Will in Scarlet by Matthew Cody

forest was protection enough. But that was before she’d learned about Crooked’s Men, the rival bandit gang that hunted the northern woods. There was a truce of sorts these days between the Merry Men and Crooked’s Men, but there’d been violencein the past, and any peace was fragile. Each eyed the other’s territory greedily.
    The South Road wasn’t well traveled, and the most Much and her companions could hope for was passing farmers and tradesmen. The sheriff’s tax men used the road as they pleased, but no one would dare rob them. The Merry Men were a sad sight, even by outlaw standards, and there was barely enough to go around, and nothing to spare for an ailing stranger.
    Wat Crabstaff greeted them at the camp’s gate, which was little more than a few sturdy logs strung together with twine. Wat was missing his two front teeth, and his distinctive smile could be seen through the gaps in the gate.
    “Well, the mighty have returned! How was business today, sirs?”
    “No cart,” grumbled Stout.
    “We’ve a wounded man,” said John. “Single rider on horseback, but I think he may be worth something to someone.”
    Stout snorted at this, but John ignored him.
    “At the very least we’ve a well-bred horse and some gear,” added Much, trying to sound more pleased with the day’s work than she really was. “Horse good enough for a king, I’ll wager.”
    “Oh, well, won’t his lordship be pleased?” said Wat as he swung the log gate open wide. “And if your poor wounded prisoner’s ransom doesn’t get paid, perhaps Gilbert can use him for target practice?”
    The Merry Men’s camp wasn’t impressive to look at, but it served its purpose. There was space enough for every man in the band to have a bit of privacy. Being the newest member, Much was given a leaky construction that was half moth-eaten tent and half drafty lean-to. But she endured the cold as best she could, and John had lent her a set of thick, if smelly, animalhides to bury herself under during the worst hours of the night. She slept like a burrowing animal under all those covers, and in the morning she’d have to crack the frost off the furs.
    It was a typical camp belonging to a typical band of half-starved outlaws, but one thing separated the Merry Men’s camp from any other in all of England—the statue of the Horned and Hooded God. One of the many tales told about Sherwood was that of Herne the Hunter, a pagan god of the Celts who was said to roam the woods on the night of the full moon. It had been Wat’s idea to build their own Herne, as a kind of scarecrow to frighten away unwanted spirits and, more important, to scare travelers into giving up their coin without a fight.
    But Wat turned out to be a poor engineer as well as a blasphemous and superstitious idiot. And in the end, they were left with a mammoth statue of wood and fur so heavy that not even John Little could move it more than a few inches, never mind carry it with them on ambush.
    Despite its practical uselessness, Wat wouldn’t allow them to take it down, lest they offend the real Herne. The Horned and Hooded God (so named because of his giant potato-sack head and broken buck’s rack of antlers) now stood watch over them all, day and night, and made an excellent home for mice.
    In time, the Merry Men had come to think of the statue as a kind of grotesque good-luck charm, their good luck being that they’d survived the worst winter in memory and hadn’t been forced to eat Wat for his stupidity. But spring was upon them, and there was a new sense of cheer in the air, or at least there had been up until the moment Much and John had dragged a half-dead prisoner into their midst.
    “We sent you after a cart loaded with goods, and you bringus back another mouth to feed?” said Gilbert. He stood next to the fire, arms crossed over his broad chest, scowling. His bow was leaning, thankfully unstrung, against his tent. On his left hand began a patchwork of burn scars