A Shot in the Dark

by

Seymour Stevens

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2018 Seymour Stevens

Prelude

The Poacher

Hail and Well Met

The Maid’s Maid

A Recruiting Party

The Sheriff of Nottingham

A Maiden’s Prayer

Kick ’em Out!

The Greek Refugees

Babes in the Woods

But Who to Kick?

Meeting God

Deal or No Deal

News

Deal

Misdirection

Detained At His Pleasure

Getting Ideas

Plan A

Of Kings and Maids

Fitting Jenny’s End

Reunited

The Heist

The Scheming Sheriff

At What Cost

Still Partying

Kicking ’em Out!

Point of Sale

Bringing Back Baccy

Time

Vision in Red

Self-Awakening

Mistress Marion

An Unwelcome Message

And Now What?

Into Action

The Frame

Mistress Marion’s Wiles

To The Rescue

Mistress Marion’s Discovery

The Shoot Out

Maid Rescues Man

Pointless Introductions

Give ’em a Good Kicking!

Ye Gods!

Samantha’s Scheme

The Gods’ Ineffable Plans

Punishment

A Sight for Sore Arses

Epilogue

Also by Seymour Stevens

Free Book Offer - The Birds

Coming Soon - Deeping Dreams

Have You Read - A Song of Camelot

About the Author

Prelude

It was a party for the beautiful people. All were fabulously formed. No blemishes besmirched the toned and tanned bodies, no bulges ballooned but those that belonged, and those bulged very nicely indeed! And you could tell all this, because all of these beautiful bodies were very much on show.

Many were dancing to the wild pipe music that trilled through the air. Though when I took dancing lessons in my youth, none of the instructors suggested holding your partner quite like these boys and girls were doing. Perhaps I should have chosen my terpsichorean tutors more carefully, there was a lot to be said for this technique. The party goers certainly seemed to think so!

Wine was being drunk and not in dainty sips. Guzzling was going on. Rivers of the liquid grape poured down throats, much of it missing its target and cascading over bare chests. Which looked a whole lot better on the female half of the gathering, if you want my opinion!

Perhaps wisely, the party was being held far from the beaten track, in a forest clearing containing a standing stone of suggestive shape and impressive proportions. Had the revellers been conducting themselves like this in the centre of town, somebody would undoubtedly have called the police by now. Even in the more liberal suburbs, eyebrows would have been raised, significant glances exchanged, and perhaps invitations sought!

So far, I’d have loved to be there, but now we come to the part that would have caused me to seek my company elsewhere.

It was the male members of the ensemble that would have induced me to regretfully refuse an invitation. And members is the apposite word, for nearly every one of them wore his member proudly in front of him, rigid, rampant and ready for action. The exceptions being those that despite the lack of a dress code, were invisible due to having entered the fray already. Well, entered somewhere anyway!

I regret to add that behind each and every single male member, visible or otherwise, lurked an extremely hairy arse!

So I wasn’t a part of this pulchritudinous partying, I rely on witness accounts to relate these rude and rambunctious revels. Stories that speak of orgasmic cries filling the air, of flaunted female flesh, of masculine members moving menacingly. Tales of the two backed beast, the many backed beast, the I didn’t know that was even possible beast! In between great gulps of the juice of the grape, fingers were fiddling, hands were holding, loins were lunging, tongues were teasing.

All in all, I think it’s fair to say that everybody was having a very good time indeed!

The Poacher

My first impression was of green, there was an awful lot of it about, there was green absolutely everywhere. I was in a world of green.

I mean, not quite everything was green, the ground was covered in dead leaves which were mostly a sort of reddish brown. Above the ground I could make out tree trunks and branches which were also brownish, but many of these were thickly covered in moss and lichen which as you are no doubt aware, tend to be of the green persuasion.

I suppose that if you wanted to be generous about it, one could almost say it was a binary colour scheme. However, the overall experience was of green, there was green absolutely all over the place. Even the sky appeared to be green, concealed as it was by the overlapping canopies of the various trees that grew on all sides.

My clothes were green, trousers and jacket, even my hat. If I was wearing underwear, and I hadn’t had time to check yet, then I had a pretty good idea what colour those undergarments would be.

I try to be fair about these things, so I’ll mention that there were a lot of different shades of green to be seen, from the bright fresh colour of a newly emerged broad leaf, to the darker hue of the needles clustered on a Scots Pine, and just about every variation of shade and texture in between. But what just about everything held in common was, and I fear I must keep coming back to it, the colour green.

