Time Riders: The Doomsday Code (20 page)

He looked down at the wooden box in his hands, old weathered wood with an ornate pattern carved into its sides.

Locke stared at it. Inside this box was what he’d come back in time for. Inside this box was what his brotherhood had been waiting nearly a thousand years to recover. A lost truth. A warning. A prophecy.

Pandora
.

Locke had glimpsed inside, had touched it, even unravelled some of it just to get a glimpse of the writing. And he’d felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The words were there on the parchment, hidden from a casual eye: random, unintelligable, the meaning locked away by its code.

He looked up again, out through the flap of his hut at his bandits making merry by the flickering light of the campfire. Their raids on the baron’s goods, on the farms, on the taxmen’s carts – all of that was eventually going to bring King Richard up to Nottingham once he returned to England, up to these woods. That, and the knowledge that his precious Holy Grail had been taken.

Locke nodded.

He’ll come. And he’ll bring with him the other half of the Grail. The key.

‘This will ensure you have the full co-operation of that bumbling fool,’ said John.

Liam looked down at the roll of parchment in his hand. It was sealed with a blob of wax in which John Lackland’s royal crest had been impressed.

‘What is it, Sire?’

‘Orders for the Sheriff of Nottingham to give you anything that you need in hunting down this Hooded Man and his bandits.’ He pursed his lips with wry amusement. ‘Should that useless fool, the Sheriff William De Wendenal, object to this, or prove obstructive in any way, you may assume the office yourself. These papers confer that authority to you.’

‘You mean …
I’d
be Sheriff of Nottingham?’

‘’Tis so if necessity requires.’

‘Cool,’ Liam chuckled.

‘Aye,’ said John, looking around at the courtyard. The readied horses blew plumes of steam and overhead the grey winter’s sky tumbled uneasily, promising another light flurry of snow. Cool indeed. ‘But it shall warm up soon, though, I warrant.’

Stern-faced soldiers stood nearby, rubbing gloved hands and stamping their feet to stay warm. ‘I give you a dozen of my best guards to take up to Nottingham with you. They are all good men. I trust them. They will take your orders as if they were mine.’ John glanced at Bob, now equipped with a chain-mail
hauberk
over his wide torso, a chain-mail
coif
protecting his coconut head and a long sword in a sheath attached to a belt of leather cinched tight round his waist. ‘Mind you, if your big friend is half the fighter as you say … I should think you’ll not need them?’

Liam looked at them and struggled hard not to grin proudly.

My own little army of tin soldiers
.

‘I’d like to hang on to them, please,’ said Liam.

John frowned for a moment, then understood what he meant. ‘’Tis so, then.’ He placed a hand on Liam’s shoulder. ‘Bring me back what was taken, Liam. Before ’tis too late.’

He nodded. ‘Aye, Sire. We’ll get it back.’

‘I do have one condition I insist on.’ He nodded at Becks. ‘Lady Rebecca will stay here in Oxford with me.’

Liam drew back. ‘
What?
’

John tipped his head subtly and a pair of soldiers appeared from nowhere and grasped her upper arms. Liam heard the scrape of a sword being drawn and Bob getting ready to swing it.

‘Bob, stop!’ he shouted. He spun round to face Becks. Already she had one hand round the throat of the unfortunate man to her right, squeezing his larynx. His eyes bulged and his feet shuffled and scraped against the flagstones.

‘Becks! Put him down!’

She stared at the man defiantly for a moment, before releasing her grip. ‘As you wish.’ The man gasped, dropped to his knees hacking and coughing up phlegm on to the ground.

John puffed anxiously. ‘Good grief!’

‘She’s a feisty one, Sire,’ said Cabot. ‘She can fight just as well as any man I’ve seen.’

‘So it appears,’ said John. ‘Nonetheless I insist she remain here until you return with …
it
.’

They could fight their way out of here, out of the keep. Liam knew that between Bob and Becks this courtyard would be nothing but a carpet of dead and dying men on the flagstones inside a minute. But he suspected a more intelligent solution was needed.

