Sherwood Bk II 'The Holy Land'

By W.Wm. Mee

Robin and Marian. Names you’ve known all your life; more familiar than Anthony and Cleopatra or Romeo and Juliet. Come join these two ‘star crossed lovers’ on the adventure of a lifetime, acted out on the hot, desert sands of the Holy Land, the pirate infested waters of the Mediterranean and in the cool, dark shadows of Sherwood Forest!
Robin and Marian, along with Will, Much and Little John, have been forced to flee England after being accused by the powerful Sir Guy of Gisbourn of a number of grisly murders, including that of Marian’s uncle, Sir Robert Locksley.
In 1190 Richard the Lionheart was gathering an army to take on the Third Crusade, and so, after joining a company of archers, Robin and his band (including Marian), set out for the Holy Land --- what the crusaders of the time called ‘Outramere’.
After a number of adventures, including being shipwrecked on Cyprus and being held for ransom, Robin has rescues Marian and her tough female camp followers along with Berengaria, the Lionheart’s beautiful bride to be. All are once again sailing with King Richard’s convoy on its way to the scorching sands of ‘Outramere’ --- while secretly longing for the cool comfort of Sherwood.
Come along on their adventure and see Robin & Marian all over again ‘for the very first time’!

• Language: English
• Publisher: W.Wm. Mee
• Release date: Feb 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301002818

W.Wm. Mee

Wayne William Mee is a retired English teacher who enjoys hiking, sailing and walking his Beagle hound. He is also a 'living historian' or 'reenactor'. You can see Wayne's historical group on Facebook's 'McCaw's Privateers' 18th Century Naval Camp' page. Building & sailing wooden sailboats also takes up a chunk of Wayne's time, but along with his wife Maggie,son Jason and granddaughter Zoe, writing is his true love, the one he returns to let his imagination soar.Wayne would like you to 'look him up' on FACEBOOK and click the 'Friend' button or even zap him an e-mail.If you enjoyed any of his books, kindly leave a REVIEW here at Smashwords and/or say so on Facebook, Twitter, Tweeter or whatever other 'social network' you use.Thanks for stopping by ---and keep reading!!Drop him a line either there or at [e-mail]'ll be glad to hear from you!'Rest ye gentle --- sleep ye sound'

Book preview

Prologue

Green Branch Inn, Sherwood Forest

1225 A.D. fall

The Green Branch Inn

On the edge of Sherwood

Tuck and me are still here; still sitting at the Green Branch and writing down what really happened nearly forty years ago. Well, Tuck’s doing the actual writing and me, I’m doing most the remembering. We’re both doing equal parts of the drinking though, thanks to some rich bugger that’s been paying for all the ale! Seems he was only a lad when his noble father joined Richard’s army heading for the bloody holy land. Like almost half of us that joined that decade long dance of death, the father never came back. The son tells us that our old tales somehow seem to bring him closer to the man that he never really knew. Sounds like a bunch of bullocks to me, but then he’s paying so what the hell?!

Me, I don’t much care much for those ‘desert tales’, myself. Those were hot, dry, deadly times! Death walked among us daily, either following along close behind like your own bloody shadow or grinning up ahead like a bleached skull seen through a shimmering pool of water --- both of which vanished when you got there, leaving only faded hopes, crushed dreams and sand, sand, and more god-damned sand! In those sun filled dark days the Grim Reaper was everywhere, though, if truth be told, he seemed to ride on the wind as often as he rode on a damned horse, because a sudden sandstorm could kill you just about as quick as a bloody sword!

But now, gentles all, if you’ll excuse me, I need to talk a walk out back. Nature is calling, and at my age one ignores the call at his own peril!

***

AHHHH! That’s better! Young fella, there’s nothing in the wide world like a good bowel movement! At least, it’s been that way for many a year now. When I was a much younger man, still nimble and quick, and my Rosie was still alive, I’d have wagered one of her kisses against a good movement any day of the week! But she’s long gone now for many a year. Nearly two score empty years of brief memories and long regrets. A steep payment for those dozen or so months of bliss that we shared, if bliss could be found amidst war, drought, famine and rivers of blood! Each day since then I rise with the memory of her kiss on my lips, and each night I curse God for taking her from me!

Ohhh, but now I’ve gone and shocked you, good sir, and made old Tuck all stormy browed and squinty-eyed! Him being a friar and all, he doesn’t take too kindly to my blaspheming ways. He says I’m too sharp with people in general and God in particular; that I’m too dammed --- what’s that fancy word he likes to use for me? Ah yes! ‘Abrupt!’ Yes, that’s it! I’m too damned ‘abrupt’ with people --- or so he says. But my Rosie used to think I was just right!

