A strong man, as boatswains must be, he clutched the shaft in his chest, clutched the rudder, skidded in blood. Then his strength failed and he lost both, slipped onto the deck. The ship lost headway again, and the sails flapped mournfully, as if on a ghostly derelict.

Now Robin spotted the pirate captain by the mainmast. He was bulky man with a white beard, a red and blue turban with gold threads, and a long blue sash over his shoulder. He howled insults at Robin Hood. He shook his fist, then screamed at his crew. He ordered two pirates to seize the loose rudders. When the men balked, he jerked a jewelled knife from a sheath in his sash -- And died as an arrow lanced through his belly.

Robin Hood laughed. In Arabic he shouted, "Lucky shots, eh? Weakling fatherless wine-guzzling camel-f.u.c.kers! Who's next?"

The pirate crew howled in rage and anguish, hurled insults and dares, shook weapons and fists, shot arrows. They argued with one another, too, for no one would took the rudders. The pilot master, now acting captain, hunkered behind the mainmast and called orders. Pirates put their backs into the oars. The rudders could lie idle -- they'd steer with the oars alone. The pilot master's whistle shrilled like a bird scared into flight.

A voice called Robin from below. He looked down the mast at Little John's bleached head. The giant called, "You only got a dozen or sumpin' arrows!"

"That's so," the outlaw called, "but they're thirsty for blood! How go the preparations?"

The giant waved. Crewmen and pa.s.sengers no longer scurried about, but fussed at their stations with things at hand, or simply waited. "'Bout ready. You've made them pirates madder'n h.e.l.l."

"Good!" Robin Hood shipped his bow over his shoulder, clambered into the shrouds and slid down like a squirrel. Pirate arrows whizzed around him until he sank below the rude barricade and thumped to the deck. "Angry men make rash decisions."

Robin Hood strode down the decks on a quick inspection tour. The decks were surprisingly clear since the cargo had been stacked along the gunwales. With the new fortifications, the ship looked like the rooftop of a castle. Everywhere he went, people greeted him with nervous laughter or terrified silence. He did his best to comfort them. In the forecastle, men and boys were positioned with bows. "Keep a sharp eye out," he told them, "and wait your chance. Better too slow than too fast. Aim well and you'll send heathens to h.e.l.l."

"I wish I could shoot like you," a boy burst out. "You're a wizard with that bow!"

Robin laughed and tousled the boy's hair. "That was nothing. Were my cousin here, he'd have made me call which eye I'd put out. And I almost missed their captain, and he's stout as a gravid sow. Or he was."

All along the sides, older men and dames, women, and children, were arrayed along the bulwarks with various parcels and bundles. Robin Hood nudged a pile of rough sacks, ball-sized, with his foot. He winked at a young mother whose girl clung at her skirts. "We'll make it hot for them with these, eh? We'll pepper their stew and make them eat it too!" The woman only smiled. People laughed for many reasons, partly from tension, partly from Robin's infectious joy, partly from hysteria.

Amidships, Little John stood with his quarterstaff in hand and a pile of rocks at his feet. Robin told him, "Try not to throw too far, John. We don't want to kill anyone in Africa." The giant smiled.

Lying crossways on the decks were two long booms, spare spars hauled from the hold. The ends were freshly sharpened, and cypress resin scented the air. Nearby, various lines leading to them, like spiderwebs, the Venetian sailors crouched in two groups. They were ready for orders from either the boatswain or Robin Hood. The outlaw said, "If we save this ship, I'm sure the lords in Venice will see to it you keep most of the profit." They snorted, and one man said, "More likely they'll dock our pay for using up ship's supplies. Wasting arrows in pirate's guts, for instance." They laughed at that.

The four Hospitallers were dotted along the bulwarks like crows on a fence. Robin squeezed the arm of the youngest, Hume. "If the babies are this big in Germany, I'd hate to face their fighting men! See you don't carve all the pirates before your father. T'would be bad manners to eat them all." The Germans grunted, laughter deep in their bellies.

