Time Riders: The Doomsday Code (4 page)

‘Sire! Look!’ shouted one of the squires, pointing up the forest track.

Geoffrey turned back in his saddle and squinted at the bright blanket of undisturbed snow ahead of them. He could make out the perfectly still form of a man swathed in a dark hooded cloak, standing in the middle of the rutted track.

Geoffrey’s sense of caution stirred him to rein in Edith and raise a gloved hand. He heard the column of bone-weary horses and men shuffle to a halt behind him.

‘We are about King’s business, make way!’

The hooded figure remained perfectly still. The forest was utterly silent, save for the cawing of a murder of crows circling high above in the winter sky, the rasping of the horses’ breath and the clink of a harness as one of the pack horses stirred uneasily.

‘Do ye hear?’

The figure seemed not to. Geoffrey switched tongues. ‘
Nous faisons les affaires de rois!
’

A breeze tugged at the hooded cape, but the man within remained perfectly still.

This is not good
.

Geoffrey looked at the trees either side of the track: perfect ambush terrain. They’d been jumped before by bandits on the Continent in woods much like this. The mistake back then – a mistake that had cost them a good knight and two sergeants-at-arms – had been not to form up the moment the first of them had appeared. He raised his hand and balled it to a fist – the signal for the rest to dismount and make ready for a fight.

The forest echoed with the metallic clank of buckles and belts, the rasping of chain mail and the drawing of swords from scabbards.

‘Step aside now! Or … I will have one of my men fire upon ye,’ said Geoffrey, beckoning forward Bates, one of the sergeants in his retinue and reliable with a crossbow. Bates drew up beside him, ratcheting back the drawstring and slipping a bolt into place.

‘A warning shot is it, sir?’

Geoffrey pressed his lips tightly. The warning had already been given. Nonetheless, he decided if one more caution could save bloodshed on such a cold and Godless day it was a breath worth expending.

‘Step aside, or ye shall be fired upon!’

For a moment the man’s response was the same. Nothing. Then, slowly, he began to stride through the ankle-deep snow towards them.

Bates turned to him. ‘Sir?’

This foolish man was going to die, then. Perhaps that was what he wanted: a martyr’s death. Geoffrey had seen too much of that these last few years – men hungry to die on the battlefield for all the promises they’d been made about sins forgiven.

‘Take him down.’

Bates swiftly shouldered the crossbow, aimed and fired. The
twang
of the string echoed off the trees as the bolt flickered across the twenty yards between them. With a smack it embedded itself into something beneath the flowing dark robes. But the man’s stride remained unbroken.

‘Good God!’ Geoffrey whispered under his breath.

The hooded man, now no more than a dozen yards away, produced a broadsword from beneath his cape with an effortless sweep of his arm.

‘Prepare to fight!’ shouted Geoffrey over his shoulder at the others. ‘Sergeants, defend the cart!’

He was joined by the other three knights, all younger, some fitter than him, but all of them prepared to die to safeguard what lay behind them, secure in a nondescript wooden box and nestling in the back of their baggage cart.

The squires, not fighting men but hired valets, drew back to gather the horses’ reins, and watch over the column’s possessions. Geoffrey regarded his three brethren, all seasoned fighters, veterans of King Richard’s crusade. Despite this man shrugging off the impact of a bolt – still protruding from his chest – he was sure, between the four of them, that this was to be a short fight.

The hooded man broke into a sudden sprint as he closed the last yards between them, raising the five-foot length of his cumbersome blade as if it was no heavier than a clerk’s quill.

Geoffrey and the youngest, William, hefted their blades aloft, two-handed as Geoffrey had taught, poised ready to swing down. The hooded man’s final stride brought him within range of strike and William swept his blade down first, aiming it at the vulnerable ‘L’ between neck and shoulder. His sword
clanged
on something hard beneath the cape – armour for sure. His sword hummed with vibration as it bounced off the man and continued down into the snow. The hooded man’s response was a blur of movement and the glint of the broadsword through air. Young William was a dead man before his legs had begun to buckle. His head toppled down beside him into the crisp white snow, eyes still blinking surprise.

