This is a totally open AU one-shot. Do whatever you want with it, because barring a miracle I'm never touching it again.
"You robbin' hoods! You dirt-eatin' worm cowards are going to regret ever crossing me..."
The rickety wagon sped into the forest with its two passengers, quickly outdistancing echoes of the pitiful threats.
As one man leaned back to adjust the load on the back of the haphazardly laden cart, the other drove the horses down the old deer trail with quiet and decepive ease. "Sheriff Bob sounds a mite pissed," said the driver with a totally straight face.
"I wonder if it was the tax money or the leper disguises that set him off, Vin?" wondered his fellow in a equally serious voice.
"Think it was the part where we left him hanging upside down in a tree, Chris?" Vin asked, looking out at his friend from beneath the floppy brim of his felt hat. The two men shared a satisfied smirk before returning their eyes to the path, such as it was. Soon the woods surrounded them entirely, blocking out the rest of the world.
Vin's glance darted up at a rustling tree top, but he relaxed as he heard a familiar voice cry out. "Buck, they're coming!" A small figure hurtled toward the forest floor only to stop with an audible thud two feet from the ground, dangling from a line.
"Dammit, J.D., how many times do I have to tell you not to do that? You can't fly!" hollered a deeper and equally familiar voice as Buck sprinted out from cover to help untie the young lookout.
"I have a rope." J.D. grumbled as Buck held him up while Vin left the wagon to help fidget with the knots until the human fishng lure came loose. The commotion caught the attention of several others who also broke cover to either berate J.D. or inspect the contents of the cart.
Chris untied one bag and held it open for inpection. It was filled with a wide variety of copper coins, lightly laced with silver.
J.D. had recovered his dignity, such as it was, sufficiently to stagger over and join the group peering in."Nice take."
"Praise be." agreed Josiah, holding himself several steps back from it's temptation.
After struggling out of his leper robe, revealing his suit of outlaw's green, Vin caught Chris's eye and nodded at an aging dogwod tree meaningfully. "Ezra, get over here!" Chris called, tossing down the open sack so that it made a weighty clink.
Another man in green dropped gracefully from his perch in the low flower clad branches and adjusted his collar. Ezra managed to make the utilitarian verdant camoflage look somehow more expensive. He wandered over and cast a calculating eye on the small sacks strewn across the bed of the cart and raised his eybrows appreciatively. "Remind me to thank our good Marian."
Buck agreed, returning to a well-liked subject. "You sure know how to pick 'em Chris. Lucky she's sweet on you."
Chis shook his head. "Lucky Bob's stupid enough to try bullying his sister-in-law like he does. Mary's a hard woman."
"If she ever finds out for sure that he did in his brother Stephen..." said Friar Nathan, looking up from his basket of herbals.
They all winced at the images of carnage that suggested themselves.
"No more easy pickings," Vin answerd softly.
"Can't be two sherriffs in England that stupid," seconded Josiah.
"Might as well get this stuff unloaded." Buck said with a sigh.
As the men carried the sacks into a small concealed cave dug for that very purpose, J.D. took Ezra aside. "Tell me again why you have to count every coin here?"
His friend sniffed cynically. "Do you want to still be hiding behind bushes when you're in your dotage? If we don't have a precise tally and accounting of our impromptu tax-refunds, you almost certainly will. Don't you want Richard to see us for the charitable gentlemen that we are?"
"But what about the stuff we keep?" the young outlaw asked earnestly.
"A trifling sum," Ezra dismissed loftily. "Even saints must eat."
Vin stiffened slightly as he dropped his bag, catching the attention of the good Friar. "Let me see that shoulder, Vin," coaxed Nathan, and Vin reluctantly shrugged out of his shirt to reveal a long shallow wound. "How'd that happen?" asked the infirmary monk incredulously. "Bob didn't actually hit you this time, did he?"
"No, that happened last night when Mistress Nettie mistook him for a robber," replied Chris as he too unloaded.
"Now where would she get that idea?" Buck laughed
"Shut up, Buck," chorused, well, everyone.
"This looks raw," noted Friar Nathan "You know she would have patched you up, right?"
"No call to worry her none. Just a scrape," Vin grumbled.
"Well, good thing that's the truth for once," the friar admitted as he took another look at the slash and rubbed it with a rag dipped in alcohol. "I swear you all act like you think you're legends from one of Josiah's epics."
"Now that's just dumb." said J.D. "Who'd want to hear about a bunch of merry men who're robbing hoods?"
Finis
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