RoS fic: Going Home Part 1

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 08:36:35 GMT

Another RoS fic. Set directly after the episode "Children of Israel". At the end of that episode, when the sheriff is done chewing the scenery and Gisburne has failed to get the girl, Loxley tells the de Talmont family that they will be the outlaws' guests in Sherwood, and that when they are ready to go to Lincoln, Nasir will show them the way. He doesn't ask Nasir, mind, he just kind of waves his hand and says "Make it so."

This is how I think that particular trip might have turned out.

Beta'd by luthien13 may all worship her and despair.

Title: Going Home
Rating: PG for mild profanity.
Summary: Home is where you find it.

Going Home

          “Nasir will show you the way,” Robin had said, as if it were nothing much. As if it were obvious. Not a thought in him, not a moment’s doubt. For a brief instant, Nasir had wondered what the man would do if he said no. Gape like an idiot, most likely, and then flail and frown. Robin did that, when things did not go as he had planned. The man did not seem to understand contingency.
          Nasir had no burning desire to see Lincoln. He had seen enough of English cities and towns – squalid, filth-ridden places, verminous and bleak, stinking of open cess pits and dung and too many people and animals crowded together. London, with its reeking river and spreading shambles, had been a crashing disappointment, Oxford and Cantebrigge dismal, and Nottingham positively brutish. There was no reason to believe that Lincoln would be any better. No one would wash, the streets would be thick with muck, and if there was music it would sound like someone breaking pots with a hammer.
           In Damascus, the souk would be full of light and sound and colour, the fine shimmering song of the sunlight mixing with the heady scent of spices and oils, fruits and flowers and musk, high notes of citrus and dust and frankincense. The bray and call of the traders at their stalls would blat and ripple through the air, filling the market with the burble of half a dozen languages flowing like water, and wise men would gather in the cool open courts to sip mint tea and speak of poets and politics, philosophers and faith. In Lincoln, men would gather in taverns to drink themselves senseless, and as distasteful as that was, Nasir found he did not particularly blame them. If some things had not been forbidden by the teachings of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, Nasir might have sought solace there too.
          Quite how his charges had thought to reach Lincoln on their own, Nasir did not know. It was not so far: only some thirty or forty miles heading north and east along a wide, easy road, passing Newark on the way; a simple enough venture for a traveller of some experience, but a different matter for an old and ailing man, a milk-and-water maiden and a pair of children barely out of the nursery. Alone, Nasir could have made the trip there and back in a handful of days. Joshua de Talmont and his family, Nasir thought, would have been lucky to make it at all.
          They had no idea how to survive in a hostile world. That was strange to Nasir, who had learned survival with his mother’s milk – and doubly strange for that they were Jews living in a Christian country, and met with hostility as a matter of course. He had thought they would be better at defending themselves by now. “The most beautiful thing is to forgive,” de Talmont had said of the men who had killed his people and stolen his daughter. Nasir supposed that that was true, but the practical thing was to dispose of one’s enemies when the chance arose and thank Allah for His mercy when it was done, and Nasir had ever been a creature more driven by the practical than the beautiful. It was no wonder, though, that Robin and de Talmont had got along so well. Robin never wanted to kill anyone, either. No matter how desperately they deserved it.
          He kept them off the main roads, leading them along forest tracks and twisting country lanes. He scouted ahead when he could, though he did not like to leave de Talmont and his children alone for too long. Not a one of them could swing a sword, or draw a bow, or even wield a staff with anything like skill, and their broad little donkey with its loaded paniers made a tempting lure to any bandit with an eye for the main chance. Mostly he stayed close by them, shepherding them off the path at the first sound of voices or horses, the first creak of cart or rise of dust. They’d objected to that at first, the old man smiling politely as he’d said, “Not all men are our enemies. We must face the world with some trust, surely?”
          “Faith and foolishness are not the same thing.” Nasir replied. His grasp of Hebrew, though not perfect, was still better than his English, and he added: “Trust in HaShem, but do not test Him.”
          De Talmont had seemed surprised at that, had wanted to argue. Nasir had never seen the point of arguing. A man was right or he was wrong, and adding words to the equation was hardly going to change that. He’d only shrugged, and let things unfold as they would.
          After he’d had to kill the first ruffian who accosted them, de Talmont did not argue any more.
          That night as they set camp in a small spinney away from the road and passers-by, de Talmont asked quietly, “That man today … why did you break his neck like that? Couldn’t you have simply … discouraged him?”
          “If a rabid dog menaced your family, would you merely toss it a bone and hope for it to go away?” Nasir finished with the fire and sat back, watching the two young children, Esther and Samuel, help their sister with the donkey. “A quick death, and no blood to frighten the children, alhamdulillah.”
