The Doomsday Code

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!’