'There they are! In the King's name, stop!'

Ranulf and Bardolph fled. A crossbow bolt whirled past their heads. They had nearly reached the mouth of an alleyway when Bardolph suddenly groaned, flung his hands forward and crashed to the cobbles. Ranulf stopped and ran back.

'Don't leave me!' pleaded Bardolph. Ranulf let his hand run down the man's back and felt the cruel barb embedded at the base of his spine. 'The wound is grievous.' Ranulf looked despairingly across the square at the dark shapes hurrying towards him.

'Then don't leave me alive!' Bardolph wept. 'Please, Ranulf, do it! Do it now!'

He shook his sweat-soaked face and peered closer.

'Please!' Bardolph insisted. 'They'll keep me alive for weeks!'

Ranulf heard the slap of leather on the cobbles.

'Look!' he hissed. 'Look over there! We are safe!'

Bardolph painfully turned his head and Ranulf swiftly slit his throat, breathed a prayer and hurried into the shadows.

The forest had always stood there, the trees providing a canopy to shield the earth from the sky. Beneath this veil of greenness which stretched as far as the eye could see, the forest had witnessed murder as long as it had seen man himself. First the small dark people who burnt their victims in hanging cages to atone their angry war gods or placate the great Earth Mother whose name should never be mentioned. They were replaced by more warlike men who hung their victims from oak or elm in sacrifices to Thor and one-eyed Woden. These, too, had gone to dust, supplanted by men who, though worshipping the white Christ, built temples to their own captains of power.

The trees had seen it all: the gnarled oak, the elm with its branches stooped with age. The forest was a dangerous place, a living thing, and through its green-dappled shadows slunk masked men who knew the secret paths and where to avoid the treacherous morass. Only a fool would wander from the beaten track which wound through Sherwood Forest, either north to Barnsleydale or south to Newark and the great road down to London.