          “Praise Him indeed.” De Talmont gave Nasir an odd look, thoughtful, between solemnity and sorrow. “You are a hard man, my friend.”
          “I am a man like any other.” Nasir shrugged. He did not like the expression in the old man’s eyes. It looked like pity. “It is the world that is hard. I only live in it.”
          “You do as you must.” De Talmont seemed to understand that, at least. Nasir nodded, accepting the truth that far and giving it back in turn.
          “As do you.”
          “Indeed.” De Talmont’s smile was almost wistful. “As do we all.”
          Nasir hesitated a moment, unsure what to make of that, then decided it didn’t matter. He rose, moving away from the small fire and the low chatter of the children. The sun was the barest glow on the western horizon; he made himself ready for prayer then turned to the east, and let the soft chant of his own words bring him peace.
          When he was done, he stayed where he was, listening to the sounds around him; slow calling night birds, the high chitter of crickets, the quiet murmur of voices by the small fire. Nothing out of place. He hoped it would stay that way. It would be good to get a little sleep, at least. Three watchful nights and walking days and he would be dreaming awake by the time they reached Lincoln, and then he’d be no use to anyone.
          The young woman’s voice carried to him, gentle on the evening air. Nasir smiled to himself. She was telling the young ones a story, something from their holy book. He recognised the story, if not the names; he had heard a version of it once from a tale teller in a market place in Baghdad, spinning a fable from old Babylon of three faithful young men who had refused to worship a false idol, and who had been cast into a furnace as punishment.
          “The flames were so hot that the soldiers who threw them into the furnace withered on the spot like cinders, but when the king looked in to the fire, he saw Haniniah, Mishael and Azariah standing and walking around in the flames, untouched by the heat, and a fourth figure watching over them. And the king knew that they were sheltered by God’s hand, and that was a power greater than his, and so he called them out of the flames and gave them gifts and bade them go in peace. So you see, no matter how great the danger may seem, all we need do is keep faith in God, for when our faith is strong enough we will not be burned, even by the hottest fires.”
          A comfort for frightened children. Nasir could have told them that the truth was not so kind; his faith had never faltered for a heartbeat, and he had been burned time and again. Betrayed by his Brotherhood, by friends and teachers and ad-Din Sinan himself, lied to and used to ends not his own, cast into captivity and exile among infidels – oh yes, he had walked in the fire and been scorched by the flames. Faith was not enough to keep a man from scars. Nor should it be, he thought. What was faith worth, after all, if it was not tested?
          But no, let the children have their comfort, and their peace. They would know better soon enough. And in any case, they had been well-tested for ones so young; they had witnessed death and madness, seen their sister abducted, fled their home and safety for the hope of security elsewhere. Nasir doubted that they would find it – from what he could tell, nowhere in England was safe for a Jew – but he could hope that he was wrong.
          Sarah looked up, wide-eyed and startled, when Nasir shadowed back into camp. It occurred to him that he had frightened her, moving so quietly as he did; he offered a smile in apology and a murmured word as he folded himself neatly beside the fire, soothing her as he might sooth a nervous filly: “Salaam.”
          “Shalom.” And then, shyly, trying his language on her tongue: “Salaam. The children are asleep, poor lambs. They barely kept their eyes open long enough to eat. And my father too, he’s not as strong as once he was, his chest troubles him. They are not used to travelling in this way …” Realising she was babbling, Sarah made herself stop. Nasir made her uneasy with his arsenal of weaponry and his cat’s grace, and that made her feel poor and ungrateful. The man had been nothing but gracious to her and her family, fulfilling his role as their guardian with unfailing manners and unrelenting competence. She had no business thinking ill of him. Even if he had appeared just now out of the night like a very spirit, all dark and swarthy in leather and steel, with eyes like black stones in the moonlight.
          An owl called nearby, and some small creature shrilled a thin and painful cry. Sarah jumped were she sat, wrapping her arms about herself and laughing nervously.
          “You must think me a silly chit of a thing,” she said. “Flinching at shadows. It is only that I am unused to living like this. The forest at night, being outdoors … I’ve always had a home, before, you see.”
          Nasir gave that a moment’s thought. “No,” he said at last. “Not silly. Only…” He trailed off, lacking the words to say what he meant, then tried again. “Only misplaced.”
          That made her smile. “Not so misplaced as you are, I think. We are both far from home, are we not?”
          “A wrong turning,” Nasir shrugged, deliberately casual. “Allahu alam. Perhaps it is part of my passage through the flames?”
          She laughed, self-conscious. “You heard that? The children enjoy stories, it takes their minds from their troubles.”
          To that, Nasir did not reply, though he nodded his understanding. If privately he thought that it would take more than a tale or two to save these children of Israel from the woes of the world, he kept that to himself.
          “Sleep,” he said. “I will see that no harm comes.”
          Sarah, who knew no better, found that she believed him.

