Robin Hood and the Pirates
by Clayton Emery

"'Spose Richard'll send someone to fetch us back?"
"Let 'em. The first seven and ten can stop arrows."
Two men trudged the shore of the aquamarine Mediterranean. One was a knight in dusty leather coat of iron plates, a dirty quilted cap, broken boots that let in the dust, and a worn sword in a worn scabbard. In one hand he carried a battered Norman helmet, and in the other an impossibly long bow, crazed and checked in dark lines from the heat, yet gleaming with oil and hours of polishing. A quiver of bright arrows rattled softly at his back.
Beside him walked a giant in a tattered gambeson belted with rope. His shoes were mere scraps of horsehide. His braid, thick as a horse's tail, was bleached almost white, for he never wore anything on his head. Over his shoulder he carried a quarterstaff of red-glowing cypress eight feet long. On a string hung a pointed Saracen helmet, his sole booty and pay for two years' crusading.
They had waterskins strung around them, but they were flat, and the redware jug in the giant's hand was empty. A goatherd had promised there was a well ahead, just a few miles, but that had been miles back. The goatherd might have lied, since he was Muslim and they Christians.
The giant went on. "From outlaw to pardoned freeman to vassal of the king to outlaw again. Makes a man wonder where he's going. In a circle or what."
"We're going to Jaffa."
"We're going home. That's a circle."
"If we make it."
Dust chuffed around their feet as high as their knees. The road was more stone than dust, but plenty of dust. The sea rolled away at their right hands. The land rolled away in sand dunes and coarse grass. Other travellers passed them, local people in voluminous robes colored saffron and black and red and blue, but they said little.
"Let 'em come," the knight grumbled. "Let 'em try and take us. We'll cut down the first with arrows, then more with sword and quarterstaff. After that, they can have us. Let 'em draw and quarter us and string our guts along the road for the buzzards. I don't care."
"You're jolly company."
"Me and three thousand ghosts."
&&&&&-----&&&&&
Jaffa was blocky houses and blotches of gardens on hills surrounding a tiny harbor that held only fishing vessels and small coasters, and one lone merchant vessel lying by the long stone wharf. It was autumn, a time of storms, late in the shipping season. Yet the sky overhead remained molten brass, and the meager sea breeze did little to dampen the heat reflected from the dusty streets and blinding oyster-white buildings.
The two men laid out pennies and bought flat bread, white goat cheese, and figs, and washed it down with water from a public fountain. Then they joined the lazy bustle of the dockside, added themselves to the queue before the table at the head of the gangplank. Cargo in chests and bales and sacks were heaped all around the ship's gangplank, and mule carts came and went and stacked more and more produce to go into the hold of the single small ship.
At the table were a scribe and the burly Greek captain and a quartet of German knights, all in black like vultures, who dickered with the captain in guttural French. As near as Robin could follow, they wanted the captain to avoid putting in to Cyprus, where the air was bad for Germans. The captain begged and whined and wrung his hands, and finally agreed to only land when the wind was offshore, and to withdraw at other times. Once that was settled, they argued about who would pay the landing dues, then the tolls, then the port charges, and so on and on. The final price they agreed upon made Robin gasp.
"That bastard!" the outlaw breathed to Little John. "Forty ducats a man!"
Little John watched a porter with a crate of chickens on his shoulder trot down the gangplank. "That include food?"
"Is that all you ever think about, eating?"
"Only when I'm hungry."
Robin Hood stepped aside as sailors hoisted bales of cotton off a cart and tromped down the gangplank.
"Well, we're sunk, clean through the bottom of my purse. I ain't got it. We'll have to --"
Someone was fluttering her eyelashes over her shoulder at Robin. In front of him stood a woman not twenty, dark-haired and winsome, in a red robe trimmed with silver fox tails. Beside her was an old man, probably her father. The old man noticed the flirting and swung around, scrawny hand on her upper arm. He too wore the rich red clothing of a merchant. His face was shrunken, his neck stringy, his teeth gone, but his eyes were brown and direct as polished agate.
He rasped in sunsoaked French, "You find my wife handsome, sir?"
Ah, wife. Robin Hood pulled his eyes back into his head. "Indeed, grandfather. Sir. I was thinking you're a lucky man." To change the subject, he asked, "Sir, you look a well-travelled man of the world, wise with years. Can you tell me what you'd consider a fare price for passage? And is this ship bound for Genoa or Venice?" He spoke in French, for English was unknown off its tiny fogbound island.
The old man squinted at Robin as if he'd buy him, like a horse. Then he answered, "Venice. And I'd think a man could expect to pay thirty ducats to eat reasonably good food."
"And for bad food? We've had little for two years, and any will seem a feast."
"If you care not what you consume," the old man shook his head in distaste, "you might expect to pay only twenty ducats."
Robin Hood jingled the coins in his purse. That was more like it, but still not close. Despite the claw on her upper arm, the girl continued to flutter and flirt. For something to say, Robin asked, "And where is it you prop your feet?"
"Padua is my home. I have a villa on the east of the town. Do you know Padua?"
"I've never had the pleasure, though I've had the desire. It's said throughout the Continent there is no finer-looking town or finer-speaking people." It was a standard thing Robin Hood said to fill conversations and spread good will.
The old man didn't let his businessman's face change expression, but he did purse his lips and straighten his head on his skinny neck, pleased at the praise of his homeland. Out to impress his wife, the merchant nattered about his villa in the hills, his olive orchards, his gardens, the furnishings and silken hangings in his expansive and airy home. He finished with, "I'm to show my new bride her new home, and have her meet my vassals. That is, of course, if we make it."
"And why shouldn't we make it?"
"This late in the season, and us alone, there'll be pirates thicker than seagulls on the water." He spoke with relish, trying to frighten his wife and yet reassure her he could protect her. "Aye. Thick they are in these waters, and thicker they'll be now that more folk are returning from the Holy Land. These pirates load their ships to the gunwales with men and race out of harbors onto ships, as sharks descend on a crippled whale. And of course, we might not fear pirates if a storm shipwrecks us. Or we're becalmed, which is worse. `Few men die in a storm,' they say, `but many in a calm.'"
Little John muttered to Robin, "I don't recall no pirates coming over here."
"Coming over here," Robin reminded him, "we had a hundred armed Crusaders crowding the decks."
"Oh, aye."
The old man waxed about the terrors of the sea voyage. Robin Hood tried not to yawn. After two years of hand-to-hand fighting and unimaginable horrors, spurious pirates couldn't interest him. He sank into his previous gloom.
The old man rattled on. "... I only hope our captain is up to outfoxing any pirates there might be. Yet I can't bring myself to trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle..."
The merchant finally shut up, for the Germans had stumped aboard and it was his turn to dicker. Robin squinted at the hot sun overhead. His head throbbed. "The pirates would be doing us a favor to sink us. It'd be cool at the bottom of the sea."
"There's octopuses down there, too. You can eat them, I hear."
The merchant dickered long and hard with the Greek captain, a hammer against an anvil. The merchant finally got the best passage available, including chairs in the aftercastle under an awning, two meals of good food a day, held even if the merchant was late, use of the privy closets at the stern, a small glass of Malvoisie per day for seasickness, permission for a cook to use the galley when not in use, and space for ten chests belowdecks away from the hatches. For this the merchant paid fifty ducats for himself, thirty for his wife, twenty for his cook.
Skull throbbing, Robin Hood wasted no time in haggling when he stepped up to the table. He upended his shabby purse. "Thirty-two ecu for the two of us. We'll sleep where we fit and eat what we can get."
The captain was a burly Greek with black curly hair on his chest, neck, ears, arms, hands. He raised both hairy hands in a deprecating, half-praying manner. The customer was always right, if ill-informed. "Sir. I'm afraid I've no room for passengers who can only pay what I would charge to ferry a horse all the long way to Venice. And from the size of your servant here, he'd eat as much as three men, let alone horses."
Little John thumped his quarterstaff, like a ship's spar, on the stone wharf. "I don't eat no more than a hermit. Spring water and stale bread suits me."
"Done." Robin Hood banged the table. He pointed to the escrivain, who managed the paperwork aboard ship. "You, write it."
