Sorry it's so short, but I'm not going to get a chance to post again until after the weekend (camping trip! what a merry band of outlaws we shall make!), so I figured I could just post what I had. Hope you enjoy - and do please take the time to review if you can!

They were late. John was ceaselessly pacing on the ridge above camp. Djaq was trying to channel her anxiety into chopping the onions for that night's stew, but looking down she realised that she had already turned her onion into a fine paste.

"John! Stop pacing, you're making me nervous!"

"Be 'narvous!" said John, his attenuated accent evidence of his fear. "They're an hour late and it's not like Robin to change the plan without sending a messenger back! You're thinking the exact same thing I am – if they're not back in the time it takes me to walk to that tree and back 3 more times, I'm going to walk to Locksley and figure out what happened!"

"If they've been captured that's exactly what Gisbourne would want you to do. Sit down, eat something, and maybe your mind will return to sense!"

"WE DON'T NEED SENSE. WE NEED –" John stopped his bellowing and looked over his shoulder. "Did you hear that?"

Djaq left her cooking preparations and went to stand beside him. Indeed, there were faint sounds echoing from tree to tree – swift feet crashing through the underbrush in their direction. They weren't coming from the direction of Locksley. John gripped his staff, and growled. "Get ready to run," he whispered.

Djaq ran down to the fireside and drew the sword she always kept by her as she worked. "A daughter of the Prophet's house, leave the big Christian to be martyred while she fled?" she said when she got back to John's side. "You've clearly never been to the Holy Land."

The sound of crashing feet grew closer. As the sounds became more distinct, Djaq's attuned ears caught something else. These were not the sounds of soldiers, purposefully marching toward a goal. There was desperation in these steps. One man was walking much slower than the others, as if he were carrying something heavy. Another was running ahead of the main group. She followed the sound to the northwest and saw a dark-clad figure stumbling towards them.

"Allan!" cried Little John. They ran towards him. When he saw them coming he collapsed to his knees on the forest floor. Djaq reached him first.

"Are you hurt, Allan?" She lifted his head to examine his face, but he pushed her away.

"Naw . . . I'm fine . . . really . . . just winded . . . is all. John! Go help . . . Robin needs your . . . Robin needs your help."

John followed Allan's well-broken path without another word. "Has Robin been hurt?" Djaq asked, handing him the bottle off her belt. He shook his head, and gulped down some water.

"It's Much." He couldn't seem to meet her eyes. "He was hit in the back with an arrow."

Djaq let out a breath, then took Allan's face in her hands and forced him to look at her. "What about the others? Tad? Will?"

"Tad's fine. He's the one been carryin' Much –"

"And Will?" Allan tried to look away but Djaq wouldn't let him. She could feel the hot coals of readying grief deep in her stomach. "Allan! You are going to tell me. What. Has happened. To Will Scarlet."

Allan could barely whisper the words. "They took him . . . He was wounded, and they took him."

Djaq wanted to scream. To defy the Prophet's instructions and cry aloud and rend her clothing, as the Jewish widows did in Acre. She wanted to take up her sword and run all the way to Nottingham, slaying as she went.

But here was John, running towards her through the woods, with Much in his arms. There were Robin and Tad coming after him, blood staining their tunics. She clenched her fists until her palms ached, and allowed one single tear to fall from her eyes. Then she got to her feet and ran back to camp to prepare a bed for Much.

For a long time, Will seemed absolutely alone. He was floating, untethered to earth or body or pain, through a maelstrom of old memories. His father. His brother. The smell of a carpenter's shop. The sound of an axe chopping through flesh and bone. Djaq's voice. The feeling of a noose tightening around his neck. Djaq's laughing eyes. After a while, his body began to remember itself, piece by piece. A small, insistent throb of pain in his temple. The side of his face resting on a stone floor. The sensation of not being able to draw breath fully. His feet, shackled together.

His mind made its first real effort to wake him at the realization that he was in chains, and with wakefulness the real pain began. His head felt twice its normal size, and the dull throbbing morphed with each painful, hesitant breath into a vice of lightning. He tried to move, to sit up, to open his eyes and more fully understand his predicament, but every shifting muscle drained him. After fighting the weakness and dizziness for a few minutes he gave up, and tried relaxing back onto the stone floor. But now, when he needed it most, the comforting darkness would not return. Every point of his body in contact with the floor ached. The left side of his chest felt as if it were being crushed from the inside out by a boot of hot iron. He tried rolling over, but when he did, what had seemed to be the outer limits of what a man could endure proved only a foretaste. His eyes popped open, and if he had had any extra breath in his lungs he would have screamed. Rolling back into his original position, he realised the reason for his extreme discomfort: the arrow had not been removed from his shoulder.

Suddenly he heard a door scrape open. His gaze drifted listlessly towards the noise, but all he could see were three pairs of feet shod in fine embroidered leather. "Well," said a too-familiar voice, "look what Guy brought home for Daddy to play with . . . Suppose you thought it might appease me seeing as this ISN'T ROBIN HOOD!"

It sounded to Will as if the Sherriff had struck Sir Guy, but he didn't have much time to be amused – instead of finishing-off Gisbourne, as he no-doubt wanted to, Vaisey turned and kicked Will in the stomach several times. His body curled around itself as well as it could while chained to the floor, and for a few minutes all Will could think about was air, how badly he needed it, and the debt of pain he had to pay each time he needed more. Above the sound of his own desperate coughing, Will heard the Sherriff instructing the owner of the third pair of shoes.

"See to it he doesn't die – I'm going to want him for later."