The Friar's Tale, стр. 24
He thought he saw them on the other side, sleeping noses resting on sleeping paws. Those dogs would not have to limp along on missing toes. They would be treated, he thought, better than most humans.
He thought letting them out might make a good distraction. If they needed one. Robin was approaching the base of the tower.
"Are you sure this is the right place?"
"Not entirely, but I have to make a call at some point." He frowned a little. "No entrance on this side, and if we go around..."
If anyone on the wall heard them, this could easily be a killing zone. Tuck was reminded that he was, after all, far too large a target. Any idiot should be able to hit a man his size.
Maybe, he thought with bitter humor, Robin should use him as a shield. Then Robin was moving, darting faster than any man had a right to around the tower. Tuck did his best to follow. He prayed...knowing that Robin would invoke Mary and Clorinda her own gods. They had everything covered. That was another bitter thought.
And a heretical one, of course, but he did not really care about that. If he had to spend an extra year or two in purgatory for thinking it, then so be it.
Somehow, he made it into the shelter of the wall. From above, "Ho! Who goes there?"
They had been seen or heard. He flattened himself against the tower, crawling around it.
Robin was working the lock on a door. He frowned. "I can't get it open," he murmured.
"Given they know we're here now, how about the old-fashioned way?" Tuck tapped the side of his staff meaningfully.
The air seemed for a moment to turn blue. For a moment, Tuck felt her presence...goddess or saint? He was not sure.
Robin's eyes widened for a moment. Then, softly, "Do it."
Tuck was the larger and stronger of the two. He brought the end of his staff into the hinges of the door once, twice, three times. On the third blow they broke, the door falling inwards.
Inside, the base of the tower was dark. Robin ducked through and Tuck followed. He could still sense her presence. He still knew she was there. Supporting them, being with them. Being part of what they had to do.
Cold flowed through Tuck for a moment. Was this Clorinda's goddess leading Robin to believe she was the Virgin? Tricking him into damnation?
He did not want to think of Clorinda as damned. "Up or down?"
"Up. There's a guard room, then the cells. Down is just storage."
Another myth pushed into nothingness. Again, the dungeon, not where the prisoners were kept. Tuck knew now she was in here.
Barely aloud, he whispered, "If you're using Robin..."
No answer, but the slightest smell of roses. Rose of the sea. It proved nothing. Roses were associated with immortality, along with apples. Whatever was in here with them, though, it was not human or mortal. Not anymore, if it ever had been. It was no mere woman.
Up the stairs. Guard room. There would be more guards in there, by now, they would know the goal of their intruders.
"We need a hostage," Robin muttered.
"One of the guards should do. I'll take care of it." Tuck wondered why he had offered, except that he had far more chance of holding another man, physically, than the woman-sized Robin.
Had he not seen the man topless, he would have wondered. But no, Robin was definitely not a woman...and probably not one of those rare unfortunates who partook of both.
Unfortunates because nobody ever knew how to handle them. Tuck had spent part of his novitiate with a future friar who wanted to be a woman. Longed to be one. Felt that being one was his destiny. He had chosen orders because a friar could be genderless, could be neither one nor the other, and it was the closest he could get.
Tuck failed to understand why anyone would choose to be a woman, supposedly a weaker vessel, further from God and closer to sin. Unless they had met a woman like Clorinda. She had cured him of those feelings.
Maybe she, too, was between the two, maybe she was part man. No... The door opened from the other side.
An arrow lodged in his robes, somehow missing his flesh. Lousy shot, he thought, to miss a target his size in such a confined area. Well, he supposed he should be grateful.
"Lousy shot," Robin called upwards, echoing his thoughts. He was trying to provoke them into anger.
Angry men were lousy shots on the whole. Another arrow spiraled past. This one did not even come close. "I noticed!" Tuck called, joining in the mockery. "Maybe you need to go back to shooting straw men...oh wait, you'd miss them too!"
An incoherent shout came, and the guardsman attempted to tackle Robin, who stepped to the side.
The man landed in a heap at Tuck's feet. He put his staff on his neck. "Welcome, my friend. You'll be enjoying our hospitality for a brief while."
He fully intended to let the man go. If one did not release hostages, the technique became valueless. Worthless. The Saracen were fond of taking hostages.
They were fond, in fact, of taking an enemy's child and raising him within their own household...a tactic which genuinely fostered peace. It was hard to hate and fight those who had cared for you as a child.
Tuck thought that some of the quarreling lords could do well to learn from that particular idea. That they could exchange