‘May my friends and I talk in private for a moment, Sire?’

John sniffed. ‘If you wish.’ He waved a hand and the soldier standing beside Becks helped his colleague to his feet and took him across the courtyard to join the other guards, where a soft hubbub of laughter and ribbing ensued –
a grown man, a King’s guard … bettered by a girl!

John took a dozen slow steps back from Liam and started humming tunelessly.

Liam, Becks, Bob and Cabot converged and began talking with muted voices.

‘We should stay together!’ said Liam. ‘You’ll miss the return window if we leave you down here!’

‘The scheduled window,’ said Bob, ‘is due in three days, one hour and –’

‘The one-hour back-up window will follow and there will be another after that in ten days’ time,’ interrupted Becks. ‘We also have the final back-up set for five months, twenty-six days, one hour and seventeen minutes from now.’

Liam realized Becks seemed to be making a point. ‘You’re suggesting you stay here?’

‘Affirmative. There may be an opportunity to acquire tactically useful data here: additional information on the Treyarch Confession.’

Bob nodded. ‘She is correct. Also, now that we have a method of communication with the field office we will also be able to provide them a separate time and location stamp for Becks.’

He was right, they could open a portal right
here
for her. She wouldn’t need to make her way up to Kirklees. Liam looked at her. ‘You’re OK with this?’

‘It is the correct tactical choice,’ she replied.

Liam glanced at John, looking up impatiently at the sky and still humming. ‘I think he’s got a bit of a
thing
for you, Becks.’

‘A thing?’

‘You know … I think he
fancies
you.’

Cabot snorted a dry laugh, then quickly blessed himself with a guilty glance to the heavens.

‘Yes! You’ll have to be careful!’

‘I will be able to deal with him,’ she replied calmly. ‘I will use his …
desires
and
motivations …
to my advantage.’

‘You can’t let him know you’re some sort of robot from the future,’ said Liam. ‘Do you understand? That’s too much contamination.’

Becks studied Liam for a moment, then her cold, emotionless face seemed to melt, transforming into a warm and sensual smile. She tossed her dark hair for good measure. Liam felt something flutter inside him …
desire
?

Oh come on, Liam. Meat robot, remember?

‘My AI has already learned much. I have observed female rituals. I have also read Harry Potter. I know what body language and verbal inflections work most efficiently on human males.’ The smile remained on her face – teasing, encouraging, bewitching. She even managed a wink: clumsy and forced, but still enough to make his heart flutter. ‘I will be fine, Liam O’Connor.’

She will at that
.

Liam nodded. ‘All right, then. You stay here. See what you can find out. We’ll let the field office know exactly where you are so they can beam a tachyon signal to you. If something goes wrong, Becks … if for some reason Maddy doesn’t contact you with a schedule for a window here, make sure you get to Kirklees in time for the six-monther. Do you understand?’

‘Affirmative. I have no wish to self-terminate.’

‘All right, then … that’s that.’ He looked at Bob and Cabot, nodded, then turned to face John. ‘Lady Rebecca agrees to stay, so she does.’

‘Of course she does,’ said John. ‘I will make her most comfortable.’

Liam stepped forward and offered John a polite nod. ‘We’ll be off now, Sire.’

‘Please waste no time, Liam,’ said John. A momentary flicker of tension crossed his face. ‘I have heard rumours King Richard is already in France.’

‘We’ll be back before you can say
póg mo thóin
.’

John’s heavy brows locked in mild confusion again. For a moment his lips pursed as if he was going to actually have a go at saying it.

‘It’s just a turn of phrase where I come from, Sire.’

‘Right.’ He dismissed Liam with a curt nod. Liam turned and pulled himself up into the back of Cabot’s cart. Bob followed him up, the cart’s axles creaking under his weight.

‘It has been good to see an old friend again,’ John called out to Cabot. ‘Lord knows ’tis been a while since I’ve had one.’

