Wild Boy Read online

  KILL HIM.

  Rook paid Robin no heed. All his thoughts were for the Sheriff’s son. He felt the skinny, freckle-faced boy staring up at him from the ground, could almost hear him thinking the scornful thoughts of an aristocrat: He’s filthy, he smells, keep him away from me. Proud son of Nottingham. “Kill him,” Rook repeated, his voice as dark and clotted as the brambles in his heart.

  “What, Rook, do you think we’d kill a child? To eat, perchance?” Robin recovered his grin. “Nay, there’ll be a feast in his honor tonight. Tell Rowan and the others, will you?”

  Rook said nothing, only glared at the boy on the ground. The boy stared back at him, his narrow face white and hard. A child? Rook himself stood no taller, no older, no stronger, but he knew himself to be no child. He was an outlaw, and like a wolf he could be killed by anyone who cared to carry his severed head to Nottingham for a reward, and like a wolf he would kill. He would kill this freckled, snotty brat if he got a chance.

  Wild Boy

  THE TALES OF ROWAN HOOD

  by Nancy Springer

  Rowan Hood, Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest

  Lionclaw

  Outlaw Princess of Sherwood

  Wild Boy

  Rowan Hood Returns

  Wild Boy

  A TALE OF ROWAN HOOD

  NANCY SPRINGER

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Philomel Books,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2004

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2005

  Copyright © Nancy Springer, 2004

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PHILOMEL EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Springer, Nancy.

  Wild boy, a tale of Rowan Hood / Nancy Springer.

  p. cm. Sequel to: Outlaw princess of Sherwood, a tale of Rowan Hood.

  Summary: Determined to avenge the death of his swineherd father at the hands

  of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Rook finally gets his chance when

  the Sheriff’s son is captured by Robin Hood.

  [1. Revenge—Fiction. 2. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction.

  4. Robin Hood (Legendary character)—Fiction. 5. Middle Ages—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.S76846Wi 2004

  [Fic]—dc22 2003019146

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-56348-9

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that

  it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise

  circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover

  other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition

  including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any

  responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  Version_2

  For Jaime

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  One

  Flat on his belly on the riverbank, Rook slipped his hands silently into the eddying pool. Here at the curve of the river, fat brown trout would be hiding in the shadow of the overhang. Letting his hands dangle in the icy water, for a timeless time Rook waited, watching and listening. An outlaw in Sherwood Forest could never be heedless of danger. But Rook did not stiffen when he heard branches rattling, the thud of hooves on loam, the creak of saddle leather. He lay alert, yet at ease, waiting for the horseman to ride past. Rook knew that his bare, skinny body lay weather-browned and almost invisible in the bracken, his shaggy black hair at one with the shade of the shaggy willows. This was how he liked to be, like a wild animal of the forest, a hidden, solitary creature who didn’t have to care too much, or think, or remember.

  His hands swayed with the river currents, seemingly of their own accord drifting deeper beneath the overhang, waiting for a trout to brush their fingers. In the bracken near Rook’s side lay half a dozen silver speckled fish. Rook wanted to go back to Rowan with enough fat trout to feed her and the others. But it was not that he cared about Rowan, Rook told himself, even though she was Rowan Hood, archer and healer, daughter of a woods witch and Robin Hood himself. Rook kept his distance from her and Beau and Lionel. He did his share, that was all. Rowan brought in small game and healing herbs; Lionel hunted deer. Even Beau, that laughing pest, gathered hazelnuts and such. And Rook caught fish to eat.

  Deep in the green-dark pool beneath his fingers, shadows moved. Deep in the oak forest all around him moved shadows of a different sort. It was as if a breeze had stirred the greenshade, nothing more, or as if trout had slipped through deep water. But watching, Rook allowed his eyes to widen. Robin Hood’s outlaws were on the hunt for something. The horseman? He had passed Rook by, but Rook could still hear the rustling of brush around his horse’s flanks.

  Rook did not move, did not turn his head to look. Let Robin do what he wanted.

  Ah, Rook thought. Despite the icy water he felt a whisper of motion: trout fins fanning. Slowly, softly, Rook curled his hand, fingertips tickling the trout’s belly. To catch trout this way he had to act as if he loved them. Perhaps he did. Sweetly, sweetly he caressed the fish until it had entirely relaxed into the cup of his hand. Then he whipped it out of the water. A splash, a shining arc, and the trout flopped in the bracken, gills gasping. Rook placed it with the others, barely noticing how his hands had gone numb with cold. A stag or a wild boar or a wolf would not notice the cold. But even a wolf must beware of enemies, Rook knew. Had anyone heard him move, or seen him?

  Snap, a branch broke, not far away. Hooves stamped. Twigs rattled.

  Flat in the bracken, Rook crawled behind the massive trunk of an ancient willow. Once in its sheltering shadow, he eased his head up, peering toward the commotion.

