Robin Hood and the Hobyas © 2004 by Clayton Emery
Sherwood might be home to Robin Hood's outlaws, but there are times when it's a scary place...

"This is it. I ain't never seen anything like it."

Robin Hood squatted next to the skeleton. It lay among last fall's leaves, white against brown. The bones were scattered farther than a man could reach. The long pointed horse-like skull lay down the slope a ways. Leg bones and hooves pointed every which-way. The empty rib cage lay torn loose from the spine.

The outlaw chief stroked a finger down a rib. The bones gleamed, luminous under a spring sky that lofted clouds just over their heads.

Simon, a round-faced peasant late from the plow, and Robin's cousin, Will Scarlett, all in red, watched their leader. Scarlett kicked at a thigh bone. "Wolves."

Robin rubbed his callused finger against his thumb. The bones felt oily. "I don't think so. Wolves would have cracked them for the marrow. And they're - knurled - chewed all over. Feel 'em. Like - a dozen foxes had worried 'em, or a sett of badger kits. Fresh-killed, too. Today."

"It ain't foxes neither." Simon pointed with his bow. "There's a full-grown fox eaten and scattered the same way not two rods on."

"Show me," said the outlaw chief. Farther up the slope he saw. Another fresh skeleton, another pointed skull. "Stripped clean, too. Wolves nor foxes would never be this neat. And foxes don't eat their own. I'd say it was ants, they do such fine work. But t'wasn't ants."

Scarlett flicked at a chain of bones like a bracelet. "They even ate the hair of his tail. Makes my skin crawl."

Simon crossed himself. Robin Hood plucked at his beard. "Whatever it be, we'd best stay out of its path."

Will Scarlett replied, "We're scarce a league from the Greenwood."

"I know that."

"But you've never seen anything like this before either?"

"No."

Scarlett peered at his cousin. "Rob, you've crawled all over these woods since the day you were born."

"I know that. But there are things in this forest no man will ever discover."

Scarlett snorted and rubbed his ear. Simon cast about them nervously. Robin grinned and poked him with his bow. "Wish you are back at your broadcasting, Simon?"

The former serf shook his head, but he was unsure. "I couldn't scare up nothing for dinner, Robin. Not even a hare. What'll we do?"

The outlaw hefted his long bow and aimed downslope. "It's too late to get anything tonight. The sky's going to crash on our heads before long. We'll eat venison shanks gone high and be glad to get it. Spring is a time to tighten your belt and live on wildflowers and the smell of fresh earth and the beauty of God's bounty."

"I don't know..." Scarlett followed along. "Something's eating its fill..."

"Hoy! Rob! Come quick!"

The three men broke into a trot. Little John and Will Stutly and Friar Tuck waited by the cave entrance. The men were hard to see in the fading steel-gray light. Most of Robin's men looked alone, newly-dressed in Lincoln green now that the snow was gone and the leaves sprouting. Only Tuck was in dark dark brown, his Benedictine's cassock, and Scarlett in faded red year-round. The Greenwood was pools of silver-washed depths like the surface of the sea. All the forest was turning gray under the dusk and impending storm. Only the entrance to their cave showed yellow, a glow no brighter than a chilled firefly.

"What is it?" asked the outlaw.

Little John, so big he looked more tree than man, pointed with his quarterstaff. Friar Tuck hissed, "It's your familiar."

Robin peered. Amidst the lowest branches of a oak huddled a figure no taller than a toddler, no fatter than a broom. Like a crippled spider, the figure hand-clawed his way down the rumpled bark of the oak tree. It tottered across the grass towards Robin, lurching with a bundle in its arms. The burden was almost as large as the bearer.

"Puck..." said Robin. But his voice died on the air. Something was dreadfully wrong. The fairy was, as Tuck sneered, Robin's friend alone. He rarely came to the Greenwood, rarely showed himself to other men, and was always chipper as a squirrel when he came. But now...

The outlaw handed his bow to Little John and squatted on his hams. The fairy stopped before him and almost fell. He offered up the bundle, a bundle wrapped in a spotted fawn's hide, and Robin reached for it.

