I'm a little nervous about this chapter, as it's my first time writing for Little John, and I'm not quite sure that I've gotten his voice right. I just couldn't bring myself to use one of his trademark "I liked" sentences (I hate catchphrases!) so I've just tried to make him as stoic as possible.

Also, I know nothing about sword fighting, so goodness knows if any of this is described properly. I'm just going to hope that no one out there knows anything about it either!

And it's still light on the OT3, but it's coming - I promise!


Chapter Three: Little John

"Where are they going?" she called to the giant man, still a little out of breath.

"There'll be travellers on the road into Nottingham," John told her. "They've gone to lighten their load. It's what we do."

It took a moment for her to understand, but when his words became clear, she was more confused than ever. What kind of outlaws freed Saracen slaves, let a woman sleep among them unmolested, and then rushed off to steal from innocent travellers? Who were these men?

And then a more troubling thought occurred to her: if thieving was indeed their occupation, then she had been left behind – and what's worse – her presence had forced another of their number to stay behind with her. To protect me? she wondered bitterly. As she glumly hefted up her sword, intending to put herself through some rigorous exercise, she glanced up to see John approaching her. She drew herself up for a challenge, ready to remind him that she'd saved – well, helped save his life – and ended up surprised for what seemed like the hundredth time that day (and it was still only morning!) when he extended his hand.

"I did not get the chance to thank you for yesterday," he said in his deep, grumbly voice. Relieved, she put her small hand into his burly paw and they shook solemnly.

"Thank you, little one."

She smiled, letting the endearment go uncommented upon for now, and glanced across at the massive staff held in his other hand.

"You fight with that?" she asked.

"I do," he replied, hefting it in his hands and holding it across his body with two hands. Djaq cast her eyes over it, doubting that she could even lift it, let alone do damage with it.

"You have good form," he told her, nodding at her sword. "Robin was showing off – but you managed to surprise him. And we all saw Much stand on your foot."

She brushed off the compliment, though was secretly pleased.

"I am out of practice, and weak. Brooker did not feed us very well."

Anger crossed the man's face – though it was not directed at her – and for a fleeting moment she wondered if he was a father, for it was with a paternal concern for the welfare of a smaller being that he ushered her to the scant remains of last night's rabbits and cut portions for them both. The meal was paltry, having to leave some meat to spare for the four absent men, but for this she was thankful. After so many months of an empty stomach, she knew that gorging herself would only make her sick.

As they ate, she glanced at John guiltily. "I am sorry you were left behind," she said. He shrugged.

"Ah, the lads can handle it without me."

That was beside the point, and once again her mind snagged itself on that unfamiliar word, but all that was swept away as he wiped his hands, reached for his staff and gestured to her to follow him back down to the clearing in which she'd sparred with Much and Robin.

He held the staff across his body and gestured with it, inviting her to parry with him.

"Just practice," he told her. Grateful beyond words, she began her old fencing exercises, her body quickly recalling the memories of the routine as she whacked the staff with the flat of her blade, following its movements through the air, perfecting her footwork. It was clear that John – like her – favoured a more direct method of attack, forsaking agility in order to use one's weight against an opponent. Of course, the style worked better for John considering there was so much more weight to work with, but the steady back-and-forth of his staff felt achingly familiar. Gradually she felt her strength returning, regaining her ability to defend herself, and she gave herself over to the movements, wondering if she could possibly explain to this man how delicious the activeness of her body felt after so many terrible weeks of chains and bars. She was not sure she could, and so hoped that her enthusiasm in the exercise spoke for itself.

"Where did you learn how to fight?" he asked at one stage.

Not being ready to reveal the truth of her abilities – not yet anyway – she told him that her entire household had been trained in the ways of the sword, explaining that the war had caused her father to insist on his entire family learning to defend themselves should the worst happen.


About an hour later, sweaty but pleased, she heard voices reaching out across the forest, and sure enough, the other outlaws appeared soon after. Much and Allan were crowing in triumph, and Robin and Will had large grins across their faces as they lugged two chests between them. Her own smile faded, remembering her earlier confusion at their activities. She kept quiet as Will, by some trick of the hand that even her quick eyes missed, managed to yank open the locked chests to reveal the bounty within.

Allan gave a cry of glee, and plunged his hand amongst the coins, lifting up a fistful.

"Allan," Robin said warningly, and the hand dropped them back, a little reluctantly, or so it seemed.

"Where to?" John asked, as Robin and Much began to shovel the coins into a range of pouches that Will had retrieved from the hollow of a fallen log.

"Edwinstowe and Nettlestone," Robin replied. "And we'll move on to the cave tonight."

"No! Not the cave!" Much suddenly wailed. "It's cold and wet and dark and creepy and cold and-"

The list of grievances went on as Djaq found herself caught up in the process of gathering up the tools and equipment dispersed around the camp before following the boys out on what would become her first drop-off.