Robin checked the last group, the archers in the aftercastle, then turned and surveyed the ship from the platform. Lines were tight and ready to hand, excess baggage was stowed below, buckets of water to stop fires were s.p.a.ced around, the canvas hatch covers were battened down, both to keep anyone from falling into the hold, and to keep anyone from retreating from the fight. Everyone and everything was ready. He called, "Good people, we sink or swim together, so let's work together! Is everyone clear on the most important point?"

"'ATTEND ME!" half a hundred shouted.

"Aye!" Robin Hood dashed forward and hopped onto the knee of the mast. "Then if anything goes wrong, I get the blame! Mother Mary knows you lot have done as well as any of the defenders of Acre or Jerusalem this day! They'll be singing a song about you heroes before you arrive in Venice! Look sharp, stay at your stations, and listen! The wolf's after the flock, but we've teeth they don't suspect! We'll teach them pirating's an expensive way to make a living! Boatswain! Where are they bound?"

The boatswain, under the aftercastle with the steersmen and the compa.s.s, pointed along the barricade. The dromon was circling the merchant vessel wide to come into the lee.

"'Round Robin Hood's barn," Little John chuckled. "They're afraid of you."

"That's a Muslim for you," quipped a knight. "Always trying to get 'round your b.u.m!" Laughter answered.

The dromon, long and lean as a white-tipped shark, circled the ship and bore closer, white-faced men at the rudders. Pirates along the sides readied grappling irons: multi-fanged iron hooks like anchors with ropes attached. Excited by imminent action, the pirates howled like demons, but a bark from the new captain and raps from the master's mates silenced them. In the eerie quiet, the acting captain called across the tossing turquoise water with a speaking trumpet. "Surrender and we will not harm you! Give us --"

Robin Hood jammed his foot in a gap in the barricade, hooked another in a shroud, popped up like a badger out of a hole, and raised his bow. He could just see over their shield wall. Pirates scrambled and ducked below the railings. The ship's head fell away again as the steersmen dived for cover. But the pilot master moved too slow. A long swift arrow whisked through the trumpet and slammed into his throat. He was knocked over like a pheasant flushed from cover. Robin Hood disappeared as a storm of arrows whizzed overhead and slapped into the mast.

He called in French, "Your tune strikes a sour note! I can pluck my harp and sing a sweeter one!" Turning, he yelled, "Archers, shoot! A scream marks a bullseye!"

Men and boys and a few women levelled crossbows from the ship's armory and some short European bows. The pirates hooted as arrows pinged and broke on their shield wall, but shouts showed some got through the cracks. Their aim spoiled, the pirates' returning shots went high or hit the barricade.

Robin Hood kept one eye on his ship and one on the pirates, and shot when he could. He tried to place arrows that would kill two men at once, and usually succeeded for, unless a shaft lodged in a bone, his arrows could pa.s.s clean through a man and kill the one behind. Men went down with split livers, collapsed lungs, punctured guts.

Robin Hood watched through a peephole in the crazy wall of mismatched chests and bales, looked up to follow the dromon's sails. And, most important, he measured with his eye. Yes, the end of the mainmast's lateen yard would reach well over the pirate ship when the time came. The pirate ship jigged, the sails were hoicked closer to the wind. The pirates were closing.

"Grapples next, folks!" he called. "Fear not! We needs bring the enemy close to strike! Children, ready weapons!"

Heavy iron hooks, a half dozen like grasping octopi, flew through the air. One bounced off a cotton bale and splashed back into the sea, one tore a sack of rice, but the rest clanged and bounced on wood and rope. Four bit deep.

The ship jerked. Three score screaming pirates heaved on the lines. With a creak and groan, the merchant vessel and pirate ship were drawn together by brute force.

Robin Hood watched and waited, shot when he could. He'd decided not to pry at the grappling irons, for that might sunder the fragile barricade. Nor could the grapples be cut loose, for the first six feet of line was chain. So he let them lie. But pilgrims set up a frightened twitter. Robin wasted no words comforting them. They'd be busy soon.