"God's love," Friar Tuck grated, "don't touch the filthy thing."

"Hush, Tuck." The bundle weighed less than a dead woodcock.

The fairy always reminded Robin of a sheaf of cattails. His legs and arms were reed thin, with cracked hands and feet gnarly as a bird's. His head was the biggest thing on him, round as a turnip but flat on top, with slash of a mouth that almost divided his head in two and pointed ears that stuck up past his crazy spiderweb hair. He smelled like the forest too, a dry punky odor like mushrooms.

That he was a thinking creature was demonstrated by his clothes, like a man's. ("So he's Christian in his own way," Marian had noted.) Trousers of moleskin hung loosely under a shirt of green woodpecker feathers. Clothes like Robin's, Will Scarlett had suggested.

That Puck's other name was Robin Goodfellow, Robin Hood was well aware.

Yet now the fairy was in sad shape. A hank of hair was missing from his melon skull. One of his hands was bloody, a finger missing leaving him only two. He limped on one maimed foot, and dark blood marked his vest as scratches marked him elsewhere. A bite had been taken out of one ear.

Robin swore in shock. A bite? Like up on the slope, with the deer skeleton?

"Puck, what the hell?"

The fairy gestured to the bundle with his good hand. If Puck could talk, Robin had never heard him. They communicated with signs that often as not Robin failed to interpret. Sighing, he peeled back the fresh fawn hide and peered at the bundle.

"Jesus save us."

Inside was a replica of Puck. An evil twin, Robin thought at first, if fairies have such things. But this fairy was wrinkled as a winter apple. Its teeth were pointed like a cat's, but yellowed and worn down. The spiderweb hair was thin.

And if Puck had been nicked in some fight, this old gentleman had fared worse. A flap of skin hung down from the top of his skull across an empty earhole. One tiny eye was swollen shut, the edges of the wound raw. He was scratched and bitten in a hundred other spots across his tiny frame, and one foot was gone.

Robin Hood wasn't even sure the thing was alive. He had to probe with a gentle finger to find a pulse, fainter than a sleeping snake's.

"Puck," he said. "Who is this? What's hap-"

The fairy was gone. Robin cast about. "Where'd he go?"

Little John pointed at the woods with his eight-foot quarterstaff.

"Oh, my," the outlaw sighed. "Will, kick up the fire, will you? We need light. And heat some water. And call in Brand and Much from the scouting posts. There's no one will be astir this night."

Robin Hood fussed over the larger wounds with help and hindrance from the Merry Men. Friar Tuck groused, "It's Satan's own work to succor a succubus."

"Belt up, Tuck. We'll worry after our souls when the body's healed."

"Who is he, Robin?" asked Simon.

"Move out of the light, please. I think - I think he's Puck's father."

"Fairies have families?"

"They do not," the friar rasped. "They arise from muckheaps like flies."

Will Scarlett grinned. "I thought the Bible said like begets like. Kine from kine, ass from ass, friar from friar." He wrapped the shorn leg in a scrap of brown cloth. "Stump's bleeding. It's still alive."

Robin cleaned the scalp wound and laid it back over the tiny misshapen skull. He sat back on his heels. "Not for long. This's no boot we can mend. He might have been gray to begin with, but he's lost a lot of blood... Marian could tend him."

Little John drilled his quarterstaff into the dirt floor of the cave. "Twelve miles in the dark?"

"And a storm?" added Hard-Hitting Brand. He was a big shaggy rawboned man, almost as big as Little John and often mistaken for him. Beside Brand was Much the Miller's Son, a hunchbacked lumpy-faced idiot.

Robin glanced at the cave mouth. "I'm afraid so. We're in for a long night."

"He'll probably die on the way," Tuck snorted.

"Perhaps. But I needs try. I owe Puck. If he hadn't pulled me out of I don't know how many scrapes, I'd never had lived to handle a sword."