De Talmont had wanted to stop in Newark, to find rooms and rest for a day or two with his family. He had money enough, he said. He would slip the innkeep extra coin to take them in and keep his mouth shut, and they would sleep dry under a roof and safe from danger. Nasir told him bluntly that they would do no such thing. He did so in Greek, which he had discovered that de Talmont spoke nearly as well as he did after the man had quoted Aristotle to him, espousing on the nature of truth. Perhaps they would not misunderstand each other so readily, in Greek.

“You are Jews,” he said, “and I, to the people of this land, am the nearest thing to a demon. You, they would drive out, money or no. Me, they would try to kill. It would cost lives, and gain us nothing.”

“You don’t know that.”

Nasir gave him a cool look. “I know fear, and what it does to men. I know that, when faced with the likes of us, the people of this land know little hospitality and less kindness. I know that the beaten dog will snap even at the hand that feeds. We will rest if you must, but we will not go into Newark.”

That afternoon, the weather began to fail. Grey clouds streaked the horizon, sending a damp, gusty wind before them. Nasir, who had become used to reading the skies in this land as a matter of simple necessity – it had amazed him, at first, to be in a country where it rained so well and so often, but the novelty had soon worn off – found he did not fancy spending the night in the open. They had passed a village or two along the way: ramshackle affairs of daub and wattle, busy with children and livestock and workers grubbing in the fields. The villages themselves offered no safe shelter; if these people were anything like the villagers that surrounded Sherwood, they would be as wary and skittish as deer. In any case, Nasir did not want their passing to be marked, and it was not as if a Saracen warrior and a family of Jews made for a commonplace company of travellers. There was no telling to whom bored and curious villagers might speak … and no telling, either, if Gisburne had truly given up the chase. The man had declared himself smitten with the girl Sarah, after all, and Nasir had never noticed that Gisburne was one to be easily discouraged. Will’s outlandish threats (Nasir did not think that it was actually possible to rip out a man’s heart and make him eat it, but he did not doubt that Will was willing to try) and de Rainault’s brief madness may have put him off, but just how long fear and good sense would outweigh desire and the need for revenge in a man like Gisburne was anyone’s guess. Nasir preferred not to take chances.

Where there were villages, though, there were outsiders. A charcoal burner’s hut, abandoned for the season but sound enough, offered refuge from the gathering rain. There was even a small lean-to shelter at the back for the donkey. Inside, the shack was a one room affair, with a stamped-earthen floor, a strong smell of disuse, a smoky hearth, and a roof that leaked in one corner. Nasir shrugged, placing his bow, unstrung in the damp, to lean in one corner. In the walls, vermin scratched. Nasir ignored that. He had been raised to better, but he had known worse.

De Talmont cast a long-suffering eye over the hut as he slumped to rest on an uneven, three-legged stool. He had his hand to his chest again, rubbing as if it pained him. Perhaps he was thinking of his fine home in Nottingham, or his longed-for inn in Newark. All he said, though, was “It will keep the rain off.”

Sarah busied herself at once with lighting a fire and warming water to prepare her father’s infusion, the herbal tonic that he drank morning and night. To help with his chest, the old man had once said with a resigned smile that had told Nasir that it did not help at all. He wondered if Sarah knew that. The children, subdued by fatigue, huddled quietly together near the hearth.

“So, my friend. Arabic, Hebrew, English, and now Greek.” De Talmont’s tone was deliberately light, cautious and curious at once. “I will admit, I had not picked you for a scholar.”

Nasir stifled a smile at that: even the most persistent of his boyhood tutors had found him an adequate student at best. “The Prophet, sallahu alayhi wa-salaam, teaches that it is the duty of every Muslim to seek knowledge. I have learned a little, here and there. And I have travelled more than most, perhaps. Sometimes willingly, sometimes less so. Necessity, they say, is the best teacher of all.”

“That is so, that is so.” De Talmont sipped at the infusion his daughter had put into his hand. “Necessity taught you suspicion, too?”

“Father!” Sarah stared, shocked and embarrassed. The old man waved her into silence.

“I only say as I see. You do not trust as other men trust. We must stay off the roads, you say. We must avoid the villages, we must not go into Newark, as if every man’s hand is against us. Does the world seem so cold to you?”

Nasir took no outward offense, though his eyes flicked once to the door as if he was considering using it. He hitched one shoulder in half a shrug. “Suspicion, survival. Sides of the same coin. I trust where trust is earned.”

“But you do not extend credit?”

“I have not found that to be wise.”

The old man’s expression was oddly sad. “Then, my friend, I fear the world has been cruel to you.”

Another shrug. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Nasir was not sure he liked where this conversation was going. He was uneasy with words such as these, in any language. He made his voice crisp, indifferent. “I have been charged with a task, to see you and yours to safety. I will do that, inshallah, or shame myself for my failure. If I am cautious, be glad of it.”

“Indeed. But I wonder; if you will not unbar your gates, how do you know who is on the other side?” De Talmont tipped his head, his expression gentle but his eyes quietly insistent. “How can you know who to trust if you never learn who a man is?”

Nasir flicked his fingers in irritation, though his face remained still, his expression calm. He had been better schooled than to squabble like a jackal over scraps, even if de Talmont had not. “I can see who a man is. If I do not trust a hungry wolf to guard my flock, nor a frightened man to guard my back, is that not good sense?” And then, because he was tired and de Talmont was a fool and he could not help it, schooling or not, “And you are Jews in King Richard’s England. Every man’s hand is against you.”

De Talmont nodded thoughtfully. Then he said, “Yours is not. You, and your friends in the forest.”

“For myself, we are all Ahl al-Kitab – People of the Book. As for my … friends … in the forest,” and there was an odd intonation there, a hesitation that de Talmont was not quite sure he understood, “… they are their own masters. They do not think always as others do. They believe what their eyes see, and use their own minds.”

A small laugh greeted that remark. “So, they are all scholars, then. To be able to entertain a thought without accepting it is the sign of an educated mind.”

