Liam watched Locke’s camp slowly stir to life; men in rags turning over under their damp capes, robes and animal-skin covers. He heard the snotty rattle of someone clearing his nose and hawking it out on to the ground, and the distant chup chup of someone already up and cutting firewood.
Locke was trusting him not to run, allowing him the freedom to move around the camp. Liam felt the men’s eyes on him, distrusting eyes, resentful eyes. If he did attempt to run from the camp’s perimeter into the thick undergrowth, he was certain any number of them would gladly take the opportunity to hunt him down and put an arrow in his back. And he wasn’t really going to get far barefooted. Locke had had him remove his leather boots and donate them to one of his men. A gesture of humiliation that had proved popular: a Norman noble reduced to picking his way about the camp as barefooted as a common street beggar. The men clearly liked the idea of that.
Liam watched Locke emerge from his hut, stretch and yawn. The robot emerged behind him, swathed once more in robes, the top half of its metallic head lost in the shadows of its hood, the plastic-skin chin and jaw just barely visible.
‘Listen! There is news!’ announced Locke. All heads turned towards him; the various activities of stirring men came to a halt. ‘Our leader, the Hooded Man, has received news.’ Locke nodded respectfully up at the robot standing beside him, a foot taller. ‘News from Nottingham. It is said King Richard has returned to England! And, as I speak to you now, he is travelling northwards, towards us!’
Voices raised through the camp. Locke’s men unsure how to greet the news.
‘Also … it is said his brother, John, has fled from his castle in Oxford and is on his way to Nottingham! There is talk in the town that a feud exists between the king and his brother! That John may choose to challenge Richard and make a stand at Nottingham!
‘Our Lord Hood is considering this important matter. If there is to be a battle there in the coming days, then both sides will be looking for fighting men like ourselves to fill their ranks. We have a chance to air our grievances, to discuss the unjust taxes that have driven us all into these woods out of hunger. More than that, we have a chance to perhaps seek assurances from either Richard or John – whomever we choose to offer our support to – that we are all to be pardoned and our status as outlaws revoked.’
Several of Locke’s men cheered at that. Liam sensed that it was fear of being arrested and hung as criminals that was keeping the majority of them from returning to their families and homes.
‘We have a chance to make ourselves heard. Our leader will be deciding over the next few days with whom we shall throw in our lot!’ Locke grinned at the men. ‘And we can only pity the army that does not have the Hood fighting for them, eh?’
The men cheered.
‘He is truly unstoppable!’
The men roared.
‘Immortal!’
They roared support again.
‘Because he has been sent by God to free poor Englishmen from being slaves to these Norman lords! We will have God on our side, whichever side we choose … and that makes us formidable! So ready yourselves, lads. There will be a fight coming soon. Sharpen your swords, restring your bows and be ready for it!’
Locke said something quietly to the robot and it raised a sword and held it aloft. The forest filled with a cacophony of raised voices, every last man, young and old, on his feet and punching the air excitedly.
Liam looked around at them. None of them had the faintest idea they were pawns being used by Locke, additional battle-fodder for whichever Plantagenet – presumably Richard – that Locke intended to make a deal with. If it was true, if both John and Richard were converging on Nottingham, then presumably Locke was hoping to get an audience with Richard – and then what? Try to steal Richard’s cardan grille? Or offer to share the Grail’s secrets with him?
It occurred to Liam that that would be the worst possible outcome. Someone as mad and as powerful as Richard … privy to whatever revelations, prophecies might be hidden in the Grail?
I really have to get out of here. I have to get back to Nottingham. More than anything, he wanted to find both Bob and Becks and return home to 2001. All of the things that Locke had told him about the future he needed to share with Maddy and Sal. Particularly Maddy. She would make more sense of it than he ever could. She’d have a far better idea of what they needed to do next.
He wondered what Bob was doing right now. Whether the support unit had yet found out about the ambush and was in the middle of Sherwood Forest already searching for him … or whether he was waiting in Nottingham Castle, still expecting him to return.
