Time Riders: The Doomsday Code (22 page)

Bob’s head appeared through the gap between the gates. ‘Wider, please!’ his voice boomed above the din. The men against the gate reluctantly gave him a few more inches to push himself through, and then he was inside with the others. Immediately a heavy locking bar was slid into place.

Liam collapsed back on to the ground exhausted as the thick gates rattled and thudded for a while longer under the dwindling barrage of projectiles. Finally, apart from the occasional thud, it seemed the riot going on outside had spent its energy. He could hear the roar of voices grow sporadic, beginning to dwindle and lose some of the intensity they’d experienced earlier. Finally, one of the men in the guard tower called down.

‘They’re leaving!’

A man next to Liam, one of the guards who’d handled the locking bar, sighed. ‘Same as last night.’

Liam grasped his arm. ‘It was like this last night as well?’

He shrugged. ‘’Tis like this
most
nights.’

It took a word of command from Cabot and a mere glimpse of the king’s royal seal to convince one of the castle guards to take them immediately into the main keep. They found the Sheriff of Nottingham hunched over a round oak table, on which a dozen thick candles cast a flickering glow across cluttered stacks of parchment and a plate of food uneaten and forgotten.

‘What is it
now
?’ He stirred drunkenly. Bleary eyes opened, and at the sight of strangers in rags, spattered with blood, he lurched back in his chair and fumbled clumsily for a longsword on the table. It slid off the table along with a small stack of parchment and clattered uselessly on the floor.

‘Sire!’ said the guard, a young lad with tufts of ginger hair poking down from the rim of his helmet. ‘Sire! ’Tis not villains!’

The sheriff stopped fumbling for the blade on the floor and looked up. ‘N-not villains?’ His rheumy eyes narrowed behind a tangle of dark greasy hair. ‘We are safe? They – they have … gone?’

‘The fool is drunk,’ growled Eddie under his breath.

‘Aye, sire,’ replied the young guard, ‘they have dispersed, as last night.’

The sheriff collapsed back into his chair with a sigh of relief, resigned to leaving his sword where it lay on the floor. He muttered a prayer of thick unintelligible words and then reached across the table for a goblet of wine.

‘Sire,’ said Cabot, stepping forward, ‘we are on royal business. His Lordship, Earl of Cornwall and Gloucester –’

‘Oh yes? What d-does John want of me now, eh?’ He grinned up at them and then upended the goblet into his open mouth.

‘We have come directly from John’s keep in Oxford,’ said Cabot. ‘On his orders.’

Nottingham laughed again. ‘Orders? I have orders, eh?’ He attempted to pull himself to his feet, stumbled a solitary step towards them before losing his balance and sprawling on to the floor. He lay where he was and began whimpering. Finally, while they waited for him to pick himself up, they realized he was snoring.

‘He is of no use to anyone,’ said Cabot.

‘Bob,’ Liam sighed, ‘lift him on to his bed.’

They watched Bob heft the sheriff carelessly over his shoulder and cross the hall to a large oak-framed mattress.

Liam turned to the guard. ‘Is he always so drunk?’

The young man was unsure whether he should reply.

‘
Answer
the man!’ barked Eddie.

‘Aye, s-sire. ’E …’e’s turned to drink.’ The guard looked anxiously at them. ‘Dreadful afraid, ’e is.’

‘Of what?’ asked Liam.

‘The people, sire! The people out there! Every night now they come out. Every night they gather and try an’ burn them gates.’

‘Lad, where are the captains? The sergeants? Who is in charge here?’

The young guard shrugged. ‘Many ’ave deserted. They gone to serve other masters.’

‘So
who
is in charge?’

‘The sheriff,’ said the lad.

‘There are
no
captains?’

‘No, sire. Just other … other men at arms, sire.’

‘How many?’

‘We are at ’alf strength. Perhaps no more than two ’undred, sire. But more leave each day.’

‘So why’ve
you
stayed?’ asked Liam.

‘Because … because there’s food ’ere. Because I’m afraid what them people out there goin’a do to me, sire. I ’eard stories of soldiers caught leavin’ this castle … what them outside ’ave gone done to them.’

