The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 37

1194, Nottingham

Ahead of them Bob had deftly spun the pike round so that the blood-wet tip and halberd blade were aimed towards the people. He began to swing its eight-foot length in a wide loop that clipped and gashed a thickset man who’d shuffled back too slowly.

The swooping pike’s blade did the job and created an arc of space in front of Bob as he resumed his steady stride towards the oak gates, now only a dozen yards in front of them. Cabot roughly kicked the rear of the left horse and it staggered forward, eyes rolling and snorting. The other followed suit and the cart was moving again. The guards kept pace, their shields produced a cacophony of metallic clangs, like hailstones descending on to a tin roof.

Liam felt the air by his cheek pulse as a stone or rock whistled by, far too close for comfort. He wrapped his arms round his head and ducked down low. ‘Jay-zus-an’-Mary-get-us-out-of-here!’ he screamed through gritted teeth.

Cabot held the reins in one hand and held his other arm up to shield his face.

The lethal sweeping pendulum of Bob’s pike had now cleared space all the way to the large oak gates. At their base, the beginnings of a pyre of bracken and firewood had been laid, but yet to be successfully set on fire. Several bodies littered the ground in front of the gates, the stubs of multiple crossbow bolts protruding from them.

Liam could see the bracken and branches were going to need to be cleared aside in order to allow the cart through the gates — if, that is, someone inside was prepared to open up for them. But Bob was simply too busy sweeping his pike in order to keep the rioters back to deal with that himself. As the cart rolled forward into the clearing created by him, the soldiers spread out from guarding the cart’s flanks and formed a semicircle guarding the space in front of the gates.

The rioters — and Liam had noted a fair number of them looked more like seasoned fighters, even mercenaries, than they did townsfolk — seemed unwilling to press forward and engage the soldiers or fall within the range of Bob’s swooping halberd blade. Instead they held back, jeering and cursing and continuing to rain down an endless barrage of missiles on them.

Liam jumped down off the cart and began pulling the small mound of branches and bracken away from the bottom of the gates.

‘Help me!’ he shouted to the nearest of the soldiers.

The soldier glanced quickly at Eddie, who nodded. ‘Go on, do as he says!’

He dropped his shield and sword and joined Liam dragging armfuls of tangled branches and twisted bracken aside. Between them they soon managed to clear a gap in the thick pyre when Liam suddenly felt a sharp searing pain in the small of his back; the impact of something sharp and hard. His legs buckled at the shock of it and he collapsed forward into the nest of branches and thorns, snagged and tangled like some hapless scarecrow on a loop of barbed wire. He gasped for air for a moment, winded, stunned.

Beside him he heard a loud ring of impact. He twisted, trying to untangle himself, feeling a searing pain between his shoulders, to see the soldier who’d been helping him clear the pyre, drop heavily to his knees then clatter forward on to the dirt and cobbles, wide, surprised eyes rolling uncontrollably. His helmet was caved in on one side and the stubby fletching of a crossbow bolt protruded. A river of dark, almost black blood cascaded from beneath the rim of his helmet down his face.

Oh, God help us, we’re all gonna die out here.

Cabot was suddenly beside Liam, reaching down and pulling him out of the nest of wood. He was shouting something at Liam, but above the roar of chanting voices and the hailstone rattle and clang on the shields of the soldiers, he couldn’t make out what the old man was saying.

Cabot looked back over his shoulder and quickly ducked an arcing lump of flint, that shattered and sparked on masonry nearby. He turned back to Liam and jabbed a finger past his head, shouting something again. Liam turned painfully, grimacing at the sudden twist of his spine, to see the oak gates behind him had been cracked ajar. No more than would allow a single man to squeeze through sideways.

Cabot shouted again, this time directly into his ear. ‘Forget the cart!’

Liam nodded as Cabot pulled him roughly to his feet. ‘Yeah … OK,’ he uttered to himself. Liam could see that Eddie and his remaining ten men could do little more than hunch down behind their battered and misshapen shields, several of which looked little more than twisted corners of foil paper.

Liam cupped his hands. ‘The gate is open!’

His words were lost amid the chanting from the rioters. He tried to make himself heard again. ‘THE GATE IS OPEN!’

This time Eddie heard, turned quickly and saw for himself. He snapped an order to his men and they immediately began to shuffle backwards towards the gates.

Liam looked for Bob. Over the top of the cart’s two horses he could see his round head protected by the swinging skirt of his chain-mail coif as he ducked and weaved, and the metallic blur of the pike’s head whizzing round like the blade of some vast propeller.

‘BOB!’ he bellowed.

The support unit paused, straightened up like a startled rabbit and looked round for Liam.

Liam waved his arms until Bob spotted him, then pointed to the gates. ‘IT’S OPEN!’

Bob nodded and then, with one last warning flourish of his pike and a deep bear-like roar that startled and hushed the rioting crowd for a few fleeting seconds, he bounded around the uneasy horses and the abandoned cart.

The soldiers had begun stepping through the tangle of branches quickly, one after the other, and through the narrow gap between the gates. Until all that remained of them was a rearguard of Eddie and two others.

‘You first!’ Eddie shouted at Cabot and Liam.

Liam pushed Cabot towards the gates. ‘I’ll wait for Bob!’

Cabot nodded and followed through the gap. The rioters resumed pelting them with missiles as Bob arrived beside Liam.

‘GO!’ Bob’s voice boomed. A large rock bounced off his left shoulder and spun off into the night. ‘NOW!’

‘All right, all right!’ Liam nodded and beckoned at the remaining soldiers to go for the gap in the gates.

The air around them was now thick with the hum of incoming rocks and stones. Liam hunched over with his arms round his head as he waited his turn, certain that some large hunk of masonry was going to brain him before he got a chance to squeeze his way through.

Eddie waved at him to go first and Liam wasted no time. He stepped through the nest of remaining branches and forced himself into the narrow gap between the two large oak gates, rattling like drumheads from the impact of stones and rocks.

Then he was through into the darkness of the tower’s entrance arch. He collapsed on to a hard floor of flagstones, gasping and wheezing. By the wan light of the torches outside falling through the opening he could see the pale and frightened faces of half a dozen men, their shoulders braced against the gate, ready in case the rioters decided to rush it and force it wider.

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.’