The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley Page A

your little staff. I welcome you.”
    Little John’s mouth stretched and curled as if he were not accustomed to smiling; and he said, “I shall try to be useful. And your name, my new friend?”
    â€œMuch,” said Much. “Much of Whitestone Mill, as I was; although the person of that name seems to be gaining some notoriety of late, and I believe I shall start leaving him at home in Sherwood.”
    The outlaws were lucky in their first winter. Snow fell rarely, and only a little of it sifted through the many branches and stubborn brown oak leaves of Sherwood to cover the ground. The center of Greentree’s glen gleamed white in the sunlight occasionally; but what snow there was melted quickly. Thanks to Harald, by the time there was ice underfoot everyone had shoes stout enough to walk without fear of frostbite, and a leather tunic to cut the winter wind. As the season stayed mild, the animals the outlaws depended on for food and clothing were in good condition, and most of them continued to stray through the forest as they did during the rest of the year, and did not take hibernation too seriously.
    The winter chill and the shortness of daylight did, however, cut down on the number of folk who left what homes they had to seek Robin Hood, for which favour Robin felt that a little snow and a permanently cold nose was worth it. Even the sheriff and the king’s foresters seemed willing to live and let live for a time, and take things, even outlaws, a little more leisurely, be grateful for the boon of a gentle winter, and wait for spring.
    By midwinter Robin could hardly remember a time when Little John was not at his elbow, patient and hard-working, ready to carry out orders, and to suggest improvements on those orders before he followed them. As his frame filled out to its proper proportions, he suited his nickname even more illustriously than he had when Robin met him on the log bridge; and yet for all his size he moved quietly through the laboriously preserved tangle around Greentree. He also never got lost.
    And he unexpectedly knew practical things about the design and shoring-up of earthworks. “From farming a landscape that doesn’t want to be farmed,” he said. And from being the largest man in several villages and automatically expected to do more than an equal share of the heavy work. “I learnt to have an eye for hills and ditches in self-defence,” he said.
    â€œSelf-defence,” said Much. “Ah. A man the height of a Midsummer bonfire would find himself preoccupied with self-defence.”
    â€œEven as horses are plagued by horse-flies,” said Little John. “I learnt wrestling when I was a boy, when I got tired of being knocked down by boys half my size and twice my age.”
    Nonetheless no one was sorry when the little green knots of young leaves began to appear on the tips of twigs, even though the stream at the edge of Greentree’s meadow promptly overflowed and the hut-cave where they mostly slept was flooded, and almost everyone caught cold. No one became dangerously ill, only a trifle snarly.
    â€œHave you noticed that Robin hasn’t complained about the stink of the arrow-glue and Harald’s stretched hides for over a week?” said Much. “Because he can’t smell ’em. Maybe the foresters all have head-colds too and won’t wonder why someone has set up a tannery in the middle of Sherwood.”
    Perhaps it was the end of his head-cold, or the relative peace of the winter just passed, which made Robin sharp when Much brought a stranger to Greentree one day in early April. The man was the first stranger Robin had seen—or rather, been seen by—in several months.
    In any company that did not include Little John this man would have been large; and he towered over Much. But where Little John had come to them dressed as a man dresses who has had an empty purse and no home for some time, this man dressed as a