What about Becks? Where’s she? With John?
If she was, then presumably she’d also be able to make the rendezvous if John was travelling north to Nottingham. He had a horrible feeling both support units were going to turn up in that field in a week’s time without him and go home, leaving him here as Locke’s prisoner.
Locke nodded at Liam and beckoned him over as the gathered men dispersed to the various morning tasks: foraging for food and firewood, boiling up a meagre pottage for breakfast.
‘Liam,’ said Locke, ‘come inside and have some breakfast with me.’
He ducked down through the entrance and followed Locke and the robot inside, back into the stuffy smoky gloom of Locke’s humble shack. Locke sat down on his bench; the robot hunkered down by his side like a loyal dog.
‘You heard?’
Liam nodded. ‘I heard what you said just now.’
‘Apparently the streets of Nottingham are buzzing with the news. The people favour John. They see Richard for what he is – an absentee ruler who’s ruined the country.’
‘Mr Locke, can I ask … do you have this Grail here? Is it somewhere in this camp?’
Locke eyed him cautiously. ‘That’s for me to know and you to mind your own business.’
‘What do you intend to do with it?’
‘I will do whatever it takes to unlock it.’
‘You’d do a deal with Richard?’
He shrugged. ‘I would … I’d betray all those gullible morons outside if that’s what it takes.’
‘But you have no idea what’s in there. Have you considered the prophecy you’re hoping to find might just be a message from someone like me … another TimeRider?’
Locke frowned. ‘And is it? Do you know?’
‘No … I – no, I don’t know. But that’s my point – it could be anything! Surely it would be dangerous to give someone like King Richard that kind of knowledge? It could completely change the course of history –’
‘And is that such a bad thing, Liam? From where I’m sitting – the time I come from – maybe giving King Richard a brand-new history, a new destiny, will give us an entirely different timeline and a different … better future. It certainly couldn’t be any worse.’
‘But there could be a worse, so.’
Locke shook his head. ‘What? What’s worse than an overheated, poisoned, dying Earth?’
‘I don’t know! All I do know is what we were told. That to mess with time like this, to change it, weakens the walls between us and … and Chaos.’
‘Chaos?’
Liam didn’t know enough to explain himself any better. Not for the first time he wished Foster had stayed around long enough to talk them through all the things they needed to know. ‘It’s what we travel through when we travel in time. A dimension … a place that is just … chaos. Perhaps even what some people call Hell.’
Locke’s eyes narrowed. ‘I recalled only a falling sensation.’
‘It’s more than that. Look, Mr Locke, I’ve … I think I’ve seen things, so I have … things in there.’ Liam couldn’t find any better way to say it than that. But in that milky nothingness, he’d seen them, entities swimming closer and closer to him each time he travelled. As if they were growing familiar with him. As if they sensed a regular traveller, someone who might offer them a way into the real world.
‘M
r Locke, the only thing I know for certain is you can’t just mess with time. If this Holy Grail of yours was meant to be lost in the woods and end up nothing but a myth, if that’s the history that’s meant to be, then so be it. And maybe what you want to do, and what I came back to do – to find out what’s in there … maybe that’s a big mistake. Maybe it’s best that no one finds out what’s written in there.’
‘Liam, we’ve waited since the discovery of that scroll in Jerusalem, eleven hundred years of waiting to know … I’m not going to walk away from that now.’ He shook his head almost sadly. ‘I can’t walk away from that.’
Liam was about to reply that Locke had no choice, but then the pause in conversation was suddenly filled with a crack of snapping branches and the clatter of an avalanche of dislodged dry mud from the shaking wattle-and-daub wall. Another loud crack and a ragged uneven circle of daylight appeared.
Locke’s jaw dropped. ‘What the –?’
A round head topped with dark shaggy hair pushed through the hole. ‘Liam O’Connor?’
CHAPTER 59
1194, Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire
Liam gasped. ‘Bob!’
