Merlin by Jane Yolen Read Free Book Online

Nell, he desired only to be done with death.
    "We will go softly, quietly, like a fox, like a wolf, back to the camp," he said.
    "I can be a fox," Cub said. "I can be a wolf,"
    "I know you can," Hawk-Hobby said. "And we will find everyone well and hale. You will see." He patted the child on the head, thinking to himself that he would see Cub back to his family and make his own escape. Having done it once, he was confident he could do it again. But they were no sooner several steps along the track when there was suddenly thunder, great rolling clanging walls of it, and rain bolted down from the sky.
    "Robin, I be afraid." The child clutched his hand tightly and shivered with the wet and cold.
    Despite his growing magic, Hawk-Hobby was frightened, too. He was, after all, but twelve years old himself. But he would not let the child see his fear. "Come," he said, "we will not stay out in the storm. Let us shelter in the tree."
    "Oh, no, Robin," the child said. "Lightning will hurt us there. We must find a cave."
    Hawk-Hobby smiled down at him. "Who knows what beast lives in a cave?"
    "Thou art Robin o' the Wood," the child said. "No beast be harming 'ee."
    "I have no answer for you that will suffice," Hawk-Hobby said. "We will find a cave." And no sooner had he spoken than—as if by magic—they came upon a cave in a cliffside. It was really more a shelf than a cave, too narrow for a beast's den but wide enough to keep them from the rain. Hawk-Hobby went in first and pulled the child in after. And there, huddled together for warmth, they spent a disquieted night.
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    The track they followed back to the camp had been well widened by the army. Great swaths of bracken had been crushed beneath the horses' hooves; autumn wildflowers had been ground into the dirt.
    The child seemed undismayed by the destruction, set as he was on getting to the camp. But at each step, Hawk-Hobby grew colder and colder. It was not fear he was feeling, but dread. It trickled down like sweat between his shoulder blades.
    The child stopped suddenly. "Robin. Listen."
    Hawk-Hobby listened. He could hear nothing. And then—as if in another dream—he realized: he could hear
nothing.
No birds, no chirruping insects, not even the grunt and moan of trees as they shifted in their roots.
Nothing.
    "Nothing," he said.
    "Robin ... I want..." and then Cub began to wail, a sound so alien in the woods that it sent a terrible shiver down Hawk-Hobby's spine.
    He gathered the child up in his arms and soothed him until the tears stopped. "Come," he said. "I will hold thee." The deliberate use of the word
thee
had a salutary effect on the child.
    "Thee must take
me
now," Cub said.
    The track took a slow turning and then they were in the meadow ringed with beech trees. Not a blade of grass stirred between the bodies. The busy, scurrying ants were gone.
    The oddest thing,
he thought,
is that there is not much hlood. Not a flood of it. Not a meadowful.
just bodies strewn about as though they were dollies flung down by a careless child.
    They found the dark-haired scar-faced woman first, lying on her back, her arms spread wide as if welcoming her death. Near her were two of the boys, side by side. Close by them, a third boy and one of the wild men.
    He held the child against his shoulder. "Do not look," he cautioned, though he knew from the rigid body that the child was taking it all in. "Do not look."
    He wandered across the field of death until he heard an awful sound. It was a dog howling, the cry long and low. He wondered that he had not heard it before. Following the thread of it, he came to the meadow's edge and there was the wodewose and, with him, Fowler. They were locked in an awful embrace. It was Fowler's dog, Ranger, who was howling, his muzzle muddied with blood. When he saw the boys, he shut up and lay down miserably, head on paws, following their every movement with liquid eyes.
    "Stay, Ranger," Hawk-Hobby said, trying to put iron in his