Hunter of Sherwood: Knight of Shadows by Toby Venables

Author:Toby Venables [Venables, Toby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Historical
ISBN: 9781781081624
Google: qocAmgEACAAJ
Amazon: 178108162X
Goodreads: 17571700
Publisher: Abaddon
Published: 2013-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

MOMENTS BEFORE, ONE of their number – a yeoman who, two days prior, Gisburne had heard conjuring loving, longing images of the lush, green pastures of his farm in Kent – had suddenly and completely lost his wits, scooping up handfuls of the ash-grey dust and grit and shovelling them into his mouth until he gagged and retched, only to repeat the process, laughing and moaning like an idiot. For a moment, those around could only stand and stare, their resolve utterly drained – until a doughty, toothless old soldier called Bowyer stepped forward, and, with no more emotion than one would spare for an ox, raised his mace and felled the man with a blow across the temple. The yeoman twitched in the dust. Bowyer stove in his skull with a second blow, straightened then turned back again to contemplate his own doom. Gisburne was sickened – but also relieved. He wasn’t sure, in that moment, whether to detest Bowyer for the act, or detest himself for lacking the resolve to do the same.

None spoke. The big man next to him – Gisburne thought his name was John – let his head droop, and a long, shaky breath escaped him. It almost sounded like a death rattle.

Tongues were parched, brains exhausted almost beyond the capacity for thought, but this, Gisburne knew, was not the reason for their silence now. He had seen men find inner reserves in worse states. He had seen soldiers shout and sing and laugh in defiance when they were so badly beaten and wounded it seemed impossible that they were alive.

This was different. It was the silence of defeat.

He yearned for some familiar sound then – any sound – was almost ready to batter his fellows into some response. When people roared and shouted in battle, even if it was to mask their terror, you at least knew they had some spirit left. But when that silence fell… That’s when you knew you had lost. Gisburne had seen it before. The colour draining from faces, the resolve falling from limbs. It was as if their lives were already leaving them – as if they had come to some realisation that their end was upon them, and that no matter what they did, they would never witness another new day – never kiss another woman, never eat another meal, never see another place beyond the wretched field of corpses. Such men were finished before the fatal arrow or sword point struck, already picturing themselves food for the birds that circled patiently above their heads. Spirits flown, their very ghosts crushed. Red stains in the dust. “Battles are first fought in the mind,” Gilbert used to say.

In this chaos, from the left of him, came an impossible, utterly incongruous sound.

Laughter.

It was not, as one might have expected, the laughter of madness, or cynicism, or irony. It was a rich, full-throated, belly laugh – something as alien to this place as the cool sound of trickling water. A laugh Gisburne had heard a thousand times – perhaps tens of thousands of times.

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