"Gisbourne!" Robin leapt from his horse and cried out his enemy's name before his feet touched the ground.

He had tracked him to this place...tracked him, even though it was an impossible feat in the darkness. He somehow knew Gisbourne was close. His instincts had been awakened with his fury, and both alerted him now to his enemy's presence.

The forest remained still. Not even the hoot of a faraway owl interrupted the dreadful quiet.

"I know you're here, you murdering bastard," Robin uttered menacingly. "Come out and show yourself, coward."

A slight rustle of leaves in a thicket made Robin nock an arrow and shoot. Running to the bushes with murder in his eyes, he parted the foliage, sword upraised to strike.

A cry arose, and Robin felt himself attacked from behind. Swiftly, he spun around to face Guy of Gisbourne, covered in the hide of an animal, lunging at him with the sword that had slain his loved ones.

Robin couldn't speak, so filled he was with hatred at the sight of Gisbourne.

"Prepare to die with the rest of them, Locksley," Gisbourne sneered, his voice choked with rage and fear.

The two adversaries locked in a fierce battle, the clashing of their swords breaking the silence of the night.

"You forget, I won this battle once before, Hood," Gisbourne snarled, remembering how Robin had fallen and hit his head on a boulder. There was no cliff to throw Hood's body over tonight, however, and Gisbourne feared he himself would be the one who never awakened from this bloody fight.

He was quaking with fear, yet hatred and revenge drove him onward. Suddenly, he cried aloud in anger and pain, as Robin's curved blade swept over his guard and cut him in his shoulder.

"Die, Hood, die!" Gisbourne shouted, enraged and terrified by the Earl of Huntington's skill and silence.

"Where are your clever remarks, Hood? Say something, fiend!"

Still Robin wouldn't speak, disarming Gisbourne further.

With one deft blow, Gisbourne managed to sweep his blade under Robin's, and he caught the former outlaw under his arm. The wound proved no more than a scratch, but before he could withdraw his sword arm, Robin replied with a lightening quick stroke, embedding his scimitar to the hilt in Gisbourne's chest. Gisbourne dropped to his knees as Robin withdrew his sword, then rolled forward onto the ground.

Panting heavily, Robin stared at the blood dripping from his Saracen sword as Gisbourne lay dying. Images of Acre flooded his consciousness, propelling him to a world of nightmares. With an Arabic curse on his lips, he pulled Gisbourne's body up by the hair on his head, and with a single stroke, sliced his head clean off his body.

The headless body dropped to the ground. The head, still lifted in Robin's left hand, gushed blood.

Robin stared into the dead man's evil eyes, then, still gripping the head, ran and picked up his bow from where he had thrown it. With a wild cry, he removed the bowstring, dug one end of his bow into the ground, then jammed Gisbourne's head onto the upraised end. Gisbourne's head rested on the point unsteadily, his open eyes staring back into Robin's.

Still behaving as one possessed, Robin seized his hunting knife and began carving away at Gisbourne's face, marring it so as to make it unrecognizable. First, he retraced the scar on Gisbourne's cheek he had given him years ago, then began cutting away, hacking and slicing and jabbing at the face until it became nothing more than a mass of torn tissue and bone.

The air was suddenly rent apart by cries, interrupting Robin from his madness.

"Robin! What are you doing? Robin, stop!"

His former outlaw friends had found him in the forest.

...

(Note: Gruesome, I know, but entirely based on two separate accounts of Robin's murder of Gisbourne. I did some research, since the first story I had stopped after he embedded his sword to the hilt in his chest. The other story was harder to read, being in an older form of English, and it did not clearly say he chopped off his head, but said he pulled it up by the hair, stuck it on his bow, and marred the features with his knife to be unrecognizable. I couldn't see anyone could do that unless he had beheaded him first).