“He has no right.” Friar Tuck shook his head. Marion noticed how the crowd started to cling to each other, mothers holding their children closer. It wasn’t for warmth.

“And not just Thorney.” Stutely reached for a half-eaten dough-cake on the rocks by the fire. “It’s everywhere. We went to Godling and it was the same there, and Lowdham and Lanley Marsh. We didn’t have nowhere to go after that, we were too tired. We have children, you know? What were we supposed to do?”

Will Scarlet at last removed his hands from his blades, and instead patted Stutely on the shoulders. “I knew this would happen! We lay low and we stay out of the Sheriff’s way, and what happens? The Sheriff thinks he can do whatever he wants!”

Stutely chewed on the cake, but it didn’t stop him from talking. “It’s worse in Bernesdale, I hear. They took over the city, booted everyone out of their homes, every last one. They say they’re bringing wagons and wagons there, stockpiling. That’s when I knew I had to come find you, no matter what it took.”

“Wait.” Tuck put his hands out. “This is out of the realm of our capabilities.”

Stutely’s eyebrows smashed together. “Out of the … realm … of your … capabilities?”

“It’s beyond our help.”

“Beyond your help?” His confusion led him to look around, for the first time connecting with the remainder of the crowd. He choked for a moment and then spat his food into the fire. “You’re going to fight for us, aren’t you?”

“Fight for you?” Robin asked. “Has there been fighting?”

“No, no. I don’t think so,” Stutely stammered to understand. “We thought you would do that for us.”

Marion took the full weight of that expectation like an axe. Beside her, Robin too reeled with the ramification. “So you just abandoned your homes,” he laughed, half-heartedly, “expecting me to come and rescue you?”

“Robin.” She reached out to him, but he shook her off. A log popped in the fire and a cloud of embers floated up and away.

Stutely didn’t answer. He studied the faces of each person watching him, and apparently found disappointment.

“I knew it. I knew you were full of shit.” He snatched an unattended wooden cup and drank everything in it, its liquid pouring out the sides of his mouth and into his beard. “I told my friend Munday you were a liar. But I came anyways. I knew it.”

Scarlet, naturally, took first offense. “Hold on a moment—”

“Fuck on all of you,” Stutely added. “I’ll just take my coin and go.”

Robin spun his head around. “Excuse me?”