The ship jerked like a horse balking at the reins. When the ships were a rod apart, Robin bellowed. "Away jars! Archers, shoot as you can! Sailors, take up slack!"

Arrows sang from the fore- and aftercastle. Along the sides, men and boys, old and young, rose from a squat. Over their heads they hoisted red clay amphoras stoppered with wood and beeswax, then grunted as they heaved the long jars over the barricade. A couple of jars splashed in the narrowing gap between ships. But a score or more made loud and satisfying crashes as they shattered on the pirates' deck.

Olive oil and heady Lebanon honey and raisin-scented wine gurgled around the pirates' feet. Muslims cursed, grunted as they slipped and hit the decks and one another with knees and elbows and chins. Some shrieked as the archers found new targets. Pilgrims grabbed more amphoras handed them by women in the second line.

Robin Hood called, "Little John! Catapult!"

From the far side of the ship, the giant caught up a stone in each hand, and pitched. These slimy rocks, big as man's skull, were drawn from the ballast in the ship's bilge. They crashed aboard the dromon. The two nuns fed rocks to Little John as if loading a mangonel. The giant killed and crippled men like Samson slinging his a.s.s's jawbone.

Robin Hood peeked, measured the gap between ships, shot an arrow that travelled only ten feet. Pirates with purple stains on their clothes and purple bruises on their faces raised shining steel. Many poised just below the shield wall, ready to bound across to the merchant vessel the second the hulls touched. Others crowded behind them, almost jabbing their comrades' rears with sharp points.

The Fox of Sherwood called loud and clear, "Children! Away feathers! Away pepper!"

With shouts of joy and fear, the dozen children of the ship rose like hares in a field and slung clumsy bundles overhand. Like autumn leaves, the bundles showered black and brown chicken feathers in the air. The children threw again and again, forgetting the danger in their haste, exposing their heads. Robin had to trip one boy into a sprat fall on the deck. When the feathers were exhausted, they hurled bags of pepper and were rewarded with colorful Arabic swearing and thunderous sneezing. Boys and girls snickered. Robin Hood laughed too. The feathers and pepper were nothing but a nuisance, but they gave the children something to do besides worry.

Robin Hood still had plenty to throw, for he'd all but emptied the buss's hold onto the decks. "Keep it up! Away grain!" Like an explosion in a mill, rice and spices cascaded onto the pirate ship. And more spices, pungent cinnamon and cloves. Then cut lemons and oranges, then lumps of fresh horses.h.i.t from the stables below decks.

Robin had to shout over the shrills of the children and jabbering of men and women. "Away pots!" Robin Hood shouted into the tumult. "Pots" were anything else they might throw. Iron nails, bra.s.s tacks, knife blades, bra.s.s bowls, clay cups, spiked dog collars, spear heads, redware pitchers, gilded beakers from Syrian, carved rock crystal from Egypt, hammers, hinges, and much more went sailing, including a trio of lutes that broke with a musical brong. Robin laughed at the sight, as if a earthquake and thunderbolt had struck a bazaar. Pirates howled more in outrage than from actual damage, though a number of men cursed when they stepped on nails and pot shards. "Keep shooting, archers! Heave everything we've got at the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

Robin peeked. The ships were about to close. Robin Hood shouted over the noise, "Sailors, HAUL AWAY!"

Opposite him, amidships, two teams of sailors tailed onto the lines and heaved. The twin booms lying across the deck jerked, then rose at an angle that steepened, like giant stiff snakes pulled by their tails. The sharpened ends skittered across the deck and gouged furrows in the pine decking.