  He saw the horse first, at a distance between oak boles, a great, rampaging black horse seemingly at war with the green clinging forest, kicking and plunging, whacking and hacking worse than a woodcutter with an ax. And the rider’s brass helmet and breastplate made a racket like a tinker mending pans. He wore livery that made Rook glower, in the colors of Nottingham, forsooth. It was one of the Sheriff’s men, and the fool had ridden his
horse into ivy. When would these high-horse braggarts learn? There he struggled, his mighty steed caught in vines as strong as a hangman’s noose, and there he could stay.

  No, it appeared that his situation would soon become even worse. Rook gave a low growl of pleasure, because now he saw the outlaws, their backs to him and their bows at the ready, waiting for Robin’s signal.

  It came—a birdlike whistle, mocking and cheery. Within a heartbeat, a dozen outlaws broke cover to confront the rider from all points of the compass, longbows drawn, ringing the man with razor-sharp steel arrow points.

  Rook stood and walked forward, silent as always on his bare feet.

  Ambushed, the horseback rider startled like a deer. A stray branch caught at his helmet and knocked it off.

  The outlaws started to laugh.

  From atop the frothing horse, the rider glared around him, his gaze raking the outlaws. Rook saw dark eyes in a thin, pale face dotted with freckles. Narrow shoulders. Arms like sticks, skinny hands trembling on the reins.

  “By my troth, it’s a boy!” cried a voice Rook knew well. Robin Hood, the outlaw leader, stood with his bow lowered, his golden curls glinting in a shaft of sunlight and his blue eyes sparkling with fun.

  Yes, the horseback rider was a boy. A stripling no bigger or older than Rook was.

  “What are you doing on that horse, lad?” inquired the tallest outlaw, Little John.

  “I know him,” said another outlaw. “It’s the Sheriff’s son.”

  Rook felt a sudden thicket of emotion clot his chest, passions like thorns, like knives, fit to pierce him from within. His hands clenched into fists.

  “The Sheriff’s son!” A chorus of mockery burst from the outlaws.

  “It’s Little Lord Nottingham?”

  “Ooooh! On Papa’s horse?”

  “Watch out, sonny. Papa will spank.”

  “Papa will be worried if you’re not home for supper.” Smiling as if he almost meant this, Robin stepped forward and started cutting the ivy away with his long hunting knife.

  “Come on,” said Little John to the others. Several of them stepped forward to help. Little John, standing almost seven feet tall, reached up to lift vines away from the rider, but the youngster pulled back from him.

  “Get your foul hands off of me!”

  The boy should have remained silent. His voice cracked and squeaked. The outlaws laughed anew. Chuckling, Robin joined Little John. “Now, be careful,” he told him, owlish. “Do be careful, Little John, lest yon fierce warrior take offense at your foul hands.”

  “Ay, by my poor old body, we can’t have foul hands touching a Nottingham.”

  The two of them untangled the boy and lifted him off the horse as he thrashed and windmilled and struggled against them. “I do not yield!” he cried. He wore a short sword but did not think to reach for it, just squirmed and flailed like an eel. “Let me go!” he yelled. “You let me go, or my father will kill you all!”

  “Spitfire!” Robin exclaimed, grinning, as they laid the boy on the ground and took the sword away. “What are we going to do with him, merry men?”

  Outlaws yelled suggestions, some of them more serious than others.

  “Dance a reel on him!”

  “Give him a shave with a blunt arrowhead.”

  “Spank him and send him back to his papa.”

  “Hold him for ransom.”

  “Hold him hostage.”

  “Give him a Sherwood Forest welcome.”

  Then spoke a different voice, a thick panting voice Rook barely recognized as his own, although he felt it bursting like a wild boar out of the sharp, tangled wilderness in his chest. “Kill him.”

  Robin Hood swung around, crouching to flee or fight, his face a pale, startled oval. The other outlaws snatched at their bows. For a heartbeat there was silence like a scream.

  “Rook, lad,” Robin said almost in a gasp. “You took us unawares. Put a feather in your cap for that.” He stood tall again, and the ruddy color returned to his cheeks. “If you ever wear a cap.”

  Rook paid Robin no heed. All his thoughts were for the Sheriff’s son. He felt the skinny, freckle-faced boy staring up at him from the ground, could almost hear him thinking the scornful thoughts of an aristocrat: He’s filthy, he smells, keep him away from me. Proud son of Nottingham. “Kill him,” Rook repeated, his voice as dark and clotted as the brambles in his heart.

  “What, Rook, do you think we’d kill a child? To eat, perchance?” Robin recovered his grin. “Nay, there’ll be a feast in his honor tonight. Tell Rowan and the others, will you?”

  Rook said nothing, only glared at the boy on the ground. The boy stared back at him, his narrow face white and hard. A child? Rook himself stood no taller, no older, no stronger, but he knew himself to be no child. He was an outlaw, and like a wolf he could be killed by anyone who cared to carry his severed head to Nottingham for a reward, and like a wolf he would kill. He would kill this freckled, snotty brat if he got a chance.

