The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 63

1194, Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire

‘He won’t have left without it,’ said Liam. ‘Not without the Grail, I’m sure of it.’

Bob nodded. ‘Then we must catch him.’

Liam ducked back out through the entrance and was pushing his way through the crowd when several pairs of hands grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground.

‘An’ where ye goin’, Frenchie?’ snarled someone.

Liam heard the grate of a metal blade being unsheathed.

‘RELEASE HIM!’ Bob’s voice boomed across the clearing once again. He strode forward, his face once more covered by the hood. ‘STAND BACK!’ The crowd did so instantly, drawing back from Liam as if he carried the plague. Bob reached down with his one good hand and helped him back on to his feet.

‘We need horses,’ uttered Liam out of the side of his mouth. ‘We’ll never catch him up on foot.’

‘WHO HAS A HORSE?’

The crowd was silent.

‘Bob, tell them you’re taking me to Nottingham,’ he whispered. ‘Tell them you’re going to force me to write a pardon for them all. They’ll be free to go back to their homes.’

Bob nodded and repeated Liam’s words in his parade-ground voice. The people listened in stunned silence. As he announced they’d be free to return home, an uncertain cheer rippled through them. Uncertain, perhaps because to them it sounded too good to be true.

‘Where has Locke gone?’ asked someone.

‘I’ll tell them,’ uttered Liam to Bob. He cleared his throat. ‘Locke has gone to offer his services to King Richard!’ Some of the men in the crowd cheered at mention of the king. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t be so quick to cheer him,’ Liam continued. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure Richard’s here to save you from John! He’ll come here first, I’d wager. Come here and deal with you all, before dealing with his brother!’

‘You’re lying!’ someone shouted. ‘You are John’s man!’

Others in the crowd murmured their agreement. Liam could see none of them was going to believe a single word he uttered. ‘You better tell them,’ he whispered to Bob.

‘HE IS TELLING THE TRUTH!’ barked Bob. ‘RECOMMENDATION: LEAVE THIS CAMP IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN TO YOUR HOMES! KING RICHARD IS COMING AND WILL KILL YOU ALL!’

The wood was suddenly filled with raised voices, all speaking at once.

Through the crowd, on one side of the clearing, Liam spotted a solitary malnourished horse, tied to a tree and staring listlessly out at the noise and commotion in front of it. He nudged Bob gently. ‘Over there. Do you see it?’

‘Affirmative.

‘I WILL NOW LEAVE WITH THE SHERIFF. YOU WILL ALL BE PARDONED!’

Bob led the way, dragging Liam with him by the arm. The crowd was beginning to break up into knots of people arguing with each other — some determined to stay here, some wanting to go home. An old man reached out for Bob, his hands grasping at his cape. ‘Please don’t leave! We follow you! We came here to follow you!’

Liam glanced up at Bob. He couldn’t see Bob’s eyes beneath the shadow of the hood, but a gentle tip of his head assured Liam he had an answer. ‘It is over, old man! There will be no uprising now. You must go home!’

With that he grabbed Liam by the arm again and pulled him forward through the milling crowd.

But the old man was not to be shaken off so easily. ‘You cannot leave us now! We have nothing! We have — ’ He grasped at the cape again, but this time the old man’s frail hand grasped at material further up the cape and as Bob stepped away the hood pulled back off his face and flapped down on to his shoulders.

The effect was instant. A silence once more; arguments momentarily forgotten, voices hushed and eyes growing ever wider as they stared at his face.

‘’Tis the man who was here earlier!’

‘A trick!’ someone else cried out. ‘To rescue the sheriff!’

Liam jabbed Bob in the ribs. ‘Run!’

Bob’s one good arm stretched out and snatched a longbow from the hands of a young man standing nearby. He swiped it around, smacking the heads of half a dozen of those too slow to duck. And then the pair of them were running for the horse.

Liam’s bare feet stumbled through the embers of a fire, kicking up a shower of sparks. He yelped and hopped as those nearby frantically brushed off and patted down embers on their dry rags and lank hair. Liam was still hopping and yelping as Bob tossed the longbow aside, scooped him up under his arm and a moment later hurled him over the rear of the horse. The animal bucked and complained at the sudden load deposited on its back.

Bob snapped the horse’s tether from the tree with a savage jerk and then swung a leg over. With a brutal kick of heels into its flank he startled the horse forward into the crowd, knocking aside hands reaching out to grasp the reins and wrest the horse from their control.

They clattered through the rest of the camp, the horse’s hooves kicking aside the frail wooden frames of tents and hovels, people lurching back out of their way at the last moment. Curses and stones whistling through the air at them. And then they were on the narrow forest track.