Hall The Blind Bowman: Wildwood Rising

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-78845-332-5
Verlag: David Fickling Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 464 Seiten

The blind bowman, Robin Hood, is missing. Rumours spread in his absence. From the ashes, new leaders must rise, as Marian and the outlaws ask themselves: will Robin ever return?T.K. Hall's epic fantasy reimagining of Robin Hood concludes in this heart-racing extravaganza of powerful storytelling brilliance.

T.K. (Tim) Hall is a former journalist who has written for various national newspapers and magazines. He spent two years in Bermuda, reporting for the Bermuda Sun, and has travelled extensively in South America. He now lives near Stroud in Gloucestershire with his wife and two daughters. In addition to writing, he works for the Stroud-based charity The Door, which supports disadvantaged young people and their families.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hall, Tim

Leseproben

Prologue

‘The wind’s rising,’ Lucas called out to his sister as dust eddied around his feet. ‘Time to find shelter.’

‘Just a little further,’ Arora called back. ‘We’re on track today. I can feel it.’

‘That’s what you said yesterday, and the day before that. And what have we found? A few clipped shillings. Some arrowheads.’

‘Which were the surest sign of all,’ Arora said, her head low to the ground, like a hound following a scent. ‘I’m telling you, little brother, our luck’s on the turn.’

One of these days you’re going to push our luck too far, Lucas thought to himself. He paused to peer back the way they had come, then swept his gaze across this whole blasted landscape. It was always a dismal place, the bare ground grey and eroded, layered with dust and sand. From horizon to horizon it was featureless, save for the occasional naked hillock or stone-dry riverbed or shadowy ravine. But today, to Lucas’s eyes, the Lost Lands appeared more wretched than ever. Not so much as a lone buzzard broke that hard white sky. No sign of even a sand serpent or a lizard.

He turned and hurried after his sister. At first, with a spike of fear, he failed to see her. Like him, she was dressed head-to-toe in sand-coloured rags. They kept scarves wrapped around their mouths and noses to keep out the cloying dust, and their hoods raised against the punishing sun. To soften the glare of white light that blazed off the leafless ground, they wore bone blinders with narrow slits.

Dressed like this, Arora blended with the landscape, especially now she had stopped and dropped to one knee. As Lucas fixed his gaze on her at last, something else caught the top edge of his vision. It was a hulking white outline.

‘Sis, up that way – a fallen tree,’ he said, hurrying to her side. ‘We can take cover there.’

‘All right. We’ll go as soon as I’ve got this.’

She was using her knife to chisel away at the sun-baked soil. As she dug around the object, one edge of it gleamed. Despite his eagerness to get on their way, Lucas watched, intrigued. And when she finally stood with the find, brushing it clean of dry soil, he stared, spellbound. The object was made of copper. It was dented and discoloured. But there was no doubting what it had once been. It was a goblet.

‘It really belonged to them?’ he said in hushed tones, as she offered it to him. ‘To the outlaws of Sherwood?’

‘Who else?’ She smiled. ‘Whose lips do you think it touched? Will Scarlett? Blodwyn Kage?’

‘What do you think it’s worth?’

Arora shrugged. ‘These things are trinkets. Father always said so. One day we’ll be standing in Robin Hood’s Cave. Then you’ll see what treasure means!’

She was moving off again, but Lucas remained where he was, cradling the goblet in both palms, his mind full of wonders. The twins were twelve years old – too young to have ever known the fabled forest, Sherwood, that they say once carpeted this land. Growing up, their father had told them endless stories of it. How the wildwood was so saturated with life that you could not set your foot upon the ground without creatures scurrying from your path. How when you needed to eat you had only to reach up and pluck fruit from a tree. When thirsty, you merely knelt at a spring or a stream.

Wandering the wastes, treading this cursed earth, Lucas often found these stories hard to believe. Except at moments like this. Standing here, holding this relic from that mythical past. From that golden age of heroes and gods, when forest fighters lived in the treetops and waged war against the enemies of the wild!

From the west came a hollow howl. In the distance, a column of dust spiralled skywards. Hurriedly stowing the goblet in his backpack, he hastened after his sister.