Aristotle again. Nasir found something deeply amusing in the image of Scarlet as a scholar. Personally he doubted that Scarlet had ever entertained a thought that he had not spoken aloud or acted upon; the man had very little restraint. All he said though, was, “I will go now, outside. I will not go far. If you have need, call.”

“You may pray amongst us and give no offense,” de Talmont told him. “As you say, we are all People of the Book.”

“My thanks,” Nasir said dryly. In fact, he preferred a little privacy for his prayers; a man’s faith was between him and Allah the Merciful, after all. He saw no need to say so, though, rising to his feet and glancing at the smoky fire. “I am hungry, and stale bread and hard cheese will not suffice. I will find meat, if I can.” He paused at the door, regarded his bow and decided against it. Anything he could not bring down with stealth and a dagger would be too much, in any case.

When he had gone, Sarah turned to her father in consternation. “Why do you provoke him?” she chided. “He has done us no wrong.”

“A question or two honestly asked is not provocation, my dear.” The old man leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, weary. “He resents my words because I ask him to consider himself, and I think because very few questions have been asked of him in a long time.” His eyes opened, thoughtful, pensive. “I think too that he is a man who has at one time come very close to losing his path, and he is not sure even now that he has found his way back. I imagine,” de Talmont said quietly, “that is a lonely place to be.”

De Talmont, Nasir had decided, was a man who was overly fond of the sound of his own voice. Either that, or he was half in love with questions; he had, it seemed, a question for everything. Why do you do this, where did you learn that, why did you kill him, where is your trust? Nasir supposed that he could have given him a true answer for that last – in my sword arm and in Allah – but he did not think the man would have let that lie. What did de Talmont want him to say? That he’d learned half of what he knew in Masyaf following a madman, and found a good portion of it to be a lie? That it was ungodly hard to trust in the kindness of strangers when strangers had spent the best part of his life trying to kill him, and even harder when those who had been his Brothers might now want to kill him too? Perhaps in de Talmont’s world, hostility and threat might be turned away with meekness and downcast eyes, but Nasir was as proud a son of the desert as had ever drawn breath, and he lowered his eyes for no man. His father had not named him Malik – Kingly One, by bearing and by blood – for nothing.

The woodland around the charcoal burner’s hut was dripping with wet, typical of this fat green land even in summer. Nasir shuddered as an especially damp drop of water ran down the back of his neck, and scowled at the rain-flattened grass of the clearing he’d wandered into. He’d learned to track over the shifting sands and gritty stones of desert places, following the sign of swift-footed gazelle or jewel-bright lizards or the half-mad desert hare; in this land, he’d had to learn new tricks for reading the earth. Tracking small game in the rain was not one he’d yet mastered. He’d seen the marks of a passing hunter – spoor and fresh wolf tracks in a stretch of damp clay along a hedgerow – so there was prey here, but it was making itself scarce. In this land, even hares learned to go in out of the rain.

Hunkering down under a spreading tree, Nasir watched the rain fall into the steadily darkening gloom. Another good day’s travel and they could make Lincoln; a day or two more and he would be back in Sherwood listening to Will taunt everyone within earshot and watching John try to keep the peace and wondering what madness Robin would lead them into next. No one would speak Greek, or Arabic, or anything remotely civilised, and no one would particularly care where he came from or ask him questions he did not want to answer. He could think of worse places to be.

Overhead, a pigeon roosting in the tree’s lower branches ruffled its feathers and let out a low alarm. Nasir thought briefly of killing it for the pot – pigeon stew was as good as any – but then the alarm came again from off to his left, and he turned, pricking up his ears.

And then a child screamed.

In the hut, Sarah froze wide-eyed for a handful of heartbeats, and then bolted for the door. Her father was a step behind her, gasping already at the sudden exertion.

“Samuel! Samuel!”

Outside, the darkness and the trees hampered them, lashing wet branches into their path, making them stumble and falter. The scream came again, the sound of a child in terror, and Sarah felt an answering cry rising in her own throat. In a waver of moonlight she caught sight of Samuel, standing with his back against a dark tree … and she saw, too, the flash of eyes and teeth as the wolf that menaced him bore down.

The boy had wandered off as boys do, driven by boldness or boredom or nature’s simple needs. Nasir saw that at once. He had no time to think on it though, for the wolf lunged even as he broke through the undergrowth. Nasir did not falter; he could not afford to. He lunged too.

Sarah opened her mouth to wail, and then gasped as a dark-clad figure sprang past her like a bolt from a crossbow, all coiled power and intensity suddenly released. Nasir hit the wolf running, knocking the beast from its charge and landing in a snarling tangled heap, all snapping teeth and studded leather and blunt, scrabbling claws. Samuel let out a high and piercing cry and flung himself away from the turmoil at his feet, into his father’s arms.

Nasir fisted one hand in the thick ruff of the wolf’s neck, fighting to keep the powerful jaws from closing on his exposed throat. His other hand sought one of his knives, without success; the beast’s heavy body hindered him, stronger than it ought to be and pure vitality. Teeth caught in the leather of his jerkin, driving for the flesh beneath; he swore silently and kicked out, shoving the animal away. The wolf tumbled and wheeled, snapping furiously, and came back at his face.