Up until this point in my life I’d never had anything against green. I’m not a tree hugger or anything, but I have been known to develop a fondness for the odd houseplant during the brief period that I can keep the thing alive. The thought of protesting against green was not one that had ever occurred to me.

To the best of my knowledge, green is a fully paid up and perfectly respectable member of the spectrum, quietly nestling as it does in between yellow and blue, and has done nothing to deserve opprobrium heaped upon it by the likes of me. It’s just that I felt the theme was being somewhat overstated. I would have been similarly overwhelmed by, for example, the colour purple. Something was lacking, and that something I felt, was variety.

Still, green was what I’d got and it seemed that I’d better get used to it.

Thus it was that when a crossbow quarrel embedded itself with a thock into a tree trunk close to my ear, I greeted its arrival almost with relief. Its shaft was a refreshing golden colour and the grey goose feather fledging made a welcome change to the overall emerald ambiance.

The bolt had, however, come extremely close to me and my ear had felt its passing. I reached a tentative finger to my earlobe and brought it back to my eyes for examination. While a touch of scarlet might have brightened things up, I was relieved that it was not my blood that would be adding a fresh colour to the palette.

What happened next took me by surprise. I had effectively just woken up in this green world and had absolutely no idea of what was going on. It had registered with me that I wasn't all that fond of people firing crossbows that were presumably aimed at me, but beyond that my thinking hadn't really got past green.

But now I felt my body go into action. My right arm reached over my shoulder and pulled something from behind my back. As that arm came around in front of me, I saw that I was holding a thin stick which I was bringing towards a much bigger stick that I held in my left hand.

It was only as I was fitting the thin stick into place on a string attached to the big stick that I realised what I was holding. As I was raising my left arm, while simultaneously hauling back on the string with my right, an act that required considerable effort I might add, I registered that it was a bow and arrow in my hands.

A different feathered fledging, whose colour I hadn't noticed, tickled my undamaged ear and I slipped my fingers from the string, sending an arrow towards the source of the quarrel that had so recently come my way. There was a cry of pain and a man fell forwards, a steel helmet rolling from his head as he hit the ground.

He was wearing a chain mail coat, but I knew that chain mail wouldn't stop one of my arrows. However, it hadn't needed to, my arrow had struck the man in his right calf and was there still. It was, I realised, sufficient to disable the man and hopefully stop him shooting at me again, but not anything that should do him permanent harm. His calf was also, I now understood, exactly what I'd been aiming at. I hadn't wanted to kill him.

Further ruminations on this theme were suspended as a hail of crossbow bolts came from the wounded man's companions. None of them hit me, for which I was grateful, but it seemed that I had perhaps outstayed my welcome, it was time to withdraw.

I offered the crossbowmen a mocking bow and tipped my hat towards them, then I melted away into the trees behind me.

* * *

Now, despite what some of my acquaintances will tell you, Jenny's minx, Samantha, springs to mind (if you haven't met these luscious ladies before, don't worry, they'll be along shortly and I'll introduce you then), anyway, I am not a complete fool.

I recognised the symptoms, the merciful bowshot, the mocking bow and the tipping of the hat for what that they were. They were the gestures of one who wished to let his opponents know that they had encountered a true hero, and that actions such as my current withdrawal from the fray should in no way be interpreted as running away.

I knew this because immediately prior to my arrival in this green new world, I had been another hero, Sir Galahad, one of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. King Arthur himself was another hero. A nice chap, by the way, but one with a regrettably hairy arse. However, King Arthur's arse is of no relevance here, I was talking of heroes, and it is the hero side of things on which I now focussed.

Merlin the Magician (more on that manipulative swine later) had transported me back to Camelot and into the body of Sir Galahad (if you want all the details, treat yourself to a read of A Song of Camelot) and it was Merlin that had needed a hero. He had also led me to believe that he was sending me home, but he had lied, hadn't he? Here I was instead. Another hero.

Well, there was only one hero that I knew of who carried a longbow and hung around in forests. This was presumably Sherwood Forest and that would make me Sir Robert of Loxley, later turned outlaw and better known to the world as Robin Hood!

Hail and Well Met

A reedy voice called quietly to me as I edged further back into the forest, it was Ralph, a strapping lad who was a poacher’s son. The crossbow wielding men were one of the Sheriff of Nottingham's patrols and they had disturbed us just after we had shot one of the Royal deer.

While I had been delaying the Sheriff's soldiers, Ralph had been cleaning the carcass and lashing it to a pole. The pair of us were no match for that many soldiers in a real fight, however heroic one of us might be. Discretion demanded that we beat a tactical retreat with the utmost urgency.

