The Rise of Robin Hood Read Online Free PDF

‘Not sure these thieves are trustworthy
     – ha-ha!’
    The bodyguard motioned for John to put down the carcass, and briefly rummaged inside its body cavity before pulling out his
     hand, red to the wrist, and giving his lord a brisk shake of his helmeted head.
    At last, Robin and John were allowed to approach the Lord of the Wood. Robin smiled cheerfully, even engagingly, at the man
     who had slapped his face twice and stolen all his worldly wealth. But John had a face like chiselled granite, and when he
     slipped the pricket from his shoulders, he allowed it to drop on to the table before Hussa with a jarring thump.
    At this small act of defiance, the two bodyguards took a step closer, but said nothing. Robin noticed a crowd of Hussa’s followers
     forming around the clearing, like courtiers, watching their meeting with dull eyes.
    ‘You’re a big, strapping fellow, eh?’ said Hussa, looking up at John with his cunning red eyes. ‘What name do you go by?’
    John didn’t answer for such a long time that Robin had to do it for him: ‘He’s called John, my lord – and he sometimes can
     be a little shy in exalted company.’
    Hussa beamed: ‘Like a child, eh? I think I shall call him Little John!’ and the fat man broke into a thundering laugh, his whole
     body given over to the shakes of merriment. The men-at-arms on either side of Robin and John chuckled dutifully. And all the
     watching folk also set up a raucous cackle in appreciation of their lord’s astounding wit.
    John looked down at the axe on the table, expressionless.
    Robin smiled even more broadly.
    When the hilarity had finally died away, Hussa jerked his chin at the pricket lying before him. ‘What’s this, eh?’
    ‘Tribute,’ said Robin. ‘This is to be your reward.’
    ‘Good boy,’ rumbled Hussa.
    ‘Yes, I am, aren’t I. I try hard to give people their due. It is a fine beast, isn’t it.’
    His hand casually stroked the furry skin between the animal’s long, straight horns. A more discerning eye than Hussa’s would
     have noticed something about the pricket’s right horn: a very faint black marking, just a fine line, around the base, where
     the sharp antler met the deer’s skull. If a man looked closely, he would notice that the horn had been sawn almost all the
     way though by a careful hand, and was attached by only a leaf-thin bridge of bone.
    Hussa did not notice.
    Robin’s hand closed around the base of the antler, and with a jerk, he snapped the long spike from the deer’s head, swung
     his arm in a short vicious loop and jammed the point straight into the right eye of the bodyguard next to him.
    The man screamed and clapped both hands to his face. But Robin was moving faster than a cut adder. He had a hand on the man’s
     sword hilt and a boot in his belly and, as the man sank to the ground, the jelly and gore spurting from his punctured eye-socket,
     Robin tore the sword free of its scabbard, whirled and struck the head clean off the second man-at-arms.
    But Hussa did not merely sit idle while his men died. His hand dived for the leather-wrapped handle of the axe, and he had
     lifted it an inch from the table when John’s wide left palm slapped down very hard, flat, on the shiny double-head, trapping
     Hussa’s fat fingers painfully against the wood of the table.
    Then John hit Hussa full in the face with his bunched right hand, a superb blow, perfectly timed and with his full strength
     behind it. Two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and bone, concentrated into four big knuckles and fuelled by five days of
     rage and frustration, connected with Hussa’s doughy face, crushing flesh, cartilage and bone and sending him backwards in
     his chair and over the high back of it; the Lord of Sherwood tumbling away towards the cave behind him like a kicked ball.
     When Hussa finally came to a halt, he lay deadly still.
    John picked up the axe and made a tiny noise, mewing like a mother over her baby. Then he and Robin