The scribe looked to his captain, but the Greek stared only at the meager pile of worn coins on the table, the sadness of the ages in his eyes. He turned his hang-dog look upon the Englishman, slyly looked him up and down. He nodded at Robin Hood's belt. "Perhaps, good sir knight, if you're leaving the wars behind, you won't be needing such a fine sword any longer?"
Robin Hood put a hand on his hilt and the captain took an involuntary step back. "This was my father's sword. I'd give up my arm before I'd part with it. I'd walk to Venice."
Little John cleared his throat, reached behind his back, then set his captured Saracen helmet on the table. "Can we throw this into the bargain?"
The captain brushed the air with both hands. "That, I regret, good sir, I cannot use. I could fill my hold with Muslim helmets."
Robin Hood sighed. He dropped his Norman helmet with its frowning nasal on the table. "Perhaps you can use this."
The captain rolled the helm in his hands, frowned over the coins. Robin Hood knew he was holding out for more. But he had nothing else. He'd sold his horse and tack to get this little money. His Lincoln green coat of arms had been torn into rags long ago. He'd chucked his battered shield after the first mile. His belt knife was worn to a stripe. His leather hauberk was falling apart. No one could use his bow. He began to wonder how long a walk it would be to Venice. Half a year, at least.
Something caught his eye. The merchant's young wife again. The two had lingered as their ten chests were loaded by porters. The girl whispered hurriedly to her aged husband. The Paduan merchant frowned, then finally acquiesed, an old man unable to refuse a young woman. Croaking like a crow, he called, "Perhaps, captain, you'd agree to take them aboard for their abilities. These two have obviously seen their share of fighting, and could make a good show against any pirates."
"Pirates?" The captain was shocked. "There is no danger of pirates, Don Giovanni, not on this sea, not at this time of year. Besides, all men passengers are required to take up arms in the event of an attack. It's custom and law. I could not discount their passage for such a simple --"
Robin Hood rapped the table with his fist. He pointed a brown calloused finger at the scribe. "The day wears on. Move that quill."
The escrivain looked up again, and the captain sighed like a ruptured bladder. The scribe scratched the contract. The captain tried to salvage something. "You must understand, sirs, in that you are not paying full fare, I can provide you only the simplest accommodations, sleeping above decks, and the commonest fare, such as our sailors eat. No meat, only peas and lentils, but all sumptuously prepared by the finest cook on the Mediterranean."
The two Englishmen grunted by way of agreement.
The squint-eyed escrivain finished the contract, which would go to the captain, then scribbled two extracts, one for the passengers and one for the court of commune of Jaffa. Common law required that passenger lists match from port to port, to ensure passengers didn't disappear at sea.
The outlaw snatched the extract from the scribe's hand, and he and Little John bounced up the gangway. "Peas and lentils. We'll pass enough wind to push the ship to Venice all by ourselves. But maybe our sweet captain will throw us a haunch of rat now and then."
Little John tunked his quarterstaff along the gangplank. "Been times these past months I'd'a welcomed a nice juicy rat. Maybe we can fish. These're the waters where Jonah got swallowed by a whale, ain't they?"
"Aye. Monsters swallow up saints while pirates and grasping merchants sail through without a qualm."
"We're outlaws. Maybe we could become pirates. I bet they eat all right."
"Belt up."
&&&&&-----&&&&&
The Saint Theresa was round-bellied and turned up as a shoe, a buss ninety feet long, painted rust red and sea green in lines and checks. The foremast raked forward while the mainmast was upright, as if the shipwright had been drunk, but Robin knew this design was merely the melding of two schools of thought, the boxy hull of a European cog driven by the lateen-rigged sails of an Arabian dhou. Above the stern, forming a roof over the steermen, was a square box called the aftercastle, like a misplaced pavillion complete with parti-colored awning, originally a fighting platform, now a haven where the wealthy could pay extra to avoid the common folk. Instead of a single rudder board at the stern, as Northern seamen used, there were twin oars through slots at the rear, like the two back feet of a horse. There were two hatches in the main deck, then a forecastle like a balcony at the bow. The sails were huge graceful triangles of yellowed Egyptian cotton on long slanted cypress yards. Atop the masts were two small tubs, fighting tops or crows' nests, and above them fluttered yellow banners marked with the arms of her Venetian owner. Yet the eyes painted on the bow, so the ship might see where she was going, spoke pure Greek.
Robin Hood and Little John found themselves with barely enough room to stand, for the ship was packed. More cargo and more passengers straggled on board, and more people and more bales and chests and sacks, stowed below or stacked across the decks, yet still more came aboard. Many spit on the deck for good luck as they boarded. There were people from all over the Holy Land and Christendom. There were merchants with chests and crates and oilskin-wrapped bundles of spices, pelts, rare woods, brass kitchen utensils, silver-chased armor. There were pilgrims in rough woolen robes with palm leaf badges stitched around their hems or hats to show they'd been to Jerusalem, or as close as they could get, toting iron-tipped staves. There were harlots with bastard children, returning to Christian lands now that the siege of Acre was broken. There was a papal messenger with the crossed keys of Rome stitched on his breast. There were two musicians with flute and tambour, scholars carrying books in oilskin pouches, a Benedictine monk and two nuns. They had some things in common. Most wore a travelling cloak fastened with a cloche over one shoulder, and everyone had earflaps or chin bands to hold their hats down in the sea breeze.
And every one of them, it seemed, brought one or two or more chests with them, for every traveller was a trader. There were too many people, Robin thought, and too much cargo to ride safely all the way to Venice. Even the sailors loading the ship were uneasy. Robin heard them talking as they glanced over the side apprehensively and clucked their tongues. The iron cross nailed at the waterline, a marker installed by the port authorities, never to be submerged more than two feet, was sunk clear out of sight. Already, they murmured, the ship felt sluggish and dead on the roll. Robin and John felt like the only ones aboard who hadn't brought chests full of trading goods.
Robin Hood moved to stand by the after hatch. Roiling from the dark depths came the dead mud stink of bilges, a blend of spices such as cinnamon and cloves and eye-watering black pepper by the ton, the greasy stink of olive oil and burned wood from the galley, even the sweet green odor of horse manure, for the animals had been floated on rafts and prodded through another hatchway in the hull. And of course, there were more chests stacked to the ceiling, and tiny passenger berths four feet wide and six deep that reeked of unwashed bodies.
Little John's rumbled, "How long need we sail? I forget what it was coming over."
"A month. More if we're becalmed or we dally. This one is greedy, the sailors were saying. He stops at every island that'll hold an anchor. Rhodes, Corfu, Modon, wherever the hell that is, Cyprus if those Germans let him."
They watched more goods brought on board, and more people, till the round-bellied hold could swallow no more. Then sacks of rice and bales of cotton were stacked around the masts and covered with old sails and lashed tight with scratchy hemp rope. Robin clucked his tongue. The captain -- or more pecunious traders -- were banking on no rain for a month. Finally, crates of chickens were lashed atop the heaps, and people climbed amongst them, nestling around and inside the loads like a lot of squirrels digging in autumn leaves. Little John and Robin Hood staked out a pocket near the stern and flopped into it to sleep, exhausted.
They sailed the next day. Sailors snaked the gangplank aboard. Porters cast the cables from the bollards. The two steersmen plied their trade. The sailors hoisted the sails hand-over-hand, tightened lines and squinted aloft. In the stern, the escrivain shuffled his papers and counted booty as the captain watched. On the dock, a pair of brown-skinned girls strewed flowers in the wake of the ship, wishing it a safe return. Sharp the captain might be, Robin Hood thought, but he took precautions to appease the spirits. As the ship warped out of the dusty harbor, he watched the blinding white hot sandy land recede, as if it were sinking into a cool blue sea.
His reverie was interrupted as something touched his sword hilt. He snapped a hand onto it and trapped the bony hand of a child, a somber-eyed boy, too old to play. The rest of the children had discovered Little John and gotten over their shyness. They flocked around him like sheep around a shepherd, and the giant chuckled and tousled their hair and asked them their names and got them, though most of the children didn't speak his language. Giggling and pushing one another, they poked the giant as they might a statue.
The older boy didn't let go of Robin's sword. He asked in a quiet voice, "Was you at Acre?"
