Which was precisely why Robin had been skeptical of it. An unusually good deal was always more suspicious than an unusually bad one. “It’s a question of what we want, Alan, and why we want it. If we just want to give the Nottingham Guard hell for the sake of it, we could sign on with Prince John. But if we want to make our own difference, our own way, then do we really want to be beholden to him? What happens when he asks us to do something we don’t agree with?”

“I don’t know,” Alan admitted. “Just seems like a lot to turn down.”

“It is.” If Prince John was telling the truth, his help could have changed everything. But the odds of that were staggeringly thin. Robin looked up, searching for the nearest colored ribbon in the trees that marked the way home.

“He said he was going to Nottingham. What if he could help us with the Sheriff’s funeral?”

“What if he doesn’t want us involved at all?” Robin asked back. “If we told him our plans to rescue Will and Elena, he might have put a stop to it.” He had been careful to avoid giving up any details the prince did not already have, especially in regard to their intentions with Nottingham.

Marion could get them all the information that John claimed to have and more, and she was a good ways prettier, too.

“We don’t have the luxury of trusting anyone we don’t know, not until we get this done.”

Alan shrugged, clearly unconvinced. But Alan was just a farmhand who had been swept into this world, and thought the distinction between friends and enemies was absolute. Robin wondered if he had been teaching them the wrong things. Training to fight was a functional skill, but it reinforced the idea that swordplay was the solution to their problems. Instead, he needed to teach them how to think. He had taken for granted the ease of working with someone like William, who instinctively looked for the deeper motivations behind every opportunity. Robin needed to teach someone as simple as Alan how to anticipate not the next move, but the one that came five moves after that.

He didn’t have the damnedest idea how to do that.

And worse, William was on the opposite side looking five moves into Robin’s future, which was four more than Robin knew himself. He had barely figured out his current step, which was a long shot on its own.