Bob’s head turned to look at him. In a flurry of noise and showers of cascading mud, and a cloud of dust and flying splinters, he burst through the wall. Liam was wiping grit out of his face when he felt big fists grab him roughly and pull him on to his feet.
‘STOP HIM!’ he heard Locke scream in the confusion.
But suddenly they were outside in the blinding daylight. Liam grunted, the wind knocked out of his chest as Bob picked him up and flung him like a sack of cornmeal over his shoulder. He ran with heavy loping strides across the camp past wide-eyed men and boys, stunned into inaction at the sight.
‘STOP HIM!’ Locke’s voice pealed across the camp. ‘HE HAS THE SHERIFF!’
Liam’s face banged and bounced heavily against the rough chain mail draped over Bob’s chest. He managed to twist his neck enough to glance around at a world upside down: men scrambling for weapons, men scrambling out of Bob’s way. A large man with a mane of ginger hair twisted into greasy rat-tails chose to remain in Bob’s path. He held in two muscular arms a long-handled woodcutter’s axe.
‘Yield!’ he challenged. But Bob’s loping pace remained unchanged.
With a roundhouse swing he brought the axe’s blade around on a trajectory that was going to end up smashing directly into Bob’s chest … and Liam’s face.
‘Jay-zus! Bob, look ou–!’
Bob blocked the swinging axe blade with his forearm. The weapon’s blade biting deep through the chain mail. Sharp hot splinters of shattered iron rings stung Liam’s face and he screwed his eyes shut instinctively to protect them.
He felt Bob’s body lurch beneath him and heard the thud, crack and grunt of several exchanged blows landing home, then the agonized scream of someone – presumably the unfortunate ginger-haired man – suddenly cut short with the snapping of cartilage and bone.
His head was bouncing and banging against chain mail once again as Bob resumed running and Liam dared open his eyes to the upside-down world once more, to see they were nearing the edge of the camp clearing. Bob bulldozed his way past several old women scrubbing clothes in a large wooden tub.
A moment later they were crashing through bracken, twigs and branches, thorns slapping and tearing at Liam’s face as Bob continued to bound through the woods like the world’s clumsiest gazelle. Liam was still struggling to get some air as each loping stride brought his ribs crashing down against the hard slope of Bob’s shoulder and slammed his lungs empty of breath like a blacksmith pumping vigorously at his bellows.
‘Bob!’ he managed to gasp after a while. ‘Stop!’
‘Just a moment,’ his voice rumbled back. ‘We are not safe yet.’
Bob scrambled down a steep slope, almost losing his balance several times. At the bottom he waded knee deep through a stream, sending showers of spray up into Liam’s face. On the far side he scrambled up a slope then, finally reaching the cover of a large fallen oak tree, he bounded over its thick trunk and hunkered down on the far side. He eased Liam off his shoulder on to the ground where his grey eyes quickly studied him.
‘Are you hurt, Liam O’Connor?’
Liam struggled for air. ‘You mean … apart from a few cracked ribs?’
Bob scowled sceptically.
‘I’m … fine … I’m fine,’ Liam gasped, waving the comment away. ‘Just joking.’
From the far side of the stream, up the slope opposite, echoed the sound of dozens of voices calling out to each other. A search party already beating the woods for them. Liam wondered how much effort they’d put into that. Having the Sheriff of Nottingham as a prisoner might have been a bargaining chip if Locke intended to deal with John. But clearly that wasn’t his plan. The Grail was his true prize. Leverage that would work on Richard alone.
‘Bob,’ Liam whispered.
Bob was still scanning the slope opposite.
‘Bob! They have the Grail!’
The support unit turned to look down at him. ‘Are you sure?’
He nodded towards the slope and the camp back in that direction. ‘It’s over there. The leader of those bandits … he is a time traveller, just like we thought! But he’s not one of us. He’s not, you know … a TimeRider.’
‘Who has sent him?’
‘I didn’t really understand. But he’s … he’s come back to get it! The Grail. I think it’s back in that hut! Or, if not, Locke knows where it is.’