Robin Hood rubbed his forehead. His eyes burned. He wasn't much company, especially for somber boys who longed to be knights. "Aye."
The boy sat on the lumpy canvas. "What was it like?"
"Like? Oh..." The outlaw propped a foot on a bundle. "There was a lot of fighting and a lot of dying, and not much progress. No land changed hands, and little coin. Sand got into everything. There were times of no food, and poor people starved to death while knights killed hangers-on to keep them from hamstringing their horses. But then the garrison in the castle surrendered -- after two years of siege, Richard talked them out in a month -- and everyone was glad. But then Richard was stuck with three thousand prisoners and another army within bowshot. He couldn't get no ransom. So Richard beheaded them. Three thousand men, lined up like sheep at spearpoint, their heads whacked off like chickens. Three thousand heads, son. You could have piled them in a pyramid would reach higher than this mast. Even the sand couldn't soak up all the blood, and it ran in rivulets like snowmelt. Then whores and knights alike started slitting their bellies, thinking they'd swallowed their silver or their gems before surrendering. They rooted around in dead men's guts like pigs turning over a manure pile. Then those bodies began to rot in the sun, and give off gasses like to kill a man. The vapors did kill many, a funny way of getting revenge. Wolves or hyenas or some kind of wild dogs came down out of the hills. You could hear them fighting over bones and guts all night, snarling and snapping. The vultures got so fat they could barely flap their wings, and the dogs would pull them down and tear them open like popinjays, so that even the carrion eaters weren't safe.
"But we got the castle, and put our garrison inside. Saladin's army pulled back and Richard mounted for Jerusalem. Two years of struggle got us a pile of sandy rock. We were soldiers with God on our side, fighting for right and justice and our king, slaughtering soldiers just like us, working for the same thing, but calling their god by another name. That's a crusade."
The boy was silent, stunned, his breath and dreams shattered.
By Robin's side, Little John said quietly, "What he means, lad, is that when you grow up, be a carpenter or a tinker or a vintner or something. Something good that helps people. Never a soldier, who only work by killing."
"Is that what he said?" breathed the lad.
The English outlaw put a hand to his brow and squeezed so hard his hand turned white. The children all stopped to listen, confused at an adult confused. "God, John, I'm so tired of fighting and bloodshed. I'm so tired of hearing men plead to God to forgive them as they die and die, or die cursing God and their king and themselves. If this weren't my father's sword, I'd sink it in this sea and let the rust feed the fishes."
"That sword's done a lot of good in its time. I've seen it."
Robin looked back at the shoreline, a string of soft white humps like a snowbank. "Better it had been forged a bell in a chapel tower to call the faithful to prayer."
"Talk like that makes my knee ache." Robin Hood had once hoisted the giant, crippled by an arrow in his knee, onto his shoulders and then fended off the Sheriff's men until they reached safety.
"There'll be more fighting at home. A new sheriff'll be hot to drink our blood. More fighting, more dying. How many have we lost so far, and how many more will we lose?"
"It ain't the ones that die that are important, it's the ones that go on living because Robin Hood came to their rescue."
"You sound like me before I went crusading in the Holy Land."
The giant lifted his quarterstaff to give two blonde girls a ride. "The Holy Land's behind us, and good riddance. It's Sherwood we're bound for, and I ain't never stepping out from under a green growing tree again."
"God damn Richard," Robin muttered. "I hope he gets sand in his eyes and a sword up the bum. I hope he dallies all the way to Jerusalem and runs out of supplies and his men open his veins to drink his blood. But his crusade became mine too, John. All gone to smash. I'm as guilty as anyone for those poor betrayed men."
"The moon follows the sun, too. That don't make it the moon's fault when there's no rain."
Robin Hood looked around at him. "What?"
"You did everything you could to stop the massacre. You argued with the king 'till you was hoarse, until he was red in the face, until his ears were sore. You were lucky yours wasn't the first head he laid on to the block."
"And now we're running away."
"Naw, we ain't. Our work's done, so we're going home."
"To Sherwood, overgrown. To the Sheriff and Guy of Gisbourne, who'll have tightened their grip. To Marian, who won't even talk to me."
"Yes, she will." Little John grabbed a girl and held up upside down by both feet as she squealed.
"No, she won't. She didn't want me to leave. She called me every name you can call a person. She said she wouldn't wait and she won't. She's stubborn as an oak stump. She'll never speak to me again. She's probably married now, with a baby at her breast."
Little John tsked. "She's that stubborn, she'd spit in any man's eye even looks at her. She'll save her venom for you. You'll get an earful, but it won't kill you."
"So I've a tongue-lashing to start my journey and one to finish? You give me a lot to hope for."
"I'm a poor farmer," Little John sighed. "My seeds fall on stony soil."
"What?"
But the giant was distracted by the children, who insisted on playing. Selecting two of the smaller children, he balanced one in each hand and juggled them. The children squealed and their mothers gasped. Passengers applauded.
Robin Hood plucked his bow with his thumb. Mounting a stack of goods, he wedged himself between some chicken crates and dropped back to sleep in the hot sun. But silver flashed across the desert sky of his mind, and blood jetted into the air. Men jabbered and screamed. Their language was foreign, but their howls of betrayal were not.
Shaking, shivering, Robin Hood awoke to find Little John and the children playing pirates.

&&&&&-----&&&&&

"Sail ho!"
The cry interrupted the second mass of the day. The monk, acting as padrone, lowered his picture of the Virgin as people ran to the rails. Sails were thicker on this sea than seagulls. They'd seen dozens in ten days. People peered through the early morning light and wondered why this one had attracted the lookout's attention.
They'd bypassed Cyprus, had spent only a day and night in Rhodes. To the north lay the island-speckled Augean Sea, somewhere to the south, Crete. A triangle of sail stood out against a distant dark point of land. The sail was only a sliver like a new moon, so everyone knew the ship was pointed for them. A steady licking showed along her sides, whiter and wider than any bow wave. Robin noticed the crew members needed only one look to go scurrying after weapons. The fat Greek captain wrung his hands and whispered to his second-in-command, the pilot master.
"That's it, then," rasped a voice at Robin's side. It was Giovanni, the Paduan merchant. "We're on the rocks. That's a dromon."
Ah. Dromon meant "runner". That explained the extra-wide bow wave -- banks of many oars pulled by many more men. A galley full of pirates. Word spread among the passengers hanging at the rail. Rowed and pushed by her tall sail, she came on very fast, as if the merchant vessel were moored to a wharf. A *surrsurus of terror went around the ship, a whimper of impending death.
"What will they do?" Robin asked. He had a fair idea, but wanted details.
"Overpower the crew. Kill any who resist. Kill anyone else they like. Enslave us Christians. Chain the stout men to the benchs. Seize the cargo and this ship, or else scuttle it. Unless the captain is a faster talker than I think."
"Fast talking how?"
"Fast enough to make us shine in their eyes so they leave the boat and its crew whole."
Robin Hood squinted at the old man. Beside him, his sultry young wife was pale with terror. "You think he'd sell us to save his skin?"
"Wouldn't you, in similar circumstances?"
"No," Robin replied. "But some might."
The Paduan pointed his beaky nose towards the pirates. He grasped the arm of his young and trembling wife. "I'm an old man now. I've little to save. But it'll be hard on..."
But he was alone.
Robin Hood and Little John clambered up the shrouds to the fighting top, a tiny tub atop the mast. From there, they got a better look at the enemy.
The dromon was eighty feet long and narrow as a coffin, low in the water as a floating arrow and driven by two triangular sails and banks and banks of oars. The sides were painted dark red, even to a long square-end ram that jutted from her prow. The boat fairly skipped across the water.
"Look you, John," said Robin. "We're a crippled seal and she a shark."
Little John shaded his eyes. "More like a pack of rats and us a nest full of chicks. They'll swarm over us. What shall we do? Lie down and surrender? Pray they kill us swiftly, or enslave us gently?" He couldn't help but smile.
"T'would serve Marian right if I were killed at sea and never heard of again..." The outlaw chief propped one foot on the railing of the top. His long bow lay balanced across his thigh, and he waggled it as he thought. The wind ruffled his brown hair under his quilted cap. "But I must admit... the idea gets me feeling contrary..."
