Not so far off, Jacelyn de Lacy was placing a cask of her own against the base of a tree. “What’s in these things, by the way?”

“I don’t know,” Kyle answered, “but they’ll burn for a good long time.”

“We’ll put one more a bit farther in, shall we,” Quill commanded from the horsecart, even though he’d just said they had placed them far enough. “Then we’ll light them from the road. Morg!” He called again, gesturing to a new cask.

Kyle grunted and returned to the cart. Why Quill couldn’t carry one himself, Kyle didn’t know. Even Jacelyn could carry them, and she was a woman. But it wasn’t worth griping about. It didn’t matter to Kyle none as long as the work got done. He bent his knees to tilt another cask into his arms. Twenty more or so were on the cart bed, which they would plant at regular stops on the way back to Nottingham Castle. They’d traveled halfway to Tickhill before stopping to ready their first fire, and Kyle was eager to get it lit. Even though the trip back would take longer than the ride out, at least they’d be moving closer to home and closer to beds.

“I can’t believe we’re burning down the whole forest,” Jacelyn said, wiping the dirt from her hands.

“It won’t burn the whole forest,” Peveril tisked. “But it will clear the trees away from the road. Make it harder for them to sneak up on anyone.”

“Good luck with that,” Jacelyn scoffed. “But I wasn’t complaining. All the better if it burns them right out of the forest and into our hands.”

Kyle hauled his cask off, waddling, shuffling well past where he had lain the first one.

“I don’t get it,” he called back to them. “We killed Robin Hood, so why bother?”

“It sends a message,” Quill answered, “about keeping our promises. We cannot suffer the people to see us as weak.”

Jacelyn argued something against this, but Kyle wasn’t interested enough to keep listening. He kept ambling off until he seemed a good enough distance away from the previous cask to tie his lines together and they could be on their way.