Robin Hood watched and prayed. This part of the plan hadn't been tested. Each boom was lashed by its end to a line -- a sheet line, the sailors called them -- that ran far overhead to a block on the lateen yard. From there, the rope returned to the deck and another block, thence to a band of sailors. Hand over frantic hand, six knotty-armed men yanked on each block and tackle rig. Slowly the booms rose to hang overhead like twin Swords of Damocles. Robin Hood prayed to Joseph the carpenter, shouting the while. One sharpened boom, swinging like a lethal pendulum, brushed the barricade and tore lose some pilgrim's chest of clothing.

The foremast boom, having to travel a shorter distance, was in place first. Like a giant lethal pendulum, the sharpened end swung out over the pirate ship. Then it tilted back, over the merchant vessel. Then out again -- The outlaw glanced at the pirate ship and swore. Too slow. Despite the debris and missiles, two dozen pirates were poised to leap the short tumblehome between the rounded hulls. It would be close. Both pirates and pilgrims glanced overhead.

Back, forth swung the boom. Over the Theresa, over the pirates -- Robin hollered, "Let her go!"

The sailors opened their hands, but not fast enough to prevent the rough rope from sizzling through their palms like lightning. A rope end whipped past and almost took out a man's eye. Then the giant arrow struck.

The sharpened boom plunged straight down, hit with a giant thud, and punched a hole through the bottom of the pirate ship. Splintering, tearing planks loose in its pa.s.sage, it disappeared through the gaping hole and shot straight to the bottom of this inland sea. The hole it left raised havoc.

Like some miraculous fountain, like a whale spouting, water cascaded into the air. The column sprayed the pirates in the bow of the dromon.

"Get that other boom up! We must --" Robin screamed. The second boom had to hoisted higher, for the yard reached higher -- There came a sickening crack from overhead.

The block far above on the yard had split. And jammed. The sailors tugged manfully, and Little John left off his rock throwing to tail on too. But the rope was stuck fast.

At the same time, a thump rang through the ship, the first kiss of wood on wood, heard as much as felt through their feet. The hulls collided, bounced apart, collided again. A woman shrilled.

Perhaps, Robin's mind flashed, he could shoot the rope holding the boom. He reached for an arrow -- -- and came up empty. He'd miscounted.

The Fox of Sherwood didn't even bother to swear. "John, fix it!" From the corner of his eye, he saw Little John scamper up the shrouds like a Barbary ape, a knife in his teeth. Robin called up and down the ship, "Pick up swords and pikes! Stand by to repel boarders!"

His last words were drowned out in a hurricane of noise. Like devils from h.e.l.l, a dozen pirates swarmed aboard the merchant vessel. Another dozen took their place and jumped too. They cut through the boarding ropes with sharp steel and thumped to the decks.

The defenders of the Saint Theresa had the fight of their lives.

Robin Hood, outlaw, thief, knight, lord, Crusader, n.o.bleman and peasant, was in their forefront. With no shield to his name, he carried his bow in his left hand. With his mighty right he drew his father's sword, hopped over a boy with a pike, jerked the boy aside and saved his life, slashed at a pirate in a yellow shirt. The Saracen, nimble as a goat on the tossing ship, raised a curved scimitar with a blade blackened to prevent corrosion.

Screaming "MAR-I-AN!", Robin Hood slammed the scimitar back into the man's face, tearing open his cheek and jaw, snapping back his head.

Yet three others took his place. Clambering over the teetery barricade, a pirate on Robin's right slashed at his neck and sheared into the leather hauberk with its rusty iron plates. The blade fetched. The farther man jabbed for Robin's face while the middle man slashed at his belly.

Faster than he would have believed, the Fox of Sherwood hooked his bow over the middle blade. His bowstring snapped like a whip crack. With his sword, he parried the other blade away from his face. Ducking half over, wrenching the trapped blade out of his tangled hauberk, he caught his sword pommel in two hands and used a Norseman's trick, sweeping at the men's feet as if axing a tree. The pirates being off-balance on the bales gave an added advantage. Robin chopped one bare dirty leg to the bone and a man screamed. One pirate, lunging to get out of the way, only tripped himself, and fell into the blade's next sweep. Robin Hood felt a blade slash across his back, but the leather and iron took most of the blow. As one man spurted blood from his leg, Robin ripped off half another's ear and scalp. The third man was gone, either back over the side or somewhere behind.

