Robin Hood: War 33

Robin looked over and saw that John was being kicked even though he was passed out. Unbeknownst to Gerard, he was the last of the demons standing. He was furious at the turn the night had taken and he wanted to make sure “Little John” never forgot it. A few more kicks give or take a dozen aught to finish him. A shadow passed over him He looked up just in time to see all the remaining outlaws of Sherwood converge on him.
It turned out to have been a much less fatal night than Chaucer had dared hope for. Every one of the demons that did live was a long way from consciousness. Gerard might never wake up. They were summarily loaded onto carts and carried out of town, like rubbish. It was hours before first light, and Robin had a few of the lads take the carts to Nottingham where they could be unloaded in front of the sheriff’s office. Robin wanted to send the sheriff a message. He wanted the sheriff to know that despite his carefully hidden plans, Robin Hood knew what he was up to and was more than up for it.
Chaucer had Robin’s men convalesce at the inn. Although it would take some time for these men to recover, only about six of them had been seriously wounded, including John. There were close to 200 men in the forest, ready to take the fight to the sheriff. The problem was, that number would soon be dwarfed by the sheriff’s mercenary army. Robin needed to rally the entire shire to his side, or act before the bulk of the enemy horde arrived, or both. The mercenaries might be doing Robin’s recruiting for him if what happened in Worksop was any indication.
As the year ripened and the days got warmer, families wandered in to Sherwood from all over the shire. People’s homes were being destroyed. The sheriff had been shaken by the pile of giant wounded at his doorstep and decided not to wait to put his plan into action. He wanted to show the people of the shire the price of lawlessness. He wanted them to beg him to make the attacks stop. His plan was that Robin’s outlaws would be blamed for the acts of the mercenaries who were instructed to pretend like they were themselves the outlaws of Sherwood. The sheriff felt that this would rally the people to the lawful representative of the shire. It would also enrage Robin Hood who it had been demonstrated would try to interject himself into every outbreak of pandemonium, the exhausting his forces and rendering him permanently on defense.
Although everyone knew that the mercenaries weren’t part of Robin’s band of outlaws, the news that it was the sheriff’s men was hard for people to swallow. Rumors began to circulate that Lincoln was gathering an army to take over Nottinghamshire. Other rumors claimed that there was treasure hidden in the shire, probably Robin Hood’s, and that the riff raff converging on the shire were treasure hunters in search of the gold.
The "Merry Men", as the outlaws were referred to by the people of Nottinghamshire, would help people rebuild. They began an extensive underground network, connecting the various towns with Sherwood. They had to be careful as in addition to the mercenaries, there were deputies in every town reporting directly to the sheriff and anyone or any town caught co-operating with Robin Hood was putting his life in jeopardy. Tuck's homing pigeons were distributed throughout the shire. Men from Sherwood were assigned to watch over towns where they wouldn't be recognized. They would watch out for signs of invasion. Sometimes a scout would come and pretend to be a wandering soldier. He would get drunk at the tavern, and try to get a feel for the town's defenses. If that were the case, and Robin's man found out in time, he could make haste for Sherwood and bring a band of men to defend the town. Most times, though the mercenaries would just come riding in from where they had been hiding in a neighboring shire and attack a village, raping and pillaging, and then go back to where ever they came from.
In cases like this, the village could only rebuild, and hope it didn't happen again. In some cases, the deputy of the village would be ignorant of the sheriff's plan and help Robin fight the invaders. In others, The deputy's loyalty would lay with the town they served and they would turn against the sheriff. Most deputies, however, had a fear of the sheriff that outweighed their desire to do the right thing. The same was true of many townspeople. Even after their town was attacked, they would stay loyal to the sheriff.
Sherwood itself began to swell with people who would rather live in the woods than in a town that was ruled by a sheriff that would exploit it as soon a destroy it. For the first time, Sherwood village had voluntary citizens.
The sheriff was sick of this game of cat and mouse. He had been trying to get Robin hood to leave himself open to attack by drawing him out to the various villages and towns of the shire. It was obvious to the sheriff, that the peasants of the shire were in cahoots with Robin Hood and so he cared not a fig if the mercenaries burned them all too the ground. Some of the gentry and nobility were beginning to suspect the sheriff was mad, but they dared not oppose him when he was so hell bent on catching Robin Hood. To do so might put even them in jeopardy. For his own part, the sheriff was convinced if he could just get rid of Robin Hood, life would return to normal, and no one need worry about any of this nastiness anymore. He felt he was right on the verge of capturing or killing Robin Hood. Nothing worked, however, and so the sheriff needed to change tactics once again. Instead of a raid on a town or village, the army would assemble en masse, and attack them in Sherwood. The forest lands were protected by the crown, and so the sheriff couldn't just burn them down, or he would have done so long ago. But he now had enough of an army that he could surround the forest, and they could work their way towards the center, thus ensuring that there was no escape for Robin Hood.

For himself, Robin needed no conjurer to tell him of the coming carnage. It came to him in his dreams. The people of the forest, having built a home for themselves & redeemed themselves from their fall from grace and banishment from civilization, would be chased even into the wilderness by the madman who had placed them there in the first place, and finding them, would slay them all.
In the fever of sleep, Robin loosed every arrow, never missing his mark, and still they came, the invaders; choking the woods in the blood of his countrymen. And they did not stop with the outlaws, no. Onward they came. Punishing the whole of the shire, every man, woman and child. The children, with tomorrow's bright promise of hope in their eyes, reaped like wheat, their dolls and toys falling to the dust, forgotten: a stuffed bear, a wooden deer, a toy archer.
Robin would awaken screaming silently, bathed in sweat. This coming war would destroy Nottinghamshire, and the sheriff would suffer not a scratch. Robin Hood would go down in history as the rat that caused the death of a generation. Heaven and eternal rest would be barred to him. In the eternal pit he would forever be tormented by the deaths he had facilitated by his rebellion. Robin could not allow it. He would take the fight to the sheriff. But how? The sheriff, now playing the role of general, was always surrounded by an entourage of lackeys waiting to be dispatched. Yet Robin determined to find a way.

