The Two Torcs Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Debbie Viguié and James R. Tuck

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Witchstones and Children’s Tears

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Bitter Ashes Swirling to Earth

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Mantle of Winter Mourning

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Heart of Sherwood

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  Also Available from Titan Books

  Coming Soon from Titan Books

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM DEBBIE VIGUIÉ AND JAMES R. TUCK

  Robin Hood: Mark of the Black Arrow

  Robin Hood: Sovereign’s War (August 2017)

  ROBIN HOOD: DEMON’S BANE

  THE TWO TORCS

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783294381

  Electronic edition ISBN: 9781783294398

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: August 2016

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Debbie Viguié and James R. Tuck. All Rights Reserved. Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  To Ann Liotta, my oldest friend, I would battle demons with you any day.

  –DV

  Always to the Missus.

  –JRT

  PROLOGUE

  The world had gone white.

  Everything lay under a rime of hard frost, sheeted over with ice, slick and deadly, waiting to take down man and beast alike.

  Even the heart of vast Sherwood lay locked in the grip of winter, only the mighty oaks stood unbent beneath a frozen burden. Limbs were bare against the dull sky, bushes and undergrowth pressed down by the weight of snow. The deer had stopped moving, stopped digging for food long gone. They retreated to hidden hollow and sad shelter, hunger-staved sides and jutting ribs shaking as they huddled together for what meager warmth they could make.

  He stalked carefully, moving with barely a ripple through the low groaning of the trees. Stopping on a ridge he stood, looking down over a deep hollow in the earth. Even in the numb of the cold he could feel the life that shivered around him. His spirit felt larger than his body, as attuned to the mighty forest as the sun is attuned to the sky. He had come to hunt, to take a life to sustain others. His goal for the day was to see red spilled on white, to breathe the steam as his prey cooled. He had prepared to offer the life to God, a sacrifice of necessity.

  But something was different.

  He was transfixed, his body thrumming inside to the vibrations of the earth beneath the ancient wood.

  Movement caught his eye, pulling him from the white.

  A badger, skin loose from winter’s privation, shuffled up the hill toward him, low to the ground on stubby, curved legs.

  Another movement broke the white. A covey of three foxes trotted from the other side of the valley, angling toward him, their lush fur brushing small icicles off shrubs with a soft tinkling sound. Foxes were hunters like him—they could move silently, creeping like shadows without a sign that they passed by, but these bounded like domesticated puppies.

  A flurry of snow fell beside him. He looked to the source and found the limbs of the oak and ash above him crowded with small creatures. There were squirrels, rabbits, and dozens of birds from small sparrows to raptors the size of his chest. Over the ridge trundled a bear, shaggy and stumble-footed from hibernation cut short, but massive and mighty with claws the length of his palm.

  His hand flew to the quiver on his back, fingers closing on the shaft of an arrow.

  The black arrow.

  His skin tingled and grew tight. Small muscles along his body began to twitch, and his mouth tasted like the morning smelled after a hard rain.

  * * *

  Once, when he was younger, first running through Sherwood, he’d been too inexperienced to read the signs of an oncoming storm through the canopy of the forest giants. Unaware until the forest turned black and water began to shower him, he was caught in a thunderstorm. At first he stayed in the wood, enjoying the warm summer rain that fell in runs and splashes through the branches and leaves of the trees, the power of the storm muted far above. Then he continued on to the edge of a field, one of the interior pockets of open sky and low grass.

  From under the canopy of a massive oak he looked out at a sky as gray and solid as the blacksmith’s anvil. The expanse split with blasts of lightning so fierce they tore the clouds apart with white light. The rain in the opening pummeled the grass, flattening it and covering it with inches of water that fell too fast to be absorbed by the thirsty earth. Hail pounded down into the miniature lake, sent water flying back up, and he was reminded of the story of God’s almighty wrath against the Egyptians.

  He didn’t know who the Egyptians were, but watching the storm, he could understand the concept of God’s wrath, terrible and beautiful at the same time.

  The thunder that followed each lightning strike rolled against the full front of his body and he felt it in the marrow of his bones. Suddenly his teeth hurt in the back of his mouth and every hair on his pre-teen body stood on end. He began to move backwards, back into the forest, feeling as if the eye of the wrathful God had turned upon him.

  Lightning struck the oak beside which he’d been standing.

  The blast of it knocked him flat, his eyes scrubbed of the ability to see, and his ears closed with the concussion of the strike. He didn’t remember losing consciousness, but in what felt like an instant he opened his eyes. His muscles wouldn’t stop twitching under his skin, and the back of his mouth had that peculiar taste in it.