‘Don’t take no shit from nobody, William!’ she used to tell me. (She always called me William. Not Will or Willie, but William ---just like I was a proper born gentleman!) ‘Be they highborn or low, man or woman , or God Almighty Himself! You’re as good a man as any and a damn site better than most! So don’t you dare take no shit from nobody!’

Of course we were both green as peas back then, and, even though she was younger than me, she was a fire-eyed, two-legged force of nature! But I loved her dearly and I’m proud to say that she felt the same towards me!

Now, I believe I’ll take another glass of this excellent wine that nice young fellow bought us. Dictation is thirsty work, and now and then a rather touching memory is dredged up along with all the bitter-sweet ones. The passing of my Rosie is certainly one of them and still cuts me deeply.

It was that bloody desert that did my Rosie in! Dried her up from the inside out! So damn hot that you stopped sweating and it hurt like hell to piss! The poor little tyke didn’t last a fortnight in that heat! It nearly killed Rosie when he died. Killed a big part of me as well and left us both cursing the sun, the sand and the wind! Cursing too the god that let our baby boy dry up like an unwatered flower! We both tried to help him --- Tuck and Marian as well --- but near the end he was like a shrivelled leaf just waiting for the wind to carry him away. When it finally did Rosie and me whished that it would take us as well, but it seemed the old bastard upstairs had other plans! Turned me right ‘abrupt’ it did!

Though it took that bastard Gisbourn’s men to actually stop Rosie’s heart, a good part of her had already died with the death of our son. Maybe in the end she at least she found some peace. I know I didn’t, not until after I put a goodly number of her killers in the ground!

Excuse me again! I need another drink and I got something in my damn eye! Don’t go away now. I’ll be right back and then Tuck and me will tell you all about what happened when we finally got to the goddamned ‘Holy Land’

***

PART ONE

1191-1192

Chapter One: The Lion Arrives

Painting by NC Wyeth

1191

June, Acre

Richard sat astride his black charger and looked down at the besieged, walled city of Acre. A group of his knights and men-at-arms were around him. Robin and I were there as well, along with the rest of Watts Company of Archers. We’d only gotten off the bloody ships the day before and already Richard had taken over from King Philip, Duke Leopold and the other leaders.

You’ve sat here outside the bloody walls for six long months and what have you achieved?! he had demanded of the other kings and nobles that at last nights welcome banquet. "Bugger all, that’s what! I’ll have the walls down in six weeks or less! Just stay the hell out of my way!"

Richard was many great things, but humble he was not.

He was also surrounded, or at least caught between a rock and a hell of a hard place! Let me explain.

Think of the game of chess when no matter where the king moves, he’s under attack.

The walled city of Acre was on a small peninsula sticking out into the sea and was strongly defended by a large city garrison of Muslim soldiers.

The Christians camp of ten thousand men was on the sandy plain east of the city, spread out in an arc from one side of the narrow finger of land to the other. Acre was cut off both by land and blockaded by the Christian ships in the bay.

However the Muslim leader Saladin was not inside Acre, but outside with an army twice as large as the Christians and they had form a longer arc behind Richard and the other kings.

Every time Richard’s siege machines opened up a breach and the Christians made ready to rush in as they had on Cyprus, Saladin launched a counter attack on the Christians and diverted them away from the city, giving time for the breach in the wall to be repaired.

The solution was in the hold of Richard’s largest ship.

Dismantled and brought from Cyprus was the ‘monster’ trebuchet that Marian’s brother, Sir Hugh Fitzwalter had used to knock down the castle walls. Two days of back breaking labour had the monster hurling its fifty pound stone balls at the same spot on Acres’ wall time after time after time.

After a day and a night the wall suddenly caved in. Two thousand knights and men at arms rushed up the rubble slope while four thousand of us archers blotted out the sun with an arrow storm.

Then once again Saladin launched an all out attack to the city.

***

The bastards won’t stop coming! someone yelled.

Keep bloody well shooting! Sergeant Tully yelled back as he limped along behind Watt’s Company of Archers. Having been wounded in the leg on Cyprus, he needed a cane to get around --- a knobby black-thorn cane that he vigorously used on any and all archers not loosing their shafts as quickly as the good sergeant deemed proper.

That’s it, Tom! All the way back to the bloody ear! he growled. Each shaft sends a Muslim-man straight to hell!

More arrows over here! another voice yelled.

Me too! I’ve gone through three bags already!

And you’ll go through three more if needed! Tully bellowed. "Now shoot, you beautiful bastards, shoot!"