Little John crossed his arms across his chest. He looked at the distant pirate ship, studying it as a problem, like a rock to be removed from a path. "It's not enough to talk about it. You have to have a plan."
"Aye..." That those were Robin's own words quoted back at him, the outlaw ignored. He squinted down at the overburdened Saint Theresa, so overladen with bales and chests and sacks she dragged in the water. Then Robin threw his leg over the railing and stepped into the shrouds. "And even a hare-brained plan is better than none. Let me see if there are any more hares aboard."
On deck again, he walked towards a knot of sailors who stood clustered at the side, watching the approaching ship and debating what to do. Robin Hood pointed out a salt-bearded clear-eyed sailor, the boatswain, charged with the day-to-day activities of running the ship. While the three principal officers aboard were Greeks, the sailors were mostly long-faced Venetians with squinty blue eyes. Little John caught the boatswain by the arm and dragged him from the cluster. The man swore and planted his feet, but the giant moved him anyway. The other sailors stood ready to help, but didn't move.
"Good worthy," Robin said gently in French, "a question. Do you trust your captain?"
The boatswain tugged to free his arm, but it might as well have been lashed to a mast with hawsers. "By Peter's keys, why do you ask me that?" His French came fast and furious.
"Because he holds our lives in his hands."
Like all the other sailors, the boatswain wore a coarse and filthy woolen shirt with a hood, striped sailcloth trousers, and patched felt slippers on his feet, for the decks were too hot to walk barefoot. He wore a red vest as a badge of authority. A seashell on a string around his neck was a charm against drowning.
The man stopped struggling, giving up in many ways. He glanced at the pirate ship. "I'd like to think we had an even chance, but... he's a slippery one, this Greek... My children are grown and can care for my widow."
"As I thought," Robin nodded. "Pray, I need a quick lesson in seamanship."
"What, are you mad?"
"It shan't take long," Robin was mild. "It's said the sailors of Venice can hoist a kerchief and pilot a cork around the world with their eyes closed, is it not?"
Though hampered by his trapped arm, the boatswain managed a Roman shrug. "It's so. And I suppose talking to you will neither hasten nor slow the pirates who come to disembowel us. Do you plan to fight them, then? For I think our captain will see we don't."
"By the Grace of Our Good Lady and the strength of my good right arm, he just might. Pray, tell me how they'll attack."
"Well..." he got his arm free so he could wave both hands as he talked. "We're tacking into the wind and can't draw closer than forty degrees to it. Her over there can pinch tighter because she's got sweeps, but she only needs to sail parallel to us and she'll have us."
"Why?"
"Why? God's blood! Because she's faster and we're fighting the wind! Like, if, we're a horse running along a fence and that's a lion after us. She won't even need to chase us, which'd just make her run half-circles all over the sea, she only needs point where we're going and cut us off. It's sure as raising an axe -- sooner or later it'll fall."
"How will they strike? Will they ram us or board us?"
"Not ram, I don't think. That's warship to warship. We might go straight to the bottom. No, they'll keep the windward and lock alongside with grappling irons, then swarm aboard like devils let out of Hell. It'll be quick for anyone above deck, slow for the rest, unless they make us galley slaves, which I doubt, what with winter coming on."
"We'll see. When?"
The old sailor squinted at the sails, out across the water, at the descending ship. "Two hours, maybe. Three, if we tack small and often. And stick a knife in the mast and pray for a cyclone."
"Pray, by all means. But meanwhile --" he pointed to the blocks, tackle, gears, and other machines around the mast, "-- show me how this mare's nest hangs together..."
A few minutes later, the archer smiled. "You know your stuff, sir, and I thank you. John, we needs address our friends in the crow feathers."
The outlaw approached the German knights with the curious blend of black clothing, the knight's surcoat overlain by a priest's mantle. White crosses, their ends split like a fish tail, decorated their breasts and capes. They were Hospitallers, Knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, sworn to God and ridding the Holy Land of heathens. They were monks with swords, but rich, for each wore a mailcoat and even mail leggins, chausses, with armored kneecaps, poleyns. At the first sign of pirates, they had donned their swords, black shields, and Phyrgian helmets with graceful points like the backwards fin of a dolphin.
Seeing them armed, Robin Hood wasted no time. "Sirs, I was a prisoner of the Saracens, and they told me the only thing they feared on the battlefield were the men with yellow hair and black robes. I've no doubt you'll fight the pirates, but we need a plan to make it effective. I think I have one. Will you back me, and see if together we can win the day?"
Their leader, an older man, stiffened his spine at Robin's compliments. Now he stamped his feet, eager for battle as a warhorse. His French was guttural and grating. "We saw you question the sailor. We have no plan, but suspect our captain will put forth one to his advantage and our disadvantage. We will acknowledge you as leader, as long as you plan to fight to the death. Is that your intent?"
Robin Hood grinned like a wolf. "The pirates' death, yes."
"Then lead. We will back your every step. I am Harday." He nodded at a knight even bigger than himself. "This is my baby, Hume. These are Alard, and Roland." To a man, they were broad-chested and broad-bellied with bright blonde hair and beards. And all of them carried a fire in their eyes, an unquenchable light of dedication and sacrifice.
"Good. Without you, there can be no plan." Robin Hood introduced himself and Little John, and shook every iron hand. "To start, will you watch the sailors? Wherever they stand, place yourselves at the four points of the compass. They have no love for their captain, but they might follow his orders over mine."
The knight grinned inside his blonde beard. Quickly, but quietly, he turned to the men and gabbled German.
During Robin's negotiations, the passengers and crew had filtered forward into the tiny space before the foremast. They waited on the Greek captain, who stood in the forecastle calm as a sphinx. People shouted, questioned, threatened, begged for leadership.
The captain tried to quell their fears. "Good people of God. I have sailed these waters all my life, as did my father and father before me, and I have seen men such as approach us in yonder dromon. You need have no fear. They appear fierce, it is true, but they are men of no imagination and will settle for little if we do not trouble them. They are only here to exact tribute, as has been their right for centuries untold. If we remain calm, we will be able to buy them off with some trinkets and a small tithe from each of you. Within the hour we can be sailing again and they left far behind --"
From the rear, Robin Hood bellowed, "Captain! We men agreed to fight as part of our passage, and I'm sure the women and children will do their share! What is your plan to fend off these sea-wolves nipping at our heels? What shall we do? Give us courage!"
The captain's face flushed dark with anger. Caught in wrongdoing, Robin Hood thought; the bastard does plan to betray us. Out of the corner of his eye, behind him, he noted the lanky pilot-major, the second-in-command, draw a knife from his sash. But that man stopped short and gasped as Little John materialized alongside and laid a seemingly-gentle hand on his.
The captain glanced at the pursuing ship. It was closer, close enough to show two sails, pointed slightly ahead of them to intercept their path, as the boatswain had warned.
The captain sputtered. "Honored sir, I'll thank you not to interfere in the business of running this ship! I've sailed these seas thirty years, boy and man, and I know I can speak with these men --" The captain faltered as he realized the tall English knight was not alone. His pilot-master stood very still, afraid his hand might be crushed by the giant. The four knights in black surrounded his unarmed sailors. The merchant fell back on his bargaining skills. "Good people, if you will only trust me and not listen to rash talk from strangers, all will be well --"
The passengers buzzed. One man shouted an angry denunciation, but the others demurred. What did they know of these waters, after all? Could the captain be right? Would the court of commune in two cities allow him to captain a ship if he were incompetent or corrupt? And who was this shabby English stranger with the over-long bow?
As they buzzed and clacked, Robin Hood pushed through them and hopped to the forecastle aside the captain. He called, "Right! Well said! A pack of frightful lies, but smoothly put! Now, people, if you'll list' me for the nonce, I'll put forth my ideas of who's coming and what they intend!