  It felt like lightning had struck him.

 
* * *

  It felt the same way now.

  But different.

  Similar.

  Familiar.

  He could sense the animals around him, one and all—not just see, but sense with all of his body. Each heart, from the ones the size of acorns to the mighty boulder of blood-pumping muscle inside the bear. Every one of them beat in time with his.

  One by one, the creatures stopped in a ring on the hill below him, all of them looking up at him. Predator stood beside prey, the white steam of their breaths collecting and combining to make a ring of fog.

  His hand fell away from the arrow, not pulling it from the quiver, but the connection remained.

  He turned to his left and found the King of the Forest there.

  The stag towered over him, looking into the distance, crown of antler threatening to tangle in the branches. The mantle of fur over the stag’s back glistened with hoarfrost, glittering in even the low winter sun, as if he were not just the King of Sherwood but also the Lord of Winter itself. As if he were an elemental, a primordial guardian of the wood.

  He was close enough to lay his hand on its flank.

  The animal turned its head, staring at him with an implacable eye the color of midnight. He fell into that eye, his spirit—the one that had felt so large just moments ago—tumbling like a child taking its first steps. He was overwhelmed. His nostrils filled with the musk of the forest, the pungency of life that made his head swim. The stag’s heartbeat thundered through him, bouncing the bottoms of his boots on the hard snow beneath them.

  Then the thunder calmed and settled, less the roar of the waterfall and more the rush of the river. Beyond the circle of lives below him on the hill, he could feel all the life in Sherwood. It pressed his skin, insistent as it penetrated him with the unknowable mystery of Creation itself.

  Unable to withstand even another minute he turned and walked back down the ridge, the feeling fading with each step, yet etched in his memory.

  WITCHSTONES AND CHILDREN’S TEARS

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I hate this cursed place.”

  Will turned in his saddle to face the speaker. Doing so meant he had to adjust the rapier strapped to his hip, tugging the hilt back to clear the sheathed blade from the quilted cloak he had wrapped around him, but he hated talking to someone without looking at them.

  Even if he despised that someone.

  “Do you hate it because you think it cursed,” Will asked, “or do you think it cursed because of your hatred for it?”

  The merchant on his own horse didn’t look over. Between scarf and cap, his eyes zigged and zagged in their sockets, trying to take in every limb on every tree that arched overhead. He was a soft man, not fat, but cushioned by a life of comfort and ease without work. The type of man who eagerly exercised someone else’s power. Always an underling, an overseer, a lapdog but not a lackey.

  He snarled, and it made the soft flesh of his face jiggle.

  “You watch that sharp tongue of yours, Will Scarlet, else it gets cut out of your head. You know as well as I do that Sherwood is haunted.” He closed one eye and spat on the ground, an old ward against evil, then crossed himself. “And worse,” he added.

  Will looked at the canopy above them. Interwoven branches of oak, hawthorn, and ash screened against the weak winter sunlight, diffusing it into a verdant haze that darkened the closer to the ground it fell. Off the road the forest became near night, twilighting away to pockets of pure dark.

  At night, he wouldn’t be able to see his hand in front of his face.

  “I’m riding with you to protect Locksley’s goods and keep you safe from ghosts, goblins, and fey.” Will’s hand was still on the hilt of his rapier. He flicked open his cloak as his voice dropped, low and dangerous. “But it won’t be my tongue you find sharp, if you threaten me again.”

  The soft man jerked around in his saddle, so violently it made the horse under him stumble a step or two sideways. His moon eyes were full.

  “I… I… I meant no disrespect!” A pudgy arm in a thick wool sleeve wiped across his mouth. “It’s the forest. It makes me nervous, and I speak without thinking.”

  Will Scarlet’s voice took on a cruel tone. “Frightened by children’s ghost stories and old wives’ tales of will o’ the wisps? I’m surprised Locksley trusts you to deliver his goods for him.”

  The merchant’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “It’s not the ghosts that get to me. It’s the Hood.”

  Will sighed, breath pluming into the air. “Oh yes, the Hood—the scourge of Sherwood, swooping through the trees and robbing any merchant who dares take the only road to market.” He made a show of yawning. “I’m sure you’ll find him just as real as the will o’ the wisps.”

  “He is real,” the man insisted. “He stole my brother’s merchandise just a month ago. Robbed him, stripped him naked, and sent him back tied across his horse with an arrow in his arse.”

  “Well, the good Lord Locksley has also paid me to keep arrows out of your arse. That is, unless you like that sort of thing.”