Geoffrey swung his sword in a reckless roundhouse sweep, hoping if not to cleave the man in two then at least to knock him off his balance. His sweep ended with jarring suddenness and a metallic clang. He grunted a curse. The hooded man had to be wearing a complete suit of battle armour beneath that cape, and yet he moved with the agility of a man almost naked.

The response was a whip-snap blur and before Geoffrey had fully understood the result of the blow he was looking down at the blade being yanked firmly from his sternum. In a fog of incomprehension he found himself lying in the snow, looking up at the grey sky, the flakes settling lightly on his cheeks and nose. His mind was still dealing with the ridiculous notion that, for him, the fight was already over. He – a man who’d fought Saracens all his life, killed hundreds of men – was now reduced by a single thrust to being a pathetic panting body staining virgin snow with his blood.

Far off he was aware of voices screaming. The sound of fear and anger and the metallic clang and rasp of metal on metal: an exchange of swordplay that seemed to come to an end horrifyingly quickly. The voices receded – the squires, perhaps even the sergeants, running for their lives.

Then finally silence. He was aware of the crows still circling above, and the soft crunch of snow underfoot as someone slowly approached him.

Daylight was blocked out by the hooded man leaning over him. Geoffrey thought he caught the glint of armour amid the shadows of his cowl.

How can an armoured man move so quickly?

Then his fading mind was aware of another person leaning over him.

‘Where is it?’ said the new man.

Geoffrey spat congealing blood out on to his cheek. ‘We … we have … no … money.’

‘I’m not after your money,’ said the man. ‘I’ve come for the relic. No matter, we’ll find it ourselves.’

Geoffrey’s grey eyes tried focusing on him. ‘Y-you …
know
 … of it?’

The man’s voice softened, almost kindly now. ‘Yes. I’m one of your brotherhood.’ Geoffrey felt a hand under his cropped hair, lifting his head out of the snow. ‘Here’s something to ease the pain.’

The second man, a lean face framed by long hair and a beard, lifted a glass bottle to his lips. He tasted a strong mead.

‘I’m truly sorry,’ said the man. ‘But we must have it.’ He sighed.

‘The … the relic … is to … be taken to Scotland. It must … it must be kept safe for –’

‘For future generations,’ the man completed his words. ‘Yes, I know this. That’s why we’re here.’ He smiled. ‘We
are
that future generation and we’ve come for it.’

Geoffrey could feel death coming fast; warm and welcoming. And yet his mind felt compelled to know more. His mission had failed.
It
was to be taken from him and now he needed assurance.

‘Ye … ye are … a …?’

‘A
Templar
? Yes.’

Geoffrey’s eyes were far off now … looking for hosts of angels to guide him to the Kingdom of Heaven.

‘We’ve come from near the time that it all happens … and we
have
to know the truth. We’ve come to find out. It will be safe, brother … I promise you that. We will keep it safe.’

The words meant nothing to the knight now. His breathing, short and rapid puffs of tainted air, finally ceased with a soft gurgle.

The man gently eased the knight’s head back down on to the snow and traced the sign of the cross along the red cruciform on the man’s white tunic. Then he looked up at the hooded figure, kneeling in the snow beside him. He nodded towards the abandoned baggage cart. ‘It’ll be there somewhere. Find it.’

The hooded man silently stood up and strode towards the cart.

‘
I’m sorry
,’ the Templar whispered again to the dead knight, gently closing the lids of his eyes. ‘
But we simply have to know
.’

Liam winced at the noise. It was so loud he could feel something inside his ears vibrate, and that surely couldn’t be healthy. Maddy had dragged him to the front of the small nightclub’s dance floor; dragged him by the hand until they’d found a gap just in front of the stage. He’d been prepared to stand there and listen while the band had been playing a slower, quieter,
almost
pleasant song. But then, without any warning at all, they’d taken a passable piece of music and turned it into a screaming, banging cacophony of sound that made his ears hurt. And, of course, all the other weird-looking youngsters standing around him had started jumping up and down for some reason and rudely pushing and shoving him and each other.

