Page 98

He'd even ordered his soldiers to take me alive. Everything led back to the same thing.

Guy was the bait.

And Fitzwalter knew I'd come for him.

"You can't go into Nottingham," Alana said.

"Watch me."

"Robin, he's the sheriff. He's being held behind thirty feet of stone wall, four gates, and an entire garrison. Fitzwalter's sitting in the middle of that castle waiting for you to walk straight into his hands."

"I know."

She sighed. “Then you can't go."

I looked at her, then at Little John and Merry. The others stood around the fire, watching me.

"No," I said.

Alana frowned.

"No, what?"

"He's my mate."

Nobody spoke. I turned and walked toward Little John's lean-to.

"Bring me the map."

I cleared the table with my forearm and spread the parchment across it. I'd spent three years putting that map together.

A little information from a carter here, a mason there. A laundress who'd worked in the east tower before her knees gave out had told me more about the castle's servants' passages than any soldier ever could.

I knew the four gates and their guard rotations.

I knew about the postern beneath the kitchens that flooded whenever the river rose.

There was a drainage tunnel running beneath the curtain wall into the Leen, and a gap in the barred window of the muniment room where a mason had died before completing the work.

Nobody had bothered to repair it.

I'd collected every detail because I wanted to know how to stay out of Nottingham Castle for the rest of my life.

Now I was studying the same map, looking for a way inside.

For three years, Guy Bisbane had chased me through Sherwood. He'd followed my tracks, studied my habits, and mapped my raids on the wall of his office.

He'd sworn to drag me back to Nottingham in chains. Now he was the one being held prisoner.

And I intended to bring him home.

To me.

23

GUY

Thirty-one unfamiliar soldiers had taken up positions around Nottingham Castle, and every last one of them answered to Edmund Fitzwalter.