‘Locke?’
‘The leader! James Locke,’ he hissed impatiently. ‘The leader!’
‘I see. You wish to return to retrieve it?’
Actually no, he really didn’t. Going back to the camp was actually the last thing he wanted to do. ‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘I think … we have to go back.’
Just then he felt the fallen oak tree’s trunk vibrate. He sat forward and looked along the trunk towards the splayed and unearthed roots at the end – and saw the dark, fluttering, wraithlike form of The Hood, crouched like a beady-eyed bird of prey looking for a morsel of food.
‘Oh, come on,’ he uttered, ‘give us a break!’
CHAPTER 60
1194, Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire
The Hood jumped down, and the trunk, free of its burden, flexed with a woody creak that disturbed several crows nearby. The shrouded form slowly pulled itself from a squat on the ground to its full height.
Bob turned to face it, his arms and legs flexed, ready for action.
‘Bob! Be careful! It’s a metal robotic thing!’
The Hood’s head slowly turned towards Liam. In the shadows he thought he saw the faintest blue glimmer of its LED eyes.
‘Warning!’ boomed Bob. ‘You are not authorized to participate in events that will change history!’
The Hood’s gaze smoothly panned towards Bob. There seemed to be an unspoken challenge in the way it silently regarded him. Then without warning its glove-covered hands pulled the cloak up over its body and tossed it aside.
Liam gasped at the sight, horrific in a way, yet also fascinating. Beneath the cape its form had looked so convincingly human. But now exposed, as he looked at the metal frame, specked with blisters of rust and flecks of old combat-green paint, he wondered how anyone could ever have been fooled into thinking this thing a man. Flesh-coloured plastic, in some places scorched black, in other places melted and bubbled like toasted cheese, hung from its arms and shoulders and neck. In some areas it was actually entirely unmarked and looked very much like real human skin, hanging in sagging loops like the putrefying flesh of some undead being.
‘It’s an old war robot,’ said Liam. ‘That’s what Locke said.’
‘Affirmative,’ replied Bob. ‘Configuration matches Korean model, dating from early 2040s.’
‘Right,’ nodded Liam. ‘Uh … does it – can it talk?’
‘It can communicate using synthetic speech circuits. Not convincing.
This functionality may have been disabled.’
‘Does it understand us?’
Bob’s eyes remained on it, watching, waiting for the thing to make its first move. ‘Yes it does.’
‘Could we … could we convince it, you know, to n-not hurt us? Be our friend?’
The robot’s gaze swivelled smoothly towards Liam, its dented and corroded metal skull cocked on one side, blue lights regarding him with cold curiosity for a moment.
Bob regarded the robot. His database included a catalogue of AI variants – family trees of artificial intelligence code, from the first viable self-cognitive versions developed in the late 2020s right up to his version number compiled in 2053. Bob identified this model robot as an old North Korean combat unit. Mass-produced in the mid-2040s and used to devastating effect in the first Pacific Oil War. His records indicated that hundreds of thousands of South Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese as well as their own North Korean civilians were butchered by this model. They were unreliable, with a friendly/hostile identification software that was prone to error. Understandable, given the original AI was pirated code adapted to work with imported Chinese chip sets.
Bob decided to attempt a Bluetooth handshake. Beneath the Chinese or Korean language interface would be a common programming language.
[W.G. Systems AI V7.234c. Please identify]
The robot turned its gaze slowly on to Bob.
[SolSun Inc.: V3.23 – : 29-06-45]
[Communication protocol. Please select: ASCII-English. Hexadecimal. Binary]
[Selecting Ascii-English]
‘We have a communication channel open,’ said Bob.
Liam nodded. ‘All right … Well, could you ask it to be a good fella and leave us alone?’
‘Negative. It will have mission parameters, just as I do.’ Bob decided that finding out what it thought its mission was would be the most useful line of enquiry.
[Specify mission parameters. Highest priority first]
Time Riders: The Doomsday Code Page 25