Puck shrugged. "You may as well say, "long after' if you speak of the man who gave the slip so often to the foresters of Edward III."
"That's still 'the old days,' where we are today. Wouldn't he be a little dead by now?"
"Oh, nay!" Puck laughed. "Brave Robin die? It cannot be. Whene'er the people of England groan under the hand of a tyrant, Robin's spirit will inspire those who fight in opposition. Mind you, he was "Brave Robin' when the Saxons strove against the Danes, and Robert Fitz-Ooth, and Willikin o' the Weald, and many names before even that."
Matt frowned. "You trying to tell me that Robin was always supernatural?"
"Nay, he began as a living man—but when his body should have aged, we elvin folk laid an enchantment on him, and a geas—that he defend the poor for all of England's days. He and his band will never die, though they move from one plane of existence to another."
Matt frowned. If "plane of existence" meant "alternate universe," it made sense—but how could Robin and his merry men move from one world to another?
How had he moved from one to another? He scolded himself; by this time, he should have recognized a quibble when he came to one.
"After all," Puck said, "I allied with bold Robin only...umm, was it a century ago, or two? A band of evil men sought to imprison England under rails of steel, for snorting monsters to scurry o'er. I could not act 'gainst Cold Iron myself, so I found need to call on Robin. He and his men made short work of those iron dragons, I promise you."
Inside, Matt shuddered. The Industrial Revolution, brought to a halt by an outlaw band from the greenwood, with Puck's magic behind them? He found the notion very easy to believe. After all, as a scholar, he knew that the legend that had grown up around Jesse James owed far more to the Robin Hood ballads than it did to fact. "That's all very well, but how do we get him here?"
Puck shrugged. "Who but now spoke of moving folk from one place to another?"
Matt pressed his lips thin, biting down on words of exasperation. "Look. If I could send people between universes, I would have sent myself back where I came from, a long time
Puck glanced at him keenly. "Would you indeed?"
There it was, that nasty knack other people had for making Matt confront himself. "All right, already! So as long as Alisande is here, I won't go back to my home "plane of existence'!" With emphasis on the "plain," he had to admit—in his home universe, he'd been just one more scholar in a market overstocked with Ph.D.s. Here, he belonged. Maybe even if Alisande hadn't been here...
"What's he talking about?" Narlh demanded. "Can you make people go back and forth between worlds, or something?"
"That's what it boils down to." Matt heaved a sigh. "But if I have to admit that, I have to admit that I really wanted to come to this universe, Puck. And the corollary is that you can't move anyone out of his own universe against his will. What're the chances that Robin would be willing to come?"
"Do you jest?" Puck demanded. "When there is, here, a ruler who not only is wicked in word and deed, but has fully dedicated himself to evil? A ruler who does encourage his soldiers and vassals to rapine, plunder, and murder of the common folk? A ruler who grinds all into squalor and hunger? Tell that to Robin, and see if you can prevent his coming!"
"I think the forces separating the universes would do that. Okay, so he'll want to come if I tell him what's going on. How do we get word to him?"
"Sing of him," Puck suggested. "That will show me the way to him, where he bides at a moment corresponding to this, and I shall go to him and tell to him the plight that we are in. Then do you summon him, and be ready."
"All right, let's see how much of the Robin Hood ballads I can remember..."
The companions grew silent while Matt pondered. Then he began to intone a low chant:
"I have it!" Puck cried, and disappeared.
So much for step one. Matt took a deep breath, trying to ignore his trepidation, and waved his companions back as he recited,
The air along the trail thickened with more than dusk. Matt began to notice an earthy aroma, compounded of fallen leaves and late-flowering plants, of small animals and musky deer...
"He has come," Puck's voice said in his ear.
And he had. The thickening air coalesced, and a whole troop of bowmen filled the trackway. Feathered arrows lanced up from quivers, feathers adorned hats, hoods shielded faces. A few rows back, one lithe young man clothed in glaring red leaned upon a quarterstaff; farther on, a slender, handsome blond man had a bow on his back, but carried a lute before him. Near the front was a short, round man in a monk's robe. He might have had a tonsure, but Matt couldn't tell, because he was wearing a leather cap reinforced by steel cross-straps—and that staff he was carrying could have been a pilgrim's staff, but Matt suspected he knew how to use it as something else.
And in the front stood a woman as tall as Matt was, whose demure tan gown and brown bodice and kirtle couldn't hide the bulging muscles underneath.
Matt felt an eldritch prickling creep over his shoulders and up the back of his head. Could that be Maid Marian?
It had to be, because the man next to her exuded a magnetism, a charisma, that instantly drew Matt's attention and made him want to ask for orders on the spot. Somehow, he had instant, total faith in this man and knew that, with him leading, they couldn't possibly lose.
By twentieth-century standards, Robin Hood was a short, round-faced man with a mustache, maybe five-feet-four-inches tall—but he was broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and muscular, and the eyes in that round face were glowing with the joy of life and anticipation of battle. And his mild smile expanded into a reckless grin.
Behind him, the "giant" towering over the rest of the band wasn't much over six feet—Little John? Matt felt the prickle renew itself—but he still stood a head taller than the rest, most of whom were only five and a half feet high.
"Good e'en," said the man with the mustache. "Are you the wizard Matthew?"
"Uh—yes, I am." Could he actually be talking with Robin Hood? "These are my companions—Fadecourt, and the Lady Yverne—and don't let the big one fool you, he may look ferocious, but he's on our side, his name's Narlh..." Matt realized he was running off at the mouth and stopped.
Robin bowed in response to Fadecourt's bow and Yverne's curtsy. Matt, meanwhile, was noticing that Marian had a face of stunning beauty, no matter what her physique...He wrenched himself back to the matter at hand. "And I think you know Puck..."