Will Scarlett shucked his quiver and counted his arrows. "Whatever gnawed on them deer and that fox is probably what tore strips off old One-Shoe here." He told the others about the stripped skeletons up the hill, finished with, "And if Puck's friends to all the animals, is what Rob tells us, then there's something out there ain't an animal."

Robin Hood hunted in a rack suspended from the ceiling. He took down a mildewed belt quiver, slid it onto his belt, and transferred his arrows to it. Rewrapping the maimed fairy, he slid the bundle into his shirt front, pricked holes in the fawn hide and laced his tunic ties through it.

"We going now?" asked Little John.

"`The time to begin is now.' Whoever wishes may come. I won't force anyone. This is a personal mission."

The men glanced at one another. The last to ready himself was Friar Tuck, his knees creaking and fat fingers fumbling with his back quiver.

Hard-Hitting Brand added a pouch of rags and tinder soaked in tallow to his belt. "We might need to strike a fire in the rain. It might be the only thing chases off the chewers out there."

Robin Hood stepped to the cave mouth, then out into the blackness. A night wind thrummed in the treetops. "They won't bother us. We're too big."

The men glanced at one another. Will Scarlett voiced their thoughts. "I wonder if that's what the deer reckoned."

"What was that?"

The foresters stopped. Hard-Hitting Brand was in the lead, Little John brought up the rear, and Robin and his precious cargo walked in the center. They'd halted at the giant's question.

"What's what, John?"

The moon was up, nearly full, and Sherwood was an undersea grotto painted silver and black. Tree trunks straight as pillars of salt surrounded them, but they shivered from the wind pressing their tops. Brush tickled them from either side of the trail.

"Some strange sound."

They listened but heard only the rush of wind. Robin could hear the wheezing of the fairy in his shirt, like a baby at his breast. Still breathing, if hard.

"Keep moving," said Robin. "It's probably -"

They all heard it this time, down in the brush at the height of a grouse. A gobbling sound.

Hob-ya.

Hard-Hitting Brand stopped so short Will Scarlett plowed into him. "What was that?"

"That's a badger dicking his mate!" snarled Scarlett. "It's nothing."

Old Will Stutly growled, "Nothing I ever heard before."

"Keep moving!" barked Robin. "You're jumping at -"

"There!" shouted Simon. "It's a - a muskrat."

"Ach!" Robin pushed Simon from behind. "What would a muskrat be doing this far from - yaah!"

Something like a long cat bounded from the brush and sank its fangs into his outstretched hand. Panicked, Robin whipped the thing off. It disappeared over the bush. "It bit me!"

"A muskrat?"

Robin staunched the flow of blood with his good hand. "What the hell is going on? If we were still walking -"

Hobya, came a noise from the brush. Then, from the other side of the path, an answer. Hobya.

"Go!" barked the outlaw chief. The men picked up their feet and jogged ahead.

They came free of the brush along the trail into a small glade. The grass was silver, as if frosted, and already cold and wet with dew.

"What are these things saying?" asked Scarlett. "Hob-na?"

Hobya, hobya, echoed the dark under the trees.

Robin Hood pulled his sleeve over his hand. "Don't stand still, keep walking!"

The men reformed. Hard-Hitting Brand steered his big nose towards the trail they all knew by heart. Marian was this time at Gresham Abbey, southeast on the banks of the Trent. Marian's father shunted her from priory to abbey to priory as she was kicked out of one and then another.

Scarlett panted, and not from walking. "If there's only two of them, we don't have much to worry about."

"They et a whole deer," said Simon.

A single hobya sounded behind them. It was echoed from up ahead by a half-dozen such cries.

The foresters froze.

Robin Hood swore bitter oaths. "Trend more east. We'll ford Rainwood Water at Tuck's Well. Water stops - demons."

"Those things are still ahead."

"Go!"

The men jogged on.

In the first pool of darkness under the trees, they were attacked.

Much howled as a dark angular shape dropped onto his head. The thing snarled, and men around the idiot heard a tearing noise as Much's hair was shredded. Will Stutly whapped at the idiot's head, but lost his balance as something bit his leg. The old man hissed and fell. He thrashed with something in the dark. Other men were equally beset.

