Will leaned against the wall to catch his breath, the simple act of following John to market suddenly infinitely more difficult than it should have been. John was already far ahead, stepping through the mud of the streets with the irritatingly brisk strides of a man who hadn't drunk himself legless the night before. Will had tried, quite honestly, to keep up at first but finally it seemed inevitable he should be left behind, which wasn't, truth be told, entirely unappealing.

The thought of owing John anything was…well, it wasn't good. Will felt for his coin purse, and that was missing. He'd probably lost it sometime last evening, not that it mattered much. He might have something he could sell, some trinket he'd hidden away that might do for a few groats on the market. There was that 'borrowed' needlepoint he'd left behind in camp.

Will glanced down the street again. No sign of John. Almost as if the man had been sent on his merry way to let Will make his escape, a sort of divine providence really, and who was he to argue with God? He pushed himself off the wall and headed down the street, back towards the Briar Rose and onto the next street, ducking into an alley and hurrying off, following the little stream of water running along the trench in the cobbles. He came to the wall and the gates, and soon he was at the edge of Nottingham, where the land opened out into a field with a stone wall, and the road meandered down the hill into a copse of trees. Beyond that the moors spread out flat and grey as far as the eye could see. On the best of days, the heath was a carpet of rich browns and purples, speckled with yellow heather, but today, under the grey skies and the beating rain, it looked mournful and desolate, and Will turned away from it before the misery could settle in his bones.

He pulled his hood forward to keep the rain from his eyes. Despite the weather he was feeling better already. The cold air had cleared his head, and the tight hand that had clenched his stomach was loosening. He hurried down the muddy road. There were many paths to camp, secret routes carefully plotted over ground too trying for horses. The paths had been the first defence against the Sheriff, shadow trails through an impassable forest of imagined terrors. Wind chimes and ghost stories had saved Will's life more than once.

Will came to the river and stopped. He'd meant to ford in the shallows, but the river was swollen from the rain, hurtling past him in brown rapids. Damn. Even the usually peaceful spots were torn with eddies. He was irritated with himself. Of course he couldn't expect to cross. Even a child knew the rivers turned from lambs to lions in the spring. He should know that. It had rained. Why didn't he know that? He blushed and felt inordinately stupid and was only glad there was no one there to see him.

Think, Will.

He stood watching the muddy waters roll past him for some time, trying to remember the next best place to cross the river, and it took him much too long to recall the crossing upriver, where the waters were wide and slow, even in spring, and there were enough rocks and handholds to get across mostly dry. He didn't really relish the idea of getting his feet wet, but he wanted even less to go back, so upriver it was.

The rain stopped as he was moving along the riverbank, pushing half-heartedly through the undergrowth. It wasn't difficult, though for a while the rocks were so steep they forced him back into the forest, into a little vale where he knew the wild onions grew in summer, the air filled with their pungent scene. All the other times he'd come through here he had filled his pockets with the small, white bulbs for later. There had been a summer—not a very good summer—when he'd lived on onions and the occasional rabbit, when he could catch one. He almost laughed at the memory. He'd been so terribly bad at catching rabbits.

He had come to the knotted grove of trees, and only a few paces after that was the river, the waters slow and brown. He found the usual footholds, but it was a bit more difficult than usual to cross when he couldn't see his feet in the water. Finally he waded through the last part, pulling himself up on the other side where the brambles hung down over the bank. He struggled up the muddy slope and pushed through the thorny bushes as carefully as he could, coming out on the hill above camp.

He stopped.

There wasn't anything to see. It was all brown and damp and dreary, hardly different from any other part of the woods. If he hadn't lived here himself he might not have believed just days ago it had been a camp, even a village of sorts, alive with fathers and mother and children. But that was all over now. The huts had burned, and the woods were empty, and anyone who had any sense at all had gone back to the villages. Back to what had been before. Because what good was a home in the forest if there was better to be had elsewhere?

Will sighed and trudged down the hill, hoping to shake the gloom. Why did the forest look so desolate today? It should be empty. He should be glad there was no one left, because it meant the end of the Sheriff, the end of a life in Sherwood. And what life was it, always skirting soldiers and keeping out of sight, away from roads and bridges and towns and family? He should be pleased. And he was. He really was. He wouldn't wish that life on anyone. Would he? No, of course not. He wasn't that selfish to think that—no, he couldn't.

Mustn't think like that because…what would that mean?

His walk was getting slower.

There was nothing here to witness what had been, except for bits of charred wood and stumps of burned rope. He was alone in the forest, and it seemed to him that none of this had happened, and maybe it had all been a waking dream, and he was tucked away somewhere, warm enough and dry enough to imagine a life other than the one he had. In what world had the Sheriff been defeated? It sounded too much like Ol' Jemma's stories. Tales of golden geese and spinning wheels and beautiful maidens in towers. Stories where the youngest and weakest of seven contenders would win the princess and marry into a life of fruit orchards and servants.

The cold air that had kept his head clear now seemed like a knife in the back. He shivered. What was he doing here?

He had been meaning to avoid the far side of camp, but now he was standing in a clearing, the smell of wet earth like a incense in the air, and to his right, a row of crosses, a line of new graves.

Oh.

A pendant hung from one of the crossbeams. Without thinking, he reached out and picked it up. It was a small metal cross, so like the one Robin had worn, only simpler, without the blue stones. Will's stomach knotted, and he felt a stab of guilt at the recollection. Duncan. It was his cross, an imitation of his master's. Will remembered seeing the old man take it out, press it between his hands, running his thumb over the metal shape in a kind of quiet reverence.

Duncan was dead.

Like the others.

