I had a message to Robin from King Richard in my saddlebag and I believed that it contained the date for our departure — it was only by using a great deal of force upon my self that I had refrained from tearing open the sealed parchment and reading this private missive between the King and my lord. But refrain, I did. I wanted more than anything to be his faithful, reliable vassal, utterly trustworthy, utterly loyal: for Robin had done so much more for me than grant me land. In a sense, he had made me what I was. When we first met I had been just a grubby young thief from Nottingham, and he had saved me from mutilation and possibly death at the hands of the law. Then, believing that I had some talent, he had arranged for me to be educated in music, in the Norman-French language, in Latin — the tongue of monks and scholars — and in the art of combat, and I was now as accomplished with a sword and dagger as I was with the vielle, the five-stringed polished apple-wood instrument with which I accompanied my singing.

And so I had spent many hard days and nights in the saddle wearing down the muddy roads of England in the service of my master — and now, labouring up that endless emerald slope, it felt as if I were coming home.

I glanced over to my left, as Ghost put one weary hoof in front of another up that steep hill, to check the height of the sun — it was mid-afternoon — and noticed to my complete surprise a mass of horsemen not two hundred yards away. At a rough count they numbered about a hundred men, ordered in two lines, helmeted, green-cloaked and clad in mail, all armed with twelve-foot spears, held vertically, and tipped with steel that glinted evilly in the sunlight. My first reaction was fear: they were approaching at a trot and on my exhausted mount there was no way I could outrun them.