"You're all pilgrims, you've all you've heard the stories of atrocities visited on helpless travellers! Well, you're about to experience those stories yourself! Those are pirates yonder, the scum of the seas, sea-wolves they call them, and you're the sheep! Those are men so evil no village will have them and no mother claim them, men fled to the sea and outlawry! Their motive is profit, their pleasure torture, mutilation, and rape! You know the stories! Those men will board with naked steel like gulls after garbage! They'll gut every man, woman, or child and laugh as your life blood sprays across their black faces! And those that die will be the lucky ones! For after they've sated their bloodlust comes the rape! The women will be befouled with every sin imaginable, raped so often they lose count, bleeding from every hole, until they lose their minds or cast themselves overside to the mercy of sharks! Nor will the men and boys escape! You know the ways of the Saracens! You'll be bent over the railings and pricked up the bum, used like animals by animals! Then the men will be castrated, their balls cut of like steers to keep them humble and quiet! Your sons will be castrated too, and dressed in women's clothes to serve as eunuchs in some sultan's hareem! As for your daughters, you know the Arabs have no use for girls! They'll have their noses cut off, their tongues cut out, their cheeks scarred so that no man will want them! Them that survive face a life of pain and degradation! You'll be hauled aboard in chains, shackled in a fetid hold among the rats and roaches, then whipped to a slave market! There you'll be stripped naked and paraded before the most loathsome and callous and cruel-hearted men this festered coast can summon! Slave collars will be fit around their necks, and you'll end your days chained in a salt mines, the closest thing to Hell on God's green earth, or lashed to a galley bench to pump an oar and sit in your own shit until you're cut loose and pitched overside! The women, once they're done raping you, will be whipped into the kitchens or rug factories, starved and beaten, converted to their heathen religion, or sacrificed entire on a blazing altar before a golden calf!
"This," he finished, out of breath, "this is the fate your captain would consign you to, with his smarmy smile and oily hands dipped in blood! He'd have you bow your heads and wait for the axe to fall while he bargains his miserable skin free with your lives! That's his idea of a shining business deal! How many of you can truthfully say you'll trust your lives to this man? None! But, if you trust me, a fighting man who's assembled fighting men, I say we can organize a defense that'll see those sea-wolves lose their teeth and claws while we sail away into the sunset, bloodied but free! Listen here, quick and well, for time grows short, and I'll sketch my plan..."
Briefly, Robin Hood outlined some of his plan, leaving out the more hare-brained parts. The buzzing and confusion increased among the horde. Men argued with their wives, brothers with their sisters, merchants with their partners, children among themselves.
The captain blustered, "Listen not to this man! He knows aught! Those men will bring us no harm unless we resist, which we must not do! That would arouse their ire, and we would find --"
Robin Hood let him rant as he listened. When he liked the sound of the crowd, he called, "Enough!" He paused for a breath and effect. "How do you choose?"
The outlaw suddenly stooped and reached to the deck. Catching a child by the armpits, he hauled her aloft. She was a slight girl in a sky-blue robe, and her golden hair shone in the sunlight. "Don't tell me! Listen to your hearts and your heads, then tell this little girl the fate you've chosen for her! Do we fight or do we kneel?"
"FIGHT!" cried Hospitallers. They drew their swords and shot them into the air.
"Fight!" cried a woman, the girl's mother.
"Fight!" cried a man with his hand on his son's shoulder.
"FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!"
If there was dissent, Robin Hood didn't hear it. He swung the confused blond girl back to the deck and the arms of her young father. He was laughing.
The captain waved both hands, punched the air, all but stirred up a hurricane with his hands. "People, attend me, please! These pirates are businessmen! If you but let me talk to them --"
Robin Hood interrupted. "John, the captain would converse with the pirates! Assist him!"
The captain jumped as something caught him by the waist. Deftly, Little John slid his quarterstaff into the man's sash. Before the captain could wriggle off the hook, the Brown Bear of Sherwood took three long steps and whipped the staff like a fishing pole. Screaming, the captain pinwheeled through the air and raised a waterspout thirty feet away. The giant lobbed after him a water butt for a float, almost hitting the captain in the head.
People laughed and cheered, but others let out only a gusty sigh. Sharp or not, the captain had promised no trouble and this tall knight promised a sackful of it.
Yet Robin Hood gave them no time to brood. "Be proud! You've made your choice, the only honorable one! We'll trust in God and our good right arms! Now to work! We've much to do before welcoming our guests! Cut those lashings and stack these bales! Hoist those chests out of the hold -- yes! every one! We'll have no favorites, we sink or swim together! Don't tell me a batch of fake relics and two bolts of indigo cloth are worth your life! You women, and you, grandmother, tear open those sacks! You, broach those casks! Harday, assemble the crossbows and count the bolts! Children, crack those crates and show me who can pluck a chicken the fastest! You, forward crew, give me a hand with this mast! We've axe work here, or better, a good sharp saw! Break out the spears! We've changes to make that yon pirates never anticipated! To work!"

&&&&&-----&&&&&

The Venetian boatswain, now acting captian, was good as his word, for it was near three hours before the pirate ship drew within hailing distance.
From the deck, Robin and the other passengers could see the stitches in the sails and the yellow teeth and dark faces of the laughing villains. Across the gap, those pirates not rowing stood swayhipped shoulder to shoulder in the bow. They wore faded colored turbans round as a pudding, dirty shirts in bright colors, and black mustaches that stuck out straight. They called insults and jibes, waved and grinned, like boys anticipating mischief. One waved a curved sword, a scimitar, in the air and pointed to the blade, then his throat. Others sighted down arrows nocked at short bows, eager to get within range.
They laughed too at the clumsy defenses the merchant vessel had erected. The ship was now ringed by a wall like a castle. Wooden chests of all sizes and shapes and colors had been hoisted from the hold and stacked and lashed around the perimeter of the ship, high as a man's shoulder. Atop them were lashed bales of raw cotton and cotton rags and hay and straw for the horses and sacks of rice, with gaps between. Above this flimsy barricade were strung ropes, tied from shroud to shroud like spiderwebs, designed to slow boarders. The defenders had also tried some desperate measures in rerigging the sails, for lines ran across them every which way. The pirates too, had made some changes to their ship. They'd erected wooden shield walls lashed temporarily to the shrouds on both sides of the ship -- enough to stop arrows, but nothing to hinder their piling over the side to board.
Robin Hood trotted around and around the deck, giving orders and advice and encouragement. Things had fallen into place, but not completely. He told Little John, "We've preparations to make yet. I'll go aloft and buy us some time."
Little John walked his friend to the offside shrouds and watched him ascend as if climbing a tree. He chuckled, "Send 'em a piece of Sherwood for me."
The outlaw rose on the shrouds, which narrowed near the top, and climbed over the rim of the fighting top. The outlaw moved a pavis, a shield wall he'd sent aloft earlier, a hastily-lashed frame of barrel staves that reeked of vinegary wine. Robin drew his belt knife and cut a small cross in each stave, then picked up his bow.
Pirates laughed to see a lone archer standing close to Heaven. A dozen pirates lifted their Turkish bows, the strongest bows in the world. They were very short and double-curved like rams' horns, fashioned of wood, horn, and sinew. They knew European bows to be short things scraped from a single piece of wood, and did not fear them. A Turkish bow could shoot three times as far and still penetrate armor. The knight in the top opposite might have an abnormally tall bow, it was true, but he could little damage. Between the range and the contrary tossing of the two ships, he might hit a man if he aimed at the mass, but more likely he'd only disturb the fish. The pirates began to essay bets as to who could come closest to hitting the archer. They drew their powerful curves and arrows slashed the air. Most zipped by the top. One struck the wooden shield. Men laughed at the sport.
Up in the fighting top, Robin Hood braced his feet against opposite sides of the tub. The deck of the round-bellied vessel rolled badly enough, like a sodden shoe, but forty feet above the water the swaying was amplified until Robin would have sworn he could dip a handful of water at each side. The lateen sail's yard stuck up at an angle behind him, higher still by half, yet he felt high enough to shake hands with God. He could see all of the pirate ship's deck, and he counted the men. Near to seventy grinning pirates.
"For the nonce," he said aloud. "Laugh and learn, good fellows."
He crossed himself, leaned around the shield wall, drew to his cheek, waited. Shooting from this top, he reflected, was like shooting from astride a galloping horse at a rising woodcock. A pirate arrow sliced the air not six feet off. Still he waited, juggling angles and distances and wind and pitching in his mind. He caught his breath.
And loosed.
