Free Path of the She Wolf by Theresa Tomlinson Page B

Sheriff’s thin lips. He laughed: then spat into Will’s face. ‘Hang the fool,’ he cried. ‘Get on with it! Shut his stupid mouth up! Shut it forever!’
    As the hangman moved to lift the noose, suddenly Tom was swinging himself up onto the platform with agility, despite his damaged leg, sword and dagger in his hands. He sliced through Will’s bonds in a moment.
    Will laughed, delighted.
    ‘Here’s your sword,’ Tom cried. ‘Don’t die with honour; fight instead! Help shall come – I’m sure of it!’
    Then the two men swung about back to back as they’d so often done in their practising. Will with a sword and Tom with his dagger were both ready to fight to the death any and all of the Sheriff’s men.
    The Sheriff howled with anger. ‘Kill them! Kill them both!’ he screamed.
    But the guards hesitated to charge at them, for the gleam that was there in the outlaws’ eyes told them that they would not die without taking others with them.
    Then all at once an arrow went whistling over the heads of the soldiers, just grazing the Sheriff’s cheek. The Sheriff swung round in fury as more arrows flew out from the edge of the woodland bringing down two more soldiers.
    Then there started up strange distant thudding sounds that grew and grew, at last becoming thunderously loud.
    ‘Look out! Look out!’ one of the soldiers cried, pointing towards the woods. Everybody turned to see that the bushes and branches on the edge of the forest were trembling and shaking. Even tall trees twisted and turned, waving wildly about. All at once hundreds of squealing, grunting pigs came bursting out from the shadows of the trees, charging at speed towards the platform and the crowd of fighting men. There was sudden wild panic, every man shouting at his companions, nobody able to hear or make sense.
    ‘Ya! Ya!’ came the cries of the herders as they still drove the pigs on. The gibbet was surrounded by fat, heaving, snorting bodies. More arrows whistled overhead and the Sheriff was grazed again in the elbow. He did not wait to see what next might come flying out from the forest, but fought his way through the charging beasts, slicing his sword in all directions, heading for the gates of Clipston. At last he reached the safety of the courtyard, his men streaming after him.
    ‘Get back and fight them,’ he cried, ‘I order you back!’
    The Sheriff tried to close the gates and make his men stay and fight, but they’d had enough of nasty surprises for one day and only when the last guard was eventually safe inside did they swing the gates closed.
    There was just a moment of laughter and rejoicing, then the outlaws took action once again knowing that they must not hang about. Isabel rode straight at the collapsing gibbet and hauled Will up behind her onto her strong grey mare. Tom whistled for Rambler and in a moment the horse was by his side. There were a few more shoutsand sharp bursts of laughter as the pigs were quickly rounded up and driven back into the woods. When the Sheriff dared to open the gates once more there was nothing left but a smashed gibbet and a great expanse of trampled ground and pig-muck.
    ‘Get into the woods,’ the Sheriff cried. ‘Kill every pig-herder you can find. Kill every pig!’
    But as the night grew darker, the pigs and their owners left the woodlands, slipping away to their homes along the secret paths that they knew well. A thin mist rose from the sodden mossy grass, growing thicker in patches, sending the soldiers stumbling about, lost and weary. They fell into bogs and streams, cursing the pigs and their herders, cursing each other but cursing the Sheriff most of all.
    There was much joy as Will and his rescuers returned to Langden, but Marian marched ahead of the others towards the Forestwife’s clearing, her face grim.
    ‘Do not look so anxious,’ Robert begged, running after her. ‘It was a mad idea, that you and Magda thought up, but it worked!’
    ‘Aye. It worked,’ she agreed.