The Blood of Merry Men

                                    

                                              
Submitted for Vampires Everywhere Challenge #2: The Classics by WattVampires 
                          


                          


                          
That cowled stranger—alleged "Abbott of the Black Canons"—had no reason to be in Sherwood Forest. Yet I accepted his offer without suspicion.
                          


                          
Desperate times, you see. With Richard the Lionheart away on Crusade, that pretender John of Angevin seized our lands, driving many Saxons off into the woods. Those who remained were taxed heavily, under threat of dispossession by the Sheriff of Nottingham.
                          


                          
The Normans told children that we were monsters; fell creatures preying on authorities beneath Sherwood's dark cover. So that's what we became.
                          


                          
Guy of Gisbourne was our first blood sacrifice. We fed on him after rescuing Much the Miller's Son from Gisborne's dungeon, where he'd been tortured for poaching livestock.
                          


                          
Will Scarlet distracted the guards, his acrobatic feats enhanced by our eldritch 'gifts'. 
                          


                          
Little John breached their ramparts, an inhuman juggernaut.
                          


                          
Tuck—previously excommunicated by the Benedictines for his ribald humor and boisterous personality—found renewed purpose as Friar of our unholy congregation. Tuck's crimson-stained lips spoke profane oaths that roused our fighting spirits.
                          


                          
Gisbourne Keep fell to my longbow, loaded with the same archer's stakes that could be our undoing.
                          


                          
Our numbers grew after that, as our Merry Men turned more of the Normans' disgruntled victims.