‘We shan’t return empty-handed, Sire.’ Cabot clacked his tongue and goaded the horses to life with a sharp tug on the reins. The cart slowly clattered forward across flagstones towards the castle’s front gate. Liam looked out of the back canvas to see the men –
his
men – forming up and dutifully falling in behind them: a short column of ruddy-faced soldiers in dull chain mail, marching heavily in their wake.

He caught one last glimpse of Becks, that teasing smile of hers packed away for later use. She nodded a farewell at him as they clattered beneath the archway and out on to the bridge.

Sal watched Adam across the archway, bustling around their kettle and fridge, making them some tea.

‘Are we not telling too much?’ she asked Maddy. ‘Showing him too much? I thought Foster said we were, like, this top-secret organization.’

Maddy looked away from the monitor towards him. ‘I know, I know,’ she muttered guiltily. ‘But I … he’s useful, Sal. We need him.’

‘So what happens, though … when we’ve fixed things up and it’s all back to normal? What’re we going to do with him then?’

Maddy said nothing … which Sal misinterpreted. Her eyes suddenly lit up. ‘He can stay?’

‘No!’ she replied quickly. ‘No – we can’t
recruit
him!’

‘Oh.’

‘He can’t stay, Sal. He can’t. I just can’t take in anyone we – just because we, you know? Just because we
like
them.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because this is a team already. A four-man team, just like Foster said. The agency is made up of
four
-
person
teams. Each with their own role and –’

‘But with Becks we’ve already got
five
in our team!’

‘I know! All the more reason not to be taking on any more!’

They watched Adam pour water from the kettle into several chipped mugs, stirring the tea with a tinkling sound that echoed across the archway.

‘So what’re you going to do, Maddy?’

She sighed. ‘Nothing.’

‘
Nothing?
’

‘Because –’ she bit her lip and looked away – ‘he’s not going to
last
very long.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I checked his name, Sal. Checked it against the roll-call of tomorrow’s victims …’

Sal’s gaze returned to the desk, to Maddy. ‘
Shadd-yah!
’ she whispered. ‘No.
Tomorrow?
Don’t say to me he’s …?’

Maddy nodded. ‘He works for a company called Sherman–Golding Investment … they’re on the ninety-fifth floor, north tower.’ Maddy realized her voice was wobbling ever so slightly. ‘He’s one of them that never made it out.’

They heard his footsteps approaching. Both turned to see Adam carrying a steaming mug of tea in each hand.

‘Here you ladies are. Nice cuppa.’ He frowned, puzzled. ‘What’s up with you two?’

Maddy fixed a wide smile on her face. ‘Hey … absolutely nothing.’ She reached for her tea. ‘Thanks.’

He glanced back at the kitchen table. ‘I’ll just go get the biccies. Mum always said a cuppa tea’s too wet without something to dunk in it.’

They watched him go. And Maddy found herself wondering what sort of a person this job was turning her into – that she could just knowingly let someone as likeable as Adam walk blindly to his death.

The town of Nottingham glowed in the dark. Not the welcoming glow of lanterns and night-watch fires but from several buildings set aflame.

As the cart and its escort of guards slowly approached the entrance to the town, their ears picked up the faint ring and clatter of melee weapons and the roar of a defiant crowd.

Through an open and unmanned gatehouse they entered the walled town to see a thoroughfare cluttered and messy with broken slats of wood. A funeral pyre burned in the middle, stacked with a dozen corpses. The smell of cooking human flesh made Liam gag.

Cabot sitting beside him on the jockey seat turned. ‘All right, lad?’

‘Jay-zus! The smell,’ he grunted, wiping a string of dangling bile from his chin. ‘What’s happening?’

‘’Tis a rebellion, I think.’

Liam noticed some women and children in rags and on their knees around the fire, presumably grieving for those bodies burning in the flames. He spotted a cart laden with what at first he thought was a pile of bark-stripped firewood, pale knobbly branches of beach or willow. Then he realized he was looking at arms and legs – bodies, stacked on top of each other.