Robin Hood had no time to help his men, for he was suddenly aswarm with biting tearing spitting creatures like giant mosquitoes. A furry cat-like thing grabbed onto his wrist with two claws. Taloned feet scrabbled against his trouser leg. The attacker chomped on the wrist, tiny needle-sharp teeth sinking to the bone. Another snagged his shoulder and bit at his ear, and a third bit his thigh through the rent in his trouser knee.

Panicked - these things were stripping his flesh from his bones! - Robin swiped the one clinging to his wrist at the one on his neck. The animals - or demons - thudded into one another like a sack of bones, squirmed aside, bit him again. He could feel ragged tears in half a dozen places, like hot pokers jammed into his skin. Swallowing a scream, he smashed and flailed at the things and somehow got them off. He grabbed for the one chewing his thigh. He felt a silky scruffiness like a mangy cat, then it evaded his hand, dropped off and disappeared.

Robin swiped at his wounds and came away warm and wet with his own blood.

Someone was screaming. Simon, until Little John cuffed him quiet. He continued to whimper.

"Belt up!" Will Scarlett's voice shook. "We've fought worse than this and won!"

"Is anyone sore wounded?" Robin asked. His own voice shook. Why had the things attacked, and why retreated?

"What are these bloody things?" Hard-Hitting Brand swore. "I smashed one hard against me leg, but it just ran off. Tough as roaches."

"It's like tangling with a nest of wildcats!"

"Keep moving," Robin told them. "We can't linger."

"They'll track us," guttered Will Stutly.

"I'm going back, then." Simon had found the deer skeletons. "I don't want to get et."

"You'll go with us because we need you," Little John growled.

"John, wait..."

Tuck's voice floated from the dark. The friar, fat and older, wheezed. "I'll go back with him. I can't keep up the pace."

All these voices coming from the dark disoriented Robin, as if he were surrounded by ghosts. He made a rapid calculation. With all his strongest men, Little John, Hard-Hitting Brand, Will Scarlett, Much the Miller's Son, and himself, they could go much faster. But that left Will Stutly, oldest of them all...

As if reading his mind, Robin's old mentor said, "I'll go back too."

Robin stifled a sigh of relief. "Right then. Let's hie."

Probably into another flock of demons, he thought, like a gaping abyss.

They were attacked a half-mile on.

This time the things - hobyas, the men called them - leapt from the bushes and dropped from the trees. Will Scarlett had one latch onto an ear with its teeth, and Much punched his head to dislodge it. Old Will Stutly got on on the shoulder and fell and rolled onto it to crush it. Friar Truck broke one's back with his bare hands. At least two more attacked other men. Four came for Robin Hood.

One bit Robin on the hip, getting more Lincoln Green than flesh. Two attacked the bundle on his chest: one bit and clung to the deerhide, another scrambled for the wounded fairy's face. Robin made to grab another attacker when another bit his arm in the same place as before.

The torn spot was sore, and the outlaw chief howled. He tore loose the hobya going after Puck's father. But the pain in his arm seared so frightfully he could only flail the limb and holler. Then his arm was arrested in a grip of iron. Little John loomed over him, blocking out the night sky. "Hold still, Rob."

Someone else sawed at his arm, and the pain stopped. Robin recognized Will Scarlett by his height and smell. Robin's cousin pried off a skull and tossed it away. He wiped his "throatcutter" on his shirt. "You can cut 'em at least, Coz. But they're tough little buggers."

Little John pushed Robin back to see if more hobyas stuck to him. Robin himself popped a hobya loose from his hip with a fist. He tried to stomp it, but the thing scampered into the bushes. The chanting hobya hobya hobya encircled them.

"Like leeches," said Will Scarlett.

"Like men," Robin corrected. "They attack in force. They think. They're after this one. Puck's father." He tilted his head to listen. A thin wheezing came to his ears.

"Tha's right," rumbled Little John. "Most of 'em swarm on Rob."

"But why do they want him?" asked Scarlett.

"I don't know. Let's go."

"Listen!"