Will swallowed hard. Of course he was. Couldn't expect an old, blind man to live through that. Will had barely come through it, and he'd had both his eyes to see him through. He cleared his throat. Couldn't think about that now. Had to keep moving. Had to—to what? Why was he here? Why was that so hard to remember?

To…to find something to sell. Yes. That's it.

But why?

Because…because John had paid. Couldn't let that stand.

"Move that." A voice broke the stillness.

Will froze. There was someone else in the forest.

don't run. not yet. keep your head.

"Nothing?" A second voice.

"Nothing. I've already looked."

The second man cleared his throat, spat. "Damn Gauls must've taken the lot of 'em. I'm not making a new life for myself out of nothing."

Will carefully dropped into a crouch, tense. He could see the two men through the trees, a little ways down the hill.

"Would you like to go back to Nottingham, try your hand at picking our late Sheriff's lock?" The first man spoke again. "Hear he's got a fortune within them walls."

Our Sheriff? The uneasy feeling came back full force.

"Look." The second man broke off, mumbling something. Will saw him overturn a board with his foot and squat down to pick something out of the dirt. "Finally. The first bit of good luck in this whole bloody mess." He held it out to the other man, who took it, and Will could see it was a coin.

"I'll be taking this as my quittance, Sheriff, for services rendered," said the man, raising his voice and addressing the grey heavens, "May the Devil take you down below—I mean," the man made a sign of the cross with the coin, "God rest your soul."

The other man laughed, digging the through the wet leaves, finding more coins and stuffing them in his pockets, and Will felt a stab of jealousy he hadn't thought of that himself. That would have been easier than—than—what was he saying? This wasn't the time.

The man had stopped digging through the soil, satisfied he'd found the last of the coins, and he looked up, and by the slimmest of chances, he glanced up the hill to where Will was, and there was a moment when they didn't move and their eyes met, when Will could see the man's eyes widen in utter surprise before he shot up from his position. "Hey! You!"

Will jerked back, turning, slipped on the wet soil and came down hard, and it was like his chest shattered into a thousand pieces. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move, and he heard them, their footsteps, and something cold was pressed under his chin, and he'd had enough blades levelled at him to know it was a sword.

"You peepin' where your eyes aren't wanted, boy?"

The sword edge pushed up into his throat, and Will looked up and saw the blade, and the thought came to him that it was new steel and the cross guard was pretty, with a floral vine over the hilt, and at least it was new and not old and maybe it wouldn't hurt as much if they ran him through. "I-I didn't see anything," he stammered.

One of the men leaned into his view. He had an ugly cut along his temple, still healing, and his eyes were blue, bloodshot and all the bluer for it. "Is that so?" He didn't believe him, and Will had to say something else, adjust the lie, keep talking because God knows it was the only thing he was good at.

"Well," Will started, "I saw you find something." He swallowed, trying to make his tongue work properly. "Silver?" he guessed, carefully not saying gold, even though he knew it was gold, gold from the mountainous piles of blood money Robin had so painstakingly acquired, stored, and guarded. Will said silver, not gold, because silver wasn't worth killing him over, hopefully, not in daylight, maybe dusk, and that would give him time.

"We can't let him live," said the other man. A dagger was hanging loosely from his hand. "He'd go back to Nottingham and tell 'em what he'd seen. And where would we be then?"

"Gone," said the first man. "Far from here. I'm not killing a man in cold blood."

"You've done it before."

"I know I've done it before," he snapped. "But not on my way to a new life without the Sheriff. You kill him and then what? You plan on stopping for a burial? Kill him and you'll have the new law following you to the end of your days. I'm not risking my neck for your half-arsed plans."

The second man snarled in irritation. "Then what do you suggest we do with him? We let him run and he'll go straight back to Nottingham and tell 'em anyways. Better stick the pig now and give us time enough to leave. There's no one here to see. And if it's God you're worried about, then I doubt even the Lord himself would mind us ridding the world of bastards who lie in wait for their better man. Why do you think he's out here? Noble intentions? Just look at him."

Will tried again. "Please, let me go."

"And you have that much to live for, do you?" The man grinned, a smile that pulled back slowly over his crooked teeth, and Will knew then he meant to kill him.

It was like a fist had clamped down on his stomach and squeezed. He wanted to vomit. "I won't tell anyone. I swear. I don't have anyone to tell. And even if I did, they wouldn't believe me." That, at least, was true, and maybe it would be worth something to tell the truth now. "Please."

Silence.

"Well, you're right," the second man spoke at last, the hard set of his brow softening, and there was a sliver of hope in the gesture. "Kill him."

There was a moment between the order and its execution that was perfectly clear and slow, and he thought no bows, no arrows and he'd have to take the hit and it would hurt, and he'd have to run and that would hurt too, it couldn't be helped, but at least there were no bows, no arrows, and run, Will. Run.

Will didn't know how he avoided the sword. He saw it come down, and he felt the nick under his chin, a brief, sharp bite of pain as he rolled to the side, and he was up on his feet, running down the hill, skidding on the muddy slope. He slid down into a gulch, where the marshy ground sucked at his ankles, and his foot caught and he stumbled, hands, knees, and his side hurt, and he couldn't breathe. His lungs were burning, but he couldn't stop.

Not yet.

Not yet.

He stumbled in the half-light, legs stiff and wooden, and he wondered when it had gotten so dark. He lost his footing, lurching forward in a painful sprawl, lay there gasping as the world spun, and he knew he should get up, go on, but his heart was hammering in his chest, and there was only pain, a white knife in his side, a terrible ache in his hand, and he couldn't say.

Not yet.