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XLIII. Another Millstone



Leggings soaked from fording the Went, Will Scathelock sent three of his group into the orchard near the small church. Once they were situated behind three trees, he led his remaining two bowmen around the priest’s house and the church and took up positions behind the low front wall surrounding the burial ground.

From there, he watched Little John stand upon the bridge awaiting some sign that the demonic elves had seen him. Perhaps, thought Will, he should shoot one of those guarding the humans who were outside and feeding their animals. At any moment he expected to hear a clash of archers, swords, Yvags, something from back down the road. And where had Robyn gone? He was nowhere to be seen. Was he in the thick of that fray Will couldn’t hear? More likely he’d gone to fetch the spinners (although Will had thought they were in the tattered old bag he carried). He had probably cut open one of those circles in the air for himself. Will shuddered at the thought. It had been strange enough riding that beast while holding one of those stones. He hadn’t mentioned to Robyn the one time he’d dropped it and the beast had come to a dead stop until he got down and found it again.

From here he couldn’t see the other members of their band, either, including that tall skinny outlaw whom Robyn addressed deferentially as “Sir Richard.” He was almost certain the Keepers had come across that one before with three or four others. How did Robyn know him?

Or maybe Robyn was leading a group around the vill right now to come at the demons from the half-harvested fields on the slopes above it? There was a lot Will wished he’d been privy to, but returning Isabella’s body to her castle had been a task he could not shirk.

Just then a knight in a surcoat of alternating red and black panels abruptly came out of the cooper’s house close by and took up a position facing the bridge. The knight did nothing further, just stood and waited. Little John started down the slope from the bridge.

For what? wondered Will. And odd, his surcoat. Drustan Liddel had said the knights were dressed in Passelewe’s colors. Not this one. He didn’t look demonic, either—just choleric, as if occupying this hamlet was a waste of his precious time. But upon his appearance, the other knights ushered the villeins away from the animals and herded them into the larger central hall. Will got the impression the whole vill was being kept in there.

After a minute, the same four knights emerged from the hall. Two of them carried crossbows. Like the first, they took up positions just outside it and then stood, still as statues. Unlike him, they tilted their heads back as though they could see all the way to The Saylis from here. None of them seemed aware of the presence of Will and his men.

To the two beside him, he said, “Take aim, good yeo—” when, on the far side of Little John in the narrow space between the mill and the bakehouse, the air suddenly lit up bright green. Will nearly shouted to John, sure that the demons were invading the vill from without. Instead, who should bound out of the fiery ring but Robyn Hoode. He seemed dazed for an instant, but then lay there aiming his bow at nothing. A small goat gamboled up to him before he finally lowered the bow, turned, stumbling awkwardly, and scrambled for the mill. He was wounded, that was clear—one entire leg was slick with blood. But when had he changed into that same black armor Will had put on? Little John, having walked down from the bridge, didn’t even see him. Neither did the first knight outside the cooper’s. The bakehouse itself must have blocked his view.

What madness had overtaken Robyn that he’d openly revealed his ability to work the demons’ magic? Did he possess the spinners in his bag after all? He still carried it with him. But who had wounded him so grievously?

Even as he wondered all of this, from the direction of The Saylis came the blast of the ram’s horn: Presumably, the archers had engaged the demonic knights in a skirmish. From behind Will came an odd pressure, as if someone’s fingers were pushing up through his hair. He could not help glancing back. The door of the church had opened. A white-robed priest stood there. The priest might have appeared human, but there was no mistaking the nature of that pressure: He was communicating with the knights. Without a single word he was telling them of the bowmen in the graveyard.

Will found the four knights staring his way.

“Well, that’s just enough of that.” He pivoted about and raised his bow to aim at the priest.


Thomas opened his eyes to find Isabella Birkin kneeling beside him. She was pale and bloodless in death as he’d seen her last. She had torn a cotton flour sack apart and ripped a long strip of the cloth to tie around his thigh. Having ministered to his wound, she looked upon him with seraphic joy; yet the first words out of her mouth were, “You’ll lose that leg.”

“I won’t,” he replied. “I heal quickly.”

“So you do.” Astonishment filled her voice. He followed her gaze to his own leg, which was indeed whole once more, the blood gone, even Robert Hodde’s legging knitted whole once more. “I do not,” she told him sadly, “I’m dead.” Then she confessed, “I never expected to know love again.”

“Nor I.” But vaguely he was aware that he wasn’t conscious, and had passed out propped against the wooden bin where the flour poured out of the chute below the millstones. His head swung side to side and his eyes fluttered open. He raised his head up. No Isabella greeted him. No, of course not. The realization stabbed at him. His leg was indeed tied off with a strip from a flour sack, but he had done this himself in his last lucid moments. Blood had darkened the floorboards beneath him, but at least it had stopped flowing. His leg was wetly carved and raw but the wound didn’t look quite as bad as before. No doubt the glamoured Yvag armor had minimized the damage that Sir Richard, whatever he was, had inflicted. “Bragrender.” Another elven name.

Thomas looked around. Unlike Oakmill, there was no table or stools, no Forbes or Janet, no Aðalbrandr seeking revenge. No Sir Richard in any form, only two short, thick planks leaning against the walls, one by each of the two doors. The miller could bar his doors, probably so that no one could inadvertently open them in the midst of a grinding and set the wind to whirling through. Those would prove useful.

He must not have been unconscious for more than a few minutes. No one was shouting or fighting outside. It sounded like John was talking, and having to bellow his words at that, so at some distance from whoever he addressed.