  Two

  That night, fresh ember-baked trout tasted like wood to Rook. Instead of eating, he leaned against the stones that formed a natural wall around the rowan hollow, watching as the others ate. Watching Rowan, who seemed to think always of the others, lay her portion aside to place more wood on the fire. Watching Lionel, the overgrown lummox, gulp his dinner, bones and all. Watching Beau, the newcomer, pick at her food and talk. Beau loved to talk. “Mon foi, this is a stout trout,” she declared to no one in particular. “A trout femme, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Only you,” complained Lionel, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, “would want to know whether your dinner was a girl trout or a boy trout.”

  “Mais quel dommage, a shame if one cannot tell, oui?”

  Beau still wore the crimson tunic and yellow leggings of the high king’s page boy. Many had not known she was a girl. Soberly Lionel turned her joke against her. “Sometimes people just can’t tell, Belle.”

  Beau straightened, her black eyes flashing. “You no call me Belle!”

  “But my dear Belle,” protested Lionel with round-eyed gravity, “we know you’re not really a boy. Just as your fair tresses are not really yellow.” Although Beau’s hair still hung golden to her shoulders, its black roots had grown out almost a hand’s width. “Fair hair once yellow, Belle, O!” Lionel sang as if he were thinking of composing a ballad.

  “No Belle, I tell you!”

  “But you are a girl, mademoiselle, and femme for Beau is Belle.”

  “Bah! Stop it. Sounds like ding-dong.”

  “Goodness gracious.” Lionel’s moon face lighted up, his baby blue eyes angelic. “Very well, how is this? You stop talking with that annoying phony Frankish accent, and I’ll stop calling you Belle.”

  “I talk how I like. Go milk yourself.”

  Sitting quietly in her wilderness hideout with her wolf-dog at her side, Rowan took no part in the bickering, amusement showing only in her warm eyes. In the firelight’s tawny glow her grave face seemed to float in the night, spiritous, like the aelfe, woodland denizens who were her kin. On one finger she wore the two remaining circlets of the many-stranded ring that had belonged to her half-aelfin mother. Lionel wore his strand on a silver chain under his tunic. Beau’s strand shone on her hand, greasy from eating fish.

  Lionel protested, “But, my dear little Belle—”

  “Clodpole, make silent the big mouth or I stuff my fist in it.” Tossing a trout head at him, Beau grinned as if it were a treat to be teased. Lionel had always teased Ettarde too, calling her “dear little lady,” which she had hated. Ettarde would have laid her fish on a dock leaf, dissected it as if it were a logic problem, then wiped her hands daintily with the kerchief she kept tucked in her sleeve. Remembering Ettarde, Rook reminded himself that he did not miss her, just as he was sure she did not miss his dirty face or his black hair tangled worse than a moorland pony’s mane. Even as a runaway, Etty had remained a princess, and Rook detested aristocrats.

  But ev
en worse he hated the Sheriff of Nottingham, a commoner who gave himself the airs of an aristocrat.

  Rowan glanced at Rook across the rowan hollow and gave him one of her rare smiles. Did she sense his dark thoughts? Perhaps. Rook had been silent tonight, but Rowan knew silence was Rook’s custom. He seldom spoke unless it was necessary, and it was not necessary now. He did not have to smile back at her either. Rowan was wise. Rowan knew that a wild boy did not smile.

  Consigning Rook’s father to die, the Sheriff of Nottingham had smiled.

  Rook’s hands clenched at the thought. A growl formed deep in his throat. But at that moment Tykell, the wolf-dog, lifted his gray-furred head and growled aloud. Someone was coming.

  In one swift motion Rowan stood, arrow-straight in her green kirtle, hearkening. Beau scrambled to ready her new bow and arrows, and even that great slug Lionel alerted, one hand on his quarterstaff. On his feet like Rowan, Rook reached for the dagger he wore at his belt.

  Tykell’s growl quieted. He wagged his plumy tail.

  Within the next eyeblink, without a sound, not even the scrape of a deerskin boot on stone or the rustle of leather against a rowan leaf, Robin Hood slipped over the boulders and leapt lightly down to stand in the hollow.

  “Sacre bleu,” said Beau, “it’s a dastardly scoundrel if I’ve ever seen one.”

  Robin kissed Rowan on the side of her head, smoothing her brown hair back from her face. “Daughter,” he greeted her. Whatever the business was, Rook knew, Robin could have sent a messenger, but as usual he had come himself for the sake of seeing Rowan. The next moment, his eager blue glance scanned the others. “Scoundrel yourself,” he told Beau with a smile. “No mischief for me here? Hast seen aught of the Sheriff’s son?”

  Lionel and Beau and Rowan exclaimed in unison, “The Sheriff’s son?”

  “Fire-spitting youngling on a horse too big for him.” Robin’s gaze caught on Rook. “Didn’t you tell them?”