Eddie cursed. ‘This castle will not hold the people of Nottingham out much longer if all that is left inside are frightened boys.’

Cabot nodded. ‘This is not a good situation for ye to take charge of, Liam.’

The young guard’s eyes widened and Cabot noticed that. ‘Aye, seems this young man is to be yer new sheriff.’ He tossed a nod at the snoring body on the bed across the hall. ‘I am sure he can do no worse a job than that drunken fool, William De Wendenal.’

Cabot turned to Liam. ‘So, lad … there are things it seems that need yer immediate attention here, before we go looking for a certain item.’

Liam nodded silently.
Jay-zus, I’m supposed to be running a castle now?

‘Right,’ he said with little enthusiasm. ‘Right … yes.’

He became aware that Cabot, Eddie, the young guard – even Bob – were all looking at him, waiting for him to say something.

Why me? Why is it
always
me?

‘Errr … all right,’ he said finally. ‘Right,’ he said once more for good measure. ‘Umm, OK.’

Eyes on him still.

‘So, then, Eddie?’

‘Sire?’

‘I’m going to put you in charge of the men here.’

His jaw dropped open. ‘Sire?’

‘That’s right, you’re the garrison commander now. I want you to take command on the walls for the rest of tonight. All right?’

‘Aye, my lord!’ Eddie barked with enthusiasm.

Liam expected him to turn and go immediately but then he realized the man was waiting to be dismissed. ‘So then, uhh … you can go now.’

‘Sire!’ Eddie turned on his heels. ‘Come on, lad!’ he barked at the young guard. They clumped heavily out of the hall and a minute later Liam thought he heard his parade-ground bark echoing up the stone walls from the bailey outside.

Cabot filled the quiet hall with the sound of his soft wheezy laugh. ‘So, Liam of Connor, mysterious traveller from the future. It seems now ye have become a
part
of history. Ye
are
the Sheriff of Nottingham.’

‘This will cause contamination,’ cautioned Bob. ‘And it is exceeding our mission parameters.’

‘Yes.’ Liam nodded. ‘I’m well aware of that.’ He glanced at the snoring drunk on the bed. The man was clearly unfit for his role; a nervous wreck. A drunken nervous wreck. Perhaps the situation had done that to him. The stress of it, being in charge of this hopeless mess. He’d learned enough now to know that this country was in a perilous condition, bankrupt and on the verge of complete anarchy. A resentful population taxed to their knees and now starving. The noblemen – barons, lords, earls who should have been the backbone of authority providing men-at-arms and money to maintain order – were all conspiring against John, refusing to pay the tributes they owed.

A mess. A terrible mess. But a mess that was not his nor Bob’s concern. That’s how this history was meant to be anyway, right?

‘I’m afraid, Mr Cabot,’ said Liam, ‘that fella snoring away over there … he’s still the sheriff.’

‘Ye understand this castle is the administrative centre of the north!’ said Cabot. ‘Do ye understand that? If it falls into the hands of marauding peasants, if they overrun this place, then the country north of Oxford will be lost!’

‘Right. But it’s not our business. If it happens, then it’s meant to happen. That’s how history goes.’

Cabot studied him silently. ‘Ye would let that happen? If order collapses, the land will be awash with the blood of innocent people!’

Cabot was probably right.

‘Information: there are no records in history of a popular uprising of peasants successfully overthrowing the Sheriff of Nottingham,’ said Bob.

Liam looked at him. ‘You sure?’

‘Affirmative.’

‘Oh that’s just grand, that is,’ he sighed. ‘You’re telling me this is all
wrong
– right? That this
shouldn’t
be happening?’

Bob nodded. ‘It appears we are experiencing incorrect history.’

‘Sal? Sal? … You OK?’

Maddy noticed she was teetering on her feet unsteadily. The half-empty mug of tea dropped from her slackened fingers to the floor and shattered on the hard concrete. She took a faltering step, then steadied herself against the edge of the kitchen table. Maddy got up from her armchair and put a protective arm round her narrow shoulders.

‘Dizzy,’ she replied.

‘She OK?’ asked Adam.

Sal nodded. ‘I’m fine … but I think that was a –’

The archway went completely dark.

