Time Riders: The Doomsday Code (33 page)

The last time Liam had asked Locke the question, he’d replied rather cryptically, ‘The end.’

‘Is it much farther into the future than me?’

Locke said nothing, the half-smile frozen on his face, teasing Liam.

‘A hundred? Two hundred years? … Five hundred?’

‘The End,’ said Locke again, offering nothing more.

‘The End?’ Liam hunched his shoulders. ‘Ahh, come on, what is that supposed to mean? Do you mean the end of the century?’

The older man said nothing.

‘The end of what? … End of the
world
?’

Locke relented. ‘It really boils down to how you interpret this world around us, Liam. In a scientific way, or a spiritual way. Is it an ending … or a beginning?’

Liam ground his teeth with frustration. ‘That means nothing to me, so it does! That’s just the kind of mumbo-jumbo I’d expect from a priest.’

‘The prophecy, Liam. We’ve always known the Grail contained a detailed prophecy. Something happens on a certain date, a certain year.’

‘Something?’

‘
Something
.’ Locke spread his hands. ‘We don’t know. That’s what I came back to find out.’

‘Something,’ uttered Liam again. ‘Something good or something bad?’

‘I suppose if you have faith, Liam, if you can believe in a caring God, then it can only mean something wonderful will happen.’

‘And do you?’

Locke scratched the tip of his nose. ‘I suppose I’ll make my mind up when I’ve managed to decode the thing.’

Moonlight illuminated the forest track in front of Bob. It was just possible to see the dark stains of congealed blood in places, the scuff marks of boots, the glint of several twisted and broken loops of chain mail, and the pale feathered fletching of a few arrows deeply embedded in the dirt.

Bob reined the horse in and stepped down on to the track.

It was silent except for the hiss of a breeze through the endlessly stirring trees and the far-off hooting of an owl. He examined the signs of battle more closely.

Heavy boots close together had rucked the dirt, and many small gouges in the mud suggested arrows that had embedded themselves in the ground and been retrieved later. Bob nodded with calm certainty that this was the site of the ambush that had happened over twenty-four hours earlier.

He wandered over to one side of the track, pushing aside the thick ferns and bracken that filled the forest floor between the stout oak trunks. He soon found the first body, hastily pulled out of sight and dumped amid a thick clump of nettles, stripped of anything of value and left as carrion. He picked his way along the edge of the track, finding several more bodies, all of them stripped of their mail and their leather boots and left with nothing but their leggings and blood-stained tunics.

Half a dozen bodies in total. He flipped the last of them over; to his relief, none of them was Liam.

Relief.

Bob queried his mind for greater clarification. His on-board hardware looked dispassionately at the impulses coming in from the organic nub of flesh that barely deserved the term ‘brain’. The tiny electrical impulses fired off by the rat-brain-sized organ conformed to a pattern that humans would call an emotion.

Yes. Relief.

He stood up and listened to the night, hoping that beyond the hiss of stirring branches he might hear the faint and distant cry of human voices raised in drunken celebration or calling for help. But he heard nothing. Just the owl.

Bob’s decision-tree had been here before. On his very first mission he’d lost Liam in the aftermath of a battle for the White House; Liam had been taken away in one of a column of prison trucks. His AI then had been woefully unprepared for the decisions it had to make. But he’d managed to do it. He’d managed to reprioritize the mission goals to put rescuing Liam at the very top. Technically, a breach of his programming, but also something he’d been proud of.

This time round, it was a far easier decision. This mission’s goals were so poorly defined and ambiguous that devoting what was left of the six-month mission envelope solely to finding his friend Liam was a nanosecond evaluation.

But how?

He could wait until dawn and attempt to identify a visual trail. A body of men moving through the thick undergrowth of Sherwood Forest would leave behind something that even an inexperienced tracker could follow.

He decided that was to be his plan of action, and settled down to a hunched-over squat amid some nettles to wait for the light of dawn. He wouldn’t sleep. Instead his mind would do what it always did when the rest of the world was in slumber: a
defrag
. A chance to play through the endless terabytes of data stored on his hard drive.

Memories.

To replay it all, every single image, every sound, every sensation, every smell. To try and make connections, to make associations, to understand a little better what it would be like to have a real brain. To be a
real
human
, instead of an engineered tool … a meat robot.

He’d just started unpacking and sorting through a slideshow of memories when he detected the faintest odour of woodsmoke. Not the ever-present odour ingrained into the tunic he was wearing, the smell of melted tallow mixed with stale sweat. This was on the air … a fire burning somewhere out in the forest tonight, caught on the fresh breeze and carried for miles.

He sniffed loudly, his broad nostrils flexing like a horse’s.

The faint odour again.

He stood up quickly, scanning the woods in a steady 360° arc, hoping to detect just the faintest flicker of light deep in the woods. He saw nothing. But … he had the odour. Not just the smell of dry seasoned logs, but the vaguely minty odour of pine needles burning.

A campfire.

He decided to follow his nose.

It was morning and a mist mingled with the white smoke of a dew-damp cooking fire, drifting up through the canopy of branches above.

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
.’