Hacking, heists and flaming arrows! Read an extract from Robin Hood by Robert Muchamore

Chapter 1.

MR BARCLAY IS A NUTTER

The legend of Robin Hood begins in Locksley High School, on a Wednesday afternoon. It was the middle of lunch break, and pepperoni pizza and buttered corn sat heavy in twelve-year-old Robin’s nervous stomach. ‘If we get caught, we’re dead,’ Robin’s pal Alan Adale noted, as he shoulder-barged double doors. The school was a dump and the boys set off down a corridor lined with vandalised lockers. Mildew on the windows gave the light a greenish tinge and a stink wafted from drains in the girls’ bathroom at the far end.

The two lads were a contrast. Robin was small but muscly, with scruffy hair and ketchup down his purple school polo shirt. Alan was a neat freak. His gangly frame started with madly expensive basketball boots whiter than anything in a toothpaste ad and topped out with an extravagant afro that forced him to duck under doors. ‘Mr Barclay is a nutter,’ Alan continued. ‘Craig got two weeks of detention for that burp in assembly.’

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