Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
The Long Road Home by Ecri
Part 1C: Familiar Ground
Nottingham's soldiers ushered them to the dungeons and left them there, hands still bound, but otherwise unshackled, shivering in fatigue and cold. Immediately they began to talk, discussing in hushed tones who they thought might have survived and fled through Sherwood, and if any of them had seen Robin.
Will seethed in silence hardly noticing the dank dismal surroundings or the smells that had greeted the admittedly ripe group of outlaws. Fear, blood, urine, sweat, vomit, and other things he did not bother to identify permeated the dark, dank cell. It smelled of hopelessness, and Will's outrage that the others still put their hope in Robin of Locksley fed his own hopelessness.
His clothes smelled of smoke, sweat, and blood. His emotions were in turmoil. He'd briefly dared think that Robin of Locksley might save them all. Might save him. He cursed himself for a fool that he'd even entertained such a notion. Noblemen were capable of little besides cruelty, stupidity, and greed. Locksley was nothing. He was less than nothing. He had brought them all to ruin pretending to be one of them when he was really just another untrustworthy, manipulative noble using them for his own ends.
What Will couldn't quite manage was to explain away the depth to which this realization hurt him.
"He will abandon us," he said, perhaps too loudly, though he'd never meant to say it out loud at all.
"He won't!" Wulf's defiance was understandable. He was a child. He still believed in right and wrong. Black and white. Will envied him that though at the same time he wanted to shake the boy until he understood the truth.
"Robin of Locksley brought this down upon us! He stole the Sheriff's horse, he made himself a nuisance to the man, and now Nottingham will exact his revenge. He will kill us all and then kill who ever is still alive in Sherwood Forest!"
Wulf screamed at this, rage making his voice high and almost inhuman. "That's a lie, Will Scarlett! Robin will protect whoever survived and he will send someone to free us!"
Will cursed himself for the anger and worry he saw in Wulf's eyes. Wulf had a mother and father and seven brothers and sisters to consider. He was about to say something to reassure the boy that his family was probably fine when Nottingham's men entered. One stood by the door while the other entered going through the now silent and staring outlaws with a nonchalance that piqued Will's ire. In this man's eyes they were no threat. They were rabble. They were nothing. Not worthy of their consideration, they were simply a curiosity.
Inside Will Scarlett something snapped. He recognized it even as it happened. How could he not? It was the same thing that snapped each time he'd done something he'd later regretted.
It had snapped when he'd tried to throw his knife through Robin of Locksley's back.
Even recognizing the pattern did not give him the power to break it. He stared at this man, moving calmly among the dispirited outlaws and he leaped at him, his bound hands swinging to land in the man's stomach causing him to double over. He fell on the man then, his hands going for the other man's eyes. It lasted only seconds. That was all the time it took for the guard at the door to call in reinforcements. He was hauled from the man and held—still struggling and shrieking his rage. He didn't feel the first few blows, but eventually there were too many of them. Booted feet smashed into his stomach and ribcage. Fisted hands pummeled his face and back. Soon he was merely a writhing mass upon the floor twisting this way and that in a vain attempt to protect some part of him from the attack.
They hit him until he stopped struggling.
Once he lay there, still but for the panting, they lowered a chain from the ceiling and strung him up by his ankles to hang upside down. Unable to curl up to protect himself or seek warmth, he hung there, exposed as his shirt fell to obscure his face.
He saw them moving about now to secure the others to walls and other instruments of torture.
The man he'd attacked came over to him and spit in his face. "Scum like you don't deserve to live!"
Will actually laughed. It was a sound so devoid of humor and so permeated with despair and bitterness that the guard took a step back. "You're not the first to say so." He whispered, still laughing though it hurt his stomach, his back and even his head to do so.
The man was shaken and moved away. He eyed the others and nudged his companion. "That one might do."
He pointed at one of the other men. He was old, he was worn out from the fight and the journey, and Will happened to know that he hadn't been in the best of health before that.
Will knew then what this was about. They wanted someone to torture.
"Nah," the guard's companion said. "Nottingham will prefer him!"
To Will's surprise, the man was pointing at Wulf. Will thought of Fanny. She was the one woman who hadn't judged him when he was a boy. She'd given him more than half the meals he'd eaten in his life, often, he suspected, going without herself just to do so.
He couldn't let them.
"Coward!" he called as the familiar something snapped again. Then he sang tauntingly.
"The Sheriff's man from Nottingham
Needed someone to torture
Cruelty gone wild!
He picked a child!
Cowardice was just his nature!"
Will didn't hear the chuckles and chortles from the other prisoners. He sang the verse again and again until the Sheriff's men converged on him taking him roughly from his suspended chains and dragging him away.
To Be Continued