He soon had enough of that and left Maddy and Sal bouncing up and down like idiots. He squeezed his way through the crowd, quickly giving up on his
excuse me
s and
pardon me
s until he found Becks standing at the back of the nightclub, calmly studying the behaviour of everyone inside like a scientist studying a cage full of lab rats.

‘They call this
music
, so they do,’ he shouted. ‘
Music
– would you believe that?’

‘Affirmative,’ she shouted back at him. ‘Spectrum analysis of the frequency envelope and beats per minute indicate this music matches other tracks identified collectively as
Death Metal
.’

‘Death Metal, is it now? More like Deaf-and-Mental.’

She looked at him. ‘Negative. I said
Death
 …’ She hesitated. ‘That was a joke, wasn’t it, Liam?’

He shrugged. ‘Aye.’

She practised a laugh she’d been working on; against the din of the band’s final chorus it sounded coarse and braying and not particularly lady-like. He shook his head and looked back at the dance floor, a seething, bouncing carpet of hair and sweaty heads, nose rings and tattooed shoulders, while five willowy young men on the stage jerked and twitched over their instruments. He decided they looked like something out of a travelling freak show.

Jay-zus, so this is ‘the modern world’, is it?

‘Ah, come on,’ laughed Maddy. ‘Lighten up, Liam. You sound like my granddad.’

‘Yes, it wasn’t exactly the bangra-thrash I’m used to,’ added Sal, ‘but – shadd-yah – they were proper good!’

‘Good?’ Liam huffed as they stepped out of the warm and humid fug of the nightclub into the cool September night. ‘I’ve heard angle-grinders along the Liverpool docks make a more tolerable noise than that.’ He tutted grumpily. ‘Now, are you sure those fellas back there actually knew how to play their instruments?’

‘It’s not about how
well
you play, Liam,’ said Maddy, ‘it’s the – I don’t know … it’s the energy, the
attitude
. You know?’

‘Attitude, is it?’ They stepped out of West 51st Street on to Broadway, leaving the milling crowd of emos and grunge rockers dispersing behind them.

‘Yes, attitude. It’s about getting an emotion across to the audience. Laying out how you feel.’

Becks cocked her head in thought. ‘That would indicate the musicians were feeling moderate to extreme levels of irritation about something.’

Liam laughed.

‘Anger,’ said Maddy.

‘And that’s all you need, is it? To be very angry and very noisy?’

‘Umm …’ Maddy made a face. ‘Well, not exactly …’

‘Yes,’ said Sal. ‘Angry and noisy is exactly what music sounds like in ’26.’

As they walked down Broadway towards Times Square, quieter than they’d ever seen it, Maddy checked her watch.

‘You’re sure your idea works?’ asked Liam.

She nodded. ‘We don’t need a portal back to our field office. It’s nearly midnight now. The time bubble will reset in a couple of minutes. By the time we’ve walked back down and across the bridge we’ll be an hour into Monday.’

‘But won’t we, like, meet a copy of ourselves?’

‘That doesn’t happen,’ replied Maddy. ‘We don’t copy. There’s us and we’re either here or there, but not in two places.’

‘I don’t get that,’ Sal replied.

Liam stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking so much about the time thing … just that this is going to be a long walk, so it is.’

The girls laughed at that. Becks dutifully copied them.

‘I would have thought you’d be used to walking?’ said Maddy.

‘Why? Because I’m just some potato-eatin’ Paddy from a hundred years ago?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that exactly. It’s just I don’t suppose there were many cars or buses an’ stuff.’

‘Jay-zus, we’re not jungle savages, you know. We have …
had …
trams and trains and the like in Cork, so we did. I didn’t like walkin’ much then, just as I’m not so keen on doing it now.’

Broadway led them on to Times Square, which was much busier. The cinemas were spilling out those who’d been watching the late showings of
Shrek
and
Monsters Inc
., and yellow cabs queued in the central reserve to pick up the last of the well-dressed audience for
Mamma Mia!
.

Sal staggered for a moment.