With some difficulty, Thomas got to his feet and hobbled to a shuttered window. He pushed against the shutter, opened it only enough to see out. Something pressed against his good leg and he looked down: An orange-and-white cat twined itself around his legs. “You the local rat catcher, are you?” he asked it. “Shame on you for letting the vermin invade.” The cat looked up at him, seemed to determine that he was not about to supply it with a snack, and wandered off across the floor. “Best you not remain here long, puss. Go hunt mice elsewhere.”

Outside, John was explaining that the “spinners are gunna take a little longer to lay ’ands upon,” and glancing worriedly back at the bakehouse.

The listening knight appeared impatient enough to run John through where he stood below the bridge. There was no time to waste.

Thomas grabbed his toolbag and carried it up the steps to the grinding stones. Partially ground grain lay around and in the center hole as if the work had been interrupted. He untied the bag and reached in. The ördstones buzzed in his head like angry bees, as if they knew his intent. He winced but carried on, dropping the two ördstones into the hole. He was about to add both the spinners, but hesitated. If this worked as he hoped, Nicnevin and the Yvag would assume that all the spinners had been destroyed. He could not say why just then, but he felt that a time would come when he would be glad of holding onto one of these. He returned it to his tool bag, then leaned over and covered the three pieces with the grain while muttering, “Millstone around my neck, Alpin. So obvious, hey?”

He limped to the rear door of the mill, nearest the large vertical wheel. Just outside, beside a narrow stone walkway, a lever protruded that released the exterior wheel. The walkway or jetty continued along, paralleling the mill, to the end of the channel, where a sluice gate attached to a rope and pulley controlled the water’s flow past the wheel.

Back inside, Thomas gathered his bow, belt quiver, and toolbag and carried them out beside the lever. He glamoured his Yvag armor, turning himself into the incarnation of Robyn Hoode once more—Lincoln green cotehardie with red trim. His whole thigh throbbed, though the wound looked better.

Grabbing a broom on which to lean, he hobbled through the mill to the door on the opposite side, through which he’d crashed. He opened the door and limped outside, this time toward the base of the bridge.

John turned just then, and a look of great relief came over him. The knight he’d been speaking with had already spotted Thomas and headed straight for him, hand on the hilt of his sword.

“No closer,” Thomas shouted. “If you want your dights, you release all your prisoners first from the hall.”

The knight drew up, sourly replied, “Then we’ll have none to bargain with.”

Thomas laughed. “With another force coming up the road at our backs to trap us even now, you feel you need hostages? We know what you have planned.” He gave the knight a moment to consider that. “You want the dights, send the people over the bridge with my friend now. Once they’re safe, you are welcome to repossess the two you don’t have. I am leaving them in the mill for you.”

John looked as if he wanted to object but Thomas shook his head. He must get the inhabitants of the vill to safety, which was to say, over the bridge.

The knight was communicating with more of the Yvags scattered about. The humming pressure of it pushed into Thomas’s head.

He marked Will Scathelock in the kirkyard, aiming an arrow at the doorway of the church, as if he expected someone to come out. Or maybe he’d already sent them fleeing back inside. That led him to wonder if other Yvag knights might be glamoured to blend in with the inhabitants. He knew they’d never intended to deal fairly with John, but they also probably thought five of them could easily finish him off. No wonder the knight looked so dyspeptic.

“Very well,” the knight agreed finally. “We will release them all but you remain in the mill, your friend upon the bridge. And those behind the kirkyard wall must withdraw.”

Thomas gave Will a nod to retreat, then limped on the broomstick over to John.

Will and his two companions climbed over the low graveyard wall and made for the bridge. Passing Thomas, he whispered, “Three still in the orchard if you need reinforcements.”

“Good,” Thomas replied. Turning to John, he said, “You heard?” John nodded. “Among us you’re the only one knows the inhabitants here. Watch them carefully as they cross over the bridge. I fear there might be a substitution or addition. Will was aiming at something beside the church. So watch there.” John nodded again. “And remember what I said about staying low.”

The four knights, meanwhile, had gone into the central hall. Almost at once, people emerged, clearly more than happy to escape their captivity. As he headed back to the mill, Thomas wondered if they knew that their captors weren’t even human.


The citizens of Palavia Parva walked up the bridge around John. One, a barrel-chested man with a red apple of a nose, tugged on his sleeve and said, “’Ere, whatcher doin’ to me mill?”

“Using it t’save your life today,” he replied, watching Robyn go in. The miller looked forlornly from John to the mill and back again; shaking his head, he continued up over the bridge, muttering, “Outlaws an’ knaves.”

The knights came last of all. John watched them suspiciously: two with crossbows, and two sporting those lethal swords. In the air around them circled little flitting creatures. One darted ahead and dove at John. He smacked it with his quarterstaff so hard that it flew against the bakehouse and fell to the ground. It did not get up. The other flitting hobs circled back and kept their distance.

Despite the threatening presence of the knights, Little John was glad to see all of the vill set free and not so much as an arrow fired or a sword drawn, but he didn’t trust the luck. Did the knights know that their forces in the woods had met with resistance? The sounding of the ram’s horn had told him that much. Maybe those coming out of the rings were too far away to communicate with these five. Maybe the archers had sent them all packing before they got through. He recalled Robyn explaining how the elves were so long-lived beneath their resistant armor that they hardly believed death could touch them any longer. He wondered if that might make them terrified of the fight: Geoffrey had described the one in Chandler’s Lane gaol, petrified with fear at the prospect of death. If you lived forever, what did death even mean to you? He scratched his head, thinking about terrified demons while the citizens of the vill passed him and went up and over the bridge, until only Little John and the five knights remained.

The knights looked him over, menacing, cold. To each he returned the look twice as darkly. They still didn’t have their spinners. They didn’t dare harm him, not yet. He stood his ground and they all turned away and headed across the croft to the mill.

They’re all yours now, Woodwose, an’ God help tha. He started up the bridge. Will Scathelock awaited him at the top.


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