Robin Hood whirled and found another pirate behind. He swung and sliced the man under the chin. Frothy blood fountained onto the outlaw as his throat was cut.

For a second the outlaw was in the b.l.o.o.d.y clear. All around him was chaos, and pirates thick as a snowstorm. Two Christian boys, brothers not twelve, manhandled one long spear and pierced a pirate in the guts. A young mother hacked with a cleaver at a pirate's back. An old man grappled a young pirate in a bear hug, their white and black beards touching. But the pirates were clearly overwhelming them. Two slashed at a covey of women trying to defend children. A young man was hacked to death, the scimitar blows chopping bone and the deck underneath. Far overhead, Little John had crept hand-over-hand along the yard, held only by his giant hands, to saw at the ropes in the jammed block.

Then Robin Hood saw no more, for men dove at him from all directions. The pirates were angry for his shooting them, he thought inanely. Someone landed on his back and he crashed to his knees in the narrow s.p.a.ce stacks and a hatch cover. He was smothered under a pile of sweaty spicy bodies.

Flexing, shoving with his hands and knees, bucking did no good. He couldn't move. He groped with his right hand, hooked his sword and jabbed, sliced something -- probably an ankle -- heard a man's distant yelp. The growling of the men on him gave him a taste of h.e.l.l. Men ripped at him with scimitars and daggers, nicking their comrades as much as himself. Robin Hood scrambled for his slippery sword and sliced his palm on his blade. Someone worked a knife at his neck, feeling for an artery, like a giant beesting. He kicked, and the stinging stopped, but he was still pressed all around.

For a second, he felt the ship heel, as it had when the pirates had boarded, as if a giant weight had jumped aboard, or gone over the side. Seawater splashed the men piled on him, and he wondered if they were sinking. m.u.f.fled by bodies, he heard a heavy thump close at hand. But the knife blade was back, and he was being killed, almost helpless.

Then sunlight and fresh air washed over him, as if he'd surfaced from drowning.

Like Neptune risen from the sea, Little John plied his quarterstaff like a pitchfork. He rammed the end into the gut of a pirate and, lightly as flicking away a load of manure, pitched the man backwards over the railing. One man asprawl Robin was knocked flat, the side of his head punched in. The giant slid the quarterstaff among the pile and levered three pirates away, and Robin scrambled to his knees, then his feet.

Behind John, the canvas hatchway sagged in the center as if from a great invisible weight. Robin realized John had jumped from the yard, forty feet, and crashed into the center. All to rescue his friend. And opposite, the dromon had a second spout of water that reached halfway up the mast. Little John had cut the boom free.

Two pirates drove at him. Little John jabbed his long quarterstaff past their curved swords and smashed each in the throat, throttling them. The men fell heavily.

"You did it, John! You're a wonder!"

"Been -- a h.e.l.l of thing," he grunted, "-- if I'd sunk us instead."

The giant cracked a pirate in the face, and the man toppled backwards amidst tumbled cotton bales with a b.l.o.o.d.y nose. They looked for more enemies, spotted them farther down the deck, seemingly a mile away in Robin's distorted vision.

"Come on," Little John caught Robin's free hand and almost dislocated his arm. Robin managed to retain his sword.

Amidships, sailors and Hospitallers fended the pirates away at every hand. Running amidst them, Little John caught one pirate by the ankle and shook him, snapping his knee, then tossed him on the hatch cover. Another man slashed at him, but the giant just kicked him into the scuppers. Defenders fought valiantly from every nook and cranny. Two Hospitallers were knee-deep in bodies, but two were down.

With his free hand, Robin Hood clutched his neck, which burned like a branding iron. Blood soaked his shirt. He didn't know how badly he was wounded, but his sword arm felt weak, hollow. "John! We needs sweep the ship!"

"I thought you was sick of bloodshed!"