The susurrous of hobya hobya hobya hobya sounded all around like a chorus of crickets. Or the rush and hush of surf about to drown them.

"Let's run."

Foresters are built for walking, up to thirty miles a day if need be. Running is a different matter.

Hard-Hitting Brand led, his great feet making the forest floor jump as he clumped along. He caught all the branches on the head and shouting warnings to those behind. Much was just behind, put there by Robin as a brush-breaker. Then came the outlaw chief and his tiny bundle, then the rest, with Little John rearmost. The men ran in silence, their hoarse panting the only sound. But even over that they heard the satanic choir. Hobya hobya hobya.

"How much farther - to Kirklees, you reckon - Robin?" gasped Will Scarlett.

"Three leagues yet!" Robin called over his shoulder.

"We'll never make it!"

"I know! I'm hoping we can outrun them - then slow down."

A little later, another half-mile or so, they stumbled to a stop. Over their wheezing they could hear - nothing.

"No sound of 'em," said Scarlett.

Robin counted in the dark. "Where's Stutly? And Little John?"

A pounding came down the trail. The giant loomed into sight and cut off the view to the east. He was hardly panting at all.

"John, where's Stutly?"

The giant pointed back with his quarterstaff. "He dropped out. Said he wouldn't run. Too old, he said. I offered to carry him, but he told me to - he said no."

"Will he be all right?"

The giant spread his hands. "It's you they want. Unless they're out to eat us all."

Hard-Hitting Brand scanned the black trees. "There's no sign of 'em here."

"There's no sign of anything," Robin panted. "No owls, no foxes, no squirrels. If these things eat like they bite, they'll have devoured or scared off every animal for miles around."

Simon whispered, "So you think they're here?"

"Something stinks -" began Brand.

A flurry shook the canopy overhead. Hobyas fell on every member of the party like leaves in a windstorm.

This time they were thicker than bats at sundown. The Merry Men were bitten on the ears, cheeks, shoulders, arms, hands, legs. There was no time to help anyone else, or even to draw a weapon. The men ripped the things loose like leeches, smashed them with fists, stomped them underfoot, bit through scaly-furry necks and arms. Robin suffered worst of all. He couldn't see for monsters clinging to his face. One hooked a dirty claw into his lower eyelid and Robin smashed himself in the face rather than lose an eye. That hobya fell, but a dozen more tore at him, impossible to stop as a swarm of giant wasps. Robin shouted "Run!" and took off blindly in what he hoped was the right direction.

He cannoned into someone tall who swiped big hands down Robin's body to claw off hobyas. The big man then plucked Robin up, hurled him across a shoulder, and ran so branches whipped the outlaw's face.

"What are you doing? Let go! I can walk!" Then a scuttling hobya bit his jaw and he had to wrench it loose.

Hoarse panting, a long set of strides. Robin felt his arms creak in their sockets, his ribs compress. Then he was loose and sailing through the air.

He crashed into water shocking cold, lost his breath, sank, scraped his face on a stony bottom. He shoved away with his hands and surfaced. The water was only knee-deep. Someone else struggled to pull him erect, then out of the water up a grassy bank. Robin Hood sobbed for breath, couldn't catch it for water so cold in early spring. The cold made his wounds throb and burn, but at least he was free of hobyas. For now.

Someone big still clutched one shoulder. "Who is it?"

"Brand. Little John pitched you into the stream. I jumped after."

Spitting icy water, Robin felt the bundle on his chest. Still there, still breathing, bubbling. "Mother of God. This fairy's the toughest of us all."

Hard-Hitting Brand led Robin off the grass to the path. The outlaw chief asked, "Where are the rest?"

"Slowin' 'em down. We've got some time."

Even with darkness, Robin saw Brand was wet to the waist and bled from a dozen places. He wanted to protest this sacrifice by his men, but quit. He didn't know what to think, so didn't. Gulping, he picked up his feet to trot alongside Brand. The tall man, almost as tall as Little John and often mistaken for him, was the band's best runner. Robin would have to match him tonight. They picked up the pace.

