Author's Note: I seem to have fixed the issue with the quotation marks. Let me know if there are any other problems. Please enjoy and please read and review.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
The Long Road Home by Ecri
Part 1B: Familiar Ground
Will fell to the ground, winded, as someone flew at him. Startled, he turned to see Wulf in a heap next to him, and a laughing guard standing nearby.
"Can't stand the sounds, boy, you shouldn't have started a war!" The guard laughed again, and Will realized that he was being ridiculed for having turned his back on the fire and for covering his ears to block the sounds of the burning. He glanced at the other prisoners around him. They looked at him in slight confusion, as though not certain why he'd been doing that.
"We all have to hear it, Will," whispered Wulf. "None of us want to."
Will knew it would take too long to explain to Wulf that he'd been hiding from memories…memories that had found him anyway, and that it hadn't been meant in disrespect to those still within Sherwood. Wulf's thoughts, like his eyes, were firmly on the flames.
Fear took firm hold of Will's heart and it wasn't just for himself. Reliving certain memories seemed beyond his strength just now…perhaps Robin had been right to question his courage, but then Robin hadn't had to live the way he'd had. No, his biggest concern now was Wulf. If John or Fanny died in there…or any one of the boy's many siblings…what if someone came stumbling out of the fire as his own mum had come from his burning childhood home? He couldn't permit Wulf to be burdened with that sort of memory. He inserted himself between Wulf and the forest, much as Wulf's own mother had done to stop him running to his dying mother.
Wulf, not understanding, began to fight him, beating and kicking and demanding that Will let him go, but Will only tightened his grip until a guard called out. "Stop making trouble!" Nottingham's man yelled, and to Will's surprise, two of his own—outlaws like him who'd known him most of his life—pulled him off Wulf. They all glared at him in anger and he knew that he'd never be able to explain what he'd meant by what he'd done. He hadn't spoken of that night to anyone since it had happened. Aside from Fanny and perhaps John, no one likely knew about it or remembered it. He knew it was likely that Wulf would resent him for this for some time, and he knew Wulf well enough to know that he wouldn't listen to him. Wulf adored Robin and knew that Will did not. The boy thought of him as a threat to Robin. It almost made him want to laugh. He was powerless against Robin of Locksley. Even when confronted by the man in the only home he'd known, Locksley always came out on top.
Here Will had been trying to do good, to prevent Wulf from suffering a sight similar to the one that still haunted Will almost every night, and yet he was considered to be in the wrong. He accepted the glares and whispers and turned his back on the fire once more. Let them talk, he thought.
Moments later, the guards started to herd the small group away from their home and toward Nottingham.
To Be Continued