Arable watched Robin Hood pull his weapon out of a young man in a tattered brown smock. She had seen more blood in the last ten minutes than in her entire life, and already it ceased to horrify her. Robin raised his sword again, this time at John Little. The only one who had defended her, his giant fatherly face was riven in grief. John held his hands out at Robin, cringing, “That’s enough, Robin! That’s it!”

She’d heard the word bloodlust before, but never thought it was real. Robin was gone from the world, like a drunkard. It took all of John Little’s efforts to bring him back down. Eventually he dropped his weapon and shuddered in shame—there was nothing of the light-hearted showman she had met a month earlier.

She had bet everything on her hope to find a future with these people. She had begged their hospitality.

John was holding Robin’s head, shivering tightly, mourning. Once he could, Robin looked upon what he’d done. Not at Gisbourne’s body but the final man he’d killed, the one in the brown smock. Arable didn’t understand at first, but eventually it hit her. That brown smock was no Guardsman’s tabard. Robin had killed an ally, defenseless, in blind rage. Probably one of the villagers from Bernesdale who had rallied to their aid. So many bodies, so many had lost their lives here. During the battle, nobody could be blamed. But this final death …

“It’s alright,” John was whispering to Robin, though it wasn’t.

Robin looked up to him, his lips quivered. “I saw red,” he whispered.

“I saw red.”

“I saw red.”

John held Robin’s face to his chest. “I know. But you’re back.”

It was a terrible thing, but it was only one more of a hundred terrible things that had happened in the last day. Arable’s emotions were closed off. She simply didn’t have the ability to care about any new problems. It was too hard to imagine these were real people, with entire lives of their own.

“Is that it?” came an uncertain voice. “Is it over?”

The survivors were regrouping. Already they were gathering the dead, or trying to bandage the wounded. Some had earned grievous injuries. The crowd thinned quickly by necessity, as the healthy helped carry the less fortunate away, hoping to get them to Bernesdale where they might find better assistance. Those who remained were a mix of furious and mortified. They fell instantly upon each other, arguing over what would happen next, and whether William’s edict to burn down the forest was anything but an empty threat.

“He won’t go through with it,” Arable said. Nobody here knew William the way she did. Looking at the parchment, she recognized William’s signature at its bottom, but it had to be some ploy. “He’s not Gisbourne. He wouldn’t.”