That evening, wrapped in her blankets in the cave – which was as dark and dismal as Much had declared – she marvelled over the latest eye-opener of this extraordinary day. That these men robbed from the rich and then proceeded to give it all away to the poor. Even now it was difficult to believe.

She had been given a few curious looks as she helped distribute the moneybags, but there had been no hostility directed at her. Either Robin's mighty influence over the people safeguarded even an enemy of their country, or the villagers were so hungry and downtrodden that they didn't care who provided them with their next meal, so long as it was provided.

After giving out the money where it was needed, and promising more to those who had missed out, the gang had disappeared back into the trees, heading for the nearby cave. She walked beside John, half-listening to Much's loud verbalising to Robin ahead and the murmering of Will and Allan's significantly quieter conversation behind. As they approached the entrance of the hillside cave, John gave her a little nudge.

"Any of this lot give you any trouble, you come see me," he told her. "Especially if it's that one." He nodded his head in what was unmistakably Allan's direction. Djaq felt touched at the gallantry, though a little discouraged. If John thought anyone was likely to give her trouble, then there could only be one possible reason for that trouble. Was she just another stray that needed taking care of, with the added difficulty that she could end up being a potential target for propositioning? She forcefully injected a manlier gait into her stride as they climbed the hillside.

After an even scarcer meal than the day before, the outlaws drifted off to sleep one by one, till finally only she and Robin remained by the campfire near the mouth of the cave. Now at last, they could talk.

They discussed the Holy War and the price that it had cost each country, as well as each of them personally. She told him of her family's deaths, though kept all the details to herself, and he confided in her the loss of many of his own comrades in the bloody battles. He told her of his loyalty to King Richard, even as he admitted the futility of the war he waged, and she carefully explained the scorn and bitterness that Saracens held toward the white invaders. He told her about the corruption he'd come home to in England, of evil men like Sheriff Vaysey, who milked the war to his own advantage, lining his coffers and tightening his grip on the country, crippling the poor all the while in order to fund a war that kept him in power. She told him of her father's work as a physician among the wounded and the dying, and the premonition he'd made that she'd never forget: that if the war was not resolved soon, then the anger being stirred up in her people would resonant down throughout history. Finally, Robin told her of Marian, a faraway gleam in his eye, and she scolded herself for feeling a tiny pang of regret, one she impatiently pushed aside and away forever.

The fire had flickered down, and they'd bidden each other goodnight in Arabic, with Robin heading further into the cave, Djaq choosing to sleep close to its mouth despite the cold. The gloomy depths of the cave reminded her a little too much of the dark hold of the slave ship, that terrible darkness that she'd been thrown into, that rolling, stinking, endless agony in which she was sure she'd be forced to stay forever. Looking reluctantly back now, it felt like it had happened to someone else, someone who was neither Djaq nor Safiyah, someone who had been stripped of everything that had made her who she was: her family, her name, her home, her country, her freedom and her hair. Noble-born Safiyah had become a nameless slave, and in being treated as nothing by her loathsome jailers, she'd become nothing. She'd retreated so deeply into herself that her expressionless face and blank eyes had unnerved those who claimed to own her, and they'd avoided her as a result. Her withdrawal tactics had probably saved her life, removing her from pain and shock and hopelessness and allowing her escape into oblivion.

After emerging out the other side, half-carried from ship to port, she'd felt blinded by the light, as raw and numb as one of her father's surgery patients after an operation – no longer in pain, but too weak to feel, to think, or to understand anything. It would still take a while to regain or replace the missing pieces of herself that had been taken from her before and during that horrific journey in the dark. But now, after today – with a weapon in her hand and a new purpose in her life, she felt a piece of her spirit return. A piece that was unfamiliar, since Safiyah had existed solely to please her family and find a husband, not to rob rich travellers alongside outlaws, but it was a spark of life that she eagerly felt kindled inside her.

Like an arrow shot from the forest onto the path before her feet, Robin had given her a reason to live on, allowing her to swear fealty to a cause that sought to end the war that had destroyed all she'd held dear. She could fight such a battle here, in her own way, far from the suffocating women's quarters of home, in which she'd existed only to preen and coo and flutter like a dove. And in doing so, she could put her father's skills to good use in helping the sick and miserable multiude of peasants that she'd witnessed today. They were not her own countrymen, but the poor were the same in any country and could benefit from her abilities no less than any other type of human being. She would make Robin's cause a part of her, repay the man who had restored her freedom, and in doing so, fill a bit of that terrible abyss inside her.

For she was still trying to discover who this new self was – this woman who was no longer Safiyah, not quite Djaq. Until she'd figured it out, she'd be Robin Hood.


As she drifted off to sleep, one hand wrapped comfortingly around the hilt of the short sword, a strange, dreamy thought came upon her just before sleep took her: that you learnt a lot about a man from the way he fought. Today, she had seen Robin, Much and John in such a way, and in doing so, gathered necessary information about them. Allan and Will however…they still eluded her…


Next chapter: the plot finally kicks into gear when the gang ambush a mysterious envoy travelling through Sherwood.