He shifted on his feet. Torn flesh screamed at him, hot agony lancing through his leg. He winced and sucked in a sharp breath. Marian smiled, triumph painted in every line of her face, and Robin ground his teeth as he flexed his fingers, ready to snatch her neck again, this time with a far less gentle touch.
“You have a strange way of behaving before you ask someone for help.” He forced himself to stand straight even as his leg wailed in torment. “Four hundred pounds is not a pittance, you know.”
Every muscle in Marian’s body stilled. Even her hair seemed to freeze. “How did you know the amount of my eric?”
Robin smiled. “A little fox told me.”
Marian’s eyes flashed. Robin called his power again, summoning the same glamour he’d worn to meet her as a trader, painting his face with the same lines, loading his back with the same bundle of pelts. His whimsical green tunic faded to drab grey, the rich color muted to cloth worn ragged by time and hard work. Marian’s emerald eyes grew impossibly wider and her lips parted.
“You. You’re the one who told me to come here, told me that I could find help…from you.”
The spriggan, Will, laughed, a semi-hysterical sound that had no business coming from a body that size. Skin the color of aged cheese wrinkled with his glee and his lips spread to flash more sharp teeth. “A fine mess you’ve made for yourself then, lass. You’ll get no help from him now.”
“Now, now, Will, do not be rude. Of course we are going to help this fair lady.” Robin forced himself to walk on the injured leg, to show no pain, no weakness. He scooped up the fat purse they’d taken from an even fatter tax collector and loosened the silken drawstrings. “Four hundred pounds I think it was?”
Gold coins glittered in his palm as he held them up between himself and Marian. He waited until her eyes had locked onto the money, then without breaking eye contact, scattered the coins through the clearing with one flick of his hand. Marian jerked forward, realized what she’d done, and threw herself back against the tree with enough force to rattle her teeth. Her eyes burned with hatred as he repeated the process with the rest of the coins, flinging them about until the clearing seemed filled with golden rain. Will lost himself to a fit of giggles, broad shoulders quaking with mirth, but the bear that was Little John just snuffed an ursine sigh and shook his massive head.
When all the coins were sparkling in the grass like fireflies on a dark night, Robin strode back to Marian. “Gather your four hundred pounds. When you’re finished, we will have dinner and discuss the terms of repayment.”
No words escaped her lips, but they would have been redundant if they had. Her features were so expressive, they told him more clearly than any speech what was going through her mind. She wanted to tell him exactly what he could do with those coins. She wanted to scream at him—definitively wanted to shoot him again. The conflict played out on her face like a bloody war, the need to make him pay for his insult battling the knowledge that without the four hundred pounds, she would only face a similarly smug male face tomorrow. The kingdom of Meropis had a saying apropos to the situation—“between Scylla and Charybdis.” Robin wasn’t completely clear on who Scylla and Charybdis were, but he imagined they were two equally disagreeable females.#p#分页标题#e#
Finally, Marian’s gaze dropped like a lead fishing weight, her gaze dragging the ground as she took a small, but defiant step toward a particularly thick patch of gold. Robin chuckled as she passed him. Her shoulders sagged like a wet hat—a perfect picture of defeat.
Which made the vicious kick she landed to the arrow protruding from his leg a complete, and utter shock.
A howl of agony spilled from Robin’s mouth as he collapsed to the ground, hands fluttering around his leg, wanting to stop the pain, but afraid to make it worse. Marian’s steps grew lighter in the wake of his torment and she flitted about the clearing, plucking gold coins from the grass like a merry child gathering wild flowers.
Robin frowned. “Are you…humming?”
Marian ignored him, but she continued to hum. A jaunty little tune completely at odds with the macabre appearance of Robin’s mutilated leg.
His frown worsened. “I could kill you, you know.”
The happy tune didn’t stutter, nor did Marian’s movements lose their newfound pep. The world greyed at the edges, eaten by pain and his brain’s desire to part from reality until his body had the sense to heal the gory damage. He blinked at his leg, some corner of his mind holding the awareness that he needed to remove the arrow so he could heal. But that seemed like it would hurt even more. Wouldn’t it? His thoughts grew sluggish and he lolled to the side, barely catching himself on one hand to keep his face from planting in the grass.