Free Will in Scarlet by Matthew Cody Page B

“That’s too fine a horse to be riding alongside a merchant’s cart. Even as protection.”
    After some struggle, Much managed to roll the rider’s body off her and onto his back. John was watching her with a bemused smile, his hands resting on his staff.
    “You know you could’ve asked for help, lad,” he said.
    “Didn’t need it,” she answered, wiping a smear of something wet off her cheek. The dead man had bled on her.
    The cloak had fallen back, and his face was visible now—a young man about her age, his sandy-brown hair plastered to his forehead with dried blood. He had soft features, maybe even handsome if not for the look of death on his pale face and his cold blue lips.
    Someone groaned.
    “Enough, Stout!” she snapped.
    “What?” the fat man said. “I didn’t say anything!”
    Much looked back at John, but he was shaking his head.
    They both looked down at the dead man. His lips were moving.
    “Lord,” said John. “He’s alive!”
    John was right. The boy was the very shade of the grave. Eyes closed, but his lips were moving.
    Much found her knife in the dirt and then leaned closer, putting her ear next to the boy’s lips.
    John knelt next to her. “What’s he saying?”
    “Wolves,” she answered. “He said … 
wolves
.”

EIGHT
    What bandit worth his salt won’t take a risk now and again?
    —M UCH THE M ILLER ’ S S ON
    On the way back to camp, they talked about one thing only—whether they should try to save the boy’s life or let him die and take his horse. Arguing
for
the boy was John, who pointed out that though the lad’s clothes were plain enough, he carried a fine sword of rich craftsmanship and his horse was superior, not a bug-bitten nag like the ones they had stabled back at the camp. Perhaps the boy had some connection to a rich house. Perhaps he was a servant, or even a person of importance riding under the disguise of poverty. Such a person would be worth a great deal in ransom, but only if he was alive. You just couldn’t get a good price for a corpse.
    Arguing
against
saving the boy was Stout, who acknowledged that while he rode a fine horse, he probably did so because he’d robbed and killed the rightful owner. The boy had a sneaky, cutthroat look about him, Stout said, a look that reminded him of himself in his younger days. It would be a waste to nurse the little thief back to health only to have to kill him again once they discovered the truth of his awful character.
    No one asked Much her opinion, and she didn’t offer it. She didn’t know what to make of this strange young rider who’d appeared. He was mysterious, and mysteries, on the whole, annoyed her. For instance, the boy kept mumbling feverish things about wolves, and yet it was obvious enough that his wounds were man-made. She wanted to shake him awake, if only to tell him to stop going on about wolves that weren’t there. If he quieted down like a sensible person, then he could live if he liked.
    Nevertheless, as irritating as she found him, she didn’t like the idea of just letting him die. Not when there was a chance he could recover. She believed in that, in a fighting chance. She’d had to these past few years.
    Perhaps that was why, as they led the boy toward camp, his limp frame slumped sideways over his horse, she found herself cooling his feverish forehead and neck with a rag soaked in her own drinking water. She wanted him to have that fighting chance.
    The Merry Men’s camp was hidden safely away among the tangles of Sherwood Forest, at the junction of a pair of long-forgotten hunting trails. As the little team of bandits traveled the secret paths, they heard the telltale whistles and animal calls of hidden lookouts placed along the way.
Friends approaching
, the calls said.
With a prisoner in tow
.
    After they’d passed the lookouts, it was several minutes before they could smell the camp’s cookfires. At first the Merry Men’s defenses had seemed overly complex to Much—the