Wild Boy Read Online Free PDF

nothing.
    “Your father?”
    “He—he beats me only to toughen me.”
    The look on Robin’s face made Rook grab one of the sheepskins and cover Tod with it, not so much for warmth as to hide the marks.
    Robin said, “That makes as much sense as stripping the bark off a young tree. To toughen it.”
    “Father, hush,” Rowan said.
    Tod’s eyes widened and shifted to stare at her.
    Not hushed at all, Robin demanded, “Does he beat your mother as well? To toughen her?”
    “
Father
. Either be quiet and help me set his leg, or go away.” Rowan spoke with the authority of a healer. Robin Hood set his lips in a line like a bowstring and said nothing more.
    “Rook,” Rowan said, “come here. Help us.”
    Rook found himself holding the Sheriff’s son down while Rowan and Robin peeled the bloody wrappings away from the boy’s mangled leg. Knees on Tod’s shoulders, hands leaning on his arms to restrain him, Rook felt him shaking. It should have been a pleasure to watch a Nottingham suffer, but Rook felt far away, and staring into Tod’s upside-down face made everything seem like a bad dream. Rook heard his own hoarse voice as if it belonged to a stranger. “He’s biting his lip.”
    Blood stood on the boy’s mouth and chin. Robin looked, then without a word he undid his hunting knife from his belt and placed it, tough leather sheath and all, between the boy’s teeth.
    “We’ll set it as quickly as we can,” Rowan told Tod. Her shadowy gaze shifted to her father. “Ready? Take hold.”
    The Sheriff’s son was brave, Rook knew by now, but brave can do only so much. Tod arched his back, straining, writhing. He screamed—by all the world’s suffering, how he screamed—then went limp. Rook closed his eyes.
    “Thank the Lady he fainted,” Rowan murmured.
    She and Robin were binding the splints on. Rook lunged for the doorway, scrambled out and ran in the pouring rain toward the forest. He barely noticed Lionel and Beau calling to him from the shelter of the pigsty. And he had not yet reached the forest before he fell to his knees and vomited. Although there was not much in him to vomit. He had not eaten.
    The rain cooled the boiling porridge of emotions in him somewhat. He turned his face to the sky, let the rain wash his mouth, spat, then got up and started walking toward another place he remembered as if from another life.

Six

    I t took him several days. First he had to find a young tree, not too thick, with two sturdy branches jutting about at the level of his shoulders. Then he had to cut it and trim it into a shape like a slender cross, after which he had to sharpen the upper end into a rude spear. He carried this weapon at the ready as he stalked toward the place he remembered.
    Perhaps he should have told Rowan he would be away for a while…. But no, foxes and deer did not need to seek anyone’s blessing or say-so. Wolves roamed at will. And so would he.
    Slipping through the tangled shadows of Sherwood Forest, Rook expected to meet swarms of Nottingham’s men-at-arms in search of the Sheriff’s missing son. But in fact he saw only one bored patrol riding through a beech glade.
    Other than that, he encountered the usual presences in the forest: frightened peasants poaching firewood or meat, nervous travelers, knights errant and wandering friars, the king’s foresters, bounty hunters, Robin Hood’s merry men, and other outlaws not nearly so merry or kind. Rook knew when any of these folk were near, but few if any of them were aware of the wild boy.
    Rook ate what little he could find as he traveled, only enough to stay alive. Mushrooms. Bilberries. Little bony fish that tasted muddy: dace, chub, perch. Still, eating took time, sleeping took time, stalking and walking took time, days of sunshine then cloud again and rain and then more sun.
    He found the wallows at last by the prints of many two-pointed hooves leading there. Rain had freshened the mud, and now a warm afternoon sun glowed down