Free Outlaw by Michael Morpurgo

distance behind, Robin’s horse shied at a rising buzzard, leapt a ditch and careered off into a field. Robin hung on, but when the horse trod in a badger’s hole and stumbled, Robin came off, twisting his leg under him as he landed. He heard the excited, triumphant yell of the sheriff’s men and saw Much riding to his help. He tried to stand and couldn’t. Then Much was beside him, his sword drawn, putting himself between Robin and the sheriff’s men. There was no time to mount March’s horse. They would have to stand and fight. “Help me up, Much!” he cried. “Let me loose off one arrow, one arrow for the sheriff.”
    “Your horn, Robin!” shouted Much against the thunder of the oncoming hooves. “Blow your horn!” Robin put his horn to his lips and blew three times. But no one came and the horsemen were so close by now that they could see their eyes. Then, with a war yell that sent shivers down every spine, the Outlaws came pouring out of the forest. Like a rush of starlings overhead, the arrows flew over Much and Robin and into the charging horsemen. Most fell at that first volley. The rest were spread from their saddles, and once on the ground were finished off with the sword and the dagger. It was a brutal and terrible fight, but mercifully quickly over. Sir Guy of Gisbourne rode from the field with an arrow in his thigh; and the sheriff, still unscathed, went with him. Barely half a dozen of the hundred who rode out of Nottingham that day survived. But every victory has its price. For the first time, theOutlaws had lost men and women in battle. They carried their bodies home to the encampment that evening, and while all the talk was of how they had faced the sheriff’s men in open combat and beaten them, yet there was no rejoicing. Robin sat with Marion under his tree, little Martin on his good knee, and was glad to be alive. It had been a near thing. But his leg throbbed with pain, and with every minute that passed he was becoming more anxious. Neither Tuck nor Little John had come home from Nottingham and it was getting late.
    As the shadows lengthened that evening, neither Robin nor anyone dared voice their fears, for they all knew well enough what would happen to Tuck and Little John had they been captured. At last Robin could not stand it any longer. “I can’t just sit here,” he said. “I have to go back and find out what’s happened to them.”
    But Will Scarlett spoke up strongly. “We have six dead already, Robin. Is that not enough? Go back into Nottingham, and you won’t come back alive. If they are taken, then we need you here with us, not hanging alongside them on a rope.”
    Not long afterwards, Robin was limping up and down, kicking at the embers and cursing himself, when Friar Tuck came sauntering out of the trees and into the light of the fire. “Well!” he cried. “Have you ever seen such long faces! Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a ghost just yet, by God’s good grace.” Robin hugged him as if he would never let go.
    “Little John?” he asked. “Where’s Little John?”
    “He’ll be along,” said Tuck. “He just stopped for a piddle. Too much ale. He can’t hold it, the old goat, not like I can, by God’s good grace. After we’d heard about the mauling you’d all given thesheriff and Sir Guy of Gisbourne, we went and had a little drink or two to celebrate.”
    “Robin!” boomed a voice from behind him. It was Little John. “So you made it. I told Tuck you would, didn’t I, Tuck? They won’t get him, I said, they never do.”
    “Where’ve you been?” Robin said. “You had me worried sick.”
    “Here,” and Little John held out the arrow with its glinting silver arrowhead. “The sheriff left your prize behind when he went after you. So seeing as he didn’t seem to want it, we took it. Oh yes,” he went on, shaking a purse in Robin’s face, “and this too. The hundred pounds the sheriff owed you, your prize money. You won it,