Immediately the dromon fell off to the east.
The pirates all felt the loss and turned to see why. One of their steersmen lay face down on the afterdeck. A shaft with a steel head long as a man's thumb projected from his back. Sliced through the liver, he leaked bright blood that ran in glassy ripples, back and forth with the rolling of the ship.
The laughter died, supplanted by howls of outrage. The other steersman deserted his post. The sails luffed and flapped as the ship lost headway.
Robin Hood grinned. Below his feet, a cheer went up as pilgrims realized what he'd accomplished. He grinned also at the angry mutter carried across the water from the pirates. A score of arrows flew at him like a flock of startled birds. Two more arrows chunked into the shield wall. The outlaw called in twisted Arabic, "I am an eagle, and I shit on your heads!"
The Fox of Sherwood nocked another arrow and waited. This was hunting, after all, and a hunter needed patience more than anything. He examined his arrow (number sixteen) for imperfections. Each was a clothyard long, stained green with red fletching and three red rings below the fletching. (He smiled. The three rings had been Marian's idea: "For God, man, and woman?" he'd asked her. "For man, woman, and love," she'd replied.)
He peeked around the shield wall. Far off and below, like dolls, a pirate boatswain shouted as two pirates dragged away the steersman's body. The boatswain, a brawny man, planted his feet wide to avoid slipping in blood as he grabbed a rudder. He yanked hard and put the ship back on course, then snatched the other and slipped a rope over the top, tying them in tandem. Shouting and cursing orders, he --
Died as an arrow split his breastbone.
A strong man, as boatswains must be, he clutched the shaft in his chest, clutched the rudder, skidded in blood. Then his strength failed and he lost both, slipped onto the deck. The ship lost headway again, and the sails flapped mournfully, as if on a ghostly derelict.
Now Robin spotted the pirate captain by the mainmast. He was bulky man with a white beard, a red and blue turban with gold threads, and a long blue sash over his shoulder. He howled insults at Robin Hood. He shook his fist, then screamed at his crew. He ordered two pirates to seize the loose rudders. When the men balked, he jerked a jewelled knife from a sheath in his sash --
And died as an arrow lanced through his belly.
Robin Hood laughed. In Arabic he shouted, "Lucky shots, eh? Weakling fatherless wine-guzzling camel-fuckers! Who's next?"
The pirate crew howled in rage and anguish, hurled insults and dares, shook weapons and fists, shot arrows. They argued with one another, too, for no one would took the rudders. The pilot master, now acting captain, hunkered behind the mainmast and called orders. Pirates put their backs into the oars. The rudders could lie idle -- they'd steer with the oars alone. The pilot master's whistle shrilled like a bird scared into flight.
A voice called Robin from below. He looked down the mast at Little John's bleached head. The giant called, "You only got a dozen or sumpin' arrows!"
"That's so," the outlaw called, "but they're thirsty for blood! How go the preparations?"
The giant waved. Crewmen and passengers no longer scurried about, but fussed at their stations with things at hand, or simply waited. "'Bout ready. You've made them pirates madder'n Hell."
"Good!" Robin Hood shipped his bow over his shoulder, clambered into the shrouds and slid down like a squirrel. Pirate arrows whizzed around him until he sank below the rude barricade and thumped to the deck. "Angry men make rash decisions."
Robin Hood strode down the decks on a quick inspection tour. The decks were surprisingly clear since the cargo had been stacked along the gunwales. With the new fortifications, the ship looked like the rooftop of a castle. Everywhere he went, people greeted him with nervous laughter or terrified silence. He did his best to comfort them. In the forecastle, men and boys were positioned with bows. "Keep a sharp eye out," he told them, "and wait your chance. Better too slow than too fast. Aim well and you'll send heathens to hell."
"I wish I could shoot like you," a boy burst out. "You're a wizard with that bow!"
Robin laughed and tousled the boy's hair. "That was nothing. Were my cousin here, he'd have made me call which eye I'd put out. And I almost missed their captain, and he's stout as a gravid sow. Or he was."
All along the sides, older men and dames, women, and children, were arrayed along the bulwarks with various parcels and bundles. Robin Hood nudged a pile of rough sacks, ball-sized, with his foot. He winked at a young mother whose girl clung at her skirts. "We'll make it hot for them with these, eh? We'll pepper their stew and make them eat it too!" The woman only smiled. People laughed for many reasons, partly from tension, partly from Robin's infectious joy, partly from hysteria.
Amidships, Little John stood with his quarterstaff in hand and a pile of rocks at his feet. Robin told him, "Try not to throw too far, John. We don't want to kill anyone in Africa." The giant smiled.
Lying crossways on the decks were two long booms, spare spars hauled from the hold. The ends were freshly sharpened, and cypress resin scented the air. Nearby, various lines leading to them, like spiderwebs, the Venetian sailors crouched in two groups. They were ready for orders from either the boatswain or Robin Hood. The outlaw said, "If we save this ship, I'm sure the lords in Venice will see to it you keep most of the profit." They snorted, and one man said, "More likely they'll dock our pay for using up ship's supplies. Wasting arrows in pirate's guts, for instance." They laughed at that.
The four Hospitallers were dotted along the bulwarks like crows on a fence. Robin squeezed the arm of the youngest, Hume. "If the babies are this big in Germany, I'd hate to face their fighting men! See you don't carve all the pirates before your father. T'would be bad manners to eat them all." The Germans grunted, laughter deep in their bellies.
Robin checked the last group, the archers in the aftercastle, then turned and surveyed the ship from the platform. Lines were tight and ready to hand, excess baggage was stowed below, buckets of water to stop fires were spaced around, the canvas hatch covers were battened down, both to keep anyone from falling into the hold, and to keep anyone from retreating from the fight. Everyone and everything was ready. He called, "Good people, we sink or swim together, so let's work together! Is everyone clear on the most important point?"
"`ATTEND ME!" half a hundred shouted.
"Aye!" Robin Hood dashed forward and hopped onto the knee of the mast. "Then if anything goes wrong, I get the blame! Mother Mary knows you lot have done as well as any of the defenders of Acre or Jerusalem this day! They'll be singing a song about you heroes before you arrive in Venice! Look sharp, stay at your stations, and listen! The wolf's after the flock, but we've teeth they don't suspect! We'll teach them pirating's an expensive way to make a living! Boatswain! Where are they bound?"
The boatswain, under the aftercastle with the steersmen and the compass, pointed along the barricade. The dromon was circling the merchant vessel wide to come into the lee.
"'Round Robin Hood's barn," Little John chuckled. "They're afraid of you."
"That's a Muslim for you," quipped a knight. "Always trying to get 'round your bum!" Laughter answered.
The dromon, long and lean as a white-tipped shark, circled the ship and bore closer, white-faced men at the rudders. Pirates along the sides readied grappling irons: multi-fanged iron hooks like anchors with ropes attached. Excited by imminent action, the pirates howled like demons, but a bark from the new captain and raps from the master's mates silenced them. In the eerie quiet, the acting captain called across the tossing turquoise water with a speaking trumpet. "Surrender and we will not harm you! Give us --"
Robin Hood jammed his foot in a gap in the barricade, hooked another in a shroud, popped up like a badger out of a hole, and raised his bow. He could just see over their shield wall. Pirates scrambled and ducked below the railings. The ship's head fell away again as the steersmen dived for cover. But the pilot master moved too slow. A long swift arrow whisked through the trumpet and slammed into his throat. He was knocked over like a pheasant flushed from cover. Robin Hood disappeared as a storm of arrows whizzed overhead and slapped into the mast.
He called in French, "Your tune strikes a sour note! I can pluck my harp and sing a sweeter one!" Turning, he yelled, "Archers, shoot! A scream marks a bullseye!"
Men and boys and a few women levelled crossbows from the ship's armory and some short European bows. The pirates hooted as arrows pinged and broke on their shield wall, but shouts showed some got through the cracks. Their aim spoiled, the pirates' returning shots went high or hit the barricade.
Robin Hood kept one eye on his ship and one on the pirates, and shot when he could. He tried to place arrows that would kill two men at once, and usually succeeded for, unless a shaft lodged in a bone, his arrows could pass clean through a man and kill the one behind. Men went down with split livers, collapsed lungs, punctured guts.