My shoulders were on fire and my left arm started to shake, so that the arrow jumped about like a living thing. Little Rose was there beside me, handing me shaft after shaft; dirty faced, covered in mud and dark eyes shining! God, how I loved her! Skinny, over-large eyes and a fierce temper, in those brief few months since rescuing Marian on Cyprus she had come to mean the world to me! Oh, I still loved Miamian, but I finally saw that ‘love’ for what it truly was --- longing for something that I had never really had; a safe, secure home where, when I lay my head down at night I needn’t fear that some drunken ‘customer’ of my mother’s would beat the living shit out of her and me just because he bloody well felt like it!

Marian had been my ‘safe haven’; my warm, soft place where nothing could hurt me and the big bad bastard in the other room pounding away at my mother for a few filthy coppers was something that never really happened. As long as I had loved Marian, even from afar, I was safe!

And then Rose came along and made all the old fears go away.

Rose gave me peace.

Rose gave me hope.

Rose became my life.

"What the fuck are your doing, Will?! Sergeant Tully yelled. This is no bloody time for holding hands! Loose those fucking arrows, lad! Loose the bastards! And you, Rose, see that he keeps at it!"

"I will, sergeant!’ Rose grinned, handing me yet another bloody arrow.

***

General Abu Bakar leaned into the rhythm of his mount, and felt the mass of the large stallion carry him forward like the living will of Allah! A religious fervour coursed through Bakar, transforming him into a blinding light of Islam, chosen by Allah to carry the fiery sword and death to the godless infidels!

"Allah akba!" he screamed over and over; and the chant was taken up by the galloping hoard all around him, magnified several hundred times. ‘God wills it!’ A mantra used by both sides of this unholy holy war to illicit the dubious aid of an ‘all seeing, all knowing Creator’ --- a creator that rarely, if ever, revealed himself in a way that was even close to being believable!

As his mount moved beneath him in a way that his several wives had never been able to duplicate, General Abu Bakar, Caliph of the Northern Oasis of Salahazajar, drew the ancient heirloom that was the breath and soul of his being. ‘Caleasiphran’, the bejewelled hilted scimitar that had been in his family for five generations! The blade, forged in the far off alcaimic bowels of Damascus, was rippled like the waves washing over the bronze thighs of one of the forty nubile young virgins waiting for him in Paradise. The sword of his father’s father’s father seemed to call out for blood! A chance to cleave flesh and cut through bone, and cleans the world of pork eating infidels that bent not their knee to Allah!

On both sides of him, riding stirrup to stirrup, was his ‘pahad’ or troop of Saracen cavalry. ‘Brothers of the Blade’ he called them! Over two dozen men ready to die for Allah, glory and him!

PING!

Something had struck his turban covered helmet and glanced off, tearing some of the costly silk.

THUD! THUD! PING!

The horse to his right went down, an arrow in its chest!

The rider on his left screamed and topped backwards off his mount’s withers.

More horses riding directly behind went down in a tangle of legs, arms and broken bodies!

THUD! THUD! THUD! PING! THUD! THUD!

Glancing up, General Abu Bakar, leader of the ‘Brothers of the Blade’, saw over half of those brothers go down in a hail of falling arrows that momentarily blotted out the sky!

"Nooooo!" he screamed skyward, his bejewelled scimitar ‘Caleasiphran’ shaken at a seemingly uncaring deity.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

More arrows slammed into armour, punched through leather and embedded themselves in living flesh. Men screamed. Horse fell. The dead and dying were all around him, littering the sands like cast off clothing. And yet another flight of a thousand steel tipped darts of death fell amongst them --- and then another, and then another! Their falling darkened the sun, their sound was like a thousand mother’s wailing for lost sons. This was the doing of the cursed Infidel’s ‘longbow’ and the English archers that used them! Abu Baker, like Saladin’s other generals, had all heard about them but had refused to believe that lowly archers could turn the tide of battle. Yet now he believed, for he saw his dead and dying ‘brothers’, their unblooded weapons still in their hands, piling up like the bodies of plague victims awaiting a communal grave. Not one of them had gotten close enough to the godless infidels to strike a single blow!