Rapidly shouldering the burden that would later form a feast, we moved swiftly into the deep forest and made our way towards camp. All the way, we were careful to leave no traces of our passing, and the last stage of the approach to our outlaw base was an aerial one, we took to the trees so that we’d leave no tracks. The deer carcass was hauled away on rope slings.

People bringing large quantities of food are traditionally welcome at outlaw camps, and Ralph and I were no exception. Besides, I was the boss! We were greeted cheerfully.

Soon I found myself being ushered towards a hut which was slightly larger than average and stood at the edge of the camp. Flowers bloomed in neatly trimmed borders around the hut’s walls. No windows, but a curtain doing the job of a door, which is more than most of the other shacks could boast.

Somebody called out Marion, Robin’s back! and the door curtain was pulled aside. A dark haired head poked out and looked at me. It was Jenny!

I mentioned earlier that I would introduce you to Jenny and her minx and now is the time to meet Jenny. This dark haired and wonderfully shaped beauty is the bosom companion of my heart, possessing a far finer bosom than I do myself.

Jenny is a warm, caring and compassionate girl of no small intelligence, and she is kind enough to indulge me by allowing me to be hopelessly in love with her. We share both home and bed together, though not always alone. One regular visitor to our bed being Samantha, Jenny's poppet, slave or minx. But I'll say no more of Samantha just now, we'll meet her soon enough, let's see what Jenny has to say for herself.

She pulled the curtain open wider and she ushered me inside in silence. Dropping the curtain back into place, she looked me up and down, then she said You!

A few women had taken to greeting me like this of late. It was a trend that I couldn’t really bring myself to like. While You! has the virtue on being succinct, saving on wasted breath, pithy almost, I feel it lacks warmth. The whole how nice to see you ness of it was sadly absent. There was no real bonhomie, welcome the returning hero, or any of that. Still, I was used to it and knew how to respond.

Me!

What is going on? What have you done?

That’s right, blame the man! No matter how innocent he may be, when it comes down to it, when you get to the nitty gritty, the heart of the matter, it’s going to be his fault regardless of extenuating circumstances. I defended myself.

Nothing!

What do you mean, nothing? One minute I’m in a dungeon with you and Samantha, the next I’m here. Living in squalor and with everybody calling me Marion!

Ah! I can explain.

Well, I said I could, but in reality I didn’t know what was going on myself.

You’d better start explaining right now! What am I doing here? What is this thing I’m wearing? Where are my own clothes? And in particular, where are my panties?

Well, the thing you’re wearing is called a shift, or it used to be, maybe the name has changed over the years, anyway, it’s a very handy garment, it comes off at a moment’s notice. As to the panties, I rather think they still haven’t been invented yet. On the other hand, a lack of panties goes very well with a shift, what with its coming off qualities and all that.

I was babbling, I knew it, but didn’t really have anything sensible to offer and given Jenny’s expression, saying nothing wasn’t an option. She didn’t look at all happy. Her mouth had assumed the same shape as a letterbox. Her eyes were flashing. I considered telling her how good she looked when she was angry, but my self-preservation genes kicked in and I stopped myself.

You are treading on extremely thin ice! Explain!

At least my foot hadn’t gone through the ice quite yet, but I had a feeling I’d be up to my neck very shortly.

Merlin!

What?

Merlin. The wizard.

Merlin is a myth, he doesn’t exist! Like elves!

Ah! Funny you should mention elves. Quite recently I ...

Jenny’s eyes flashed even brighter, a low growl was coming from the back of her throat. I backtracked.

Er, Merlin, yes, it’s all his fault.

You’re going to die!

No, no! Merlin, he exists! Really! Funny old cove, twinkly eyes, don’t you know. He knows everything!

Like where my panties have got to?

Oh, I expect so, yes. He’s a bit of an old goat, you see, I suppose he thought you’d look better without them.

Actually, I thought this was a perfectly rational response. Jenny looked good wearing panties, but she did indeed look even better without them. In a less fraught situation, she might agree the point, but that was not the case here. She was unimpressed.

You are saying that a twinkly eyed old goat of a wizard who doesn’t exist is looking up my skirt, shift, whatever?

Well, if he’s got any sense he would be!

That’s it! Prepare to die!

No, wait! I told you, Merlin is real, or was, or even will be, but real. A bit like the elf girl’s tits.

What!

That wasn’t actually a question, it was more of what I believe can be termed an