"I'm sick of the strong exploiting the weak! I'm sick of people shouting that G.o.d demands others die! I'm sick of men with swords hacking innocents to death because -- because no one can -- oppose them! --"

Dizzy, weak from blood loss, turned around, sheltered by the giant's broad back, Robin Hood steadied himself with a hand on the gunwale. He stared.

The two ships were only partly locked together. The dromon was almost awash. Three of the grappling lines had either snapped under the strain or ripped loose their moorings. The pirate ship spouted water faster as more planking tore loose and the hole enlarged. Then the spouts quelled, smothered by bubbling seawater. Frantic pirates fought each other to clamber aboard the merchant vessel, for their own ship was sinking.

Robin Hood stumbled to join Little John and the sailors and Hospitallers left. He stuck his sword over his head, though lightning burned down his shoulder. Above the noise and confusion he shouted, "To me, lads and la.s.ses! For G.o.d, king, and country, sweep 'em overside!"

It was doubtful anyone heard him. The pa.s.sengers screamed, shouted, hurled taunts and insults as the pirates had done not long ago. Demoralized by the loss of their ship, the pirates were backed against the gunwales, forced to choose between the sea and steel. Some chose one path, some the other.

Suddenly the decks were clear of enemies. Before the last shout had died away, the vessel carried only dead and dying pirates. With triumphant shouts and relieved laughter, those were soon tumbled over the side too.

The two ships drifted apart as the sea breeze shoved on the one vessel above the waves. Pirates swam or struggled to grip floating casks, hatches, bundled sails, coils of rope. The dromon was only a line in the water dotted with flotsam and floating heads.

Infected by bloodl.u.s.t, the c.o.c.ky pa.s.sengers couldn't get enough, and lobbed whatever they could grab at the black bobbing heads in the water. They jeered and hooted for a long time. Eventually even the strongest youths could not pitch that far, for the ship had moved on.

"Look, John," said the outlaw. He pointed with his sword but somehow dropped it. "We beat --"

Little John caught him before he crashed to the deck.

Propped against a hatch cover, Robin Hood sat quietly as the gentle fingers of a nun packed cotton rags on his neck wound. Giovanni the merchant had offered up a cask and broached it. The little blonde girl brought Robin a draught of sweet wine red as blood, and Robin poured it down his throat, barely tasting it.

Above him, looming like a mast, Little John used a rag to wipe blood off Robin's father's sword, and slide it home in its sheath. Around them, sailors spliced and rove new lines as if the attack had been no more than a squawl. In a short while the sails snapped to, bellying full, tugging the vessel towards Venice. The sailors asked Robin Hood to captain, but he simply pointed to the boatswain. Pilgrims reordered their belongings and lives. They restacked bales dotted with rusty blood, pitched over the side split casks and splinters and broken scimitars and at least one severed hand, tended the wounded, who were many, and prayed over the dead, of which there were eight or nine, including two children. The monk lit a censor, and gray incense smoke was s.n.a.t.c.hed forward by the breeze. Harday and his son Hume and the surviving Hospitaller sang a hymn in German, sad and sweet and surprisingly beautiful.

Still sitting, Robin Hood added his prayers to the thanksgiving.

Afterwards, Little John perched on a bale and looked at him. Robin said, "It's terrible to lose anyone, John, especially to violence, especially children. But not a third of these folk would have lived through the attack had we bowed to the will of those devils."

Little John used Robin's belt knife to pare splinters off his quarterstaff. "You're talking c.o.c.ksure again, for all your earlier talk of doom and gloom. Have you left the Holy Land behind at last?"

Robin squinted in thought, turned to face the stern, grimaced, turned around again, grimaced again. "I guess so. I'll watch from our bow from now on. It'll be good to get home. It's been a long time."

Little John tried to hide a grin in his bushy brown beard. "And Marian?"

Robin lost his breath in a gush. Then he grinned back. "She'll come around."

"Aye. So do we all."

END.