The snarling of the wolf was the only sound. That was what Sarah would remember, later; the wolf snapping and slavering, and Nasir grimly silent. She would not remember picking up a fallen tree branch, nor would she remember rushing forward to strike at the wolf, howling herself like some wild pagan goddess of the hunt. She would recall only the sound of the animal’s fury, and the silence of the man who held it at bay, and then the low grey streak of the wolf fleeing into the gloom.

Nasir was on his haunches, leaning forward with his head down. She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the low rumble of his voice steady in the dark. It sounded like prayer. She hesitated, hovered, touched his shoulder.

Nasir, who had in fact been swearing quite impressively and creatively in the language of his heart, glanced at her and heaved himself to his feet. “The boy?”

“He is unharmed,” came de Talmont’s reply. The man limped forward, Samuel clutched to his side. “I’m not sure you can say the same.”

A quick roll of the shoulders and a grimace answered that. “It is nothing.” His shoulder throbbed, and when he moved it a bright flare of pain sang down his arm. “It will heal.”

“All the same, we should take a look. If there are wounds they will need cleaning, at least.”

Nasir knew full well the dangers of infection; he’d seen men die from nothing much at all, once the poisons got in. He grunted his assent and strode past de Talmont without looking back.

His wounds for the most were shallow, but impressive; a jagged bite to the shoulder that would have been far worse if not for the leather he wore, and a row of score marks raking down his forearm. Bare to the waist, he suffered the attentions of de Talmont and his daughter, let them sluice the deepest of the punctures with wine (and was oddly grateful that they’d asked first; Will still could not understand the strictures against alcohol in Nasir’s faith, proffering wine or mead once or twice a week and disgusted when his offer was refused), even accepted a cup of willow-bark tea.

“For the pain,” Sarah told him. Nasir said nothing. He knew perfectly well what willow-bark was for – Marion was in the habit of forcing it on anyone who so much as squinted – and in any case, the pain was not so bad. He’d known worse. He watched her sort through her small collection of medicinals – comfrey, sage, yarrow, a handful of others, and begin mixing them to a paste.

Samuel approached, all big eyes and pale, drawn cheeks. “I’m sorry for going off like that. I’m sorry I caused trouble.”

Probably his father had told him to apologise. Nasir saw no reason to worry the lad further. “No trouble. There was a wolf, now it’s gone.”

“It bit you.”

“It did.”

Samuel was silent a moment, considering that. He tilted his head to one side. “Does it hurt?”

“Not so much.”

Another pause while the boy thought that through. Then; “Nasir? What does ib … ibn-sharmuta mean?”

That made Nasir blink, then laugh in spite of himself. So, the boy had heard him cursing at the wolf, had he? Ya Allah, how did he get out of this?

De Talmont did not precisely come to his rescue. “Leave Nasir be, Samuel. He can’t be up all night answering your questions.”

“Yes, father.” The boy sounded disappointed, but he crossed the room to where his sister Esther already huddled in her blankets, ready for sleep.

“I knew that he had an ear for languages,” de Talmont said, watching the lad go. He glanced at Nasir, eyes twinkling in mild good humour. “But I could have hoped that his first Arabic would not be quite so … colourful.”

“My apologies then, for my rough tongue.” Nasir did not sound as if he meant it. De Talmont smiled.

“You had cause. And in any case, how should I call you to account for a profanity or two when you have just saved my son’s life?” The old man lowered himself to sit next to Nasir on the beaten earth floor. “It seems you are making quite a habit of saving us from wolves … both those that go on four legs and those that go on two.”

Another laugh, though softer this time. De Talmont wondered at that. The man could show little or no emotion for days in pleasant company, but give him an enemy to fight and a nasty bite wound and he suddenly developed a sense of humour.

“By two-legged wolves, you mean Gisburne?” Nasir nodded his approval of that; Gisburne, with his cool blue eyes and his arrogant, predatory ways, was like a wolf, when he thought about it. “I think I would rather fight Gisburne than his four-legged kin. He fights fair, at least.”

“He does?” De Talmont’s eyes narrowed in surprise. “I had not thought …”

“Fair is the wrong word, perhaps.” Nasir made a graceful gesture with his good hand, negating what he’d just said. “Perhaps ‘predictable’ is better. Gisburne does what he does – he shouts, he postures, he waves his sword. He thinks no more than he has to.” The dark man gave a sudden grin. It made him look like a boy. “He would make a good crusader, I think. A good horseman, a good fighter, but so little imagination.”

“Is he dangerous, truly?” De Talmont had not asked this before. He had been avoiding thinking of it, in fact. “Do you think he will come after us, even in Lincoln?”

Nasir considered that for a moment, then made that graceful negating gesture again. “I think not. He can be persistent, but Lincoln is far and there is easier prey nearer to hand. Even so, we will not tarry, or take risks.” Dark eyes hardened then, and met de Talmont’s very directly. “Understand me, now: the road belongs to no man. You will not be safe until you are within Lincoln’s walls.”

And you, my friend? When will you be safe? De Talmont did not say that aloud, though. He did not think it would be well received. In any case, he was coming to suspect that safety was not a consideration in Nasir’s world: danger clearly brought out the best in him.

