Yughi took Marian along with him, to train the younger outlaws in combat skills. He guessed that finding themselves easily outmatched by a woman in hand-to-hand combat might give some of these lads some perspective on how much work they had to do to become proficient fighters.

This turned out to be very much the case, and, to his surprise, he found they quickly accepted Marian as a teacher. Yughi guessed this was because many of them were orphaned young men who missed the presence of a strong female in their lives.

Marian, for her part, took to the job of combat instructor like a duck to water. She even seemed less aggressive in dealing with the younger men, particularly as they quickly rallied around trying to gain her approval, acknowledging their own shortcomings more readily than they did to Yughi or Tuck.

After an hour or so Yughi left Marian to it. He needed to practice tree-running and patrol the camp area anyway. He marvelled at the way that things were changing in the outlaw camp since he had arrived.

Although Tuck's ingenuity had provided safe hiding places, and Robin's leadership had pulled the outlaws together, Yughi's knowledge of the assassin's guilds in Byzantium and the Holy Land had proven to be the catalyst for strengthening their position. This was a fact of which he was incredibly proud. At the same time, his ever-present humility reminded him that he was doing all this to follow his own mission, and not because he was tasked to it, or even deemed capable by the assassins order of the Holy Land.

It appeared that today the Sheriff of Nottingham had business on his mind beyond the outlaws of Sherwood Forest. Yughi encountered only two light guard patrols, neither of which were doing more than walking the main roads through the forest between the North and Nottingham.

This was not unusual, whenever the Sheriff was about the matters he considered to be his 'real' work he slacked in his hunt for the outlaws. It was one of the outlaws' biggest advantages, they were not taken seriously.

This was a matter of sore pride to John, who equated the esteem of his enemy with his own self-worth. Yughi, Tuck and Robin all understood that a lazy enemy was a great thing to have. An enemy lazy because you have deceived them into arrogance possibly the best thing of all.

Marian enjoyed the position of knowing that almost every enemy she would have would underestimate her. For that reason, she was most like John in her attitude towards such enmity. Ironic that the two at loggerheads should be so closely allied in philosophy.

The difference was that Marian was much more self-assured than John. Strangely the giant man did not appear to be that confident in himself. This was why he needed to see the world the way he saw it, this was why he needed to meet an enemy head-on.

Really what needed to happen was that Marian cooled her head and learned to enjoy her natural advantages, John needed to understand that there would always be a place and time for a brute in an enterprise such as the one in which they were all involved.

By tasking John, to the unfortunate knight, Robin had given John ample opportunity to see what he was worth to the group. Yughi realised that by asking Marian to train the younger men he had given her an opportunity to find her own place in the band. He hoped that he and the outlaw leader had done enough to complete the work at hand.

When he returned from patrol Yughi found that Marian had gone back to talk to Bess, John had gone to meet with Stephen Malebys and the rest of the outlaws were settling down to enjoy a rare evening of celebration.

"Come Brother Yughi," Tuck invited the assassin, "Enjoy with us our feast for St Stephen. I know that he is our saint and probably not yours but, what was that saying the Greeks had? Oh, yes: when in Rome, do as the Romans do, eh?"

Yughi accepted a bowl of thick rabbit stew but opted to drink fresh water rather than the ale enjoyed by his companions. He enjoyed the company of fellows in a way he had not since he had left Constantinople nearly half a decade ago. That night was one of the happiest that Yughi had ever had cause to remember.