“And who’s this long lout?” she asked, inspecting Schmendrick as though he were something she had found sticking to the sole of her shoe. “He’s no townsman. I don’t like the look of him. Slit his wizard.”

She had meant to say either “weasand” or “gizzard,” and had said both, but the coincidence trailed down Schmendrick’s spine like wet seaweed. He slid off Jack Jingly’s horse and stood before the outlaw captain. “I am Schmendrick the Magician,” he announced, swirling his cloak with both hands until it billowed feebly. “And are you truly the famous Captain Cully of the greenwood, boldest of the bold and freest of the free?”

A few of the outlaws snickered, and the woman groaned. “I knew it,” she declared. “Gut him, Cully, from gills to guilt, before he does you the way the last one did.” But the captain bowed proudly, showing an eddy of baldness on his crown, and answered, “That am I. He who hunts me for my head shall find a fearful foe, but he who seeks me as a friend may find me friend enow. How do you come here, sir?”

“On my stomach,” said Schmendrick, “and unintentionally, but in friendship nonetheless. Though your leman doubts it,” he added nodding at the thin woman. She spat on the ground.

Captain Cully grinned and laid his arm warily along the woman’s sharp shoulders. “Ah, that’s only Molly Grue’s way,” he explained. “She guards me better than I do myself. I am generous and easy; to the point of extravagance, perhaps‌—‌an open hand to all fugitives from tyranny, that’s my motto. It is only natural that Molly should become suspicious, pinched, dour, prematurely old, even a touch tyrannical. The bright balloon needs the knot at one end, eh, Molly? But she’s a good heart, a good heart.” The woman shrugged herself away from him, but the captain did not turn his head. “You are welcome here, sir sorcerer,” he told Schmendrick. “Come to the fire and tell us your tale. How do they speak of me in your country? What have you heard of dashing Captain Cully and his band of freemen? Have a taco.”

Schmendrick accepted the place by the fire, graciously declined the gelid morsel, and replied, “I have heard that you are the friend of the helpless and the enemy of the mighty, and that you and your merry men lead a joyous life in the forest, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. I know the tale of how you and Jack Jingly cracked one another’s crowns with quarter-staves and became blood brothers thereby; and how you saved your Molly from marriage to the rich old man her father had chosen for her.” In fact, Schmendrick had never heard of Captain Cully before that very evening, but he had a good grounding in Anglo-Saxon folklore and knew the type. “And of course,” he hazarded, “there was a certain wicked king—”

“Haggard, rot and ruin him!” Cully cried. “Aye, there’s not one here but’s been done wrong by old King Haggard‌—‌driven from his rightful land, robbed of his rank and rents, skinned out of his patrimony. They live only for revenge‌—‌mark you, magician‌—‌and one day Haggard will pay such a reckoning—”