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castle could not lie so snug as a swineherd in this hut.
    It took Rook’s eyes a moment to comprehend the dimness within, but his hands rested on sheepskin beds, and he knew at once that all was well. Nothing had been touched except by mice and such.
    Someone crawled in beside him—Rowan. She turned to crouch at the doorway, and two pairs of hands passed the Sheriff’s son in to her headfirst. She cradled the boy under his shoulders and eased him to the sunken floor, shifting him to one side so that rain would not find him through the smoke hole. “He’s barely breathing,” she said, her voice stretched to a taut whisper. “He needs warmth.”
    Rook had already found kindling in the accustomed place. Squatting like a squirrel, he arranged straw and twigs in the circle of fire stones, then reached for a rock that jutted to form a shelf—yes, flint and steel still lay there. Rook took one in each hand and struck them together shrewdly, raining a shower of sparks on the dry tinder.
    A few sparks caught. Rook saw smoke, then a glow as feeble as the hurt boy’s pulse. Blowing on it would be too much, would put it out. Rook fanned it with his hand and gave a gruff call to a pair of enormous feet standing outside the doorway. “Lionel, bring firewood.”
    “Firewood? But my dear little lad, it’s all soaking wet.” Lionel’s tone revealed how much he detested being wet. “Might I remind you it’s raining hard out here—”
    “Pigsty,” Rook said.
    “I am not a pigsty!
You’re
the dirty one.”
    Beau broke her unnatural silence. “
Mon Dieu
, Rook, what you talk about?”
    “Pigsty?” came Robin Hood’s cheery question. “Where—oh! I see it! In the copse.”
    “That other hut?” Beau asked. Footsteps moved toward where the pigsty hid amid trees, a beehive-shaped stone shelter just like this one, except with a larger entry and no smoke hole. With fodder stored overhead instead. Rook hoped the others would find some fuel in there. Dry sticks left from leafy branches once put in there for fodder and bedding, perhaps. Or the wood of the fodder shelf itself.
    Orange light made Rook blink as his fire put out tiny flames. He fed it kindling a little at a time until it blazed more strongly and he felt its warmth on his wet skin. Only when he felt sure the fire would not go out did he look at the Sheriff’s son.
    Gray eyes looked back at him. The boy lay conscious, watching him with a quiet, wary stare, like a fox cub. By the boy’s side sat Rowan, cradling his broken leg in her healing hands. She could not make it mend, Rook knew, but her touch eased the pain.
    “What now?” Rook asked her.
    Before she could answer, there was a slight scraping noise. A bundle of firewood landed beside Rook, and then Robin Hood slipped in to bend over the Sheriff’s son, his broad shoulders crowding the hut to its limit. “Better, lad?” he asked.
    “Go suck eggs.”
    Defiant, even now? The boy had to have heard the scare stories folk told of outlaws. How they would steal children from cottages, roast them over flaming bonfires and eat them.
    “I’m not afraid of you,” the boy said, his voice as thin as straw and not much stronger.
    “Good, lad.”
    “We ought to get the wet clothes off him,” Rowan said.
    They maneuvered around one another in the confines of the hut, Rowan steadying Tod’s leg and Rook edging out of the way as Robin bent over the hurt boy. But when Robin reached to pull off Tod’s soaked jerkin, the boy clamped his skinny arms across his chest. “Don’t.”
    “Just trying to help you”—Robin lifted Tod’s arms with one hand and tugged the jerkin off with the other—”get dry and warm—”
    Robin faltered to silence, staring at the boy’s thin body. Even in the dim orange firelight, Rook could see also: Tod’s narrow shoulders were striped with welts, his bony ribs mottled with fresh dark bruises.
    Between clenched teeth Robin breathed, “Who has done this to you?”
    Tod said