Far down the trail they ran. Fortunately Robin knew it by heart. He'd walked it a hundred times, through snow and fog and rain and sun, to visit Marian, who would sneak out of the abbey to spend an evening with him. It was a deer trail, so followed its own bouncing prancing logic around tree boles, with many light hops over fallen logs, between boulders and around the edges of glades, under bracken and on and on. Robin felt sorry for Brand, less familiar with the trail and taller besides. The big man banged his head and scratched his face and stumbled from missteps a dozen times for Robin's every one, though the outlaw chief stumbled aplenty.

A light trot suited them both. Gradually they grew warm and steamy inside icy clothes. Only occasionally would a hobya leap out and latch on with white shark teeth. Robin caught them just behind the head and snapped their necks, though his hands were slippery with his own and his attackers' blood. Brand helped pluck monsters off Robin's back, often before prying a creature off himself. Robin blessed Brand a hundred times until they were both sick of the phrase.

The path opened up and Brand trotted beside Robin.

"Why do you - suppose these things - want whatisname there?"

Robin Hood cursed himself for encouraging his men to ask questions. Especially when he had no answers. He stole air from his lungs to say, "I don't know."

"What would happen - if we just left him?"

"These hobyas would - eat him."

Robin ducked a tree branch. Brand fended one aside with his bow. "But if we - just left him - abandoned him - they'd leave us alone - wouldn't they?"

"What are you - talking about?"

"Nothin'." Brand stopped asking questions.

The men left off talking and worked at running. Robin sobbed and sucked air. His legs burned from crotch to ankle until he felt like Saint Lawrence on the spit. Despite the pain, he could lift his feet, but setting them down accurately was dodgy.

Miles down the trail, with many more hobyas crushed underfoot and by hand, and many cuts and much blood lost, they passed a final barrier of woods. The men leaned against the last boles and croaked and gasped. Even sucking air hurt. But they gazed a world lit by moonlight, and their destination.

Kirklees Abbey was a crennalated box behind a wall as high as two men. The place was black. There was no watchfire, no smoke from bread ovens, no torches at the gate. The abbey was independent, without neighbors. It stood like an island in the midst of a silver sea - knee-high winter rye and orchards of pear and plum trees. The two men couldn't see the road from this side, but they knew it was only a cart track that wended into the forest. The abbey was a half-mile off. Ten minutes' walk.

Robin blew out his cheeks. His sight dimmed for a second, then returned. He shivered in wet torn bloody clothes. He thought of Marian, soft and warm, snuggled in her bed behind that forbidding wall. He imagined he smelled spiced wine and the perfume of her hair. He hoped she dreamt of him.

Brand pushed away from the tree trunk. "What do we do?"

Robin wiped his forehead. "Truth to tell, I hadn't thought of it. You can boost me over the wall, I guess, and I'll try to pull you over. Then we'll catfoot to Marian's cell. I think I can find it. I've been in the grounds once. Twice."

"What if they catch us?"

"The prioress?" Robin barked a laugh. "Whatever her wrath, she won't shred and eat us."

"And Marian can fix - your friend there?"

"I don't know. But if she can't, no one can. She makes magic with herbs."

Staggering, Robin led into the field of rye. It brushed against his deerhide boots with a shoosh, shoosh. Chaff stuck to the wet leather. The sound of his feet pounding and the grain parting covered other sounds.

Like rats in a larder, hobyas surged from the grain, all around, and slapped against Robin's boots. Razor teet tore at his boots and the skin underneath. Hard-Hitting Brand shouted, stomped his feet again and again, until the cracking and snapping of tiny bones was continuous. But the searing tearing bites came more often. Robin Hood was bitten on the rump, knees, thighs. A hobya caught his arm and scrabbled for purchase. The outlaw made to sweep it off, but it bit his fingers. He howled and balled a fist, but the thing latched onto that and Robin had nothing to smash against.

Hobyahobyahobya Hobyahobya HOBYAHOBYAHOBYAHOBYA ran the unending chorus as the tiny fiends multiplied like demons out of some drunken friar's depiction of Hell. There were hundreds between the outlaws and the distant abbey wall.