Robin Hood watched through a peephole in the crazy wall of mismatched chests and bales, looked up to follow the dromon's sails. And, most important, he measured with his eye. Yes, the end of the mainmast's lateen yard would reach well over the pirate ship when the time came. The pirate ship jigged, the sails were hoicked closer to the wind. The pirates were closing.
"Grapples next, folks!" he called. "Fear not! We needs bring the enemy close to strike! Children, ready weapons!"
Heavy iron hooks, a half dozen like grasping octopi, flew through the air. One bounced off a cotton bale and splashed back into the sea, one tore a sack of rice, but the rest clanged and bounced on wood and rope. Four bit deep.
The ship jerked. Three score screaming pirates heaved on the lines. With a creak and groan, the merchant vessel and pirate ship were drawn together by brute force.
Robin Hood watched and waited, shot when he could. He'd decided not to pry at the grappling irons, for that might sunder the fragile barricade. Nor could the grapples be cut loose, for the first six feet of line was chain. So he let them lie. But pilgrims set up a frightened twitter. Robin wasted no words comforting them. They'd be busy soon.
The ship jerked like a horse balking at the reins. When the ships were a rod apart, Robin bellowed. "Away jars! Archers, shoot as you can! Sailors, take up slack!"
Arrows sang from the fore- and aftercastle. Along the sides, men and boys, old and young, rose from a squat. Over their heads they hoisted red clay amphoras stoppered with wood and beeswax, then grunted as they heaved the long jars over the barricade. A couple of jars splashed in the narrowing gap between ships. But a score or more made loud and satisfying crashes as they shattered on the pirates' deck.
Olive oil and heady Lebanon honey and raisin-scented wine gurgled around the pirates' feet. Muslims cursed, grunted as they slipped and hit the decks and one another with knees and elbows and chins. Some shrieked as the archers found new targets. Pilgrims grabbed more amphoras handed them by women in the second line.
Robin Hood called, "Little John! Catapult!"
From the far side of the ship, the giant caught up a stone in each hand, and pitched. These slimy rocks, big as man's skull, were drawn from the ballast in the ship's bilge. They crashed aboard the dromon. The two nuns fed rocks to Little John as if loading a mangonel. The giant killed and crippled men like Samson slinging his ass's jawbone.
Robin Hood peeked, measured the gap between ships, shot an arrow that travelled only ten feet. Pirates with purple stains on their clothes and purple bruises on their faces raised shining steel. Many poised just below the shield wall, ready to bound across to the merchant vessel the second the hulls touched. Others crowded behind them, almost jabbing their comrades' rears with sharp points.
The Fox of Sherwood called loud and clear, "Children! Away feathers! Away pepper!"
With shouts of joy and fear, the dozen children of the ship rose like hares in a field and slung clumsy bundles overhand. Like autumn leaves, the bundles showered black and brown chicken feathers in the air. The children threw again and again, forgetting the danger in their haste, exposing their heads. Robin had to trip one boy into a sprat fall on the deck. When the feathers were exhausted, they hurled bags of pepper and were rewarded with colorful Arabic swearing and thunderous sneezing. Boys and girls snickered. Robin Hood laughed too. The feathers and pepper were nothing but a nuisance, but they gave the children something to do besides worry.
Robin Hood still had plenty to throw, for he'd all but emptied the buss's hold onto the decks. "Keep it up! Away grain!" Like an explosion in a mill, rice and spices cascaded onto the pirate ship. And more spices, pungent cinnamon and cloves. Then cut lemons and oranges, then lumps of fresh horseshit from the stables below decks.
Robin had to shout over the shrills of the children and jabbering of men and women. "Away pots!" Robin Hood shouted into the tumult. "Pots" were anything else they might throw. Iron nails, brass tacks, knife blades, brass bowls, clay cups, spiked dog collars, spear heads, redware pitchers, gilded beakers from Syrian, carved rock crystal from Egypt, hammers, hinges, and much more went sailing, including a trio of lutes that broke with a musical brong. Robin laughed at the sight, as if a earthquake and thunderbolt had struck a bazaar. Pirates howled more in outrage than from actual damage, though a number of men cursed when they stepped on nails and pot shards. "Keep shooting, archers! Heave everything we've got at the bastards!"
Robin peeked. The ships were about to close. Robin Hood shouted over the noise, "Sailors, HAUL AWAY!"
Opposite him, amidships, two teams of sailors tailed onto the lines and heaved. The twin booms lying across the deck jerked, then rose at an angle that steepened, like giant stiff snakes pulled by their tails. The sharpened ends skittered across the deck and gouged furrows in the pine decking.
Robin Hood watched and prayed. This part of the plan hadn't been tested. Each boom was lashed by its end to a line -- a sheet line, the sailors called them -- that ran far overhead to a block on the lateen yard. From there, the rope returned to the deck and another block, thence to a band of sailors. Hand over frantic hand, six knotty-armed men yanked on each block and tackle rig. Slowly the booms rose to hang overhead like twin Swords of Damocles. Robin Hood prayed to Joseph the carpenter, shouting the while. One sharpened boom, swinging like a lethal pendulum, brushed the barricade and tore lose some pilgrim's chest of clothing.
The foremast boom, having to travel a shorter distance, was in place first. Like a giant lethal pendulum, the sharpened end swung out over the pirate ship. Then it tilted back, over the merchant vessel. Then out again --
The outlaw glanced at the pirate ship and swore. Too slow. Despite the debris and missiles, two dozen pirates were poised to leap the short tumblehome between the rounded hulls. It would be close. Both pirates and pilgrims glanced overhead.
Back, forth swung the boom. Over the Theresa, over the pirates --
Robin hollered, "Let her go!"
The sailors opened their hands, but not fast enough to prevent the rough rope from sizzling through their palms like lightning. A rope end whipped past and almost took out a man's eye. Then the giant arrow struck.
The sharpened boom plunged straight down, hit with a giant thud, and punched a hole through the bottom of the pirate ship. Splintering, tearing planks loose in its passage, it disappeared through the gaping hole and shot straight to the bottom of this inland sea. The hole it left raised havoc.
Like some miraculous fountain, like a whale spouting, water cascaded into the air. The column sprayed the pirates in the bow of the dromon.
"Get that other boom up! We must --" Robin screamed. The second boom had to hoisted higher, for the yard reached higher --
There came a sickening crack from overhead.
The block far above on the yard had split. And jammed. The sailors tugged manfully, and Little John left off his rock throwing to tail on too. But the rope was stuck fast.
At the same time, a thump rang through the ship, the first kiss of wood on wood, heard as much as felt through their feet. The hulls collided, bounced apart, collided again. A woman shrilled.
Perhaps, Robin's mind flashed, he could shoot the rope holding the boom. He reached for an arrow --
-- and came up empty. He'd miscounted.
The Fox of Sherwood didn't even bother to swear. "John, fix it!" From the corner of his eye, he saw Little John scamper up the shrouds like a Barbary ape, a knife in his teeth. Robin called up and down the ship, "Pick up swords and pikes! Stand by to repel boarders!"
His last words were drowned out in a hurricane of noise. Like devils from Hell, a dozen pirates swarmed aboard the merchant vessel. Another dozen took their place and jumped too. They cut through the boarding ropes with sharp steel and thumped to the decks.
The defenders of the Saint Theresa had the fight of their lives.
Robin Hood, outlaw, thief, knight, lord, Crusader, nobleman and peasant, was in their forefront. With no shield to his name, he carried his bow in his left hand. With his mighty right he drew his father's sword, hopped over a boy with a pike, jerked the boy aside and saved his life, slashed at a pirate in a yellow shirt. The Saracen, nimble as a goat on the tossing ship, raised a curved scimitar with a blade blackened to prevent corrosion.
Screaming "MAR-I-AN!", Robin Hood slammed the scimitar back into the man's face, tearing open his cheek and jaw, snapping back his head.
Yet three others took his place. Clambering over the teetery barricade, a pirate on Robin's right slashed at his neck and sheared into the leather hauberk with its rusty iron plates. The blade fetched. The farther man jabbed for Robin's face while the middle man slashed at his belly.
