The Rise of Robin Hood Read Online Free PDF Page B

turned to face the crowd
     of raggedy men and woman surging towards them across the clearing, with cries of rage and fear issuing from every mouth. It
     was a wall of righteous anger, a furious mob, some forty souls strong, armed and ready to kill. These two incomers had entered
     their home and done bloody violence to their comrades.
    They must be slaughtered.
    Robin adjusted his stance and took a two-handed grip on his stolen sword; John hefted the double-headed axe . . .
    ‘Stand fast,’ said a lilting voice, a voice from the mountains in the West. ‘Stand fast, Robin, and do not hurt these poor
     people or I will loose! I swear it.’
    Owain, standing a dozen yards away, a little apart from the advancing crowd of poorly armed Sherwood folk, had a bow in his
     hands once again, and once again a nocked arrow poised to pierce Robin’s breast.
    ‘Wait, wait, all of you,’ another voice cried, a woman this time. ‘Do not harm these two strangers.’ And a skinny figure in
     a filthy sackcloth dress with a Y-shaped amulet dangling from her neck emerged from the crowd and stood between Robin and
     John and the ill-looking mob that sought to tear them limb from limb.
    ‘This man here is the spirit of the woods – he has the wild spirit of Cernunnos, the Woodland God, within him!’ The woman
     jabbed a grubby finger at Robin. ‘See! He kills with the very horn of Cernunnos, plucked from the sacred animal’s brow. He
     commands the trees of the forest to do his bidding – and they obey. He orders them to fall, and they fall. I have seen this.
     You must not harm him. I forbid it! I put a curse on any man or woman who harms a hair of his head. He is sacred to me. He
     is sacred to these woods. He is sacred to Cernunnos. My curse protects him. Touch him and your private parts will shrivel
     and dry up, your bowels will be infested with seething black worms, your children will sicken and waste away; your animals
     will all die.’
    Although the witch-woman’s words made no sense at all to Robin, he was relieved to see that the crowd had stopped in its tracks,
     and the people were muttering in a confused manner, many looking plainly terrified by her dire threats.
    ‘Stand aside, Brigid,’ said Owain. ‘There is no need for your curses. We must have justice. These men have come here and done
     bloody violence to our friends and to our lord. We have all witnessed this. They cannot be allowed to walk free.’
    ‘If it is justice that you want,’ said Robin, in a loud clear voice, ‘I am the man who can give it to you.’
    The space grew suddenly quiet. Robin fixed the murmuring crowd with his silvery eyes and spoke directly into the silence.
    ‘I know about injustice. I know about desperation and hunger; I know about cruel masters and callous lords. I know what drives
     a man or a woman from their own hearth and home, to take up the life of an outlaw grubbing a meagre living in the wilderness.
     Hungry most of the time; chilled to the bone in winter, your children always sick. I know how you have suffered. And I can
     change all that.’
    Robin paused, took a breath and smiled at the shabby crowd of Sherwood folk. He saw that they were all listening intently,
     almost greedily, to his words.
    ‘I can make you strong and well-fed; healthy and happy. And keep you that way. I can make sure that your children grow up
     with food on the table, and a warm hearth to eat it by . . . I can make you free from hunger and poverty, I can make you free
     from the oppression of sheriffs and lords, and I can do it here. In this wilderness. In this very place. These very caves.
     All I ask is that you allow me to lead you. If you will only follow my guidance, we can all live together in this place .
     . . and make it a paradise on Earth, as long as God grants us breath. We will steal from the rich, from bloated churchmen
     and cruel lords, we will take freely from those who have oppressed us, kill them when we must. And we shall be