Sarah had finished with her herbs. Nasir sat quietly while she applied the tincture and dressed his wounds, though he could have done it just as easily himself. The girl wanted to help, to be useful. He saw no reason to deny her that much. When she had done, he thanked her quietly and reached for his shirt and scarred jerkin. Sarah eyed him anxiously, taking in the glare of the white dressings against his olive skin, the handful of scars he carried. One of those scars caught in the light of the feeble fire, old and pale where once it would have been livid. Nasir noticed her staring.

“An old wound. Hunting.” As it happened, that was true – he had been hunting in the shale hills above Aleppo, and he had been careless and failed to see the ambush that waited for him. The spear thrust might have killed him, had his father’s personal physician not been Cordoba-trained. She did not need to know that, though. She looked frightened enough already. He shrugged into his shirt, left the leather jerkin for later, and tipped his head towards the paniers piled in the corner. “There is still food?”

Food. Sarah started, giving herself a brisk shake. Of course. He had said before that he was hungry, and the wolf had interrupted his hunt. She nodded.

“Yes, a little. Some bread still, and half a dozen green apples, and cheese.” She gathered them as she spoke, bringing him what they had carefully stored in a rough bound sack. Nasir sighed inwardly and thought briefly of the pigeon he hadn’t killed. The bread was days old, tough and dry. He thanked her, and ate it anyway.

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:55:29 GMT

Robin of Sherwood was a British tv show that screened in the 1980s, and is considered by many to be the definative treatment of the Robin Hood legend. It gave us magic and mysticism, politics and pagan gods, flawed heroes and complex villains, and all the dirt and muck and casual cruelty of Plantagenet England.

It also gave us the first - and best - of the Saracen Merry Men, to whom all later facsimiles owe a debt of honour.

His name was Nasir Malik Kemal Inal Ibrahim Shams ad'Dualla Wattab ibn Mahmud.

This wee fic is for him.

Rated PG, unpleasantness inferred.

What Dreams May Come

In this new life, the nights were the worst. During the days he could occupy himself, trying to learn the ways of this new land and the people he’d fallen in with – their odd, rough language and their odder, rougher habits – but at night there was nothing but the darkness and the damp and the living forest bearing down. It was too easy, at night, to think. Too easy to remember.

Some nights, he stood sentry while the others slept. He did so more for his sake than for theirs, if they had only known. Even with thoughts and memories chasing through the dark, when he was awake he had at least a fair chance of fending them off. He could move silently about the camp, pausing at each object to name it first in his own tongue and then, if he knew the words, in the rude tongue of his new companions; he could study the stars through the shifting forest canopy and try to match them to childhood astronomy lessons; he could listen, and watch the creatures of this place come and go, and learn what they were and how they moved. Anything to stave off sleep. Because when he slept, he dreamed.

His dreams were not pleasant things. Sometimes he dreamed of his homeland, the heat and the dust and the scent of iron, and bodies piled in a low ditch while armoured men on horses galloped away; sometimes he dreamed of a castle, dank-walled and narrow-chambered with the enemy closing in. Sometimes there were the faces of his brothers, calling him on with smiles on their lips and daggers in their hands and death in their eyes. Sometimes there were the faces of the others, the men he had killed, with questions and curses to heap upon him. He could not escape. Always in his dreams he was trapped, always there was blood. Sometimes, there was worse.

This night, there was worse. Blood, and pain, and not all of it his own. Chains and a brutish, stinking cell; a woman keening; an idol of smoke and flame, like a djinn from a story-teller’s tale; the jagged, harsh sound of a baby crying, cut off suddenly and far too soon. There was a cup, brimming with blood, and something cold and dead that held him where he was as the cup came to his lips, and from the shadows there was laughter that sounded like the opening of a crypt, and smelled like a wound gone bad. Part memory, part magic – Nasir had tossed in it, fighting, and lurched gasping to his senses in the forest with the trees sighing around him and a cold sweat on his skin.

He sat up carefully, raising an unsteady hand to wipe the moisture from his brow. He could hear the rush and surge of his own heartbeat in his ears, feel the prickle of dread on his skin. Fear, that was, and nothing else. His shirt was sticking to him, unpleasantly clammy in the cool night breeze. He ignored it, waiting for his heart to slow and his blood to settle.

Around him, the others slept on. Even the young tow-headed boy, who had been meant to be on watch, had fallen asleep at the base of a wide tree. Nasir took some solace in that. He had not, at least, woken screaming: he had that much discipline left to him, at least. De Belleme had let him keep that much, in the end – though the man had tried his damnedest to take everything else. Nor had he been gentle about it. The man had known a number of tricks, some more subtle than others. Even now, Nasir was not always sure how far he had managed to resist. He had done things, he knew – there were memories, flashes, half fog and half stone. They left him cold inside.

De Belleme … the very name made him want to curse. The man had visited on him the greatest of indignities, collaring him as one would collar a hound, denying him comfort that even an animal might be given. Food, for one thing. Water. Warmth. And then, when that had not broken him, the baron had gone the other way, given him all of everything. In an echo (intentional, perhaps?) of Nasir’s long ago initiation to his one-time Brotherhood, the man had created a twisted paradise in the hell of his dungeons: opiates mixed in the food, fine carpets and willing women, and a numb haze from which Nasir had woken sweating and shivering in a filthy cell as his body purged itself of the last of the drug and simultaneously howled out for more.

