Time Riders: The Doomsday Code (17 page)

‘Ye hear?’ whispered Cabot. ‘We are no longer alone.’

Then they all heard it – the almost musical note of a released drawstring, followed by the whistle of something arcing through the air. Liam heard the smack of impact and saw Bob recoil a step backwards. By the light of the fire he could see the glint of something metal protruding from between his shoulders. The support unit turned round to face Liam and he could now see a pale wooden shaft and the white fletching of an arrow embedded deep in his chest.

‘DANGER,’ his barrel-deep voice boomed and echoed into the forest.

Several more arrows whistled out of the darkness, another finding Bob’s right hip, a third hissing past Liam’s head so close he could feel the rush of air on his ear.

‘Bandits!’ shouted Cabot, scrambling to his feet and heading for the open back of his cart.

Into the pale dancing light of the fire, a dozen shapes in rags emerged, all of them armed with bows and long double-edged swords that glinted and flickered. By the look of them, Liam guessed their intention wasn’t to demand they hand over their valuables, but to kill them all first, then to pick through their cart for what might be worth taking.

Bob and Becks moved at exactly the same moment, identical AI routines calculating risk and available courses of action in precisely the same number of micro-seconds. Bob sprinted towards the nearest man, ducking down swiftly at the last moment to dodge the careless swing of his sword. He sprang up again and crushed the man’s throat with the bullet-hard jab of his oversized fingers just beneath his jaw. As the man dropped to his knees, gasping and spraying blood from his mouth and nose, Bob grabbed hold of his sword, flipped it blade-over-hilt and caught it, then finished the bandit with a lightning-quick thrust into his chest.

Becks meanwhile had effortlessly relieved another man of his bow and, using it like a quarterstaff, had scooped him off his feet and on to his back. She dropped down on to him, knees on his chest, and grabbed his head, twisting it sharply until cartilage and bone cracked.

Bob’s blade clattered with a heavy ring as a second man stepped forward and swung at him. Sword pommels locked, Bob pulled his sharply, yanking the other man’s sword out of his hand. It flew through the air, still humming like a tuning fork, and clattered off the trunk of a nearby tree. The man, older than the others, a florid face framed with wisps of dirty white hair, screamed, ‘I yield!’

He raised both his hands in surrender, a gesture entirely wasted on Bob. His next swing severed both of the upraised hands, sending them spinning to the snow-covered ground. The man screamed in agony, turned and ran into the darkness, waving bloody stumps before him.

Liam heard the twanging release of another drawstring and saw Becks had retrieved some arrows from the corpse at her feet. A grunt on the far side of their crackling fire, and a man, who had been sneaking around to take Liam and Cabot from behind, staggered slow baby-steps forward, sporting a tuft of fletching from his forehead and a yard of bloody shaft out of the back. He toppled over on to the fire, sending a shower of sparks up into the dark sky.

The remaining bandits had already seen enough and turned and fled like startled hares, boot soles and swinging arrow quivers disappearing into the darkness. Someone’s agonized drawn-out wailing – presumably the unfortunate handless old man – quickly receded to an indistinct echo that merged with the other frightened calls of the remaining bandits as they tried to find each other in the darkness of the woods.

In those few seconds – little more than the time it had taken Cabot to retrieve his trusty campaign sword from the back of the cart and adopt the once-learned-never-forgotten on-guard stance of an experienced swordsman – four of their attackers lay dead.

‘Good God!’ gasped Cabot.

Bob walked over towards Liam. ‘Are you all right, Liam O’Connor?’ he asked casually.

‘I’m fine, Bob. But you might want to take care of those,’ he replied, pointing at the arrow shafts protruding from Bob’s chest and hip.

‘Affirmative.’

Becks joined them. ‘I will assist you, Bob,’ she said, calmly reaching for the barbed tip of the arrowhead poking out from between his shoulders. She snapped it off with a flick of her wrist. She reached around in front of Bob and pulled the shaft out of his chest with the sucking sound of puckered flesh.

Cabot watched in goggle-eyed silence as she snapped the second tip off and pulled the arrow out of Bob’s hip without even a flicker of reaction on his face.

