A World That Will Not Turn to Ash (English)(From Ashes Vol.1)

Chapter 3 - Ambush

Guy spurred his horse and made it get around a fallen log, then he continued to advance into the forest without turning to look if the soldiers were following him.
The guards of Nottingham were not worth much, but Guy hoped that at least they were able to keep up with him without getting lost .
Maybe he should give them more precise orders, send them to explore the undergrowth bush to bush in search of some trace of Robin Hood, but had the feeling that the exploratory mission was just a waste of time.
Hood knew the forest better than them and that random search wouldn't certainly give any result, but Gisborne had to at least give the sheriff the impression that he was doing something to find the outlaw.
And then that useless ride would give him at least a bit of time to think.
What had happened with Marian that morning worried and embarrassed him at the same time. He had had no intention of ruining the reputation of the girl and he hoped that consequences wouldn't be too unpleasant for her, but at the same time he wished that the sheriff's insinuations had been true.
He sighed to himself: when he alluded to the marriage, the silence of the young woman was way too eloquent and Guy had no more illusions in that sense.
Even if he knew that, the thought of Marian's body so close to his when they woke up filled him with a warm feeling that was as new as pleasant. If only Marian had managed to reciprocate his feelings for her!
An arrow pointing to his head brushed against him, and planted itself in a nearby tree. Guy looked up just in time to see a man who disappeared in the bushes.
"It is Robin Hood! Get him!" He shouted, launching the horse in pursuit of the man.
The hooded man seemed to vanish into thin air, then he showed for a moment and ran away again, luring Gisborne and the soldiers into a chase.
Guy bowed his head to avoid a low branch, but he didn't slow the pace of the horse: if that man was really Robin Hood or one of his friends, he would catch him.
He vaguely noticed that the chase had brought them forward in a forest area that he didn't know well, but he didn't think of a trap until his horse fell in a ditch hidden by dry foliage.
Gisborne was thrown off the saddle and fell a few meters ahead, landing painfully on his back. Behind him, the neighing of horses and the cries of surprise of his men made him understand that he wasn't the only one who fell in the ambush.
He tried to pull out his sword, but, before he could move, he found himself with a knife at his throat. The hands of two men grabbed him, pinning his arms and legs, while a third one took his sword. They abruptly pulled him standing and they tied his arms behind his back.
Gisborne looked at them: they weren't Robin Hood's men, he was sure of this, but he could not recognize any of those people because they all wore a mask on their faces. There were many of them, at least thirty, and they were slaughtering mercilessly the soldiers who had fallen from their horses, hitting them with swords.
Only three of the guards weren't killed and they were bound and pushed abruptly beside Guy.
The injured horses whinnied in pain and weakly moved at the bottom of the pit with their legs broken, but none of the outlaws bothered to put an end to their suffering.
"Who are you?" Guy shouted and one of the men struck him on the face with the back of his hand.
"You have no right to speak, dog of Nottingham. We know who you are and that is enough. Today you will pay for your sins."
Looking in Guy's eyes, the man approached one of the captive soldiers.
"Their fault is to have obeyed you and for that the sentence is death." Suddenly, he cut the prisoner's throat while his companion did the same with another soldier. The two men fell to the ground, writhing weakly before they stood still.
Gisborne watched them die, terrified, and, behind him, the last surviving soldier, a young man in his teens, began to cry and moan in terror.
The outlaws pointed a finger at Gisborne.
"Your sins are much more serious, sheriff's dog. For years you have oppressed the people of the villages and everyone here has lost someone dear because of you or your master, but it's over now. You will die, but before killing you, each of us will take a little satisfaction."
The bandits untied Guy's hands to take off his coat and jacket, then they tied him to a tree, with his face against the trunk.
The young soldier kept crying and the leader of the bandits slapped him to force him to open his eyes.
"You are lucky, boy, you shall remain alive. You'll look carefully everything we do to this dog and then you'll go back to the sheriff with a message. You will describe what you saw in detail and then you will tell him that this is the fate of the oppressors."
The first lash came suddenly and caught Gisborne by surprise, tearing a cry from him, but the second one was not immediate: the bandits waited a few seconds so the pain could grew, becoming more intense.
Guy remembered that once the sheriff had said something like that: if the floggings were too close together, the pain of the second would have damped down the first one, so if he had to whip a prisoner it was better not to hurry.
Apparently the bandits knew it very well.
Guy, however, would have preferred not to be aware of what awaited him.

