Free Shadow of the Wolf by Tim Hall Page B

and Marian would be passing through avillage and someone would hear the name
Loxley
and would remember meeting Robin’s father. Robin would follow their trail, from place to place, until one day he would find them, and they would be amazed and overjoyed and proud beyond words that Robin was alive and had managed to track them down!
    Robin was pulled from his reverie by raised voices near the main gates. Dust was rising – the Sheriff’s soldiers riding away, shouting as they went. A knife of lightning stabbed at Winter Forest, quickly followed by the first crunch of thunder.
    He turned to go into the tower. But then another noise caught his attention. He peered towards the stables. Horses were being saddled and yoked, and vehicles were being prepared. One was Lord Delbosque’s own gilded coach.
    Is he leaving again, already? Was he only passing through, after all?
    The main gates opened with a clanking of wood and a rattling of chains and the Chief Porter waved a litter out and away. A second litter followed, a little quicker, its wheels bouncing across the cobbles.
    Yes, he’s leaving! They all are. But why now, straight into the teeth of the storm
…
?
    And stranger still: it wasn’t only the lord’s travelling staff who were on the move. Here was Mistress Bawg, her great bulk shaking as she clambered into a waiting carriage. And there, crossing the Great Ward: Igiotte Hutte, the Seneschal. Where were they all going?
    Then Robin saw the strangest sight of all. Gerad Blunt was moving between the kitchens and the servants’ quarters. He was rolling a barrel and he kept tipping it so a black liquid pulsed out. It was bubbling hot, like pitch. The Castellan went to fetch a second barrel and continued dribbling the stuff onto the timber struts of buildings. As he worked he kept shaking his head.
    Elsewhere there were sudden movements, and sounds of alarm, and from somewhere close a thump and perhaps a cry of pain. Thunder stirred through it all, masking the details. Robin listened hard. He stared into the storm-dark dawn, not yet ready to believe his own eyes …
    Marian’s father came into view, unsteady on his feet. He was naked to the waist, and he held a flagon, spilling wine. In the other hand he was waving a flaming torch. He came swaying towards Gerad Blunt.
    He can’t be
, thought Robin.
His own home
…
    The Castellan spread his black trail; Lord Delbosque staggered to meet him …
    A flare of lightning, freezing the scene.
    Robin strapped his father’s bow across his back. He hurried through the trap door.
    ‘Marian, you need to see this. Something is happening out there. Your father, it looks like he’s—’
    But Marian wasn’t there.
    ‘Marian!’
    He raced down the spiral staircase, shouting for her as he went. He saw something protruding into their tower, poking through the buttress. A ladder. He scrambled down it to the ground. He found Marian’s knapsack, lying open, spilling its contents.
    ‘Marian!’
    Robin running, through the abandoned lanes, into the main manor. Into a great rush of bodies and noise and panic. Already wafts of black smoke and the smell of burning pitch spreading. Servants and maids running for the main gates, being barged out of the way by men on horseback.
    Robin racing towards the main house, plunging deeper into the chaos, people and animals rushing past on every side. Two bandogs, free from their chains, snapping at oneanother and at people as they raced to escape the flames. A clattering of wings from the dovecot – the birds spiralling into the storm. A child crying in her mother’s arms.
    Robin weaving through it all, shouting for Marian, coughing and disorientated, colliding with someone rushing from a side door, stumbling, staggering onwards.
    Thunder tearing the sky, the vibration of it in the earth. A wall of rain sweeping in, hissing against the flames. Lightning flared, and through the glare and the thickening smoke – there – Marian’s father. The earl