‘Blood is congealing from the two wounds already,’ she said. ‘I would estimate your combat functionality to be no less than ninety-five per cent of full capacity.’

‘Agreed,’ said Bob.

‘What in the saints’ names are ye?’ hissed Cabot.

Bob glanced at him. ‘Very tough human being, serr,’ he replied unconvincingly.

‘And ye,’ Cabot said to Becks. ‘No lady have I
ever
seen fight like that!’

‘I am also a very tough –’

Liam laughed a little shakily, still adrenaline-pumped from the attack. ‘It’s all right, I told him we’re from the
future
already. You can drop the old English now.’

Becks frowned. ‘That will cause unnecessary contamination.’

Liam shook his head. ‘Ah well, it’s not like the fella believes a word I was saying anyway.’

Cabot was still holding his longsword aloft. His arms, now tired, lowered it to the ground. He leaned on the hilt and regarded the three of them in silence.

‘Well, Liam of Connor … I think I believe ye now.’

‘Oh my God, yes! Yes, it has! It’s changed!’

Sal stared at the grainy image on the computer screen. Old stone dimpled and worn with age and mottled with olive-green blooms of algae. She could see faint lines inscribing the name
Haskette
, a gouge in the lettering where at some point in the last eight centuries someone had hacked at the gravestone or perhaps it had been shot at.

At the bottom of Adam’s photograph, where brambles emerged into the image, she could just make out the faintest groove of several lines bisecting. If he’d taken this picture in poorer lighting it might not even have been visible. They’d easily have missed it.

‘That’s definitely it!’ he said. ‘Do you see it?’

Sal nodded. Maddy said nothing.

Sal’s finger traced the shape on the screen. ‘And that’s the coded symbol for an L?’

‘Yes – yes, it is!’ Not for the first time his jaw hung open, dumbfounded. ‘I can’t believe it. I visited the ruins of Kirklees Priory six years ago and took all these graveyard pictures. And these digital images have been sitting on my old hard drive, in my chest … Jesus, I haven’t plugged in this drive for a couple of years – it’s just been collecting dust. And, yet, something’s happened on there! Something changed on my hard drive! That picture’s been altered. That’s … that’s just … well, it’s just messing with my head!’

‘A minute wave,’ said Maddy. ‘That’s what happened. A tiny, tiny time wave. So slight only Sal felt it.’

Of course, Sal really wished she didn’t pick up on the subtle ones; they felt like motion sickness, that sensation of spinning around too much with your eyes closed.

‘And you’re telling me this is a wave that’s been rolling forward through eight hundred and seven years?’

‘Yes, subtly changing this timeline in its wake. Except, of course, everything inside the archway’s
preservation
field
.’ She could see a look of confusion on his face. ‘That’s why I placed your hard drive
outside
in the alley. There, it’s outside the energy field, and so it
can
be altered by a time wave. Do you see?’

He nodded slowly. ‘Right. So … when Sal sensed a … wave thing, that’s why you …?’

Maddy nodded. She’d raced outside with a data cable the moment Sal started wobbling and looking pale, and had quickly downloaded Adam’s graveyard photos again. All the while with him standing in the middle of the archway, open-mouthed and looking utterly bemused.

He nodded his head again, as if that was going to help him get it. Then he leaned forward and studied more closely the image in front of them all. ‘I feel like my head’s going to explode.’ He laughed. ‘This really is the most incredible thing ever!’

‘Of course it is,’ Maddy said coolly. ‘That’s why this – time travel – has to be kept so secret.’

‘But – but think how it could revolutionize history! Historians could visit the times they study; see for themselves how things were and not rely on –’

‘And with each historian casually joyriding back into the past, the precious history they’d be studying would be altered, mutated, with echoes of change ricocheting back through time, tiny waves affecting tiny decisions causing bigger waves affecting bigger decisions. And all of a sudden in 2001 we’re all speaking, I dunno – Chinese, or we’re all suddenly dinosaur lizard-men, or there’s no New York any more and it’s just radioactive ruins! All because
somebody
decided it would be a
cool
thing
to go back in time and see a bit of history for themselves!’

Sal looked at Maddy. Her cheeks were mottled pink with anger, or embarrassment.

