Alex Scarrow - The Doomsday Code

The old man’s lower jaw hung and wobbled uncertainly.

‘We received a warning, Mr Cabot. A warning to look for this Pandora , whatever it may be. You said this Treyarch Confession goes that the scroll they found was written in Jesus’s time? Right?’

Cabot nodded. ‘’Tis what is said.’

‘Then this warning has travelled across twothousandyears to find us.’ He looked up at the old monk. ‘This is no game.’

‘We must acquire this Grail ,’ said Becks.

‘Agreed,’ added Bob. ‘That must become the mission priority.’

1194, Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire

He listened to the sounds of his people, his followers, their voices echoing through the woods as they chattered around their campfires. Their spirits were lifted. For them, today had been a good day. They’d managed to intercept a merchant’s wagon destined to deliver to some baron a cart full of luxuries. The foreign wine they’d found was being consumed now. And their songs around the fire were gradually becoming less tuneful and more raucous.

They are like children.

He watched them from the darkness of his hut, his army of peasant bandits. So used to the grinding poverty of recent years, the starvation, grubbing for scraps of food. That here, in the forests of Nottingham, where they could poach royal deer and hares because the soldiers daren’t follow them in, they were like excitable children.

It reminded him, James Locke, too much of the place, of the time , he’d come from. A world of poverty, overcrowded and crumbling cities … polluted oceans populated by nothing but floating islands of plastic rubbish and slowly dispersing toxins. A dying world … a dying world.

He looked down at the wooden box in his hands, old weathered wood with an ornate pattern carved into its sides.

Locke stared at it. Inside this box was what he’d come back in time for. Inside this box was what his brotherhood had been waiting nearly a thousand years to recover. A lost truth. A warning. A prophecy.

Pandora .

Locke had glimpsed inside, had touched it, even unravelled some of it just to get a glimpse of the writing. And he’d felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The words were there on the parchment, hidden from a casual eye: random, unintelligable, the meaning locked away by its code.

He looked up again, out through the flap of his hut at his bandits making merry by the flickering light of the campfire. Their raids on the baron’s goods, on the farms, on the taxmen’s carts — all of that was eventually going to bring King Richard up to Nottingham once he returned to England, up to these woods. That, and the knowledge that his precious Holy Grail had been taken.

Locke nodded.

He’ll come. And he’ll bring with him the other half of the Grail. The key.

1194, Oxford Castle, Oxford

‘This will ensure you have the full co-operation of that bumbling fool,’ said John.

Liam looked down at the roll of parchment in his hand. It was sealed with a blob of wax in which John Lackland’s royal crest had been impressed.

‘What is it, Sire?’

‘Orders for the Sheriff of Nottingham to give you anything that you need in hunting down this Hooded Man and his bandits.’ He pursed his lips with wry amusement. ‘Should that useless fool, the Sheriff William De Wendenal, object to this, or prove obstructive in any way, you may assume the office yourself. These papers confer that authority to you.’

‘You mean … I’d be Sheriff of Nottingham?’

‘’Tis so if necessity requires.’

‘Cool,’ Liam chuckled.

‘Aye,’ said John, looking around at the courtyard. The readied horses blew plumes of steam and overhead the grey winter’s sky tumbled uneasily, promising another light flurry of snow. Cool indeed. ‘But it shall warm up soon, though, I warrant.’

Stern-faced soldiers stood nearby, rubbing gloved hands and stamping their feet to stay warm. ‘I give you a dozen of my best guards to take up to Nottingham with you. They are all good men. I trust them. They will take your orders as if they were mine.’ John glanced at Bob, now equipped with a chain-mail hauberk over his wide torso, a chain-mail coif protecting his coconut head and a long sword in a sheath attached to a belt of leather cinched tight round his waist. ‘Mind you, if your big friend is half the fighter as you say … I should think you’ll not need them?’

Liam looked at them and struggled hard not to grin proudly.

My own little army of tin soldiers .

‘I’d like to hang on to them, please,’ said Liam.

John frowned for a moment, then understood what he meant. ‘’Tis so, then.’ He placed a hand on Liam’s shoulder. ‘Bring me back what was taken, Liam. Before ’tis too late.’

He nodded. ‘Aye, Sire. We’ll get it back.’

‘I do have one condition I insist on.’ He nodded at Becks. ‘Lady Rebecca will stay here in Oxford with me.’

Liam drew back. ‘ What? ’

John tipped his head subtly and a pair of soldiers appeared from nowhere and grasped her upper arms. Liam heard the scrape of a sword being drawn and Bob getting ready to swing it.

‘Bob, stop!’ he shouted. He spun round to face Becks. Already she had one hand round the throat of the unfortunate man to her right, squeezing his larynx. His eyes bulged and his feet shuffled and scraped against the flagstones.

‘Becks! Put him down!’

She stared at the man defiantly for a moment, before releasing her grip. ‘As you wish.’ The man gasped, dropped to his knees hacking and coughing up phlegm on to the ground.

John puffed anxiously. ‘Good grief!’

‘She’s a feisty one, Sire,’ said Cabot. ‘She can fight just as well as any man I’ve seen.’

‘So it appears,’ said John. ‘Nonetheless I insist she remain here until you return with … it .’

They could fight their way out of here, out of the keep. Liam knew that between Bob and Becks this courtyard would be nothing but a carpet of dead and dying men on the flagstones inside a minute. But he suspected a more intelligent solution was needed.

‘May my friends and I talk in private for a moment, Sire?’

John sniffed. ‘If you wish.’ He waved a hand and the soldier standing beside Becks helped his colleague to his feet and took him across the courtyard to join the other guards, where a soft hubbub of laughter and ribbing ensued — a grown man, a King’s guard … bettered by a girl!

John took a dozen slow steps back from Liam and started humming tunelessly.

Liam, Becks, Bob and Cabot converged and began talking with muted voices.

‘We should stay together!’ said Liam. ‘You’ll miss the return window if we leave you down here!’

‘The scheduled window,’ said Bob, ‘is due in three days, one hour and — ’

‘The one-hour back-up window will follow and there will be another after that in ten days’ time,’ interrupted Becks. ‘We also have the final back-up set for five months, twenty-six days, one hour and seventeen minutes from now.’

Liam realized Becks seemed to be making a point. ‘You’re suggesting you stay here?’

‘Affirmative. There may be an opportunity to acquire tactically useful data here: additional information on the Treyarch Confession.’

Bob nodded. ‘She is correct. Also, now that we have a method of communication with the field office we will also be able to provide them a separate time and location stamp for Becks.’

He was right, they could open a portal right here for her. She wouldn’t need to make her way up to Kirklees. Liam looked at her. ‘You’re OK with this?’