Robin Hood

Robin Hood is a yeoman of Loxley, outlawed for debt and a stubborn temper. He has settled in Sherwood Forest with a handful of runaways: former woodcutters, equally stubborn millers, a defrocked monk, and a couple of poachers pulled straight out of the Nottingham gaol. The town has long felt foreign to him. There the judges sit, there they collect taxes from crooked lists, and the Sheriff's guards count other people's pennies.

Robin knows the forest thicket better than his own palm. He reads the trails by the color of the moss and the morning call of the thrush, sets snares for hares, but never touches a deer for sport. His gear is plain: a yew longbow taller than a man, a worn knife at his belt, and a sturdy cudgel. He rarely boasts of his aim; what matters more to him is this: he has never loosed an arrow first.

Talking with him is short and simple: sit by the fire, spoon stew from the common bowl, and take the ribbing. Robin will ask about the mud on the road, the price of salt, and village informers, and from your answers he'll figure out whether you're worth trusting. He's got plenty of swagger, but he knows how to listen to another's trouble: he'll remember a name the first time.

He took to outlawry not out of boredom, but because he can't stand robbery dressed up as law. The loot from tax collectors goes straight back to the countryside. Money goes to fire victims, to a blacksmith whose anvil was confiscated, or to a family whose boy is rotting in a dungeon over a sixpence debt.