‘Time wave,’ said Maddy.

‘What?’ She could hear Adam’s breath, uneasy and ragged. She felt the soft touch of air on her cheek, his hands swooping and flailing in the pitch black. ‘What is this? Is this … is this some other sort of dimension thing?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s just darkness. The genny should kick in, in a few seconds.’

But the lights flickered back on
before
she heard the deep coughing throb of the generator starting up.

‘Oh! That means we’ve got power still,’ she said, looking at him and smiling. ‘That’s a good sign.’

The computer monitors began to flicker back to life, one after the other.

‘That was a big wave,’ said Sal.

‘Yes, it was.’

Adam looked at them both. ‘So does that mean …?’

‘You’re in an alternate timeline? An alternate 2001?’

His head bobbed like a cork.

‘Yes.’ She made her way over to the computer desk. ‘Let’s see
how
alternate.’ The computer system was just finishing restoring itself, and Bob’s dialogue box flickered up on to one of the screens.

> System reset complete.

‘Bob?’

> Hello, Maddy.

‘We just had a time wave.’

> I know.

‘But we’ve got power still.’ Stupid thing to say, but she’d said it anyway.

> Affirmative, we have power. But I have had to correct the voltage and amplitude settings.

‘What?’

> The power coming in is a form of direct current.

She looked at Adam and Sal standing beside the desk. ‘Then maybe it’s a bigger change than I thought.’

> Information: we have no external data link.

‘No Internet,’ said Sal. She made a face. ‘That
isn’t
such a good sign.’

Maddy nodded towards the shutter door. ‘Something pretty big’s changed out there … maybe we should go see?’

They made their way across the floor. Maddy jabbed at the green button. Nothing happened. The shutter motor, linked directly to the external power line and not automatically monitored and modulated by the computer system, wasn’t working.

‘Marvellous,’ she muttered, and began cranking the handle beside it.

‘Let me,’ said Adam, taking over from her.

The shutter clattered up slowly, letting in a surprisingly bright ribbon of light for the time of day. Maddy checked her watch. It was approaching four in the afternoon. The Williamsburg Bridge normally blocked the sun from their dim little alleyway pretty much from two in the afternoon onwards.

Adam stopped cranking. The shutter was waist height. A quick look at each other, then all three of them squatted down together to look outside.

‘
Shadd-yah!
’ whispered Sal.

‘Uhh … all right, that’s not New York,’ said Adam.

‘Nope,’ said Maddy almost nonchalantly. ‘No it isn’t …
again
.’

The cobblestones of their alley ended abruptly where the energy field ended and beyond that was a bed of tidal silt that sloped down to the East River. She spotted several fishing boats of various sizes lying askew on the mud like beached seals, tethered to wooden mooring poles.

Across the East River, Manhattan island was still there, of course. But instead of the forest of skyscrapers, there was a sleepy-looking town nestling on it. She could see a carpet of gabled rooves and chimneys and somewhere in the middle the spire of a church. Along the edge of the town she could see more fishing boats and jetties, and the bustle of activity as fishermen worked their catch ashore, small cranes lifting catch-nets full of squirming sea life out of their holds and on to the dockside as clouds of seagulls buzzed, swooped and complained.

‘We’ve had worse,’ said Maddy.

Adam shook his head. ‘It’s like … like, completely changed!’

‘Duh,’ chuckled Sal. ‘Of course it is.’

‘But there’s power,’ said Maddy. She pointed towards the town where a line of lamp posts carried overhead cables along the shore front. ‘So it’s not like we’ve been thrown back into some total dark age.’

‘But no Internet,’ said Sal.

On this side of the river, where only moments ago the seldom-used dockside cranes and abandoned warehouses of Brooklyn had stood, there was nothing but silt punctuated by hummocks of coarse grass and dozens of tide-marooned fishing boats surrounded by discarded coils of rope and useless torn fishing nets. She spotted a solitary gravel lane to their right, flanked by intermittent wooden telegraph poles. It wound along their side of the river and, a couple of miles further up, she could see the small mid-river humps of Belmont and Roosevelt islands, and – just as in the normal timeline – a bridge spanned the river there. Albeit a very different-looking bridge.