“And a coward I call you,” said the stranger, his brow lowering in a terrible frown; “for you would shoot me with your arrows when I have naught but a staff to defend myself with.”
Robin’s common sense tried to make him say something conciliatory; what came out was a snarl: “A coward I will not be called!”—and he ran freely back to the far side of the stream, but with his hands shaking with rage. He cut himself a sturdy oak staff that might hold against seasoned blackthorn, and trimmed it, taking a few deep breaths to steady himself. The stranger had not moved from his place a quarter way across the log bridge.
Robin left his bow and arrows hung on a tree limb, and went to meet his challenger. He was, or had been, good with a staff, for he was quick and light on his feet, and vagrant breezes had less effect on staves than on arrows. But he had not practised with a staff in many long months, and his footwork would avail him little whilst he stood on the narrow curved back of a log bridge; and he knew besides that he would be no match in physical strength to the giant before him.
But he stepped up on the log nonetheless, and held his staff warily, and advanced against his enemy; and his enemy straightened up and moved forward to meet him.
Robin feinted and, as the stranger lowered his staff to parry, raised his own in a lightning stroke to smash the stranger across the brow; only the quickest shift on the stranger’s part saved him from a blow that would certainly have landed him in the stream. “You strike well,” he said, surprised; and, surprising Robin, his voice sounded almost pleasant. He began an attack of his own, but deft and wise though he was, Robin parried ably, and threw the blows back upon him.
They stood so for many long hard minutes, neither moving but for the rare half-stagger as his opponent drove past his guard and rapped him with his staff; for they were better matched than they appeared. Robin was the smaller by a good deal, and, as he soon knew, the less practised, but he was strong and wiry—and stubborn; and he had the knack of the thing besides. The stranger was just the littlest bit slow, and never quite managed to deliver a blow that had his full strength behind it.
Their breath came in great gasps, and a red haze was in their eyes. Sweat ran down Robin’s face and sides, and his ribs burned from the stranger’s bludgeoning. And this for who gets to cross first, he thought in disgust, for his bruises were cooling his temper. Perhaps it was that ill-timed thought, or the sweat running into his eyes, that put him out, for of a sudden a blow he did not see knocked his staff aside and caught him fairly between the last rib and the hip, and swept him into the stream.
“Ugh,” grunted Robin, floundering to the surface, and spitting water. The stream was cold, and his body seemed to contract inside its skin with the shock of it after the heat of the contest; his bones ached with the chill. He stood up awkwardly; the strength of the current pulled him off balance, and his backbone felt as if it had been split in half by the stranger’s final blow. He glared up at the man still standing on the bridge. The stranger was looking down at him with a curious expression on his face. “Well, you have won,” Robin said ungraciously. “I would count it a favour if the victor would now proceed on his way and leave me in solitude.”
“You fought well,” said the stranger, as if he would make peace.
Easy for him to say, thought Robin, who only grunted again in reply, and pushed his dripping hair away from his face; it clung to his neck like weeds. The cold made his teeth chatter, and he could feel the blood blackening the skin at all the places the stranger’s staff had struck him, as if the water were a charm to bring up bruises. He found himself ungenerously hoping that a few of his own blows were making the stranger’s sides throb as well. He set out for the nearer shore—and to his annoyance found the stranger came to meet him, and held out a huge hand to pull Robin through the mud and water-weeds of the slower-moving water near the bank.
“My thanks, sirrah,” Robin said grimly. “Why do you not go? I have acknowledged that you have won the right to cross the bridge first; or you have acknowledged it for me by removing me from your path. Yet you are still on the side of the stream where you began.”
“And you, on the contrary, are where you wished to be,” said the stranger with something like humour.
Robin had taken off his boots and was peeling out of his tunic, and he looked at the stranger with dislike, but something in the man’s face brought a weak flicker of humour to his own. Now that the stranger was not standing like a small mountain in the middle of the bridge, nor scowling like a medium-sized thunderstorm, Robin found himself thinking that he looked like someone whose company Robin might have enjoyed in other circumstances.
“Just where I wanted to be indeed,” said Robin, and began discouragedly to wring out his tunic.
“I will offer you an apology, if I may,” the stranger said after a moment. “My temper is not so good as it might be, and I—well, it is of no matter.”
“My temper is nothing to boast of either,” said Robin ruefully, now squeezing the water from his shirt, and shivering in the light breeze. “Perhaps times are hard with you; and such weighs on a man’s mind.”
The stranger went suddenly still, and Robin looked over at him—at first curiously, and then with some alarm. What if this man had been sent by the sheriff after all—? Robin’s hands paused, and for a moment the only sounds were the voice of the water and the rustling of leaves, and, audible perhaps only to himself, the sodden slow drip of water striking the moss around his feet.
“Times, in truth, are hard,” said the stranger slowly, “and I have come a long way in a short time, and am not—at ease in the new country where I find myself.”
Not a spy, thought Robin; or I doubt the sheriff could hire any spy so good at his craft as to put on such a look of weariness. He squeezed again, and a heavy splatter of water sank into the wet moss. Although the sheriff is holding little back of late.
“May I set you on your way, then, if you are unfamiliar here?” he said aloud, trying to sound disinterestedly courteous. He picked up one soggy boot and looked at it with gloom.
The stranger heaved a great sigh, and spoke as if he made a hard decision. “I seek the man they call Robin Hood.”
Robin dropped his boot, more in surprise than apprehension. “What for?” he said aloud.
The man sat down, which made him look, as he drew his knees up to clasp his hands around them, rather like a short thick mountain than a taller thinner one. “I come from the far side of Nottingham,” he said; “but we know your sheriff there, too. My lord needed no help to raise the rents on the yeomen who worked his land; but the sheriff and his taxes gave it him anyway, and generously. They have been this three years at driving me off my farm, and they have done it at last. I could not meet the rents when my lord raised them once more.… I had lately heard of a man named Robin Hood; I little knew whether to think him real or a tale to torment such as I. But I have nothing left to risk, and so I thought to look for him.…” He paused, and swallowed. “Forgive me, but I have had little to eat this past sennight, and our battle, which I brought on myself—I have ever had a hasty temper; my lord would not else have taken notice of me among his other Saxon slaves—seems to have taken my strength.