“Stop it, you two!” Marion blurted out. She couldn’t suffer to see such bickering after all their progress. She would not watch it all fall apart for no reason. Their world had burned down before, and was poised to do so again. “This is not the time. There are people hurting out there.”

Arthur grunted in agreement. “What are we going to do about these raids?”

“What to do about them?” Robin shouted. “You don’t know the first thing about what’s happening, but you already think it has to be stopped, and you’re the ones to do it? You’re nothing compared to the Sheriff’s Guard. There’s a dozen of you and hundreds of them. And that’s aside from the fact that you shouldn’t do anything at all!”

“There it is,” Will snarled. “There’s your great plan again. Sit back and do nothing. Back down, tend to ourselves. That’s what he said last week. We move backward, they move forward, that’s how it works. You told us this would all blow over, Robin, but we’ve got a storm bearing down on us. How long should we wait it out? Oh I know, how about another three or four days? That’s when you’re leaving, isn’t it?”

He spat in the fire. Elena’s hands dropped down to stroke Much’s head. “The Sheriff didn’t just take our money and our homes,” she said.

“That’s right.” Will snapped his fingers. “He took our way of life. He took our dignity. It’s awful easy for you to tell us to wait for things to get better, because you have a life to get on back to. But we’re here. Our life is here. This is it. We’re sick of waiting. Things aren’t going to get better lessin’ we make them better.”

John Little tapped the dirt with his staff, seizing the attention. “Robin. You’ve had the best of intentions, but Will’s right. This isn’t your fight, and never was none. Your heart isn’t in it like your father’s was. Like ours are.”

“My heart’s not in it?” Robin said dryly. “I lost a father.”

“That you did,” John said. “But that was years before he died.”

The truth of that sentence was staggering, but Robin ignored it. “John. Don’t do this. You’re going to get these people killed.”

“Not me that’s doin’ it.” He frowned. “A call this important … Marion, this one’s for you.”

Her attention was fully in the fire. She saw Locksley Castle there, and the shattering difference between good intentions and reality. But while Lord Walter’s fate was by any account an accident, these raids were a deliberate act. Marion could not take back her mistakes any more than she could convince Roger de Lacy to undo something that had already—

“What is he talking about?” Robin interrupted.