“Obey me, serve me, worship me, and you shall have your pleasure every night,” the baron had said, in oddly flat Arabic and a tone like honey.

“An old trick,” Nasir could remember saying in a voice that rasped in his throat, curling in on himself in a hard, tight knot. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Don’t force my hand, fierce one. Your defiance is amusing, but futile. You’ll only live to regret it.”

“Insha’Allah.”

“Inshallah.”

After that there had been other things; deprivation, confinement, long days of lightlessness and silence. Physical pain was easy to endure when it was his own, but hell when it was someone else’s. That, he could suffer for only so long. It had been that which had extracted his oath from him, in the end: he had sworn to obey, sworn by the Holy Word, by the Kaaba, by his father’s name and his own, and de Belleme had had the child, a small grubby thing with great frightened eyes, brought down from over the flames. The child was probably dead now in any case, sacrificed to de Belleme’s horrid curiosity and dark spirits, but at least Nasir could say that it was not on his account. He was not sure how far that was a comfort.

What was a comfort, though, was that even for the worst of de Belleme’s torments, Nasir had not broken. Even at his darkest moments, he had held to the only two things in the world that he could still claim as his own, the things he would not renounce: his pride, and his faith. There had been days (or nights? Nasir could not say) when only the Shahadah, repeated so many times that his voice had worn to a whisper, had kept him sane, and the mad baron had screamed at him to stop, to be silent or lose his tongue, or his eyes, or his life, but Nasir had held to those words
la ilaha ill'Allah, wa Mohammadan rasulu'llah

as to a life line in a high sea, or water in a desert, and refused to bend either neck or knee to the things that gibbered at him out of the shadows. Even de Belleme – sun-crazed spawn of a rabid cur, may Iblis take him – had, finally, had to accept that he could have his Saracen slave alive or he could have him dedicated to the Darkness, but he could not have both.

He had been treated well enough, once the baron had pried his oath from him – if any man whose life belonged to another could be said to be well treated. There was no escaping from it, though, not when he had given his word. An oath given under duress was no oath at all, but de Belleme had known that: he had never asked Nasir to swear to anything. Once he had done so though, and of his own volition, the baron had understood enough of honour to know that Nasir was bound. There had been no chains after that, and a measure of liberty, but not enough to matter. A slave was still a slave, no matter how loose his leash. Nasir had obeyed as he had sworn to, following the baron’s commands to the word and not beyond, and let his hatred show. De Belleme had found that amusing. He had not wanted his Saracen slave an empty shell, like the wretches he used to summon his shadows and carry his wine. It had suited the man’s perverse nature to surround himself with dangerous things, and an untamed Saracen with an arsenal of fine steel and quick killer’s eyes was dangerous enough. If de Belleme could have kept an unmuzzled lion on a chain of gold, he would have done that too.

“Will you join me for a drink, now that we’ve settled things between us?” The baron gestured to a cup, the gracious host to the soles of his boots. “Only water, I assure you, but sweet and fresh.”

“No.”

The baron smiled at his slave’s refusal, as he might have smiled at a pretty girl too modest to accept an invitation to dance. “Oh, come. We have much to talk about. The things you know, the things you’ve seen … I’m sure you could answer many questions.”

“No.”

“I have a book here you might …”

“No.”

“It speaks of names, the power of names. Nasir.” The baron spoke the word as if tasting it. “‘Protector’. A name you earned, isn’t it? Not one you were born to. What is your true name?”

“Nasir is name enough.”

“Never mind. You’ll tell me. We’ll have years together. Years. You know, my fierce friend, the Emperors of Rome often trusted no one so much as their slaves. We are like those old Romans, wouldn’t you say?”

“No. And we are not friends.”

The baron smiled again, delighted. It was enough to make a man wish for death.

The baron had, of course, been utterly insane. Nasir had known that almost from the first. The abominations the man indulged in only set that knowledge in stone. Blood drinking, sacrifices and idolatry, and the women … Ya Allah, the things he had done to his women. If there was anything in his life that Nasir wished he could unsee, it was that – and he had seen a good many unpleasant things, a good many bloody deaths. Eternal life, the Baron had wanted – and he had seemed to think that stealing life from others would bring him closer to his goal. In another man, Nasir might have been inclined to think that perhaps the desert sun had stolen his senses, or that he had been struck once too often on the head, but de Belleme’s madness was something else. There was nothing passing about it, no tragedy of time and place. It was a part of him, a thing that had grown in him like a cancer until it was all that was left.

In truth, Nasir had seen that kind of madness before, and even served it until he had finally been able to face what it was. Rashid ad-Din Sinan, called the Old Man of the Mountain, had not been entirely sane, and Nasir had recognised the same maniacal, obsessive gleam in the baron’s eyes as he had seen in ad-Din Sinan’s

(If you are faithful, you will destroy him

But … he’s my teacher, my Brother …

Do not question. Destroy him)

on that last day in Masyaf. For men like those, the world existed only as they wanted it to exist, all in shades of darkest black or brilliant white, with themselves at the very centre and all else purely expendable. There had been a time when Nasir himself could have been lead to think that way, save for the impediment of his own sense of morality and an alarming tendency to explore, to question, that not all the indoctrination in the world could remove. Now he had a better sense of who he was and the things he would fight for, and he had only had to turn his back on one madman and escape another to gain it. That made his lips twitch in almost a smile, though there was nothing mirthful in it. Ah, Malik Kemal, you always were one for learning things the hard way.