Faster than he would have believed, the Fox of Sherwood hooked his bow over the middle blade. His bowstring snapped like a whip crack. With his sword, he parried the other blade away from his face. Ducking half over, wrenching the trapped blade out of his tangled hauberk, he caught his sword pommel in two hands and used a Norseman's trick, sweeping at the men's feet as if axing a tree. The pirates being off-balance on the bales gave an added advantage. Robin chopped one bare dirty leg to the bone and a man screamed. One pirate, lunging to get out of the way, only tripped himself, and fell into the blade's next sweep. Robin Hood felt a blade slash across his back, but the leather and iron took most of the blow. As one man spurted blood from his leg, Robin ripped off half another's ear and scalp. The third man was gone, either back over the side or somewhere behind.
Robin Hood whirled and found another pirate behind. He swung and sliced the man under the chin. Frothy blood fountained onto the outlaw as his throat was cut.
For a second the outlaw was in the bloody clear. All around him was chaos, and pirates thick as a snowstorm. Two Christian boys, brothers not twelve, manhandled one long spear and pierced a pirate in the guts. A young mother hacked with a cleaver at a pirate's back. An old man grappled a young pirate in a bear hug, their white and black beards touching. But the pirates were clearly overwhelming them. Two slashed at a covey of women trying to defend children. A young man was hacked to death, the scimitar blows chopping bone and the deck underneath. Far overhead, Little John had crept hand-over-hand along the yard, held only by his giant hands, to saw at the ropes in the jammed block.
Then Robin Hood saw no more, for men dove at him from all directions. The pirates were angry for his shooting them, he thought inanely. Someone landed on his back and he crashed to his knees in the narrow space stacks and a hatch cover. He was smothered under a pile of sweaty spicy bodies.
Flexing, shoving with his hands and knees, bucking did no good. He couldn't move. He groped with his right hand, hooked his sword and jabbed, sliced something -- probably an ankle -- heard a man's distant yelp. The growling of the men on him gave him a taste of Hell. Men ripped at him with scimitars and daggers, nicking their comrades as much as himself. Robin Hood scrambled for his slippery sword and sliced his palm on his blade. Someone worked a knife at his neck, feeling for an artery, like a giant beesting. He kicked, and the stinging stopped, but he was still pressed all around.
For a second, he felt the ship heel, as it had when the pirates had boarded, as if a giant weight had jumped aboard, or gone over the side. Seawater splashed the men piled on him, and he wondered if they were sinking. Muffled by bodies, he heard a heavy thump close at hand. But the knife blade was back, and he was being killed, almost helpless.
Then sunlight and fresh air washed over him, as if he'd surfaced from drowning.
Like Neptune risen from the sea, Little John plied his quarterstaff like a pitchfork. He rammed the end into the gut of a pirate and, lightly as flicking away a load of manure, pitched the man backwards over the railing. One man asprawl Robin was knocked flat, the side of his head punched in. The giant slid the quarterstaff among the pile and levered three pirates away, and Robin scrambled to his knees, then his feet.
Behind John, the canvas hatchway sagged in the center as if from a great invisible weight. Robin realized John had jumped from the yard, forty feet, and crashed into the center. All to rescue his friend. And opposite, the dromon had a second spout of water that reached halfway up the mast. Little John had cut the boom free.
Two pirates drove at him. Little John jabbed his long quarterstaff past their curved swords and smashed each in the throat, throttling them. The men fell heavily.
"You did it, John! You're a wonder!"
"Been -- a hell of thing," he grunted, "-- if I'd sunk us instead."
The giant cracked a pirate in the face, and the man toppled backwards amidst tumbled cotton bales with a bloody nose. They looked for more enemies, spotted them farther down the deck, seemingly a mile away in Robin's distorted vision.
"Come on," Little John caught Robin's free hand and almost dislocated his arm. Robin managed to retain his sword.
Amidships, sailors and Hospitallers fended the pirates away at every hand. Running amidst them, Little John caught one pirate by the ankle and shook him, snapping his knee, then tossed him on the hatch cover. Another man slashed at him, but the giant just kicked him into the scuppers. Defenders fought valiantly from every nook and cranny. Two Hospitallers were knee-deep in bodies, but two were down.
With his free hand, Robin Hood clutched his neck, which burned like a branding iron. Blood soaked his shirt. He didn't know how badly he was wounded, but his sword arm felt weak, hollow. "John! We needs sweep the ship!"
"I thought you was sick of bloodshed!"
"I'm sick of the strong exploiting the weak! I'm sick of people shouting that God demands others die! I'm sick of men with swords hacking innocents to death because -- because no one can -- oppose them! --"
Dizzy, weak from blood loss, turned around, sheltered by the giant's broad back, Robin Hood steadied himself with a hand on the gunwale. He stared.
The two ships were only partly locked together. The dromon was almost awash. Three of the grappling lines had either snapped under the strain or ripped loose their moorings. The pirate ship spouted water faster as more planking tore loose and the hole enlarged. Then the spouts quelled, smothered by bubbling seawater. Frantic pirates fought each other to clamber aboard the merchant vessel, for their own ship was sinking.
Robin Hood stumbled to join Little John and the sailors and Hospitallers left. He stuck his sword over his head, though lightning burned down his shoulder. Above the noise and confusion he shouted, "To me, lads and lasses! For God, king, and country, sweep 'em overside!"
It was doubtful anyone heard him. The passengers screamed, shouted, hurled taunts and insults as the pirates had done not long ago. Demoralized by the loss of their ship, the pirates were backed against the gunwales, forced to choose between the sea and steel. Some chose one path, some the other.
Suddenly the decks were clear of enemies. Before the last shout had died away, the vessel carried only dead and dying pirates. With triumphant shouts and relieved laughter, those were soon tumbled over the side too.
The two ships drifted apart as the sea breeze shoved on the one vessel above the waves. Pirates swam or struggled to grip floating casks, hatches, bundled sails, coils of rope. The dromon was only a line in the water dotted with flotsam and floating heads.
Infected by bloodlust, the cocky passengers couldn't get enough, and lobbed whatever they could grab at the black bobbing heads in the water. They jeered and hooted for a long time. Eventually even the strongest youths could not pitch that far, for the ship had moved on.
"Look, John," said the outlaw. He pointed with his sword but somehow dropped it. "We beat --"
Little John caught him before he crashed to the deck.

&&&&&-----&&&&&

Propped against a hatch cover, Robin Hood sat quietly as the gentle fingers of a nun packed cotton rags on his neck wound. Giovanni the merchant had offered up a cask and broached it. The little blonde girl brought Robin a draught of sweet wine red as blood, and Robin poured it down his throat, barely tasting it.
Above him, looming like a mast, Little John used a rag to wipe blood off Robin's father's sword, and slide it home in its sheath. Around them, sailors spliced and rove new lines as if the attack had been no more than a squawl. In a short while the sails snapped to, bellying full, tugging the vessel towards Venice. The sailors asked Robin Hood to captain, but he simply pointed to the boatswain. Pilgrims reordered their belongings and lives. They restacked bales dotted with rusty blood, pitched over the side split casks and splinters and broken scimitars and at least one severed hand, tended the wounded, who were many, and prayed over the dead, of which there were eight or nine, including two children. The monk lit a censor, and gray incense smoke was snatched forward by the breeze. Harday and his son Hume and the surviving Hospitaller sang a hymn in German, sad and sweet and surprisingly beautiful.
Still sitting, Robin Hood added his prayers to the thanksgiving.
Afterwards, Little John perched on a bale and looked at him. Robin said, "It's terrible to lose anyone, John, especially to violence, especially children. But not a third of these folk would have lived through the attack had we bowed to the will of those devils."
Little John used Robin's belt knife to pare splinters off his quarterstaff. "You're talking cocksure again, for all your earlier talk of doom and gloom. Have you left the Holy Land behind at last?"
Robin squinted in thought, turned to face the stern, grimaced, turned around again, grimaced again. "I guess so. I'll watch from our bow from now on. It'll be good to get home. It's been a long time."
Little John tried to hide a grin in his bushy brown beard. "And Marian?"
Robin lost his breath in a gush. Then he grinned back. "She'll come around."
"Aye. So do we all."
END