Then his own great stallion snorted in pain as an arrow blossomed in it’s neck. The beast faltered, shook its head, nearly stumbled, righted itself, then collapsed beneath him. Abu Bakar, having ridden since before he could walk, was already out of the stirrups and leaping off to one side. He hit the desert sands in a roll that drove his empty scabbard and the rougher part of his armour into his ribs, side and back, yet the general, still a vigorous and healthy warrior despite his two score and ten years, managed to come to his feet fairly steadily. His father’s father’s father’s sword still in his hand, he looked around for someone to kill, for someone to make pay for the death and destruction to his beloved brotherhood --- all he saw however was yet another flight of incoming death raining down on him and the pitifully few sword brothers that remained

As the arrows thudded into the sand all around him, he lifted both his ancient sword and his voice and shouted back defiance --- a defiance that was aimed both at the god-cursed infidel and his thrice cursed ‘longbow’ and at God himself for allowing such an obscenity to happen! Always a devout Muslim, general Abu Bakar in that moment, teeth bared in a satanic snarl, renounced his faith, denounced his god and swore an oath on the blade of his fathers that he would not lie with a woman, gaze upon his children or drink anything but water till he had killed ten English archers for every one of his brothers that had died here this day! To seal the oath he sliced deeply into his left forearm, holding his clenched fist towards the distant heavens, he shook it, cursing both the English and Allah --- and still the arrows fell all around him.

***

Robin! Sergeant Tully yelled. Get your lads up on that bloody sand dune and stop those buggers from riding around our flank!

Robin, a sergeant now, was in charge of a twenty man squad. Naturally the ‘squad’ was made up of Tuck, Much, John and myself as newly promoted corporal. Marian and five or six of her ‘maids’ were also part of it, including Much’s Wee Meg, John’s Helga and my own Little Rose!

The minstrel Alan Adale was with us along with six or seven experienced archers and a youngster called Billy Biggs. All of them except for young Billy had been with Watts’ Company for some time. Robin made damn sure that Bull Harrow and his bullies were NOT a part of our squad, though the bastards still made smart remarks about the women in our ranks.

Much, take your group up this end of the dune! Robin called. I’ll take the rest over to the far one and we’ll catch the buggers in a crossfire!

Nodding, Much called and John, Alan and the rest of his ten ‘man’ team and, with bows and arrow bags slung over their shoulders, they began climbing up the step shadowy bank of the closest dune.

Mary, Nicole, Angelic, Marian called out. You three go along with Wee Meg and Helga. Quickly now! Joan, Maud, you two come with Little Rose and me. Grab some water bags as well!

Soon both groups were scrambling up the windblown slopes of the two opposite dunes. We had just gained the top and took our positions when a score or more of brightly clad horsemen came galloping around the far end of the dunes!

Get ready, lads! Robin called out, though of the eleven of us on that sandy ridge, five were women!

Marian, Joan, Maud, Brigit and my own Little Rose stood side by side with us men, each with a dozen arrows planted at our feet for quick drawing. The women’s bows were not the hundred pound draw of a full English warbow, but then neither was mine or half the men’s that called themselves archers. A hundred pound draw takes a man with shoulders like John’s, Tucks or Robin’s to continually pull it back shot after shot. Most archers used lighter bows in order to keep up continual fire. Regardless of the pull weight however, both the men and women prepared to shoot down into the mass of galloping horseflesh that was moving quickly up the open valley between the two dunes.

***

Captain Hadma Salish, a daring, self-confident young Sarasin commander, had seen General Abu Bakar and his much larger group struck by the English arrow-storm and quickly decided that the same fate would not happen to either himself or his men.

Sergeant Awkmawd! he shouted to the experienced non-com galloping along beside him. Have the men veer to the right around that far dune over there! We’ll cut behind the infidels and take their left flank!

The sergeant’s surprisingly white smile came back though his thick, grizzly beard. Though there was almost as much gray in it as there was black, the man’s eyes showed that he agreed heartily with his young captain’s plan. It shall be so, my captain --- and may Allah grant us both long lives!

Allah akbar, sergeant! Salish grinned back. God wills it!

***

We stood just back of the crest of the dune, a shaft on our bowstrings, another dozen stuck in the sand at our feet. The mid-morning sun glinted off the tops of the cloth covered helmets and upraised spear points of the approaching enemy. Of the score of horsemen coming up the sandy valley, only three or four seemed to have bows, and those were the much shorter, less powerful and accurate ones kept already strung in leather cases behind their saddles. Most Saracens preferred bladed weapons, either the sword, lance or short throwing spear. Whatever weapon they chose however, very few would get close enough to actually use it --- or so I foolishly thought at the time.

The sound of the pounding hooves reached my ears just as Robin gave the word to ‘loose’. On the opposite hill Much must have done the same, for suddenly, twenty, then forty, then sixty arrows were in the air, converging on the onrushing enemy horse. Most of us were fitting our forth shaft to our sting before our first arrow even struck!

***

"Shields front!" Captain Hadma