Brand shouted, "Robin, RUN!"

"I can't!" A hobya bit his finger to the bone and he shrieked. It worried the flesh until he smacked the beast into a half-dozen of his fellows. More took its place. The ground was gray with hobyas trying to climb Robin's body. Bites on his legs were continuous, a thousand needle pricks. Blood filled his boots. A hobya sank rat teeth into his upper thigh. God's love, suppose it bit off his balls? He pictured the nuns coming to the fields in the morning, Marian in a novice's brown, and finding him and Brand as skeletons with the tiny bones of a cat-like thing mixed on his ribcage. If the monsters left any Lincoln Green, Marian would know instantly who they'd been. Or would she never know? How long would she grieve? Robin gasped and mashed monsters and tried to stumble towards the abbey. He'd never make it. He'd stumble, fall face-first, be hobya food like crowbait. Only God could help them now.

God.

Robin spun and nearly fell. Brand was five feet off, nearly invisible under gray ratty bodies. He batted at them furiously as he trudged towards Robin, but it was like wading through surf. The field of grain was lost under the field of knee-high hobyas. He raked them off only to have more fasten on. Brand howled like a man afire.

"Brand! Attend me! We needs strike a flint! And I need your hat!"

"What? Hat?" Brand grappled Robin, close enough to kiss, snatched a hobya off his leader's neck. "To scare 'em off?"

"Stike a flint!"

"This corn won't fire! It's green!"

"Strike!"

Confused yet dutiful, Hard-Hitting Brand fumbled flint and striker and charcloth from a pouch. Robin tugged a hobya off the fairy on his chest, drew an arrow and nocked, clawed a hobya off his ear. He almost fell and stopped breathing for a second. To fall was to die. He prayed to Saint Stephen as he snatched off Brand's hat. It was sweaty but dry.

He speared the hat on the arrow head, threading it securely. He wouldn't get another chance. He cried out as something bit his hamstring. He wore writhing hobyas around his clothes like braces of dead rabbits. His trousers were more shreds than cloth, and hungry toothed mouths licked at his blood.

Brand grunted, "Here!" He had four hobyas lined on his arm, teeth champing blood. Yet the big man had struck charcloth alight in his palm. Yellow flames licked and seared his fingers as he blew tiny puffs. Robin leaned close, gritted his teeth against fresh lacerations, and roasted Brand's hat.

Brand gasped, "Your cousin would say you're mad."

Robin Hood grinned fiercely as he blew the hat alight. "But not you, eh?" Sizzling, he whipped it to burn brighter, then turned and faced the abbey.

He drew to his chin, aimed. If he were correct, his target was behind that wall... right about... there. Fire crackled and smoked and singed his knuckles. Squinting, Robin checked his aim - almost straight up - and loosed.

The fire arrow sped up and away, peaked in its arc, then dropped, plunged behind the wall, a spark extinguished.

Robin ripped out the rest of his arrows, split them in two bundles, set the fletchings afire, handed one bunch to Brand. "Hie for the wall!"

He loped, Brand hard alongside, their hands locked, burning arrows outermost. They ran crouched, like animals, legs too tired and bloodied to lift properly. Waving the arrows, they held each other up as they surged through the sea of animal bodies. Under the black sky, by their queer flickering light, Robin thought Brand looked a hunchback, or as wearing a gray shaggy sheepskin. The outlaw chief must look the same. He wasn't worried much anymore. They'd done their best. If they fell and were eaten, at least they could rest.

He stumbled and dropped his arrows, burned out anyway. He tried to catch his feet and fell. Brand came too, either falling himself or trying to protect his leader. Robin managed to shield the bundle at his breast to not crush it. He landed heavily on his shoulder, ducked his head over the tiny fairy and hugged tight. Brand flopped over him, shielding both. The monsters were everywhere, a gray flood, the entire world, an unending swarm of tooth-gnashing fiends. He smelled earth and blood and cat-stink. They scrabbled at Robin's neck. They'd find a vein and bleed him white. Maybe he'd missed his target. He hoped Puck would forgive his failure...