Robin Hood: Marian Has a Date For Dinner 29

"Ja, I am Hilde the math teacher. I am from, uh, Derby. Ja Derby is vere I am from, und I have come to be a substitution teacher for the children." Cedric mistook Marian's blushing for shyness. She wished she were better at dissembling.
"Well, I suppose I should let you take over so I  can get back to St. Mary's. Perhaps you will join me in the rectory for dinner this evening to welcome you to Nottingham? Now, I won't take no for an answer. We English Vicars are used to being obeyed. In everything... heh, heh. Just a joke, really. See you after evensong, then? Good. Well, I'll leave the little vermin in your capable hands, then. Be stern with them. Don't spare the rod and all that. You can bet I haven't."
Marian was mortified. She was just getting ready to be relieved that she had gotten through that short introduction without being detected, and now she would have to sit through dinner with the despicable cleric. Her proud warrior heritage seemed to have abandoned her, laughing as it went. She had so been looking forward to seeing the children and catching up with them, and now that they were here, safe in front of her, she could barely acknowledge their presence. She took a deep breath. She looked up at the children. They seemed to regard her with the same open mouthed neck craning curiosity one might look upon an owl attacking a small rodent. Years of caring for her small charges kicked in. “Well, shut your traps, have you never seen a priest invite a lady to dine before?”
“Marian?” said a young, blonde girl in pigtails herself seated in the third row.
“It is her! I told you she’d come back!” agreed another.
“Marian! Marian!” rose the chorus of children so that children from the neighboring classrooms and the yard outside overheard and began flooding into the small classroom.
“Well, do you children not see that I am in disguise? Do you want the sheriff to come here and arrest me? Then you had better learn to keep quiet and not tell anyone!” This was why she had risked everything to come back. This is why she knew that she had done the right thing. these children needed her. What’s more she needed them. She had been lost without them.
“Tell me,” she said, once she had quieted them down. “What has gone on since I’ve been gone?”
The children spent the rest of the day telling Marian how the sheriff had levied a special tax on St Anne's and arrived with armed guards to receive payment in person. Since then, the meals had been reduced to just a small bowl of gruel in the  morning, and a thin broth accompanied by stale bread in the evening. Theirs clothes were more threadbare than usual and some of the teachers had left to go work in the fields in order to better sustain their families and avoid the obvious persecutory wrath of the sheriff. Many of the children had become sick due to the nutrition and care that had been withheld from them. There was little to be done as the supplies in the infirmary had run nearly out. There had been a garden in which Marian personally grew medicinal herbs for the sick children, but Father Cecil had had the entire garden pulled and burned on the grounds that herbology was a form of witchcraft, and had threatened to ad that to the list of crimes Marian was wanted for. Marian could have shown him St. Hildegard’s own writing on the subject, but the Benedictine Nun & saint would probably not have been able to persuade Father Cecil to spare the herbs, were she there in person. Most of the medicinal plants grew in the greenwood, and Marian had planted them in the garden for the sake of convenience, so even though the herb garden was gone, the plants were still relatively close at hand.
Even so, Marian’s blood boiled with anger at the way these two men treated the children as if they were themselves weeds to be pulled and thrown into the fire. It wasn’t just neglect, ignorance, greed and vice fuelling the persecution of the children, it was a prejudicial bias against them. The sheriff and Father Cecil believed that orphans should be drowned like feral kittens. The two men resented the community’s effort to provide a decent upbringing for the unwanted, parentless offspring, whom they viewed as liable to grow up to be beggars or outlaws. Marian and Tuck were doing their level best to make sure that didn’t happen. By educating the children and providing a nurturing environment, they hoped the children could overcome the strike fate had dealt them and become productive members of the shire. Marian felt that the actions of the sheriff and Father Cecil would guarantee that their predictions as to the fate of the orphans would bare out. By treating them as unwanted and less than deserving, the children would internalize these attitudes and become the villains they were expected to become.
After class, as Marian told Tuck about the testimony of the children, she got so wound up that she nearly flew into a rage. There was no way, she swore, that she could have dinner with Father Cecil without killing him! Tuck tried too calm her down, to warn her that she would give them both away if she behaved at all like Marian. He gave her a glass of strong wine to sooth her nerves. She downed it so fast that even Tuck was taken aback.
He had, of course, learned about the tax, but the tale of the herbs was news to him. The only way that he could get Marian to go through with the dinner was to tell her to act as their spy. Perhaps she could find out something useful about the sheriff’s plans. Something that the sheriff would rather Robin and his friends not find out. Perhaps something concerning the sheriff’s plans for Robin and his friends. Marian held out her glass for a refill. Robin loved this kind of thing. This whole disguise idea had been his. He could be so annoying. Why didn’t he wear his hair in braids and flirt with Father Cecil? Then he would see! Actually, he would probably love it. He was such a rogue! She remembered the first time she had laid eyes on him. He had been in the dress shop when she’d arrived and looked like a beggar. Then he had produced the coins and offered to pay for her dress. She had known right then that he was trouble! Now look at her! She was going to have dinner with the man who had imprisoned her (for having one of those damn coins!), dressed like an invading Viking woman and she was expected to spy? Well, she would show them! She would do it! She would pry secrets out of Cecil that he didn’t even know he had. He would promise to find out the things he didn’t know. She would have him eating out of her hand! But first she had to lie down; she felt quite dizzy.