Ahead of him, she had dwindled to almost nothing. She appeared to be moving to lower ground. And as he gained on her, he saw that, yes, she had entered a wide depression – like a bowl scooped out of the earth.

He moved down the slope after her. The ground down here was different: it was dotted with smooth, round pebbles, and with tiny bones fused into rock.

‘There was water here,’ Arora said as he joined her. She was kneeling once more, digging again with her blade. ‘I think it was a lake.’

A lake.

Lucas stared around him, trying to make it real – to envisage this great expanse filled with sparkling water and swimming with life. The effort was beyond him. Look at it now. As the sun lowered, becoming red and angry, it bathed the whole bowl in a crimson hue. It made the land look raw, like flesh peeled of skin. 

Again the plain howled, heavier and more tormented than before, and the wind reached Lucas with enough force to pelt him with grit.

‘Whatever that is, sis, leave it. There’s a dust storm brewing. We need to go.’

‘I’ve almost got it,’ she said, through gritted teeth, twisting her blade. ‘It was buried deep, but I think … Ah ha, yes, here it is!’

She stood with the object resting in her palm. It was made of greenish rock, like jade. It was in the shape of a teardrop … or a heart.

‘What is it?’

‘An amulet,’ she said, delighted. ‘Or … a love charm! Yes – look – this fissure down the middle – I think it was in two halves! The heat of the Great Fire must have fused them together!’ She grinned as she pocketed the charm. ‘I told you our luck had turned. What will we find next?’

They headed towards the fallen tree they could see on the far side of the old lake, the wind swirling around them as they went, stirring dust and dead flies.

Climbing up out of the bowl, they came in clear sight of the tree. Fire had stripped it to a bare skeleton. The sun had bleached it white as bone. At close quarters, it was enormous. Even lying on its side, its trunk towered over the twins.

And now they could see it was not alone. Beyond the first tree, they found the scattered remains of another two, and a fourth – and more. There must have been dozens of these trees in all. They arched up from ground like colossal ribcages and backbones.

‘It’s a giants’ graveyard,’ Arora said, her voice hushed as they moved deeper amid the remains.

Lucas wrapped his robes close, feeling chilled. The sun was setting and the temperature was falling fast. Night-mist, green and sickly, was seeping up through the cracked soil and snaking through the twisted skeletons of the trees.

‘Look!’ Arora whispered. ‘Do you see it? Is it a mirage, or …’

Both of them stopped dead and stared. The mist had swirled aside to unveil a phenomenal sight.

It was another ancient, broken tree. Except this one had not been uprooted. Instead, the trunk had snapped, leaving behind a hulking stump. But what amazed the twins – what held them here, awestruck – was the fact that this stump appeared to still be living. Green shoots grew up out of its exposed roots. Its top was bushy with shrubs, like the hair on an old man’s head. All around its base sprouted wildflowers and ferns and even small saplings. 

In all their journeying across these wastes, the twins had only ever seen scraps of vegetation: the occasional corpse flower, or clump of burn weed. And now, here in the middle of these ash-white bonelands, there blazed this beacon of green.

‘Here’s our refuge,’ Arora whispered, as wind moaned outside the Giants’ Graveyard. ‘See – the stump is hollow. There’s our way in.’

As she moved towards the green oasis, Lucas stayed put, suddenly on full alert. He drew his slingshot and knelt to pick up a rock. A flash of something had crossed his path. There – he saw it again. The blur of reddish fur, the flash of golden eyes.

Whirring his slingshot, he stared into the shadows beneath the twisted trees. He saw nothing more, yet had the intense impression he was being watched. There was something there, studying him, he was sure there was …

‘Sis, wait,’ he called, going after Arora. ‘This place … Something’s wrong.’

‘It keeps out the wind, doesn’t it? What more do you want? Are you going to let me do all the work, as usual?’

She had collected a pile of firewood, and was now dragging it towards the ancient tree stump. On this side of the stump was a triangular fissure, like the jagged entrance to a cave. Arora was now edging backwards into it, disappearing into the blackness.

Scurrying to pick up sticks she had dropped, then pausing to sweep one last look around the Giants’ Graveyard, Lucas ducked in after her.

Inside was a world of its own. The walls of this tree-cave must have been as solid as stone,...