Free The Merry Men of the Riverworld by John Gregory Betancourt Page A

and fled into the trees. Robin threw back his head and laughed.
    “Sir Robin!” said the tall man he called Little John. “On the River—”
    Robin turned to follow his friend's gaze.
    Coming around a bend in the river was one of the strangest looking riverboats he'd ever seen. They had encountered three others on the River, but this one—
    It was huge, easily two hundred feet from pointed prow to broad, flat stern, with a large wheel on either side and a third wheel churning water at the rear. Its three tall decks had intricate woodwork, and twin smokestacks rose from a central pilot's cabin. Sunlight glinted off glass windows and what looked like brass railings. Several dozen men did various tasks on the upper two decks, while sword-bearing guards maintained a vigilant watch on the lowest.
    “Incredible,” Robin said. He stared, looking thoughtful.
    “What do you think?” a portly Friar Tuck asked.
    “I've never seen anything like it,” Will Scarlet said.
    “Who could have built it?” asked Little John
    “A better question is, where did they get the metal,” said Mutch. He'd been a civil engineer in the last life and tended toward practical questions. “Did you see those windows? That was glass! Real glass !”
    “I think,” Robin said, sitting down, “we're going to wait for the riverboat's return. Will, Ben—scout the hill. There should be a grailstone on the other side. If the natives are peaceful, we'll spend the night here.”
    “Yes, Robin,” Will Scarlet said. He and Ben Taylor slipped into the forest like shadows.
    While Robin stared out across the River, deep in thought, the rest of his men began setting up camp: clearing the area, gathering wood, building a circle of stones to hold their fire. After a minute Robin opened his pack, took out a small square of cigarette paper, a tiny clay jar with a stopper, and a carved fishbone pen. He opened the jar, dipped his pen into a thin grayish ink, and began to write. His script was tiny, meticulous.
    When he finished, he wrapped the paper around an arrow's shaft, tied it in place with human-hair string, and returned the arrow to his quiver. Now it was just a matter of time.
    The natives turned out to be surprisingly friendly, considering the language barrier. They were a shy people, quiet and simple in their ways, all living in grass huts around a grailstone. They allowed Robin and his men to fit their grails into the unused slots in the grailstone, then clustered at the far side of the village to keep a wary vigil.
    Robin counted twenty-five men and thirty women. He noticed each man kept a long, bone-tipped spear close at hand, though none made a hostile move.
    “Polynesian,” Friar Tuck suggested, “or from another of the Pacific Islands.” He had been a sociologist before being recruited into the merry men: one of the reasons he'd joined was to see more of the people resurrected along the River's banks. “Probably never saw a white man in their natural lives...”
    Nodding, Robin collected his grail from the grailstone after the charge had come. “Do you think they'll attack?”
    Tuck hesitated. “They were a friendly people. But I wouldn't want to press our luck.”
    “Come on, then,” Robin told the rest of his men. “Back to the River. We shouldn't push our welcome by eating in front of them.”
    He led the way back to the cliff. Will Scarlet was standing guard, keeping an eye out for the riverboat.
    “No sign of it,” he reported.
    Robin nodded slowly. “I'm sure they're on a scouting mission this time,” he said. “They'll be back.”
    “In such a craft?” Little John said, his bushy black eyebrows coming together in a frown. “They could go to the ends of the River. Why should they return here?”
    “Any of a dozen reasons.” Robin hunkered down and opened his grail. There were thin crispy wafers, little packets of what looked like peanut butter, strips of some dried, cured meat, and a little flask of brandy ... as well as