Free The Rise of Robin Hood by Angus Donald

Spears of early morning sunshine drove through the lichen-green branches of a lush and sprightly oak tree and down on to
     the gold-flecked brown hair of a young man crouched at its base. The tree, one of many hundreds of thousands like it in that
     ancient forest, formed part of a wall of dense greenery on the western side of a leaf-strewn track. The forest road, while
     undoubtedly one of Henry Plantagenet’s royal highways, might easily have been mistaken for a subterranean tunnel, for the
     oaks reached up from either side and joined above, their leaves and limbs mingling promiscuously into a thick canopy and allowing
     only the odd parcel of daylight to gleam through.
    This thoroughfare, the main and indeed only direct route from Derby to Sheffield, was in poor condition that summer – one
     thousand one hundred and eighty years after the Incarnation of Our Lord – for there stood no sizeable manor or village nearby
     with responsibility for its upkeep, and its royal lord was far away, tending to his vexatious affairs across the Channel.
     And so in stretches it had become mired and muddy, with deep patches of near-bog, and the surface made treacherously uneven,
     on the drier parts, by roots and ruts, half-submerged boulders and fallen branches.
    And it must be admitted that the young man at the bottom of the tree – a rake-thin stripling of perhaps fifteen or so summers,
     with curious silvery-grey eyes – was not in the best of condition either. He looked hungry and unkempt, and was as poorly
     garbed as a beggar. The sagging, scuffed leather boots, roughly patched grey hose and dark-green tunic that he wore were all
     smeared with leaf-mould and earth, and torn in places. He had clearly been sleeping under the summer skies for a month or
     more, and his disordered hair had not felt the tug of a comb for a fortnight at least. But the scabbarded sword – strapped
     to his lean waist by a leather belt, and surprisingly clean and well-kept – indicated that this was no ordinary discontented
     young villein or unruly apprentice seeking sanctuary in the woods from a cruel master.
    ‘We need to cut here and here, John,’ said the youngster to his companion, indicating invisible intersecting lines on the
     tree’s trunk with his none-too-clean index finger, ‘and dig out a handle in the living wood, here, to attach the rope. We
     do the same to each of the trees that I’ve marked. And I think I have found a bough, up ahead, that will serve as my station.
     But it does seem a pity to fell so much prime timber without a very good reason.’
    His friend, a vast, muscular man with a rosy sun-baked face and yellow hair, was kneeling a yard or two away, searching for
     a roaming louse in his thick blond beard. As poorly dressed as the younger fellow, he carried about twice his bulk. A yard-long
     double-handed woodsman’s saw was balanced against the giant’s brawny knee, its teeth bright with fresh sharpening; a long
     keen-edged spear lay in the leafy-litter by his right hand, and two fat coils of rope hung from his shoulders, one on each
     side.
    ‘No shortage of trees in Sherwood,’ the big man said. Then he chuckled, a bubbling rumble of mirth. ‘And we do have a good
     reason, Robin. Nearly five thousand round, bright, silvery reasons, if what your blacksmith friend in Derby said is true.’
    ‘I suppose so,’ said Robin, ignoring the jest. ‘I just wish there was some other way to do it without bringing down so many
     old oaks.’ He sighed. ‘Well, come on, John, hand me the end of that saw, will you? They’ll reach this spot by noon, if not
     before. We need to spend a little of our sweat.’
    ***
    The constant jolting of the cart was making the skinny woman ill. It was not the fear, she told herself firmly, it was
     not the dread of what was to come the next day, or the next, or perhaps the day after that: the hungry red flames, the spiteful
     jeers of the crowd, the searing agony of scorched flesh,