Dimly in the night came the sound of dawn.

Bong.

Bong bong.

Bongbong bong bongbongbong...

The tide over him stopped pattering, like rain lifting.

Bong...

Cool air graced his neck, not scaly cold naked feet.

Nothing bit him.

Robin picked up his head. Fresh air bathed his brow. Hard-Hitting Brand's ugly craggy face was inches from his own, confused, unsure they were safe.

Bongbongbong...

Robin crawled to all fours. The bundle at his chest hung like udders from a cow. "Come on, Brand. We're not finished."

All around ran rumpled rye and scratched earth. The yeasty scent of cut grain reminded Robin of autumn. Far off, a wave of gray scum like seawrack receded towards the woods faster than a man could run.

Robin pointed toward the abbey walls, and they trudged.

The nuns had opened the gate to escape if the fire got out of control. The two men staggered into the courtyard. Robin's fire arrow had landed smack into a manure pile beside the stable. A nun had seen the fire, rung the bell to rouse all. With much flailing of watersodden habits, the women had beaten the fire flat. Wet smoke trailed into the black sky. The moon had set.

Robin Hood and Hard-Hitting Brand went unnoticed a moment, then a nun shrieked and the Mother Superior ran to shoo the men. Many nuns wore light shifts for sleeping, but some only headcloths. One nun was Marian, and Robin only had eyes for her. He shouldered through a crowd of skittering women, leaving blood streaks, and stretched out his arms to the woman he loved.

"Rob, what is it?" Marian's dark eyes sparkled with delight and dismay.

Robin urged the bundle on her. "It's - not a baby."

Marian caught the bundle, but couldn't catch her lover.

Later that day, Robin rested in a stable stall, men not being allowed inside the abbey proper. Hard-Hitting Brand lounged alongside and sipped mulled ale. Merry Men blocked the sunlight in the stall doorway. Will Scarlett ogled younger nuns who passed again and again.

Little John picked a scab on his ear. "Right queer, Rob. Them little fairies disappeared like mosquitoes once the sun was up. Not a sign anywhere. If we go home by sunlight we'll avoid 'em entire, I'm thinkin'."

Robin nodded wearily and sipped ale. He was bandaged all over with strips of Marian's petticoat. "I think they're gone. They didn't get what they wanted, and won't now."

"Not much to show for a night's adventure," Scarlett shurgged. "Their little carcasses aren't but skin and bone, and ants're eating 'em up. Nothing on us but scars. How's our patient?"

"Marian's laid him in the dovecote and doses him with herbs and eggs. His missing foot's even growing back, she said."

Men shuddered. Simon made a face. "Ugh."

"I wonder what those toothy buggers were," mused old Will Stutly. "Where'd they come from? I never saw nor heard of any such. And why'd they want Puck's father?"

"Oberon? I've thought on that. Maybe the hobyas travel in flocks like geese, or schools like fish. Maybe the fay folk are at war. Oberon is king of the fairies, they say, and kings wage wars."

"Is that Oberon?" asked Simon. "He don't look like much."

"Eh?" asked Much the Miller's Son, and everyone laughed.

Robin said simply, "I don't know if he is."

"Why do the nuns tolerate a heathenish fairy?" asked Little John. "Don't they give short shrift to his kind?"

Robin shrugged, felt scabs crack on his back, winced. "Marian suggested to Mother Superior that it was wise to keep the fays on your side, especially if you grow crops. God knows Puck's a pain in the arse if he hates you."

"He'll love you from now on. But how come Puck's father weren't driven off by the toll of the bell?"

"He was passed out, I guess. I don't really know. I don't know much. Who the hobyas are, what their quarrel is, why Puck came to us. I don't know much, but I know what's important."

Leaning on his quarterstaff, Little John asked, "And what's that?"

"I know no man has more loyal or doughty friends than I!"

The men smiled, but Will Scarlett shook his head. "You really are daft, Rob."

Robin saluted with his cup. "I know that, too."