Marian listlessly ate, annoyed with herself for her own weakness.
She was ready to risk even her life for what she thought was right, so she shouldn't give so much importance to her compromised reputation.
Robin would understand the situation, or at least she hoped so, her father had already accepted that she was the Nightwatchman and she had never cared about other people's opinion. So why did the sheriff's dirty allusions upset her so much?
Maybe she was less courageous than she had always thought, but she didn't want to admit it.
She was aware that her silence had hurt Guy's feelings and she was genuinely sorry for that.
Marian sighed: keeping her conscience at bay was much simpler when she still did not care for him.
She pushed her plate away and got up from the table. She decided to leave the castle and go for a walk to distract her mind for a while.
She wished that Guy would return early from his mission so she could speak sincerely with him and clarify things at least with him. She hated the sheriff for having forced him to go on the hunt for outlaws. She knew very well that the order the sheriff had given to Guy was unnecessary and it was just a way to punish him for his delay.
At least, Marian thought, today it was a market day and she would be able to pass time more quickly while she waited for the return of the black knight.
The girl smiled to herself thinking that Guy looked younger as he slept and she gasped in surprise when she found herself face to face with Robin Hood.
"Robin! What are you doing here?" She asked, blushing. She felt strangely guilty about having met him while she was thinking of Gisborne.
Robin looked at her, raising an eyebrow.
"Can't you guess?"
Marian hated the sheriff with her whole being: it was clear that Robin must have already heard the rumors about her and Guy.
"I do not like riddles, Robin."
"And I do not like to hear that Gisborne went to bed with my betrothed." Robin retorted with a poisonous tone that surprised the girl.
"Since when do you listen to the chatter from the tavern?"
"When all Nottingham speaks about it, it's hard to ignore gossips."
Marian blushed with shame and irritation.
"And what do you believe, Robin?"
"If Gisborne dared to put just a finger on you, I will kill him with my bare hands."
"Guy hasn't done anything wrong!" Marian blurted. "It was just a misunderstanding!"
"Guy? Are you defending him now?"
"Don't you trust me anymore?"
"You have not answered my question, it is so hard to do it? Did you sleep with Gisborne or not, Marian?"
The girl hesitated, and when she finally answered, her tone was uncertain.
"Nothing happened..."
"This is not a no." Robin said bitterly, then he turned away and he disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.
"Robin!" Cried Marian, slamming a foot on the ground, but he was already gone.
The girl returned to the castle, furious with Robin, with the sheriff, with the whole world, but especially with herself. Her uncertainty had managed to hurt Robin's feelings. Not bad, she thought, two in one morning: how many more people would she be able to disappoint before the day ended?
She decided not to go to see her father for the moment. Perhaps gossip had not yet arrived in the dungeons, but in any case she wanted to avoid seeing a look of disappointment even on his face.
She returned to her rooms, and she threw herself on the bed with a sigh, burying her face in the pillow.
There was still the smell of Guy on the sheets, but she did not mind, in fact it was vaguely comforting.
That night she had never felt threatened in any way, and sleeping with Guy had been an entirely innocent thing, even though no one would have believed it.
Marian fell asleep cuddling the pillow.

Guy panted after yet another blow.
He had stopped counting the lashes after the tenth one and he kept slipping in and out of unconsciousness and pain.
When he thought he was about to lose his senses at last, a new burst of pain came to wake him up and he no longer had the strength to cry.
They would kill him, he was perfectly aware of this, and he had no more energy to react, he could only hope that the end would came quickly and that it would put an end to that unbearable suffering.
"Now we will send you to hell!" Shouted one of the bandits, approaching him with a dagger and Guy could only think that if he was going to cut his throat, at least the end would come quickly. He kept his eyes closed and thought of Marian, how she had embraced him only a few hours before: if he had to die he wanted this to be his last thought.
"No! Let's hang him, just like he has done with our loved ones!" Shouted one of the other outlaws and everyone else joined in.
The one with the knife grinned and used the blade to cut the ropes that bound Guy to the trunk of the oak, while other two men dragged him to a more suitable tree, a plant with a branch leaning over a cliff. In the bottom of the ravine, the river was flowing fast and furious.
"Look boy," said the bandit to the young soldier "he will be hung to that branch and we will leave him there to rot. The ravens will be happy. Tell the sheriff, tell him what happened to his dog!"
Gisborne was barely conscious, but those words filled him with a mad terror. As a boy he had risked being hanged unjustly and now everything in him rebelled at the thought of ending in the same way.
He would accept any other death, but not this one, he could not end like this, not with a noose around his neck.
Despair gave him back some energy and Guy tried to fight, to escape the grip of the men who held him.
He managed to pull one away and the bandit fell into the ravine, banging his head against the rocks before falling into the river, but Guy was unable to break free from the grip of the other one.
The outlaw with the knife, furious because of his companion's death, pounced on Gisborne and stabbed him, leaving the knife stuck in his chest, then he pushed him down with a kick, throwing him into the river.
He watched him disappear under the water, then he turned his back to the cliff and approached the young soldier, pulling out another knife from his belt.
"Did you see? This is how we kill the oppressors. Do not forget any detail, you have to tell everything to your sheriff." He took the hand of the boy and pressed it against the trunk of a tree, then he cut off his little finger with his knife. "This is to be certain that you won't forget anything. Now go away!"
The boy howled in pain, then the bandits let him go and the young man staggered away.