Read Online Laura Strickland - The Guardians of Sherwood Trilogy by Champion of Sherwood - Free Book Online Page A

him. That had been so long ago, so far away. He remembered only her smile, and the softness of her eyes.
    Light flickered against his closed eyelids. He opened his eyes and looked up.
    Linnet stood there, a torch in one hand, a flask in the other. “Here.” She sank to her knees beside him. “Water.”
    Thank God . He reached his good hand for it. His fingers brushed hers and she looked away.
    He drank greedily, drained half the flask’s contents, and then made as if to hand it back to her.
    “Drink all you wish. There is a stream close by.” She hesitated. “You must be hungry.”
    He shook his head. He ached too much for hunger. He had not hurt so since he first began training, the butt of all the older lads’ cruelty.
    “There will be something to eat soon.” She arose and left him, never once having looked him in the eyes.
    Gareth tried not to feel a sense of loss. She meant nothing to him. A Saxon peasant. He could allow her to mean nothing. And the sense of connection he thought he had felt between them had been sheer fancy. A beautiful woman touching him, tending him, should stir his interest and his manhood. That was only to be expected.
    He closed his eyes again and wondered if he would ever be sent to his uncle. He wondered if he wanted to be. Aye, anything was better than this situation in which he now found himself.
    He must have fallen into a pain-wracked doze, for the next thing he knew he roused to a touch on his arm. Linnet knelt beside him once more, with her mother, straight and tall, standing over her.
    “Tend his hurts,” Wren said, “and then get away from him.” In the harsh torch light, Wren’s face bore the signs of grief. Gareth wondered just what Scarface had meant to her—something dear, plainly, for she had aged in a day.
    She added to her daughter, “Do you need my help?”
    “Nay, Mother.” Linnet gazed up at the woman. Gareth tried not to notice the graceful line of her neck or the beauty of her bosom. “You must be sorely depleted after…after—” Linnet’s voice broke. “You go rest.”
    Wren ran a disparaging look over Gareth. “You, whelp—do not give me reason to end your miserable life. Do not lay a finger on my daughter.” To Linnet she added, “I suppose you had better feed him when you are done.”
    Throw a scrap or two to the hound, Gareth could not help but think, and struggled to straighten his spine again. The woman stepped away, not far, and Gareth turned his eyes on the healer. He could not be sure what had taken place back in the village. But Linnet’s face showed the marks of tears, and her emotions pulled at him unaccountably, almost as if he could sense all she felt.
    She busied herself with her salves and bandages, her eyes upon her hands and not on him.
    He could hear the others talking—Fal on a rant, encouraged by the small sister, Lark. And he could still hear the trees whispering.
    “This will hurt,” Linnet told him. It must be what she said to everyone she tended. He shook his head; he could hardly hurt more.
    But he was wrong. The pain, when she peeled the blood-caked bandages from his shoulder, left him sweating. Her hands shook when she cleaned the raw, angry wound.
    “This looks worse than it was yesterday. It has not had a fair chance to heal. Perhaps I should consult with my mother.”
    “No.”
    “But she is far more skilled at healing than I, with powers I do not possess.”
    “She has no reason to aid me.” A foolish thing to say. Did he think Linnet had? Clearly, Scarface had meant something to her and clearly, like the others, she had translated her grief into a fiercer hatred for him, Gareth. She could not even bear to meet his gaze.
    A shadow moved behind her. The other lass, Lark, stood there, an ugly look on her face, the ever-present knife in her hands. “Trouble, sister?”
    “Nay, Lark. I wonder only how to keep him alive until his use to us is done.”
    Lark spat. “To my mind, he has no use. Let Fal kill him