Jahulla, what’s up with her?

‘Sorry,’ said Adam meekly. ‘I was just saying.’

Maddy turned to look at him. ‘That’s why we’re here, Adam. Stuck in this archway. Stuck in these same two freakin’ days, watching the same things over and over! We’re here because there are morons in the future. Idiots! Crazies! Power-hungry lunatics who think time travel’s just a
game
! A
neat
idea! We’re stuck here watching history … and I’ve got no idea how long we’re gonna be here – me, Sal and Liam.’ She looked at Sal. ‘Forever?’

Sal shrugged. ‘I hope not.’

Maddy’s outburst left a long silence filled only by the hum of computer fans and soft purring motors of the growth tubes in the back room.

‘You OK?’ asked Sal.

Maddy chewed her lip in silence for a while. Then eventually nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she sighed. ‘I’m OK.’

‘Sorry,’ said Adam. ‘It’s just all so new and exciting to me.’

Maddy shook her head. ‘No,
I’m
sorry. I … I was rude. I didn’t mean to crank off at you. It just sort of gets to you – this. Knowing about all this. I’m tired.’

Sal decided to lift the mood. ‘Well, the good thing is they found the right gravestone. Right?’

Maddy nodded. ‘Right.’

‘We’ll know what they’re up to
this
time,’ she added.

The cart drew to a halt on the dirt and cobblestone track leading up to the flint-walled grounds of the royal residence, and Cabot dropped down off the cart’s seat on to the track with a heavy smack of sandals.

‘Morning!’ he called to the cluster of soldiers up ahead blocking the way.

Staring at the tall stone buildings beyond the low wall – the steep gables, the crenellations, the flumes and chimney-pots from which thick columns of woodsmoke floated, the fluttering rooftop pennants decorated with royal coats of arms, Liam found he couldn’t help but giggle. Yet another sight a young man from 1912 Cork was never meant to see.

‘What is funny?’ asked Bob.

‘Oh, I’m not laughing, Bob. It’s just exciting. Seeing this … seeing a
real
medieval king’s palace.’

Cabot’s exchange with the pack of soldiers was already over. They – five of them in winter cloaks and heavy chain-mail, puffing clouds of breath – disinterestedly watched him trudge back towards the cart.

‘What’s the matter, Mr Cabot?’

‘John is not here,’ he replied as he pulled himself up on to the seat. ‘He has moved to Oxford Castle.’

To Liam’s disappointment they had skirted round the walled city of Oxford a mile or so back and not entered through the large archway into the busy thoroughfare he’d glimpsed beyond. However, over the top of the thirty-foot-high stone wall, he had spotted tendrils of woodsmoke coming from several steep rooftops and thought he’d caught sight of the crenellated outline of a keep somewhere in the middle.

‘The guards say ’tis the unrest in this region that has driven him to the castle for safety.’

Liam looked back at the low flint wall, the open ground beyond that decorated with cherry trees and the structure of Beaumont Palace itself; it was not unlike a cathedral, long and low with a vaulted roof of timbers. And, he noticed, no motte or other defensive earthworks around the place. Hardly the safe retreat of a ruler in times of trouble.

‘Oxford Castle,’ said Cabot, grabbing the horses’ reins and turning them slowly round. ‘I know it well. ’Tis a strong keep and the city itself very well protected by its wall. Good place for John.’ Cabot’s dry laugh sounded humourless. ‘That is, unless the people of the city have also turned against him.’

The late-afternoon sun peeked through scudding clouds as the cart rattled unchallenged under Oxford city’s main gatehouse into a marketplace thick with the activity of traders closing up for the day.

Liam sat on the seat beside Cabot, chuckling with undisguised pleasure at the sight and the smell of the place. Market stalls, no more than flat hand-drawn carts, were being loaded with the unsold flotsam of the day: rotten, broken heads of cabbage and snapped turnip roots. He saw a trader stacking the remaining skinned hares and rabbits head to toe, a baker collecting the last unsold stale loaves of bread, and, among all the traders packing up for the afternoon, he saw a wandering rabble of very old and very young beggars in dirty threadbare rags, pleading for the scraps too unfit to sell and destined for a pig’s trough.