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And in truth we were in very bad shape: there was hardly a man who was not wounded in some way. Hugh was limping from a lance wound in his right leg. John had a gash on his left arm that looked as if a sword point had scored up his naked forearm nearly to the bone. We had lost perhaps two score men in the final attack and their bodies were laid out in a neat row. The brothers Ket the Trow and Hob o’ the Hill were dead, too, their tiny corpses lying together a little apart from the rest as they would receive a pagan burial. Only Tuck, indomitable Tuck, was unwounded. He was sitting on a barrel of ale, eating a great piece of cheese, with his two great hounds Gog and Magog at his side, guarding a prisoner. It was Guy of Gisbourne.

The boy — the man — who had tortured me, humiliated me, stripped me of my pride in that foul Winchester dungeon was slumped dejectedly, hands bound, between the two massive dogs. He was facing the death of a renegade from Robin’s band with as much dignity as he could muster. One whole side of his face was swollen, I guessed from a great blow that must have rendered him unconscious, but before I could ponder his ill-luck in being captured rather than killed outright in battle, he caught sight of me, and with a cry of ‘Alan, help me!’ he tried to get to his feet. The two dogs growled, deep and terrible, like the vengeance of God, and Guy collapsed down again. I turned my back and walked away.

We washed ourselves and ate and drank and slept that hot afternoon at Linden Lea, and many of us, too many, died of our wounds. At dusk, Robin gathered together in the courtyard as many men as were able to walk. He stood over the forlorn figure of Guy of Gisbourne, who seemed to be trying to shrink into the earth at Robin’s feet.

‘We have fought, and we have won,’ said Robin in his carrying battle voice. ‘And many have died. And after victory comes justice. Here, before you, is a man who was once your comrade but today he rode with the enemy; this man, who was once your friend, with whom you shared your daily bread, is a traitor. What shall we do with him?’

The courtyard rang with cries of: ‘Boil him alive!’ and ‘Flay him!’ and ‘Hang, draw and quarter him’. A wag yelled: ‘Tell him one of your jokes!’ Robin held up a hand for silence. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘The punishment shall be-’

And then I was shouting: ‘Wait, wait. I claim his life. I claim his life in single combat.’ I don’t know why I did so; I could have sat back and watched my enemy meet his deservedly cruel end — and even enjoyed it. But there was something about his pathetic air, the way he had appealed to me before, and perhaps my sense of guilt was stirring. If I had not engineered his expulsion from Thangbrand’s with the stolen ruby, maybe he would have fought with us this day.

So I said it again: ‘I claim his life. I will fight him and kill him in single combat, if the prisoner is willing.’

Robin looked at me oddly. ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘What about your arm?’

‘It will be fine,’ I said, though I was far from sure. The cut was burning, my arm felt weak and I was trembling even as I loudly made the absurd boast: ‘My sword requires his life.’

‘Very well,’ said Robin. ‘The prisoner will face single combat with our brother Alan. Swords the only weapons. If he wins, he shall go free.’ There was some grumbling from the crowd at this, although a good many seemed to consider a sword fight to the death a fine entertainment to crown such a bloody day. ‘Does the prisoner accept the challenge?’

Guy had lifted his bruised head at this strange turn of events. He looked across at me, doubtless remembering the many times he had beaten me on the practice ground at Thangbrand’s. He half-smiled, a mere twitch of his dry lips, and said: ‘I accept.’

Behind me I heard a deep voice whisper in my ear. ‘By God’s swollen loins, you are a fool, young Alan. But don’t you worry; you’ll easily slaughter him. And if by some mischance, he wins, I’ll chop his head off myself.’

Both Guy and I stripped our tunics and shirts off to fight bare-chested in the warm evening. Robin had flaming torches brought out for light and I found myself facing my childhood enemy over the point of my sword inside a ring of jeering outlaws. As we circled each other, I felt the weight of my blade for the first time in months; my cut arm had weakened me more than I had supposed, and I was bone-weary from two days of battle. But then Guy spoke quietly, so that only I could hear him: ‘I enjoyed hearing you sing in Winchester, little trouvere, or rather hearing you squeal.’ He was looking at the burn scars on my naked ribs and, remembering the deep humiliation, the heat of the burning iron near my most intimate parts, I felt for the first time a flare of real anger. ‘Good,’ I thought, ‘now I can kill you.’ Whatever pity, whatever weakness I had felt before was swept away by his words. As we circled each other, naked steel in our hands, I felt my being fill with the strength that comes from pure hatred. I wanted his blood, I wanted his guts smeared all over my blade. I wanted him dying, begging for his life in front of me in the dust of the courtyard before my friends and comrades.

Then he sprang at me, and he was as fast as I remembered him; a lighting quick flurry of blows which I parried with my wounded sword arm. By God, he was strong, too, he was fighting for his life, and he had learnt a thing or two since our days at Thangbrand’s. But, then, so had I.

He attacked hard down my right hand side, hammering backhanded blows against my blade. By luck more than skill, I managed to fend him off and we broke apart, both panting for breath. I looked down at the bandage on my forearm and noted with dismay that the bleeding had started again, and a large crimson patch was seeping across the white of the cloth. He came at me again, this time on the left, then left and right in succession. He was driving me back, the outlaws scattering behind me, back towards a surviving stretch of palisade, trying to corner me to a place where he could hammer me down.

And then he over-reached himself — he must have been tired too, for he mistimed his sword stroke and I was through his guard in a heartbeat, slashing him across his naked chest. A shallow cut but bloody, a foot long and an inch or so above his nipples. The crowd gave a great animal roar of approval. First blood to me. He looked down in complete surprise, as the gore welled and spilled down his bare chest and on to his belly. And then I was attacking. I used a combination of cuts and lunges that Sir Richard had taught me. Guy seemed bewildered by this change in my demeanour. In his heart, he still believed me to be the snotty thief that had been an easy target of his bullying only the year before. Or the cringing victim, screaming for mercy in that Winchester dungeon. But I was no longer that boy. I was a man, a full member of Robin’s band, a warrior. He tried a desperate counter-attack to break my lunge-and-cut routine, but it was another mistake. I let his blade slide past my head and chopped down into the meat of his right bicep. He roared in pain and dropped his sword and I could have killed him there and then. The blood-drunk crowd was shrieking for his death. But I did not strike. I heard again his laughter at my humiliation, my agony of body and mind in that cell, and it was not in my head to give him a quick death.

I made him pick up the sword with his left hand and fight on. But after that cut to his arm, the battle was all mine. He was no swordsman with his left hand and in three passes I had sliced his chest again, slashed into his side, stabbed his calf muscle and, with a contemptuous flick of my wrist, made a deep cut on the unbruised side of his face. He was staggering and crying now. He could see his death in my eyes. His defence was at an end and he barely moved as I swung and sliced deep into the muscle of his left shoulder. By now, weak with loss of blood, he could barely lift the sword. And suddenly all my anger drained away. Here, in front of me, was a wreck of a man, bleeding from a half a dozen cuts, right arm useless, humiliated. I had had my revenge.