Free Outlaw by Angus Donald Page A

surrounded by a ring of Robin’s men, some freshly wounded, who were taunting him and pelting him with stones. The mocking outlaws stayed prudently out of reach of the knight’s sword and mace: I could see three bodies at his feet.
    ‘Come on, you cowards,’ the knight shouted. His English was unaccented, which was rare for a knight. ‘Step forward and die like men.’ A stone bounced off his chest. ‘You pack of lily-livered villeins, come forward and fight!’ And, in answer to his taunt, one rash outlaw, a big fellow armed with an axe, rushed at him from behind. The knight seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. He half turned to the right and blocked the man’s wild axe swing with his sword. Then he changed direction, his feet as neat as a dancer’s, and swinging his torso to the left, he neatly crushed the man’s skull with one blow of his spiked mace. The man crumpled, jerked once, lay still. The knight had done it so casually, a killing flick of such skill and grace, that his jeering enemies were silenced.
    ‘Come on then, who’s next?’ said the knight. ‘Let’s start a pile.’
    An archer pushed his way through the ring until he was just five yards from the knight; he nocked an arrow to his bow, pulled back the hemp cord and was about to sink a yard of ash into the knight’s chest when Robin, arriving at a run, shouted in his iron battle voice: ‘Hold!’ And, pushing through the crowd around the knight, he said: ‘Sir, you have fought with courage. And now you are wounded. I am Robert Odo of Sherwood. Yield!’
    The knight cocked his head on one side; he was a handsome man, about twenty-five, with a big black bushy beard and bright eyes. He replied: ‘You wish to yield? Very well, I accept.’ He was smiling, even in the face of death. Robin stared at him. The archer hauled back his bow cord the final inch. The knight lifted his chin, a heartbeat from his Maker. But Robin stuck out a commanding arm, palm toward the archer. And then my master began to laugh, amid the blood and death, the pain and fury, he laughed and laughed. And the knight, laughing also, dropped his mace, spun the sword in a glittering sweep in the air, caught it by the bloody tip in his mailed hand and offered the hilt to Robin. ‘I am Sir Richard at Lea,’ he said smiling, ‘and I am your prisoner.’ And, still smiling, he collapsed on the mud at Robin’s feet, unconscious.
     
    We packed up the wagons with astonishing speed. In fact, Robin’s band did everything quickly, without fuss. The wounded were loaded with the baggage. The very badly wounded, only three men that I saw, after they had been given the last rites by Tuck, were dispatched with a swift dagger to the heart, administered by John. He did it with a strange gentleness, cradling their heads in his enormous hand and thrusting once, quickly, through the ribs to release a bright gout of heart’s blood. It seemed that this was the custom of Robin’s band. And nobody commented on the way these men were hurried on to Heaven, or the other place. Graves were dug, again with great speed, for our dead. Their dead - there were twenty-two corpses, and no wounded: all who had not run, except Sir Richard, had been executed by Robin’s men and women - were stripped of anything valuable: weapons, mail, boots, clothes, money, and lined up by the side of the road; their grubby chemises, these undershirts being the only item of clothing too dirty even for Robin’s men to steal, fluttered in the wind, grey, ragged flags to mark their passing to the next world. Tuck said a few brief words over the row of dead men, and I felt a pang as I caught sight of my victim’s blond, blood-smirched hair. They were the enemy, but they were also warriors and men. Tuck made the sign of the cross over the bodies and turned away; Hugh, mounted and at the head of the column, gave the cry: ‘Forward!’ and the whole lumbering train set off again down the forest road. I looked at the sun -