  The merchant looked sharply at the man who rode beside him. Slim and small, Will Scarlet was like a snake in fine clothing. His movements either nonexistent or too quick for the eye to follow. He rode on a silver-trimmed saddle of imported leather. A red velvet jerkin, with family crest embroidered on the breast, fit tight to a slender chest. Linen ruffles spilled from the throat and cuffs of his shirt and the wide brim of a felt hat was pulled low over a boyish face with dark eyes and a sly grin. Many ladies of the court had succumbed to that smile.

  Rumor was a few men had, also.

  In particular John, the acting king.

  Will didn’t say anything for a long moment, dark eyes cold as black ice. Then he chuckled—a soft rasp, a scuff on leather.

  The merchant tittered, a hateful, nervous giggle brought on by the unsure feeling that he had just avoided some terrible consequence he couldn’t even imagine. His eyes jumped away, returning to the forest canopy above.

  “Locksley neglected to tell me what we’re transporting on this fine winter’s day.” Will looked at the large wagon trundling along behind them. A sturdy carriage the size of most huts from the village, it rolled on wide axles and stout wheels built to carry heavy loads. They squeaked through ice-crusted puddles left in the muddy earth by an earlier storm, a mix of wet sleet and fat droplets of rain.

  The sides were thick wood planks banded and roofed with iron, the only windows thin slits cut high near the roof. The iron door on the side was fastened with a lock the size of his head. The behemoth was pulled by a pair of steady, dull horses guided by the sallow-faced boy who was the merchant’s apprentice.

  “It must be worth a great deal,” he added, “to warrant a rolling fortress such as that one.”

  “I only know that we are to deliver goods, wagon, and all to the Kraeger Estate on the other side of Sherwood.”

  “We’re not going to market?”

  “No. Whatever is in that wagon gets delivered directly to Lord Kraeger.”

  Will’s eyes narrowed. “Curious.” Pulling back on the reins of his horse, he brought it to a stop. To his left, in the shadows of the forest, flared a small light.

  Suddenly a flaming arrow streaked the air by his face, stinging him along his cheek, then thudded to a stop, quivering in the wood of the wagon inches from the head of the merchant’s assistant. The boy sat for a long second, mouth hung low in shock, before tumbling sideways and falling in the mud. Scrambling to his feet he ran, a flurry of elbows and heels that disappeared down the road back to town.

  The wagon shuddered to a halt, though the cart horses were unaffected by the commotion.

  The merchant cursed, twisting in his saddle and sawing the reins. His horse lurched and stomped with a sharp whinny that shushed as soon as it hit the trees. Jowls shaking, he whipped his head around, looking for the source of the arrow. Will instead pointed down the path in front of them.

  A man in a hood s
tood in the center of the road, an arrow notched in a stout longbow and pulled tight against his cheek.

  “The Hood!” The merchant’s voice hissed between his teeth. “I told you he was real.”

  “Yes, you did,” Will growled. “Color me surprised.”

  A voice, gruff and deep, rolled down the road toward them.

  “Dismount with your hands away from any weapons.”

  The merchant leaned in. “What should we do?” he whispered loudly.

  Will rolled his eyes. “I suppose we should dismount and keep our hands away from our weapons.” He swung his leg over his horse’s back, dropping gracefully to the ground. He scowled at the squish of mud under his boot heel.

  I shouldn’t have worn the calfskin.

  The merchant’s descent from his horse was far less graceful. At least the man managed not to fall on his face, though. By the time Will looked again the Hood was only a few feet away. The bow was still pulled back, the wicked iron point of the arrow aimed at the merchant. Razor-sharp edges gleamed in the low light, the fangs of a snake poised to strike. At such a short distance not even bone would stop it, if the man in the hood let it loose. Will put his hands in the air.

  The merchant stood, dumbfounded. Will whistled, low and quick. The merchant looked over, mouth hanging open. Will moved his hands and jutted his chin. The merchant raised his arms, dark moon stains showing in his armpits even through the thick winter tunic.

  A cowl of leather hung low over their attacker’s face, obscuring it in shadow. All that could be seen was a ruthless glint deep where an eye would be.

  “Open the wagon.”

  “I… I c-ca-can’t.” The merchant’s bottom lip slapped against his chin in a quiver.

  “Then you are of no use to me…” The Hood stepped closer, voice grinding from under the cowl. “…and I’ll kill you where you stand.”

  The merchant’s mouth jabbered, no sound coming out. Will saw the Hood’s fingertips slip slightly on the bowstring, preparing to let loose the shaft.

  “He has a key to the wagon,” he said quickly. “On a chain around his neck.”

  The merchant’s eyes cut over at him. “Why would you tell him?”