Many of the men were lice infested and this malady was cured by making all the outlaws shave all the hair from their bodies and scrub vigorously in wooden tubs while fire-heated water was poured over them. The complaints they made as a result of this were greatly multiplied when there followed the obligatory period of itching from the stubble as their hair grew back. Finn and Bobby did not exempt themselves from this; Finn shaved because he believed in setting a good example and not demanding anything of "his men" that he would not do himself. Bobby followed suit because he had discovered, to his great disgust, that Marion had gifted him with crabs.
It had taken both of them to wet her down and shave her, which task was accomplished only after her struggles had resulted in her taking some bad cuts from Finn. He finally smashed her in the jaw and told her that if she would n
ot lie still, he would skin her alive. She suffered the treatment stoically from then on, but when it came time to scrub her down, she fought them, clawing like a wildcat. The merry men were more than eager to assist Finn and Bobby in the task.
When it was all done, they all looked like Army boots in training. And, not surprisingly, the process had taken a good deal of the resistance out of them. They were also pleasantly surprised to be free of their tiny livestock at long last.
Breakfast was followed by a general clean-up of the camp as their existence became regimented. The clean-up was followed by inspection, which was followed by a period of drill and calisthenics. Finn was a ruthless taskmaster and he was ably assisted by Marion, who would not be outdone by any of the others. Finn and Bobby also saw to it that there was a variation in their diet and that cooked food was cooked properly. They worked hard and they ate well. Whatever recalcitrance remained vanished the moment they were able to put their new training into practice.
The soldiers had no desire to reform the merry men. They were outlaws and outlaws they would remain. Plying their trade helped them to put their training into practice. The first time, Finn and Bobby directed them in a foray against one of the sheriff's tax collecting parties.
The sheriff's tax collector was well protected by a party of knights and men at arms, a force that ordinarily the outlaws would have refrained from attacking. Finn had Bobby, with a group of about ten outlaws, block the party's progress by jumping out from under cover ahead of them with shouts of "Stand and deliver!" The sheriff's men reacted in the proper fashion to such a confrontation. The knights couched their lances and, closely followed by the men at arms, they charged —right into the line of fire of the twenty some odd archers Finn was commanding, who were under cover to the right of the trail. The result was that the sheriff's men were caught in a deadly crossfire, from the front and from their flank. At that distance, with the cloth-yard shafts and the incredibly powerful pull of the longbows, armor provided only the most superficial protection. The ambush was devastatingly effective and the outlaws made a tidy haul. Alan-a-dale was inspired to compose a song about the incident. In a short time, Finn and Bobby had instilled within the outlaws something which they had sorely lacked up to that point—esprit de corps.
But there was still one dark cloud on the horizon. There was no word from Lucas.
"He should have been here days ago," said Bobby. It was late and he and Finn were sitting by the embers of a fire. It would be dawn soon.
"How long has it been?" said Finn.
"I don't know," said Bobby. "A week? More? You think maybe Goldblum got him?"
"I don't know," said Finn. "I've had men making inquiries. No one seems to have seen either him or Hooker. Last word I had on Hooker was that he was staying with Isaac of York, but there's been no sign of him, either. He's vacated his rooms in the village of Ashby and he's not in York. I've sent men to Rotherwood, but Lucas isn't there. Nor is Cedric there, or Athelstane, or Rowena. It's like they've all just disappeared."
"They would have had to travel through Sherwood," Bobby said. "You don't think maybe—"
"No chance," said Finn. "If our guys had anything to do with it, I'd know about it."
Bobby smiled. "You really like them, don't you?"
"Like them? Yes, I suppose I do, at that. They're a good bunch. They work hard and they play hard. In a way, they sort of remind me of Eric's men."
"Eric?"
Finn chuckled. "Eric the Red. Nastiest son of a bitch it was ever my pleasure to serve under. You think this is a heavy gig? I'll tell you what a rough gig is. Try heading out to open sea in a longboat. Seventy-five feet from bow to stern, about ten feet in the beam, rigged with a Nordic square sail. God, those men were really something. Vikings. Greatest sailors ever lived, except maybe the Polynesians. I'll tell you something, we've got us a rough and ready bunch here, but they wouldn't last five minutes in a set-to with the Vikings."
"You know something, Finn? I think you were born too late."
"No way. I was born right smack on time. I wouldn't trade my life for anything. You and I, we're the ultimate soldiers. We can fight with anyone, anytime, anywhere. We've got all of human history to play with. I'll tell you one soldier who would've given his eyeteeth for living in our time and serving in the Temporal Corps. Fella by the name of Patton. Now there's a guy who was born too late, but not late enough."
"You're a romantic, Finn," said Bobby, softly.
"I guess I am, kid."
"I'm not." Bobby sighed. "I'm a realist. I can appreciate the way you feel, but what we're doing is dangerous, damned dangerous. Man never should have traveled back through time, Finn. It's wrong. It's crazy. Worse than that, it's stupid.
They're afraid to travel to the future because no one knows just what the future is. Is there a future? I mean, how many possibilities are there? Who knows what kind of bends and twists the timestream takes up ahead? Maybe someday some lunatic will actually try it, but they're scared of that right now and so long as they remain scared, I think there's still a chance that they'll come to their senses and stop the time wars. I don't know what it would take. Maybe something like this, maybe something worse, I just don't know, but I wish to hell they'd stop."
He stared at the embers silently as the sun came up.
"I want to go home," he said.
Chapter 10
Andre was exhausted. She was grateful to drop Cedric off at Nottingham Castle. Blindfolding him had not been enough, it had finally been necessary to gag him, as well. She had had more than she could stand of his defiant epithets, Athelstane's ceaseless grumbling and Rowena's whining. She had finally ordered them all gagged, although she had to call one of the men over with a hand signal and whisper the command, since she could not imitate De Bracy's voice. The blindfolds served a dual purpose, protecting her masquerade as well as preventing the prisoners from seeing that they were being taken to Nottingham, rather than Torquilstone. Had the prisoners been able to see, they might have realized that she was not De Bracy; something might have given it away.
Taking them had been simple enough. The attack had been a complete surprise and every member of their party save for the three of them had been killed. It was a shame about the palmer who had been traveling with them. A simple pilgrim who had only desired safe passage through the wood, he was an innocent bystander. He had not even been armed. Still, she had her orders. She consoled herself that she had not hit him all that hard; perhaps there was a chance that the blow had not been fatal. It was a small consolation, but it was something.
Her stay at Nottingham had been extremely brief. She had remained there only long enough to see the prisoners turned over to the sheriff's men at arms and to pick up Marcel and change back into her own clothing and armor. Now, with Marcel riding at her side, she was once again the red knight, on her way to Torquilstone. De Bracy would welcome Andre de la Croix, never suspecting that he would be admitting his own murderer to his castle.