And now here he was, sleeping rough in an English forest with only infidels and barbarians for company, and their leader was a young man with a ready smile and a cause, and Nasir was not sure that he was not mad too. Certainly he had courage beyond the normal measure of things – facing down the Nottingham garrison with no more than a longbow and a bright stare, marching alone into de Belleme’s castle with all of his faith in a sword he could barely use and a pretty pagan trinket. Robin, they called him, as if that was name enough. In fact, none of them had names beyond what one might give a horse, or a favoured dog – Will, John, Much – and when he’d offered his own with his lineage and honorifics, they’d looked at him like he’d grown a second head.

This time, his smile was a steadier thing, brief but true. He felt better, calmer now that the claws of the dream had let him loose, the horror fading. He was glad none of his new companions had been awake to see him so stricken; with any luck, this weakness would pass as others had passed before, and remain between himself and Allah the All-Knowing. Strange, to be so unmanned by dream and memory, when he would gladly face any enemy in the flesh … but then, had he not always been taught that a man’s struggle with his own weakness was a harder and truer battle than anything that could be won with a sword?

Well, perhaps this was his lesson, and his struggle. Allah had brought him to this for a reason, after all; to de Belleme and his lunacy, to this damp green land, to these mismatched rebels. Not that Nasir would presume to guess at what that reason might be; who was he to know the mind of the Almighty? All he knew was that he had fought as his beliefs had driven him to fight, and that he fought still, inside and out … though look now who he had been given to fight beside.

The giant he knew a little from his time with de Belleme, though the man had been tormented by demons then. Still, he seemed solid enough, gentle in spite of his great size and willing to let a man’s actions speak for him. The hellion with the fierce stare had been a soldier, but his anger rode him like an ifrit, blurring his focus and making him lash out at anything – he would take some watching, or his fury would drag them all into danger. The boy seemed simple, harmless, like a puppy bumbling underfoot. Still, even a puppy could show its teeth, if it had to. From the friar, Tuck, Nasir had been braced for a deal of hostility, but he had found only an honest interest instead. Nasir had not had fond experiences with men of the Church, but this one seemed different – less inclined to corruption for a start, and seemingly more intent on food than prayer. And then there was the woman, running loose in the forest like a young animal, with no care for reputation or honour … but she had greeted him with a shy smile and a smattering of awkward Arabic, blessing him backwards but making an honest fist of it. All of them different, and all of them drawn by whatever powers they named to the young one who led them, Robin with his forest green eyes and his peculiar pagan ways. They had no discipline, no reserve, no idea of what they might do, only a great and burning drive to do something … and barely a trained fighter amongst them. It was not what Nasir was used to, certainly not what he would have chosen. It was, in fact, enough to make a camel laugh.

Nasir gave a mental shrug at that. If it was Allah’s will that he should throw in his lot with a handful of unbelievers and whatever cause they called their own, then so it would be. After all, he owed his freedom to Robin – the oath he’d sworn to de Belleme had died the moment that the man himself had, and that had been Robin’s doing. Honour demanded that he make some recompense for that. Perhaps he could be of use to them in whatever battle this was that they had taken on: he had skills that went beyond swinging a blade, if anyone cared to ask.

It was still dark, but falling towards dawn. Nasir considered trying to go back to sleep, but the dream and its flexing claws were not far enough away for that, not yet. Much had abandoned his watch, in an act of carelessness that might have meant death in a more rigid company than this: Nasir supposed he might as well pick it up. Climbing slowly to his feet, he padded to where the boy lay curled on the ground and lifted the tattered cloak Much had been using for a blanket to rest more comfortably about the lad’s shoulders, then wandered back to the fire to stir the slow embers back to life. Behind him, Much muttered and yawned, then settled deeper into slumber. John lay like a mountain under his shaggy jerkin, sleeping the sleep of the righteous. Will, on the other hand, was no calmer at rest than he was awake, twitching and growling softly like a dog dreaming of the hunt. Tuck snored deeply on the other side of the fire, and a little apart from the rest, Robin and Marion shared a blanket of cured hides, curled together like kittens. Nasir watched them briefly, wondering what they dreamed of, then tipped his face to the sky.

Finally, a faint grey light broke through the trees. Nasir welcomed it, letting the familiar strains of the adhan float through his mind. There would be no muezzin’s call in this land – how long since he had heard it proper? He couldn’t say – but even the memory of the words brought comfort. Come to prayer, ye faithful, come to sanctuary. Oh, yes, he needed that.

Standing, Nasir stretched and surveyed the camp again, taking in the sight of his sleeping companions. They were strangers still, but they were all he had to pledge his loyalty to in this land, save for himself and the faith that had nurtured him. It was Allah’s will he was here, so far from his home and all he knew. And if it was Allah’s will that the least and most unworthy of his servants should one day return to his own land with all its comforts and conflicts, then that would come as it may. Until then, he would make the best of it.

And, maybe, learn to be stronger than what dreams may come.